Chris Worfolk's Blog

I was reading a topic on Cozy Campus (an adult webmaster forum) earlier today about the gossip blog PerezHilton.com.

Standard ad (150×200):

One week: $9,000
One month: $30,000

Hi rise (150×600)

One week: $16,000
One month: $44.000

And before you say, “Yeah, but how many of those ads is the selling at those prices?”, take a look at his site and count them.

I count 15 standard size ads and 5 hi rise.

That’s over half a million dollars a month. I always said there was qood money in gossip blogs.

Ok, so I’m sat in The Old Bar.

Ignoring the flashing games machine and table football to my left which is permissable in a pub I have two plasma screens showing different things, a large screen showing something else on my right, a bright neon air hockey table further to my right and music blaring out behind me.

Does anyone else miss the times you could have a quiet drink in The Old Bar?

So are you.

We’re all Humanists really.

These days it seems the atheist community has more labels than members. Atheists, rationalists, secularists, Humanists, secular humanists, naturalists, Darwinists, nontheists, agnostics, week atheists, strong atheists, secular believers, free-thinkers, skeptics. I agree a lot of these are very different terms but they are all terms in which someone showing up to an A-Soc meeting may well describe themselves as.

Watching the Life of Brian to check everything is in order before the upcoming screening this term it got me thinking.

“People, don’t fight! We are all here together! We must join up against the common enemy!”
“The Judean’s People Front?!”
“The Romans!”

I’ve been wondering recently if we spent too much time worrying about the semantics, squabbling over names and labels when we should actually be doing some productive. Is it really that bad if someone mistakenly calls us a Humanist? I could think of a lot worse labels.

I got watching The Four Horsemen to which Rich posted the link on the Atheist Society Facebook group which consists of a roundtable between Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett (how amazing is that!) which is well worth a watch to get an insight into the minds of these people.

One of the questions they asked I thought was particularly interesting, the issue of whether as atheists we actually can make a difference.

There is often a general feeling within the community that we can’t, that we are never going to manage to convince anyone to give up superstitious beliefs. I disagree with this attitude though, it has always felt to me like if that is what we honestly believe then we are really just wasting our time. Luckily, I don’t feel like this.

As Dawkins says, he runs into people all the time who have seen the light after having seen one of Dawkins’ lectures or reading one of his books. People who until this point fully believed their faith have it shaken and give it up to rationality and science.

Of course, at least for the moment, I don’t have the reach of someone like Dawkins and Hitchens but I’m sure this demonstrates the principles and indeed I see it working at the local level too. While I’ve yet to have one of the Christian Union come up to me and say “wow, you’re right, this whole faith thing is just silly” (to be clear we haven’t lost a member either ;)), I have a small list of people forming of reformed fence sitters now proclaiming the lack of a god thanks to my evangelism.

Dawkins puts it right when he says there is a huge pool of people who haven’t really made up your mind yet who can be shown the light. And I’m not just talking about people who describe themselves as agnostics, indeed I probably don’t include these people – I leave them for Gijsbert’s preaching. But people who describe themselves as beliving in god without really doing much about it – the 75% of whatever of people who put Christian down on their census form really are still up for grabs.

And just remember – it’s a million points if you convert Carl ;).

I’m currently trying to report an issue with my VPS. I can’t though because ServInt’s support site is down.

Seriously, why is it so hard to find a reliable host?

I was moving away from PowerVPS as I’ve had a few problems with them recently including hostnames and root passwords mysteriously changing in the middle of my trying to set up my new VPS. But I’m not getting any further with ServInt. Bare in mind that these are the two most well respected VPS companies in existence. So it’s hard to draw any conclusion other than than I am cursed.

Consider some of the fun problems we’re currently tackling. Most of the websites in the network use nsx.mazedev.com as their nameservers. These are registered with the domain registrar and so are seperate to the server which hosts mazedev.com itself. Yet if you take that server offline, all domains that are not .com or .net (such as .co.uk, .info and .org) stop resolving. Yep, get your head around that one.

Meanwhile I still can’t get any work on my project done, run my website backups or generally access anything at Burchett Place because of our connectivity issues. The replacement modem was supposed to arrive today, after all I ordered it middle of last week and payed for next day delivery. It hasn’t turned up. I can’t phone City Link because eBuyer haven’t given me a consignment number and I can’t phone eBuyer because they are closed for new year.

