My Site – Hello Curns

Cool URLs

An idea about preserving web content, even though the author acknowledges difficulties in maintaining original URLs.

A great idea

According to the people who think about web standards, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Cool URIs don’t change. It’s a basic idea: once a page on the internet is created, it should – in theory and with enough money – stay at the same address forever. Always there and available for reference. I think the idea is sound. We have all come across links that no longer work; a concept that became known as link rot. I wrote about it in June 2004, in a post entitled Learning from Others.

Harder in practice

I might like and support the idea, but as I enter my 29th year writing on the web, I know I’ve been unable to honour the concept. For example, above is not, strictly, the right link for the ‘Learning from Others’ post. I might argue that the version here, which is on the domain I used to use for blogging, is more accurate. The content is the same, they’re still my words, but musak.org was the original home.

That’s still not the original URL, however. Sometime in the mid-2000s I archived the musak.org site when I switched blogging platform. I imported posts into the new tool without much thought. I wasn’t sure I was going to keep the old site around. I also copied some of the posts into curnow.org so that I would keep a copy even if I killed off the other site. The closest to the original URL is now at the wonderful Internet Archive (or Wayback Machine), and is a snapshot from July 2004: Archived: Learning from Others.

If you didn’t know about the archived version and tried to go to the original post it would generate a ‘page not found’ type of error; 404, in internet speak. Even worse, there would be almost no clue that it’s still possible to read the original words. I could do something clever on the server to rewrite the links. Maybe I’ll get to that when I have time to write some code.

Correcting link rot

Those original posts were not updated when I mothballed the site into the new platform. As a result, musak.org had quite a bit of internal link rot. Occasionally, I look back and read something old and decide to correct the internal links. Eventually, I will finish that task and everything will be properly linked.

While I am in ‘correction mode’, I also check other outbound links on those old posts. If they no longer work I decided I’d update them. If I can find an online version of the original text at a different URL then I correct it. If I don’t, I try the Internet Archive. If I can find neither, I leave the broken link.

Last summer, James Cridland wrote about Fixing 404 errors and link rot, while maintaining authenticity. He took a different approach to updating dead links. I think his path is more inline with the ‘cool URL’ concept, but I’m happy with my compromise.

My weeknotes

When I started my weeknotes, I decided to prepare for future link rot and preemptively included a reference to the Internet Archive version of all the things I’d linked to in that week’s note. That way, I knew there would be a snapshot taken around the time I wrote a note and, in the future, it would be easier to navigate to the archive if link was broken.

I have been reviewing my 2023 weeknotes. It’s an interesting exercise to understand my year. But, I think the ‘Archive’ section that includes the Wayback Machine links makes reading a series of notes harder than it need be.

So, while I’m going to make sure all the links are added to the Internet Archive whenever I post a new weeknote, I’m dropping that section.

My URLs, however, will stay cool (perhaps the only thing I do that is).

Annual Report 2018

The curnow.org annual shareholder’s meeting is taking place now.

My name is Jon, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the curnow.org full-year 2018 annual report to shareholders*. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there won’t be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during that time, please press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad, and I will ignore it. This call will be recorded. Thank you very much.

Are you sitting comfortably …

You might say this report is a lot like Jeff Bezos’ annual Amazon letter, only I can’t announce that we’re top of anybody’s customer satisfaction list like he can. It’s also not like Bill Gates’ annual letter where he speaks of the wonderful ways in which the world is getting better: “The world is healthier and safer than ever. The number of children who die every year has been cut in half since 1990 and keeps going down.” And I am most certainly not in Warren Buffett’s league, making you richer by the second: “Berkshire’s gain in net worth during 2017 was $65.3 billion”. Sorry.

No, this year, if we were to assemble the Board of Directors in a wood-panelled room around a large, polished oak table and serve them coffee from a silver jug in delicate china cups, we would have to begin with the company’s trading performance. And there would be some uncomfortable shuffling in those overpriced antique chairs we put in the conference room.

