Recently in Website Issues Category

Apologies for the lack of activity. I unplugged for a few days and enjoyed it a bit more than expected.

I'll start re-posting again shortly.

Apologies for the lack of activity lately. I'm a bit snowed in with offline life, but I'm hoping to get a couple of posts up in the next 24 hours.

If you want you can sign up for the email alerts on the right hand side. Each morning the prior days posts and tweets are emailed out.

A little low on motivation right now. You can blame me downloading the first season of Mad Men on AppleTV.

Things will be quiet here for the next week.

I broke the previous RSS Feed for this site, but it should be repaired now and emails should get delivered again.

If you didn't understand anything I just said don't worry about it.

The Mid Ocean News was kind enough to waste some column inches on the site being relaunched.

As they said, I'm hoping to be geared more towards substantive policy and strategy/analytics than before, but that doesn't mean I'll ignore the politics. Although if I feel myself being drawn into a direction I don't want I'll try and make a quick course direction.

Still working out a few kinks in the new templates and layout. Bear with me please. I need to reupdate links and properly integrate the twitter feed. The upgrade was more involved than I anticipated and I'm also quite busy for the next two weeks.

But I'm getting there.

Just a quick heads up on where I'm going here as I kick the site back into gear.

But first things first:

I am completely unaffiliated with any political party or any organisation in Bermuda, and have been for several years. I am not involved with the breakaway party nor am I involved with the UBP. It's just me and my keyboard. I'm not working for or aligned with any group whatsoever. Hopefully that clears up the early conspiracy theories.

In the next few days I'm working on some housekeeping and technical issues on the site to integrate Twitter and potentially Facebook as well as clean up the look and feel. Anyone with skills who would like to assist please shoot me an email (thanks to those who've already offered).

Unfortunately to do that I need to upgrade my MovableType software that drives the site on my hosting account. That could get messy apparently. But once that's done I'll be on my podium.

I'm also going to try some new things branching off of the site over the coming months to try and stimulate some more substantive policy oriented discussions as opposed to the predictable petty politics.

Stay tuned...brief brain dumps will be occurring over at Twitter in the meantime.

Testing 1, 2, 3.

Tap, tap, tap.

Oh. It still works.

Ahem.

My one year to the day retirement is over. Damn it was dull.

You can follow me on twitter if you're that hip. The 140 character limit will force brevity on me. I guarantee I won't post about what I had for breakfast - because I never eat breakfast. (I know, I know. Most important meal of the day, yadda, yadda.)

Mostly I'll use it for interesting links and earth-shatteringly deep insights.

I'll check in tomorrow.

Today is the fifth anniversary since I launched Politics.bm on a bit of a whim.

In the summer of 2007 when an election appeared imminent and I was wondering where to take the site I committed to myself that I'd continue through the campaign and until the site had completed 5 years.

Five years is up. So today I'm signing off to spend some time developing some other projects that I've been neglecting.

Thanks for reading and contributing. I hope that I achieved my stated goal, which was to inform, amuse and provoke some thought.

I'd note, for the record, that Dr. Brown's libel suit has gone, and will continue to go, nowhere after such a frenzy of pre-election activity. What a shock.

All the best.

PS (I recommend Vexed Bermoothes for your fix).

PPS My email will remain active and is my primary address to contact me at.

I doubt I'll be posting until after August 21st.

Summertime.

I'll be out of commission until the end of the weekend.

As you've probably noticed, I'm not keeping pace with the blog very well right now as I've got a few other things going on. Hopefully I can pick things up shortly, but for now updates will be infrequent.

Thanks.

I'm pretty much out of commission until Thursday, so updates will be sporadic if at all until then.

I'm on a blog Holiday for the next 10 days.

I'm going to restart posting over the weekend. I still have lots of books to read (just finishing Kite Runner - get with the times I know), and some changes I will be making to the site, as well as some new projects to develop, but I figured the occasional brain dump might make for light entertainment.

In the meantime, in the wake of Bermuda's recently concluded (and successful) campaign of division, watch this for the alternative:

Imagine if our practitioner of personality politics had done that, instead of this.

