Add Me as a Friend on Pownce

admin —  July 1, 2007 — 2 Comments

The more friends and comments I’m getting, the more I’m liking Pownce…which is just as well, I was prepared to rip it to shreds at first. Dave Winer’s Twittergraming (audio twitters) will work great in Pownce, and probably more importantly they’ll work natively as well.

http://pownce.com/duncanriley

Unlike Twitter where I was getting swamped with requests and subsequently stopped reciprocating, I’m will recip on Pownce until I get some good numbers happening. Join me now! 🙂

It’s been 30 days since I made the grave error of upgrading to Vista. Before that day I was a happy Microsoft customer, after that I bought a Mac (which should be delivered this week).

The 30 days marks the day I can no longer use Vista because I am unable to validate it, despite now trying to reinstall it several times as per the advice I got off the phone from Microsoft, and of course having a valid a legal copy of Vista itself, along with the key for XP.

Silly me never thought to burn XP before this day: Compaq’s don’t come with a restore CD, only a backup partition, so my only space filling choice was Linux unless I wiped the hard disk, which I wasn’t willing to do.

Linux has come a long way. I’ve still got my Red Hat Linux for Dummies book from 2001 and I still remember trying to use it then: it was a complete nightmare.?Ǭ† Unfortnuately its only marginally improved now.

Turns out that Linux doesn’t like NTFS partitions or Nvidia video cards or even running on more than one monitor!

Again, silly me, I’d downloaded Ubuntu a week ago and had tested it on the laptop when I should have tested it on the desktop.

Half a day later and I’m now posting this from Firefox running under Ubuntu. I know more about shells than I’ve ever wanted to know, and it’s all working. Did I mention that Ubuntu feels like using Windows 95 in terms of aesthetics? Ugly as sin, and Beryl doesn’t want to work for an allegedly better look. The Mac Pro can’t come soon enough, and if it doesn’t I’ll fly to Melbourne and ring Getamac.com.au’s necks, my Mac memory ordered from the States less than a week ago is already in Perth for delivery Monday, the Mac order hits 14 days tomorrow! I can’t win! 🙂

Now back to suffering from Ubuntu orange, or is that Ubuntu baby spew 🙂

I was looking for a podcasting mic and I found this by accident: 

Skype Phone & Mouse in 1 – Yappermouse – VoIP Phones – Deals Direct Australia

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Just what everyone wants, a corded mouse that doubles as a VOIP telephone handset….note again it’s a corded mouse.

But it gets better, the mouse vibrates!

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California Here I come

admin —  June 28, 2007 — 3 Comments

Some good news and something I never imagined happening when I attended the last TechCrunch party in New York last November; at this stage I will be attending the next TechCrunch party at August Capital at Menlo Park, California July 27. I’ve never been to the West Coast before (no slings and arrows please) so I’m looking forward to it, obviously from the opportunity of networking as well as actually seeing what the hype is about. Will be great to meet a lot of the people I’ve corresponded with , people like Brian Solis and others. I should be on the ground for around a week, given I’m likely staying at Michael Arringtons house my only request is that people don’t try to pitch their startups at first light, but aside from that I will be some-what available 🙂

This is just bizarre…apparently he’s on ER now, I’d think as a mental patient.

 

Stephanie and ABC Bias

admin —  June 27, 2007 — 1 Comment

I heard a women by the name of Stephanie, a single mother on welfare on ABC 720am Perth this morning. Her complaint was that she was being screwed over by the Government because she is being forced to find 15 hours of paid work. Stephanie is a single mother with 3 teenage children who apparently volunteers and worse still (and god forbid) has an aged parent in a nursing home. The indignation from Stephanie was so thick you could carve it; Stephanie believes that its her god given right to stay at home and continue to receive welfare, and that she is (I kid you not on this) “too busy” to take a paid job.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could all sit at home and raise our kids on welfare! Note we aren’t talking about a mother with a young child looking after their kids here who perhaps in dire circumstances deserves government, Stephanie’s kids are all at school and she has plenty of time to volunteer.

Here’s my issue: she who must be obeyed and I work full time to put meals on our table. We pay taxes, and although things are going well now they haven’t always been. We’ve struggled in the past, but we’ve always worked hard to improve our lot. Why should I pay taxes for some woman in Perth to not work when she is fully capable of working?

And then there is the ABC.

Geoff Hutchison gave Stephanie the complete soft treatment. Some goose from Centrelink came on to provide the counter argument and totally stuffed it up with Government new speak that never got close to the issue. The show then read out email after email favoring Stephanie, and talk back callers were the same, little to no counter argument was presented. Interestingly it warped into some sort of discussion about the Government not valuing volunteering, Stephanies only real claim to fame. Here’s the thing: volunteering is giving your own time when you are able, after work if you of a working age. This was my email to the show, that unless I missed it was never read out (note that it was in bite sized chunks on purpose to suit the medium)

Geoff

I?m appalled at your soft treatment of Stephanie. No one likes working, but we all have to do it. We shouldn?t have to pay taxes to sustain Stephanies lifestyle choice. If she is capable of doing volunteer work then she is capable of doing paid work. My wife and I both work, we don?t get a cent from the government; the hand out mentality of people like Stephanie sickens me. My only message to Stephanie: get a job and stop expecting the taxpayer to support you, life?s hard in the real world; get use to it, the rest of us have.

It will probably never see the light of day on the ABC. I’ve always known from my Government days that the ABC is biased, but locally I’ve never really seen it before. The one sided support of Stephanie in her anti-Government rant (and most of it was how the Government was out to get her) seems to prove that at least in Western Australia the ABC has no interest at all in being anything other than biased against the Federal Government. I’d switch to 882 6PR but simply we don’t get the coverage in the Bunbury area and there are no decent local alternatives. In future I might just stick to ABC Classic FM or News Radio on the occasions the reception is good enough.

ThreadWatch Closing

admin —  June 27, 2007 — Leave a comment

I actually read this yesterday (my time) but never got around to posting.

It’s sad.

ThreadWatch is the site that got me interested in SEO and a site through which I made a number of good contacts over the years. I don’t want to diss Aaron, but the site has never been the same since Nick Wilson sold it. Nick’s shoes were too large for just about anyone to fill; Nick’s often sarcastic style and biting commentary is something more unique to the English, certainly its a style you don’t often see from American writers aand although Aaron tried it was never the same for me as a reader, although notably where as I may have unsubscribed to other sites during this time I have kept reading Threadwatch.

I’m also interested as to why the site is being shut and not sold. An Alexa ranking under 10,000 would make it a decent sized asset, maybe Aaron has other plans?

This is the latest mouse from Sony. OMFG! Just when you thought Sony had already lost the plot.

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(via Crunchgear)

Crowded House Coming To Perth

admin —  June 25, 2007 — 2 Comments

The dream isn’t over!: 

Crowded House – 16 Nov 07 at Enjoy Perth!

Tickets go on sale at Ticketmaster July 6. A bet Ticketmaster goes into melt down that day…as they do everytime anything big goes on sale.

Wow, wow and wow! Now if only it came in 3G, but wow anyway.  

Apple – iPhone – A Guided Tour – Medium