Rubénerd :)

You know that now notorious error message you sometimes see on YouTube videos claiming the music in a video was copyrighted and had been disabled?

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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.

If you can’t view the officially greatest video of all time here (alas with a stupid name), try it on YouTube directly. The song is none other than Chaccaron Maccaron.

I have a very sophisticated palette. By that I mean colours.

For about a year now my MacBook Pro exhibited horrible grinding, rattling sounds on the right hand side of the unit, just below the power button. After doing a bit of research I realised that I had a damaged fan (Apple unit number 922-7194), and while I could have tried lubricating the existing one, I decided to play it safe and just buy a replacement. PBParts.com had the best overall price for the unit and international shipping to Australia, and had the unit to me in less than 2 weeks with economy mail.

Rather than take photos as I usually do for such projects, I decided to edit together a crappy little video showing what I did, and so you could hear the difference yourself! I just can’t believe how whisper quiet this MacBook Pro is again, I literally cannot hear it unless I turn off every other appliance and peripheral in the room!

Apologies to my readers on BSD, alas because my current host’s bandwidth quota is almost used up, I’ve had to uploaded the video on YouTube.

For what seems like an age I’ve been receiving email newsletters from the so-called "Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation". They added me to their email list; I didn’t subscribe to them; and they don’t provide any way to opt out. Repeated messages to them to unsubscribe me from their list were always ignored.

ASIDE: I probably paid a price for replying, which verified my address and allowed them to continue spamming me. The power of hindsight!

Fortunately they finally slipped up and provided a link to a YouTube video they’re working on. From their latest email message that landed in my spam folder:

Dear Friends,

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation has a polished draft of our new “Tax Competition” video. Thanks to all the helpful comments we received on our “Corporate Tax Rate” video, I hope our new video is an even better product. It’s one minute shorter and was used a professional filming facility, but we’ve also worked on making the message more compelling.

I’m hoping you can be part of our final filter.

This was a slip up because YouTube allows publicly viewable comments that they can’t filter out. So I posted a quick response which I’m sure won’t get me off their spam list, but at least I can warn others… and plus it just feels good finally getting a message to them they can’t just block out!

These people subscribed me to their email newsletters without my permission and do not provide a way to opt out. I have to create a separate filter in all my email clients specially for their junk.

Even ignoring their flawed economic logic, the simple fact of the matter is they’re nothing but SPAMMERS. Don’t give them any of your time.

I’m not linking to their site or their video so I’m not giving them free Google juice, but I’m sure you could find them by doing a quick internet search… if you really wanted to find them!

Does this count as Schadenfreude? Is there such as thing as justified Schadenfreude? :-D

The beautiful Singapore Sunday afternoon episode!

Son of a diddley, long times and whatnot, moving back to Singapore, Murphey’s law, unpacking stuff, loving living in the tropics, Yakult, a heart attack inducing Singaporean taxi adventure, my two guilty signs of insanity, loud apartment security boom gates, going to Changi Airport at 0630 on a Sunday, the Commodore 64 Family Pack, borderline Twitter addiction, Twitting Felix Tanjono and Frank Nora, shoehorning Symbian, 3G wireless in Singapore, using m.twitter.com on a handphone, Keeping Up Appearances, Hyacinth Bucket, hand painted periwinkles, ratholes, review of Twitterrific and TwitWin, Chocolate Rain, awesome internet memes, time zones, some sort of Apple handphone, listening to podcasts and whatnot, neighbourhood insurance rates, Gold 90.5FM, Paul McCartney versus John Lennon, disowning, Starbucks, Dance Tonight on Memory Almost Full music review, singing for sheets, my Beatles realisation from Larry King Live, fortune telling on YouTube, having a brief booming voice, madams on a phone, voting for podcasts, J.D. Lasica and being a multitasking jaywalker.

There’s a bit of voice distortion in parts of this show. I’m obviously out of practice, the next one will be much better!

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 47:00 minutes, 21.60MiB

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