Gary Kirk

All females so far? Not complaining
Things I like about Big Brother 8:

• The Diary Room
• Emily
• The twins, with their mics removed

Things I dislike:

• People getting booed
• Tracey. Sorry, but no.

I’m on a wikibreak at the moment. On Thursday I blanked my Wikipedia userpage, adding {{wikibreak}}.

I need to temporarily abandon my day-to-day Wikipedia editing until my exams are over. It would probably be best if I unsubscribed from wikiEN-l and foundation-l, not to mention MediaWiki-l, but I don’t want the messages in my Gmail disrupted - I’ll just try to ignore most messages, maybe look through at weekends for the next ~month.

I’ll not be doing too much with Xinki either.

As for my The Apprentice proposal, well - I’ve sent it to the relevant person and it’s up to him to let me know.

The EastEnders webcams at bbc.co.uk allow visitors to take a sneak peek at what is being filmed at the current time. There are three cameras - one showing Albert Square, one showing George Street (where the nail bar is, under the viadict) and the third showing Turpin Road (where Scarlet is, I think). Recently the Albert Square one was blanked (”This webcam is censored”) and apparently the Vic was covered in something. Well, today it isn’t, and I’ve uploaded a few interesting screenshots of what’s happening right now on the Xinki Wiki: do look as it’s fascinating! I just saw what looks like a policeman… look out for one on 22nd June!

A second release candidate of MediaWiki 1.1.0.0 is now available. It’s currently running at sweet-technology.co.uk for testing purposes. The previous release, rc1, is running at garykirk.org.uk.

The final version of MediaWiki 1.10.0 should be released within the next week or two at the latest, I imagine.

The Xinki project experienced minor vandalbot linkspam edits on several wikis over the last few days. This blog, as I have said before, gets many spam comments which are blocked by Akismet.
Until now, no anti-spam measures were in place on any of the wikis hosted by Xinki.
On Thursday (yesterday when I write this) the first spam edits were seen at the newly-installed pre-production stage Sweet Technology encyclopaedia wiki. The SpamBlacklist extension at mediawiki.org was installed and activated, but it is not known if it is functioning correctly as yet.
This morning similar spam was seen at the Xinki Lab and on the main Xinki Wiki, and consequently the ConfirmEdit extension was installed on all Xinki-hosted wikis as an emergency measure, going live at 14:30 GMT.

I downloaded a copy of the second official (’domestic’ = ?) trailer which was released Sunday 22nd April - to save The Leaky Cauldron’s bandwidth - and I keep watching it. I love the second or two we see of Snape - “discipline your mind”.

I’m not sure if reality TV is a good thing for the people involved. Watching Wife Swap tonight I’m feeling a little uncomfortable. It’s not the kind of feeling you get watching the appeals on Comic Relief, like you know you should do something…it’s different from that. I’m thinking of the effect on the people who take part whether they like to or not.
I’ve spoken to two former Big Brother contestants and both were a little crazy. I know people who want to go on it and some who would never consider it. Marcus Bentley, who has narrated all thirteen British series of Big Brother (including the Celebrity and Teen BBs) told me personally he never would, though this was more due to him ‘loving [his] job too much’ I believe.

A new Xinki site has launched. CGSB News is a kind of portal for CGSB news, views and content. I’ll advertise it about and see what happens…

I’m going to be reviewing a book in the next few weeks. I’ve ordered a review copy of “MediaWiki Administrator’s Tutorial Guide” and will write what I think here. A guy on the MediaWiki-l mailing list recommended it, so I’m interested.
Finally I recommend Akismet to anyone running a WordPress blog. If like me you allow anonymous comments, you can easily get spammed. WordPress tells me: “Akismet has caught 53 spam for you since you first installed it.” - all without me even seeing it!

I’ve already pre-ordered the final volume of the incredible Harry Potter series from Amazon.
I’m now considering going to a midnight launch party thing. I know at least two people who’re interested as well, so I might be going, which would be very cool.

The thirty-third series of HIGNFY starts this Friday - tomorrow. It’s recorded the night before transmission - tonight then - and I’m sure we can guesstimate some of the topics they might be discussing. Faye Turney and the other marines taken hostage by Iran selling their stories to the media, and the government’s U-turn on whether that was the right thing to do. Odd as when I first heard that name (Faye Turney) I thought of Faye Rainey, who is audience co-ordinator for Hat Trick Productions who make the show, as well as being a member of HIGNFY’s production team - see the credits.

Anyway, HIGNFY starting Friday is the main point of this entry. The first of eight shows features Jeremy Clarkson guest hosting and Krishnan Guru-Murthy (This guy is good, as you’ll know if you watch Channel 4 News) and Michael McIntyre (don’t know who he is) joining the usual suspects, team captains Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. Something new this time around is the addition of a podcast. Have I Got News For You - The Inevitable Internet  Spin-off will be available after the show’s transmission, 9:30pm Fridays.

• BBC Comedy