I've been running this blog on Blogware software for more than three years now.

Usually, online publishing operations get more stable over time, not less so.

This is not the case with Blogware. For two days, I haven't been able to get into the parts of the publishing tool that allow me to manage comments, trackbacks or posts. This has been happening intermittently for weeks.

Blogware has a blog. While you can read posts about how to make money with Google AdSense, not a word of explanation about why their publishing tool is going for shit.

Blogger is free, but one pays for the privilege of using Blogware. If Tucows is going to take money from people, they owe them a stable publishing tool.

I hold that truth to be self-evident, but Tucows apparently doesn't.

The founder of CBGB, the punk mecca, has died in New York of lung cancer. He was 75. Sad news indeed, coming after the death of post-punk impresario Tony Wilson earlier this month.

From the BBC:

Saudi newsstands did not offer al-Hayat on Monday or Tuesday

Saudi Arabia has reportedly banned an influential pan-Arab newspaper after it criticised government ministries.

Sources at the al-Hayat daily said it was banned after refusing to abide by information ministry orders, including scrapping a column by a Saudi writer.

The paper, owned by a top Saudi prince, was not distributed this week in the conservative kingdom, officials said.

Recent columns by Abdul Aziz Suwaid had tackled health care problems and a wave of mysterious deaths among camels.

The government has blamed about 2,000 camel deaths on poor feed, denying the presence of an infectious disease.

Other reports say the ban followed al-Hayat's disclosure that a Saudi extremist had played a key role in al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Sean Holman of Public Eye Online keeps working the Victoria News story about a writer and editor who, er, left the paper after an article was published on buying a car for less in the United States.

Overheard on the Bathurst St. streetcar the other night. A 20-something woman tells her male companion:

"I'm going to start disciplining myself to stop buying things I already have."

First seen at Blamblog:

Afterward

Everyone loves a redemption story.

There was an amazing full moon over Toronto tonight.

How amazing?

So amazing that you wish you could just point at it, and a magic escalator would take you up there -- you know, to play golf or something. :)

From the BBC:

Opium production in Afghanistan has soared to record levels, with an increase on last year of more than a third, the United Nations has said.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime report says the amount of opium produced there has doubled in the last two years.

It says Helmand province is now the biggest single drug-producing area in the world, surpassing whole countries such as Colombia.

Afghanistan now accounts for more than 93% of the world's opiates.

If you didn't see it the first time, check out The Taliban's Opium War, a New Yorker article by John Lee Anderson, published in the July 9 issue.

From the CP story on CTV.ca:

Journalists assigned to cover the Canadian mission in Afghanistan will now have to wear dogtags just like the soldiers.

Habituees of this space may remember an Aug. 20 posting: The 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not doeth stories on buying cars for less in the United States.

Well, it turns out that Victoria News editor Keith Norbury got whacked even though the automotive dealer in question didn't threaten sturm und drang.

More from Sean Holman's Public Eye Online:

... In a subsequent email interview with Public Eye over the weekend, Dave Wheaton Pontiac Buick GMC Ltd. dealer principal Dave Wheaton added, "I never did complain about the article until I was asked (about it by a news group representative) and it was several days after it had run. My opinion was solicited and I gave it to them in an honest, straight-forward manner, in a meeting, at their request, in my office. They phoned me. I never called them.” ...

In an earlier interview, Mr. Wheaton also stated he hadn't and wouldn't pull any advertising with the news group as a result of the story

From the Aug. 24 AP story on ABCNews.com:

Here's news that Fox's series "Anchorwoman" wouldn't want to deliver: It's been canceled after one low-rated airing.

The debut of the reality show about Lauren Jones' attempt to turn herself into a news anchor for a Texas TV station drew an estimated 2.7 million viewers Wednesday, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen Media Research.

That number is about a third of the viewership Fox attracted a week earlier with the finale of its popular "So You Think You Can Dance."

Jones was a Barker Beauty on "The Price Is Right," Miss New York and featured WWE Diva before the series put her into the newsroom of KYTX Channel 19 in Tyler, Texas.

Unaired episodes of "Anchorwoman" will be available on Fox's website through Fox on Demand, the network said Thursday.

On her MySpace page, Lauren Jones pleaded with her fans to lobby Fox to resurrect the show. Good luck to her.

I'll have to check out the broadband version. I'm dying to know if she signed off with, "Go ##$$!! yourself, Tyler (Texas)!" :)

Here's an earlier posting.

From the BBC:

Ten people have been arrested in Russia over the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Russian TV showed prosecutor general Yuri Chaika telling President Putin of the arrests, informing him that those held would soon be charged.

Mr Chaika said "serious progress" had been made in the investigation into the killing, which was widely condemned.

The journalist, a harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot dead at her Moscow apartment block in 2006.

At the moment there is no information about the identity of the suspects.

Here's an earlier post that provides some background on Politkovskaya. I have lots of other stuff on Politkovskaya.

The Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert has created a mock campaign to end wrist violence after he broke his left one during a June taping. One U.S. anchor won't join in.

Vinton Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the Internet, notes that watching BBC's online video from 1997 is a challenge now. So what about in 100 or 1,000 years?

