28May

After the Irish election, we're inspired to write an Explainer piece. It's answering a poser posed last month by Doctor Vee: Parties are only fielding as many candidates as they can possibly hope to win. In most cases, this is one. And while STV gives voters more choice on paper, this extra choice has actually made me feel a bit suffocated.

(More: Two worked examples, and some funky tables. And, for those who like such things, some bad puns. - 2623 words)

The strategy is to field at least as many candidates as seats you're certain of winning, but no more than you think you could possibly win. Generally, these numbers will either be identical, or separated by just one candidate. Fielding too few candidates is a sign of little confidence; fielding too many allows transfers to erode your support.

In the example cited by Dr. V earlier, Labour fielded two candidates, and four other parties put up just one. Three candidates were to be elected. We suspect that at least one of the one-candidate parties should have put up a second candidate, but it's difficult to predict which.

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28May

Time for the quarterly RAJAR figures, this time covering the twelve weeks to 31 March 2007. Of particular reference are the figures for the fourth quarter of 2006 and the equivalent last year.

(Another one that's of very limited interest, probably)

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28May

As trailed last week, Ann Widdecombe gave her personal statement to the Commons, speaking about the firing in 1995 of Derek Lewis by then-interior minister Michael Howaerd. Miss Widdecombe stated that Mr. Howaerd had taken refuge in semantic prestidigitation, and gave us the lead quote. The new government announced plans to ban sports sponsorship by tobacco companies, and to cut bureaucracy in the NHS. There were claims that Mohammed Sarwar Lab, Glasgow Govan had bribed another candidate to stand aside; Labour's response was to set up an inquiry, which will report later in the summer.

(More: Spaghetti Junction is 25, The Stereophonics are in the top 40, and James Masterton is noted. 2002 nostalgia is very 2015, though.)

The Cardigans slipped a place to 6, and the Rembrants' re-issue of the theme from Friends was the fastest climber, up 6 to 5. New at number 4 was Rosie Gaines, performing Closer than close. Gaines had begun her career as a vocalist and keyboard player on Prince's 1990 tour; her main claim to fame was hitting the high note at the end of the Diamonds and pearls track. After getting in a wrangle with Warners, Gaines released an album through Motown in 1995; the title track was left off the album, and emerged as a single two years later. Though a tremendous hit, Gaines was stereotyped as a disco diva, and after the follow-up single stalled, her career ground to a halt. A shame. Last week's number one from Olive slips to this week's number 3, while Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli hold firm at 2.

The new number one, probably the best number one of the year, came from Eternal. They'd been having top ten hits pretty much every quarter since 1993, and survived a reduction from four to three, shedding Louise Nurding in 1995. The remaining singers - Esther and Vernie Bennett and Kelle Bryan - were by now on their third album, and followed their gospel roots to a recording session with Bebe Winans. The result was I want to be the only one, a song that lifts the heart with not one, not two, but three key changes during its progression. The lasses deserved their moment in the sun, and their back catalogue is chock full of other good songs.

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29May

If we're to believe Vecosys, Feedburner is to disappear into the G****e behemoth. If it does, we'll be contacting the owners of all the RSS feeds we use, and explaining why we won't be reading them again. Which includes Datamining, where we read the truism: There seems to be an inverse relationship between the number of G****e ads on a blog and the quality of the blog.

G****e's latest device to foist adverts where no commercial should tread: the Browser Address Error Redirector.

James Thomas lives a life without G****e. And not only lives to tell the tale, but thoroughly enjoys it:

Without the AdSense and Google Analytics javascripts executing (and downloading) on some pages, the entire internet experience is a lot faster... Ask's mapping service is pretty good. Rootly has been a great alternative to Google News, and in some cases even better.

(More: search engine optimisation, the traveller's dilemma, norms of notification, and Jeopardy: Tibet or not to bet.)

We've not created a Twit account, on the entirely reasonable grounds that we have nothing to say in as little as 140 characters, and we don't sign up for anything run by damned Yankees these days. Those who have may be mildly interested in Tube-tracker to SMS, a quick way of receiving a short message saying that there are delays on the Metropolitan line north of Northwood Hills and south of Northwood, allowing one to divert to Ruislip Manor.

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31May

Earlier this week, we asked of Livejournal support,

Following recent news that Six Apart has decided to whitelist certain third-party servers for YADIS authentication, I wish to entirely disable YADIS for my Livejournal account.

