tomroyal.com

Twitter's new "Who to follow" thing is as dumb as a bag of rocks. Here's how to remove it from Firefox in ten easy steps:

1. Go here and install the Stylish Firefox extension. Restart when prompted.
2. Click tools, then Add-ons.
3. Click the new User Styles tab
4. Click "Write new style"
5. Give it the name Twitter_WTF, tag it Twitter
6. In the main box, enter this: #recommended_users{display:none;}
7. Click Save
8. If there's an Enable button, click it
9. Close the Add-ons box
10. Rejoice

Here's how the new style should look:

You can enable and disable the style by right-clicking the Stylish icon in the bottom-right corner of Firefox and (un)ticking it. Thanks to @Yuuichi for posting the style rule last week.

Photo: Ralph, with coursework. But not his coursework, obviously.

A University Degree is a funny thing – a bit of paper that can, under some circumstances, make a difference to both one's credibility and one's bank account. But then all degrees – not to mention doctorates – are not created equal. Specifically, some are granted by accredited institutions.

In the UK, the Education Reform Act of 1988 (section 214, here) dictates which institutions can legally grant a degree, and makes it an offence for an unaccredited institution to do so. In the United States and many other territories there is no such law. This means that you can, for a fee, acquire all manner of interesting qualifications that might be said to overstate one's professional or academic achievements.

And so to Ralph.

Ralph H Cat, Esq, is a clever cat. He can, for example, open doors by hanging from the handle. Some might think this qualifies him for a degree, and as it turns out there are institutions that agree. Armed with his very own Gmail address, a fake address in Central London, a phone number (Ofcom handily provides dummy numbers for dramatic use) and a date of birth (his real age converted to human years with this chart) he set about obtaining his High School  Diploma – after all, you have to start somewhere.

The institution in question – carefully chosen by clicking a Google advert that appears when you search for "buy degree" – issues "life experience" degrees so applicants can "Receive a College Degree for What You Already Know". This makes the application process rather less strenuous than the one I had to go through via UCAS. The applicant is asked to "Briefly type the work or life experience that qualifies you for this degree."

Here's Ralph's life experience, as submitted for consideration:

"Since leaving home I have spent the last three years looking after my brother, Hunter, who has limited mental capabilities and requires regular assistance with everyday tasks. We share an apartment together. Besides looking after him, I have a keen interest in food and sports – particularly soccer. I am also a keen hunter, although with limited opportunities to get out of the apartment (it's hard to leave Hunter) this hobby is tricky to pursue."

Naturally, as Ralph is a Good Cat, it is all true. He did leave home (in a cat carrier) and lives with Hunter, who isn't terribly bright (he tries to hunt snowflakes) and does indeed need help with many cat-like tasks. They do share (our) apartment. Ralph loves watching football, or pretty much anything on TV, and hunts wasps, flies and other insects. In short, Ralph has lived a fairly average life as a London housecat. He has not, however, learned anything to merit a High School Diploma.

Nonetheless, within 24 hours – success! Ralph not only qualified, but was also offered a place on a scholarship programme, giving him a discount on the, er, "programme" fees. Here's the confirmation, as presented by the website (click for full size):

Which is lovely, and makes me terribly proud. But although it was tempting to pay $203 and get this qualification, as a pushy parent I couldn't help but hold greater aspirations for my furball. So I applied again, but this time for something a little trickier: a Bachelor's Degree in Social and Behavioural Sciences, Cum Laude. The application form had conveniently saved Ralph's CV, so it took a matter of seconds. And lo, just a few minutes later (again, click for full size):

I have to admit to being slightly sceptical – after all, surely no degree can be granted in less than five minutes based on a one paragraph life story. Perhaps this was an unfortunate system glitch? Fortunately the online chat tool was there to set my mind at ease:

All Ralph now has to do is pay $499, either by credit card or by cheque via what appears to be a mail forwarding address in Santa Monica, and he'll have a BSc. What a clever kitty!

As tempting as it is to get Ralph's name up in lights on the Wikipedia page "List of animals with fraudulent diplomas", though, I don't think I'll be writing off the best part of £350 for a worthless qualification. After all, Ralph is unlikely to ever apply for a job other than as my housecat and moth-slayer extraordinaire, and I know he's a smart cookie. And in any case, he's decided to take a Gap Year to go travelling first – he's even found a rucksac.

Please note that I haven't named or linked the institution in question here, either – partly because I don't have the time to fend off lawyers should it become litigate-y, and partly because even the most cursory glance at its website is enough to tell anyone that it's nonsense. One US Government website names it as a diploma mill that is suspected to operate from the UAE.

If you've ventured into Twitter lately the chances are you've seen messages about I Write Like -  an amusing little website that analyses your writing and tells you which notable author comes closest in style.

Well, I've fixed it. Here's my more accurate version.

