Dan Price’s blog
Weblog of a cyber-geek

Can this really be true? Well I’ve just listened to the recording myself on the BBC’s iPlayer service and it is genuine. It is strange that a man who declared “we’re bigger than Jesus” and “Imagine a world without religion” believes strongly in Christ’s teachings and even said that the Beatles were essentially a Christian band trying to push a Christian message.

Of course, this is somewhat watered down Christianity. While Lennon obviously admires Jesus’ teachings, he doesn’t say anything about accepting Him as a personal saviour and also said he follows Mohammed and Buddha. It’s certainly reassuring that Lennon admits he’s not against God but against the hypocrisy in the Church: “…the hat wearing and the tea parties…”.

I feel a bit daft now, given my rant about Lennon here!

Today has to be one of my worst days in a very long time - what can be worse than having a hole bitten through your fairly new contract phone (2 months into the 18 month contract), having a dog tear a hole in your jeans, having to see your dog limp around in pain as well as attempting to talk sense to an arrogant, self-righteous creep who won’t accept any blame on his part?

That’s been my day, pretty much. In brief, I was walking my two dogs, Bingo (an 8 year old black and white border collie) and Tim (his 2 year old son) on a regular walk I do through a local woodland, when I saw 2 small dogs, probably terriers, running around in a field next to the wood. They were quick to notice me and my dogs and soon enough were coming up to them and sniffing them (as dogs do). Then things got violent and they began attacking each other. Tim was on his lead at the time and hence couldn’t actually escape from the terriers, who wasted no time attacking his underside and his private areas (ouch!) (more…)

Firstly, I KNOW I’ll get some stick for this. John Lennon has plenty of fans, particularly for one of his best known works, “Imagine”.

I must admit that I’m a fan of the Beatles - I love their music and I think they were generally good guys. However, I just listened to John Lennon’s Imagine on YouTube and then looked up the lyrics to double check.

I’ve got to say I’m appalled by the song. Not because it’s anti-establishmentist, something that I’m not overly bothered about, but because it’s against religion. I’m not a fan of “religion” really - the word itself conjures up pictures of fanatics, priests performing meaningless ceremonies and profiteering. However, I do believe strongly that people should be allowed to believe what they want as long as they are given options - for example, being informed of other faiths as well as their own or their parents.

“Imagine” is strongly against religion entirely:

“Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky”

…”Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too”

The rest of the song, fine I’ll tolerate, but not this. John Lennon appeared to be such a liberal, yet at the same time believed that religion/faith should be removed. Isn’t that a contradiction? Surely its up to a person to look deep into their heart and make their own decision about faith and God - not have some anarchic atheist mob forcibly making people believe what they wish. Brainwashing with religion is as bad as brainwashing with atheism - by default people are generally agnostics when they are born and then are pushed one way or the other by the society they believe in.

John Lennon called himself liberal and peace-loving yet any act to remove religion or force people to believe atheism would be entirely against peace. To me, John Lennon seems to have been a hypocrite.

I await criticism on this, because I know I’ll receive it…

“Conservatipedia” sounds just like another web 2.0 site jumping on the bandwagon, and with such a name would obviously be targeted towards a right wing audience. The name simply suggests that it’s a right wing site about politics, perhaps discussing the different ideologies on this side of the political spectrum.

However, if you actually go over to this site, you quickly realise this isn’t a place for moderate Conservatives to air their views, but for far right wing Conservatives, perhaps even Fascists, to indoctrinate their viewing audience with absurd ideas about a number of topics. (more…)

OK, so for starters, I haven’t kept to the category name, “bi-weekly web sites” at all… I think the last time I posted to this was about 2 months ago.

This is besides the point anyway. I found a really cool blog, by a Webmaster-Talk member, called Lightning Shock. The guy (James) makes a lot of sense, particularly with posts like 100 reasons Digital Point sucks” and “Social Networks are Communities, not self promotion manipulation tools“.

The blog is well worth a read and highly recommended - now I’ve found it, I hope to be popping back there regularly

It’s that time again - Wikipedia is begging for finance publicly, but this time their campaign is being commanded by an illiterate monkey. The notice is on a rotated basis, but this is the message I received when visiting the site:

The site is already getting a bad reputation, and some have nicknamed it “Wreckipedia” so this isn’t the perfect time to start employing a primemate to run the publicity campaign!

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), long le creme de la creme of British television has announced today it is going to make radical changes to cover a £2 billion budget shortfall.

This means axing huge numbers of staff, approximately 1800, and selling off the cherished historical home of the organisation, the Television centre.

The full story of the news is here (more…)

Somehow, I’ve managed to pick up a reputation for being against the Digital Point(less) forums - I’ve got no idea how…

Before I launch into a rant, I want to briefly explain why I detest DP with a vengeance. I first released how rubbish filled the forum was when I started visiting Webmaster-Talk *reminisces* Back then, I just accepted this as fact, it coming from knowledgeable sources on spamming (they know who they are!) Anyway, I decided to embark on the forums myself as although they’re full of scammers, spammers and other idiots. While my experience didn’t last long, a very quick peak in on the SEO “badvice” I found was enough to confirm my fears. Right, time for the main subject, a blog post about none-other than ME!

This blog post, coming from a Digital Point member who must have also noticed me at Webmaster-Talk seems to sum up my feelings, even if it is slightly biased. (more…)

If you aren’t using Firefox, a free open source browser, you should be! Why? I’ll explain below:

1) Customizability. Firefox, unlike Internet Explorer, has a bewildering number of addons and plugins that are available to customize the browsing experience - from themes to security additions to media enhancements, it has it all. On my Windows PC, I’ve got add ons including FasterFox; designed to speed up the browser (even more than usual), Greasemonkey; allowing even further customization by enabling script installs for the browser and Flashblock; which as the name suggests blocks flash on web pages, only being enabled when you click to enable it. I’ve got several more, but these 3 are some of the best.

2) Security. You might think that an open source browser would be more susceptible to hacking since everyone can see exactly how it runs, but this strictly isn’t true. Firefox may or may not be a more secure browser if it had the same market share as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, but at the moment, it doesn’t so is generally far less targeted by hackers. When Firefox vulnerabilities are found, they are usually patched quite quickly, denying hackers the chance to exploit these. (more…)

That’s the claim by Steven Frank in his article on the subject. OK so he’s even more of a Mac-addict than myself and he’s completely biased on the subject - this quote says it all:

“It’s important for me as a Mac developer to use Windows once in a while, because it’s a fantastic lesson on how do absolutely everything wrong when designing software.”

Despite this, the article is worth a read, for both Mac and Windows fans - Mac fans to nod “I agree” at the end of every line of the rant, Windows fans to desperately disagree with every dig he makes against their beloved virus-infested, crash-prone pile of junk. Anyway…. (more…)