Twitter Activity for Week ending 2010-03-08

Published on March 7, 2010 in Tweets and Twitterings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
  • Eldest tells me the newspaper homework "we" did last week is now on display in the school. Hmm … #
  • Anyone else noticed that tweeters don't check for a reply after they've sent a DM asking a question? Frustrating when arranging a coffee! #
  • RT @danmartell: 7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing http://is.gd/9BXR0 <- Solid tricks @ducttape ! [Google search brill] #
  • Just got Handmark's #TweetCaster for ANDROID FREE in exchange for this tweet. http://tinyurl.com/TCAndroid #
  • RT @marketingwizdom: Threat to bloggers' freedoms http://u.nu/4w2a7
    <<Everyone with a blog should read this and sign the No 10 petition #

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Twitter Activity for Week ending 2010-03-08

Published on March 7, 2010 in Tweets and Twitterings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
  • Eldest tells me the newspaper homework "we" did last week is now on display in the school. Hmm … #
  • Anyone else noticed that tweeters don't check for a reply after they've sent a DM asking a question? Frustrating when arranging a coffee! #
  • RT @danmartell: 7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing http://is.gd/9BXR0 <- Solid tricks @ducttape ! [Google search brill] #
  • Just got Handmark's #TweetCaster for ANDROID FREE in exchange for this tweet. http://tinyurl.com/TCAndroid #
  • RT @marketingwizdom: Threat to bloggers' freedoms http://u.nu/4w2a7
    <<Everyone with a blog should read this and sign the No 10 petition #

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Twitter Activity for Week ending 2010-03-01

Published on February 28, 2010 in Tweets and Twitterings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
  • Freezing to death at Post-Bureaucratic Age conference in old warehouse conference centre in City. Turn the heating up guys! #
  • @BillMorrow no chance ;) in reply to BillMorrow #
  • 1st time on skiis for 20 years last night at the Snow Centre, Hemel Hempstead. Bit sore this morning ;) #

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Twitter Activity for Week ending 2010-02-22

Published on February 21, 2010 in Tweets and Twitterings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

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My Blog Has Been Hacked
and What I Did About It

Published on February 16, 2010 in Blogging, Technology and Web Hosting. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I don’t know about you but I don’t look at my own websites very often. Create a new page or blog post, check it looks OK and move on.

So imagine my surprise and horror when I was checking all my blogs after updating to the latest version of Wordpress to discover that this blog had been well and truly hacked. What was interesting was what the hack did which is why I’ve decided to share this with the world rather than bury my head in shame.

When you loaded this site, everything looked normal for about 5 seconds and then you were redirected to another site via what looked like a couple of intermediate/proxy servers. When I first spotted this, I was taken to the listing page for a Chinese TV company which rather shook me as it is not as if my blog is mega popular (I wish!).

Given that in a former life, I founded and ran a very large UK based ISP, I’m used to dealing with hacks such as this. So I fired up an FTP client and logged into my hosting account to see what I could see. I wasn’t expecting to find much in all honesty as I reckoned that any halfway decent hacker would make sure that the date and time stamp on any changed files was the same as the original so as not to arouse suspicion. Having said that, I have seen instances of what we called “script kiddies” who changed things for fun and didn’t care what traces they left behind. Anyway, as I suspected, nothing obvious.

So then I logged into Wordpress and decided to change from the K2 theme (1.08 RC) I was running to the default to see whether the hack was theme related or Wordpress core specific. And the site worked so the finger was pointing at the K2 theme.

Now that I knew I could stop the hack immediately, I put the K2 theme back and had a play with the site. That was when this hack became interesting. If I clicked on a link within a topic (I have Twitter Tools installed so this was easy to do), I was correctly taken to the linked page. I had just reloaded my blog when the phone rang, and when I looked back, I had been redirected to the link I had just chosen. Further testing showed that this hack always redirected the site to the last clicked link. I’ve not seen this before but I thought/think it was rather neat in a sick kind of way.

Anyway I’ve now upgraded to the latest version of K2 (which was long overdue) and changed the passwords on all my sites as a precaution.

You have been warned!

Twitter Activity for Week ending 2010-02-14

Published on February 14, 2010 in Tweets and Twitterings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
  • Just had a chat with Shaun @giffgaff re my VAT invoice. Suggested they display receipt at end of top up process with VAT number shown. Easy! #
  • New HTC Hero phone has arrived and is charging for next 3 hours (according to the manual). Anticipation is hell! #
  • @jammyf When did you become a Papist ;) in reply to jammyf #
  • Washing machine just packed up. Why is it almost as much to call out an engineer (with no guarantee of a fix) as it is to buy a new one? #
  • HTC Hero now charged. Time to play :) #
  • HTC rooted and unlocked. Awesome phone exceeding my expectations although setting up multiple gmail a/c’s is harder than on my old XDA IIs! #
  • HTC Hero now twitter enabled using @seesmic. Fantastic! I love this phone. Sad really … #
  • Just set up @WaveSecure HTC Hero. Fantastic way to remotely shut down phone if lost or stolen. It even sends SMS to buddies if SIM changed! #
  • @nocturnalmonkey Are congrats in order? Should we be buying rice to throw at some point? Don’t keep us in suspense! in reply to nocturnalmonkey #
  • On train with family to visit Planetarium. How can London Midland charge £34 for a family ticket on a Sunday? What a rip off. #