Although last year’s review gave the company a ‘Failed’ report, we spun the positives to deflect from the underlying health of the blog. I said that curnow.org would “go for a full house: an entry every month this year” and urged readers (sorry, shareholders) to “Stick with me”. Those that did ‘stick’ would have been very disappointed. 7 blog posts in 2018 was quite a way from that full house (here’s a tip: follow me on Instagram where a full house is guaranteed in 2019).

But, of course, like all the best investor briefings, I can distract from the grim reality by discussing lots of random numbers that have nothing to do with the underlying health of the curnow.org business.

There were 3,238 Swarm/Foursquare check-ins, which is an increase of 245 additional check-ins over last year’s performance. I think that’s what the management committee should be paying out any bonus on, don’t you? However, it all becomes less glamorous when you realise that there were 931 check-ins at railway stations. Clearly, Britain’s railway stations need to find better ways to occupy my time.

According to the statisticians at Last.FM, there were 5,804 music tracks played in 2018, which equates to 14 days and 3 hours of listening. It’s down from previous years. Kylie Minogue’s Golden appears to have been my top album of the year, which may or may not be related to watching Miss Minogue in concert back in September. Perhaps it’s time to buy a nice little sound system for the boardroom, huh? Something that would fit with the wood panels.

According to my Starwood Preferred Guest profile, I stayed with them on three occasions in 2018. I think my travelling is way down, although Jet Lovers has recorded 18 flights across the year (US, Spain, Hungary, Norway and Canada). I’m not sure what the shareholders think about our travel expenses at this point.

My Goodreads reading challenge was completed (15/15), which, I’d suggest to shareholders, is proof of the growing value of the underlying business and the fact that the curnow.org community and business continues to grow (where have I seen the words recently?). I’m guessing that there will be a later post about the books, but, as with 2018, don’t hold your breath.

I’m sorry, I am unable to take questions about Twitter at this time.

Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate your time, and we look forward to speaking with you again.

*Financial disclaimer if you’re reading this sat in a tax office somewhere in the UK: this is a blog; there’s no money, it’s not a business, and there are no shareholders. It’s a metaphor for something (although I am not entirely sure what).

Better In Just 14 Days

Is Bifidus Digestivum a made up term or is it real? Scientific proof that fewer blog comments makes you less gassy. So, I turned them off.

Today must be like a good dose of Bifidus Digestivum for my database. You know the tellybox ad that tells us that digestive discomfort affects 56% of women, or some such statistic, and then tells us to eat a pro-something yoghurt-type thing and in two weeks we won’t feel like we want to fart so much?

Think of junk comments (15,481 of them) and junk trackbacks (3,598 of them), as well as the undetected junk comments & trackbacks (about 7,000 in total), as that bloated feeling and the delete button as a daily helping of tasty Activia from Danone(this blog accepts freebies if you want to contact me). In fact, to help my database get over the discomfort, I thought about buying it a blanket and some cushions, but it said another Rhubarb Fruit Yoghurt or a tasty Prune Fruit Layer would be better.

So there we go, scientific proof that fewer comments make you less gassy. So, I turned them off.

Another Day Gone

Where did today go?

So I had the day off work today and had planned on doing lots of things. I did, in fact, do quite a lot but not the things I wanted to do. I wanted to work on some web site projects and other stuff that I usually don’t get time to do. Still, I upgrade this Movable Type instance to 3.11 so I can see the new features. I did – also – move it to a MySQL database rather than leaving it on the static files that it used to be on. I hope this has made it better but there will be – no doubt – be some oddities that need ironing out.

Comments now need approval unless you have a TypeKey id. This is designed to reduce the amount of spam but if I find spammers have keys I will just turn all comments to require approval.<

Listen To Musak August 2004

August 2004 was a popular month here at Listen To Musak. No idea why.

Just back from a great weekend away – which I will mention later. However, on my return I quickly read my stats for August (not sure what prompted it) and I am confused. August 2004 has had the most number of pages visited (although not the most number of actual requests) but is, nonetheless, counted as the busiest month by my log analysis tool. I have no idea why as not much really happened in August. Ah well, maybe all those spiders are reading my site! I see Movable Type has now released 3.1 which I think I will look to upgrade to and then who knows what wonders I might add. One of the new features is the ability to schedule posts for the future which will – I hope – allow me to develop another idea I have had for a site.

