I was just about to sleep, but then remembered I wanted to start my Gentoo intsallation installation on my iBook so it could run while I slept, a real time maximiser! Yes.
Anyway, if you're thinking of taking the plunge, here are some useful sites I've found:
The Gentoo Linux Project
This DSL internet connection we have in this shared house is slowly destroying my hairline. It's TPG 1.5mbit ADSL and the modem connects to it for roughly 20 to 30 minutes before it decides to disconnect. Sometimes its more like every 5 minutes. I any event I'm ready to throw it out the window!!!
Status shown on modem's internal configuration page
And now I've clicked Connect and 10 minutes have past. So I thought I'd reconnect to the modem to see if it had worked:
Trying to connect to the modem's internal configuration page!
Ha! That's classic! Excuse me while I rip some more hair out. No wait, hitting refresh, I'm back at the modem setup again:
Status shown on modem's internal configuration page… AGAIN
So the DSL is up, the downstream/upstream speeds have been established and I have DNS server references, but STILL no IP address and therefore vis a vis ergo wysiwyg its still not connected. Brilliant.
I would be more enthusiastic, however the fact that I do this dance with this internet connection about 3 times an hour… I want my Starhub MaxOnline 8mbit connection back! Hopefully if you're reading this though, I've managed to upload it and therefore vis a vis ergo wysiwyg we have internet again. Here's me hoping.
This post was originally created using a very slick client side Mac application called RapidWeaver. It made creating my third weblog and posts very easy, but being client side meant I needed to upload every small change, and it wasn’t open source. I moved over to WordPress a year later: forth time’s the charm right? ;).
Just saw an ad for Boston Legal on Channel 7; I knew that William Shatner, sorry Captain Kirk, no wait I was right the first time. I'll try again.
Just saw an ad for Boston Legal on Channel 7; I knew that William Shatner was in it but Murphy Brown appeared to! Awesome!
The team on Boston Legal
I remember one ad for her show we had on some cheesy Christmas recording on VHS. I think she was in a moard beeting, sorry board meeting, with little cookies or something on a tray for an office Christmas party; she was passing the tray around and one couple asked her if they were small. In her classic down-to-earth style she exclaimed that "no they were made that size by microscopic aliens with their miniturising rays! Of course they're small, can we get on with it now!"
Amazing how much trivial, pointless stuff you remember. My grandad in Firefly calls it his "vast store of useless information". Very apt!
And just saw an ad while typing this for Windows XP; it was centred around an artist discussing how the "wondrous world" of Windows helps her turn dreams into reality yada yada with all these swirling colours and cut out figures dancing around. Guess Redmond is trying to challenge the notion that their products are un-insipiring in the face of… oh I don't know, what's that creative, 'hip' computer company again? Has five letters and begins with A…
Microsoft’s last ditch attempt to make Windows look ‘hip’
As John C. Dvorak said about Microsoft on one of the more recent episodes of TWiT:
“I tell you, this company is dead in the water.”
And now a show is actually starting, some gymnastics competition in Melbourne apparently. Why do the guys get to wear pants and loose shirts and the girls have to wear those things that look like swimmers? I understand the need for clothes that wouldn't catch or slow you down when you're doing this stuff, but how would they be able to concentrate, I'd be shivering myself to death. Plus the guys can do all these complicated hurdles and stuff with loose fitting clothing on… is this another sign of the social position we're in at the moment, or it just me?
Monette Russo and Joshua Jefferis (Aussie gymnast peoples)
Okay my one hour of designated television watching is over. Back to studying, damn it.
Okay, I caved. Again.
Looking into WordPress again. I was just reading John C. Dvorak's (http://dvorak.org/blog/) and even he's using it, high praise indeed. I still don't like using databases though for such small projects, just had bad experiences with them too often in the past. Then again, I'm still giving some thought to it.
Dvorak: He Gets No Spam
Here's the problem: I want to have a blog, and at the moment I'm using RapidWeaver for Mac OS X, which is actually a brilliant program. But therein lies the catch: my PowerMac G5 has OS X on it, but my only laptop (my G3 iBook) has Gentoo Linux 2005.1 on it because OS X runs so slowly on it; Gentoo runs lightning fast on it. Anyway so when I go to Malaysia and Singapore for Christmas to see the Mumster and the Father (and the sissta) I won't have a Mac to post on this blog!
There's also something appealing with having a server-side program doing this stuff too, not a client based program; it would eliminate all the uploading step altogether.
