Earlier in this blog I've told you about things that irritate me on Twitter.
And, surprise I'm getting back with more.

1. The tunnel vision self-advertiser

Still human but barely so, they have one thing in mid. ONE.
They have achieved a ghost written e-book about the marvels of the gag reflex, and now they are going to let the whole world know about it.
They have developed a near-godly ability to relate any topic to their product, and whatever the cost they will do it to advise their marvelous
e-pamphlet on the virtues of dried crab neck whenever you feel happy, suicidal, or your car broke down.

Block, choke with recycled e-paper.

2. The bloggers

140 characters are not always enough to express what you mean.
14.000 characters are still not enough for them.
They are the TL;DR kings of the TMI land, and will, not once, sir, not twice mam, but systematically, flood your timeline with novelettes about
every single frame of their morning floss ritual.

Block, report for spam, poke in the leg with a hot needle for ever extra character.

3. The jokers

I'm inappropriate and often offensive.
But when it comes to be downright infuriating, I'm a baby compared to them.
Everything is laughable, everything is funny. They probably spawn from places such as /b/ (don't go if you don't know), and are always happy to bring the fun back in your agonizing grandmother, the last natural disaster or your sexual orientation.

Block, invite them to a lawyer-only rally and watch them melt in lava-hot lawsuits.

4. The dirties

Here I quote " @porkknuckle ;) RT: @killmenow #ouch #Iknewit RT: @vampireunicorn Totally #mommy #eyebleach RT:@killmenow http://too.short...(snip)"
You really want to have a part in that. You know you do.

Block, force them to pay for the eye surgery they just brought on you.

5. The liberated army of sexual innuendoistas

Men and women who think sexual liberation equals tweeting about their genitals every other minute.
They usually try being smart about it and lamentably fail while letting all of us know about their renewed excitement for all the alphabetic variations of the F-word.
They are not exhibitionists either, which make them totally unworthy of any interest.

Block, compliment them about the quality of their content, quoting them aloud, in a public place, preferably a church or a kindergarten.

Anything I missed?
I could turn it into a comic if you had an idea ;)

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Well, we're near Halloween, this edition is the 13th, so, yeah, zombies, vampires and Robert Pattinson would be the creepy thing to draw I guess.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

So, I have a good Friend, who works for an NGO.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

So, I have a good Friend, who works for an NGO.
And of course we talk. And of course, we chat through IM.
And funnily enough, my friend's connection drops more often than mine, even when I'm using a simple EVDO modem.

Since all good geek is curious, and since I tend to try being one, I asked whether the source of the problem was known.
This lead to that, and I got to know more about the standard policies of that organization.
I have, in the past, been an ardent defender of NGOs, especially the smaller ones, but what I heard left me pretty nonplussed.
Here is why:

Local: bad.

There are, where I live, various local ISP offering diverse professional solutions and, as long as we forget about wireless broadband, offering broadband under USD 500 per month.
Of course they are using one of these solutions, but it doesn't seem to be good enough for them, and they are using a secondary secure connection, from all the way to Europe, costing them more than USD 3000 per month.

That's pretty expensive for a VPN if you ask me. Yes, the data are precious, but I wonder why a standard VPN implementation is not enough to protect it? Is Wikileaks after them?
To add some spice to the sauce, their technical support is located abroad and the operations in case of trouble are monitored...by phone.

Standards are better, it's a fact. By why don't they let local organizations implement their  procedures, when they can actually do it well, is still a mystery to me.

Expensive: good.

Oracle. Less than 1000 simultaneous for a database. A million dollars project costs. When Facebook still uses MySQL.
And yes, before you ask me, it does crash every now and then.

The office computers are of course loaded with Windows.
I know, Linux is know to be complex. Ubuntu is also know to be pretty user friendly.

Nevermind.

Result: Mess

Since no local consultant is there to support full time their IT structure, their bandwidth is very badly distributed.
Their secure connection got recently hacked, by a local.
A virus infection recently cost them several month of shutting down their operations, plus the cost of outsourcing the cleaning up.

I won't pretend to offer an immediate solution, but I'm sad to see that so much money wasted because "they have better at home".
I know where my next donation won't go though.

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr

So, have you ever had to deal with this frustrating experience: blocking a user on Twitter, and seeing that user back and again in your timeline through RTs an mentions?
If yes, this little script can help you.

It will replace any tweet containing that user's name with "Just another tweet", so your adrenalin never spikes again.

You will need Mozilla Firefox and Greasemmonkey to run it. I can't host .js files, so you will have to follow the tutorial below in order to install the script. It's currently designed for one username only, but I could enhance it later, if ever you asked and treated me for a pizza.

Here is the tutorial:

1) Install the GreaseMonkey add-on . After installation, you should see a monkey icon on the botton-right of your browser, that's where you can manage your scripts, deactivate and reactivate Greasemonkey.

2) After installing, go to Tools -> Greasemonkey -> New user script

3) Fill in the blanks:

4) Greasemonkey will ask you for your favorite text editor, notepad or textedit will do

5) Copy and paste the following, fill the blank space between the quotes with the username you want to block (keep the quote marks, no need for a @), save and close.

For Twitter:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           TwErazer
// @namespace      TwErazer
// @include        http://www.twitter.com/
// @include        http://twitter.com
// @include           http://*.twitter.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

erazeme = "     ";
setInterval(function()
{
    el = document.getElementsByTagName('span');
    for(i=0;i<el.length;i++)
    {
        if (el[i].className == "entry-content")
            {
                str = el[i].innerHTML;
                if (str.match(erazeme))
                {
                    el[i].innerHTML = "Just another tweet";
                }
             }
    }
    el = "";
}
, 5000);

For "New Twitter"

// ==UserScript==
// @name           TwErazer_new
// @namespace      TwErazer_new
// @include        http://www.twitter.com/
// @include        http://twitter.com
// @include        http://*.twitter.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

erazeme = "    ";
setInterval(function()
{
    el = document.getElementsByTagName('div');
    for(i=0;i<el.length;i++)
    {
    if (el[i].className == "stream-item")
        {
        subEl = el[i].children[1].children[2].children[1];
        str = subEl.innerHTML;
            if (str.match(erazeme))
            {
            subEl.innerHTML = "Just another tweet";
            }
        }

    }
    el = "";
    srt = "";
}
,5000);

 

6) Go to Twitter,  breathe.

7) You can test the script with any word or username you want.

Voila, hope it's helpful :)

Posted via email from @Danny_Fr