Rubenerd

I've been direct messaged on Twitter a few times by people wanting to know how to set up Twhirl to send tweets to Jaiku properly. They've already got Pownce set up just fine with their username and password, but their messages aren't getting through to Jaiku.

The problem is, unlike the Pownce password field, Jaiku needs your API key, not your password. To find out what your API key is, login to Jaiku and click the API link at the bottom of the page. The page that appears will have your API key.

Enter your Jaiku username and the API key into the two text boxes in Twhirl, then enjoy having your tweets appearing on more than one site! This means you can keep in touch with people on three separate services, plus it makes you look like you're putting even more effort into your Web 8.0 life, or whatever version the 1337 media people have decided to assign to the intertubes now.

These are my profiles if you're interested on Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce.

Despite WordPress assigning this post as p1166, this is in fact the 747th post! Yes, it's time for another one of our really hated loved Useless Rubenerd Blog milestones!

Given the fact I'm in the 700+ range of posts, there are some posts which have the same number as famous Boeing airliners. Being a huge fan of commercial aviation, I figured I'd create some small posts about these planes. I missed the boat on the 707/720 and 727 (no, I'm sorry the 717 was the MD-95!) but I did do one on the Boeing 737.

The first things

The Boeing 747 is perhaps the most recognisable and well known commercial airliner (aside from the Concorde and the Spruce Goose!). It was the world’s first wide-bodied airliner and one of the earlist to use huge, high bypass turbofan engines which were much quieter and more fuel efficient than the slimmer but much more noisy and smoke producing turbojets of earlier planes.

Why the 747 has that "hump"

The placement of the cockpit on a deck above the primary seating area (on the "hump" as it were) was not done initially to allow for a second deck of passengers, but purely for helping with the transport of cargo.

Having the cockpit in a second level allowed the main nose area of the 747 to open up like a hinge: this meant large cargo containers could easily be loaded and offloaded. It also helped to protect the pilots from containers crushing them from behind if the plane went into free-fall or crashed. Ouch!

Future proofing for SSTs

The 747 was deliberately designed to be future proof for airlines that purchased them. At the time, Boeing theorised that most people would be flying in supersonic airliners from the 1970s onwards, so they designed the 747 with cargo friendly features so that passenger versions could easily be converted into freighters in the future. Therefore they could sell more planes to airlines with the assurance they’d still be useful when SSTs (super sonic transports, like Concorde) took over.

Of course, we all know that SSTs were a colossal flop, but at the time they seemed like the future.

Versions

The initial 747-100 (1970) was designed with a very small "hump" which was used as a passenger relaxation area and bar; according to Wikipedia Boeing simply didn’t know what to do with that small amount of space! The 747-200 (1971) replaced the lounge with regular passenger seating, and the 747SP (1976) (for special performance) was created with a shorter fuselage to increase range.

The 747-300 (1980) was the first of the next generation of 747s which had a SUD (stretched upper deck) as default which allowed for more seating on the top deck; it also had more efficient engines and a greater range. The 747-400 (1989) was radically redesigned with more advanced electronics, a glass cockpit (replacing mechanical dials with computer screens) and winglets to improve fuel efficiency and range.

The 747-8 is the intended successor expected to enter service in 2010 to compete with the Airbus A380. Given industry delays, we can expect it sometime in 2094.

Sharon777 on Twitter pointed out a possible problem with either the Camino browser or Google Reader. If you use Camino to browse someone's Google Reader Shared Items page (such as mine or Whole Wheat Radio's), an web feed notification icon doesn't appear in the address bar:

However if you click View Page Source in the View menu, you can clearly see the link to the web feed:

I can't really think why it shouldn't find it. Perhaps Camino has trouble with Atom feeds as opposed to RSS. When I have some more time I'll see if I can reproduce the error somehow.

I guess I've always been the type of person who likes collecting things, perhaps a bit too much for his own good.

Case in point I reinstalled Leopard on my MacBook Pro this evening so I could reformat the drive as case sensitive. As I was about to copy over my iTunes music library from one of my backup drives I noticed big the folder was, and how huge the Podcast folder had become!

I guess I've been downloading and listening to podcasts since early 2005, and they do build up! The question is though, what do I do with all of them? Some of the shows in this folder are no longer being produced or are even available anymore I think, and it'd be a shame to delete this collection after downloading for so long. In a nostalgic way it's fun to listen back to old shows to see what people thought was exciting a few years ago. Look, it's an iPod that plays video! Google will never buy YouTube! Ants on Mars! Irn-Bru in New York!

