Schinckel.net

If I start listening to a Podcast, and stop, iTunes removes it from my iPod. Not Very Cool!

Dear ABC, As a new listener to Podcasts, I want to congratulate you on firstly the number, but also the quality of the programming you have put online. It is nice to be able to listen to programs I haven’t heard since I only had a car with an AM radio on Radio National, like the Science Show. Now that I commute on public transport, it’s also nice to be able to download programs that are transmitted in times when I am working,and listen to them as I travel. I understand that it’s a relatively new technology, but I do have some suggestions that would make, in my mind, your Podcasting service even better. Firstly, reduce the file size. Using other codecs, such as AAC, even in addition to MP3 would mean that the bitrate can be reduced, and I can more easily download more Podcasts over dialup. Secondly, I think the term Podcast is being used incorrectly in some contexts. You talk about listeners Pod_casting_, when they are really Pod_catching_ - not that there is actually a word that is used in this context. The creator/distributor/broadcaster does the Pod_casting_, and listeners ‘catch’ that ‘cast. Perhaps a new word needs to be created to fill this void. Finally, I’d like to see a more comprehensive archive of Podcasts. As a public broadcaster, anything that does not have copyright restrictions elsewhere, like most of the music that is played on Classic FM, for instance, should be freely available to all Australians for eternity. The Internet is a great thing in this context. Regards, Matt.

I won’t deny at times I am late to the party. I’ve just discovered listening to Podcasts - mainly ABC programs, as it turns out, but nonetheless, it’s a start. Anyway, being on dialup means it can take an age to download longer podcasts. And if iTunes decides it’s going to give up on a Podcast, it cannot just do a resume on the transfer. It must start all over again. Bad news, from where I’m listening.

Blind Eye • [Hunters & Collectors][1] • [Collected Works][2] ★½

[1]: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Hunters & Collectors%22 [2]: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Collected Works%22

My sister and her husband own/train a few horses, and I put a bit on one of them the other day. This is what the ticket looks like: Now, the bit that gets my goat is that second line in the block of four down the bottom.

Please check printed investment details.

Investment. It’s fucking gambling! • Oh, and Master of Disguise didn’t place. So my investment was worth nothing.

Random Acts Of Kindness • [Robbie Williams][2] • [Intensive Care][3]

[2]: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Robbie Williams%22 [3]: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Intensive Care%22

I received this Spam yesterday:

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Dear Kristen, Clearly, you haven’t read either the post to which you refer, nor the other posts on this site. I am not running a Professional Nail Gun website. In fact, the only reference to a Nail Gun is bagging the company that supplied it. So, no, I won’t be joining your affiliate program, and I won’t be clicking on your link.

submitter I noticed this when looking through my referers tonight. It appears to be a Spam Comment entering system. Nasty stuff, by the look of it! I hope someone who knows something can do something with/about this.

I usually try to refrain from commenting on what is happening at my work, but I really need to get this off my chest. The school I work for is currently going through an accreditation process, known as CIASa.

Now, I have nothing against the noble ideals of meeting some international standards, but I think that either this system, or how we have interpreted it, has totally missed the point. I have, for example, just spent the last hour printing out edits to documents. Now, these edits are things as simple as adding a full stop to one sentence. And I have had to print out the whole page again. I have a personal objection to this purely on environmental grounds.

And it gets worse. Within my faculty, there are four staff, who by and large all teach the same material at Year 8 and 9. Our course outlines are the same, and apart from rare cases of ‘interesting’ classes, the cohort is pretty much standard. We have built into the course the ability for students with aptitude and ability to extend themselves, and for students with various difficulties to do simpler or less work.

Yet, we are required to print out copies of each of these, where the only differences are the names at the top. That’s right, I have to print out one copy for each of my Year 8 classes, even though I’m teaching exactly the same stuff to each of them. All that is different is the name of the class at the top. And my colleagues have to make similarly simple changes (like replacing my name with theirs, and the class names again), and print out a copy for each class they have.

This is useless busy work. I still haven’t finished all of the School References for my Year 12s who have finished, because I’m wasting time making minor, pointless edits to paperwork that I don’t even reference once I’ve done it. When we were visited by the initial person who gave us a whole lot of information about the process, he specifically said “this process will not create any extra work for you.” This is clearly false, as we have spent at least 37.5 hours (that we are able to count towards the requirement for our T&D; time) on this paperwork.

