Berit & Chris's weblog

Weblog comments are go (well nearly....)

We've been having a lot of problems with our comments being spammed, mostly by interesting porn sites, which initially we thought we could solve by banning the relevant IP address. All this actually ended up doing was banning everyone from commenting on the site (I think this was due to the DNAS function..?) so apologies to our regular commenters, especially the Cornish Dragon AKA Simon de Merryfield.

I’ve successfully managed to upgrade our sites blogger engine to Movable Type 3.121 which includes the TypeKey which is a comment authentication service. Although the MT upgrade was successful I still haven’t managed to get the comments working yet. You’ll need to register with TypeKey in order to leave a comment and it looks like I’ll have to edit the sites comment script to inform new commenters. Once I’ve figured out how to do this myself (customize the error page, or install MTBlacklist 2.0 plugin me thinks) I’ll let you all know too. In the mean time if anyone else knows how feel free to comment :-)

Bath Reunion

Saturday afternoon, Chris caught up with a few good friends from his Bath University days, Nathan & Sim, Chris and Rich, in Bath. Meanwhile, I went early Christmas shopping with Ana, before catching up with Chris & Co. for dinner and drinks in Bristol. A lot of laughs and dubious conversation later, we walked home in the pouring rain, determined to meet up more often.

Property Ladder

We have experienced an eventful couple of weeks. A week ago, we made an offer on a small mid-19th century Victorian cottage outside Bristol. After some negotiation, our second offer was finally accepted. Since then, we have been busy dealing with solicitors, estate agents and surveyors, and are beginning to realise the amount of work associated with moving. As of yet, we are still awaiting confirmation of completion date, and the contract has not been signed.

The decision to buy a house has not been easy. The British housing market has started to cool down after years of continuous increases. In Bristol alone, houses increased in value by 113% from 1997 to 2002 and by an anual rate in excess of 13% since then. And many people are now expecting an actual crash in the housing market over the coming years of between 10 and 30 percent. Thus, buying a house at this time becomes somewhat of a gamble. And we can only hope to have taken into account all the risks associated with buying a house at this particular time.