Category: Diary

One of the songs in the Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds I like the most is called Forever Autumn. It’s about loved ones who aren’t here anymore and works well for any kind of relationship, which is perhaps a large part of why it appeals to me so much. The whole song is great but it is the third verse which really brings it home. In the radio play the narrator steps in for a moment to advance the story and then the song comes back.

Through autumn’s golden gown we used to kick our way

You always loved this time of year

Those fallen leaves lie undisturbed now

‘cause you’re not here

Turns out listening to it is a bad idea as I just stopped everything else and started to lose myself in the music, and all of the many happy memories I have associated with the radio play and the music. The themes of loss and separation feel especially poignant as many of the people I love and care about are elsewhere. Either because relationships have changed or ended, or because they are busy pursuing their own lives.

On a less serious note, the thought which got me started writing this morning was yesterday’s attempts to configure my blog more closely to how I want it to be. I realise I need a few pages to explain my position on things like advertising, privacy and the use of AI. I like the open and uncluttered feeling the site has at the moment, but would also like to change some elements, like making the date more prominent on individual posts and on lists of posts.

These are simple tasks and I used to know how to do them, how to work my way through the menus and options in WordPress, the occasional bit of direct coding or code adjustment to get something to work just the way you wanted it to. And the notion of child themes so that when updates came through you wouldn’t lose the changes you had made to your own site.

There were things I used to know how to do

Having been hacked once I am feeling a bit more cautious about updates and patches and especially plugins. Plugins are super useful and in some ways it is almost impossible to imagine running a simple site without using at least two or three of them. On the flip side, they’re maintained by individuals and organisations who may not be anywhere near as fastidious or prompt as I would like them to be in addressing new security problems.

The internet is a big place, and it’s easy to get around, so when you use a common platform rather than your own bespoke arrangements you are exposing yourself to considerable risk because it is just so easy for someone to write an attack once and then apply it to many sites.

So today I will try to find a little time to reacquaint myself with WordPress as it stands today. I will also try to gently accept the reminder that the world continues to turn and perhaps ask myself which other of my opinions or knowledge or ability have quietly become obsolete or out of date in some way.

Yeah, I got hacked.

With a stable internet connection ready to do it was finally time to clear through the aftermath of the hack. For years I have run a small number of sites for myself, friends, community interest groups and some local businesses. My go to platform has been WordPress. It used to be everywhere before the internet was reconsolidated to the major platform providers. It is easy to set up, you can install the database and files yourself and away you go.

To say my content is niche niche is something of an understatement. My quiet little corner of the internet wandered along with ones and sometimes tens of visitors, many of whom I knew personally, without any trouble at all.

This change in 2024 when what appears to be an automated worm infected my site and quickly worked its way through all of my sites, gaining access to my hosting and FTP credentials and subverting my access and sites. This is where I could go on to tell you what happened, who did it, why they did it, but the simple truth is I don’t know the answers to those questions.

Spotting the problem was difficult enough. Files change all the time as a consequence of automated actions or changes made by the hosting provider. Yet I could see files being created with unknown functions, php scripts being placed in random locations where they could never be found or executed, random files showing up in my public directories.

Then the sites went down, I lost the ability to sign in, pages were replaced with mumbo jumbo articles filled with links to other sites. Suddenly it was absundantly clear I was no longer in control.
So I tried to fix it. I deleted files, edited key files to remove the malicious lines of code, only to watch more files spring up, more instances of these suspicious scripts appearing and sometimes within minutes the sites I tried to seize control of would return to their corrupted version. I was beat.

Getting back to business

So, this week, with the aid of my internet connection and some input from others with similar experiences, and from Claude, I worked my way through my hosting account, changing all of the passwords, deleting old credentials and clearing house. I backed up all of the sites and then cleared them from the account, removing the databases and files associated with them until the hosting account was essentially empty.

The big reboot is underway.

I bought a series of themes from a website called ThemeForest. In readiness I went and ran through the ones which were still available, as sometimes the people who make them take them down. I would say one in five were gone, little stickers over my receipts explaining I was no longer able to download the files I had paid for. I’m not sure I am too worried about that. The internet moves quickly and a theme which worked well and looked good a few years ago may not do either of those things today.

Besides, I had gone for clever themes with all sort of features, sometimes stretching into the hundred of mb and often requiring a series of supporting plugins and tool sets to use properly. While I grabbed all of the files I am not sure that’s the way I am going to go this time. Perhaps it makes a little more sense to focus on serving the content simply and quickly?

I have already decided I won’t be selling the data I will inevitably collect nor will I be allowing anyone else to post ads on the site. Best to keep it simple and let those who would like to read my stuff read it, and those who don’t can, well, not.

Good morning. I have come into the office and wanted to get a few hundred words written for myself before I make a start of writing the words other people need from me. In this case the script and slides for a presentation on Monday. I have left finishing that a bit late.