Comment Template Problem

Oops, I ought to fix the site.

Eric posted a comment about my entry Camp, and I have just noticed there has been a problem with the template that displays the comments. It should be fixed now, although I guess the spam comments will now show alongside the real comments.

I too rushed out and bought the Camp CD soundtrack, which I got in the mail yesterday, and it will be my soundtrack home in a few minutes! I got it from a cheap place in Canada – which was cool (although I guess it’s only cheap to me, used to paying overpriced UK CD prices.

New Entries Or Broken Images?

Some site maintenance notes regarding broken images in some feed readers and entries reported as new when they are not.

Just in case you are reading this via a feed/RSS reader of some kind – like Bloglines– then you might be seeing your reader marking a whole stack of entries as new when they are, clearly, not. I’ve made some minor code changes to the site to have the feeds validate with the Feed Validator as well as link to the comments from the feed. Additionally, I’ve added a couple of Movable Type plug-ins that will help me keep the rest of the site validated. Nothing major, but it does mean some of the entries have been marked as updated when it’s just the background code that has been amended.

If you happen to use a web-based feed reader or aggregator, you may see that images are broken. I’ve prevented images from being called if the referrer is not this site because some of the images from the Man of the Moment section were being called by external sites, and I don’t want to end up paying for that bandwidth. It’s not intended to stop people from reading the site from seeing anything, so let me know what reader you use, and I will try to open images up to the relevant domains.

What Version Control?

I have decided to launch version 5 of Listen to Musak. Why can’t I ever settle on a design that really works for me?

So, I have finally done it and had another redesign of ~~this site~~ Listen To Musak. The grey is the new green (sorry Jase), but green may become the flavour of the day again as I am not *sure*. I’ve tried to reduce the amount of effort Movable Type needs to make this site happen, and I think I have succeeded in that bit. All the same stuff is here for now, but I want to add some new ‘features’ by playing around with Movable Type, so now is the right time to do it. I have not updated the templates for Justin, Andrew, Dermot, etc. in the Man of the Moment section. That will come too.

While working through the final stages I discovered that this wasn’t the third version of Listen to Musak as I had thought but it was about the fifth. If you use Mozilla on the main page of the site go to ‘View’ –> ‘Use Style’ where you can apply the older style sheets. As I have tweaked the templates a little bit they do not render exactly as they used to but it was interesting to see anyway. I have decided that you can not have too many IDs or classes in style sheets and re-using elements where it isn’t the same content is a very, very bad idea.

One downside of this look is that the individual entries really do look better if they are of the lengthier format. Ah well, I really wish I was a designer!

—
Originally posted at musak.org | Wayback – original

Simplify The Site

Time to take stock – what’s this site all about?

Last night, while pounding the treadmill for thirty minutes and trying to avoid watching about crime and disaster on the news, I got to thinking about a couple of things I have written here over the last few days.

In Tuesday’s Link Dump, I noted that I thought I was lacking some passion. I don’t believe that’s true. I am still passionate about many things and, particularly, personal publishing online. I just don’t get to write about it or discuss it. I do seem to write a great deal here, though.

In yesterday’s post about Portion Distortion I mentioned something about re-designing this site and, after some consideration, I have decided to do a little bit of housekeeping here. This site has started to get a little out of control. I need to rationalise: keeping it simple will involve removing pages that I don’t think serve any worth and getting rid of some sections. I will also re-work the design. I suspect for some time there will be things in several layouts, but I don’t think anybody will be too upset.

The first casualty will be the gallery section – it’s hard to maintain, and it’s not where I store pictures that I want to share with people anyway. Perhaps Movable Type will incorporate some new image controls in a future version which will allow me to bring it back.

Changing Faces

I am trying to change the look of the header bar at the top of the site, but I do not seem to be having much success.

You may have noticed that at some point last week, a couple of pictures arrived in the top bar of Listen to Musak. For a while, I have felt that the front page of my site is a little dull, so I have been thinking of ways to add some images. The lovely bodies pictured are intended to be temporary. They will get replaced with images from my gallery or photo selection soon. I have, however, troubled over the layout.

