No, not Mark’s post from earlier, but the random Euro signs which have appear across LibDemBlogs today.
There seems to be a character set issue between my server and everyone’s RSS feeds, so when people used fancy curly quotes they just appeared as garbage.
The true problem will need to be fixed, however for the time being, I’ve just got a find and replace script instead.
LibDemBlogs Number Crunching (2007)
With LibDemBlogs now in it’s forth year, I thought I would display some stats.
We started the year displaying 108 bloggers, and today we have 168.
The most popular blogs were:
- Liberal Democrat Voice (5,284)
- James Graham (1,523)
- Jonathan Calder (1,410)
- Jonathan Wallace (1,364)
- Paul Walter (1,136)
- Nich Starling (977)
- Linda Jack (749)
- Duncan Borrowman (741)
- Jonathan Fryer (644)
- Andy Mayer (573)
Most popular posts:
- Sajjad Karim defects to Tories (124) – LibDemVoice
- Team Clegg: in full scale meltdown? (110) – James Graham
- Is Sajjid Karim as big a scumbag as he is being made out to be? (108) – Nich Starling
- The verdict on Huhne and Clegg’s fuzzy polls (106) – James Graham
- Lib Dem leadership update (100) – Steve Webb
- Take it down, Chris (99) – James Graham
- Nick Clegg up close (98) – Paul Walter
- Shock candidate for Lib Dem leader (97) – Jonathan Calder
- A new banner for Team Huhne (97) – Nich Starling
- Huhne’s campaign turns negative (96) – Anders Hanson
The most popular days to blog:
- 18th December (136) – Clegg wins, Steve Webb not real
- 15th October (102) – Ming quits
- 18th November (102) – Calamity Clegg-gate
- 20th November (102) – Some disks go missing
- 26th November (101) – Saj Karim defects
Days which had high posts to blogs ratios:
- 18th December (0.8395) – Clegg wins
- 10th May (0.7500) – Blair finally goes
- 24th January (0.7170) – Campbell “Troops home by October”
- 15th October (0.7034) – Ming quits
- 21st March (0.6967) – Browns last budget
The quietest days:
- 25th December (20) – See, even bloggers have lives
- 26th December (20)
- 2nd June (23)
- 8th April (24)
- 25th August (24)
Browsers:
- Internet Explorer – 68.50%
- Firefox – 24.35%
- Safari – 3.85%
- Opera -2.20%
- Mozilla – 0.66%
Page stats:
- Visits: 148,760
- Unique Visitors: 25,591
- Page Views: 310,321
- New visits: 16.78%
- Visits to the mobile version of the site: 4,267 (1.38%)
Whilst most of the search referalls were variations of Lib/Liberal/Dem/Democrats/Blogs some which caught my eye were
- brian paddick latest leaflet (229)
- conservative half-price bus and tram travel (145)
- christianophobia (28)
- miranda piercy wedding (27)
- don liberali who (24)
- harry potter and the deathly howells (6) – I always thought their was something dodgy about that Will!
Some caveats, only the most recent 10 posts per blogger are shown on LibDemBlogs, so some archive pages might not contain all the posts on that day. The most popular blog is counted by the number of click-throughs to the main URL of a blog, it is excluding all links direct to blog posts. The most popular posts only count those clicked directly on the title of the post on LibDemBlogs, excluded is any links followed via the RSS feed, or people who clicked on the authors name.
Happy 2008!
Remove parental control on the BBC iPlayer?
There seems to be a large flaw with the BBC iPlayer, their Parental Control feature is based on a cookie.
This makes it very easy for any computer whiz kid to allow themselves to watch programmes which are normally shown after the watershed whenever they like. And to top it off, the BBC explain how to delete the cookie in their help page.
2016 Edit turns out this page is rather high on a Google search. This post was first written in 2007 for the web version of the iPlayer. If your TV is asking for parental control it’s most likely due to the TV’s built in restrictions. If you’ve yet to set a PIN, it will tend to be 0000, 1234 or 1111. If these don’t work search for “default code” along with the make and model of your TV in Google.
Did you miss it?
Voyage of the Damned was on last night and in case you’ve forgotten to tape it / dvd-r it / store it on a hard drive / sky+ it or just want to see it again, then you can watch it right now online (only available to those in the UK) via the BBC iPlayer 🙂
It comes with changed title music, and right at the end 2008 teasers.
What’s on my desktop
The Don has pointed a gun at my head and told me to take a screenshot of my computer, so here it is:
I believe I need to point the gun towards others, so here’s the next five:
Iain Dale, Jo Anglezarke, Mark Valladares, Pink Dog and Stephen Robinson
Stuff Blu-Ray and HD-DVD…
…according to the latest TV ads the new formats you should make sure that your Home Entertainment system supports are DVD-Monday and DVD-Now!
iPlayer all flashy
After the disaster which was the BBC iPlayer, the BBC have relaunched with a flash version instead. This runs on any computer (Windows, Mac, Linux) as long as you have Flash installed. A bit like YouTube.
It’s seems to be great, and no longer do I require that crap software on my computer.
Nintendo Wii for £1000?
The press seem to think that Nintendo Wii’s are going for over £1000 at the moment with the Christmas rush, yet a quick look at eBays recently sold items show that most Wii’s are going for less than £300. So where are the journlists going wrong? It’s the usuall eBay scam, the Nigerians. People are selling their consoles and not restricting sales abroad, and then amazingly a small bidding war ensures and the goods are won by a hijacked account and if the seller is rather greedy and unlucky the Wii will be shipped off without any payment. Just take a look at the feedback of the winners.
It’s the same for mobile phones, and I’m still not sure why eBay try to suggest that I would be better off allowing people abroad to buy my goods.
Is it wrong to vote and bet on Huhne?
I’ve already said that I’m not that bothered who wins, and mentioned that maybe I shouldn’t vote, since then the Huhne team claim it’s getting close, so at 3-1 is it ethical to vote for someone where the only reason is cash?
Should I bother to vote?
I’m still one of the undecideds. I really have no idea who I should vote for. But the question I’m asking myself is, should I bother to vote?
Last time around I voted for Ming, then when I went to conference I got evil stares from my Huhne friends and I have the feeling that whoever I vote for this time, the campaign team of the other will be making remarks about why we would have been better off with theirs and the stares will return.
But if I don’t vote neither side can blame me (unless it turns out to be a draw) and I keep all my mates happy.