So on Saturday I went and photographed some flowers and petals and stuff.

Which was all very nice, and nobody got manhandled by bunch of police officers.

Jules Mattsson, on the other hand, is a photojournalist, so on Saturday he went to take some photos of the Armed Forces Day parade. Here's how it went:

Note the veritable  smörgåsbord of pseudo-legal bullshit offered up as cause for his detention. There's coverage of the incident on the British Journal of Photography, here, and also advice for photographers here.

10.30am or so this morning, on the internets:

Which would be, if true, something of a scoop for the Daily Mail. So let's take a look at the article – here's the first few paras:

Which is great – the source is Mr Jobs himself. On Twitter. Except that, as anyone working in tech journalism should know, Steve Jobs doesn't have a verified Twitter account. It took all of 10 seconds to find the source -  this update:

There are many clues that @ceostevejobs is a parody account – not least the phrase "of course this is a parody account" in his biography. Apparently, though, nobody at the Mail bothered to check. I published a link on Twitter. People laughed and mocked. Sarcastic comments appeared on the article. Still it sat unchanged. A few hours later a colleague pointed out that it also contained a howling typo – that, too, sat uncorrected.

All in all, then, an astronomical fuckup that lead to an incorrect article being published. So where's the correction? There isn't one. Instead it took around four hours for the Mail's web team to notice – or perhaps to decide that the traffic they were getting no longer outweighed the potential embarrassment – and the page disappeared offline at around 2pm.

So there you have it: shoddy reporting, no fact checking, an incorrect news story sitting online for hours and no apology. At least, for once, it doesn't really matter that much.

Inspired by the triumpth that is the Live map of London Underground trains, I thought I'd knock something similar up for fellow customers (er, "sufferers") of Southeastern Trains. And here it is! Key to symbols is as follows:

A) Hither Green Station, although it could be pretty much any other station on the line

1) Train cancelled due to snow, hot weather, breakdowns, the gravitational pull of the moon  (delete as applicable).

2) Shortened train already packed to the doors with passengers. Also, not that it matters as you won't be able to get on, but it's delayed.

3) Train stopping inexplicably for 20 minutes or so between your station and London Bridge with the heating on, slowly broiling passengers.

Neat, huh? Best of all this map is good for most peak times, and requires no live data feed or API calls. You're welcome.

I may* be slightly over-grumpy on account of having a stinking cold that's left me working on spreadsheets while cats shout at me every time I sneeze, but really, today does seem to have been blighted by some remarkable tech-related news.

First, from the BBC: First human 'infected with computer virus'. Or rather "researcher implants infected chip in own hand seeking publicity, gets it". If I put a copy of back orifice on a USB key then shoved it somewhere appropriate yet uncomfortable would that make me the first human to suffer a rootkit attack? No, it'd make me a berk.

Next, from the Guardian: a story that could be more accurately summarised as "man writes web tool that, for most users, doesn't work". Woo. However, because HTML5 is associated with the magic iPad, it makes a national newspaper blog. Do you know what I miss? XHTML. It was going to revolutionise the web back in 2001 or so, then what happened to it? *Utters wistful sigh and dreams of CSS positioning with the Tantek Celic box-model hack for IE5*

And finally from the Telegraph: Mobile phone number suspended after three users die in 10 years. Or rather, mobile phone number used by three notable rich people in Bulgaria, two of whom were criminals, is not currently in use (it's "understood to have been dormant" and "phone bosses are said to have suspended" it. Who said that? Fuck knows. Maybe it was Elvis. Maybe Elvis has the phone, on Mars, and that's why it's out of network range when called.)

At least the article doesn't quite go as far as to conclude that the phone killed them, as then we'd have to send around the tape of Lisa Simpson and her tiger-repellant rock.

* Am. Certainly.

I never did hear back from Simon Nundy about his campaign's dodgy use of graphs with misleading titles. But look, I made him a new one from the 2010 results:

Obviously I took the results from Hackney because, you know, they make the point better. But it still works, right?

So, yeah, the election. Urgh. But there was one shining beacon of hope and joy: the first ever Hither Green CatPoll. We opened the custom-designed polling station at 10pm:

And there was an early showing of interest from the electorate:

As the evening dragged on, though, voter apathy struck. Ralph fell asleep in the kitchen sink, while Hunter couldn't quite bring himself to decide:

But eventually, after some encouragement to enter the booth, Hunter cast the deciding vote at around 1am:

He predicted a hung parliament, and his prediction was proved 100 per cent accurate at around 10.30am on the 7th. Given that we may see another election sooner rather than later, broadcasters interested in using this new polling technology are invited to get in touch; prices are reasonable and payment can be made in fish.

Yesterday, in the office:

Not bad for an afternoon's work. My proper review of the Firebox Muvi Atom camera will be online in a week or so.