I'll have to check with Servage (my webhost) and see how easy it is to do database backups, because I'm thinking of moving off them for good. I'm so fed up with their slow and unreliable FTP server, and EVERY mp3 podcast file I uploaded for The Rubenerd Show was corrupted. I've managed to upload all my files to my account on Ourmedia which uses the Internet Archives server space, so it's miles faster and more reliable. With this in mind it's not really necessary for me to have a web host that provides gigs upon gigs of space anymore, especially considering I'm a uni student and don't exactly have millions of dollars to throw around!
Been looking for a while at blogging tools, still no entirely sure which one to go with. Movable Type is out of the question (mostly because I'm too lazy). I was giving some serious thought to WordPress, a lot of its users seem pretty pleased with it. Of course, it used MySQL and I really want to avoid using a database.
And NO I don't want to use Blogger, thank you very much ;)
I guess this brings me to a point on 'data independence'. I'm highly critical of sites or software that take your data and lock it up so if in future you want to migrate to another platform or software package, it's either painfully difficult or simply impossible. Call me paranoid, but that's exactly why The Rubenerd Show site still uses Perl scripts that I write myself, because if at any time I want to change it's much easier for me to do.
This post was originally created using a very slick client side Mac application called RapidWeaver. It made creating my third weblog and posts very easy, but being client side meant I needed to upload every small change, and it wasn’t free or open source. I moved over to WordPress a year later: forth time’s the charm right?
Well I've caved in.
For about a year now I've been sending out my voice in this world through podcasting; I think it's worked okay in some respects, but I've faced the fact that the audio medium is extremely clumsy for posting small snippets or ideas that come to me on an hourly basis through the day. I loved using del.icio.us and many a time I found myself posting links with detailed comments; then the idea dawned on me: how about a weblog instead? I mean, it's pretty much what I was doing anyway, might as well go the next step!
With all the hype and talk that video and audio podcasts have been recieving lately I'm going back to basics with a simple, no frills weblog designed to supplement my podcast.
Ol’ Bert on GMA
What did Big Kev say on the Good Morning Australia show? Oh yeah: "I'm Excited!"
Podcast: Play in new window · Download
20:00 – More Rubenerd Show website outage, fun! Also talking about the new website design for the show that's a HUGE departure from the old one, the joys of microphones that cut out for no reason, Donald Rumsfeld (US Defence Secretary) here in Adelaide and causing a huge fuss, the size of the state of South Australia, discussing my moral dillema trying to fathem the concept of "home" having lived outside Australia for so long in Singapore, and the concent of Third Culture Kids.
Something To Think About Segment: Diaries, and is it right for parents to be reading them? I had encryption :~).
Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
Podcast: Play in new window · Download
20:00 – The Rubenerd Show website outage explained (credit cards are fun!) and the gradual transition to Ourmedia, the global home of grassroots media. Also talking about how pathetic reality TV, 'Lost' and 'Desperate Housewives' are (in my eyes and John C. Dvorak's!), how useful Centrelink is to me for rejecting me, a MAJOR security concern: the Sony Rootkit that installs itself whevener you insert an 'enhanced' Sony music CD into a Crapdows, sorry Windows, computer that hides files and sends data back to Sony, and how screwed, up record companies are.
Something To Think About Segment: Video games don't actually promote violence, with clip courtesty of TWiT.
Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
Podcast: Play in new window · Download
20:00 – A very poorly recorded intro! But the rest of the show is okay, talking about how Christmas is in the air, Christmas television commercials and putting up Christmas decorations and ceebrating way to early in the year, thinking about what I'm buying people and how hard it is to shop for dads, reading Amanda Blair's article "Oh What A Night: It's The Willsys" from The Sunday Mail incuding the awesome Cunnos Warehouse guy and the Aussie Subway spokesperson who says "You little beauty!". Clearing up where I'm from and where my parents live, the tallest buildings in the world, and a callout to my mum who might be listening to this and to people from the AIS school in Singapore who'll be there for Christmas. Something To Think About Segment: Tanglin Mall and Christmas decs.
Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
Podcast: Play in new window · Download
15:00 – My tribute to people who have died in war in light of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month which happened last Friday, why there is no justification for war, why we are the most efficient killing machines and playing the Australian National Anthem. In other topics discussing extreme weather around the world including the localised floods and extreme temperature variations that have swept Adelaide this week, my lack of energy and what the doctor found out what the cause was after I took a blood test, beakers full of salt and electrical current, and university exams and exam deferrals.
Something To Think About Segment: Famous Australian Women.
Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