As I said last night, I'm now officially on holiday for awhile.

Enjoy the holidays.

Ho, ho, ho.

A quick update on this site, post the December 18th election.

I'll be taking a break for the holidays and through the New Year as I usually do. I'm not sure what format the site will take when I come back, if I come back. I'll see how I feel in January.

Maybe we'll all be able to bitch about the UBP for awhile.

If I do return, the site will probably move away from so much opinion and in a slightly different direction.

But I need a break, it's been high gear for the better part of a couple of years and I've got a huge stack of books I've been meaning to read for a long long time and a family who I owe some attention.

So a pre-election thanks to all my readers, including those who slag me off.

I'm inundated with emails right now and will try to respond to as many of you as I can.

Please keep them coming. I just can't promise to reply immediately.

Thanks for reading.

A little housekeeping:

1) The caption competitions were fun, but this weekend's will be the last. Thanks to everyone who has participated over the past few months.

2) The reinsurance business enters it's busy season in the next couple of weeks, and as such I'll be doing more early mornings and later nights. Updates will slow down because of this. I don't have as much time to pre-write posts in the early morning and evenings and queue them up for publishing at various points of the day as I do during the summer months.

3) I'm trying to get my column in the Gazette going regularly again, and that means a Tuesday morning deadline, which will also impact activity on the blog as it tends to take me longer to write a column that rattle out a blog post.

As always, thanks for reading and please send on comments as they've been very interesting lately.

Today, is the 4 year anniversary of Politics.bm.

I went back and re-read the first few months of posting when I started in September 2003, and guess what I was writing about?

Lack of accountability, conflicts of interest, term limits, racial antagonism to name a few. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Thanks for reading, and thanks to all those who participate by writing to me with their thoughts, tips and critiques. I've been fortunate to to come to know many, many people over the past few years who I otherwise wouldn't have.

This continues to be a fun and interesting experience.

I'm out of commission until Thursday and I'll unlikely post anything other than reader comments until then.

Thank you, to the many, many of you who sent messages of condolences regarding my nephew. The number of emails was surprising and appreciated.

I will be restarting activity here over the next day.

Thank you again.

I'll admit that I'm a little low on motivation right now, but I have a few reader comments that I'll queue up to be posted which I think people will find interesting.

Apologies for the lack of activity lately. It'll pick up...sometime.

I'm back on the island will get moving again with some activity over the next day or so while I catch up.

I'm on vacation until August 17th. I may post occassionally but probably not too much.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I will be spending the better part of the next 4 weeks off of the island.

Obviously for a political junkie like me that timing is not ideal, but that's the way it is, and frankly politics is a distant second right now.

But as a reader always likes to remind me, my trips tend to coincide with lots of political action, and the next 4 weeks are going to be ones of intense political activity with an election about to be announced by "The Main Man" (creepy cult of personality and megalomania alert!) at the Main Event on Thursday.

Anyway, because of this I can't promise how regular updates will be, and how much content of my own I will be generating, although I expect it will remain a reasonable amount.

In light of this I will be posting as much reader feedback as I can - as I have doing for the past week or so - and I'm going to lob some questions your way in a subsequent post that I think will generate some good feedback that I can publish anonymously.

If you can give me your perspective I'd appreciate it and I think it will make for interesting reading.

There will likely be no activity here on Tuesday.

Also, I have been receiving a ton of email with comments, tips, analysis etc. and can't reply to everyone but will do my best to sort through it all as I can.

Activity will be light for the next 10 days.

If you want to send through comments on any issues I'll post what I can.

Politics.bm will be taking a break until the New Year.

Activity will be light until the New Year, as this is the crazy season at my paying job.

I'll still post when I have the time but I'm not making any promises.

I'm happy to post comments from readers.

I won't be posting this week, but should be back by the weekend.

If anyone still bothers to check the site out I want to apologize for the lack of activity as of late.

The perfect storm has converged on me lately, with an office move (now complete), an imminent house move, ants invading my house (and computer) and some memory chips suddenly going bad in my home PC taking a while to decode why it wouldn't start up.