Could you please advise how I might do this?

Approximately four hours after submission, the question was placed in the webmaster section, effectively hiding it from public view. In the time between submitting the question and receiving a response, we found that it had been cited by the resistance. We have sent a copy of this article to the observant person concerned.

Almost 24 hours later, Livejournal said (and all typos are in the original),

You can disable OpenID for your account by customizing your journal to remove the OpenID declarations in the <head> of your style. Unfortunately, we cannot assist you with this; you may wish to search for a tutorial on customizing your journal.

We said, ah!, and went off to mess with our head.

In testing, we found that the following S1 over-ride is generally sufficient to cause OpenID to fail in an unrecoverable manner:

GLOBAL_HEAD<=
<!-- Three lines to break YADIS -->
<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.openid.invalid" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://www.openid.invalid/" />
<meta http-equiv="X-XRDS-Location" content="http://www.openid.invalid/xrds/" />
<=GLOBAL_HEAD

We're using the .invalid domain because it will never work. The risk of using a geniune domain is that someone might actually put a YADIS server there, and that would just ruin the day.

We note that both the standard and these fake servers are listed in the finished page. In testing, this only caused an unexpected result (i.e. it worked) on one site, which appears to have built its own authentication routines when YADIS was new. Pretty much anything using an off-the-shelf routine falls over, usually with a sweet little error message. The Wordpress plugin fails. Anything referencing OpenID.net fails. In fact, nine out of ten sites we tested at random failed.

Most pleasingly, livejournal.ru, which had been whitelisted by Six Apart thus ensuring that visitors don't get bugged for their logon when exporting data to Russia's oh-so-secure servers, falls over in a big, steaming pile of complete failure and messy error messages. We'll chalk that up as a Result!

Now, a word of warning. All this works perfectly on an S1 journal. Those of you who have downgraded to the shiny new S2 system, you're a bit on your own. We expect the principle would hold, but we wouldn't know where to begin to customise your HEAD.

But let's finish with an underlying reason why YADIS is a phisherman's phriend. It is far too open to abuse. We don't think that it's worth anyone's time, and if this advice saves someone from having their identity compromised, we will sleep a whole lot more easily.

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31May

Here's your concise guide to what has happened, and what we expect will happen.

1) Two dominionist fundamentalist christians convince themselves that Livejournal is in league with the devil, because some people express interest in things they believe are not in accordance with their interpretation of the Bible, such as incest, homosexuality, democracy, and chocolate.

2) DFCs write to Livejournal to complain about these matters.

3) Livejournal staff suppress their laughter, and politely tells DFCs to get stuffed.

4) DFCs send screenshots to advertisers.

5) Advertisers think that this might cost them one or two sales, and have a quiet word in Livejournal's ears.

6) Livejournal head honchos worry for the bottom line, enter full-on PANIC! mode, and hear what they want to hear from their lawyers.

7) Livejournal suspends all the journals and communities that the fundies have reported, plus quite a few that they haven't.

8) A zillion Livejournal customers get really rather het up.

9) Anil Dash makes a fool of himself on Metafilter.

10) Livejournal's ultimate owner talks to the press.

11) Zillions more Livejournal customers get really rather het up, not so much because of step 7, but because of step 10.

12) Livejournal's owner apologises and says he might set things straight. Perhaps. If you're lucky.

13) Half of Livejournal throws out a random string of consonants and deems the matter closed.

14) The other half remains unhappy and make noises about moving, but will wait to see if step 12 does happen.

15) Time passes. People come to realise that step 9 was quite fun. Green should be white, indeed.

16) Eventually, almost a hundred people do abandon their journals.

17) Profit!

18) Mr. Christ returns to Earth, is horrified by the things being done in His name, and is about to speak out when he is jeered off stage by the dominionist fundamentalist christians, who realise that they believe in nothing more than their own infallibility.

(Details on all this - 1932 words)

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32May

During May, Livejournal purged an undisclosed number of long-deleted accounts. This has had a significant affect on the member statistics, particularly in the age section.

(More: All the stats - no particular change - and the rest of the commentary.)

A system to automatically transcribe phone posts was soft-launched. This appears to have a pretty significant flaw: the automatic translation is actually performed by people in an Indian call-centre. If this is automated then we're Dutchmen.

Nope, not orange.

But let's end on an exclusive - Livejournal will be changing its programming language! On June 31, the company will switch to a system entirely implemented in lolcode.

