Reskinning
I’m currently replacing the K2 theme I previously used with a home made one. As this is still a work in progress things might look a little screwy around here.
Bloody Spammers Again
I’m suddenly getting a torrent of spam in the pingbacks. In an attempt to keep them at bay I have reintroduced Askimet on top of reCaptcha. Sorry if this results in some comments being held up in moderation – I’ll get to them when I can – it’s surely preferable to 40 links to casinos/drugs/porn.
Also found a couple of comments caught up in Askimet from months ago despite me switching it off. Hmm. Apologies to those who were unnecessarily censored.
Site Upgrade
I’ve just upgraded wordpress and the theme for this page. If anyone spots anything odd going on post a comment on this post or email me:
![My Email admin[at]badchemist[dot]net](http://badchemist.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/email.png)
Greetings from Oxford
I’m currently bored sat in a pub in Oxford drinking beer and abusing free wi-fi. Second time I’ve made the rather long journey down from The North in 3 weeks but it seems to have paid off and although I haven’t had a formal offer I will soon (a month or 2) be moving down here to take up a post-doc position in the Dept. of Clinical Pharmacology.
Once I’m down here proper I’ll update, I’ll be looking for any of the badscience posse in the area for potential drinking buddies.
Just need to finish that bloody thesis now….
Fight back against spam
Recently I’ve received a couple of emails from a lovely lady called Barbara Couley.
I visited your site and contents of your site http://badchemist.net/c got my attention. I am interested in purchasing Text links advertisement on it.
If you are interested please inform me.
I can make an attractive offer.
Thanks,Barbara Couley
and
Hi,
I sent you an email few days back, I am interested in purchasing text link advertisment place on your website http://badchemist.net/. Let me know if interested so we can discuss further details as well. I can make a good offer to make it worth your time.
Let me know!
Thanks
Barbara
This pisses me off, I don’t want advertising on my site, never have and never will. The only chance of it happening are if this site suddenly becomes extremely popular and I can’t afford to upgrade or my webhost will cut me off i.e. a last resort. More annoying my email address is only available as an image on this site to reduce spammers by making it harder to get it automatically.
I would suggest that everyone sends one to her (barbaracouley@gmail.com), but that might result in us all getting even more spam back. If anyone else gets this pain in the arse contacting them, I feel your pain, just ignore the twunt.
Comments
Currently I’m using Askimet and reCaptcha to prevent comment spamming on the blog. So far both comments I’ve had have been genuine but have got caught up in the Askimet spam filter. Hopefully this will just be teething problems but it will mean that some comments may get delayed as I have to allow them through.
Hopefully I won’t have to change it to registration only for comments.
Welcome and introduction
Hello and welcome to the badchemist blag. This blag has been set up for 2 main reasons: 1) I’ve tried blogging before and thought I’d have another go and 2) BadScienceBlogs is in the process of launching and seemed like a good way to coerce me into blogging/blagging.
So, who is badchemist?
badchemist is (surprisingly) a chemist currently completing his PhD at the University of Durham. My research is in the area of polymer/materials chemistry, particularly controlled radical polymerisation, biomaterials synthesis and the action of alcohol dehydrogenase and what its limits are.
When time permits more details of my research and me will appear here and in the appropriate pages.
