Happy Septemeber!

School starts in two days but I haven't been to school for over 10 years. Phew. I'm looking forward to it and I'll tell you all about it when I start... or will that be just dull? We'll see. I may well do some embarassing things.

Meanwhile, here in our little virtual-reality escape I'll be fiddling around with a few things. Hopefully some photos should make their appearance and maybe a section to do with music. Anyone fancy a treasure hunt? Or what about a parrot that radomly appears to tell jokes. There will soon be the option of personalising your comment with a little character. Also some links to friends, if I can make them (the links that is). All will be revealed soon. Watch this space:







Okay, you can stop watching now, it's really not that interesting.

It happens from time to time... a fresh look, a behind-the-scenes revamp, promises for the future... no, I'm not talking about the national election, it's another Joshlog reincarnation. Something inside me just can't keep away from rebuilding the Joshlog. I'm always coming up with a new 'amazing' system that will never have to be changed again (that is until the next reprogram, when I come up with something 'even better'). So to make this one a little different, I'm not going to promise to post lots and I'm not even going to think, let alone say, that this will be the last time. Instead, I look forward to the next Joshlog revolution and just hope that something good will happen in between.

l w0z t0tAIIy 0wn3d!!! l33t m4n!!!!! Ahem, sorry. What I meant was that the Joshlog got hacked. I'm tempted to say that it was a concentrated effort by a group of high-tech pro hackers (with m4d sk1llz) but it wasn't - even though that would sound seriously cool. I was actually outwitted, as far as I can make out, by a automated script. This went and put some harmless files (well I hope they were harmless) on my server which directed themselves to Russia - intriguing.

At first I thought it was a problem with my comments form, somehow allowing nasty files to be uploaded instead of just plain text. I quickly added an 'are you a human?' checkbox to the form... mwhahaha that should outwit those foolish robot scripts. But looking through the directories I noticed that they were all chmod 777. Those magic numbers define what the permissions of a folder are - who is allowed do what. Basically 777 means almost anybody can do almost anything. All the tutorials I read on the internet said things like "Warning: never use 777" or "DON'T SET YOUR FILES TO CHMOD 777". I didn't take notice. My spiffy admin panel needed all those sevens to work and I was too foolish to heed the warnings. No-one will ever target my site I thought - I'm safe. So I set some of my directories to 777... ERROR! (in honour of Shadrack).

The mistake is now rectified but please do get in contact if you ever end up in Russia. I just want to add to all the other warnings out there: if you chmod, don't use 777!

What is it with me and blogging? Or to be more precise, Joshlogging? It seems to happen less often than millennium comes around. I think my problem is perfectionism. I shall hereby strive to maintain quality but focus instead on quantity of content - as opposed to trying to produce a beautifully crafted dissertation every time I want to say something, even something very simple...

In other words I'm going to try to post more often! No promises because I don't like breaking them ;).

And on a final note: it's not easy being a perfectionist when you are not perfect.

Looking back over the last six entries, I realised that they are spaced quite evenly about a week apart. Maybe it could be because it takes me a whole week to come up with something vaguely interesting to say. Actually, what normally what happens is that I suddenly say to myself 'Hmmm, I havn't written anything for a while, what can I write about?'. If an event worth mentioning has happened then it is easy, if not I have to dredge out some fake philosophical deliberation or something else just as pointless. Today is one of those times, which explains why this is a meaningless drivel. Sorry, let me put a stop to this.

Let me introduce you to another type of wave. The type of wave one normally thinks of, to salute someone or something. To save you from any more jibberish like this I am going to introducing a new section for times when nothing worth writing about happens. Please welcome, ladies and gentlemen, the Bits and Bobs (I seriously need a better name). Coming first: The Ultimate Maths Challenge [WARNING: dead link!].