Monthly Archives: December 2006

Commuting, Opinion, Podcasts

Forth Road Bridge – Podcast #2

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My return trip north over the Forth Road Bridge, for Monday.

FRB Podcast #2 [2MB] – the one with the 4×4 driver. Monday 11/12/2006, Edinburgh to Fife, depart 1735, arrive 1826.

This one runs a little fast, you can hear the clicks between edit points. I edited a lot of content out, this one is just 10 minutes long.

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Commuting, Opinion, Podcasts

Forth Road Bridge – Podcast #1

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I don’t know what compelled me to do this, but after The Scotman’s campaign for a second crossing (be it a bridge, a tunnel or something else) over the River Forth Firth Of Forth [thanks Colin!], I’ve decided to record my experiences crossing the Forth Road Bridge.

I’ve chosen to podcast my entire journey, edited down such that the 75 minute drive is a 30 minute podcast. I’ll cover the route south, i.e. from Fife over to Edinburgh and back again.

Over the course of a week, you’ll hear a lot of my views and opinions on what’s wrong with the commute over to Edinburgh. Editing the podcasts takes about an hour, so please be patient, I will get them all uploaded as soon as possible. Also, the sound quality isn’t production quality, but it’s clear enough to get the point across.

I’ve got a lot that I want to say about this journey, I’ll try and put together a blog post “real soon now”.

FRB Podcast #1 [6MB], Monday 11/12/2006, Fife to Edinburgh, depart 0745, arrive 0900. Notice the slight frustration build up towards the end of the podcast!

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Security

It’s a scam, it’s a hoax, but how do you know?

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My other half (“who should know better” I hear you cry) forwarded on the message below.

FREE £60 SAINSBURY’S VOUCHER!
Hi Guys
This does work, just had a reply back from my cousin who sent it, saying he has just received his voucher, Nice eh? Send this email on to 10 people and copy in J.sainsburys@customerservices.com, Then Sainsbury’s will forward you a £60 voucher via email Fab – Just in time for Christmas

Of course, it is a hoax. It’s obvious, surely everybody can see that? Well, the truth is, it’s not that obvious and this particular hoax is still catching folks out! So what makes this so obviously a hoax?

Well, there are a few tell-tale signs.

The e-mail alias is playing on your impression of the big name that is behind the supermarket in question, you’d like to think that J.sainsburys is a reliable alias. Wrong on two counts. Firstly, the small ‘s’ is a clue, it should be uppercase. Secondly, it’s “J Sainsbury”, there’s no need for the trailing ‘s’. Don’t believe me? Check it here.

Then there’s the capital ‘T’ just after the ‘,’ – that’s just wrong. And no ‘.’ before ‘Fab’. And the capital ‘J’ in ‘Just’. And the capital ‘N’ in ‘Nice’. Always check grammar, spelling, etc. if you have even the slightest suspicion that something isn’t what it seems. Oh, and no ‘.’ closing the sentence.

The domain name, customerservices.com, has nothing to do with the supermarket. If this domain is still alive, it only serves to collect e-mail addresses from unsuspecting individuals who’ll be spammed later.

How easy is it to check for these hoaxes? Well, your favourite search engine is usually a good place to start. Check out J.sainsburys hoax to see what I mean.

So remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

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Community, Developer Events

DDD4 – What is the secret?

I’m not going to tell you what I think the secret is in this post, that’ll have to wait until the weekend…

…but, I just wanted to share the good words from Dave McMahon, on the subject of DDD4 (2nd December 2006):

“the atmosphere…feel the buzz…was smoking…everyone was smiling…of all the conferences that I’ve ever been to, that was the best atmosphere I’ve ever known…it was just awesome”

Hear more of what Dave and Rich have to say in their podcast here, and you can “see” the atmosphere here.

And there’s more super audio content from the 4ChapsFromBlightly over here.

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