I have now decided to move my blog to WordPress following Blogger discontinuing there FTP service. Thank you for the words of advice.

I have another decision to make now and your input would be appreciated. The question is… Should I move this main “tech, rant, fun” blog to another domain.

A while ago I registered “alistairmacdonald.org” and “macdonald.info”. My intention was to use these as my professional front-end and keep my “agm.me.uk” for more personal projects. Last year I managed to register “alistairmacdonald.com” that I was planning to use instead of the “.org”. I also have a few “.co.uk” domains that I never used in the end including “Millisecond”, “Multitrack”, and “Stereophonic”.

I know a few people don’t like my “agm.me.uk” address. The reason why I like it is that it is short, AGM (my initials) are memorable, and it is controlled by Nominet so subject to UK and not oversees law. The down side is that the domain does not instantly identify it’s self as mine, the “.me.uk” is often sometimes with “.co.uk”, and more recently people have been missing off the “.uk” with the addition of the “.me” top level domain.

No matter what happens I anticipate still using “agm.me.uk” for my pet projects and micro sites. I am also actively moving some pet projects to the domain in a cost saving exercise.

So, what are your thoughts?

My blog here is managed by Google’s Blogger and hosted on my own web site on a Rails Playground server. This is done by giving Blogger FTP access to my site that is used to upload the pages when they change. Sadly Google are deprecating this FTP feature and I will either have to run the blog from the Blogger’s servers (but I can use my own domain name) or host the my blog myself.

I have always had a plan in place to move my blog from Blogger to WordPress. This will continue to be hosted on my web site and the URLs will not change. You never know when a service will disappear so I tend to plan ahead like this. There is a nice migration path and this is currently my favoured solution.

My main concern about moving to WordPress is the amount of comment spam that friends get despite using recaptcha. I have had to disable the comments on the BarCampNorthEast web site that was receiving a couple of spam comments a day.

So, do you think I am doing the right thing. Should I use WordPress or something else? Should I use another comment service like Disqus to cut down on spam, or should I host the whole thing somewhere else? All comments welcome (unless they are spam :-) ).

Last year a purchased an Aspire Revo R3600 with a 160GB HDD that I installed Ubuntu on. It has been a great little machine and I am very pleased with it.

Somewhere down the line my old LaserJet printer (from Freegle/Freecycle) that is connected using a cheep USB to Parallel adapter (off ebay) stopped working. It is a problem that many people appear to have had when they upgraded Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). After a bit (okay, a lot) of debugging I have figured out that you need to treat the USB device as a parallel printer and not the default USB printer. To do this change the URL prefix from “usb:” to “parallel:”, or if that is nonsense to you use the following instructions.

• Go to the printing devices by selecting “System”, “Administration”, and then “Printing”.
• Right click on the old printer (if one is there) and select delete.
• Click the “New” button.
• Select “Other” and enter the device URI as”parallel:/dev/usblp0″.
• Select your printer as you would normally and it should then work (a reboot may be required).

Remember this is only for if you are using a parallel printer with a USB converter. I hope this helps you, and if it does and you have posted for help elsewhere, please help someone else by going back and posting the answer (or link back to here). Finally, before you smug Windows users start having a go, it took me longer to get the converter running on my XP machine. :-P

It was three years ago today that I first signed up to Twitter. I was user number 12838, and you can check your own number by clicking on your RSS feed and looking towards the end of the URL. Luckily the user name alistair was still available at the point.

I can not remember my first tweet, and Twitter removed all the older ones before I was able to make a backup, but like so many people’s first tweet it was along the lines of “Figuring out what Twitter is”.

Although I have not used it continually for three years I have for the last couple and and frighteningly it has become part of my life. I have made some great friends through it, keep in contact with a lot more, become part of one of the best (and possibly maddest) photo walk groups, know what is happening in the tech and non tech world as it happens, and feel part of a great set of online communities.

Originally it was a great way to keep in the loop and know what friends are up to. Today people are more open and broadcasting to the works when then tweet, but as a result they are [very sensibly] less open, and that in many ways is a shame. I am considering doing the same by being slightly less open and unprotecting my updates.

I think the secret of Twitter’s success is naturally luck, but also adapting it’s self and allowing user to almost add functionality. I don’t know if it can maintain it’s position forever, but unless it does something really stupid I see it continuing for quite a while.

Some good news. Dorkbot NCL returns for a second time on November 17th. This is when we get together to have a look at what exciting things we have made.

This month we will find out about the mystery of Humanaquarium, Brendan Ratliff will be composing using tracking techniques, and Touchscape will be showing off touch technology.

More details can be found on the Centre for Life web site.

Earlier in the year I waffled of at BarCampLeeds about multi factor authentication and tried to persuade everyone to get a PayPal security key.

I learned at Charity Hack that PayPal were discontinuing the security key. I don’t know the full story, but it has been suggested that it could be because of cost.

The security key has essentially been replaced by SMS in the UK. So now you can register your mobile number, and when you try and log in as normal PayPay will send you an SMS message with a one time password to enter. Although not 100% secure or reliable this does overcome the authentication security concerns affecting most PayPal users. Because of this I strongly recommend you use it if it is practical for you to do so.

Now the good news. You can still purchase a PayPay security key for £3 from the US PayPay site, and it is the amazing credit card sized hardware key pictured above. This key can also be used on ebay and other VIP web sites. There are no excuses, even if you only log in once a year you should please get one now.

At last night’s Dorkbot Newcastle the idea of organising a hardware focused Hack Day before the second European Maker Faire in Newcastle was floated.

A “hack day” is when like minded people get to together to create things. This would create interesting things to demonstrate at the Maker Faire, bring people together and introduce others to our local tech community, and help support anyone stuck on an element of there home brew projects.

This will not be a massive event with lots of the razzmatazz of larger Hack Days, but should still be a fun event focused on producing interesting things.

It could be a one or two day event, or perhaps even spread over several evenings. It could also be a weekend event, or potentiality in the days before the Maker Faire. It all depends on what people and when we can squeeze it in.

So…. What are your thoughts? Are you interested in attending? When is good for you? Please let me know your thoughts.