Date Archives: Tuesday August 13th 2002

I turned the site off today by renaming the content table so that no connection could be established to grab the content. Due to a constant stream of incoming and unwanted shit, it was much easier to get rid of the site and cut off the supply of ammunition than it was to sit there and take it.

It turns out that for the quiet life it’s not always wise to post stuff on your own website. Like this, most probably. If you add to this the efforts of Eoan last week (copying and pasting out of context to make me look like a dick), I’m starting to believe that running my own personal site just brings unnecessary hassle for very little gain. After all, the site only really performs its job when I’m after one, if you catch my drift.

So… I have a couple of choices. Either I keep posting the stuff I’ve been posting for the last four and half years and live with the feedback, or I change my habbits, pull some punches and only post stuff that I think will be widely accepted by those who read it. Neither option seems terribly inviting.

However, I also thought of some additional fallback options. One is to allow people to choose whether they want fluffy bunny wunny content or if they want it warts and all. I could do this with something in the navigation on the right there. Although my take on this is that individuals would choose the non bunny wunny option and then rejoice that they had all the ammunition they required.

Alternatively, I could check visitor IP addresses and filter the content that way. This seems a much safer route to me – the content gets screened and I get to avoid the flaq without having to make a conscious effort.

Sadly after working late, tonight is not the night I’ll be doing the coding for this, but for the sake of avoiding a Dooce.com scenario I’ll happily take the measure as soon as I can.

Couldn’t believe this when I read it, but it turns out that the contents of Evan Brown‘s brain belongs to the company which fired him.

This is the kind of thing I’ve been waiting until I was 30 to do. Oh yes, it seemed that the only folk who made a complaint over a tv advert or programme were those no-life, middle aged know it all’s with nothing better to do.

Granted, I did have something better to do, but now that you can complain online I decided to give it a whirl.

The offending advert is the current campaign that Channel 4 have going to publicise their current line up of U.S. sitcoms. This would normally be fine – I do happen to watch a couple of those recycled U.S. sitcoms, however, this advert they have makes fun of the Police Could You? campaign. I think it’s in very poor taste to parody a very serious recruitment effort – the police are obviously struggling for numbers and trivialising their recruitment drive with Keith Harris (of all people – why not just use bloody Orville!?) is ill advised at best.

So I complained.

Not sure how I feel about it now – kind of glad I made the effort in a way, but a little dismayed that I let a tv advert bug me to the point where I complained. The reason I done it was probably an article on Jeremy‘s site a few months back which brought to my attention another example of poor behaviour on the part of Channel 4.

The ITC have already acknowledged my complaint and will apparently keep me notified of what happens as a result. As is the case with these things, it would take a few more folk than me to complain in order for anything major to happen, but at least I made a stand for once.