This results in me not being able to go home and do some revision because I need to be here with internet access to resolve these issues I am having with all the websites which is now starting to cost me lots of money, money which I don’t have. Still, who really wanted a degree anyway?

Clearing out a lot of old content on the Worfolk Online network I’ve come across a lot of random crap, especially when it comes to the CassieNet Wiki. Amist the random stories and half finished articles I found the long lost Sarann’s bad influence diary detailing how Sarann corrupted people. I present it now for your consideration.

Unfortunately some of the records have been lost and it was only maintained for a short period but just look at the destruction caused :p.

Monday 13rd February 2006
* Sarann destroy’s Anthony’s self esteem

Wednesday 15th February 2006
* Got Michelle drinking
* Got Liz eating meat

Tuesday 21st February 2006
* Encouraged Chris to steal the SE15 register

Tuesday 28th February 2006
* Got Michelle drunk and got her smoking

Friday 3rd March 2006
* Incouraging Andrew to fight at Rock Soc social

Tuesday 14th March 2006
* Getting Michelle to slip out of a CS12 lecture

Looking back it really makes me think about how much we have changed. I mean, do you remember when it used to be an achievement to get Michelle drinking? It seems like so long ago.

Having had a bit of free time over the holidays it’s given me some time to do some proper reflecting and general thinking shall we say. It really makes me think about how I don’t have time to do enough reflecting during term time lol.

I’m a long way from having nothing to do. I’m trying to burn as much of my FYP as possible as well as starting to get some revision done which is going to get blitz next week while at the same time stoking the bank balance and working on a huge migration of almost every site in the Worfolk Online network to which any leftover scraps of time are donated to the odd bit of family time and trying to spend some quality time with my friends before they disappear back off to uni in January.

Still, there isn’t quite the pressure you encounter during term time. I don’t have to be up every single day for something. I don’t (to an extent) have meetings and appointments at set times, I can work and sleep as I feel. And it’s a very fine change.

I’m still not completely sold on this whole holiday concept though. It makes it hard to get things done when people aren’t working. Our modem denied on Christmas Eve and eBuyer are quoting next Monday on “next day delivery” (10 days away). That said, Christmas Day is a good day to get work done – I got a response from my server company in 4 minutes! Of course, support is always willing and ready but this was sent to the sales department so I was most impressed.

Christmas Day sucked. Having been up late and not getting to sleep until like 4ish because I had been at work the night before so didn’t have a 9-5 sleep pattern I got dragged out of bed at 9 and then proceeded to spend the day having my family attempt to engage me in mindless conversation. I really don’t care how many Christmas specials Strictly Come Dancing has – I have a life so no, I don’t watch it.

Today was a little better though. It got back to the true meaning of Chrismukkah – earning money. 13 hour shift at time and a half, that will do nicely.

Many people are probably in bed by now.

After all it’s 1am on Christmas Day morning.

Of course most people didn’t have to drag their ass out of their nice warm bedroom at 11pm Christmas Eve to go spend 2 hours trying to bring the internet back online so that they could get on with doing some of their final year project for their degree which requires remote access.

As it turns out, I’m not in this group of most people. Nor have I actually got anywhere with the time I’ve spent unless you class ensuring I don’t get enough sleep before getting up tomorrow as getting somewhere. Personally, I don’t. But maybe I should as it would ensure far more victories in life for me.

So there is some quality time down the drain now it’s just a case of waiting to see how much money goes down the drain as well. Of course that’s a joke – it’s going to cost far more of my valuable time to sort it out than has been taken up so far. Happy holidays everyone.

Ok, don’t get me wrong, I don’t support the introduction of ID cards. I know the reasons against ID cards, I agree with them and I don’t need you to list them for me. But all this overkill paranoia about them is forcing me to play devil’s advocate. Consider this…

• We already have an identity document system, it’s called a passport. Like an ID card it costs you to get one, like an ID card you need one to open a bank account and like an ID card you are in trouble if it falls into the hands of a criminal.
• ID cards aren’t some crazy system the government has dreamed up to invade our privacy, lots of countries including many European nations already have them – Spain, Belgium, France and Italy.
• It’s not even the first time they have been introduced in the UK, we have had them twice before.
• The act of parliament to introduce ID cards has already been passed so it’s too late to stop them there.
• Who cares if someone gets their hands on your personal details – they’ve already got them off that missing CD anyway 😛