Matthew's Journal

I have been automatically cross-posting my DW entries to LJ for some time now (since April 2017), and AFAICT this has mostly Just Worked.

The DW folks recently said that LJ have stopped co-operating with them about the cross-posting feature; they used to pass-list DW's IP so that even if one person put in the wrong password, most people would still be able to cross-post and now refuse to do so (or even acknowledge that they used to).

I have also been pointed at section 9.2.6 of the current LJ ToS, which prohibits "use [of] automatic scripts (bots, crawlers etc.) to [...] interact with the Service".

So it looks like it will no longer be possible to have my DW entries cross-posted to LJ (and indeed the most recent couple of entries haven't made it across); I'll copy this entry over by hand, but I don't think continuing to do so regularly is going to happen.

If that's going to be a problem for you, do comment, but do please consider joining me over at DW (or using your OpenID account to read me on DW)...

I'm confused (or Doing It Rong) - I thought, per the FAQ on features of paid accounts that making a community a paid account would mean that the relevant community would "allow any member to post polls (community)".

So I paid some money to make a community (ardgour) paid, but the not-paid-account members of that community still can't post polls (e.g. this support request). Given this is the only reason I paid DW money for that community this is a bid underwhelming. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

[all the comm members have posting access]

I got on my bike to cycle home from the pub after choir this evening, and the front light started doing the flickering thing which I "fondly" remember from the failure the other week. So I pulled over near a street-light and had a look. It became clear that the wire had been pulled hard from my rear light - both out of the light itself (which has a clip to hold the wire in place) and through the cable tie I fitted.

Thankfully, it was straightforward to re-insert the wire into the rear light, but it left me baffled as to why someone would choose to vandalise a bicycle thus - I can't see you could have applied that much force to the wire accidentally.

This morning, all my LJ pages have a little banner saying "To gain access to all LiveJournal features you should validate your email", and furthermore, I am unable to comment on even my *own* posts. This is an email address that I've not changed in ages.

Also, LJ says "Non-authenticated email address: You must have an authenticated email address in order to post to another account" when I'm

I go looking, when the "resend validation email" button doesn't achieve anything - while my email provider is very picky, I have it whitelisted to allow anything from *.livejournal.com to my LJ address.

Turns out email is coming from 208.93.1.33, which a) resolves to a hostname with invalid characters in (lj_notifications.livejournal.com, and underscores aren't allowed in hostnames) b) is on at least one email blacklist http://www.spamhaus.org/query/ip/208.93.1.33

a) means that it doesn't match my whitelisting exemption (since the relevant bit of infrastructure will only resolve to valid hostnames), and b) means that my email provider isn't going to talk to it any time soon.

So, well done LJ, you've buggered up your email setup, and externalised the cost onto me.

ETA: they seem to have resolved the not-being-able-to-post issue now (hence this!), and have now decided my email address is validated again...

A bit late for 2nd November, but there we are.

This morning, I noticed that my front light was a bit wobbly. Looking more closely, I see that this is because the bracket has started to fail (look at the corner between the horizontal bit and the long upright which the light is attached to). More annoyingly, this is the second bracket I've had fail in a similar way - I only bought this one back in late March 2014 :-(

A friend helpfully offered me their spare made of more solid material, but that doesn't have enough of a down-curve to fit under the brake saddle, so it won't help :-(

There are a lot of brackets available (e.g. here), but it's really hard to tell which of them will work with my (presumably slightly odd) brake geometry.

I've just updated firefox (to Debian stable's latest, i.e. 31.3.0), and now I cannot use Livejournal unless I disable both Flashblock [1.5.17] and Noscript [2.6.9.6] - note that white-listing LJ (which is what I'd done previously) isn't good enough anymore, I have to disable those add-ons entirely to get access to LJ [my friends page and own journal page work with Flashblock enabled, but I still cannot get to e.g. the update journal page thus].

WTF?

A while back, a friend gave me some chilli plants. Sadly, they came with free aphids. I've tried moving the plants outside, bring them in with a ladybird on, and a fruit-and-veg bug-killer spray (which contains Pyrethrum). There are still aphids. They had a bit of a field day while I was away, but while spraying seems to kill most (all?) of the obvious aphids, if I wait a few days, they appear again.

I'm not quite sure what to do - should I try spraying more often even if I can't spot any aphids in the hopes that'll kill any small ones before they reproduce, or move on to other approaches? To be honest, I'm less looking for control and more for maximum deletion, as the Cybermen would say...

Anyone know a good way to get oil off a brick driveway? Our car isn't keeping the oil in as well as I'd like[0], and the mess needs clearing up. Assume for the moment that I don't have a pressure washer or a desire to spend £££ on the problem...

[0] yes, I'm trying to get that fixed...

It seems that the UK screwed up, and so the Video Recordings Act 1984 is currently unenforceable (and will be for 3 months, while we formally notify the EU). The Minister for Culture and Tourism, Barbara Follett MP, wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, telling him this, and advising him to try and suppress this information. Wikileaks has the letter here.

ETA Beeb article

...you're making lunch, and you only notice the bread's mouldy when making the second sandwich :-(