Rubenerd

And now for something to do with computer software. If you want the best hot cross buns in Australia, you need to be in Adelaide people!

AUSTRALIA loves Nick and Margaret Davey’s buns. The proprietors of Glenelg’s Orange Spot Bakery have snatched the coveted national title of Best Hot Cross Buns in Australia.

According to the article, they almost didn’t make it to the competition in Melbourne because they upstaged the grub on their plane… take that airline food!

"They were still hot, and the smell just filled the cabin."

"Everyone wanted them – stuff the airline food, they said."

And what was their secret?

Nick said the secret was to use local produce.

"We use good quality flour and Australian fruit. I’m convinced it’s the way to go."

People sometimes call me a local fruit. I tell them I’m not really local, I was born in Sydney but lived in Singapore most of my life. Flaw in their logic you see.

It would bore you to tears if I were to relay all the gritty details, but suffice to say when I took my extended leave of absence to be with my mum before she passed on it messed up my university timetable because the degree I started changed during the time I was away. I was able to start studying again, but there was lots of ambiguity and confusion as to what I was supposed to be doing.

One quick session at the Student Advisory Centre at the Mawson Lakes campus this morning fixed it all right up. I sat down with one of the friendly councillers who drafted a new study plan and timetable, explained to me in detail what the new courses are and how they’re structured, and even gave me some help and advice on the Federal government study payment scheme whatnot. I now know what I’m doing again.

I’m all for flexibility but there’s some security and comfort in knowing that things have been taken care of and something is definitive. I’ve been living week by week with far too many variables, health scares and negative experiences over my now 23 year life that something stable and set in stone is refreshingly consoling, if that makes any sense.

For the first time since 2006 I have a 100% clear and structured path to achieve my study goals. I’m not sure what "study goals" means, but it sounded fancy. No matter what it is, my life is finally back on track. Look out world, Ruben Schade is back!

ASIDE: I’d cite the "Shady’s back" lines from an Eminem song, but I respect you, dear reader, too much to subject you to it.

For those of you following my adventures with the WordPress WXR/RSS export feature (here, here, here and here), I finally figured out why the resulting file was truncated and only contained posts up to October last year. It’s so simple I’m kicking myself for not figuring it out sooner: PHP on my webhost was configured to only allow a maximum file size of 4MiB.

As I’ve said before I’m not a PHP guy so I had to do a bit of digging, but it turns out the most reliable way to increase allowed file sizes if you don’t have access to your php.ini file (usually this is the case) is to add the following line to your root .htaccess file:

php_value memory_limit 32M

You might have to do some trial and error to find a size value that works. If in doubt, contact your webhost.

I think the people at WordPress ought to include a simple warning on the Export page of people’s blogs informing them of the file size limitation on their web servers, or barring that issue an error if it runs out of space with a link to a page explaining how to increase available file sizes instead of cheerfully and misleadingly informing users the export is finished. I imagine there are plenty of people who’ve been caught out by this, some of whom I’m sure aren’t web developers and wouldn’t know where to even start looking to solve this.

You probably all know by now I’m an unabashed greenie, but I have to admit things like this scare me more than nukes. I worry for each of these exposed plots there are plenty more going under the radar; and China certainly isn’t the only country guilty of it!

Cold War 2.0?

Clipmarked from news.com.au:

CHINESE spies have directly targeted Kevin Rudd, repeatedly attempting to infiltrate prime ministerial email and mobile phone communications.

The Australian newspaper reports that Mr Rudd and his travelling party were under constant cyber attack during his latest trip to China, in August last year, with authorities trying to access the laptop computers and mobile phones used by the Australians.

The blatant nature of Beijing’s electronic espionage is understood to have alarmed the Rudd Government and led to a further tightening of communications security procedures for senior government figures travelling to China.

Screenshot of the Holden website if you use NoScript or have JavaScript disabled. They need JS even to load their page in the first place!?

I’ve been quoting a lot of news stories on this blog over the last few days instead of creating posts of my own, but that’s only because there’s been so much I want to comment on. You’ll have to indulge me one last time because this one is a biggie.

