Author: admin

God, I’m running the sucks theme here now 🙂

So here’s my sucks for the day: Feedburner.

I number of blogs and bloggers I read use this service (I won’t name names though, but you know who you are) and they’ve nearly all been uncontactable/ not updating in Bloglines for a week. I’ve corresponded with a few people who’ve told me Feedburner is blaming Bloglines…which is odd really because its only Feedburner feeds that are having the problem. If they’re using compliant (ie Dave Winer compliant) RSS I’d think they wouldn’t have a problem….but maybe its all in my head and they really don’t suck at all.

I’ve had a play with Feedburner in the past and I still don’t get why it’s all that amazing. Sure, you get to see that Bloglines, Yahoo and others are pulling your feed, so what? I knew that already from the Awstats feeds I was getting when I still owned The Blog Herald!

Threadwatch gets it totally right: it’s totally over when Google brings ecommerce to Google Base. Combine this with the much waited for Google Payments system, and if I owned eBay shares I’d be doing certain things in my pants very soon 🙂

What a fun 48 hours. I recieved final payment for The Blog Herald and the transfer went across ok, and then Dreamhost, who hosts my personal sites (including Weblog Empire) boots me onto an “Evaluation server” and all the sites go down for 24 hours…..I suppose the karma is balanced now.

Dafamer reports on young Hollywood stars getting pissed.

Of course the proper question would be: why in the world does the US have such a stupid minimun drink age of 21? I mean they are quite happy to blow up kiddies in Iraq and send soldiers younger than this to war…which is all ok as long as they don’t drink….I just don’t get it and I never will!

Am I the only one thinking Volcano here?

Yesterday the official temperature in Bunbury was 40 (celcius) and I’d think it was proably a couple of degrees hotter where I am. Ironically one of the main stories in the local rag that day: The Summer of 69, which detailed that Bunbury had experienced its second coldest summer on record (69 was apparently colder). I shoudn’t complain really, sure we’ve only been to the beach a couple of times this summer (the water is really cold this year as well), but the weather has been pleasant (and sometimes even cold) but the heat totally sucks….which reminds me, is talking about the weather the official Australian sport? If you meet an Australian for the first time and want to break the ice, talk about the weather…we all do it incessantly. Everyone I know here is talking about the weather, constantly, and all Australians have an opinion about weather, no matter where in the world they are.

From Wired:

GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler will soon by tiny specs in Toyota’s rear view mirror, according to CNN Money.

Toyota’s 2005 profit of $11.4 billion was greater than the combined earnings of the other 12 auto companies in the world. This year they will become king of the road, taking the mantle from GM as the biggest auto manufacturer by selling 8.85 million vehicles.

The keys to Toyota’s success are growth in hybrid vehicle sales, which will accelerate as the company rolls out the Camry and Lexus GS Hybrids this year, and the ability to cut costs. Toyota engineers have halved the cost of manufacturing their Camry engines.

Toyota estimates that drivers of Toyota and Lexus hybrids have saved more than 110,000,000 gallons of gasoline as of January 31, 2006.

The seemed to have forgot to mention that they make a damn fine motor vehicle as well. Honestly I’d never buy anything else. Every Toyota I’ve ever owned has never caused a problem. My experiences with Fords and Holdens on the other hand… Ive never owned a Nissan or Honda but I’m told they are dearer to service, and Mitsubishi’s aren’t to bad, but they just aren’t an exciting motor vehicle.

As much as I hate the way Wikipedia is administered by self interested Nazi’s, I always seem to get distracted by the main page links when I’m looking for something. The Falkirk Wheel is just simply amazing. 21st design applied to a 17th-18th century transport system. Of course we don’t have canals here in Australia…except to build houses next to as an excuse to charge a pile of money for being “on the water”. This is one of those things I’d love to see one day.

This will bring a tear to your eye…and only goes to prove that giving isn’t about receiving kudos.

Ex-POWs Meet Secret Breakfast Benefactor

For 30 years, a group of former World War II prisoners of war has been getting together for a monthly breakfast at Bunny’s Restaurant. And for the last few years, someone has been anonymously picking up the tab.

On Wednesday, the men – including a survivor of the Bataan Death March and others who were imprisoned in the Pacific – finally met their patron, an area businessman who was just a boy when World War II came to an end.

read the rest here.