As usual when nicparkes.com begins to roar into life again, I get the sudden urge to make some updates myself. Nothing major, but I’ve rewritten my bio, finally put something about QPCS (though it’s still shamefully scant) along with an updated freeware page and a new photo gallery collecting my photo blogs into one neat repository. And a few other tweaks and touches along the way as well.
Apart from Nic competition, I guess I also put this down to the Duke of Edinburgh trip that has whisked many of my WLM companions away to the Lake District for a long weekend. At least I still have text contact, which I put to good use to inform the survival group that:
- I am 55% Matt Damon
- Lucy is 54% Courtney Cox
- Josie is 71% Geri Halliwell
- Andy is 60% Ashton Kutcher
You beautiful people. Source: myheritage.com Celebrity Face Recognition. So now you know.
Very well done to my sisters Katie and Natasha for their fantastic SATs results so far 
and indeed to everyone around the country. Of course, now the really important years start (which ones? whichever ones you have next of course, as always…) 
Oh, and I think I should announce that I very slightly met Lenny Henry today. Well, for about 0.5 seconds. That’s Dominic’s Celebrity Blog Watch for tonight, thanks for joining. Oh, and talking of celebrities, I’ve been watching The Day Today (one of my birthday DVDs) and I just want to reiterate that Chris Morris – of Brass Eye fame – is a genius.
Thank you and good night. I’m trying to get an early one tonight, for once, but I’m rapidly running out of time for that 
Tony Benn
Anyway, there was a bit of a debate at the end when I pressed Benn on his insistence on the national state. Globalisation, I put forward, was a good thing because it offered workers in poorer countries a new opportunity for employment and wealth. And, if the world could be a fairer place with universal standards of wages and health and safety, Benn agrees in the end. He’s also a technologist – which is pleasing, because I agree entirely with Benn on this – our future depends on technology going forward.
On a totally different note, I’m super-excited (as a Microsoft blog would say) to promote RV Blog – Nic’s re-launched network of eager bloggers. Check it out, and stay up to date with the feed on the right.
I happen to have a fairly generic Hotmail address as a ‘spare’ e-mail account, and routinely get e-mails from companies where someone has signed up to a website using my address.
The best behaved include an ‘activation link’ before the account can be used, verifying that the e-mail address really does belong to that person before allowing them to use the site. (Bonus points for including a ‘deactivation link’ in the e-mail straight away, that makes my life a lot easier.) Sadly, a great number of websites decide to take everything on trust and happily send out a welcome e-mail without doing any verification.
OK… so no big deal. The initial e-mail usually includes a username and password so I can log on, close whatever stupid account has been opened, and move on. In the rare and annoying cases where no ‘Delete my account’ is available I can always change the e-mail address (no verification, remember?) and password, ensuring it becomes a dead account that no-one has access to. Good. Shame on you for abusing my e-mail address in the first place.
Today, however, this happened with Juno Records. Not only did they happily let someone sign up to this site, they also allowed them to buy products on it, all without checking the e-mail address was genuine! It gets worse. Here’s a screenshot from the site:
Juno Account
This is sloppy design that puts people at risk.
As I just finished my first A2 Maths homework about the modulus function, I felt that would be an appropriate title. Good evening!
My life is a bit of a mish-mash of things happening at the moment. The Babble Summer CDs arrived on Tuesday and are so beautifully presented I’m quite speechless in gratitude for Pingu for putting in so much work. Great job guys! 
For those unaware, Babble members prepared a summery CD of their favourite tracks and sent them to Pingu to be duplicated, labelled and delivered.
I’m also reading for the first time in far too long. Specifically, In Defence of History which, I was told, is the book to read if you want to study History at Cambridge. It is rather good though! [Wary eyes if any future admissions people watch this] I’ll reserve judgement till the end, however, on whether History is an art or a science. For the moment – I’ll say either, both and neither, OK? And talking of History, I have decided to do my Individual Assignment on… *drumroll* the French Revolution!
Oh, and we started to watch All Quiet on the Western Front in English and were amused by the very dodgy American accents of the ‘German’ soldiers. Sorry. Horror of war and all that.
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
