I guess this message should really have been tacked onto one of my previous Pownce shutdown posts (Goodbye Pownce, I Hardly Used Ya, Pownce export feature now available) but there you go. Preserved for posterity:
Sorry to hear things didn’t work out for the Pownce team. Good luck at Six Apart guys.
The Pownce export notice on the Settings page
Shortly after I blogged about the demise of Pownce (Goodbye Pownce, I Hardly Used Ya), I received an email in my inbox (as opposed to receiving an email in my dishwasher) from the Pownce folk that they're shutting down. I already knew about this obviously, but what I didn't know was that they were kind enough to offer an export feature so our data won't become dust in the wind when they finally go offline:
We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15, 2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new pro accounts.
To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export. Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.
Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownceOur thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,
The Pownce Crew
It's not as clear cut as they say; unlike del.icio.us which takes a few hours to generate an exported file, Pownce claims it will take several days to process. Still, once it's done they will send you an email along with a file which you can use to import into Movable Type, as well as a generic XML file which should be easy enough to import into most other blogging applications.
As I said previously, other than a handful of messages my Pownce posts were just automatic duplicates of posts I was sending to Twitter from my desktop client. Still, the electronic archaeologist in me likes the idea of having a backed up archive of my Pownce account for posterity once it goes offline. Who knows, perhaps my grandchildren will be doing a school report on Kevin Rose at some point in the distant future and I'll be able to provide them with material from the short lived, mythical Pownce site. Yes, you'd better believe it.
My Pownce profile with the closure notice
I admit to shamelessly copying the title for this post from Om Malik's latest blog post on GigaOm; it was just too clever to pass up!
It's official, Pownce has been bought by Six Apart and will promptly be shut down by the middle of this month. Pownce was another clone of the Twitter microblogging social network that had a few more extra collaborative features, but it just wasn't better or different enough to justify most people moving over.
I used Pownce (http://pownce.com/rubenerd/) for a period of time earlier this year, but only because my desktop Twitter client at the time also allowed you to simultaneously post to it. I thought the interface was a bit cleaner and more interesting, but at that point I already had several hundred followers on Twitter as well as all my friends. When I moved over to TweetDeck for my desktop Twittering (I've changed Twitter clients, again I ceased updating my Pownce profile.
For what it's worth, I was never quite comfortable with the idea of having all my shared media part of a closed or gated site like this; it's the same reason I don't put anything of value or substance on my Facebook profile either. A Twitter approach which keeps the underlying messaging infrastructure simple with links you post yourself to media you want to share makes much more sense, and is infinitely more flexible. Brightkite (which I reviewed back in October) is a perfect example of this kind of "ecosystem" approach where multiple sites and services are used together to create something wonderful.
I wonder how Jaiku is going under Google these days? I had a Jaiku profile (//rubenerd.com.jaiku.com) which also used to be updated with the same Twitter desktop client software I used in the past too, but since moving to TweetDeck which only posts to Twitter I let that wither as well. It makes you wonder whether Identi.ca stands any chance at all.
Wordle is a Java web application that intelligently generates gorgeous word clouds from text you provide, sans common English words. It can be an RSS or Atom feed from a website, a generic webpage or even just a slab of text you enter in yourself. It is a brilliant way to visualise what someone has been talking about.
My RSS feed for the Rubenerd Blog is configured to share the last 40 items, so this is a Wordle for these said items:
If you have never heard of Wordle before, I must warn you against using it. Not only is it terribly addictive but it will take up your entire afternoon. You'll even start creating Wordles for other people's sites; this Wordle is for my list of artists from my Music to Explore on Whole Wheat Radio:
There's a surprising lack of mobile phone reception in the middle of nowhere
Well here we are ladies, gentleman and everyone else; I never thought I would ever be writing a post to denote the celebration of this particular event, because to be honest I never thought I would get this far. My humble little weblog/blog/internet log/Chuck Peddle has reached 1,000 posts!
What I find hilarious about this is how disjointed all the material on this site really is. Every blogging expert will tell you that the secret to success is to find your niche topic that you're fascinated with and stick with it. They claim posts that have little to nothing to do with your core subject will just distract people and you'll lose readers. I've constantly flown right in the face of this inspired wisdom though, and aside from a few bouts of self doubt now and then, it hasn't bothered me.
RapidWeaver version from 2005
This blog for example was originally designed to be a hard hitting, gritty, unapologetic critique of high school life in Singapore which didn't really get anywhere before I started to focus mostly on computer software and the intertubes. Even then though I'd be pretty confident in saying that more than half of my posts have had nothing to do with software and the internet; for every practical and useful post on Mac and FreeBSD there's a post on aviation, or a silly quote, or politics, or music, or me coming to terms with my atheism, or amateur philosophy!