I intend on picking things up in the next day. So apologies.

And of course, if anyone has anything to spout of on in the interim I'd be happy to post it.

I'm back on the island after 3 weeks of virtually completely ignoring Bermuda news.

But as always it's great to be back on the island.

There does seem to be a fair amount worthy of comment, which I'll do over the coming couple of days.

I didn't take long for me to remember why I love our news here. During my drive back from the airport yesterday one of the top stories on VSB radio news was that someone had stolen 2 pieces of lumber and 3 pieces of plywood from a construction site.

Classic.

Apologies for the late notice but I've been traveling on business and am now on vacation until the second week of August.

Complaining will continue around August 10th.

I won't be posting for the next 10 days as I get some R&R.

I had been hoping to put a few thoughts together on the Hamilton Waterfront proposal but have run out of time. Suffice it to say I like the concept, but find the proposal on the table too ambitious.

I'd prefer we make better use of the existing waterfront before we go nuts and fill in half the harbour.

I'm also concerned about the proliferation of major capital projects on the table and coming down the pipeline. I can think of a number which are huge, including the new hospital (500M +), the replacement of the causeway (100M+), a new police station/courthouse and now this enormous undertaking in Hamilton.

The money's got to come from somewhere, and undoubtedly it'll be the taxpayer paying dearly.

I may put some more coherent thoughts together at some point. But chances are there will be no activity here until the 2nd or 3rd of April.

I've been struggling to keep up with life lately, resulting in light activity here as of late.

I've also pulled back from my Royal Gazette column, which I plan to resume shortly when things settle down, and will be whining here less frequently for the next couple of months I imagine.

Posting will be light to none this week.

Due to an exploding air conditioning pipe spewing toxic fumes into my house, I'll be silent for a few days while my children's bedroom is disinfected.

Just a reminder that as I'm in the busy season at the office posting is and will be light for December.

But speaking of lights, I know we've got traffic issues in Bermuda, but do we really need to start having those flashing message boards around the island, as we did this morning on East Broadway, telling us to buckle up?

It isn't very Bermudian, and seems to be another example of Dr. Brown's Americanisation of everything he touches.

Due to the annual busy season at my paying job, posting will likely be a little lighter than usual for the next couple of months.

But when the feeling hits and issues come up, I'll be posting (in the evenings most likely). And with Parliament in session lots of issues will come up if last night's session was any indication.

More on that later.

Things have been quiet for the past few days I know. But now that things have returned to normal I'll resume posting tonight.

With regards to the Throne Speech, I put together a column for the Gazette on it (well sort of). So I'll be posting that tomorrow.

As you can see (or if you can't hit 'Refresh/Reload' on your browser toolbar) I've updated the colour schema of Politics.bm. This would be version 3.0 I guess.

I'm interested in your feedback or bug reports, although bugs should be minimal as the only changes are to the style sheet.

After promising this several months ago, I finally got my act together and made the changes, which for a guy with little artistic flair and bush coding skills took some motivation.

The site tagline has also been updated from "A Mostly Bermudian Blog", which was pretty uninspiring, to "Inform, amuse, provoke".

The next piece that I'll be tackling is a logo/banner graphic, and that's really stretching my abilities. So if there are any graphic designers out there who want to take pity on me and throw a freebie my way I'd willingly accept.

I seem to be coming down with the flu or something that feels like Alex Scott drove GP1 into me.

So posting will be light, but be sure to catch the Mid Ocean News today where they have a bumper crop of articles, of particualar interest is the Premier's stray email to Tony Brennan saying he's tired of taking "crap from people who look and sound like Tony Brennan."

So now we've got the Truth, don't hold you breath for the Reconcilliation bit.

After a couple of weeks of vacation I'm back in the swing of things and will be resuming blog activity as well as my Royal Gazette column.

But I must say, August is usually - other than the hurricanes that is - a quiet month. But not this year!

I timed my vacation perfectly to miss for everything from Paula Cox's credibility crumbling 'review' of the Pension Funds to the comedy, or was it a farce that ensued after Phil Wells' pretty entertaining column of a week ago.

