Rubénerd!

Ruben picks apart the useless spam he receives from the spamming spammers who spam him with their spamingly spammish spam. For all the spam he has picked apart, visit the spam category... sounds like a Monty Python routine.

Special Offer!

Adobe Video Collection
Adobe Premierer 1.5 Professional
Adobe After Effects 6.5 Professional
Adobe Audition 1.5
Adobe Encore DVD 1.5
$149.95

Microsoft 2 in 1
MS Windows XP Pro
MS Office 2003 Pro
$99.95

Microsoft + Adobe 3 in 1
MS Windows XP Prom
MS Office 2003 Pro
Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional

I was unaware of the existence of Adobe "Premierer" or Windows XP "Prom"... believe me my prom/formal was bad enough, don't remind me!

If you want to be taken seriously, for Pete's sake do a spell check! We're not talking rocket science!

Afterthought: I was going to also say something cynical about how Windows and Office are being offered for $99.95 when FreeBSD + OpenOffice is $0.00 but I'll let it slide for now ;).

Aside from the fact I can't stand not being able to even use a simple SSH session with my Servage account, it seems that Servage and WordPress just don't get along. Reading is fine, but I'd say when I create a new post, WITHOUT FAIL every time it doesn't give me a confirmation message etc, it just throws me an error:

ERROR

The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://rubenerd.com/wp-admin/post.php

The following error was encountered:

Zero Sized Reply

So I roll my eyes each time, close that tab in Camino and, lo and behold, the post has been published.

Now I know it isn't just a corrupt installation or files, because I have three WordPress blogs running on Servage, and they ALL have this problem, not to mention the Rubenerd Forum throws a Zero Size Reply error occasionally too.

Anyone else on Servage have this stupid problem?

I've never noticed this before, but looking for some information on OPML I came across Dave Winer's homepage on Scripting.com, and he looks like my dad!

.

Damn it, now I can't find a picture of my dad :|. Just imagine until I can post an image.

David Winer on Scripting.com

In a follow up to yesterday's post with the same title regarding purchasing Phil Gerbyshak's eBook on BookSurge and being able to read it on Mac OS X, I got an email back today:

Hello Ruben,
Thank you for contacting the Book Surge Customer Service Department. Yes we do furnish Ebooks that are compatible for Mac PCs. Please let me know what Ebooks that you are interested in purchasing. Thank you.

Client_Comments : G'day, I'm interested in buying a couple of books in the eBook format, I was just inquiring as to what format they are and whether they're compatible with Mac OS X. Cheers - Ruben

Good stuff!

I'm surprised that "A Blog focusing on Web Design and Search Engine Optimization Services" is so poorly designed. Okay, it's really not that bad but for a site that's intended for blogging about good web design, I would expect above average. The posts have no formatting whatsoever. The post I'm about to discuss was even laid out as a numbered list, but instead of typing ordered or unordered HTML tags they just wrote it out verbatim. Not good lah!

Anyway, they do have a great post about rules in web design, boiled down into five points:

1. Do not use splash pages
2. Do not use excessive banner advertisements
3. Have a simple and clear navigation
4. Have a clear indication of where the user is
5. Avoid using audio on your site

I would stress though there's one more critical point: Make your site accessible. Use established web and usability standards so those people who are using atypical software or devices to access your content (such as screen readers for the vision impared or even mobile phones etc) can do so.

Oh yeah, and a dash of humour is always a good thing too... have to give points to "Intense Development" for this :).

Intense Development: Five General Rules in Web Design

Oh MyUniSA Student Portal, why do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

IMAP Microsoft Outlook for Student Email

Whoever thought that was a good idea is insane. Not only does it limit native access to Windows users, but the web based Outlook is horrendously difficult to use, ugly and slower than molasses. And I don't care what anyone says, IMAP email that is stored on a remote server and has to be refreshed every time you do anything is not superior to POP/SMTP.

MyUnisa Slow as Molasses

Today to access the MyUniSA homepage after logging in took just under 2 minutes. On a weeknight it can be up to 7 minutes. This is unacceptable.

Enrolment Still a Pain

All the posters say that painful enrolment procedures are a thing of the past with their new internet enrolment system. Yeah, right. A counter-intuitive interface, the inability to see subjects as a grid before making final changes, and the dreaded "This subject you've chosen clashes with another you have already enrolled in". What a joke.

Believe me there's more, but I have real work to do now ;).

I don't use Movable Type, but for the benefit of those of you who do:

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I've been using widgets on the Rubenerd Show site which uses Hemingway theme for WordPress and they're a great idea.

My favourite blog to read is Make it Great, so when Phil told me he released a book my first instinct was to buy buy buy! Unfortuantely a university student's pockets are not very deep, but now I finally have enough to get it.

I noticed on the website where it is being sold, Booksurge, that they offer an eBook version as well, which would be great for me because I'm obsessed with eBooks at the moment and I'd love to have this on my virtual "bookshelf", it would be convenient because as a uni student I don't exactly have much shelf space constantly moving from place to place, and also I'd be free from the United States → Australia postage!

Before I rush out though and spend mu USD 7.99, does anyone know the format of the eBook? PDF? Microsoft Reader? If it's the latter, it would be useless for my Mac or *BSD boxes, for obvious reasons ;).

Typing as we speak in the Boat Deck Cafe in Mawson Lakes. Coffee is good.

Okay people, so I've decided to revive the blog again. Lets just say that without it for a few months I was missing being able to spontaneously add stuff whenever I want, instead of waiting till the next episode of the Rubenerd Show.

I am changing the direction of this blog though I think to be more of a link blog than an article blog, if you get my drift. I post all the time to my Del.icio.us link account and so often I find I want to write a longer description or add a picture.

If you found this blog through Google or Vivisimo (my new favourite search engine) or some other engine, you can find the Rubenerd Show at RubenerdShow.com.

Anyway, long story short, it's good to be back in the blogosphere :).

2009 UPDATE: I guess I didn't end up doing this after all!

Now that the Rubenerd Show is being released every weekday AND the fact the Rubenerd Wiki is now in place the reason for this blog's existence has been put into question.

So therefore, while I may add something occasionally, for more Rubenerd updates and entries you're best bet is just to visit the new Rubenerd Show Wiki, which is now the primary site once again.

Stressing again, this blog will remain online for now, but I won't be posting as often.

Cheerio,
Ruben