Rubenerd

Having just talked about him yesterday (Keith Olbermann’s Countdown as a podcast), I just found out through his show's site you can buy a Keith Olbermann bobblehead complete with a little desk!

Keith Olbermann Bobblehead — Now you can sit down with your favorite MSNBC personality, Keith Olbermann. This new bobblehead features the talk show host seated at his Countdown desk. You’ll have a front row seat for all the action.

I reckon he'd go great with my anime figures, they could all set up some sort of weird newsroom ^_^. If anyone wants to buy me one, let me know and I'll forward you my address. Don't all rush to offer at once!

I've started using TextMate more on my Macs for editing code because It Just Works™ and has some really useful features. It just has one nagging little problem to do with files; every single time I create a file outside a project and go to save it, the Save As dialog box ignores where other open files are located and defaults to the root of my primary hard drive to save the file. Every. Single. Time!

I don't want to have to create projects for each set of files that I'm working on once and forgetting about, is there any way to modify this default behavior? Even having it default to my home directory would be a start.

To celebrate getting over my bad flu thingy I baked a tiny loaf of bread for dinner from scratch to have with jam. The crust was hollow in some places, cracked on the bottom (tee hee) and slightly burnt on one side, but it was really scrummy and just what I needed. :)

It's only the second time I've baked bread, I'm learning new things each time I try. More than anything it helped me to forget all my troubles while I concentrated on it which was also just what I needed.

Drew Carey: Okay let’s play a game of Worst Dating Service Videos or Hats. Each of you come and get a box of hats, and the aim of the game is to come up with as many ideas for the world’s worst dating service videos by wearing the hats in the boxes!

Greg Proops: Hi, I’m Colin Mockery…

Ever since I saw his thorough, well constructed, passionate and fast paced rebuttal of Bill O'Reilly's Malmedy massacre faux pas and subsequent refusal to apologise, I've been a bit of a Keith Olbermann fan. His Countdown programme focuses on five American news stories from that day along with the reoccurring Worst Person in The World and other tongue in cheek segments.

My only problem was I could only watch snippets of his shows through YouTube because MSNBC doesn't have international affiliates in Australia or Singapore (though Bill O'Reilly can be watched in both, crap). Well it turns out for at least several months now you've been able to subscribe to the official Countdown podcast (RSS, iTunes) which lets you download full length, unedited shows without the TV advertising!

Two things to watch out for: firstly they're pretty hefty downloads at 200MiB+, and unlike most podcasts only the latest episode is available from the feed at a time, meaning if you miss out a day you miss out full stop. I don't have the time to watch every episode anyway, but if you intend to watch each one make sure you configure your podcast client to fetch new shows every day.

I often don't know many of the stories he discusses given I'm not in the US so I fast forward some segments, but there's enough my foreign brain can glean to make it a really worthwhile show to check out how my American friends are doing. Watch that along with your Daily Show and The Colbert Report and in American parlance you can turn into an evil Commie Liberal Monster!

I've been told Rachel Maddow is also worthwhile watching, but at this rate I think I've got an ample supply of American political programming!

Having written about less than nice people coming to the door in the past asking for donations for various different things (Not so pleasant World Vision encounter), I had to just relay two small events that happened this morning that help to put things into perspective and show that it is possible to help your cause without being pushy.

Firstly, I went to the supermarket to get some milk for cereal quite early and walked past a guy as I walked in who was sitting at a small table with a donation tin for the Cancer and Bowel Research Trust. I didn't have any coins and was dreading those few seconds walking past him, but all he did was give me a smile. I bought the milk, walked back out of the supermarket and put all the change I got into his tin, which got me another smile. That's it, he didn't need to lunge out at me from behind a pillar or stalk me as I walked along, he was just a nice human being who made me want to give his cause money instead of feeling obligated to.

Second time was when I was sitting back at home programming before heading out for coffee. I heard a light tapping on the door which at first I thought was someone's pet it was so quiet! Turns out it was someone else asking for money, this time for an animal shelter. Rather than trying to guilt trip me into showing a ton of money or by singing me up into a contract with all these dubious clauses, he just another tin and again I was more than happy to reach for our coin jar and throw in a couple of bucks. He tipped his hat and moved on.

Folks, there are many ways you can do fund raising as you walk around with your tin collecting change, but the best way to do it is to not be confrontational. It's not hard, and it might end up making you more money!

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Tastyness :)

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.