It also raises another question: if I don't delete this folder, how large will it be in 2009? 2010? 2020? Will I need to contemplate buying even more terabyte hard drives or invest in a Blu-Ray burner and stacks of double sided discs just for this stuff?

So much for podcasts being free right? :-).

Taken from the current chat page over on Whole Wheat Radio:

I’m so sorry, hugs from Elke and I. I’ve read what you posted on this site about your mum over the years, she sounded like a upstanding, warm, beautiful and very special person.

Having just lost our mummy recently we know probably the last thing you want to read is sad words, so all we’ll say is that we know you’ve damn well done your mum proud. Have a safe and speedy journey to Ohio, we’ll all keep the Wheaty fires burning until you get back.

Peace and love to you and your family James.

Love Ruben and Elke

I'm in the process of writing up a post on my university intranet blog about how I'm addicted to information and some of the tools I use to help me with it, but I figured this particular feature on this particular service was worthy of its own post. Brace yourself: I've finally made the switch from Bloglines to Google Reader! While I still think Bloglines has a marginally better interface, and the Bloglines Beta looks promising, I'm really sold on Google Reader's Shared Items system.

Shared Items allows you to show people exactly what you're reading. If you're reading a particular blog entry, news story or Chuck Norris joke in Google Reader and find it interesting, you can click the Share link in the post's footer and it magically appears on your Shared Items page which you can give people the link for. It's really very long and ugly, so I created a symlink to make it easier (especially for me!) to remember:

//rubenerd.com/googlereader/

One particularly important feature they added recently was the ability to change the style of your Shared Items page. Mine now includes a cute fish tank in the header, very useful.

Ever wanted your own custom designed neon tube sign?

Is it just me, or does that sign look like it was taken right out of a set from Happy Days? No wait, the face looks retro futuristic. Whatever it is, I want it!

ASIDE: Wish I had found that image less than 20 minutes ago, it would have perfect for a post on NFS time synchronising.

But what I'm really interested in is their colour glass wall cubes. Anyone interested in buying me two dozen?

They're creations of Jake Rosenfield of the Atlantic Neon Company based in Baltimore, Maryland in the States. He's also got some great photos of his workshop on his site.

This post was originally written for my university intranet blog this morning.

NTP stands for Ninja Tactical Peoples Network Time Protocol and is a system you can use to keep your system clock accurate by synchronizing it with a time server.

ASIDE: According to Wikipedia its one of the earliest internet protocols still being actively used, having been defined in the mid 1980s… only just a few years before I was come to think of it. Cool.

You'll probably want to use a time server that's geographically closer to you for better accuracy, but adding a few extra doesn't hurt and indeed the relevant NFS applications can determine which is more accurate. This site has a list of freely available time server addresses.

NTP on FreeBSD and NetBSD makes use of two related tools:

ntpdate

ntpdate updates your system clock from a specified server, and is generally set to run when you boot your computer. Therefore if you shutdown and start your machine frequently it will be run more often and can provide sufficient time synchronisation.

On either BSD append the following lines to /etc/rc.conf:
FreeBSD: ntpdate_enable="YES", ntpdate_flags="servers…"
NetBSD: ntpdate=YES, ntpdate_hosts="servers…"

ntpd

If your computer runs for longer that several days at a time, it's best to configure the ntpd daemon. It makes changes to your clock by comparing it's current value to a specified server or servers.

Open your /etc/rc.conf file again and append the following lines:
FreeBSD: ntpd_enable="YES"
NetBSD: ntpd=YES

Then create a new /etc/ntp.conf and fill in your server details, along with the location of a file to record the time drift that you know won't be overwritten or changed by another process, and if you prefer a line to prevent access to your NTP server from other computers:

server ntp.example.com prefer
server ntp.example.org
server ntp.example.net
driftfile /var/db/ntp.drift (not needed for > FreeBSD 6.2)
restrict default ignore

More information

For more information and configuration options, consult the ntpdate and ntpd manual pages, as well as the NTP chapters in the FreeBSD Handbook, and NetBSD Guide. BSD handbook documentation rocks!

AFTERWORD: If you really need to run a version of FreeBSD prior to 5.x, replace ntpd_enable with xntpd_enable.

I never tire of being told by Google that I'm a spam bot.

According to a press release from Vodafone, the iPhone will be made available for Aussies "later this year" along with a dozen or so other locations:

Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe. Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.

While I've been a very happy Aussie Vodafone customer for a while now, I'm just glad and infintely relieved that Telstra won't be the exclusive distributor! I know they'd figure out a way to stuff it up if given the chance.

If they sell them unlocked, I'll be able to use it in Singapore too :).