So with the PLP's delegates conference looming in October, and Julian Hall stirring the pot, the next few months promise to be pretty entertaining themselves.

I'm taking the rest of the month off from blogging, barring some unforseen event, and will resume posting in September.

Here's to summer.

After some feedback from readers, and my own sense that it's time for a change, I'm going to be updating the colour scheme of this site, not the layout just the colours.

A few people have commented on the font size and black background as making it difficult to read, particularly for those techno-geeks who like to read it on their Blackberries.

So I'll be changing it up in a few days, but not being an expert in style sheets, it might take me a few goes to do it just right.

Saying that, I ain't too proud to beg. So if there are any charitable web designers out there who want to donate a couple of hours to assist, I'll gladly accept.

I'm playing catch up after having been doing some traveling for a week or so. The first order of business is to clear the backlog of John Barritt's Views from the Hill that I've been remiss in posting.

Then, with Parliament down, the sun out and vacation looming, it will likely be a quieter August.

But you never know.

Apologies for the lack of activity lately on the site. After a spurt of posts on a few issues two sick babies, a hectic work schedule, a side project and nice weather have conspired to slow me down.

But, fingers crossed, the corner has been turned and I'll pick up the pace in the next day or so.

I've currently got house guests, as well as in a busy period at work, so I apologise for the infrequent posting as of late.

I intend to pick up the levels again next week.

Ok, looks like the necessary change has been made to my domain name so the site will roll back to Feb 24th temporarily until I import the posts since then at my old host (that you've been viewing from recently).

Sorry for all this. The change will take 24 - 48 hours to be completely rolled out across the Net.

I'm playing catch-up after having some technical issues for the past couple of days, as well as still trying to get our ever efficient Bermuda Government to make the most simple of changes to my domain name record, so I can take my site live at its new location.

So that's my mission for today. Bureaucrat hell. It shouldn't have to be like this. If this was a .com this would have been done weeks ago, by myself in seconds online.

But not here. Here it takes a fax, yes a fax, plenty of emails and evidently a couple of phone calls as well. And we call ourselves an ecommerce jurisdiction.

Apparently the necessary changes have been made to my domain name with BermudaNIC, so that you'll be pointed to my new host - once the changes have replicated around the web's DNS servers.

So you might temporarily see the site roll back a few days to 25 Feb., but I'll reimport those posts and be back up and running soon enough.

So I'll be going quiet for a day or two.

Yes, I know. Be thankful for small mercies.

I've 'moved' the site to my new host, but if you're reading this you're looking at the old host, because I'm waiting for my request for DNS change with BermudaNIC to be processed.

In the interim I've posted John Barritt's View from the Hill and will post the UBP's Budget Reply when it is released.

Over the next few days I'll be moving the site to a new web hosting provider (www.livingdot.com), to take advantage of much better pricing and an integrated and fully featured installation of MovableType (whose owners SixApart look to be positioning themselves for an IPO).

This change should remove some of the administration I currently do, the limitations of my current hosting account, as well as save me quite a few bucks.

Tranfering the name servers with BermudaNIC might take a few days, so there is the potential for a brief disruption, but hopefully it will be transparent to readers.

I've also got a small backlog of House Orders and Minutes to post as well as a few things to comment on.

Thanks for bearing with me. I know I've been slacking off lately.

If you're a web site designer (or know of one) who might be interested in helping me out with a little project I'm working on please send me an email.

A quick note on site activity:

You may have noticed a more sporadic level of posting on the site recently. Mostly this has been driven by some increased demands on my time.

It is also in part due to the fact that when Parliament went down for Christmas that we officially entered the silly season, where news is light, so politicians tend to reach for issues. I tried not to join in the festivities of the silly season, although some may disagree.

But posting may be a little sporadic over the coming months, some days there may be a lot and others none. I will however try and blog the highlights from Parliamentary sessions on a Friday and post House Minutes, the budget, speeches etc..

