Rubenerd

How many icons do you have on your desktop right now? On my MacBook Pro I've counted 89, not including my two mounted hard disks! Someone needs a cleanout :(

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.

Special Offer!

Adobe Video Collection
Adobe Premierer 1.5 Professional
Adobe After Effects 6.5 Professional
Adobe Audition 1.5
Adobe Encore DVD 1.5
$149.95

Microsoft 2 in 1
MS Windows XP Pro
MS Office 2003 Pro
$99.95

Microsoft + Adobe 3 in 1
MS Windows XP Prom
MS Office 2003 Pro
Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional

I was unaware of the existence of Adobe "Premierer" or Windows XP "Prom"… believe me my prom/formal was bad enough, don't remind me!

If you want to be taken seriously, for Pete's sake do a spell check! We're not talking rocket science!

Afterthought: I was going to also say something cynical about how Windows and Office are being offered for $99.95 when FreeBSD + OpenOffice is $0.00 but I'll let it slide for now ;).

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.

Got this message from eBay a few days ago:

Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay.

Come on peoples, I'm in Australia right now (aka: Southern Hemisphere) where it is the dead of winter! And it wouldn't take much effort to see that I'm registered with eBay Australia!

Not that I can stop this torrent of "official" spam from eBay, I've visited ebay.com.au and "unreigistered" four times already without any success. Cheapskates.

Interesting look into the history and evolution of the RSS XML thingy and all the different incompatible "standards". And I thought there was just RDF, RSS 0.9x, RSS 1.0 and RSS 2.0!

From the site:

I have often stated (1, 2, 3) that there are 7 different and incompatible versions of RSS. This was based on an embarassingly simple formula: I counted the version numbers in use (0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 1.0, and 2.0) and came up with the number 7. But recently some people have taken to claiming that there are not 7 versions (despite obvious evidence to the contrary), and even if there are, that they are somehow compatible with each other so it doesn’t really matter. So I dug a little further to precisely document the incompatible changes in each version of RSS.

I would like to publicly apologize for my previous misstatements. There are not 7 different and incompatible versions of RSS; there are 9.

The Myth of RSS Compatibility

Speaking of Dave Winer, I just registered for my own OPML.org account :)

Thanks for signing up!

The first thing to do is to save a copy of this email for future reference. It’s important, without this password you may not be able to login next time you visit, and you may not be able to access information that we’re storing for you on our server.

Next time you visit the site, and you want to Login, you can go to this page and enter your email address and password:

http://www.opml.org/member/login

When you click on OK, the server will store a cookie on your computer, allowing you to access all of our services. As long as you use the same computer, you won’t have to manually enter the password again.

Again, thanks for signing up!

It's so refreshing to get a more personal conformation email that isn't just "You registered as XYZ. Please confirm."

I'm in the process of downloading the Mac OS X version of the OPML Outliner, it's going to be very interesting.

Aside from the fact I can't stand not being able to even use a simple SSH session with my Servage account, it seems that Servage and WordPress just don't get along. Reading is fine, but I'd say when I create a new post, WITHOUT FAIL every time it doesn't give me a confirmation message etc, it just throws me an error:

ERROR

The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL: //rubenerd.com/wp-admin/post.php

The following error was encountered:

Zero Sized Reply

So I roll my eyes each time, close that tab in Camino and, lo and behold, the post has been published.

Now I know it isn't just a corrupt installation or files, because I have three WordPress blogs running on Servage, and they ALL have this problem, not to mention the Rubenerd Forum throws a Zero Size Reply error occasionally too.

Anyone else on Servage have this stupid problem?

I've never noticed this before, but looking for some information on OPML I came across Dave Winer's homepage on Scripting.com, and he looks like my dad!

.

Damn it, now I can't find a picture of my dad
. Just imagine until I can post an image.

David Winer on Scripting.com

Found this site when I was searching for alterative energy sources (research for the next Rubenerd Show). According to the site:

British engineers are working on a prototype to convert street vibrations into electricity. By Christmas, they predict a working model capable of powering facility lights in the busiest areas of a city.

Damn I would never have thought of that.

From the site: "The Sustainable Style Foundation (SSF) is an international, member-supported nonprofit organization created to provide information, resources and innovative programs that promote sustainable living and sustainable design."

They also have a webzine on sustainable living which, as with the rest of the site, is geared towards women. This season's issue is a tribute to global warming and how damned hot it's getting. Not that I would know currently because I'm in Australia which is going through winter now; if a girl here wore that costume outdoors she'd die of pnumonia. No laughing matter here folks.

Sustainable Style, Living and Design

Really well-designed, easy to learn tutorial about how to create an entire site without tables. I like it because the step by step instructions and diagrams are presented like an online slideshow. Teaches you how to make navigation menus, columns, headers, footers etc. Worth checking out.

Making the Jump to Tableless Design by Andy Budd

In a follow up to yesterday's post with the same title regarding purchasing Phil Gerbyshak's eBook on BookSurge and being able to read it on Mac OS X, I got an email back today:

Hello Ruben,
Thank you for contacting the Book Surge Customer Service Department. Yes we do furnish Ebooks that are compatible for Mac PCs. Please let me know what Ebooks that you are interested in purchasing. Thank you.

Client_Comments : G’day, I’m interested in buying a couple of books in the eBook format, I was just inquiring as to what format they are and whether they’re compatible with Mac OS X. Cheers – Ruben

Good stuff!