I’ve talked previously about Google Talk, and that up until now it was cut off from the rest of the public Jabber network. But a little birdie wrote to point me towards this announcement - Google Talk is now connected to the main Jabber network. Yay!

So all you Google Talk users can now add andrewjrallan @ jabber.org (and any other jabber contact to your Google Talk contacts list, and can join in with all the rest of us!

Good work Google - even if it did take a while! Who wants to bet which of the remaining IM networks will be the next to federate to the Jabber network?

Nia managed to get there before me (and has better pictures too, dammit!), but here’s my selection of photos from the Comus Dinner. I haven’t got round to tagging or them properly or giving them titles yet, but I’ll get there eventually.

I’m trying to encourage myself to post more often, and I thought this was certainly worthy of it: The Best Blonde Joke… evah!. Surprisingly funny.

The war against the spam commenters is, it seems, endless. Last week I installed a well-know plugin (Askimet) to help protect this blog - previously all comments were being moderated by me, which led to big delays for honest commenters. After a few days of successful operation, I switched off the moderation on Friday, only to be faced with a handful of spam comments making it through last night. Grrr, indeed.

So the moderation is back on again, but only for first time posters (first time since I upgraded a few weeks ago, I think that is). I’m especially disappointed that Askimet didn’t pick up on comments which were exactly the same format as the previous 200 that I had got.

Still, it’s not really the plugin’s fault - one day, there will be much vengenance wreaked by everyone who has ever run their own blog…

Once again, I’m watching the BBC News, and once again, they are revelling in someone’s misery. This time, it’s a long, drawn out look at the families of some American miners who were mistakenly lead to believe that their loved ones had survied a mining accident, when in fact they hadn’t. And that’s now the entire story - the misery of the families - in minute by minute detail, illustrated in excruciating close-up for all to see.

In the reporting of any tragedy, there will be misery, but the BBC seem to be continually focused on it. They even have a section of the Breakfast program, at 8.20am each day, which seems strangely pre-disposed to getting on some members of the public who have something distressing happen to them - generally the death of a relative - and interview them about it. But why? Generally these people have nothing else to narrate to the world other than to delve into their personal misery. It’s not as if the story is of a courageous bounce back from tragedy to do something remarkable, they’re just victims.

And the BBC revel in it. You can feel them drooling over another story full of raw personal misery, just desperate to get them on air in all it’s glory. I wish they would stop.