But I've got a stack of 20 books by my bed that I've been wanting to read since Christmas. And with writing my RG column, writing for the blog, fighting spam attacks on the site, developing a couple of other projects, tending to my paying job, and not to mention my wife, daughter and new 3 month old twin girls, there hasn't been much time for that.

As much fun as it is to write, it's also nice to read. So if you've got any recommended reading to add to my list, which includes My Life by Bill Clinton, America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans by Henry Louis Gates, The Number, Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith by The Quecreek Miners and of course, actually finishing Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken, click on the feedback link below and send them on.

[Disclaimer: Any time I say I'm taking a break it never happens. So the stack of books will probably get higher and my whining will just hum along here as usual.]

I'm checking out until after Christmas and maybe the New Year.

Happy holidays to all and thanks for reading, emailing and berating me this year.

I've been unable to post much for the lasts few days for a number of reasons but have a bit of a backlog of things to throw my 2 cents in on.

I'm going to bounce around a little on topics as there is a lot going on, both issue and strategy wise.

Yesterday my hosting service experienced some problems with the database side of the site. The result was that I was unable to post.

The problem seems to be resolved today.

All seems to have gone well. If the Powered By Movable Type message at the bottom right corner displays 3.11 instead of 2.64 I'm free and clear.

UPDATE: Success without any problems. Fancy that!

I'm about to upgrade to the latest version of MovableType, the software that runs this site. You shouldn't notice any changes if all goes well, which upgrades never do!

If you're reading this, it's a good sign. If the site suddenly disappears, it's a bad sign.

I'll post another note when the upgrade has been completed.

By the way, that last post is just an update to the site's 'About' page.

What is Politics.bm?

Politics.bm is a weblog launched on Monday September 29, 2003. The intention of this site is to discuss Bermudian politics, primarily. Hence the name.

It's maintained by Christian Dunleavy, a former weekly columnist for The Royal Gazette and onetime candidate for the United Bermuda Party, who can't seem to satisfy his appetite for political news and strategy - in Bermuda or anywhere else for that matter. If it's political I'll read or talk about it, even if you're not listening.

The focus of this site is the observation and analysis of Bermuda's political process and strategies of the parties, as much as the specific policies of the parties. Certain topics don't really interest me and as such you may see some issues that you'd expect comment on completely ignored.

As a general rule my intention is to try and add something to the discussion, not simply repeat what is covered elsewhere. If a topic has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere and I have nothing new to contribute, I'll just link through to it. If I don't think I can add something I'll stay out of it, something I wish many of our politicians would do themselves.

This site is not affiliated with the United Bermuda Party in any way.

As you may have figured out I'm on holiday. From reading the local press online it looks like there is a lot going on and my pledge to be blissfully ignorant of local politics for a couple of weeks isn't going to last!

Posting will be light until Cup Match but probably not non-existent.

I'm also taking a couple of weeks off from my RG column which will resume in August.

Updates will be infrequent this week as I'm painting my house!

I've recently added to my links on this site, under the heading of 'News Aggregators' (at the bottom of the left hand column) a list of the major news aggregators available.

A number of you read this site, and other blogs, using RSS or a syndicated site feed. If you're not familiar with site syndication and are looking for an easy way to read all your blogs and news sites in one place without checking for updates, then these are sent from heaven.

I've been using Bloglines for quite a while to read my favourite sites, and I couldn't live without it. Some major sites using RSS include most blogs and the NY Times, Slate, Salon.com, Guardian Unlimited and many many more.

My next mission is to try and convince the local print media to adopt RSS on their websites.

"Back to life, back to reality", ahh the immortal words of Soul II Soul and Jazzie B.

After being on the road and a little out of touch for a week I'm back on de rock and have the flamethrower primed and ready to go!

Blogging will be extremely light for this week.

Those of you who've been requesting that comments be reinstated on the site will be pleased to know that due to some imminent new features in MovableType 3.0 your wishes will be granted.

The new feature called Typekey will allow authentication of commenters, helping prevent abusive or offensive comments and minimise comment spam.

