One from the coal face

Myself: We've been running the auction site for years and the SSL key is still only 512. When renewing the certificate on IIS, how can I increase my CSR key size in IIS 6 without removing my existing certificate?

Prodnose: When you renew a certificate the CSR that is created will retain all of the exact details that were set when the certificate was first set up. This includes the key size of the certificate. You can't remove the existing certificate using IIS and recreate the CSR details using the Certificate Wizard because that action will take your website down on port 443 during this process.

Myself: Well we can't do that then. Analysis please Mr. Data.

Prodnose: You could create a 'dummy' website in IIS. This website can be a blank default. Once this has been done, you will then need to create a new CSR for that 'dummy' website, allowing you to change the key size. When you receive your certificate file, install it onto the dummy website as normal. You can now assign the certificate from the dummy website to the production website with no downtime. Once you have done this, you can simply delete the 'dummy' website.

Myself: Make it so.

Blanket Coverage

As for yesterday's Michael Jackson hoopla, I offer you "ersatz": being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation.

Useful synonyms include faux and knock off.

You may also consider "The President's Speech" from The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, 1985, about a ward of aphasiacs and agnosiacs listening to and laughing at a speech given by an unnamed actor-president, "the old Charmer," presumably Ronald Reagan. For, 'one can lie with the mouth,' Nietzsche writes, 'but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.'

Keep Reading

As chaos reigns in Kashgar, I remember from reading 'The New Great Game' (extract) that China's Xingxang province has a border with Afghanistan.

It seems that a significant spark of the trouble was a bust up between ethnic Han Chinese and Uighur migrant workers in Guangdong.

Guangdong! That's Canton (as in Cantonese) down by Hong Kong. It's an outrageous distance away from Xingxang.

The world is more complicated than the tabloids would have us believe, so we need to keep reading and thinking for ourselves.

TweetCraft

I came across TweetCraft on the Twitter blog.

TweetCraft is an in-game Twitter client for World of Warcraft. TweetCraft can:

• Send/receive Tweets in-game (Immediate sending reloads your UI)
• Queue Tweets to send when it's more convenient for you
• Upload in-game screenshots using TwitPic
• AutoTweet when you log in, enter an instance or get an achievement
• Extensible so that AddOn authors can register messages or events to AutoTweet

The Bomber is always chatting to me about his WoW achievements, mostly to my utter bewilderment. This could be a good way for us to keep in touch about his progess, old WoW plugin hands that we are.

This 'Coding for Fun' article on how it works is worth reading as well in light of our own Twitter API development.

National Fishing Week

The Bomber and I fished the Wandle yesterday. We saw a lot of fish (including a giant carp) even if we didn't catch any.

I always thought of angling as rather a solitary pastime, but yesterday was very social. All sorts of passersby stopped to shoot the breeze, ask how we were doing and tell their own stories of rod and reel.

(It seems we just missed National Fishing Week - http://www.nationalfishingweek.co.uk/ )

I Am Jack's Raging Bile Duct

As the tidewater recedes, Fight Club is coming into relief as one of the very best films of the 90s.

This, however, does not mean it is a good idea to wake up on a weekend morning, quaff the warm remnants of last night's lager, crack open a fresh Stella and start watching Tyler, Marla and company in your dressing gown.

That said, I have found the principles of the Fight Club drinking game widely applicable to life in general.

Take a shot:

1. If someone starts (yourself included) starts musing about death
2. Whenever "bitch tits" are mentioned
3. Anytime someone mentions "the first rule"
4. Whenever someone says "Tyler Durden"
5. At the mention of the names "Rupert", "Cornelius", or "Travis"

Which reminds me, Clancy Martin. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else .

1st Mon

The Bomber got his first mon grading at judo last night and is a pleased as punch.

I was shooting the breeze with Darren while Ben was getting changed, and asked him why there was a Brazilian flag on the wall of the dojo. He said that the club had some sort of relationship with a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu club and that he'd been training in BJJ himself that morning.

There's really a lot of cross discipline work going on. He told me that one of the seniors is boxing at the Roger Gracie Vie Academy as well as doing judo. That's the same place where Johnny - Ben's Kru - is the muay Thai instructor.

