Made for us by my dad, I can't think of a more special keepsake to remind us of this day.

Tags : angie dna, Dorian, fraser moore, jewellery, keepsake, memento, wedding,
Posted by Dorian on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 15:30 GMT
Last modified Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 13:14 GMT

Posted by Dorian on Sunday, August 15, 2010 at 18:33 GMT

A rare and explosive set from Chris Corsano & Paul Dunmall last night at Cafe Oto, one of the best gigs in a long time. 

These are clips from their second set, both were mindblowing. 

Tags : bagpipes chris corsano, drums, free jazz, music, paul dunmall, sax,
Posted by Dorian on Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 09:58 GMT

Taken from the self-titled album on Not Not Fun, this isn't the cover of Dawn Penn's classic I once dreamt of doing, but it is very good.

Posted by Dorian on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 17:49 GMT
Last modified Monday, July 19, 2010 at 16:52 GMT

It's been a busy year, but I haven't really said much about what I've been up to. As ever I am working on multiple projects in parallel, all of which seem destined to be launch later on this year. I've also been doing a lot of website maintenance on existing projects.

Things I've done of late that haven't been announced on here are the website for the Rhyzom network, a refresh of somewhere's website, a number of updates to the what will the harvest be website for the new growing season, a re-freshing of the layouts on my personal website and an update to Rossi & Rossi's website to represent their classical artworks, and the first phase of the Lawson Park Electronic Library, created with Guestroom for Grizedale Art's Lawson Park residency space.

I've also been setting up some new servers and migrating sites and email to new places, and carrying out a large number of updates to my CMS framework.

Currently in progress is work on:

• Afterall - updating it to represent their advertisers better, to apply more functionality to their article layouts, and to hook into the subscription system provided by University of Chicago.
• Spatial Agency - refinements of the database, and working on the mapping of connections between the various practices.
• Grizedale Arts - extending the documentation of their contributors and works, and creating a visualisation of how their activities interconnect.
• Lawson Park - building the backbone of a small social network to help residents at the space to document their activities whilst staying there.
• International Village Shop - A web representation of the various experiments and models of shop commerce carried out by a range of groups I collaborate with; public Works, somewhere, Grizedale arts and Myvillages.org
• Colchester Inn - Extending public works website representing the various strands of action for the current phase of this project.

I've also recently been commissioned to work on a number of new projects:

• Portland Works - A website to represent a historical Sheffield building and the makers who work there, and to help them in their aim of buying the building and preserving the space.
• Office for Contemporary Art Norway - Redevelopment of their website to freshen it up and make the content more accessible
• Florian - website for Austrian Jewellery designer and maker
• Agri-Cultur - A new website representing various art projects that are connected to agri-culture and farming.

So, keeping busy. Hence why so quiet with the updates!

Posted by Dorian on Monday, July 19, 2010 at 16:29 GMT

Great lo-fi video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMWIFfakvFY
Taken from there excellent eponymously titled album 'Roll The Dice' on Digitalis
Buy from Amazon

Posted by Dorian on Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 11:08 GMT

After 10 years of my website I wanted to get a better idea of how I had been using and posting, and changing this site. so I have plotted all of my posts on a timeline to get a bettter understanding of it. it is a bit slow to render, and it will get slower, but I like it as a relative view of myself over time.

Next task is to make my CMS work better with the iPhone.

Tags : activity design, interface, me, time, timeline, visualisation, work,
Posted by Dorian on Wednesday, June 16, 2010 at 17:45 GMT
Last modified Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 11:59 GMT

Microsoft delivering to A record for webserver not MX record

Over the past month I've had an increasing number of complaints from people I work with about emails being bounced. The problem was intermittent, most email was getting to them, but some wouldn't.

I used to manage all email through my servers, but have slowly been moving it off to Google Apps for domains for each client, which made this quite difficult to debug: no server logs to check through, and every time I asked for a bounce message to be forwarded the message was minimal - no details, just saying "Email could not be delivered"

Initially I thought that PEBKAC as I could see nothing wrong with email configuration, and it seemed unlikely that google were randomly bouncing email or unable to handle high mail loads (though possible, no one was complaining of this elsewhere).