I know some folks prefered to lob grenades anonymously but they can do that elsewhere. You're going to have to take responsibility for your comments on this site and MovableType is doing a great job in helping me with this.

More updates to come as the release date of 3.0 is announced.

Blogging will be very light for the next few weeks as I'm in the Great White North. No, not Paget, Canada.

After a few attempts to promote reasoned discussion on local issues I've regrettably decided that this experiment has failed and am removing the commenting facility. Public comments have been removed permanently.

I would suggest that if people want to discuss the content or issues on this site that they head over to the BermudaFreeSpeech Forum. As always I welcome private comments.

I'm reopening comments on the site after the brief hiatus. Following some consideration and input from a few readers I'm going to be a little clearer in establishing a comment policy (will be available tomorrow), defining what is and is not acceptable and how to report abuse.

This step is not at all intended to stifle debate but to ensure that the discussion is cogent to the issue at hand, and that personal attacks and misrepresentations are not being made. I recently removed the posting of email addresses to try and protect privacy and encourage more input. The commenting policy is a work in progress and will be expanded if necesary.

I'd ask everyone to please read the policy when available and if you can't abide by it then please refrain from commenting.

OK Folks. I think everyone needs a cool off period here so I'm closing comments on the site. Maybe I'll reinstate them later but maybe not.

I appreciated the input of everyone involved, regardlesss of the differences, but I've now had my words twisted to try and infer that "blacks are too dumb to see through the PLP's racist rhetoric". That is an outrageous and insulting misrepresentation of my argument to try and paint me as a racist.

As much as Bermuda Voter might want to try and make me out to be a racist - just because I'm in the UBP, it is clearly not the case. I won't be libeled by someone cowardly enough to hide behind an email address with no real name. I'm putting my name against my comments, how about they do the same when they go down that road?

You can contact me through a private email but there will be no more public comments for now.

A couple of changes to commenting on the site:

1) I've added private comments to the site. I often receive comments via email from readers and want to make this process a little easier and more obvious. Additionally, I want to encourage input from people who may want to remain anonymous, although I still require a valid email address for submitting a published or private comment.

I reserve the right to use private comments in an unattributed manner if deemed of interest, unless specifically stated otherwise.

2) I've removed the commenter's email addresses from public display as I think it inhibits some people from posting due to privacy and spam concerns. The climate for political dissent has become much more harsh since the PLP took over and people are reluctant to speak out. As a result if you include a URL in the comment form, your URL will be displayed (on the individual entry's page), otherwise the name/nickname only will be shown.

I've started to get hit with comment spam. I am going to install MT-Blacklist tonight which should cut out the vast majority of it.

This should be transparent to visitors to the site.

Today I released the new layout and design of the site. I've done some pretty thorough testing and think all is well. I've got a few minor tweaks to make but they shouldn't be noticeable.

If you see something that doesn't work please let me know. Any comments on the new look are also welcome.

I'm traveling for a week so will unlikely be writing until 14th Nov.

I've decided to move the platform for this blog to movabletype. It is much more powerful and has the ability for comments, permalinks, calendaring etc already built in.

There is some legwork to do however in translating the template to MT format so I imagine this will happen in the next week or so.

I'm working on adding the ability to comment on posts within the blog articles. So far I'm deciding between a few options and may actually move the whole blog to movable type as it has so many more features.

I'm traveling until Wednesday night so it's unlikely I'll be posting here for a few days.

Finally! Bermudanic got their act together and I've been able to register politics.bm. The domain is up, the site has officially moved and the previous address has been redirected here.

I still need to get the email address configured correctly but things are looking much better.

Today I've started a new weblog focusing primarily on Bermuda's political and social issues.

The commentary expresses my personal views taken largely from current events and stories in the local media. My blog will eventually move once I can get the domain "politics.bm" registered with BermudaNic - which is proving to be a very slow and painful process. I'll probably revisit this issue later.

In the meantime the blog can be found on www.bermudablogs.com/cdunleavy. BermudaBlogs.com is a site I am also working on to host blogs for anyone with a Bermuda connection.

I'll be adding to the site over time as much content as possible, based on your feedback and interest.