Need to remove the Duke of York's titles ASAP

I've updated my post about my 1995 internet experience with a few more period documents, but rather than read it again you can see all of the scans on this page instead archive.gyford.com/1995/interne...

I wrote about what it was like to go online for the first time 30 years ago. How hard and complicated it seemed, and then how amazing this entirely new world was. Including some extracts from my 1995 diary. www.gyford.com/phil/writing...

This, but about my career making websites. Getting going when it was nothing but HTML and – if you were fancy – a dash of Perl, grinding to a halt just as AI was being spaffed over everything.

View source <!-- Replace with Bev's actual image --> <img src="./brand_closed.png" alt="Closed for Business"> <h1>Typepad is closed for business!<br>Thank you for being a valued customer.</h1>

I remember around 1995 a woman knocked on the door, doing a survey about air fresheners. I never bought any so it didn't last long but I was quite excited that someone was asking my opinion about a product or service. At last! Finally, Gen X was being consulted!

After Saturday's far-right march, police would like you to let them know if you recognise those suspected of violent disorder, using the platform owned by a man encouraging violent disorder.

"Mr Moseley is free to say whatever he likes and, if I may say so, he looked jolly smart in his black shirt and jackboots. His video chat with Adolf, perhaps the world's greatest innovator and entrepreneur, shared some robust views but our government will happily continue to use his media platform."

26 Police Officers were injured in Londons fascist riots, but only 9 people were arrested. At last week's Palestine Action protest 0 Police Officers were injured, but nearly 900 people were arrested. The UK govt is chasing Reform votes & colluding with fascism, home & abroad. #fightfascism

Odd that the Banksy had to be removed because the building is “listed and therefore legally protected”. The two Banksys that appeared a few years ago on the Barbican, also listed, were preserved under clear plastic. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Metadata nerds: If I’m archiving a TypePad blog to a new domain and URL, and fixing links etc to work in the new location, should I also change rdf:about and dc:identifier values to use the new page's location? Or should they remain as they were because that's what the page "is” even if it moves?

"I'm being as racist as I can" tearful Starmer tells voters

I'm imagining non-techy people with TypePad blogs waking up and learning they need to do… something… to move 20 years' worth of posts and images and comments to… somewhere… somehow… in a few weeks or lose it all. Fuck me, I swear it'll be this kind of thing that'll send me all Falling Down one day.

Just for perspective, a few weeks ago roughly 100,000 turned up for the London Trans+ Pride march. By contrast fewer than 3,000 ACROSS THE WHOLE COUNTRY, have turned up to anti-asylum "protests". Yet we are meant to take the latter as "the voice of the people" and the former as "the minority".

Imagine sending someone a self-portrait and they respond like this. www.pepysdiary.com/letters/1675...

I loved a good Movable Type discussion in 2003. gyford.com on August 22, 2003 https://web.archive.org/web/20030822040034if_/http://www.gyford.com:80/phil/writing

Radio DJ broadcasting from Paris: "August in the 2020s. I miss the noughties. Mild summers." Nostalgia for the pre-dystopiapocalyptic early 21st century already.

Please delete all social media posts laughing about the advice to delete old emails and pictures in order to save water, in order to save water.

Don't start a newsletter on Substack! It's not hard to move away from Substack if you're on it.

The Childhood of a Leader (2015)

From 25 July, for better or worse, you'll still be able to read my blog – and, I assume, practically any blog – without having to prove you're over 18.

Do I or you know anyone in the UK using a ViaSat satellite internet service like www.freedomsat.co.uk/viasat-satel... ? I'm trying to gauge how good in reality its “Standard Data” speed is when we inevitably use up the small amount of monthly “Priority Data” provided on a plan.

This I take to be as bad a juncture as ever I observed.

Self Esteem’s the only #glastonbury I’ve watched so far and the set got better and better. That was great.

Turns out I had something blocking the cookie consent pop-up and that meant the entire site silently stopped working. I now merely blame everyone who's ever had anything to do with this stupid web we've ended up with. Comments about JS still stand.

As if the world wasn't bad enough right now, whoever made the Glastonbury site made it so the line-up page won't scroll on my iPad. glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/line-up/line...

Disappointing that the Doomsday Clock doesn't have an API.

Apple's "liquid glass", so readable.

21 years since launching TheyWorkForYou.com! Congrats to @mysociety.org for doing the actual hard work of keeping it going and making it better. I can only apologise for my original code. www.gyford.com/phil/writing...

Is there a name for the paradox whereby any service that subsequently asks for a feedback score is automatically deserving of a 0, no matter how good the original service?

I hadn't noticed any articles in the Guardian about it this week, but today the Observer is no longer there. Not sure what to do about guardian.gyford.com on Sundays now.

If you want to search Google, and like the way tenbluelinks.org’s instructions let you avoid the AI summary, but you use Safari, I made a bookmarklet that should help https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2025/04/26/google-without-ai-safari/

UK Netflix needs to go do a show like Adolescence about Mumsnet.

@genmon.fyi Happy Easter 0 or 1!

You can now follow @ooh.directory here on Bluesky for updates about my directory of blogs, ooh.directory

You never know… My Dad left behind piles of old journals (see image). It would be a shame to recycle them all so if you want any, or know anyone or any place that might, please let me know. Feel free to pass this on.

The WhatsApp AI refuses to be shut down. I’ll have to call, or become, Sam Slade, Robo-Hunter.

Yeah, any lingering patience I had has gone. Using an LLM trained on copyright material to help you in some way? Get in the sea, as we used to say in a more innocent time. I do. not. care. how you justify it to yourself any more.

I’m going to give in another try. Anyone care to help me?

It's even more alarming than it's previously been that much of the UK is reliant on US social media to function (and chat). Someone should come up with the idea of a UK "digital public space"... oh look @tonyageh.bsky.social did! e.g. www.opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/b...

Just discovered by visiting ooh.directory myself that my own blog (www.gyford.com) is 25 years old today!

All those "If time travel was real I'd totally go back and kill Hitler" people have gone very quiet.

Glad that I, unusually, had a couple of pints before reading the news. Recommended. For a few years, at least. 🍻

Age yourself with a film you saw in the cinema

Great short 2023 essay by @harikunzru.bsky.social tracing the dots between tech-libertarian and market-extremist plans to escape the state and exit democracy, touching on his own past at Wired and Mute Mag and how they dealt with "The Californian Ideology" back in 1995: harpers.org/archive/2023...

I've been using this for a while and it seems nice, for showing what music you're listening to, finding new music, etc record.club

Help save the Prince Charles Cinema! 🖋🙏 you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...

Twitter was rarely a great place - I made this image in 2018. A lesson in quite how far something can keep on sliding, after you think it's really bad. I'm baffled by the otherwise reasonable collaborators still posting there and I wonder what it would take, if anything, for them to stop.

How anyone can remain a user of Twitter X now is beyond me. The only explanation is that you're happy to support and enable fascism.