NudgeBucket

Mix tapes

2010-10-25T15:58:00.001+11:00

glasnt: It's too early in the week for these kind of puns >_< RT @abcnews: Tape lovers mix it up, old-spool. http://bit.ly/b7PcRW

I still stand by this comment. I've not even woken up yet, and it's nearly 4pm :(

glasnt: That being said, I love old school mix tapes. We had one for a interstate drive, and I still remember the order of songs. #beachboysmedley!

Ah, the spring of '01. Interstate drive down the entire east coast, in the grandparents auto with better aircon and cruise control than our regular car. It didn't have a CD player, only a tape deck. The mix tape started with Beach Boys Medley, which by the time the fortnight long trip was over, we knew all the lyrics to, including how it skipped at the start. I know this, because a) I still remember the bugger, b) I can't hear a Beach Boys song without reciting the rest of the medley that follows, c) during my recent move, I found the diary by 13 year old self kept of the journey.

But using my iPod 6-8 hours a day, listening to the same hour of songs would drive me batty #ialsohateshopping

Given that, I couldn't stand a mix tape now. I've got a 3rd Gen iPod nano (the square one) but even with 8gb of songs, I still get bored of them. This is why I hate shopping centre songs, because they tend to be on a loop (think the sales guys from 40 year old virgin, going batty over the DVD). This unfortunate ability I have to remember nearly every song I hear has also destroyed the song that was playing as the 'promo' song on the inflight entertainment on Virgin Atlantic this past June (if I ever work out the name of the song, I'll add it to by list of Songs I Just Can't Stand.. but I'm worried I'll explode if I hear it again. Sydney to London haul with that song played for hours on end on repeat, not good)

edit: Pretty sure it's Plan B - She Said, however, I don't have a working machine with speakers at the moment, so I will confirm later.

Review: HTC Legend

2010-08-29T12:02:00.002+10:00

Legend. Legend. Dead set legend.

The Oz Brothers, worshiping Boon.

I present to you the above from yesteryear, because this is what I think of when I see my HTC Legend. Not the beer gut and chuging capabilities (although the 'leno' chin might be close-ish), but it is still the best phone I've ever had.

That being said, it is a platform, not really a phone. I can't fault the phone itself. It does everything I want it too. The only thing that annoys me are the applications.

For example, here are my current gripes:

Peep lacks the 'mention' logic of Twitter proper, where it only presents tweets starting with your alias as opposed to all tweets containing your alias. This makes it annoying when the notification bar shows you have a mention, but the application doesn't show anything.

Brightness. For the life of me I can't find any control for the brightness, apart from the Power Control widget, which has wifi/mobile/brightness, etc; but lacks an option of any other size other than 4wx1h, which is a bit annoying when you have the 'People' list which can only be 1 x 4, or 4x4. GAH. Update: thank gosh for stand alone apps. The market place needs better searching though, brightness as a term on its own was useless

Notifications. You can't really tell what the notification is coming from, or what applications have rights to the notification bar. I had tweet notifications, and it could open one of 3 apps I had (before I removed them)... it was a bit annoying.

Removing applications. I didn't realise until after checked the entire marketplace that you could remove apps directly form there, without having to go to settings> apps> manage apps, then look though an unsorted list of all addons for the entire phone.

GAH.

Having said that, I've had the phone for a few days only, so I'm sure I'll be able to fix these issues (or find more.. and then fix them).

Nudgebucket on the move

2010-08-29T08:38:00.001+10:00

I just purchased a shiny smart phone, so now I have no excuse not to update this blog.

That being said, most of my 'bloglike' updates go to Twitter, however concise.

Wheeeeeeeeeee

Consolidating.

2010-04-28T12:40:00.002+10:00

I've been contemplating consolidating glasnt's blog of nothing-interesting-ness and Nudgebucket into one account for a while now.

Ever since viewing elmokeep.com with it's awesome content and rad designs, it's made me think that blogspot just isn't cutting it.

Sure, I forked out $200 for another 2 years of nudgebucket (damn you bluehost for autocharging my c-card), but in these days of free-upload space and whatnot, all I really need is a .com and somewhere to host my stuff.

Back in the day that was geocities, with a on.theinter.net pointer, then I moved to google sites (or pages or whatever it was) for a bit, with a splash of MSN Pages thrown in (shudder). But after all that, blogspot was there to keep me safe and warm for a few years, and the thought of losing that comfort is a bit scary.