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2June

Time to look at some of the more bizarre search terms people have used to reach this site...

chords of the songs of the boyband 911 shouldn't detain us for very long, they only ever sang in one key.

free essays on uk biometric passport We are not doing your homework. Not unless you pay us a grand. Cash. No refunds.

james murdoch against public service broadcasters funding system Look at the name. There's a pretty big hint.

let's get ready to karaoke Oh gawds, they've let Antan Dec into a recording studio again.

million seller song list Do you mean, The definitive UK million selling singles list? And it raises the question: will Elton John shift another 135,000 copies of Something about the way you look tonight this autumn?

paddy o'connell fired broadcasting house Oh yes, that was fun. A stunt on his Broadcasting House show in the week before Easter saw Paddy and his crew strap booster rockets to the side of the building, launch it into space during the 9am news, and present the entire programme from low earth orbit. Fascinating.

paul denchfield We bet our left eyebrow...

video klip we'll in this together - high school musical Do they teach these children nothing?

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2June

We can only aspire to be like Valerie Singleton - Konnie Huq, who announced this week that she's leaving Blue Peter.

On an Overgrown Path looks at classical music radio, and attributes much of the success of Classic FM to its innovative use of automated scheduling. Overgrown Path is spot on with its criticism of the long-established BBC station, Radio 3. We pay our license fee for the BBC to produce great radio. The current output of Radio 3 is not great radio.

Onwards, ever ever on... Metafilter has a calm and rational discussion about an eschatological religious sect. Jemima Wellington-Green has previously asked us to make clear that she in no way recognises this group, which claims to witness on her behalf.

Roy Greenslime says that the slimline Sindytab will fail. The proposition - one main section, pullout business section, and a big magazine - echoes the very successful Hell on Sunday.

Poland has proposed draconian new laws to ban demonstrations for causes that do not meet with government approval. Letter from Poland.

(More: nods to Russell T. Davies, Name That Font, and MTV travels to the Eurovision Song Contest. - 857 words)

We'll be back when we've laughed our head back on.

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3June

In France, Nelly Furtado's Say it right takes the number one position, ahead of Pakito performing Are u ready?. In at 4 is the cast single from Nouvelle Star (Pop Idle France), making their version of Should I stay or should I go?. Lafee is in at 3 in Germany, performing Heul doch. Rhianna's Umbrella is going up all over the continent - especially after the weather this week - but she's not the highest new entry in Latvia. That honour goes to Lauris Reiniks's Nakts veikala.

Per Gessle, the former Roxette star, has his second number one single in Sweden, with En händig man. E-Type's True believer and Rednex's Looking for a star are into the top ten. We also find Enrique Iglesias at 8 performing Do you know; at 9 is the United DJs playing Don't you know. No surprise to find Trine overhauling last week's Danish number one, but she's still at number 2! Torben Steno and Johan Olsen's Pligtem kalder ep is the new Danish best-seller. A new number 1 in Finland, Fashion by Hanoi Rocks. The entire top 11 is new entries, and 16 of the top 20 are new.

20 20 Mika - Relax (take it easy)
19 18 DJ Ötzi - Ein stern
18 NE Mark Medlock - Now or never
17 15 Gwen Stiffeny - The sweet escape
16 19 Travis - Closer
15 12 Manic Street Preachers - Your love alone
14 14 Michael Bublé - Everything
13 11 Maroon 5 - Makes me wonder
12 NE Rihanna - Umbrella
11  8 Ville Valo and Natalia Avelon - Summer wine
10  9 Fray - How to save a life
 9  7 Boys Aloud - Ruby
 8 10 Mika - Love today
 7  6 Timberland et al - Give it to me
 6 re Mark Ronson - Stop me
 5  5 Linkin Park - What I've done
 4  4 Nelly Furtado - Say it right
 3  3 Mika - Grace Kelly
 2  2 Beyonce / Shakira - Beautiful liar
 1  1 Åvril Lavignnesøn - Girlfriend

3June

Fourteen new entries into the top 75. We were rather hoping to make a joke about waiting forever for a Zimmer then two arriving at once, but Hans Zimmer's song (not as good as his Going for Gold theme, natch) has just missed the top 75. So has the Travelling Wilburys' Handle with care, following a documentary on The Light Programme last week-end. Josh Groban's version of You raise me up enters at 74; the song has already been a hit in the past few years for Daniel O'Donnell and Westside, and Groban's version is older than the 'Side's. Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah enters at 65, on the tenth anniversary of his death, and Pendulum are in at 64. McFly fall another 20 places to 59 - they've now gone 1-20-39-59. O'Marion enters at 58, Bob Sinclar is in at 49 with the Eurohit Sound of freedom. It's bad news for the Seizure Sisters - the second follow-up to their big hit can only make 43. And bad luck to LCD Soundsystem, in at 41.

