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Psst.

Written by Matt B · first published 26/12/2009

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I hope you are having a nice time where-ever you are today.

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Not a creature was stirring…

Written by Matt B · first published 25/12/2009

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Happy stolen pagan festival to each and every one of you.

merry freakin’ christmas

Written by Matt B · first published 24/12/2009

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You regular brilliant non seasonal blogging will resume shortly I have no doubt.

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Do you need to change your twitter password?

Written by Matt B · first published 18/12/2009

In case you have been living under a rock twitters DNS was comprimised (again) and some angry young hackers. (They should have used a better DNS managment system).

DNS is what changes your nice www.thanetstar.com into an IP address which can be used to get the web page from. Somehow someone managed to currupt this information and send all the traffic to another website.

The result was that for a short while twitter.com resolved to a server that was not owned by twitter.

Twitter itself was not compramised but should you change your password?

The answer is that it depends.

If you were not online during the DNS hijacking then you need to take no action. If you were online but were already logged in to twitter then you probably need to take no action. But if you sent your username and password to twitter but got the hijacked page instead then you must change your password because there is a chance that the hackers have ssaved that data.

There are better methods of authentication over the web than passwords but until such time as they are implimented in any useful way you had better just stick to coming up with realy good passwords ("password" is not a good password BTW).

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Time to get seasonal... again.

Written by Matt B · first published 16/12/2009

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Costly for the BNP?

Written by Matt B · first published 13/12/2009

BNP make a risky financial move.

It was drawn to my attention that the BNP have a Freepost address so I googled it and what should show up but the BNP website itself. At a bnp.org.uk/contacts/ (I'm not making that a live link for what I hope are dead obvious reasons) was the general contact address stating that general enquires could be sent by post to:

British Heritage FREEPOST

I also found a lot of sites advocating the sending of copious amounts of junk mail at the cost of the BNP. I'm not suggesting that this is an activity that as sensible adults we should be engaged in but it does raise the question of if the BNP had really thought through the whole freepost part.

With the Christmas season here there is likely to be a large number of left over envelopes sans address ready to carry less than glad tidings. I wonder if the freepost address will still be in use this time next year.

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A chance for less cancer in Thanet.

Written by Matt B · first published 06/12/2009

Did you know that many common cosmetics have been linked to many forms of cancer, birth defects, infertility and allergies?

I had no idea until I took on the relatively undemanding task of researching a company for a blog post. What I learned doing that was cool but what I learned after that blew me away. I had never heard of Dawn Mellowship and her book Toxic Beauty and so some of the claims being made seemed a bit grand. Then I read Dawn Mellowship's blog.

Keep reading to find out about Dawn Mellowship, her book and how one company (not connected) may be able to help Thanet reduce the area's cancer rate. Especially the rate of breast cancer.

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» Continue Reading: A chance for less cancer in Thanet.

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Another failure Thanet should have avoided.

Written by Matt B · first published 05/12/2009

Margate market's organisers failure to understand basic business principles is hurting traders and slowing local regeneration.

In a blog post called "You won't get customers if you don't advertise!!" local craftswoman, Sam, slams the inability of our local civic authorities to even get the basics in place. Come on Margate sort it out and stop being so apathetic she says.

She even lists five separate ways that the market (which I knew nothing about even though I live here) could have raised it's profile and gotten more people to visit. All of them are low effort, low to no cost and quick to do.

She doesn't even touch on the big things (like free parking) or adverts in the paper that might make a significant difference. When I described how How to Revive Margate Museum and Old Town in One Day I foolishly assumed that the organisers would put in the basic due diligence. We are failing here people because the basics are being forgotten.

Perhaps if the likes of Sandy stopped trying to sell as many carpets as they can and try to actually run the town we might get somewhere.

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Labour have very little to crow about

Written by Matt B · first published 04/12/2009

There is very little for Labour to crow about in this by-election result.

While it is true that Labour were 6 percentage points above the Liberal Democrats and therefore took the election it is no time to get complacent as the biggest gains were had by their now close rivals the Liberal Democrats. With a greater than 50% drop in turn out from the 2007 full elections Labours lack of significant change in votes indicates that they along with the conservatives could face the prospect of playing second fiddle to, among others, Independent Councillors and the Liberal Democrats.

While the biggest loss comes from the Conservative Party's share where 50% of the votes from 2007 (overall results) were not retained Labour failed to gain from that. Instead the gains were shared almost exclusively by Independent and Liberal Democrats with the hitherto unpopular Lib Dems scooping the lions share. This information is available to anyone with an internet connection.

Changes in votes 2007 to 2009

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» Continue Reading: Labour have very little to crow about

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Full Disclosure

Written by Matt B · first published 03/12/2009

Just to be very clear on where I stand and what affiliates I may or may not have.

Mark Nottingham recently raised the very important point of disclosure in his article Predicting the Dane Valley result. Mark observes that almost all politically aligned bloggers declare their affiliation outright naming two that do not or might not. The one who might not be clear about their affiliation being our Tony and the other not disclosing on their blog is Simon Moores who has accused me (Matt B of Thanet Star) of having a Labour affiliation.

This article, for those that are interested is a full disclosure of my affiliations that might have any impact on my neutrality introducing unexpected bias where it was not intended. If this interests you read on otherwise skip on to the next article.

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» Continue Reading: Full Disclosure

Lucky find for Thanet man

Written by Matt B · first published 01/12/2009

One lucky Thanet man has found a haul of unusual treasure while renovating his house.

Mr Henderson from Thanet was taking up some wood panelling in his dining room when he found a stash of wine bottles. The 63 wine bottles date back over twenty years.

Mr Henderson Does Well

They were in a cupboard I found under my temporary desk in the dining room. Mr Henderson told Facebook users Some previous occupant had decided to just build over the top of them. The wine dates back to the late eighties!

Lucky man.

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