Round and round and round it goes.

Prodnose: Goodness me, there's a lot of testosterone in here today.

Myself: I guess so. Did I tell you that Adam is fighting in Thailand on Saturday?

Coo What a Scorcher!

BBC: The Met Office has raised its heatwave alert level in parts of England, as hot and humid conditions look set to continue until Friday.

London and the South East are now on Level 3 of four, with temperatures set to reach at least 32C (89.6F)

Myself: Oh Fiona! This heat. I can't stand it any longer. This interminable heat is enough to drive a man out of his mind.

Fiona: Steady Charles- you're losing your grip.

Myself: I can't stand it any longer! I can't! (SHOUTS) I can't!

F/X: FACE SLAP

Myself: (SUDDENLY CALM) Thank you Fiona. I deserved that. Oh darling Fiona!

Betty Marsden: Oh darling Charles.

Myself: Oh darling darling Fiona

Betty Marsden: Oh darling darling darling Charles!

Myself: Holding you like this I feel something I don't quite understand.

Betty Marsden: I don't quite understand it either. And yet, I sense it, somehow.

Myself: I somehow sense it too.

Betty Marsden: I'm glad you sense it. It makes it better- for both of us somehow- knowing.

Myself: I know

Betty Marsden: I know you know

Myself: I know you know I know.

Betty Marsden: Yes. I know. Oh Charles- what's wrong?

Myself: Oh I don't know. It's just this damned heat. Oh Fiona, how I hate having to meet you furtively like this. Suppose someone were to find us out?

Betty Marsden: Who would ever think of looking for us here? In this damp, steamy hell. Charles - there's someone there - crouching behind that Palm Tree - see, there - that small, swarthy man in a loin cloth. Look he's coming over.

Myself: It's all right Fiona. I'll handle him. I speak his language you know. All right- what do you want you grinning devil?

Prodnose: (FOR IT IS HE) Governor's respects sir, but he says ladies aren't allowed in the Turkish Bath.

Spare the rod

The Bomber claims to have become an accomplished angler in Florida, even cooking and consuming some of his catch after getting the bug down in Wales in 2006.

We were talking to a guy fishing on the Wandle on Sunday. All you have to do is buy a license from the Post Office and you're away.

That should be this weekend's project.

Argos will have to take the strain for tackle, as his last rod (I kid you not) "burned down".

Deep, deep, down

Carrying on from yesterday, reading for background in Iran reminded me that I was finishing off The Smile of Murugan: A South Indian Journey as the bloody conflict in Sri Lanka was playing itself out.

That made me conceive of background to it in terms of the Tamil diaspora and the Chola dynasty; of a millennium or more, not decades.

"This one will run and run," as Fergus might have said.

(It also helped me to get some sort of handle on Rama and Hanuman turning up in the names of muay Thai techniques.)

Neda

Four years on I am rereading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" to try and get some sort of fix on Iran.

It is, in light of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, almost unbearably poignant.

You could also try watching 'Persopolis'.

My advice for today is not to be a woman in Persia.

That's a cracker

I can't remember where I got this tip, but a foolproof way to finish off your pork cracking is to remove the rind from the joint after cooking and stick it in the microwave for a couple of minutes.

It save all the aggravation of starting or finishing your roast a very high temperature.

The Power of Personal Metrics

Using a flood of new tools and technologies, each of us now has the ability to easily collect granular information about our lives—what we eat, how much we sleep, when our mood changes.

I love all this stuff. To easily collect; to boldly go (sic.)

Boy George Michael Jackson Browne: End of an era

Indian defence scientists are planning to put one of the world's hottest chilli powders into hand grenades.

They say the devices will be used to control rioters and in counter-insurgency operations.

Researchers say the idea is to replace explosives in small hand grenades with a certain variety of red chilli to immobilise people without killing them.

The chilli, known as Bhut Jolokia, is said to be 1,000 times hotter than commonly used kitchen chilli.

..........................

Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.

Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine.

She was reporting to a parliamentary hearing on security for poppy crops.