In addition, I've only just ported all my nudgebucket stuff from the custom-built CRM system it was on (yay iRaw) back into blogspot because of contract issues, so I'm not sure if porting or duplicating content on Tumblr and Blogspot will confuse people.

Also there's the whole personal life posting vs nudgebucket persona, but that's only an issue if I forget that on the internet any little personal detail is bad unless controlled, but even then it's still bad, if someone gets a hold of it.

If I can work out a way to port all my glasnt.blogspot.com and nudgebucket.blogspot.com while saving the timestamp information into tumblr, then I can point nudgebucket.com to tumblr and be happy :D

And hope that it doesn't corrupt like another blogspot account I had. :< (Myself and another chickadee had years of content on another account, but I accidently the entire thing to my login and date, and I never worked out exactly how it happened and why google allowed me to. Sad llama)...

If anyone has any tips on this mission, please let me now. I want to get it happening before end of May so I can properly spam you all with my travel adventures ;)

Fish fingers and custard.

2010-04-04T21:59:00.004+10:00

New Doctor Who time! And that means, we get to talk about science fiction

What? She's a typist who mastered the Duey-Decimal system in a week. She's all over this.

Having originally wanted to wait for the local tellie version of this new season (ABC 1 Sunday Nights, 2 weeks after the BBC airing)

Can I just say to start off with, that there is nothing wrong with crumb and sweet. McDonalds fries and icecream is only a corporate junket off crumbed processed seafood and custard.

Moffat is really a fantastic writer. He was the man behind "The Empty Child" / "The Doctor Dances", "The Girl in the Fireplace", "Blink"; all of which are some of my favourite episodes of the ninth and tenth doctor. Here's hoping he can continue this trend and not burn out a la Evangelion.

What we know so far:

The TARDIS makeover: How evil was it to tease and tease with off stage and blur shots. Then, we see it. A glass and steampunk majestic beast with a very nice glass-blown upy-downy-timey-whimy thing, as opposed to the tried and true plastic off centre tube. A lot of time and money has been spend in the TARDIS revamp.

Not to mention the new title sequence, themesong and logo! Both can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTvps5kawWE

Murray Gold has taken the tried and true version, and really turned it up to 11 on this one. My only gripe at the moment is how he's changed the main melody. There's a few notes going up when they should go down. Perhaps he was allowed to change this, or this is a quip to the change of tempo with this new doctor...

The Silence: Bad Wolf, The End of Time, He Will Knock Four Times.. these have all been themes that have carried series along. I'm looking forward to seeing the Doctor not know how the cracks in the universe happen. Unless he was just using that poker face of his on the Multiform when queried.

New Companion: the ginger scotsman, and isn't she a looker! The child actress was just sweet, and it's interesting how this one is very interpersonal. Donna told her Dad, but not many other people, where as half the little English town knew about the Doctor. Not even Madame de Pompadour divulged much until the troops were sent in. I hope that there is a link back to these little townspeople, they could be good for a Hot-Fuzz style lark.

Coming villians: Cybermen, Weeping Angels, River Song (or just the same actress), and Bill Nighy! (He's the only one of the Celebrity Slideshow part of the end of E01 I recognised as an undereducated minion of the colonies.) But all in all, looks like a good run for the first half of the season.

Righto then, allons-y!

Dragon Age and why it fails.

2010-04-03T23:25:00.003+11:00

I don't like World of Warcraft. Even before actually seeing the gameplay or even investigating the story line, I heard horror stories of people wasting away in front of their computer terminal, trying to further themselves in the make believe world of druids and wizards and hats, or whatever the classes are in that universe.

I never thought I would become a slave to a game, playing day in and day out. Heck, it was only because of my partner's experience with a similar MMO that I was only allowed to purchase and play Guild Wars after becoming employed, as opposed to installing an immersion experience that would negate any chance I had on the employment market.

Then I saw Dragon Age Origins. I thought I would give it a go, seeing as though I found Guild Wars to be alright, and dragons were just a deal sweetener. Since I purchased the game in late November, Steam informs me that I have wasted 261 hours of my life to this game. That's 65 hours a month, or about 16 hours a week. Over 2 hours a day fucking around killing computer generated genlocks and hurlocks.

