The balance of power's maintained that way

[melannen]

1. Okay, at least the delicious helpdesk seems to be responding fairly quickly the last week or two (helpfully, not sure yet.) On the other hand - is it just me, or is it not normal for helpdesk people to ask you to email them your password and username? Through regular, not-particularly-secure email?

2. Is it just me, or does Pinboard not have any way to view "popular" bookmarks for particular tags? It looks like you can view "popular" for the whole site, or "recent" for a given tag, but I can't figure out how to view "popular" by tag. If you can't do that, there goes 90% of what I used on del.icio.us, out the window, and the remaining zombified skeleton at the AVOS site is still more useful. Does somebody who's been learning pinboard know a way to view popular-by-tag?

3. I have been playing with vidding again (shutup), and I have to decide whether I want to use the original Bonnie Tyler single version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" or the Westlife cover. (shutupshutup, it's not a proper vid until you've chosen between several deeply uncool artists who've covered the song. The last vid I actually attempted I was stuck between Garth Brooks and the Vitamin String Quartet.)

Pros for Westlife: It has the lyrics of the second verse, which would be fun to have in the vid; it has less instrumental and repetition; the Bonnie Tyler version seems to be eradicated from YouTube. Pros for Bonnie: It's Bonnie Tyler singing, rather than Westlife; it's a tiny bit shorter; I like the emotional progression through the song better. Hmm. Or I could go with the ancient college A Capella cover I have, which has all the pros and none of the cons, except that this vid really requires over-the-top power ballad instrumentation. HMMM.

4. Speaking of bad music, I was looking for some dvds (which I didn't find, bah) and discovered some ancient backup CDs that held my mp3 collection circa twelve years ago, mostly consisting of songs downloaded from college intranets before Napster existing. And I decided that I'm tired of waiting till I manage to fix my old media drive, so my mp3 collection now closely resembles the one I had in 2001. ♥ ♥

5. You may remember me, a few days ago, mentioning BBC Radio 4's new topical comedy/political satire show, Tonight with Rory Bremner. I was attempting to reserve judgement on it, despite the presence of Andy Zaltzman as a regular, but then on last week's show they did a Tom Lehrer cover!

Specifically they re-wrote Who's Next re: the global financial crisis. And whoever sang it didn't do a half-bad Lehrer impression, either! For obvious reasons I needed an MP3 of this track so I went and ripped my own, and figured I might as well share: Rory Bremner & Tonight - Who's Next.

So there we have it. We're all heading into economic oblivion. It's no longer a question of if, but when. It's a ticking time bomb, and just like in the Tom Lehrer song, you have to ask: "Who's next?"

First we had the crunch, and Wall Street wailed
But at least it was only banks that failed!
Now it's spread to sovereign debt
Look out, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Who's next?

If Greece goes down, the banks all say
The rest'll follow any day;
When countries get in debt like this
They're bound to come a crop-o-lis

Who's next?

Ireland's bust so say the nobs
'Cause Dublin debt means half the jobs
They're running out of Irish luck
But the bankers couldn't give a --damn

Who's next?

Faced with all this sovereign debt,
Folks in China start to sweat
Soon we'll see Chairman Hu
Bearing an IOU
If the USA should fall
The Chinese banks-- are up against the wall!

Portugal's the next to go
Down to its final escudo
If Lisbon hits the rocks, it's plain
The pain falls mainly onto Spain

Who's next?

Madrid and Brussels, Paris, Rome
Spreading 'cross the Eurozone
Italy needs large amounts
Try Berlusconi's bank accounts!

Who's next?

Who's the next one? No one knows
In this game of dominos
If Europe's bust, no time to grieve--
Just turn the lights out when you leave!

Comments

[kellyfaboo]

NO SELF-RESPECTING IT PERSON WILL EVER ASK YOU FOR YOUR PASSWORD.

Sorry for the allcaps, but that is the #1 sign of a phishing expedition. And if it is really delicious doing it I've lost all respect for how that operation ... operates.

[melannen]

I think it really was delicious, or at least I've never encountered a phishing e-mail that had quite that subtle air of weariness about it, like their souls have been crushed by weeks of fruitless toil and abuse and they just want to stop feeling the pain. And all the headers, etc, work out, so I think it's legit.

But... yeah. They appear to think that a) my missing data was left on yahoo's servers [and I don't think it was]; b) my new AVOS delicious account has a different username and password from my old yahoo one, and therefore they couldn't possibly figure it out themselves and also there are no security issues [which, what?]; and c) that if I give them my Yahoo username and password, so that they can run the exact same automated data recovery program I've already run twice myself, everything will be mystically fixed.

To be honest I am disinclined to acquiesce to their request. :P I'm trying to decide if I care about my missing tags enough to send an e-mail back saying I'm not giving them my password/account in the clear, but give them my account name and tell them I haven't changed the password since well before the handover, and see what happens.

[kellyfaboo]

Ugh. Yes, I'm going to give you, semi-anon person on the internet, a password that might get you into any number of services.

Umm... how about they create a loader that will convey your password securely so the database can be accessed without a third party getting access to the password.

[melannen]

I suspect that's essentially the purpose of the "rescue tool" they told me to try myself that didn't work for me, and I suspect this helpdesk person has decided that the problem must be that I'm incapable of running the 'rescue tool' myself and therefore if I send my username/password they can just do it for me.

...which I sympathize with, having done computer classes with the public, but, um, I'd always assumed that if there was something that could only be fixed by an IT person logging in to your account, it would be escalated to the level of a person who had the admin privileges to do that themself. Not to just ask for a password in an email to a customer. Which, yeah, makes me wonder just what sort of operation AVOS is running.

[hvalrann]

Unfortunately, Pinboard has only gotten as far as being able to narrow down popular tags by only looking at popular fandom tags (http://pinboard.in/popular/fandom/). We can't yet filter within those for specific tags. I heard this is based on account holders (which I am not) checking off a box that says "I'm in fandom" or something like that, because it isn't simply searching for any bookmark tagged as fandom. While that's a clever solution to finding fandom bookmarks without requiring everyone tag them the same, I don't know whether there's any plans to rework search code for 'popular' to be able to narrow down by tag. I really hope so - I'm getting tired of trying to search through Delicious bookmarks without the descriptions showing up unless I'm in one specific user's list.

[melannen]

Huh. Well, the popular-fandom-tags page is certainly better than nothing (actually it's pretty cool, and I didn't know it existed, thank you!) but I still miss what I used to be able to do with del.icio.us. I suspect I will be reading a lot less non-AO3 fic for awhile.

And the mystery-fandom-ID on pinboard is mysterious...

[sophia_sol]

Ffff, that rewritten version of Who's Next is really awesome, in that depressingly accurate kind of way....

[melannen]

Isn't it though. And getting more depressingly accurate every day...

[zellieh]

1. sounds well dodgy. But then, AVOS have not impressed me with their efficiency, professionalism, or customer service and communication skills, so...

2. Pinboard has several gaps compared to Delicious. But since new!Delicious makes me want to cry or HULK RAAAAAGE every time I visit, it's Pinboard and AO3 for me.

3. IMHO, if you want power ballad oomph, it has to be Bonnie Tyler. I can upload a file if you want?

5. Thanks for the links to Rory Bremner's new show; I like the sound of it. And the song was great. ::g::

[melannen]

I have several versions of Bonnie! Thanks for the offer though. (It may be a very, very long time before any vid results from this, but you know how it goes...)

I love the way the British shows will just throw in musical numbers like that. It's great.