This And That : Mike Little’s Journalized

Mike Little’s not-quite-so-daily thoughts, babblings, and random synapse firings!

A collection of random thoughts and links. Nothing too exciting. ;-) -- Mike Little

Tuesday, 14 December 2004

This And That

by mike @ 00:55. Filed under

It’s been a while…

I see that Amazon UK have started their DVD Rental scheme (like Netflix et al) [Link in top left corner of the page]. I also received an offer from WH Smith with a similar scheme. The WHSmith’s offer seems a little better if you watch a lot of movies. £13.99 per month for unlimited quantity, three at a time. Whereas Amazon’s offer is £9.99 per month but a maximum of 6 per month, three at a time. Other deals are Amazon £7.99 per month, four per month, two at a time, and WHSmith £9.99 unlimited, one at a time. Both offer free postage both ways; WHSmith says first class both ways, Amazon doesn’t specify. For my viewing pattterns, neither of them represent good value! I seem to watch less than one movie a month. But then if I has something as convenient as this, I would probably watch more. I’m sure Jan and Jamie would.

I’m pleased to report that Kitten’s Spaminator is handling about 90% of my comment spam (up to 300 a day). A rename of wp-comment-post.php has eliminated a couple of brain dead script kiddies. Wordpress’ own spam blocking comment moderation currently catches 99% of the rest, but I have to manually moderate those. I just need to eliminate the rest of those. I’ll investigate some more of the Wordpress Plugins to stop the spammers.

I’m this close to implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I’m thoroughly convinced, I just need to get over the hump of that initial process. Actually I have started and managed to throw away two bin bags full of old paperwork and magazines.

Gmail continues to impress me. I use it everyday and it is currently my main email system. Though now that Thunderbird has reached 1.0, I’ve installed that and I’m testing it too. I need to be careful though: I have (almost) all my email either redirected or copied to my Gmail account. But I can still pickup up some of it via POP3 with Thunderbird. I don’t think I want to then have Thunderbird also retrieve some of the same mail from Gmail via POP3 (now that is supported). I guess I really want an IMAP interface to GMail (I think it will come eventually) with Thunderbird as another way to access that and acting as a local backup by making an offline copy.

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5 Responses to “This And That”

Dougal Campbell Says:
December 14th, 2004 at 14:06
I’ve never bothered trying to get a GMail invite, because I just don’t like the idea of storing my mail on a server that I don’t control. I keep all my mail on my own unix server, and use Thunderbird via IMAP to read it from various computers. Or I can just ssh into the box and read my mail with Pine.

But if GMail had an IMAP interface, it might be worth it to me to take a look.
mike Says:
December 14th, 2004 at 23:00
Hi Dougal,
I too worry about relying on a third party server and using a beta product too. Hence the fact that my most important email account only copies to Gmail. I still grab a local copy via POP3. I do hope they get around to implementing an IMAP interface soon.
Bear Says:
December 24th, 2004 at 14:39
I ONLY leave mail on the server. I use Yahoo! and gmail. I don’t really have anything that’s too sensitive (and those companies are probably more vigalent than I wd be - not that I wdn’t be very vigalent). Plus, it’s nice to have access anywhere.
The Red Baron Blog Says:
January 26th, 2005 at 16:14
NetFlix - The Value, or lack thereof?
Mike, I suppose it’s subjective, but I use NetFlix and find it to be an excellent value.
Red Baron Says:
January 26th, 2005 at 16:16
Mike, I suppose it’s subjective, but I use NetFlix and find it to be an excellent value.

Sometimes, if I’m in the mood, I’ll watch a ton of movies, all for under twenty US bucks a month, and because NetFlix has a 24 hour turnaround time out here in California, I can crank out as many as 9 movies a week, if I wanted to.

But usually, I’m the exact opposite, and too busy to bother watching any TV at all. If a month goes by, and I don’t actually watch any movies through NetFlix, I’m only out twenty bucks, and so I don’t really feel cheated, because of the tons of movies I watched the month prior….But just in case, it’s awfully nice to see those DVDs sitting on top of my TV…Life is all about Options!

The best benefit is really convenience. I LOVE, absolutely love, not needing to run out to the video rental store. Movies magically appear in the mail, and there are no late fees, and the movie can sit there for as long as I desire.

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