I’m not saying that all of the paperwork we have done has been a waste of time. Being a part of the group that helped to rationalise and justify our School’s Vision Statement (Philosophy and Objectives, in CIASa-speak) was actually quite an interesting process. It certainly was better than some other options that were available. But having to care that much about the date of a footer (or, rather, having to insert things like dates at all) annoys the hell out of me. As someone who likes to develop patterns and systems to make my life easier, following the suggestion of the great Pecky:

Don’t ever add the name of the school on the top of any of your handouts. Then you’ll just need to redo them when you move schools.

I followed this through to not adding dates to footers either. Unless in the development phase, where you need to know you are using the most recent version, if you have a simple document that is final, why bother dating it, and in the future, it shows up as being dated (in the perjorative sense, here). Just because something doesn’t change doesn’t make it not right. I’m sick to death of spending time doing this crap, rather than actually being able to teach, or learn new things to teach.

Why is it that girls in underwear ads always hug each other? Is that what girls do? Get together in their underwear, and hug?

Donald Rumsfelf is in town. You wouldn’t know it, not by the number of police floating around the Central Business District. Motorcycle cops on the corner near Adelaide High School. Other cars driving around the streets. And I haven’t even been down North Terrace yet… I am more than a little annoyed that we have been forced to virtually shut down the hub of our city, for a man that has been involved in several of the evil regimes that have run the USA in recent decades.

Clearly, Bumsford is a smarter man than his current boss (but I can’t think of too many people who aren’t, just quietly), but he has had his fingers in some pretty seriously smelly pies. In 1976, Ruttfield was instrumental in ensuring the US was safe from swine flu. He urged the president at the time to instigate a vaccination process. The US was safe from swine flu - but 52 people died from contaminated vaccine. Unfortunately, now the US is governed by swine. It’s a shame the vaccine didn’t work against Bush. Oh well.

The biggest irony of Roomseld’s career is that he was a significant contributor to Saddam Hussein’s build of military might. During the Iran-Iraq war, Rumbleford was, according to Wikipedia, _“the main conduit for crucial American military intelligence, hardware and strategic advice to Saddam Hussein.” _So Rimspot was at least in part responsible for helping to create the regime he and his mate’s son have now worked so hard to bring down. Or rather, try to bring down. (Chop off the head and the serpent falls? Doesn’t seem like it to me.)

I think the scariest thing about Roamstick is that he seriously believes that he, a member of Team America, really is part of the World Police. Now, it scares the heck out of me that those guys from _Southpark _are just right on the money. America! Fuck Yeah!

Update: My sub-editor tells me his name is Donald Rumsfeld. Sorry for any inconvenience or misunderstanding caused.

P.S. The whole idea for the spelling games was a typo the first time I wrote his name. Not that funny, I know…

Spam has become the bane of the connected world. Whilst it is simple for a human to be able to decide if an object (email, comment, trackback) is Spam, it appears that computers have a harder time of it. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that Spam exists at all. It relies on some sort of a payoff for the Spammer: for email Spam this must mean that people actually buy the crap they advertise. My Gmail Spam folder is bulging as we speak: I seem to get around 400 Spam emails per month. Almost all of these are automatically picked up by Gmail’s Spam filter - but this filter also picks up several Ham (or legitimate emails) in the average month. The majority of these are bounced emails: almost by default all bounced replies end up as Spam, since a common occurrence seems to be for Spammers to use real (other people’s) email addresses as the From: address, resulting in a whole bunch of Undeliverable Mail messages bouncing back to that person. Usually, this is not a problem, as most people I email I get the address right. However, as I have just taken over administration of a Sporting Organisation’s member list, I now get several bounced emails each time I do a mailout - I’m going through pruning addresses each time, but people’s addresses are often lapsing. Profit from comment and trackback Spam is a little different. Rather than getting people to buy things from them, these Spammers rely on clicks or links to make money. The second has been largely overcome in many circles by the rel=“nofollow” tag, however, unless use of this is universal, Spammers may still make money. The way linking makes money is largely by improving PageRank™, or prestige in Search Engines. The first one relies on users to click on links, and visit sites. If enough users do this, then it could concieveably make a significant amount of money for the Spammers. I’ve had some comment and trackback Spam where the URI isn’t even valid, so I’m not so sure how well this works for Spammers. I seem to have overcome the issues I had with comment Spam - just requiring users to have JavaScript activated seems to be enough for now. And if the Spammers catch on, then I’ll re-implement the catchpa. That leaves trackback Spam. This is the one that is causing me the most grief now. At least it’s not as bad as email Spam (in volume, anyway) on my blog. I’ll get around about 6-10 Spam trackbacks in a given month. I’m not sure how many Ham trackbacks I get - not too many, IIRC. I may turn trackbacks off, if I cannot come up with a decent solution.