I tell you what though, it was fun for a while. Learning about the Maker, killing the odd Ogre, having mass paralysis and firestorm spells, kicking arse anywhere I went, it was awesome. But then, I finished the game. In all of ~42 hours (including some pause time, where I would leave the game open to go to the *gasp* real world).

Why the long story, glasnt? Can't you just tell us what's wrong with the game without these Zero Punctuation-esk ramblings and occasional British swearing, you trouser wearing waffle nosher? Well, it just so happens that I am explaining myself. Just in the last sentence of the previous paragraph I identify two issues with the game, from which more will emerge.

42 hours to complete a game is bullshit. But I didn't complete it. I took a mage from start to Landsmeet (70% of the game, where all the parts come together before the final battle), got sick of getting her a ladder to get off her back (and failed to defeat Loghain), thereby restarting as a noble rouge. Having collected experience of the gameplay mechanics from my first run-through, I was able to choose a (less) annoying voice template and meander through the game like it was some ratmaze with shieks around the place.

The entire game is supposed to be 'Choose your Own Adventure', and yet the only 'choosing' you get to do is what order you gain allies in. Any other choice is strongly opposed by your companions, so much so that if they don't guilt trip you into choosing the 'right' option, they turn their back on you and then you're down a spirit healer (stupid Wynne and her Maker bullshit). Sure, it means that there is a discernable end, but maybe I want to join the blight and kill humanity with the darkspawn? But noooo, EA don't want me doing that.

And what's with the pause time counting towards gameplay hours? Sure, steam counts hours that the game is running, that's fine. Any more diagnostics collected by them with in-game play would be scary and probably publicly accessible. I do not want the world knowing how I play 90% of the time on Easy because I couldn't get out of the Dwarf Commoner storyline on Normal. When a game is paused, don't count it when it's over 5 minutes of no interaction, or something.

What's that I hear? You saw I mention my Easy Mode admittance and wonder why I then defer to another topic? Easy Mode is hard in itself. I'm not going to get any more satisfaction out of getting my arse handed to me by blight wolves, and there's no monetary, experience or achievement incentive to do so either. It doesn't extend or expand the game play, so why bother?

Also, what in jimminy cricket's name is up with the DLC? Just a few days ago they were selling DLC April Fool's gifts. I wasn't about to buy $5 worth of DLC points to try and see if I could purchase $2 of 'prank gifts and sorry gifts' just so I could 'explore the approval system further'. I know how to piss Morrigan off (the Slap Morrigan feature is quite a nice addon), and I know how to bed Alistiar. I get the approval system. And I already purchased every other DLC, Return to Ostagar, Stone Prisoner, Warden's Keep and Awakening, so I've blown enough money already.

'Awakening isn't a DLC', I hear those of you who are still with us mutter. Yes, Awakening is a fucking DLC. I am within my rights to call anything that costs $40 pre-order for 14 hours gameplay a DLC addon. It was completely shit. Sure, you could 'Play as a character from Orlias' (no-one knows you in the first 15 minutes of the game, no other difference), or you could 'Port your existing character!' (where they assume you've met everyone in the game, even if you haven't passed the Harrowing (yes I checked)).

I've spent hundreds of dollars, hundreds of dollars, and too much of my life on this peace of overpriced shit. Dragon Age has reminded me of when I got too involved in The Sims to find anything else after playing for a bit on the original PC version, even replaying the same game, was soulwrenching and disheartening.

I'm so going back to Team Fortress 2 now, casually. Humph.

Dear Sysadmin

2010-02-26T07:46:00.000+11:00

Please stop blocking gmail and blogger. There is so much good stuff on there that is work related. :<

(I will try and start up opinion pieces again, I will. It helps when I can't actually get any time outside of work online. In addition, I blame Dragon Age)

Lots of love,

glasnt.

Update... update.. Update.. UPDATE!

2009-11-25T08:36:00.000+11:00

UPDATE!

Update: 25 November 2009, 9am.

Press Release:

To all concerned with the process of Nudgebucket(TM) and related social media constructs, the owner of this conglomberate wishes to advise you the following:

Balls.

That is all.

In case you notice this notice is worth noticing

2009-10-01T08:31:00.000+10:00

The original Nudgebucket.com, the one with the funky Bucket and stuff, is now gone, due to issues with our servers.