The Mozilla layout engine makes the front look like this

the top bar as mozilla renders the image

I believe this to be an incorrect layout, but my style sheet knowledge is limited. I think it’s the better look. Internet Explorer and Opera look like this

the top bar as internet explorer renders the image

which I don’t like as much, but I think is technically correct.

If you know that I am wrong and have just done some obviously bad coding, then please let me know.

Colourful Pages

I’ve slightly changed the design for my site.

You may notice that the colours on the site have changed. I’ve lost the dull beige/brown/grey colouring in favour of something a little more colourful. I am not sure it really works at the moment, but I will play with the colour settings over the next few days. As you can probably tell, I do not have an eye for colour, so I used quick colour to help me. It’s quite useful to find colours that are supposed to work well together, but I wish it could find a greater range of colours. I’ll see if I can get used to it. I am pleased to have lost the harsh, bold red that was used for the links.

Welcome To Curnow.Org

And now they say go.

My website has been online for a number of years (in fact, my first website was in late 1993 on the backend of the web servers of the company I was working for). Over the years, I have kept up various parts of the site, taken others down, and generally tended it like you would a garden that you let go “back to nature”. To be honest, I left it alone. Some of the more cringe-worthy stuff may be moved into this new look (but I doubt it), and my site devoted to pictures of satellite dishes has been, forever, lost (and, honestly, I am sad about that).

So it was time for a revamp. Time to do something different with my site, and that’s when I decided that maintaining a site was hard work and there must have been an easier way. I had been experimenting with various blogging tools for a year or so and never settled on anything I felt wholly comfortable with. Then, taking a walk down one of the web’s odder byways, I stumbled across Movable Type and decided that, if I was serious about making it easier to maintain my site more often, then this was the tool I was going to use. And so here we are …

I have now given myself the power to do this stuff quickly and efficiently. At last, I can update my site easily. But when it comes to the moment of truth, I expect the next few entries to be pointless links to (vaguely) interesting stuff until such time as I find my voice again.

Update August 2008: You may have noticed that the site is no longer powered by Movable Type. I’ve switched to WordPress, which my hosting company, Dreamhost, updates automatically for me.

Why Do You Do It?

These are my ramblings and I can’t blame anybody else for the lack of interesting, entertaining or useful content. Still, it’s much more fulfilling than the static site with a few pictures of friends on it. It’s a place to vent, a place to keep things that I want to be reminded of in the future (or remember to do tomorrow). In my head it is some kind of journey that I have embarked on and don’t know where it will finish (but that’s what life is). In the grand scheme of things, however, it is an utterly pointless exercise.

I wrote these words about why I have a web presence sometime back in around 2000. At the time as I running an incarnation of my web site that has long since vanished. I started building a personal site for myself at the back-end of 1993 when HTML mark-up first hit the scene and I had very little to do while working the night shift.

Over time, of course, many things have changed. A couple of years ago the craze we know as blogging planted small roots but grew quickly. Drowning, as I was at the time, at an internet advertising company I toyed with, but never fully developed, the concept of my blog. I played with blogger and thought of all the great site management uses it had (at one time I worked for a company that built a large, complex site with almost no concept of a content management system). Still, I kept a small site at curnow.org and thought nothing more of it.

When the internet business went into free-fall and I, fortunately, remained in gainful employment I once again investigated a blog. I thought that the hard times that faced the industry were worth documenting and I tried but soon tired of the project. So I turned the blog into a personal journal (rather, weblog) and updated it daily. It did not, however, live under the curnow.org URL. Daily updates, of course, are beyond many of us and, again, I gave up.

Of course, the logical progressions is to what it has become today – an oft-updated collection of thoughts and ramblings (akin to drunken conversations in a pub, but without the sickening “what did I say” feeling the next morning). Without the self-imposed pressures of trying to do something daily, it’s a much better experience (from the author’s side).

So, what is it?