Reading the Adelaide Now website (the online version of the local newspaper) this morning over coffee (well not literally, I imagine there would have been more than a few sparks flying out of this laptop if I did) I came across an article discussing the future of Holden, Australia’s local GM vehicle brand:

Holden halves production at its Elizabeth plant in Adelaide, SA
April 03, 2009 09:25am

The problem is, Holden (and GM) are both suffering not only because of the current financial mess, but because for years they’ve been ignoring the needs of their customers, to the detriment of their hard working employees who now work for companies that can’t keep it together. Instead of funding and building more fuel efficient cars when the public demanded them, Holden came out with the new Commodore which is heavier and burns more petrol than the previous generation from a few years ago. This is particularly ironic given the Commodore was originally designed to meet the demand for smaller cars during the oil shocks of the 1970s.

The huge Holden Commodore Omega, photo by User:OSX.

Unlike some people I don’t think it’s entirely the fault of car companies that we’re in this mess, government has been involved too. According to Wikipedia (which means it must be true, right?) and several of my university textbooks, after World War II Europe and Japan sought to rebuild their infrastructure with an emphasis on rail because they saw it as the most efficient way to move large numbers of people to multiple population centres. Australia and the United States shunned this by instead investing in airports and highway systems which we’re living with now. Car companies did pay off governments to get this privileged position, but they could have only done that with a complicit government. It’s a shame.

In the time I’ve been writing this the page refreshed and an update has been posted:

"UPDATE: Holden says its move to slash production and shifts at Elizabeth is an effort to keep the staff it wants to build a new small four-cylinder car next year."

This changes the game somewhat, but I’m worried it’s too little, too late. Other car companies figured out people needed and wanted cars like this years ago already. Developing a new car isn’t a simple or fast thing to do, in the meantime they still have to sell their gigantic Commodores. I doubt this will change much.

Welcome to my new blog powered by Movable Type. This is the first post on my blog and was created for me automatically when I finished the installation process. But that is ok, because I will soon be creating posts of my own!

UPDATE: Yes, this was an April Fools joke!

I’ve become a "fan" of conservative Aussie opposition leader Malcom Turnbull on Facebook. This photo of him presenting behind a Microsoft sign that says Innovation, Community, Trust and Security in Canberra cinched it for me. Microsoft especially for me has always been about Trust and Security, but I wish they could have made room for Modest and Humble too.

Microsoft and The Coalition [Wikipedia]… Australia needs both and needs both now!

Screenshot from Smashing Magazine

UPDATE: Yes, this was an April Fools joke!

Straight from the Slashdotted mouth:

KermodeBear writes in to note that according to Smashing Magazine, the newest version of Internet Explorer, codenamed "Eagle Eyes," supports Firefox plugins, the Gecko and Webkit rendering engines, and has scored a 71 / 100 on the Acid3 test. The article is pretty gee-whiz, and I don’t entirely believe the claims that IE’s JavaScript performance will trounce the others. (And note that the current Firefox, 3.0.8, scores 71 on Acid3, and Safari 3.1.2 hits 75.) No definitive date from Microsoft, but "sources" say that an IE 8.1 beta will be released in the summer.

I applaud Microsoft’s resolve to look to the needs of their customers instead of themselves for the first time in a long, long time. Heck, I may start taking them seriously again myself. This is a great day for the interwebs.

I’d encourage you to read the entire article from Smashing Magazine, Microsoft is adding many more features too; one of my favourites is the ability to skin an entire website if you don’t like the current theme of a site you’re browsing, and the ability to decompile code on the fly. I’d expect the latter to be quite CPU intensive though, better leave that for the MacBook Pro with VMware Fusion and not my Windows 2000 machine.

"I wholeheartedly endorse this product, decision, service, building or idea."

UPDATE: Yes, this was an April Fools joke!

Given Last.fm’s recent commercialisation where they now force listeners from outside the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany to pay a subscription fee to listen to what was previously free music, it has got me thinking about independent singer songwriters. If they release their content for free in the hopes you’ll love their material and subsequently attend their concerts and buy their music… you know, promotion… then what right does Last.fm have to charge people to hear it?

Therefore Jim Kloss has decided to fight fire with fire, and has asked me to relay the following information. He has decided to inform the community through Google Reader that Whole Wheat Radio, the bastion of independent music online will soon become become a commercial paid site.

This would be achieved through phases in order not to alienate existing users and the artists who bought into the notion that they’re music was being sent to a non profit website that was designed to promote them and their cause instead of generate large volumes of cash for it’s proprietors and investors.

These are suggestions interim steps for Whole Wheat Radio’s commercialisation:

1. Remove any references to the Core Mission and make the chat page the main page for the site. This will allow WWR to leverage the power of social networking of the community, which is our key demographic and the largest potential source of revenue. Changing the Core Mission isn’t revisionist history because we don’t call it that.