From now on, Nudgebucket.com -> Nudgebucket.BLOGSPOT.com :D

I'm keeping the email so I can have an awesome address. For a certain forum that won't accept free-addresses :shake fist:

:D

Google Maps Traffic - Now live in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne

2009-09-15T12:24:00.002+10:00

Google Maps now has live(-ish) data about traffic conditions for Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and other hubs. You can read more about it here.

What I find really interesting is how they are integrating anonymous data from Google Maps and My Location to try and get more information about the speed of travellers. Basically, you have the Google Maps app on your phone, and you agree to anonymously transmit your location, and based on your movement overtime, Google can make more educated guesses about how traffic is flowing on major arterials. So if it takes you 30 minutes to get over the Harbour Bridge, Google can say 'Oh, someone is slow.. is anyone else slow? How does this compare to other people's times?'

I'd like to know how many people are going over the bridge with My Location enabled in any hour period. Then, I'd like to get a group twice as large, get them all with their My Location-enabled cellphones, and sit them right on the Harbour Bridge walkway for a few hours.. see how the traffic flows then. :p

(Actually, a large group on the Harbour Bridge Walkway is probably a bad idea.. the Bridge Police might get upset.. where's a safe place, that's got traffic data, that a Flash Mob could congregate in, and have slow-walking races up and down the street... everyone can run, then walk, then 'Baywatch' walk.. see if the Traffic speed changes on the selected street...)

Drinking coffee's awesome.

2009-09-14T09:20:00.003+10:00

(as sung by the Gurg, on a coffee-high)

Oh all the cappa-chics and all of the mocha-freeze
You know they're coming to drink you
So quick, better run away
And hide in Starbucks, cower, yay
We're hanging out in cafe shops
And we got cappuccino mugs, mugs and chai team, om and nom
And drinking coffee's awesome!

No idea where this post came from, found again on 28th April 2010, with the original dated 14th Sept 2009.

Shh.. something big is nearly here...

2009-09-08T09:10:00.002+10:00

You didn't hear it from me...

http://blog.monopolycitystreets.com/2009/08/something-big-is-coming.html

Monopoly.. on a world scale.

Using Google Maps and Google Sketchup.

It could only be more perfect if it was in co-operation with a monopoly... oh wait, it is! :p

Edit (10/09/2009): This game sucks. My 'country is not supported'. ;_;

Full Circle

2009-08-31T13:40:00.003+10:00

So, I happened to come across a random gift-card for the Sydney IMAX on the weekend. It happened to be part of 500 $21 giftcards given out as part of following @IMAXSydney. The last day to use the vouchers was today. Given that I don't really think I'd want to see Harry Potter or any 3D movies, I thought I'd go down and get some Gelatissimo, as the voucher was good for that store.

Turns out, everyone had the same idea I had. The gelati store had run out of take-away boxes and drink cups. Ergo, the largest item they had for sale was a 'Large' serve. All $6.50 worth. I could buy 3 of those, but I a) couldn't eat them before they turned into icey-soup, and b) had no way to store them (due to no containers at said store).

So, there I was. $21 up, and no where to go. I could have gotten 'fried fish and drink' items, but even then I'd have to double up on their $10 deal to finish the card, and I doubt I would have lived through that ordeal of fat.

So, I got a large cup, and then set off to try and give away the card with the rest of the balance. But..

Every. Other. Freaking. Person. In. Darling Harbour. Had a card.

I'm not joking. I seriously saw 20 people with this card, trying to use it. I couldn't even give it away.

Long story short, I ended up using the card to remove gum from my shoe. Don't spit your gloop onto the street, kids. You could have gotten free icecream.

Printed media gets techo-funkay

2009-08-21T13:32:00.002+10:00

US Magazine Entertainment Weekly will have a video ad in September.

No, not on youtube.. in their magazine.

No, they aren't somehow combining a flick-book animation with a series of singing corrugated strips, the magazine will actually have a video in it.

The thin-as chip can hold up to 40 minutes of music and audio, which will bring new dimension to the world of print advertising, but at a dramatic cost. The first ad will be for Pepsi, apparently.

It's only a matter of time before this medium will also be abused :(

Pointless Babble?

2009-08-19T13:14:00.000+10:00

Right. Apparently, according to the research, 40% of Twitter is pointless babble.