It is, of course, a personal site. These are my ramblings and I can’t blame anybody else for the lack of interesting, entertaining or useful content. Still, it’s much more fulfilling than the static site with a few pictures of friends on it. It’s a place to vent, a place to keep things that I want to be reminded of in the future (or remember to do tomorrow). In my head it is some kind of journey that I have embarked on and don’t know where it will finish (but that’s what life is). In the grand scheme of things, however, it is an utterly pointless exercise.

It is a weblog (rather than a journal) for I comment on things that interest me. Some of those things, obviously, are directly to do with my life but, most content, is not a diarised version of my life. I have seen journals and web logs referred to a mini-soap operas before. You can see into somebody else’s life. Well, I don’t think curnow.org will do that for you. It may give you an idea of what is in my mind right now, but then there are many things that I don’t comment on, so I suspect anybody reading this will get a wholly unrealistic picture of Jon Curnow. My favourite journals and weblogs are listed in the Give Us Our Daily Blog entry.

It’s pointless then?

Despite what I said above – not really. If you didn’t read the link at the top of the page, do so now (I’m too lazy to copy the text and my impression count goes up). I think there is a great power in personal publishing. This is my little contribution.

Privacy Policy

It’s always important to know what personal details are stored for use on any site and this site is no different. Read about my privacy policy.

This page was replaced on 13 February 2024 with a new policy. See https://www.curnow.org/privacy/ for the current privacy policy.

I believe the sites and services we use online should be open about what information is collected and how it is used. In spite of some nonsense having been written about privacy threats, collecting information like this is not always as creepy as it sounds because some information is needed just to make the internet work. For example, this page mentions your IP address. That’s the way the internet gets pages, music and video to your computer, phone or TV (depending on what you’ve connected). Without that address the internet won’t work so it has to be passed around a little bit.

The internet is also global which means it might not always be obvious where this information is going. For example, although I was born and live in the UK, the machines that hold this site are physically in the United States. I also use some services from Google which is headquartered there. So, some information passes through them.

So, in the spirit of letting you know what this site does – and doesn’t – do this page aims to explain it all as clearly as possible. If it’s not clear then I want to know. Tell me @curns.

Respecting Your Privacy

The curnow.org website does not need to collect nor store your personal data in any way. You can use this site without sharing any personal information.

In common with most sites, the web server – which is the machine that sends the pages to you – may collect information from your browser, including your IP address and the page you request, This is used to identify the most popular pages or issues with this website. In addition to information stored by the web-servers of my hosting provider, Dreamhost, I use Google Analytics to help me understand how visitors use my site. It is anonymous and I do not know who you are. I have disabled any advertising related features that I can for Google Analytics because I do not use any advertising services. Google’s privacy policy is here.

Comments and Email Addresses

If you contact me with your email address it will not be sold or released to anybody else unless the law requires it.

You are able to comment on selected entries within the site. I have removed the option to store your name and email to facilitate commenting on multiple sites because I got so few comments. Your email address is required if you wish to comment or contact me. This is to help authenticate real users and to deliver your message to me. It will never be shared with anybody else (I hate spam too) and you’re not going to get any emails from me except for any automated ones I set up to confirm your comment or contact (unless your contact request asks me to get in touch, of course) or if you tick the boxes asking to be notified about other comments. For security and to prevent spamming, the system collects your IP address from which you made the comment and this is recorded alongside the comment. That data is stored on my servers which, as I have mentioned, are located with Dreamhost in the US.

I use the Akismet anti-spam service for comments. The data on the comments – IP address, user agent, name, email address, website, and message — is submitted to the Akismet service (owned by Automattic) for the sole purpose of spam checking. You can see details of they privacy policy here. The actual submission data is stored in the database at curnow.org and is emailed to me. This email will include the submitter’s IP address, timestamp, name, email address, website, and message.

Please remember that any details you leave in the actual comment on a page will be displayed. Do not enter anything you do not want to be published on the site. Please think before posting any personal details. I will remove all posts containing obvious real world information and I reserve the right to remove any posts.

Moderation

Depending on the amount of comments – or spam – I am getting, I sometimes – but not always – hold them until they have been reviewed. Don’t worry if I don’t publish your comment quickly as it can often take me some time to get round to it. You can always nudge me @curns.