I guess it all comes down to what your motivation for blogging is in the first place. Since 2005 my motivation first and foremost has been to have some fun by talking about topics I'm really interested in, as well as posting reviews and how-to guides that not only help me remember things but that I hope is of at least passing interest and/or help to someone else down the road. In this light, it's been an unqualified success. Blogging has been such a pleasant distraction from ongoing family troubles, work and studying.
First WordPress version from January 2006
Aside from constantly rambling as I've made a habit of doing here, I'd also like to thank everyone for your readership over the years and I've appreciated all your emails and comments. I know there are millions upon millions of blogs on the intertubes that are far more interesting, inspiring, [succinct!] and valuable that most of the nonsense I write here, so I'm humbled that you value what I've written here enough to take the time to read mine. Thank you! :-D
Looking to the future, I do have some plans which I'm hoping to finally implement over these up and coming holidays. I know that despite my own preference for dark backgrounds with light text, I know that virtually all you guys prefer white backgrounds with darker text so I'll be implementing a revised colour scheme, with the option to toggle back to dark if you prefer. My efforts to move over to my own content management system from WordPress have been thwarted more times than I can count, but it is my goal to eventually move this over to said system, and on a domain name that actually makes sense. I have some HUGE ideas I can't wait to implement!
Family and friends photo from 2005. I'm the head peeking out in the centre, my mum is second from the right.
As for dedications, as with everything I post here I dedicate this 1000th post to the memory of my beautiful late mum Debra who endured an excruciating decade-long battle with cancer just so she could be alive long enough for both my sister and I to remember her. She shaped my views on virtually every major issue from music, art, books and food (Vegemite!) to ethics, politics, comedy and philosophy. While I could never dream to surpass her in anything other than perhaps in Objective C development, I hope I am at least doing her proud now. I love you mummy, rest in peace.
UPDATE: I may have spoken prematurely: they may still be supporting FOTF after all. Bummer. Will be keeping an eye on this.
After no doubt responding to a deluge of complaints from a lion's share of the Singaporean blogging community, DBS Bank seems to have backtracked on their pledge to automatically donate funds to the ultra-conservative Focus on the Family organisation whenever customers use their DBS credit cards at selected shopping centres this holiday season. If you browse to the exact page I referenced in my first post on the subject, you'll notice that any references to FOTF have been removed from their Christmas 2008 promotion.
I suspect DBS wanted to show some goodwill, but didn't realise what dark motives the organisation they decided to support really has. At least that's what I would like to think.
Regardless though, this is fantastic news and I suspect a real boon for the majority of DBS Bank's customers. I graciously applaud DBS's decision and have decided to keep my POSB and DBS accounts. I will advise my family and friends in Singapore that it is safe to use their DBS cards after all.
Xie xie! :)
Despite approaching the 1000 post mark here and having blogged for several years, I still feel tickled pink whenever I read a positive review of something I've written here, or talked about on the Rubenerd Show. It's a natural high :-).
Less than 24 hours after posting my grave concerns over the DBS Bank in Singapore supporting Focus on the Family automatically whenever one of their card holders spend a designated amount of money during the current festive season, I had my post linked to and commented on with some very warm and generous adjectives by Ovidia at the Writing-Yoga-Living blog in Singapore:
I found such a beautiful (rational, intelligent, calm) response to the DBS/FOTF mess up here that I almost feel bad for freaking out at DBS the way I did.
Her latest post about the DBS Focus on the Family is definitely worth looking into not only for the words above (ha!) but also because she takes a far more rational and probably more realistic view than I did in mine. As I wrote in my reply which I've posted below, I generally prefer to assume good intentions when such companies do things like this. As I said on my Google Reader profile page, I'm still young and naive enough to think there is a little good in everyone… well, almost everyone.
My overly verbose rambling reply I could probably have condensed down into a few short lines if I had the ability not to ramble for long periods of time without achieving anything of real value such as the case in this sentence you're reading right now:
I’ve got to be honest with you, this is only one of a handful of times any of my blog posts have been referred to as, beautiful, rational, intelligent and/or calm without the words “definitely not” before them! :)
To be serious though, I really am worried about this turn of events at DBS. When my family first moved to Singapore from Australia when I was still in primary school I got my first POSB account, and since then I’ve remained a loyal customer, even though I now live half the year in Adelaide. As you rightly say, if I had known that this was the attitude DBS wished to advertise with regards to social issues I would have jumped ship a while ago too.
As a spiritual atheist coming from a family of agnostics, I just don’t feel comfortable having any of our money sent to such an organisation because as I said, they do not represent our moral values in the slightest.
I try my best whenever writing complaint letters to always assume good intentions on the recipients part, perhaps even if deep down I fear they don’t have good intentions. I’m not sure whether or not this results in any more helpful responses than if I had the guts to send a more passionate message such as you did, but I guess I tend to be a soft touch when dealing with people in the real world!
