Rubenerd

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15:00 – Ruben (Mac OS X and NetBSD user!) tries to objectively review Microsoft's latest desktop operating system: Windows Vista. He asks: Will it help you to be more productive? Has the Aero Glass interface been well executed? How much did Microsoft have on it's plate? Are the new features necessary? Are there any areas they've neglected? Can their market share save them? Microsoft has a lot of talented people, but is it really fully tapping their creativity? And a Windows XP security quote!

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

If you haven't seen it yet, the PodShow website is a classic example of an abysmally designed website; the pages look cheap and hacked together, half the time the podcasts themselves don't work in iTunes or Juice Receiver and just finding the audio files themselves to download is a royal pain in the backside.

My favourite tech podcast, the Gillmor Gang uses PodShow, I liked it much better when they were on IT Conversations :(

It's good to know I'm not the only person who loathes PodShow though, according to some of the comments on the Gillmor Gang's page (directed at the site, not the show):

How about the decision to place the show in the podshow network? Could there be a more loathsome venue? Could the web site be any more hideous without being completely unusable?

Finally found out how to get the damn show into itunes….what a drama that was….who designed this podshow ui, should be shot.

podcast, podcasting, podshow, newtimeradio

Actually it was released on the 04th of this month, but I thought I should post anyway!

NetBSD has always been my favourite BSD release because of it's simple text based installer, it's clean and uncluttered design, the fact I can download the whole thing in just over 200MB, and that it runs on anything… including toasters ;).

From the official press release:

The NetBSD release engineering team has announced that the NetBSD 3.1 and 3.0.2 releases are now available. NetBSD 3.1 contains many bugfixes, security updates, new drivers and new features like support for Xen3 DomU

I run NetBSD on my retro c.1997 Pentium MMX machine, works like a champ.

netbsd, bsd, netbsd 3, netbsd 3.1

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10:00 – Laughing like Sandra Bullock, evil Internet Explorer (holding back progress, getting sites working), weird dream review (shopping centre in Singapore, machine guns, Harrison Ford, primary school) and these things I believe!

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

Ruben picks apart the useless spam he receives from the spamming spammers who spam him with their spammingly spammish spam. For all the spam he has picked apart, visit the spam category… sounds like a Monty Python routine.

Congratulations for becoming one of the few lucky winners.

With your permission, your e-mail will also be included in the next
sweepstake of 5Million.

You must claim your prize: 1,000,000.00 not later than 14-days from the
moment you receive this e-mail.
In order to avoid unnecessary delays with your claim from the bank. please
contact them immediately,
and quote your winning and personal information to the Bank in all your
correspondence with the paying bank.

Furnish them with the following informations:
(i). your name(s),
(ii) Your telephone and fax numbers
(iii) Your contact address
(iv) Your winning information.

See it sounds all good, but my bullshit detector is just going crazy. And why would I give personal details to someone that I have never met, have never been in contact with or even know exists?

With this sort of spam I like to reply using a different address and play along with them for fun until they ask for money, then I start making excuses about how "oh, to do a money transfer I need you to send money first… or why can't you just use some of my winnings to pay for it first?". That usually lets them know I'm onto their B.S., and no I'm not referring to a Bachellor of Science (which I'm currently doing myself).

weirdness, weird, stupid, spam, junk email, junk mail

Song Playing: Island Life, Michael Franks

Isn't it amazing with the power of computers and the web that you can do so much stuff that reaches so many people without leaving your chair? Man I love the internet so much!

Spent the whole day today again with my mum, we both just sat at our laptops typing away, well at least I was typing away. She was in so much pain this afternoon I just wanted to stay in her company and give her someone to talk to. She spends virtually her whole life now just sitting in her room reading the paper and sipping tea (very civilised I can assure you!) but nothing beats human interaction.

With it being 01:30am it is fairly unlikely I'll have the Rubenerd Shows for today [and yesterday] up today, and I apolgise again.

I want to thank the awesome people chatting on the Rubenerd Forum who have given my mum and I their best wishes and understanding. If only everyone were as kind.

Oh I forgot the biggest news of all! As you probably already know if you read this blog or listen to the show I live with my family in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia because of my dad's work. We lived in Singapore for a long time before then and I think we all think of there as home more than anywhere else, despite the fact we're Australian (well technically my dad was born in Germany, but let's not get technical).

Anyway it seems after less than 2 years here in KL my dad's company is undergoing restructuring and may require us to move to Singapore again! In a way I'm a bit sad knowing I'll be leaving a place I only just started getting to know, but at the same time most of my friends live in Singapore

Signing out,
Ruben

diary, log, ruben schade

Originally posted on the Rubenerd Forum

Well it's almost 04:30am here in KL, and I figured out what the darned problem was in Internet Explorer!

Brace yourselves! It was… a <div> tag that wasn't closed! That's it! I reinstalled the database, I uploaded all the server files twice, I rewrote all the CSS, and it was because I forgot to close a <div> tag. AAARGH! Firefox must have been more forgiving when it encountered my crappy code extensions; in any event for once it wasn't Internet Explorer's fault, it was entirely my own!