Cookies and embeds

A ‘cookie’ is a small file that is placed in your browser and allows curnow.org to, amongst other things, recognise that you have seen the cookie notification on the top of the page.

Specifically, a cookie called cookie_notice_accepted is used to show you have seen and accepted the cookie message. Once this cookie is set you will not see the message for aa month unless you delete it. A cookie called w3tc_referrer may be set. This helps with speeding up the site (technically known as caching). It knows nothing about you and is used to help the site function well. You may see cookies with a name like __utma (or similar). These are related to Google Analytics which I use to understand how people use my site. Google have a whole page, here, devoted to explaining these cookies and a mechanism for you to opt-out if you wish.

I do embed media from other sites and those sites may set cookies. Specifically, I use Soundcloud and Audioboom to share some audio. Soundcloud’s cookie policy is here and Audioboom’s is here. Occasionally I may embed content from Twitter (their privacy policy is here) or YouTube (policies here). I try to use code that does not set cookies but that’s not always possible.

There are a series of posts that embed Instagram images. They may set cookies and collect data. Their privacy information is here.

I also use a service called ShareThis to enable posts to be shared. They may set cookies. You can find our more, and opt out, here.

Gravatar

I use the Gravatar image service when you comment on the site. curnow.org will contact Gravatar to see if you have a picture that you wish to set with your comments. If you have never set this then it won’t find one. It’s a fun thing to do but if you don’t use that service then it can’t magically put a picture of you there.

The sites does not use cookies for anything else. There are no tracking or advertising cookies set. For more information on cookies please see aboutcookies.org and remember that you may delete the curnow.org cookies at any time. It will not effect your interaction with any other site. If you do not accept cookies, you can still use the site. If you want to delete your cookies then aboutcookies.org has a handy guide.

Other Services

There are a few other services supporting this site. I use Google Fonts for some of the display fonts. No cookies are sent by website visitors to Google Fonts. Requests to the Google Fonts are made to resource-specific domains, such as fonts.googleapis.com or fonts.gstatic.com, so that your requests for fonts are separate from and do not contain any credentials you send to google.com while using other Google services that are authenticated, such as Gmail.

The technology behind this site is WordPress and I use some elements of their Jetpack service to provide this site. These services are provided by a company called Automattic and information about the data they collect is here.

Credit Card Details

We do not need this information ever, so you do not need to enter it anywhere on this site.

External Sites

curnow.org is not responsible for the content of external internet sites. You are advised to read the privacy policy of external sites before disclosing any personal information.

Remember The Risks Whenever You Use The Internet

There is no reason to send us any personal details other than as specified above. In addition other Internet sites or services that may be accessible through curnow.org have separate data and privacy practices independent of my site, and therefore I want to let you know that I disclaim any responsibility or liability for their policies or actions.

Please contact those vendors or sites directly if you have any questions about their privacy policies.

Corrections and Contact

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if something on the site requires correction or removal. This policy was last revised in August 2021 to clean up some references and add more details about embedded media.

Previous versions of this policy can be found via The Wayback Machine.

This page was replaced on 13 February 2024 with a new policy. See https://www.curnow.org/privacy/ for the current privacy policy.

Key

Security on the Internet is a big concern for many people. Keeping information that identifies you personally from falling into the wrong hands is important. Check for secure sites when submitting credit card information, be careful about who you give your email to and read privacy policies. This is all worthy advice.

If you are concerned about sending information (or you want to verify information came from where it says it came from), I would recommend you investigate Pretty Good Privacy. A useful piece of freeware to digitally sign and/or encrypt files (including emails).

PGP uses a system known as public key encryption. As a PGP user, you would generate a “key pair”, which is made up of both a public and private key. The private key should only be accessible by its owner, but in order to share files, etc., you need to share your public key (and you would need a copy of another user’s to send files). For more information see PGP or PGP International.

Occasionally, I use PGP to sign emails or encrypt files. If you wish to email me using PGP my public key is given here.

other resources

Visit PGP and read this message (at PGPI) from Phil Zimmermann, who invented PGP.