Here’s hoping DBS will give us a happy Yule for us non-Christians, and a happy Christmas for more moderate Christians who are upset that FOTF’s more radical views do not represent their own, by stopping their support for the FOTF organisation. I’m not holding my breath though unfortunately.
Cheers,
Ruben
Rest in peace.
This afternoon my sister accidently knocked one of my 1TB external hard drives onto the hard concrete floor of our temporary house here in Adelaide (the drive I talked about in a post back in August). The drive is making some very scary noises and none of the indicator lights are working. I'm ready to call this a write off. Absolute catastrophic disaster.
I have backups of all the data except for some raw audio files for some of the latest Rubenerd Shows, which means I can't go back and recompress them at higher bitrates at a later date. For what it's worth, if she had knocked any of my drives onto the floor, I am somewhat relieved that it was this one.
One of my concerns is how I'm going to afford to urgently buy a new one so I can have backups of my other drives again. Say if Murphy's Law was to take effect and one of my other drives were to fail between now and when I get a replacement for this drive, I would lose months and months of work and study material. It would be catastrophic.
The other concern is that I do have backups of all this stuff, but the backups are in ultra compressed Rzip format to save space. The problem is, I don't have enough drive space amongst my other external hard drives or internally in this laptop to decompress them, at least I don't think I do. I have a long night ahead of me frantically rearranging files and deleting things in the hopes I can scrape up enough space to decompress these files.
I'm giving some serious consideration to buying a Blu Ray burner to backup static data, then using hard drives as regular backups. Blu Ray discs are far too clumsy and slow to use for day-to-day operations, but they might be invaluable for archival of material such as old Rubenerd Shows or camcorder videos. Having this data backed up on hard drives is a bit silly if I'm not changing them.
I'll also be rearranging my stuff on this table and stringing the cables off hooks underneath so that this kind of accident can't happen again.
So much for my really good mood I had less than a few hours ago. :'-(
A shamelessly recycled photo I took at the Boatdeck Cafe where I am now
It is a stunningly gorgeous afternoon here in Mawson Lakes in Adelaide, Australia. I do admit sheepishly to liking overcast days but even I can appreciate the beauty of a blue sky with a few cirrus clouds and a warm but not hot 24 degrees (75 Fahrenheit) At the risk of sounding even more cheesy than I already have done here, I've been walking around the shops and the park just for the sake of being out in this weather. I'm sitting at the Boatdeck Cafe across from the lake now having a coffee and looking out the window, iPhone in hand of course.
While we're on the subject, perhaps one of the things I like the most about Singapore is the weather; I know there are tons of horror stories about how stinking hot it is over there and how humid it is, but its the kind of place where you only need one wardrobe, where you don't ever shivver (unless your in frigid air conditioning!), where you can hop out of bed and have a shower without being scared of leaving a warm bed for the cold, where you can comfortably go for evening and late night walks and still wear light clothes. I guess I was acclimatised to such weather having lived there my whole life, but there you go.
I started this post with the intention of talking about living problems, but as usual a digression on my part morphed into two gigantic paragraphs. And as usual, I'm thinking of leaving it at that because my digression was more interesting than what I was going to talk about anyway.
Singapore and Australia are two of the most beautiful places on Earth, and I'm so pleased I'm spending my life living there. Now I just need some sort of wormhole between Singapore and Perth and Adelaide built I'll be happy.
A very high tech looking Star Trek wormhole ;)
If you galactic construction workers are listening, my dad would also like some other wormholes connecting Singapore to Ubud (the art, food and cultural precinct of Bali) and Singapore to Canada as well. He loves Montreal and Toronto, but would also like a wormhole directly to one of their national parks.
This would work wonders for me of course because then I could get an exit aperture somewhere along the said wormhole from Singapore to Canada that drops me off in Seoul/Incheon, then Kyoto, and further along to Talkeetna and to Denali. My dad wouldn't be able to exit the last two apertures because he's flagged on a US warning list now for his business trips to Iran, but that's the beauty of the wormhole system: he wouldn't need to! Not too hard to implement right? Genius!
I'm in a good mood today and thinking positively about the world, only happens when I wake up around 5% of the time, so I'm going to take advantage of it! That's right I'm getting up from this table to order an éclair. Sometimes I'm so wild and unpredictable I scare even myself!
Sent from my iPhone
I've been blogging about Senator Conroy's daft plan to filter and censor the Australian intertubes for a while now, and with every post I create I find several more great resources on the matter that I just have to let people know about. The laundry list of links was getting quite long for each post though, so I figured I'd create a separate entry listing everything I've found so far.
If you'd like to subscribe to all these links in your feed reader to keep your own, I've created an OPML feed you can import.
