Graham

British troops in Germany

July 27, 2008 By Graham Leave a Comment

You don’t encounter that many British troops in Germany these days, at least not in my part of the country.

This week I read an article about troops in northern Germany leaving after 63 years, and it brought back memories of the life in the 1980s, when there were many more of them here.

I remember…

– cars with number plates with red borders, showing that they had been registered overseas

– listening to BFBS during visits to Germany

– encountering members of the British forces on the ferries between Dover and Zeebrugge, returning to their basis after time in the UK

– it being perfectly normal to meet members of the British forces when out and about in German towns

Can you imagine that happening today? In today’s security climate I can’t image troops travelling in uniform in specially-marked cars and going shopping without putting on civilian clothes first!

Germany was close enough to home to go on holiday to, and thus troops were not so far away from home, a situation that the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq unfortunately can’t enjoy.

Filed Under: Cymeradwyo, General Tagged With: forces, Germany

It’s always a shame when a great piece of software is discontinued, and this week whilst installation a new WordPress site I was shocked by a message on the Spam Karma screen – the “major announcement” was that development of the plug-in was being discontinued and the software would pass over to a GPL project.

I first discovered Spam Karma through a post on the Notes from Spain forum around the time I first started using WordPress. It’s a plug-in that really belongs in the software by default, as a popular blog gets spammed on a daily basis. Unfortunately, it’s not.

Spam Karma uses a clever set of rules to decide if a comment or trackback is spam, and I don’t think that any spam has ever got through on the installations that I support. There have have been some false positives – about 1 or 2 per year!

But I can understand the problem – the software is non-profit, so however passionately you develop it the time eventually comes where you decide to call time and move on to other projects.

The author’s blog gives one of the reasons as the current development of WordPress. I think WordPress is a great piece of software as well, but I do agree that the frequency at which the upgrades appear has recently become a little bit overwhelming. There have been times where I seem to be in a cycle of upgrading installations, and before I have finished the next version is released.

Let’s hope that this is not the end of the story for Spam Karma, and that some good programmers take over the project and keep the blogosphere free of spam.

Filed Under: Cymeradwyo, Internet Tagged With: Spam Karma, WordPress

Das Auswärtige Amt

July 23, 2008 By Graham Leave a Comment

The Auswärtiges Amt is a term that is used to refer to the German Foreign office. It is a term that is often heard in films and news items, the proper name being Außenministerium.

Currently it has offices in both Berlin and Bonn and is responsible for the 145 embassies and 59 consulates in other countries around the world.

In crisis situations such as hostage dramas, the contact to the families in Germany is maintained via this part of the German government.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast: