As is the case with many in the world in online marketing (and, indeed, most IT-based jobs) I spend a lot of time with Excel. One of the reasons for that is that it's excellent software - especially when it comes to handling large sets of data.
Every now and then I use a port scanner on computers I work with to check which services are accepting connections from the internet. For a typical client PC, there should normally be no ports accessible, and for a server, only those ports specifically enabled for services.
As I suppose quite a few people did, I signed up for the beta of Persai as a reader of the now defunct uncov. I imagine that gives them a fairly direct batch of beta testers, all over-fond of the word 'fail'. I've used it solely from an end-user point of view: I haven't done any testing to try to figure out the technology yet.
Persai itself, is almost the diametric opposite of uncov in character: quiet and unassuming, and distinctly unchallenging.
"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance." - Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"Plato was a bore." - Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal." - Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy." - Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
"Hemingway was a jerk." - Harold Robbins
"The cynics are right nine times out of ten." - Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)
Philosophy is probably my second most common reading material. But yes, Sartre is terrifically boring. And one of my objections to Sartre's brand of existentialism is summed up by the following joke:
I recently went shopping for some home-recording equipment, and thought I'd share my experience and give credit where it's due. Online merchants note - a little bit of friendly customer service goes a long way.
After a bit of research into suitable kit, I fired off a couple of emails to prominent sellers to ask them whether or not they thought my selections would be a good choice. Predictably, I got no response whatsoever (seems to be par for the course with many ecommerce sites. Sigh).
Is Opera better than Firefox? Update: And is IE7 better than either of them?