2. Every user page on the WWR wiki will be donned with a large, non-removable box indicating what compulsory paid subscription rate they’ve chosen. This will help to guilt trip and shame people into paying more.

3. Make about 200px of room above the content for each page for banner advertisements. Each advertisement could be delivered by Google AdSense which would intelligently pick up on the text of the individual wiki page and return advertisements that are relevant and interesting to all Whole Wheat Radio listeners. For doing so, Jim Kloss would receive 0.1% of the profits from Google as a referral.

4. Monatise the audio streams themselves to deliver content that will enrich listeners lives and enhance their audio experience. Plugging into Google AdSense, the EJs will be programmed to to download the lyrics to the currently playing song from the song’s wiki page and read five to ten text advertisements after each song. Because these advertisements are relevant to the songs, listeners will appreciate them.

5. Start generating profits from the artists themselves. By banning user generated playlists and shows artists could compete for airtime by using an auction system plugged into the master WWR donation PayPal account of which PayPal would take a 92% cut of as a service fee. By rigging the auction system, Jim could still choose what songs are played but give the impression the music is being legitimately chosen by the artists.

6. Once WWR has generated large sums of cash, Jim Kloss will insure and subsequently burn down the Wheat Palace and move the WWR headquarters to Los Angeles, California to be closer to the commercial music companies.

7. Jim will then abuse his position as a trusted friend of the independent musicians to start advising them to sign with one of the major record labels and subsequently become a part of the RIAA. The record labels and the RIAA have consistently shown through their fair and reasonable music monopoly that lawsuits and their own compelling products can also generate revenue above and beyond traditional, old fashioned promotional avenues like independent music websites. As a bonus, WWR would get a commission from these record labels.

8. Once Jim Kloss has become a social networking guru, he will advise people of such by appending social-networking-guru to every profile page on every website and will proceed to charge people $10,000 per speaking appearance.

9. At this point WWR will become a publicly traded company with the stated purpose of generating enough capital to expanding their operations, when in fact they’re really setting themselves up to be bought. Once majority control is relinquished, WWR will be purchased by News Corporation or Microsoft for a substantial profit and Jim Kloss will retire to a tropical island in the Caribbean or South Pacific, secure in the knowledge that his website and actions have helped independent musicians around the world.

The Whole Wheat Radio board of directors wishes to advise that your reading of this blog post constitutes a silent, legally binding agreement in which you agree with everything that has been said to the extent that if you’re asked to provide testimony in a court of law you will be obligated to say as much.

This is the logo for phpMyAdmin right? :). Photo by wileypics on Flickr

UPDATE: This was another blog post I thought I’d published, but for some reason it was only saved as a draft, whoops! The original timestamp was for 2009.03.24

Reading back some comments I’ve been receiving from people regarding my long string of WordPress WXR/RSS Export posts, it seems I didn’t explain what I’m trying to do very well.

The problem is, I have three separate blogs and a podcast which I’m trying to merge together into one blog (but with separate categories etc) to make it easier to maintain it all. To do this, I obviously need to export the posts from all these WordPress installations and import them into the new site.

Along with more traditional MySQL table exporting, WordPress has an Export Posts feature which creates a single "WordPress eXtended RSS" WXR file which you can import into another blog (I think even Movable Type supports these now). The advantage of using WXR files instead of exporting SQL files is that it’s easier for WordPress to merge multiple sources of posts because fields like the post ID are created as they’re being imported. As I understand it with WordPress tables, if you tried to import two sets of tables from two separate databases into one, there might be overlaps and clashes and it could get messy. Or if it is possible, it certainly wouldn’t be as easy or straightforward.

Anyway, it turns out that while the WordPress Export feature works fine on three of my WordPress installations, on this blog it seems to fail at a seemingly random point in October last year, and I haven’t been able to figure out what’s going on.

I’ve been thinking perhaps the key is to export a SQL file from PhpMyAdmin from this blog, import it into my new meta blog, then use WordPress to import the WXR files generated from the other sites. That way it doesn’t matter that WXR doesn’t seem to work here.

I haven’t bothered learning too much about the inner workings of WordPress or it’s database because I’ve been intending to move off it for quite some time, but studies and work keep getting in the way! WordPress is really easy to use, but it’s really kludgy in some areas and it’s security record is less than stellar. I use MediaWiki for many projects, but it would be overkill for a site like this.

Clear as mud!