From the BBC:

Mr Rajak has been bringing out the paper for 21 years (Photos: Prashant Ravi)

Gaurishankar Rajak is a poor, "untouchable" washerman, who barely went to school.

But the sixty-something Dalit from Dumka in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand has published a newspaper every week without fail for the past 21 years, highlighting discrimination against the poor and local corruption.

Mr Rajak's four-page, handwritten Hindi-news Din Dalit is photocopied 100 times and sold to subscribers or pasted onto Dumka's main traffic lights, bus stands and roads.

Din Dalit is not just another small town news sheet - the newspaper is registered with India's Registrar of Newspapers, thanks to the efforts of India's first Dalit President, KR Narayanan, after Mr Rajak wrote to him.

Since its first edition in October 1986, Din Dalit has made a difference to the lives of local people, even helping a resident to secure social security from the authorities after his plight was reported in the paper.

Jack Shafer argues that newspapers aren't dying because the appetite for news and opinion has dried up; in fact, he thinks quite the opposite is true, and that the weaknesses create an opportunity.

From the deck: Goodbye Transformers and Superbad. Hello dark night of the soul. Throw down your video controller, trade your popcorn for a foreign-sounding coffee, and settle in for some serious talk cinema.

Some I'm looking forward to:

Eastern Promises, from David Cronenberg, follows his double Oscar-nominated A History of Violence. Once again, Viggo Mortensen stars as an ambiguous man of mayhem - this time, a Russian mobster working in London. He crosses paths with a midwife (Naomi Watts) who has discovered an incriminating diary.

I'm Not There. Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven) directs this unorthodox biopic of Bob Dylan, who is played by seven different actors, including Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Christian Bale.

No Country for Old Men. After its debut at Cannes this spring, this film has been generally rated the Coen brothers' best since Fargo, both meditative and startlingly violent. No Country stars Tommy Lee Jones as a Texas sheriff who witnesses a new kind of killer, played by Javier Bardem.

From the Salon blurb for the story by Stan Sinberg: For three years, I "reported" on Elvis and aliens for the Weekly World News. Now it's published its last issue. The checkout aisle -- and my career -- will never be the same.

I'm riding along College St. to my stop, idly looking out the window to my left, when the streetcar comes to an abrupt and shuddering halt.

I look out the front door and and see some blue car inching backward, gradually increasing the gap between itself and the streetcar from mere centimetres to about 1.5 metres.

"Was that guy pulling out?" I ask the TTC operator.

"Yep," she said sarcastically, clearly steamed. "Usually you look before you pull out, but I guess this is the new thing."

I continue to marvel at how some drivers blithely ignore streetcars.

On the other hand, why should streetcar operators be treated any differently? :)

94 per cent!!!

Woo-hoo!

This Globe and Mail article looks at the casualty rates among the national forces in Afghanistan and finds Canadians getting knocked off at a much higher rate than any other country's. IEDs, not combat, are the main reason why.

An 'only in Africa' story -- although having said that, I suppose it could happen wherever there's wild monkeys. Anyways, a group of Vervet monkeys are sexually taunting women in a Kenyan village.

I saw a really interesting documentary earlier this summer: From Mambo To Hip-Hop: A South Bronx Tale. And if you want to see the rough cut of it online, click on through.

Thrill to the sounds of Tito Puente! Marvel at the sight of DJ Kool Herc cruising the Bronx rubble with two giant speakers sticking out of his convertible! You can't go wrong!

At Spadina and Queen, people are qeueing up to get onto the Spadina street car.

"Please, do not use the back doors. Please enter the car through the front doors," intoned the operator.

Then, three seconds later, he politely said: "Thank you for ignoring me."

Titters sweep the car.

"If the back door gets broken and the car has to go out of service, that wouldn't be funny," he said quietly upon my entry (through the front; I play by the rules). "That wouldn't be funny at all."

From the BBC:

A  Malaysian newspaper is facing calls to shut down after it published an image of Jesus holding a cigarette and what appeared to be a can of beer.

Malaysia's Muslim-led government closed two publications last year for carrying controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Now some members of Malaysia's minority religions say they want the same treatment over this latest incident.

Religion is a famously sensitive subject in Malaysia.

So when Tamil-language newspaper, Makkal Osai, published a picture on its front page apparently showing Jesus smoking and drinking it was bound to cause offence.

Christian groups said that although the Jesus of the Bible was a compassionate figure - who turned water into wine, shared a flagon with his disciples at the Last Supper and mixed with tax collectors and prostitutes - action should still be taken.

Pardon me for smirking when the paper's explanation was that the graphic editor grabbed the image off the Internet. :) 

Earlier this week, there was a story about how Malaysia doesn't want much sexy-sexy in its pop concerts.

Update

The paper has been ordered to shut down for a month. Yikes.

From The Globe and Mail:

President Nicolas Sarkozy is one of the rare democratic leaders who can say the media helps him look better in print than he does in real life.

Paris Match, the celebrity magazine owned by one of the French President's best friends, did him the favour this week of airbrushing away Mr. Sarkozy's rather unsightly love handles in a photograph of him in swim trunks.