But now, it seems that research has actually proven that phone conversations are 68% babble.

Time to actually check out what this is all about. I've been looking over this issue for a bit now, but after people are trying to say that Twitter has less babble than phone conversations, I'm going to do my own research.

If you want to have a look at the original whitepaper, you can find it here.

Even before getting into my own research, I have one thing to say: if you're going to make a white paper, include more information of your own than those from other sources, and don't make it so obvious that you're using Word 2007. Autoshapes are so passé.

I'm totally going to show these bosos up. Watch this space.

MySpace finally shuts up.

2009-08-19T12:47:00.002+10:00

Recall those annoyances back in the early '00s where one would (accidently) navigate to a MySpace page, then be inundated with the user's favourite band, or their own ear piercing musical 'prowess'?

Well, not only is it an assault on our ears, it also apparently costs MySpace millions a year.

MySpace has stopped auto-playing music on user's pages, in an attempt to save money on streaming costs. Even though "execs there tended to defend it as one of the distinguishing features of the service.".

I don't know about the rest of the community, but this is a big advance in eliminating the annoying things that seem to belittle one's browsing experience. Now, if only HTML5 removes the 'blink' tag, and allows user-controlled starting of animated gifs embedded in pages. Yes, b3ta will probably kick up a storm, but hey, the 'Play' button doesn't hurt Youtube views now, does it?

Sarcasm, yeah right ؟

2009-08-11T11:14:00.004+10:00

How's this for a whaddyaknow.

There has been much talk over the years about how to uniformly mark sarcasm in text online. Some have called for appending triple-periods "..." to have the sentence trail off at the end, and there has even been a call for a 'Sarcasm Font'.

However, there is actually a symbol for sarcasm. It's a backwards question mark, according to this Wikipedia article: Irony Mark.

Since this is now part of wikipedia, it will definitely catch on ؟

Rest In Peace, Sam the Koala

2009-08-06T16:18:00.001+10:00

Sam the Koala has died, aged 4, from cysts linked to the life-threatening disease chlamydia that has ravaged the koala population.

:(

Pork Belly Speakers

2009-08-03T16:14:00.001+10:00

I'm kidding, but these Ceramic Pig Speakers are still very cute.

I wonder if they taste like chicken.

Happy Birthday StackOverflow

2009-08-03T08:36:00.002+10:00

Stack Overflow turns one around now. That means it's been a year since one of the great programming communities has been around to help those in the field with their issues and questions.

For those that don't know, Stack Overflow is actually a triplet: StackOverflow.com, ServerFault.com and SuperUser.com are communites for programmers, sysadmins/dbas, and power users respectively.

Enjoy the cake.

On behalf of google, lots of love.

2009-07-31T11:09:00.002+10:00

Google has fixed everything by implementing a method to remove 'On behalf of' messages. (in some cases.)

Finally, you can have a consolidated email box with multiple accounts seamlessly bouncing around messages without fear of behalfing yourself to others ^_^

JamLegend: Custom songs

2009-07-30T12:52:00.002+10:00

JamLegend, the web-guitar-hero app, now allows users to upload their own songs to play.

Pretty awesome, I reckon.

I can't say much more that hasn't already been said in that link, because TechCrunch are doing what I wanted this blog to do. But since I have less money/sources/staff, they are winning.

Sad panda.

Bunni

2009-07-23T08:36:00.002+10:00

Bunni is an awesome new flash MMO game. It was released a few days ago, I think. But it's awesome.

Gah, I want play it nooowww!

Also, you can get pirate bunni's if you are special enough.

Advertising things

2009-07-23T08:27:00.001+10:00

Why are the media beating up on Melbourne spending $240k on a logo?

Seriously.

It's not all that much for what I saw was a pretty darn good image, including the little spinny round thingy.

There has been more money spent on advertising fuckin' red meat, for god sake. Not to mention all the other Visit Victoria/Melbourne ads that have run in the past.

Not that all that advertising has actually made the cold dark wet city of concrete any more attractive.

Detailed Programmatic Specificity

2009-07-16T09:03:00.003+10:00

Let me break it down for you.

detailed adj. - developed or executed with care and in minute detail
programmatic adj. - following an overall plan or schedule
specificity n. - the state of being specific rather than general

Detailed Programmatic Specificity - following a process of specific detailed guidelines, instead of having a fair shake of the sauce bottle and creating a political shitstorm.

