Webfeed difficulties

Apologies if you’ve been experiencing difficulties getting updates from our webfeeds of late. We’ve been been experimenting with Feedburner as a way of getting some statistics on the readership of this blog, but unfortunately it looks like they’ve been having some problems over the last few weeks.

It’s a beta service, so some teething problems are to be expected - but if you want to get a completely reliable service, the links over on the sidebar are directly from our server, so fire, theft and witchcraft notwithstanding, these feeds should always be available.

The Next Big Thing in Plain English

If you’re looking for a plain English guide to all things RSS, you could do worse than try this whitepaper from Mediathink:

RSS: The Web’s Next Big Thing?

We strongly believe that RSS is the web’s Next Big Thing. It is potentially most disruptive to email and applications relying on email

Don’t see a problem with the iMac cables

Even though everyone’s getting very excited about the new iMac, there have been a few comments about the ports lining up in a vertical row at the back being a problem - in typical Apple style, they run from smallest at the top to largest at the bottom.

I can’t see the problem with this. If all the cables fall in a vertical plane, you bundle them together at the point where the lowest one joins the bunch, and then feed them across to the stand and down to the desktop. If you use something like the spiral conduit that’s out there on the market, you’ll end up with one big ’snake’ that can be routed wherever you want it to go. Which is far better than the average PC, which has cables coming out at a variety of points both horizontal and vertical, resulting in a huge messy pigtail.

Definitely the sign of an obsessive-compulsive Type-A hair-trigger geek - cables neatly plaited, and very likely labelled, too.

(I’m guilty on both counts…)

Consider me back online…

News.com: Skype takes VoIP software to the Mac

Newsflash - Scoble reviews the iMac

Ah, you’ve got to give the man some credit - he’s paid by Microsoft, after all, and he’s not done banging the drum just yet. His take on the new iMac:

why get this when you can actually get a Tablet PC that you can take off your desk and walk around with?

Errm - because that would mean running Windows, Robert. Blue Screen Of Death, 5-minute bootups, registry corruption, driver clashes, popups because the Messenger service is enabled by default, spyware because the firewall isn’t enabled by default, Service Pack 2, etc, etc, etc.

Need I say more?

Actually, I’m getting tired of the whole Micosoft-versus-Apple-PC-versus-Mac debate - it’s wholly pointless, because it gets religious, and pointless. I switched from Windows to Mac because I got tired of having to work around Windows all the time, instead of working with it. There’s nothing I can’t do with a Mac that I could with a PC, and the Mac works, first time, every time.

When Windows stops falling over, and I don’t have to tweak the damn registry, and there isn’t a security patch to be installed every 3 days - then I’ll look at Windows again. But I can’t see it happening any time soon.

Productivity losses, Tom Watson MP-style

Thanks to Tom Watson MP, my productivity has taken a dive…

Webboggle

Deformed rabbits by mailorder

If you’re the kind of person who is in the market for objet d’art like this one (and this is a genuine - ahem - conversation piece, on sale for £35 in Porcupine, a small and strange shop in the backstreets of York), then you might also find this of interest:

Something dreadful in the mail each month to brighten your life, currently bunnies as long as I can get them. I encourage you to have them delivered to your office.

Yes folks, you too can buy deformed cuddly rabbits, delivered to your home…

Bruce Schneier on threat warnings

Bruce Schneier is a lone voice of sanity in a wilderness of artificially-created psychoses:

How Long Can The Country Stay Scared?

Depressingly, the answer is probably “until after the Presidential elections…

Some people really do have too much time on their hands…

I give you the Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form…

elwire.com - your electroluminescent wire source

elwire.com - your electroluminescent wire source.