Nine new in the top 40, but before we reach those, the very average new Boys Aloud single drops 20 places to 39. The old one is down one at 24. Simply Red comes in at 36 with the second single off their current album. It's fair to say that the Red haven't done anything of note since 1995. Tiny Dancers have their second hit single in three months; like Little Man Tate, they're one radio hit away from huge success.

Three weeks at 29 for Nelly Furtado's Say it right; that's beaten by the Fireballs' Quite a party, which spent four straight weeks at 29 on the Record Retailer chart in August 1961. The following July, Orange blossom special saw the Spotnicks at 29 for three weeks. There's no doubt about the validity of the Gallup chart in 1984, when Stephanie Mills' Medicine song was there for three October weeks, though Nelly's is the first single to spend three weeks at 29 without peaking there. Perry Como's For the good times also spend four weeks there in December 1973 and January 1974, but that included one unpublished week in the middle. A similar argument excludes Cilla Black's I only live to love you (1967-8, RR), the Clash's London calling (1979-80), and Tears For Fears's The way you are (1983-4).

Enrique Iglesias's Do you know is in at 28, for no adequately explored reason. The other half of the joke is in at 26 for The Zimmers' version of My generation. They're a group of sprightly old age pensioners who recorded a version of the Who classic. At 81, their lead singer becomes the oldest living person to sing on a chart entry ever; to put it in context, Cliff Richard still has fifteen years to go before he can beat the mark. Kim Sozzi is new at 23 with Break up, Armand van Helden at 22 with NFC beat, and Marilyn Manson's Heart-shaped glasses enter at 19. MIMS climbs to 18 with This is why I'm shot. Reverend and the Makers storm up to 12 on physical release, and is probably a better song than Calvin Harris's The girls, new at 9. Twang storm up from 33 to 8, and Mutya Buena climbs from 9 to 2. Remarkably, none of the Sugababes' many hits ever peaked in the runner-up spot. Rihanna was released on physicals this week, and beat Mutya by 3:1.

Maroon 5 continue to have the best-selling album; Linkin Park remain at 2, and Pigeon Detectives enter at 3 with Wait for me. Boys Aloud are the only act to climb in the top 10, while R. Kelly enters at 10. Josh Groban's Awake re-enters at 12, presumably some sort of television exposure. Jeff Buckley's hits album makes 16, and Chris Cornell's Carry on comes in at 25. Don't recall his previous album being entitled Stop! Richard Thompson is in at 39, Mumm-Ra at 42, and Infernal at 44. Between, the Klaxons climb 12 to 43, and there's a good climb for Modest Mouse (69-56). Ross Copperman is in at 59, and the hits of Joe Jackson at 60. Most obvious beneficiary of the BBC-2 History of Rock series is Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album, back in at 68.

 2  9 Mutya Buena - Real girl
 8 33 Twang - Either way
12 38 Reverend and the Makers
  - Heavyweight champion of the world
13 11 Åvril Lavignnesøn - Girlfriend
16 12 Pigeon Detectives - I'm not sorry
17 15 Mika - Love to-day
25 25 Fray - How to save a life
27 16 Manic Street Preachers
  - Your love alone is not enough
31 27 Mika - Grace Kelly
32 21 Mark Ronson - Stop me
33 NE Tiny Dancers - Hannah we know
51 28 Cribs - Men's needs
53 31 The Enemy - Away from here
55 32 Biffy Clyro - Living is a problem
59 39 McFly - Baby's coming back
60 56 Gossip - Standing in the way of control
62 57 Calvin Harris - Acceptable in the eighties
66 43 Jojo - Anything
68 52 Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm
69 46 Funeral For A Friend - Into oblivion
71 58 Pink - Leave me alone
72 74 Linkin Park / Jay Zed - Numb/Encore
75 re Holloways - Generator

3June

This week, we've been watching and hearing...

