Anyone remember Elizabeth Thomas?

If there's any ex-Pinewoodians reading this, you may remember ET. Who could forget? And you may wish to check out her (newish) weblog. After all, it's got more recent content on it than this dusty pile.

mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

Sorry for the blatent lack of posting recently.

I think I lost my blogging mojo. Hopefully temporary. Perhaps I might try posting about random stuff for a bit, to see if it comes back.

Are you game for that?

Hilariously Bad 419 Scam Come-On

Hilariously bad 419 just hit inbox. Must. Stop. Laughing. And. Blog. It...

Minneapolis Telephone Network (MTN)
Foundation's Officer
125 Allen Avenue,
Lagos-Island
Nigeria.

Concern:Winner,
The Minneapolis Telephone Network (MTN),
would like to notify you that you have been
chosen by the board of trustees as one of the
final of a cash Grant/Donation for your own
personal, educational, and business
development.The Minneapolis Telephone
Network (MTN) was established by the Multi-
Million groups in 1993 was conceived with the
objective of human growth, educational, and
community development.To celebrate the 15th
anniversary program, the Minneapolis
Telephone Network in conjunction with the
Economic Community for West African States
(ECOWAS), United Nations Organization (UNO)
and the European Union (EU) is giving out a
yearly donation of Euro??3,500,000.00 (Three
Million ,Five Hundred Thousand Euro) and an
Auto-Mobile (Peugort 207 Car) each to 20 lucky
recipients for their patronage to this
organisation and continues growth.This
Donation/Grants is in view to mark it 15th years
of Best Telephone Network all over African and
some parts of the world.At least 20% of the
awarded funds should be used by you to
develop a part of your environment.Based on
the random selection exercise of internet
websites and millions of supermarket cash
invoices worldwide, you were selected among
the lucky recipients to receive the award sum of
Euro??3,500,000.00 (Three Million ,Five Hundred
Thousand Euro) and an Auto-Mobile (Peugort
207 Car) as charity donations/aid from the MTN
Group Limited (MTN Group), ECOWAS, EU and
the UNO in accordance with the enabling act of
Parliament. Your Qualification/Reference
numbers (M-323-T-6747, N-900-56) should be
quoated by winners in all discussions. You are
required to choose your delivery option which
will be convient for you in the order below:

1. Diplomatic Courier Service,Delivery To Your
Home Address.

2. Telegrahic Wire-Transfer,To Your
International Bank.

You are required to contact the promotion
agent in the below order.
Executive Secretary- Mr Raymond Chua Swee
Email:info@raymonchua-swee.1to1.org
All information is strictly confidential.
Mrs Gucci Villary
Minneapolis Telephone Network (MTN)
Foundation's Officer

ROTFLMAO

IPv4 Inaction: Danger, Danger, Will Robinson!

Gary Feldman of the UK's Demon Internet performs for the secret-wg in the closing plenary at RIPE 55 in Amsterdam, October 2007.

Hilarious. I guess it's time to stop stalling on that IPv6 rollout. Click the Play button below...


(In case it doesn't work, here's the direct YouTube link.)

Anyone know the name of Gary's erstwhile microphone stand?

Hat tip: Paul Hoffman.

Gmail, How do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Ways...

Here's a quick Gmail goodness grab-bag top-10...

1. Spam filtering. It just works. I estimate it kills more than 99% of my spam, and the only occasional false positives I get are from Yahoo Groups (which is a spam cesspit anyway) and mailing lists that include spam samples (uhhh...)
   
   
2. IMAP access. Yay, we've been asking and asking and asking for it, but it finally arrived yesterday.
   
   
3. Local front-end servers. Recently, Google moved the POP/IMAP/SMTP servers I connect to. They're not now in the U.S., but much closer to me (in the UK?). Some sort of routing cleverness, I dare say. This means downloading a load of messages is now very, very fast.
   
   
4. Search and Filters. Fast, flexible, frequently-very-useful. Especially when combined with the saved search extension for Firefox (using Greasemonkey or the Better Gmail extension).
   
   
5. Labels. I know some people hate 'em, to which I say, "Just think of them as folders." But they're so much better than folders, mainly 'cos you can "file" a message in more than one of them.
   
   
6. Fetchmail. Integrated, as way of grabbing your email from other accounts, using POP. Saves auto-forwarding, which is increasingly broken.
   
   
7. AJAX. Not as ground-breaking as OWA, not as flashy as Oddpost/Yahoo/SWA, not as mashable as Zimbra, but fast and usable all the same.
   
   
8. Keyboard shortcuts. A big productivity saver. I hate to move my hands off the keyboard to find my mouse -- that's a key reason why I don't "do" Mac OS.
   
   
9. Google Apps. A white label version of Gmail is included in Google's hosted applications service.
   
   
10. Free. Yes, as a confirmed cheapskate, this is a good thing. Even Google Apps is free for up to 50 mailboxes. No more do vanity domain owners have to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous email forwarders.