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Twitter Activity for Week ending 2010-02-07

Published on February 7, 2010 in Tweets and Twitterings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
  • Just sent out invitations to a dinner with the Coopers Livery. Hope they can come #
  • Been asked if I know anyone who can speak at a gala dinner for the lighting industry – just as I get involved in said industry. Meant to be? #
  • Forgot to mention my mobile no was transferred into @giffgaff today as promised. Great service so far. Now just need VAT invoice to arrive. #
  • Just discovered ceTwit – a halfway decent Twitter client for Windows Mobile #
  • And then i find @PockeTwitDev which an even better Twitter client as you can have multiple accounts. Brilliant! #
  • @PaulDJohnston 3rd?! Wow! Still congrats to you and Caroline :) in reply to PaulDJohnston #
  • @marketingwizdom Hardly surprising. Who buys a phone you can't play with first in a shop? Google goofed. I want one but I won't risk it. in reply to marketingwizdom #
  • Playing with @Hootsuite. Bookmarked it last night then saw @marketingwizdom was using it so thought I'd better check it out tout suite :) #
  • @sueblakePR Et tu ma cherie! Long time no speak. Trust all is well. in reply to sueblakePR #

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Twitter Activity for Week ending 2010-01-31

Published on January 31, 2010 in Tweets and Twitterings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
  • JD Salinger the author of one of my favourite books (Catcher in the Rye) died today. How sad. But a great author. #
  • Decided to seperate my "noise" (i.e. personal) tweets from my "professional" ones so new piccy here and a new Twitter a/c @TheExecMentor #

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Twitter Activity for Week ending 2010-01-25

Published on January 24, 2010 in Tweets and Twitterings. 0 Comments Tags: , , .
  • Initial giffgaff experience now a nightmare. 60 hours since activating my SIM and still no service. Come on @giffgaff – pull your finger out in reply to giffgaff #
  • giffgaff saga part 2!. Sim now recognised but no access to network. Website still says "Activation in progress". Anyone @giffgaff listening? #
  • @giffgaff Read post, doesn't apply to me. Posted support agent question yesterday at 10:50am – Conor replied within hour. Now what? in reply to giffgaff #
  • @giffgaff No update to my thread but … It's now working!! I'm really giffgaff'ed ;) #
  • Wondering if a client's web designer is in trouble. Now asking for 50% upfront after a very long relationship which seems odd to me! #

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Resuscitating my HTC Blue Angel

Published on January 18, 2010 in Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

This is a simple story of how I resuscitated my 5 year old O2 XDA IIs.

For many years now I have been re-flashing the ROM on this wonderful PDA/phone. People with iPhones and Androids etc look at my “brick” in astonishment whenever I bring it out to update my calendar or whatever but for me, it has been one of the best investments I’ve ever made. Indeed I have a brand new Orange SPV M2000, still boxed, sitting in a cupboard waiting to be fired up when this one finally breaks beyond repair. Sad I know but …

So why did it need resuscitating in the first place? Well the screen started to look as if it was cracked. I took it with me when the family went tobogganing in the big snow dump we had 2 weeks ago and when we got home I noticed that there was a patch of pixels in the middle of the screen which looked stuck. I ran a pixel unsticker utility overnight but this didn’t make a difference.  So new screen time. Fortunately a friend had given me his old i-mate PDA2K which was in a sorry state but which had a very clean screen. So following the instructions I found on the XDA Developers wiki, I proceeded to swap the screens over. Unfortunately it turns out that there are 2 different types of screens so the swap over didn’t work. Not a major problem – I just dropped the whole of the i-mate innards into my XDA case.

Brilliant yes/no? (Excuse the pun)

Yes and no as it happens. I managed to snap off the lug on the side of the phone to control the volume (not a major problem as this can all be handled by the ROM software anyway). The weirdest thing was that the ring tones were so quiet I couldn’t hear the phone when it was in it’s case.

So firing up my registry editor for Windows Mobile (the brilliant CeRegEditor) I went poking around and came across this registry setting:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\SoundCategories\Ring

The value of AttenuationCategory was set to 5. It should be set to 2. Now it’s back to it’s normal loud self.

So far so good. But there was one other thing that bugged me. I stopped having a pay monthly contract and went PAYG last year as 90% of my calls are incoming (I’ve just switched to giffgaff ). Several PAYG SIMs have settings in contacts to allow you to check on your balance etc. These kept showing up in my PDA address book which was annoying. So poking around again in the registry turned up

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Phone

and setting the value of ShowSim to 0 (zero) sorted that out.

In the words of that annoying meerkat, “simples”!