• Children's Television on Trial: the 1950s (BBC-4) Corky o'rorky, what a load of cobblers! Evidence suggests that, contrary to popular myth, the BBC didn't drag a Mickey Mouse cartoon off air; there's certainly enough evidence to ensure this isn't repeated in cheap documentaries. Apparently, the 1950s' Andy Pandy was shot in widescreen, and the diagonal wipe used throughout the episode was thoroughly annoying. There is a great documentary series to be made about children's television: on the evidence of episode 1, this is not it.
• Lingua Franca (Radio National), exploring the art and craft of the sledge. How do sportspeople use language to gain an edge over their opposition, and what are the limits to this psychological warfare? Warwick Hadfield's talk contains plenty of examples, while making his points. Transcript
• Children's Television on Trial (BBC-4). The rest of the series wasn't much better - clips thrown together, some very dubious assertions made (like, the BBC Children's department was axed because of Thunderbirds, and not budget cuts), and a generally slipshod feel to the entire week. Particularly disliked the 90s episode, which dedicated barely 20 minutes of an hour-long programme to the titular decade, and barely got past The Demon Headmaster and Teletubbies before moving down the blind alley of The Simpsons and over the bridge into the 2000s.
• When the Stranglers met Roland Rat (BBC-4) was the right way to do it - historically accurate, well researched, the proper blend of nostalgia and narrative, no gratuitous cropping to widescreen, and with a knowing Fearne Cotton narration.
• Feedback (Radio 4) asked the BBC Governers Trust what they did (not working out ways to fight the DG), wondered why Bill Oddie attacked the Toady reporter, reviewed The Unbelievable Truth (work-in-progress) and Heresy (poor - not sure about that one), and wondered if there might be a good news programme.
• Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain (BBC-2) To the Eden-MacMillan era, including news of race riots that never get mentioned, and an appropriate historical setting for the Profumo affair. And, thanks to a potted history of the Mini, plenty of shots of Round Here.

3June

In Prince Edward Island, the Liberal government has been returned, securing 23 seats on 53% of the ballot; the Conservatives have 4 seats and 41% of the votes.

The death has been announced of David Renton (Nat Lib, later Con, Huntingdonshire). To update a post from last year, written upon the death of Douglas Dodds-Parker, the surviving members of the 38th (1945-50) parliament are Wing-Commander Ernest Rogers Millington, the Common Wealth (later Labour) MP for Chelmsford from January 1945, Michael Foot (Lab, Plymouth Devonport), Maj. John Freeman (Lab, Watford), and Francis Noel-Baker (Lab, Brentford and Chiswick). Mr. Noel-Baker has previously been cited as uncertain, but we note that he is listed as the owner of Candili, a holiday resort in Greece. We also listed Edward Carson (C, Isle of Thanet) as uncertain; further research has confirmed that he died in 1987 (obituary, Times, 9 March 1987). We have also researched the 51 MPs returned in by-elections during this parliament; none survive.

3June

The bank holiday was ruined by persistent light rain. It rarely amounted to much more than 1mm per hour, but the precipitation ran without a significant break from 9pm on Saturday 26 to 3pm on Monday 28. The total fall over these 42 hours was 37mm, over half the monthly total. It's fair to describe the wet week-end as a Spanish Plume event, caused when a jet of hot and humid air from Spain and the Sahara meets the cold moist air off the Atlantic. Later in summer, this setup brings some unstable weather, with thunderstorms and tornadoes common; when it happens in May, a prolonged belt of rain is more common. Spanish Plumes are relatively common events, it's rare for a summer to pass without one happening somewhere over the UK. This one ran into high pressure off northern Ireland, resulting in cold northerly winds for most of the UK.

The showery airflow persisted through the working week, though mixing with warm south-westerlies from Tuesday, resulting in sunny intervals and sharp showers. The winds slackened on Friday, allowing temperatures to climb sharply.

28 Mo wet and windy      6/11,18.5
29 Tu sun, heavy showers 6/14, 1.0
30 We sun, heavy showers 2/16, 4.5
31 Th sun, heavy showers 7/17, 3.0
01 Fr sun                5/21
02 Sa sun                9/22
03 Su sunny spells       9/23

Rainfall in May: 130.5mm; monthly average: 64mm

Rainfall in June: 0mm; monthly average: 50mm

Degree heating days: 497½
2005-6: 684/684
2004-5: 556/556
2003-4: 754/754

Degree cooling days: 16
2006: 15/360
2005: 10/238
2004: 9/198
2003: 28/328