Facebook and privacy

19 July 2009

Yesterday, I begrudgingly decided I’d reactivate my Facebook account, after I had it deleted a few months ago. Without going into why I wanted to re-join, I was shocked when I logged in for the first time after reactivating it — all my personal information was still present. I have a feeling Facebook is breaking a bit more than Canadian law.

When I had my account ‘deleted’ a few months ago, I had the intention of leaving permanently — the fact that I have rejoined is irrelevant — I wanted to purge myself from the world of Facebook for good. However, during the period that I thought I was free, they retained:

  • My e-mail address (understandable)
  • My name (sort of understandable)
  • My avatar
  • My birthdate (uh…)
  • All the registered applications and their settings (including OAuth associations with external accounts)
  • My networks and friends (though my friends had no way to ‘un-friend’ me or view this status during this period)

I would have expected all the above to be purged, and was certainly hoping so when I requested the profile be deleted. I’m going to very strictly limit myself as to how much I post on Facebook in future.

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Insert Date Here

18 July 2009

Somehow, I think all’s not right with this publication — Highlands Post, 16 July 2009.

Insert Date Here

Hint: Look at the blue bar.

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So, what do you think?

10 July 2009

I’ve updated the design of this blog — again.

If you’re reading this post via a syndication feed, then you’re missing out on my sUpEr l33t aRTiSTIC skillZ! The visual design is based on a design mocked up with Inkscape. It’s strikingly similar to a header I drew back when I used the K2 theme.

And yes, if you’re viewing this with IE6, you’re probably wondering why it looks like complete crap. But, then again, if you are using IE6, you’re probably not going to be remotely interested in what I have to say on this blog either. Go back to your daily routine.

The main goal of this redesign was not to liberally apply alpha-blended PNGs; nor to create the yes-I’m-annoying-you-on-purpose-Coolvetica header. It’s the Identi.ca and Delicious integration on the front page. (Yay!)

Another goal was to make the site a leetle more presentable. I’m a big fan of minimalism, and while I put lots of effort into my previous design, it used simple shades of grey, and, I have to admit, it was a bit drab. So, I’ve brightened it up with the Tango palette.

After the demise of Mugshot, my blogging, bookmarking, and microblogging were no longer being aggregated into a single stream. So I brought them right here, inline with my blog feed. I often see people’s Twitter or Delicious widgets on their blog sidebar, but never have I seen it displayed inline in the blog feed before; nor could I find a WordPress plugin to do the job for me.

Don’t ask how I implemented it, by the way. It’s not exactly elegant. (*cough* output buffering *cough*)

Two more things: If you’re using a browser that doesn’t contain the substring MSIE in its user-agent ID, you should be getting served by the application/xhtml+xml mime-type. Let me know if you hit any XML well-formedness errors. Also, comments have been made a little prettier, and I enabled two-level threading (which means you can reply to a comment, but no replies to replies).

So, what do you think? Pukeworthy? Let me know.

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Nazi Noodles

3 July 2009

Today, Dad brought home a bag full of Asian nibblies. Among them were some packs of ramen noodles. I found this pack to be particularly striking:

Ramen noodles with swastika on packaging

Yes, yes, I know. It’s a Hindu or Buddhist swastika, not the Nazi form. But I’m pretty sure the noodles would be banned in Germany in one way or another. And yes, I just Godwined my blog. Ah well — it was fun while it lasted.

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