One of my life’s questions really, why do I put things off when I enjoy being prepared and ready so much. There are good answers for this, including the general lack of consequences. However, while I wrote that sentence the morning sun is playing over the skin on the back of my hand which is no longer effortlessly tight and smooth but instead has the diamond shapes all over it of slightly less elastic skin which any sensible person would associate with a man in his early forties.

I’m not a bag of bones yet, but I can lay less claim to youth. More important I can lay less claim to opportunity. Life is perhaps more than half done and while it is far too early to be complaining and whining I do feel the pressure to act rather than think about acting.

I should give myself some credit. I have broken up with my ex L and bought a house. It’s a house which needs work and these are things already done. Now to continue doing them.

My eldest, N, is pretty busy, with sport, with friends, with trying to start romantic relationships, with learning to live and work in a new country when you have the passport but perhaps not all of the attitudes and ideas which make the place work. There are some lessons for me there in thinking about moving to China.

It is something I want to do and I really need some clarity about why and what I want from the experience so I can be determined and purposeful when I am there. I have travelled to places a few times in my life and not enjoyed the sensation of walking out of the airport or port without a clear sense of why I am there, what I want to do and where I want to go.

Some of the best experiences have been the reverse of this. When I am sure about my purpose and intention and how to go about achieving it.

I read those two haiku to N, who winced a little at the second one. I had not noticed before how positive and light the first one is and how much that contrasts with the second which is more about some of the pain and loneliness of modern life.

Yesterday I ate dinner at a pub called the Muggleton Inn. It was not especially pleasant, but it was filling and tasted ok. Across from me was a table with three middle-aged women seated at it. They sat quietly drinking their drinks and looking at things on their mobile phones. Each of them as alone as I was.

Briefly I considered crossing over and asking whether they would like to have a chat. Not to flirt but just to lift themselves out of themselves and into a group. I thought it might be fun to arrange a Maidstone philosophy group and get some people together in a convenient place to talk about things the way Joel does in London. This would pull triple duty, giving me something to organise and be responsible for, introducing me to steady stream of new people and inevitably introducing me to new romantic prospects as well.

Probably one of the things I enjoyed the most about Joel’s group was the steady stream of new and interesting women and the relatively neutral space to talk to them in. Worth admitting to myself and worth perhaps pursuing as I’m hardly a chat-up artist and I would appreciate having some company while I am working on the house over the next couple of years.

Ben sent me a link to a story he’s written. Better, he’s recorded it, someone has provided illustrations and they’ve put it up on youtube as a multipart short story experience thingy. I watched the first part last night and thought a but about how impressive Ben’s output is. He is maintaining a relationship with his fiancé who needs some emotional support and care, he is running several related but independent podcasts and holding down a full time job as well.

Impressive stuff really.

The story wasn’t the greatest, but I must admit it’s vastly better than anything I have published, in part because I have never published anything. I am reminded of years and years ago when Pratchett gave the general encouragement – don’t say you want to write, just write. Followed by Abnett who said pretty much the same thing, The work is in putting the words down on the page and then working at them to make them better.

Despite hearing this, perfectly sensible, advice from actual professional authors who make a crumb or two from writing words and selling them to people I have written surprisingly little. Preferring for much of my life to think about doing things rather than doing them.

There are so many excuses and justifications available. Rest, illness, stress, anxiety, being busy with something else, worries about how it might go wrong, spending time researching, spending time designing, spending time thinking about whether or not it is the right thing to do.

Ok, so I wandered off and spent a few minutes reading a summary from Claude. 西毒 is the character’s name, Western Venom. Xi Du. The last time a character landed on my so powerfully was when I was reading Ayn Rand. There’s something about people who honour their internal sense of righteousness and refuse to apologise or justify themselves in terms designed mainly to help other people feel more comfortable.

Perhaps one of the reasons I thought about it is reading the short story Ben wrote. It’s good, there’s a clear plot, people are acting with purpose and there are plenty of references and fun ideas. Something was missing, and I think this is true of most good writing. When a situation is described well, when you become familiar with a character you can develop a sense of what they are going to do before they do it.

As a scenario is described you can already see, as though it was also laid out, what the character is going to do. This creates a sense of attachment and involvement in the story. I can think of times when reading a story I have put the book down because I can feel so strongly what is going to happen, feel the pain of the inevitable mistake or the pain or loss before it has happened.

There’s probably a term for this. My point here is that I think it was missing, or at least had not developed yet in Ben’s story. One of the reasons Dan Abnett leans so heavily on caricature and stereotype is that by setting out that his characters are typical examples of certain types you already have some sense of who they are. The highland sniper who keeps himself to himself and is a master of stealth. In just a few words you have some feel for who the oerson is and what they will do.