Rubénerd :)

I think Google Reader is punishing me for perennially having (1000+) unread items! I like that word, perennially. Not really appropriate for this discussion as blog feeds don’t grow. Or do they?

This morning the site reported I had unread items, even when I went through and read them all. This means I’m seeing the same stories being reported as new, despite having already read them!

Has anyone else been having this problem? Given this is Google I’m fairly confident it’d be fixed in a few hours, knowing me I’m just an anomaly in their database that’s wrecking havoc or something. I have that effect on people, you see.

Hey, when I saw these two stories in my sleep induced state early this morning it made my smile ;).

For what it’s worth, I’ve never personally called women birds, but I’ve heard it a lot. I thought it was an Aussie euphemism, but Jesse Lloyd says it’s a British thing. I guess she would know, being a bird and all!

Having let more unread posts pile up like a massive pile of unread posts, I’ve decided once and for all to declare Google Reader bankruptcy. George Bush, I Can Haz Bailout?

Read this post >

Has Google Reader (or Google Accounts in general) implemented a stricter timeout system for logins, does anyone know? I’ve been automatically logged out several times today with the above message cheerfully displayed when it never used to happen before.

I’m thinking it could be my newly cleaned out cookie whitelist for PermitCookies in Firefox, but just want to make sure. Could Buzz have anything at all to do with it perhaps? If they are timing out sessions earlier it could be beneficial for security but I tend to have Reader permanently open in a tab and I’d hate to have to re-login every hour or so.

Google didn’t seem to like me today. Firstly Google Reader gave me this blank page instead of my usual cheery Unread Items (100,000,000+) message, then less than an hour later I tried to view a YouTube video and was presented with this delightful error!

I never did have that green tea I promised myself a few days ago. I blame that.

While my dad, sis and I were on our Eurotrip over the New Year holidays (photos coming soon) we were placed in self imposed 24-hour-instant-Twitter-news exile, which to tell the truth was kinda refreshing. The only thing we had to worry about in Europe was being buried in a freak Irish, German, French, Czech or Austrian snowstorm, or finding plastic explosive in our baggage from Slovakia on arrival in Dublin. But I digress.

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In case you’re still subscribed to my blog through the old address (pictured above) but don’t follow my shared items in The Google Readers I’m passing this message I posted along with my sincerest apologies!

Sorry for the flurry of blog posts everyone! I had a DNS problem so if you’re subscribed to my blog through the old URL still, you probably just got whacked with two dozen new posts. Forgive me, I’ll try not to let it happen again!

While I have the RSS feed from my old side redirecting, if you’re still subscribed through the old address I encourage you to move over to the new one, if only because it seems Google Reader updates it more often and is more reliable. Thanks :).

Checking my Google Reader page this evening I noticed all of a sudden I have 18 readers for my main RSS feed here at Rubenerd.com, and 34 readers for the old URL bringing the total to 52! I do admit I started blogging because I enjoy writing about my weird and disparate interests first and foremost, but it’s another world of good feeling knowing a few of you are interested in some of it too.

<Cheesyness> So I just wanted to get all soppy for a second and send out a thank you and a hug to all of you for thinking my material here was worthwhile enough to warrant some of the time from your hectic electronic lives. Its a fulfilling feeling that has helped a socially awkward, introverted guy like me in ways you can’t imagine. </cheesyness>

I’ll try my best to minimise the number of typos and grammar mistakes :). I chose the above photo from my Flickr account because it looked all dramatic and the primary colour is similar to uncooked grilled cheese sandwiches.

Peace, health and happiness,
~ Ruben

It’s killing me that I don’t remember where I heard this, but someone made the comment that many of us online are almost welcoming the demise of newspapers because we think they’re outdated dinosaurs, yet at the same time we complain about being overwhelmed by all the content streaming in from web feeds we subscribe to!

Read this post >

Here’s an idea for a Google Reader feature that in my opinion is long overdue. If Reader attempts to fetch a web feed and it encounters a 301 permanent redirect to a legitimate new address it should update its own records in user accounts to point to the new address instead of still pinging the old one.

I ask for my own selfish reasons because as of now more people are still subscribed to my blog here through the old http://rubenerdshow.com/blog/feed/ address instead of http://rubenerd.com/feed/. Each request to the old URI takes more effort and bandwidth than the new one, and I’ve noticed items that appear in the new one instantly can sometimes take an hour or longer to appear in the old one. An automatic update would fix this.

Good idea?