Sci-fi fans will likely have heard of the prestigious Hugo Awards. On Saturday night, top notch Who writer and all-round good chap Steven Moffat won this year’s Hugo for “Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)” for his two-part Doctor Who story “The Empty Child”/”The Doctor Dances”. Congratulations to Steve, and to fellow nominees Rob Shearman and Paul Cornell, also good chaps, who were both nominated in the same category for their excellent Eccleston episodes. Paul is writing for the next series so he may be wowing the Hugo voters again quite soon.

Meanwhile, the Emmy Awards have been dished out. Kelly Macdonald won one for her role in the dreadful drama The Girl in the Cafe and Tony Shalhoub picked up another award for his starring role in the marvellous Monk (albeit as best comedy actor for something which really isn’t a comedy). I was particularly pleased to see Alan Alda win “Best Supporting Actor” for his role as Arnold Vinick in The West Wing (at least he won something), which, the Beeb tells me, makes The West Wing the joint biggest Emmy winner ever with Hill Street Blues.

Coming up this week on No Geek Is An Island…

More Edinburgh Fringe reviews (most of the shows have already finished, so no rush)… The West Wing season 4… I might finally get around to joining in with the 25 Lines meme… I also fancy doing the Favourite TV Characters meme… And finally, a detailed tract on how liberal principles and the writings of Jeremy Bentham* and John Stuart Mill can be applied to save the health service, defeat anti-social behaviour and solve the conflict in the Middle East once and for all.

That’s more of an aide memoire for me than a trailer. Usually when I make lists like this, some of the posts never materialise. (I’m putting my money on the last one.)

*not him

Two fingers to Will Smith, Will Smith and Will Self because that’s me according to Google:

And yet – presumably because other bloggers link me by my first or full name – I’m not even on the first page for Howells. As my boss says, “That’s the problem with ranking.”*

I’m not sure what Google’s description of this blog as “politics, genealogy and food” is suggesting. It seems to have originated here so I’ve submitted a change to remove the reference to food. I wouldn’t want anyone to come here looking for recipes – they’d be terribly disappointed.

(*Let me pre-empt comments of the “I thought the problem with ranking was that you went blind” variety.)

Hello. We’re on Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. Photos to follow later.

And later it is. So Peter, Alan and I went to the pub and then for a stroll up Arthur’s Seat. Peter had his digital compact, Alan had a digital SLR and I had my phone. Their photos are likely to be better (although my phone can blog from 273m up). Nevertheless, here are mine.

Dr Dave of Spam Karma fame warns of a potential security risk:

If you are running WordPress as your blogging platform and if you have been trusting enough to leave User registration enabled for guests, DISABLE IT IMMEDIATELY (in wp-admin >> options: make sure “Anyone can register” is not checked).

Additionally, delete or disable ANY guest account already created by people you are not sure about.

Leaving it open and letting people sign-up for guest accounts on your WordPress blog could lead to incredibly nasty stuff happening if anybody so desired. And trust me I am not exaggerating this. So don’t wait a second to disable this option and please relay the message.

He has taken some flak for this (as it’s not, AFAIK, backed up by the official WordPress folk) and I’m not making a recommendation one way or the other (I already had that option off), but any readers who do allow users to register on their WordPress blog should have a read and make up their own minds.

Update: A new version of WordPress has been released which apparently resolves this security issue.