Chatopus has a nice article about using bots with a Jabber client and introduced me to a couple of new (to me at least) bots.

My favourite is the weather service, add <CITY-CODE>@weather.jabber.zim.net.au to your Jabber roster, and this user will display the current weather at that location in their status. To find your the city code, go to weather.yahoo.com for example, and use the code that forms part of the url as the user part of the Jabber ID e.g.

The city code's pretty simple to find out, and it's a nice lightweight way to find out the current weather.

Still astonished here that Bush stands any chance whatsoever in the US elections - a colleague who's worked in New York keeps telling me that Americans are certainly unusual, but still...

Perhaps that's why global outrage and protest against Bush is rather muted, we really can't understand why anyone would vote for him. The prospect of someone so visibly flawed and incompetant being neck and neck with another sane looking candidate is just surreal.

One possible reason for Bush garnering any vots is that the US Govt and media have been systematically lying to the American public, Diego's questions for Bush supporters certainly tests about this theory. If you're American and you don't get it, please read Diego's article.

Global internet polls, whilst far from being statistically valid (similar to voting in Florida I suppose), certainly provide significant indications of how unelectable we think Bush is, circa 10% of the vote and only ahead in Niger and Lichtenstein is hardly a close run thing.

Given that the Bush administration's attitude towards the world is clearly shown by their mal-administered website, I guess the antipathy is mutual

A parcel arrived on Friday from Brizzle, contained within was a SWAD-Europe tee-shirt!

I'm well chuffed, it's a nice looking tee-shirt and the only one I own with RDF/XML printed on it! I can only assume Libby was clearing out the cupboards and looking for appropriate loonies to wear this sort of thing in public. I guess by having asked too many stupid question in #foaf and also by having such a bizarre Foaf document that was probably a good stress test for Rosco, I've demonstrated some use to the RDF/FOAF cause.

The most amusing bit is that my name is mispelt on the parcel, you'd think they of all people could have checked my Foaf file, then again it wouldn't surprise me if that was wrong...

I'm off to see Thunderbirds the movie with the lad later today, I know it's had some terrible reviews, but as a long time Thunderbirds fan - there's family photos of me aged around 4 clutching a Thunderbird model - I'm willing to give it a fair crack of the whip.

F.A.B. Virgil!

So we're well into Osamatober and the guy with the beard hasn't been paraded before us yet, have they decided it's a stunt that no-one will believe? Or did he die under torture?

It looks like Osama is not an ace up George's sleeve, although there's plenty of other curious bulges in that ill-fitting whistle...

For as long as I can remember (which appears to be about 2.5 years), Jim Ley has been complaining to anyone who'd listen (which didn't include Google's security team) about script insertion flaws in Google's Javascript code.

Earlier this week Jim took the nuclear approach and released a working example of the exploit that looked like a classic phishing scam. Google finally noticed and took some action.

However, they don't appear to have done a great job in fixing the holes, as Jim's still seeing the exploit working, and Paul Mutton of Netcraft has discovered (and reported to Google) a number of other possible exploits. Google's a great search engine, but they really should have sorted this out faster and better.

You'd think that after the 2000 election debacle, heads would have rolled and Florida's voting system would have been improved.

Apparantly not...

The old adage "vote early and vote often" seems apt here, or should it be "no taxation without representation"?

Russ and Joi want us foreign bloggers to start leaning into it a bit more over the US presidential election, so here's my angle.

Am I too late? I don't know, maybe American voters are experiencing candidate and election fatigue, I can certainly understand that, as I'm no lover of politicians of any type.

However, I'm going to post a few items here over the next month or so, posing a few questions about the US presidential election. All I'm asking is that the American voters who read this blog take a tiny slice of their time to read these items and ponder them.

Sure, you might think some of these will be rants from a Limey who has no business poking his nose into US politics, but I hope that my readers are open minded and responsible enough to realise that US politics casts its influence and actions over the rest of planet too.

With power comes responsibilty, US voters have the power to elect the right guy, and as a disenfranchised observer, I'd like to think that US voters will be responsible in using their vote. Well, I can hope, can't I?

Ho hum...

Nothing major, I've not gone under a bus or anything, I just got a bit too busy with Real life™. Normal service (whatever that is), should be resumed shortly.

Last week involved some good and some bad, AAS pub meet, Symbian Expo, a stinking cold and a dodgy fish - 2 good and 2 bad. I'm still suffering from the cold and the after effects of the fish, and still grinning from the pub meet and Expo, more on these soon.

Like Matthew's finding out in Germany, it's horse chestnut (or conker) season. They're all over the ground here in the UK too, and the kids are well into playing conkers.

Traditionally a good cheat was to harden your conker by soaking it in vinegar or baking it in a low temperature oven, this may explain why I found one in the tumble dryer this evening...