jamezpolley.com

I’ve seen a few hits on my site to http://zhasper.com/user/, or pages underneath. This seems to be because there used to be content there, and Google’s cache hasn’t (or hadn’t at the time anyway – it seems to have mostly caught up now).

I don’t want this, so I went to the “Remove URLs” tool, under Tools in the Webmaster Console.

The page says:

Before you begin, you must make sure that Google and other search engines will not crawl the content you want to remove from our search results.

To do this, ensure that each page returns an HTTP status code of either 404 or 410, or use a robots.txt file or meta noindex tag to block crawlers from accessing your content.

Okay, so it needs to return a 404. Easy – there’s no content there anyway, it’s already returning a 404. Double-check:

zhasper@bridgitte:~$ wget http://zhasper.com/user/

2008-12-25 17:03:31 ERROR 404: Not Found.

Excellent. So, I request the whole directory to be removed from the index.

Some days later, I come back and check, and my request for removal has been denied. There’s a little question mark beside the word denied, obviously further details, so I click on it:

Your request has been denied because the webmaster of the site hasn’t applied the appropriate robots.txt file or meta tags to block us from indexing or archiving this page.

No shit – I didn’t put anything in robots.txt because it’s returning a 404, and your instructions say that’s all that’s needed.

Grrr.

I *think* that everything under /user/ has been removed (there’s certainly nothing in the index any more), it’s just /user that’s not been removed. I don’t understand this – /user gives a 404 also, and the content shown in the snippet is the old Drupal content.

(obdisc: this is a private blog, all opinions are my own and not those of my employer, who happens to be Google. There’s probably something obvious that I’m overlooking – hopefully I’ll have another blog post soon with an update on what that is)

Udpate, 5 minutes later: Duh. Read the next paragraph, idiot:

If you’re requesting removal of a full site or directory, you must use a robots.txt file to block crawlers from accessing this content.

I’m requesting removal of a full directory. So….

Dear Stilgherrian Sir[1],

What is your take on Vodafone’s new prepay plans, with The Interwebs Included? Start of a Jesus-phone-induced mobile internet revolution, or just a marketing ploy?

I’m going to call them tomorrow to clarify if when they say “Surf the real Internet on Your Mobile”, they mean the 12c/Mb “real Internet” or the 2.2c/kb “real Internet”, as it’s not clear. If the former, this makes their caps similar in value to Optus Turbo Cap plans – which, I note are expiring on 30th September – although, that doesn’t mean they won’t be replaced with identical plans..

[1] I’m optimistic enough to believe you subscribe here already, realistic enough to know that you don’t, and enough of a company shill to be certain that either way you’ll get a nice email from my employer notifying you that someone took your name in vain.

Bugger all.

Cab drivers got nothing except a slow week.

The Sydney Chamber of Commerce and Industry claims 231m was injected into the Sydney economy – but does not explain where, or who benefited – the same story has convenience store owners saying the week was “absolutely dead. As bad as Apec, even worse”, cafe owners saying the only people who came into their cafe “were kids who asked for their water bottles to be filled up”.

The article does mention that “cheap trinket” stores saw a significant boost, but I doubt that’s going to inject $231m into the economy.

The only other beneficiaries I can think of:

- They had to have eaten something, somewhere. I saw a lot of them standing outside McDonalds, but few going in. In the whole week, I didn’t see a single pilgrim eating – you’d think that with 250k+ in town, a few would randomly happen to be eating somewhere near me. I vaguely recall hearing that the State Government was coughing up for catering for at least some parts of the event – possibly just the final show at the racetrack, so presumably some caterer, somewhere, got a bit of money.

- The horseracing industry. Taking all the fluff out of the article, we’re left with a huge in jection of cash turning Warwick Farm into a training facility on par with Randwick, and with sufficient cash floating around that they start giving free breakfast to employees. Great use of taxpayer money!

It wasn’t shop owners in randwick who benefited – I was there last week and it was a ghost town. It certainly wasn’t my doctor, who had to close on Friday – and it certainly wasn’t his accountant, whose office was on a street only registered pilgrims were allowed to get onto, so he had to shut down for a few days too.

