Rubenerd

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

Companion Website for Discrete Mathematics

(categories: discretemaths mathematics studies books textbooks)

Introduction to Logic

(categories: discretemaths logic mathematics studies)

PurpleMath Practical Algebra Lessons

(categories: studies mathematics algebra discretemaths)

Update 2015

I've given up trying to fix this, the show is now available at a new URL:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/rubenerd-show/id1003680071

Original Post

I've figured out why some iTunes users have been reporting problems with subscribing to the Rubenerd Show through the iTunes Store. I deleted my own subscription, searched for "Rubenerd Show" in the iTunes Store and resubscribed to only be given a small circle and an exclamation point.

When I right clicked and chose "Show Description" I was given the above dialog box. No wonder it isn't working, it's trying to access new shows from http:///show/feed/ for some reason!

I don't know how or why this happened. I'll be contacting Apple about this to see if I can get it pointing back to the proper URI again. I believe my good friend Felix Tanjono submitted my podcast to the iTunes Store back in 2005 back when Australia and Singapore didn't have access to it.

While I'm sorting this out you can still go to iTunes, choose the Advanced menu and click Subscribe to Podcast, then enter the following address as a stopgap:

http://showfeed.rubenerd.com/

Sorry about this, I don't know how this could have happened :-(.

We buy books because we believe we’re buying the time to read them.” – Warren Zevon.

And yet we rarely end up getting that time do we?

Thanks to Ralston Bowles via the Whole Wheat Radio Twitter feed for that eerily accurate quote.

Here's another Rubenerd Fun Fact for all you rabid Official Rubenerd Fun Fact fans. I know you're out there, I can hear you breathing. Oh wait, that's me.

Crunchy peanut butter makes for a poor, though crunchy, substitute for battery water.

Thank you.

You remember just in passing here I mentioned that I got a Unicomp buckling spring keyboard? I certainly didn't talk about it too much, only in… seven separate posts, eight including this one. I ended up getting the USB SpaceSaver buckling spring model and its been a real pleasure to use.

The problem with using said keyboard with my MacBook Pro though is IBM and Mac keyboards have their Alt/Option and Windows/Command keys in opposite places. Fortunately as of this morning I've got this all sorted out with software and some new keycaps from Unicomp.

Firstly, one of the great think about these robust keyboards is their keys can be easily popped off and rearranged, so it took no effort at all to take off the Alt and Windows keys on both sides of the spacebar and swap their positions. Of course all this does is change the lettering on the keys not the keystroke signals, but if you go to System Preferences, Keyboard and Mouse, Keyboard and click Modifier Keys, you can swap the Alt/Option and Windows/Command keys to match your new layout.

The second piece of the puzzle is purely cosmetic but as a guy like me with a restraining order against Microsoft Windows it felt a bit creepy using a Windows logo key instead of a Mac Command key. Fortunately I was able to contact the Unicomp sales department and for a few bucks they sent me some Option and Command keys to replace the Alt and Windows keys. They arrived this morning and I popped them into position, they look great!

They're not offered on their online store as an option so if you want them too you need to contact sales at pckeyboard dot com and quote them which model and colour keyboard you have so they can match the appropriate keys. Ask for their optional Mac keycaps.

Now I have quite possibly the best Mac keyboard you can possibly buy! I implore you, if you're a Mac user to contact Unicomp and get your hands on a keyboard of theirs with optional Mac keys. As I said before, it's akin to upgrading your bed from a sheet on the floor to a mattress, it makes that much of a difference.

It also makes it an even easier decision to pick up one of their keyboards because the Unicomp people themselves are down to earth, friendly and honest and as an international purchaser they went out of their way to find the cheapest and fastest shipping options and asked me what I wanted to do. They're good people who make great products, simple as that. And I wasn't even paid to say so, though I would gladly accept a discount on their future products if they felt so inclined :).

Not that I'm biased against car companies or anything, but I think this latest television advertisement from Holden (Australia's General Motors subsidiary) is pretty terrible, even by their own standards.

In the beginning we're introduced to their new car the Cruze, named as such because cars are automatically cooler if they use single words that aren't spelt properly. After showing us the bog standard four door design they advertise as being "small" along with plenty of stock footage of random people smiling, we're shown a person filling up their tank at a petrol station, then an image of a solar car similar to the one in the photo driving past while the voiceover says:

[The Cruze] uses less fuel, without feeling like you’re driving an experiment.

My jaw dropped.

Yes, heaven forbid a car manufacturer — who's parent's company overseas is declaring bankruptcy because of their failure to satisfy the market — "experiment" with new technologies using alternative sources of energy instead of creating yet another petrol internal combustion engine driven machine! I didn't think it would be possible for a car company to present environmental sensitivity and alternative energy as negatives, but Holden pulled it off.

Despite what Holden is saying in this advertisement, we do need car manufacturers which are forward thinking enough to experiment and to see the impact of their products in the medium to long term rather than just trying to repackage yesterday's technology and ideas into new bodywork and pass it off as real innovation.

Their dismissal of these things pretty much ensures that if I ever need to buy a car in the future, it ain't going to be a Holden. As I say so often about Microsoft for example, I'm sure they have some extraordinarily talented people working for them, I find it quite staggering that this is the best they can do. It may be a backhanded compliment, but what do they say about real friends telling you the truth instead of sucking up by agreeing with everything you say and do?

Excuse me, I'm off for a nice long walk.

If you thought weirdness with regards to this blog was limited to my obsession with grilled cheese sandwiches and the mentioning of Fun Facts which you don't think are terribly fun given your rather stern nature and lack of patience for nonsensical silliness, here's something weird that for once isn't the direct result of my brain.

In the screenshot above can you make out the single pixel line that's been shifted in this particular part of the screen? This is the second time in as many days that my desktop background has been distorted exactly like this.

Back in 1997 my first desktop started exhibiting similar behaviour and we predicted the graphics card was on it's way out. Several weeks later we were proved right. Here's hoping this is just a random software glitch, yeesh!

Podcast: Play in new window · Download

19:18 – 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!

Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.