Rubénerd :)

One of the features of TweetDeck is the Recommends column which displays users the TweetDeck team deem worthy of following. Most of time its a fairly random mix of folks, but sometimes you get some unlikely pairings!

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Three random and entirely pointless error messages for your consideration.

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Ever since August 2008 when I made the switch, TweetDeck has been Twitter for me. For people following hundreds of fascinating people categorised into lists (formerly TweetDeck groups) there’s absolutely no better ways to use it, even if it does run on Adobe Air. Problem is, no matter what Mac I’m using it always "remembers" those red dotted lines denoting bad spelling.

Perhaps it’s just poking fun at the fact I make sppelling mistakes.

I’ve always thought the idea of the Mashable Open Web Awards was at best just a misnomer and silly, but this year I decided to give it a try. Most of the categories had nothing I wanted to vote for, and in the case of those that did I was incorrectly informed I had already voted for it! In protest, I’m creating this post.

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For the first time in recent memory Twitter has actually gone ahead and released a new feature that for once isn’t merely the destruction of a previous feature: so-called Twitter Lists. And I love them, even if they are mostly useless in their current form.

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It’s the Rubenerd Blog’s 2000th blog post, and what better way to celebrate than to show my current desktop background. Yup, on my MacBook Pro which is my primary workhorse I’ve given up on them because as I put in this tweet here:

I just realised something: I don’t need a desktop background/wallpaper anymore because I never minimise TweetDeck! #Obsessive

It looks like I’m not the only one either. Who would have thought back in 2007 how much Twitter would become such an integral part of our lives?

Happy 2000 posts everybody! Not that I’m counting ;-).

UPDATE: As of 18:21 it’s all good again. Stand down Red Alert!

Once again the fragility of my current primary means of communication has been highlighted by it’s absence. In this case it’s not Twitter that’s down, it’s my twitter client TweetDeck. All afternoon I haven’t had a single friend tweet, reply, mention, search, group tweet or direct message come through.

I liked to think TweetDeck turned Twitter from a fun distraction into a CNN replacement; taking up my whole 1920×1200 screen I can see what’s happening all around the planet with my friends and current events in near real time. I’ve used Twitterrific, Snitter and Twhirl but since jumping to TweetDeck nothing has come close to replacing it.

As of 17:55 Australian Central / 08:25 GMT TweetDeck is still refusing to download my columns, and even attempts to re-download the client software result in errors.

Time to give Seesmic Desktop another try?

This is the third time I’ve written this post! All I wanted to say is, if I tell people I’m an atheist and they say "they’ll still pray for me", I find that to be a backhanded compliment at best, and condescending at worst. They might not mean it, but motive doesn’t negate the result.

Since posting version one of this though I’ve learned religious people are allowed to offend atheists, scientists, biologists, doctors and geologists whom they passionately (or often tacitly) disagree with, but if we’re offended and explain why as I did with my post, we’re called out as being rude and intolerant, along with several strings of four letter words.

It’s interesting that people can discuss their favourite music, author, politician and grilled cheese sandwich and discussions can occur, but if it’s about faith there’s an untouchable social taboo. Often being religious is enough; if most Christians meet a Hindu for example, they’ll get along just fine. If a religious person meets an atheist (or agnostic, or another non-believer) though, it’s automatically expected the atheist has to defend his or her position, and then to take insults without responding. It’s downright weird.

There’s also a popular analogy that "atheism is just another religion". Even if we weren’t to assist in the suicide of this fatuous proposition (thank you Christopher Hitchens for that line!) and we played along, why is it unique amongst religions in that it’s the only one that’s allowed to be criticised? If the answer is because atheists reject religious teachings, don’t different religions reject each others teachings too?

Given it was just recently the 4th of July in the United States, I’m reminded of that infamous passage in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Apparently though the next passage states that if you believe your creator was the beautiful and elegant universe which evolved in space and time, this does not apply. Good to know!

As I’ve said before, I don’t think the world would be better without religion per se (I love cultural festivals for example!), I just want the ability to one day have honest and meaningful conversations about them. I suspect that day will come, but it won’t be for a while. I’m guess I’m just sick of apologising!

The Twitter client episode!

Scaring people who think I’m a chick (ha!); late Friday night train journeys; nostalgia for 2007 Twitterland with Twitterrific; TwitterFon inserting advertisements; moving over to Tweetie on the iTelephone; obsessively using the huge but efficient TweetDeck; and the spectacular cost of mobile phone company text messages!

Download MP3 to listen 21:30 10.0MiB

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