It wasn’t shop owners in the city. It wasn’t cafe owners, convienience store owners, or even fast food store owners.

Who the hell got this fabled $231m injection of money? QANTAS and the other airlines who ferried pilgrims in?

Dear Mr Palmer,

A) Either your blog’s comment feature is broken, or navigation links to it have been misplaced. Please fix, so that I don’t have to continue commenting here.

B) You are a spammer. You admit that you merrily sent spam on its way into around five user’s inboxes – spam that you know appears to come from you, spam that you know is definitely unsolicited and unwanted. This makes you a spammer. The fact that you seem to think that sending this spam to users was somehow getting back at either the authors of the spam, or the writers of the spam blocking tools, only makes this worse.

C) You complain that “but the people whose job it is to write, maintain, and run spam software don’t [know that source addresses are forged and there's no point replying to them]“. If you’d take two seconds to think instead of sending spam and then blogging while enraged, you’d realise that this is patently false. The authors of these tools are trying to ensure that, in the case they’ve blocked legitimate email, it can be allowed through. This *requires* that they assume the From: address is not forged.

Please stop and think next time before you angry-blog.

Dear SMH,

Please, please stop employing monkeys and start employing people who understand basic rules of English grammar.

No. “Three year olds” is simply plural, there’s no possesion being described here – therefore no apostrophe.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – this is the same publication that talks about “cop cars” on the front page.

Actually, a cluster thereof.

grum: wondering if there is any way i can poop without leaving my desk

trib:@grum too much info, Chris

grum: @trib too much info? no way! this office chair toilet combo could make me rich!

grum: I could sell it to @jasoncalacanis to increase productivity at mahalo!

Dear Myer,

It’s great that you’ve got a website where I can track my points balance.

It’s great that you’re using open source.

It’s great that you’re pretending to care about me, by personalising the site based on my recent activity.

But do you really think that inspiring slogans like “This is the ALTERNATE message” are going to make me feel special? You really think that “OpenCMS resource /myerone/content/myprofile/my_summary” is going to persuade me to spend more money with you?

Please, try again.

(dlsspy): Has anyone seen XKCD #404? 403′s there, and 405′s there, but I can’t find 404.

Oh Randall Munroe, you wily sexy funny man. I want to have your babies.

Bloody hell, I’ve been tagged.

The Rules

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Random Facts about Me

Well, thank goodness this doesn’t have to be 8 random things you don’t already know.

1. I was raised in an Open Brethren church. Well, not raised so much, that mostly happened at home, but my family attended the assembly religiously. My father was an elder (and I think his father was too).
2. Bob’s my uncle. Actually, Bob is three of my uncles – my mother’s brother, my father’s sister’s husband, and my mother’s father’s brother.
3. I have a 2.5-greats grandmother. Let’s call her Betsy, as I don’t remember her real name. Betsy had a daughter out of wedlock, and later, another daughter in wedlock. The second daughter had a son, who married the first daughter. I’m descended from this union…
4. I’m hideously unsymmetrical. I have a Darwin’s Tubercle on one ear, but not the other. On one foot, my third toe is longer than my second toe, but on the other foot it’s the other way around.

SMH is running a lovely slow-news-day story today, about oddities in the latest Google Maps/Earth imagery in Sydney harbour.

The article as a whole is a lovely bit of fluff, but what really upset me was this paragraph:

The ferry “collision” appears right beside a giant cruise liner – either the Queen Elizabeth 2 or Queen Mary 2 – which was docked at Sydney Cove when the photographs were taken.

Fucking hell. If you want to pretend to be a journalist, spend a few seconds doing some basic research.

Here are some hints that might help you figure out whether it’s the QEII or the QMII:

* The ship is displaying an odd string of letters. Due to the power of the interwebs, it’s trivial to figure out which of the two ships this is.

* Just in case there’s any doubt, search for “qmII sydney circular quay” – the top hit makes it clear (in case you weren’t in Sydney at the time and don’t remember) which one of the ships is too big to dock at the OPT.

I’m too angry to continue writing. Bah humbug!