Posts tagged with "intoyourhead"


Google Editions to sell electronic dead trees

How to Raze a Healthy Cat by Neal O'Carroll of IntoYourHead.com

Google has announced they'll start selling books, presumably in electronic form unless they've extended their search algorithm to include people frantically working in libraries with magnifying glasses.

I've never read Eric J. Savitz's blog before, but he had the best summary with the longest URL to boot!

Google will begin selling digital books in late June or July, taking on both market leader Amazon.com and new entrant Apple [...] a Google exec announced the move at an event today in New York.

The new service, to be called Google Editions, will allow users [to] buy digital copies of books they discover through its book search service. The company will allow book retailers to sell Google Editions on their own sites. There were no immediate details on book pricing or publisher participation.

Is that how you spell piqued?

That last sentence piqued my interest. Given how much they've royally angered publishers with their Google Books effort (though I assume not as much as they'd be angered with me over my terrible legal puns), I hope they can succeed.

Instead of selling the latest titles I could otherwise get from somewhere else, I'd be more interested in seeing them sell the books they've scanned that are in that awkward chasm between not being sold and not in the public domain. I suppose that presents an entirely new set of legal and practical challenges; for one thing how do you track down the author of a book that's been out of print for decades?

It had to be said

If I ever publish Rubénerd.com as a book, it'll have my home address, phone numbers, Twitter handle, Singaporean IC and Aussie Tax File Number clearly printed on the sleeve jacket. I'll even make up an American Social Security Number to make it look more legit. That way, people could track me down to give me the commissions, royalties and other payments I so rightly deserve. What could possibly go wrong?

Thanks to Neal O'Carroll of the Into Your Head show and the Dublin School for Veterinary Science for permission to use his latest book cover.


Neal O'Carroll buying me a coffee

Buy Ruben a Coffee link

I was puzzled when Neal O'Carroll insinuated in the comments for a recent post that he'd used the Buy Ruben a Coffee button on my blog sidebar. PayPal didn't -- and still hasn't -- emailed me any record of this taking place.

Anyway I would like to sheepishly admit with a deep crimson face that Neal did indeed hit that Buy Ruben a Coffee button, it just appeared in my PayPal account, and I wanted to thank him for keeping this weirdo caffeine-d up for another day. Thank you good sir :).


A hodgepodge of error messages

Neal O'Carroll's entertaining error message

Three random and entirely pointless error messages for your consideration.

The first, pictured above, is the eloquent Neal O'Carroll from the aaaaaaaah Into Your Head podcast letting people know his site hasn't gone off the deep end. I would never be caught making a grammar mistake or typo on my own site, and I'd certainly never instruct people to "click here" but then put the link somewhere else. Looking forward to that pie though, it's going to be schweet. Wonder if I can ask him to pick mine up from the Hairy Lemon?

Neal O'Carroll stalling my upload client

The second error, pictured above, is Neal O'Carroll stalling my file transfer application. I thought his error message was overly cryptic and suspicious, and it turns out I was right. He clearly planted malware on the page so when I took a screenshot it attached itself to the file. It even survived processing and file conversion in The Gimp. He's a crafty one.

TweetDeck telling me not to panic

The second error, wait, third error, pictured above, is from TweetDeck while I'm using the public WiFi hotspot here. Don't panic!? That's easy enough for you to say, you're not addicted to Twitter through a Twitter client, you are the Twitter client! And who do you think you are, Douglas Adams?! Yeesh.


iPhoneUserNews is a breath of fresh air

iPhoneUserNews.com

After hearing for years about how blogging was going to revolutionise the way we read and publish information, it seems thesedays most blogs dealing with specific technologies have consolidated into "megasites" run by dozens of people. Nothing wrong with that per se, but it means if most folks want to read about news, reviews and opinions on iPhones for example they hit the same few sites that rehash the same material as each other and that's it.

With this in mind I present to you my dear reader iPhoneUserNews which if you can't figure out what it's about from the title I find your comprehension skills both scary and fascinating at the same time. It's run and managed by the same Neal behind the IntoYourHead show from the Emerald Isle. At least that's where he claims to be, he could be posting messages from a base in Antarctica or one of Saturn's moons for all I know. Apparently he likes frigidly cold climates.

If you're fed up with reading the same stuff about everybody's favourite phone from the same few sites (you know the ones of which I speak) you may want to check it out. I was paid off several billion Euros to promote this site, but that shouldn't in any way put you off anything I wrote here about it. You can also follow along on The Twitters.

Thank you, and good morning. Or whatever time of day it happens to be for you and the internet device upon which you're reading this. I say that because the time on your internet device may be incorrect and you may assume the time is different. I'm clever aren't I? Don't answer that.


Rubenerd Show 273 2009.07.27

Larger version of cover artThe incompetent internets episode!

Moving lots of blogs into one blog; people like Zombie Plan and Neal from IntoYourHead going the opposite ways; working and living places after university; iTelephone cases and downloading; The Googles and I losing track of core competencies; too much self respect to use Chandler Bing and vacuous people getting angry at Twitter for losing spam followers!

Download MP3 to listen 19:18 8.9MiB

You can also view previous episodes, subscribe via iTunes or another client, stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.


Rubenerd Show 264 2009.01.20

Larger version of cover artThe sporadic memories and bottled water episode!

You've joined me at a tremendously exciting moment; unabashedly ripping off IntoYourHead; microwaving coffee after I said you shouldn't; Family Guy; Germans can make better Christmas food than the French; family trip to Europe in 1998; asking for the bathroom with sign language; Frankfurt am Main; time speeding up as you get older; Melbourne since 1990; remembering primary school; flag carriers and whatnot; Tom Keene talking about ridiculously expensive bottled water with David Zetland on Bloomberg on the Economy; the political compass thingy; and a Paul Shaffer smoke alarm!