Tinkering around though with this Vanilla Forum software though I learned a lot, so it wasn't a complete waste. I figured out how to use the language customisation features, so now we can all bask in the glory that is Aussie/British spelling! I'm so old fashioned :wink:.

I also changed the theme to one that takes up much less screen space.

Let me all know what you think and if you have any further problems. It was exhausting, but in a way I'm glad it happened, I've learned so much about Internet Explorer CSS hacks, and how to customise Vanilla Forum software.

Cheers,
Ruben

bbs, web forum, vanilla forum, lussumo

As some of my internet friends on the Rubenerd Forum pointed out and as I talked about on Rubenerd Show 179 (Fri 17/Nov/2006) there have been some problems with viewing the Rubenerd Show, Rubenerd Blog and Rubenerd Forum with Internet Explorer. I really don't have an excuse other than I use Mac OS X without Interent Explorer and I forgot to even test the sites in it. Big whoops!

While I encourage people to try alternative web browsers such as Firefox, Flock, Camino and Konqueror, I understand some people still have to use Internet Explorer in the workplace where they don't have a choice, and I apologise for leaving you out.

So I've spent today documenting and fixing all the rendering problems on the Rubenerd sites and have fixed all the bugs that I can see that prevented the site looking as it does in other browsers in IE:

Rubenerd Show: removed weird green bar from header, fixed CSS indentation, adjusted footer link spacing to prevent weird wrapping, reset search box size, fixed article photo gallery alignment

Rubenerd Blog: removed weird green bar from header, fixed CSS indentation, adjusted footer link spacing to prevent weird wrapping, rewrote CSS for sidebar so it actually appears on the side, adjusted line height for tag cloud

Rubenerd Forum: updated Vanilla Forum software to 1.0.1 which fixed several bugs

Unfortunately the forum still looks like rubbish in Internet Explorer for some unknown reason, even with the latest update and the latest default theme! I've registered with the Vanilla site so I'll be posting a question regarding this and will try to fix this tomorrow. For now it's 3:00 in the morning so I really need some sleep!

If you can see any further problems let me know by posting a comment here or creating a new thread on the Rubenerd Forum. In particular I'd like to really thank my old room mate enaurore (aka Kevin), surrealist (aka Matt) and Mr Bunny (aka Dave) for bringing my attention to these issues.

Cheers,
Ruben

internet explorer, rubenerd show, rubenerd blog, rubenerd forum, internet explorer rendering issues

The Sydney Morning Herald website is reporting that YouTube has been flooded with videos depicting young people smoking. While there appears to be no direct evidence that these videos have been posted by tobacco companies, the speculation is there.

IS THIS the last frontier in tobacco marketing or simply a global stage for the look-at-me generation?
Thousands of videos of sexy, smoking teens are appearing on the internet phenomenon YouTube, possibly being posted by tobacco manufacturers to recruit the next generation of smokers.

Quite frankly I don't have a problem with cigarette advertising. The way I see it, with all the information and evidence available thesedays about how dangerous smoking is, if you're stupid enough to start the habit you deserve all the medical consequences. I like to think of it as natural selection at work ;). The only thing I resent is when our tax dollars have to pay for these people's self inflicted damage in hospitals.

Hey I just got the pun too: YouTube… cigarettes… cigarettes are tubes! Just like the internet ;).

tobacco, tobacco advertising, cigarettes, cigarette advertising, smoking, health

I really like tag clouds. On my del.icio.us account I always use the built in tag cloud option, and now I've got around to implementing one on the Rubenerd Blog.

Why do I like tag clouds / tag heatmaps? Well aside from the obvious reason that they allow you to view categories or tags based on how many pages they contain or have been tagged with, I like them simply because they take up less space than a static list, and they just look more stylish. Plus they're all Web 2.0-ish, which we all know must mean they're cool.

Without really knowing it, ever since I started this blog I've really used the categories more as tags, so displaying them in a cloud now seems to be the natural progression of this. Some people like creating sub categories and using a dedicated tag extension as something extra, but personally I feel that using WordPress's built in category feature just makes more sense… and it's a lot less effort ;). The advantage we WordPress people have is that Technorati actually recognise WordPress categories and use them as tags anyway which is even more convenient!

I'm using the excellent Category Tagging Plugin which, as the name implies, makes your WordPress categories look and function as tags. The only customisation I made was to change the list elements to be inline in the site's CSS instead of having them in a bulleted list to make it look more "cloudy". Michael Woehrer has done a great job on this plugin, and the PHP file itself has very clean and easy to read structure which makes it perfect for customisation. Plus he has a German last name just like me, so you know his stuff has to be good :D.

I'm working this weekend to make the Rubenerd Show, the Rubenerd Blog and Rubenerd Forum working correctly in Internet Explorer and thought I'd implement this in the process. If you want let me know what you think and if you really like or hate it!

Cheers,
Ruben

wordpress, wordpress plugins, wordpress categories as tags, wordpress tags, wordpress categories, tags, tagging, tagclouds, tag heatmaps, tag clouds, technorati, php, category tagging plugin, michael woehrer