Author Archives: alexmock
How I Nearly Got Arrested for Going on the Train This Morning
Yes, seriously. I get the train into Charing Cross from Brockley every day. I tend to use an Oyster Card because, well, it’s convenient. Except when it goes wrong and you have to deal with a bunch of people in … Continue reading
Silencing the Flood of Recruiter Emails with a Domain List
I get a torrent of email from IT recruiters. There’s the occasional gem; every once in a while someone really does want to get interesting work done on scalable web-facing UNIX platforms. But the rest is utter dross. “Your CV … Continue reading
Rule #1 of Marketing: Don’t Subscribe Me to Your Crap and Call it a Service
There are two kinds of people who carry multiple phones – drug dealers and IT consultants. I’m the latter. My second phone is a special one; tiny enough to not get in the way and carried solely so that the … Continue reading
Fail of the Day: Federal Express Europe Inc.
Latest rant: FedEx. A month ago I had a parcel shipped from the US. A week after the parcel arrived came a letter from FedEx saying customs charges needed to be paid. “Fair cop” I thought as I scanned the … Continue reading
EDF Energy: How Not to do Online Billing
Dear EDF Energy, I’ve had an email saying my bill is awaiting payment and suggesting I view it online. This seems plausible; as a citizen of the developed world I use gas and electricity and I am indeed your customer. … Continue reading
HTTP KeepAlive Considered Harmful
Isn’t that a wonderfully alarmist title? A better one would be “HTTP KeepAlive harmful for modern high-traffic low-latency low-footprint websites”. But then you’d have fallen asleep by now, wouldn’t you. This was written to expand on an idea I touched … Continue reading
“Open” UK Rail Data: Media Coverage & Broken Appeals Process
Since my last piece on the saga of National Rail Enquiries shutting off public access to their data feed the problem has gained coverage in the Guardian and elsewhere in the press. On Thursday I went on Radio 4′s You … Continue reading
Awful Recruiter of the Year: Nick Blake of “Technical Identity”
I originally posted an entry about a particularly obnoxious IT recruiter on LiveJournal in July 2009. Sometime in the last couple of months it’s been suspended by them for reasons unknown. Here’s the entry in full…
How to Survive a Slashdotting on a Small Apache Server
…so your plain ordinary webserver just got listed on a high-traffic news site. Slashdot? Reddit? Hacker News? Well done, turns out you’re hosting something thousands of people want to read. Now thousands of people want to come to your webserver … Continue reading
National Rail Enquiries: License Application Refused; My App Still Dead
Remember last month (1, 2, 3) where National Rail Enquiries ordered me to shut down my free train times web app and locked down their data feed so only people whom they grant a license key can query it? A … Continue reading