UPDATE: The date for this episode has been fixed to show 2009 instead of 2008 after I received a smartarse comment ;-)

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 21:00 9.8MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.


Rubenerd Show 257 2008.11.23

Larger version of cover artThe freak Aussie weather and iPhone 2.2 episode!

Freak weather in Australia (torrential storms in Brisbane, fluctuating temperatures in Adelaide, snow in Victoria a week before summer!); my cheesy slogan from primary school; my dad's plant designs in Pinkenba; the iPhone and iPod Touch 2.2 update (still no copy/paste, the amazing street view feature, the new weird MobileSafari layout); Toronto, Adelaide and Dublin; the IntoYourHead show; and utopian science fiction writers!

UPDATE: I referred to the CEO of Microsoft as Steve Jobs not Steve Ballmer! The blasphemy! Please forgive me!

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 21:05 9.7MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.


Roast beef sandwiches for underage cats

An underage cat having trouble eating roast beef.
An underage cat having trouble eating roast beef. Photo by Daniel Mayer

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. In light of the fact I have been going through the source code of a 10,000+ line C application on and off for the last four hours, I decided to take a much needed break and proceeded to appeal to my loyal Twitter followers for a topic I could briefly discuss. Neil O'Carroll responded to my call with the following tweet:

Want to do a cat song for 121, but wifey still sleeping upstairs, don't think she'd appreciate guitar/harmonica sounds from below.

That's clearly the wrong tweet. Neil O'Carroll responded to my call with the following tweet:

@rubenerd Topic suggestion: Blog about roast beef sandwiches for underage cats.

First of all, I would like to send Neil O'Carroll a sincere mail bomb... I'm so sorry, a sincere thank you, for giving me the opportunity to discuss this incredibly important topic that I'm sure concerns a great deal of us.

Let me be blunt. Please. I ran over my pencil sharpener with my motor scooter. We are living in uncertain times economically, militarily and economically, all three of which are contributing to a severe downturn in the abilities of pet owners and feline fanciers to indulge their cat's desires for cooked meats. The situation has become so critical that beef consumers in particular have become the latest victim acute shortages; and none have been so negatively affected as those who prefer to roast their beef for their cats, felines and other feline related cats. Economically, militarily and economically.

One positive side effect of this whole debacle however has been the that the issue of underage cats has once again been given the opportunity to be scritinised. Unfortunately our discourse in the past has been limited to roasted meats being fed to adult and adolescent cats, leaving out completely the issue of feeding beef of the roasted meat variety to underage cats which lack the necessary dental and digestive capability to chew and eat such meat with such parts of their bodies respectively.

ASIDE: My computer is telling me that I've misspelled "scrutinised". It claims it should be spelled "scrutinized". I would be willing to to spell it with a z, but that's not how you spell "scrutinised". You can see the dillema I'm facing. Great, now its saying I've misspelled dilemma.

Asahina Mikuru with a very cute... damn it, you were supposed to be holding a moose!
Asahina Mikuru with a very cute... damn it, you were supposed to be holding a moose!

I put it to you ladies and genteman that the time has come to genetically engineer cats that are able to eat roasted meats of a beefy nature much earlier in the life cycles. If we refuse to acknowledge this dire need soon, I fear we may be letting down entire future generations of cats. No other source of food is as high in vitamin C, iron, folate, mercury, arsenic, vitamin a+, vitamin w- as roasted chicken, and I'm sure a similar statement can be made for other roasted meats, in particular the one which I've already forgotten I started talking about but which I hope dear reader you have not.

You see, at this point as a reader of this post you have a distinct advantage over I, the writer, for nine distinct reasons, eight of which are meaningless and stupid. The remaining advantage is this: as a reader you have the ability to either read this post in its entirety, or merely skim it and claim at a later date that you have read it when the topic of Ruben Schade and his very informative fridge magnets and blog come up at housewarming parties which may or may not be unfounded given that you may have been living at your current address for a number of years. As a writer I do not have this luxury, I must sit through the entirety of the pointless rambling nonsense because I am the one creating it. I cannot skim through creating something: George W. Bush tried to do that with a new, un regulated subprime mortgage buying-and-selling banking business and suffice to say it didn't work.

So to all of those reading this post I ask you this question: why has your refrigerator but two doors when clearly the amount of material you have forced into it warrants the need for several more? I also ask you to consider the plight of underage cats and their inability to eat roast beef, or indeed any other roasted meat while we're on the subject. Because after all, isn't there a little underage cat in all of us?


Bill Withers had a lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

A tribute to IntoYourHead episode 113, one of the greatest New Time Radio podcast audio magazine interent radio shows I've ever heard.

Bill Withers

When I wake up in the morning... love
and the sun light hurts my eyes

And something without warning... love
bears heavy on my mind.
Then I look at you
and the world's alright with me

Just one look at you and I know it's gonna be...

A lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
A lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

When the day that lies ahead of me,
seems impossible to face
And someone else instead of me,
always seems to know the way
Then I look at you,
and the world's alright with me

Just one look at you and I know it's gonna be...

A lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
A lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

When the day that lies ahead of me,
seems impossible to face

A lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
A lovely daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

And people say I'm weird. Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.


Rubenerd Show 254 2008.10.01

Larger cover art versionThe IntoYourHead show war episode!

It's official ladies, gentlemen and everyone else: the fine folks at the IntoYourHead show are officially at war. In response to this situation, I have recorded this highly sophisticated response. Please listen to in a well ventilated area, for the fumes of professionalism may overwhelm you.

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 09:18 4.3MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.