Category Archives: Admin

Change is for the better, except when it makes things worse. Blogger recently forced me to migrate this blog from the old platform to New Blogger. The most obvious “improvement” is that all the permalinks for the posts written since I moved are broken if you use Firefox, as I know many of you do. As a result, Firefox users are currently unable to leave comments here; not a major problem I’m sure, but a pain in the arse all the same.

So. For the time being, if you want to leave a comment, either use Internet Explorer or in Firefox, click on the permalink, add “.html” after the URL in the address field and hit “go”, and you should end up at the right place. I think. Failing that, send me an email.

I’ll update you when I have resolved the problem by whatever means necessary.

So you made it! The switch over from obscurer.blogspot.com to www.obscurer.co.uk went fairly smoothly, once I had figured out how to configure my archives, but all in all it was pretty hitch free.

Except.

When I checked if things were working on Firefox (yes, I am one of those Neanderthals who prefer IE) the cache or history or whatever meant that the redirect instruction from the new site back to the old site was still in place, preventing Firefox users from coming here. I’ve tried a quick fix to stop the redirect problem but I’m not sure it will work, so if you have only just landed here after a few months of trying then that is probably because the old page has dropped out of your cache. I think.

Things look the same around here, except for the absence of the Blogger navbar at the top of the page; I’m staying with Blogger for the time being because it suits me fine. I may move to MoveableType or WordPress at some point but I don’t know if I’ll ever bother; in any case, that is an ambition that will surely founder on the rocks of my own incompetence.

One thing about having your own domain name, of course, is that it is easy for anyone to find out the details of the owner of the site. This effectively has ended any possibility that I will ever reveal who I work for or explicitly criticise my employer; I haven’t done so this far, and indeed I may never have done so anyway, but I definitely won’t now. It’s no big secret, it’s not like I work in the heart of government or anything, but even my employer’s IT department must be able to do a whois enquiry, so I’m certainly keeping schtum.

So that’s more or less it; welcome to the new URL, thanks for sticking with me, although I apologise in advance if your loyalty goes unrewarded. The new Obscurer will be exactly like the old Obscurer, including the irregular long gaps between posts; indeed looking at the next week ahead, with a heavy workload, a wedding anniversary and 3 year old’s birthday approaching, not to mention over 50 minutes of holiday video that require whittling down into something vaguely watchable, I don’t know when I will update this site next; but if you’ve made it this far I suspect you know all about my ways. Hang around and the usual drivel will appear here soon enough. I’m just not entirely sure when.

PostScript: as predicted my new atom feed is www.obscurer.co.uk/atom.xml, and my FeedBurner feed remains feeds.feedburner.com/obscurer. Update what you need to update, if you understand such things.

Well, I need a holiday to get over my holiday etc. But I’m home now, and I’ve even done a few days in work readjusting to what it means to have to bother about such things as what the time is, an irrelevance when cottage bound in Cornwall; and I think I have got back into the swing of things admirably.

The “luxury” of holidaying in this country is that you can, if you wish, keep up with the nation’s toings and froings and comings and goings, so I think I am up to date on the things that matter; the final(?) flailing Blair reshuffle; the release of the “narrative” on the 7/7 bombings that rightly hasn’t ended the desire for a full public enquiry; the elevation of Melanie Slade’s boyfriend into the England World Cup squad (pipping Shaun Wright Phillips presumably because the latter hasn’t played much Premiership football this year); and inevitably, the one candidate I explicitly criticised in my last post on “The Apprentice” only goes and wins the damned thing (which either proves that what I know about business could be written on a stamp while still leaving space in the margin for some doodles, or that siralan doesn’t actually mind managerial bollocks (“I’ll give 110%”, “am passionate about…”, “dedicated to…”, “have an instinct for…”) so long as it comes parcelled up in a rags-to-riches (or Kwik Save to quick off-shorer) tale.

But of course the most important news that you are all hanging on for is my scheduled move from blogspot to my own domain; and rather surprisingly it is all on course. At some point tomorrow (Friday 26th May) I will move this whole thing to www.obscurer.co.uk and that will be the place to go for my sporadic rubbish in future. I will try to leave a forwarding post here, but I am not sure quite how that will work. If you subscribe via FeedBurner then that link shouldn’t change; I assume my new atom feed will be www.obscurer.co.uk/atom.xml, so if that is your rss/xml source you may need to do a bit of fiddling about. Check back on the new site tomorrow for confirmation.

For some of you, who have perhaps been following this blog with a certain lack of enthusiasm recently, kept on by a faint hope that I will write something as half-decent as the post that attracted you here in the first place, then amending your bookmarks or favourites with my new address may be too much for you and so this may be the time when we part company; in which case good luck, I don’t blame you and indeed thanks for sticking with me for so long. For those who do make it to the new URL I can’t promise anything other than more of the same, so don’t say you haven’t been warned.

So that’s it, and I hope to see you again soon at the new place.

Well, that’s me for a while. I am about to set off for a cottage in Cornwall for a fortnight, and when I get back this ol’ blog will be moving to its all-new-all-singing-all-dancing domain of www.obscurer.co.uk. Exciting huh? Don’t click on that link now as it will just redirect you back here in a sort of “looking at a reflection of a mirror in a mirror until infinity” type thing. I will post here again the day before the big move, probably on the 25th of May, and the new site should go live on the evening of the 26th if all goes according to plan, which it almost certainly won’t. It is all an act of spectacular pointlessness I know, the main purpose of which will be for me to plummet down the Google rankings; but holding the domain name for about a year and doing very little with it is also pretty pointless, so you takes your pick.

But for now my thought are for Cornwall, land of oddness both ancient and modern. We are fortunate enough to be going in time to catch the historic Helston “Furry Dance” as we did a couple of years ago, although that occasion was somewhat marred by my son’s undiagnosed lethargy throughout the festivities, which we finally found out was due to an ear infection, but not before some frantic drives between Penzance and Truro hospitals. Hopefully the Furry Dance will pass off this year without any such concerns.

For examples of recent Cornish eccentricity how about this record shop we spotted last time we were in Falmouth, surely the most unenthusiastically named shop in history. It is certainly the antithesis of CD-Wow. Or The Rising Sun pub in Mevagissey which advertises itself on its website by saying “once you have found us, please remember to KEEP THE SECRET”, an unusual tactic for any business to adopt I would have thought. I suppose it could be a double bluff, getting people like me to spread the name of the pub by word of mouth while simultaneously conveying the image that it is a lovely quiet pub, I really don’t know.

No, Cornwall is odd, but I love it; I feel right at home there. I wonder why? See you in a few weeks.

…I am the New Year” sang The Breeders way back when on their Last Splash album, and who am I to argue?

Yes, I can tell it’s New Year and that the holiday period is over because once again we are being inundated at home with sales calls at all hours of the day. I had forgotten what it was like to hear the phone ring and assume it is my credit card company mithering me, but that feeling is back in earnest.

So the tele-sales people are back at work, but here at The Obscurer I just can’t be arsed at the moment, so this is little more than a “holding post”, to say that I have survived the seasonal excesses and I am still alive, but when normal-ish service will be resumed I cannot tell. But I shall return; I’m going nowhere.

Welcome to my Blog. Who knows where we will go from here. It may be funny, it may be serious, it may by entirely devoted to football. It may never get much further than this welcome message. Watch this space and find out.