Then it dawned on me, the majority of senders appeared to be having problems from Hotmail/MSN/Live mail... so I jumped into my Hotmail account and started sending some tests. And things became muddier:

It seemed the email was bounced to one domain handled by a single Google Apps account, but not on another handled by the same account. And it turns out that why I wasn't getting a full error message when asked for them from the senders is because Hotmail puts the error message in an attachment - not very handy for forwarding.

Looking at the details of the error message the error was being generated by vchkpw part of Vpopmail, which I know from experience is part of my mail install - Qmail Toaster - and Google don't use. So the email was being rejected by a server other than Google, quite possibly my server.

I checked the MX records for the domains - all correct, all point to googles servers. Very odd. Also odd that this had only started happening recently on domains that had been moved a year ago.

I thought, maybe they are delivering to the old mail server, so I went and checked the logs there. No sign of attempted delivery there. Most odd.

Then I remember, I'd recently set up a mail server on the system that handles the websites for these systems. Primarily for handling mailing lists it doesn't handle user accounts. I checked into the log files, and there are loads of attempts to deliver to email addresses from hotmail/msn/live and the odd one from BT Internet.

So, Microsoft are attempting to deliver email to the Web server rather than the listed MX servers. Well done Microsoft! I don't know _why_ they are doing this, but a quick hack - binding the Qmail SMTP server to a different IP address to the web server - seems to have resolved the problem. Because Hotmail can't find anything running on port 25 of the web server it must decide that it really has to send to the MX server.

Most odd, most annoying, and really bad that I have to work round a problem with an different email sender. Microsoft once again failing to work by the agreed standards of the internet. Yet another reason to not use Microsoft.

Tags : bounce cludge, debugging, email, error, fix, gmail, hack, hotmail, livemail, microsoft, problem, qmail, standards,
Posted by Dorian on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 12:48 GMT
Last modified Saturday, May 29, 2010 at 15:07 GMT

Just because I can use a chisel, it does not make me a Carpenter.
Just because I can use a brush, it does not make me a Painter.
Just because I can use a hammer, it does not make me a Builder.`
Just because I can use a pen, it does not make me a Writer.

Just because I can open a door, it does not make me a Locksmith.
Just because I can draw a building, it does not make me an Architect.
Just because I can hold an argument, it does not make me a Politician.
Just because I can repeat a rumour, it does not make me a Journalist.

Just because I can play an instrument, it does not make me a Rockstar.
Just because I can write a story, it does not make me a Bestseller.
Just because I can paint a picture, it does not make me an Artist.
Just because I can look a million dollars, it does not make me a Supermodel.

Just because I can use a spreadsheet, it does not make me an Accountant.
Just because I can use a drawing program, it does not make me a Designer.
Just because I can use a search engine, it does not make me a Specialist.
Just because I can string some words together, it does not make me a Poet.

Posted by Dorian on Friday, May 7, 2010 at 16:11 GMT
Last modified Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 16:47 GMT

Whilst I know they won't win I think each time I do this they get closer, and that takes us closer to some electoral reform, and some balance in a system currently dominated by the fights between two parties.

At the moment I doubt very much that picking my local MP on what he says will really make much difference, my dealings with my past two local MPs have been ineffectual, and more and more the Whips seem to have control.

If my vote can at least make other people think the next time that LibDem are getting stronger and more popular, and that there is a contest which is not just two parties, then it's worthwhile.

Having three parties who all have a chance of winning would hopefully make the parties consider what they do, rather than just opposing each other. It would hopefully bring some balance, and if the Lib Dems get there way it might encourage some electoral reform that brings power back to the people.

If the parliament is hung, so be it; Our politicians will start to have the power to decide, because the parties won't be able to control it.

I hope.

I dream.

I pray.

Posted by Dorian on Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 16:47 GMT