Make sense?

Well it will, in due season.

Stephen Conroy: Internet Villian 2009

2009-07-15T08:35:00.002+10:00

I'm not making this up. I wish I were. The UK Internet Industry Awards have awarded Stephen Conroy the 'Internet Villian' award, "for continuing to promote network-level blocking despite significant national and international opposition". Full list of awards here.

Well played, UK.

But sorry, we're still going to flog you in the ashes.

Update: Apparently, he's "going to put the statuette on a shelf in sub-basement 17 of my Volcano Mountain retreat."

Firefox Personas

2009-07-12T10:41:00.000+10:00

Not sure if this has been missed or something, but Firefox has 'Personas', which is the equivalent of having a image underneath your browser's address bar+buttons, etc.

It's really quite disturbing. I've got a cute little fox on mine now, but my toolbar is so minimal all I can see are his eyes.

And what cute little eyes they are...

Aww...

*shakes head*

NO! No glasnt, toolbars are meant to be GREY!

Well, that was interesting.

2009-07-11T14:39:00.000+10:00

I've just spent the last hour transferring all the old Nudgebucket.com posts into this blog.

You can thank me later.

Also, I'll have you know, Google, that no, I'm not a spam bot. Just because I want to enter more than 50 posts in a day doesn't mean I'm a spam bot. I'll complete your captcha just to make you happy.

Anti-sec Movement

2009-07-11T13:07:00.002+10:00

It seems that ImageShack.us, a popular image hosting service, has been hacked by a group trying to promote something or other. Aparently things will be getting owned.

This is the image I speak of.

What they've done is changed every existing image hosted by imageshack into their message. Since there are probably millions or more images hosted on this service, anything hosted on that site has been changed. New uploads are not effected, unless they run the script again.

I just hope they revert all the images back. That wouldn't be nice if they didn't.

Google OS - Late 2010

2009-07-09T08:31:00.005+10:00

It had to happen.

First, they opened the possibilities of websearch, then web based applications. As soon as they delved into browsers, you knew the Operating System by GoogleTM had to be around the courner.

In a release from Google they have said that the Google Chrome OS will be built off a linux kernel, and be a Chrome base.

Doesn't this remind you of another operating system that was basically a browser on wheels?

glasnt was originally waiting for an eeepc with an Intel Ion chip, but now is thinking that a Google OS will complete that epic nerd trio

Beta be gone.

2009-07-08T08:27:00.002+10:00

Google. You know it for it's ever expanding list of web-based applications, it's browsers, and maybe even for it's search engine. You can't live without it. And now, Google thinks that it's time to remove that little grey word from the bottom of their application logos.

BETA.

That's right, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, in fact, all of the Google Apps are officially out of beta.

I'm worried.

Being a beta release means that it can and may break. That it may have new functionality added without notice to try and make the thing better. Now that the BETA has gone, will Google stop developing? Will Gmail just fade into nothingness when we start having some new form of AJAX WYSIWYG automatic instantly updating technology, the original introduction of which took email from the executable application and into the cloud?

Well fear not. Google has said it won't stop developing it's flagship products. Too right they shouldn't. I'd hate to be around on the day that Gmail's End of Life statement is announced.

And don't worry, there's been an added feature to Google Labs to keep the BETA-branded logos in your favourite applications. Just look for 'Back to Beta' in the Labs tab of your Gmail environment.

glasnt thinks that Google has tarnished the reputation of beta releases. No longer can they falter.

Handwriting

2009-07-06T10:14:00.004+10:00

How many people actually have ledgiable handwriting? How hard is it to be able to take a pen and be able to draw a series of symbols that another person can interpret and understand their meaning?

Being able to use a pencil to write words is a skill that is trained from age 2 or whenever you find those crayons and a large white wall to scribble on. And yet it takes many years before you're allowed to start using a pen (if you were educated in a school which had a handwriting test before you were granted a 'pen licence', usually by age 10).

And yet, a lot of people can't write to save their life. Doctors are printing prescriptions out to save time, ink, and inconvenience when the pharmacist can't decipher if the patient needs tamiflu or tynocl. Scribbling a note for yourself at the end of a Friday afternoon can lead to a Monday morning of confusion trying to work out what the heck 'get 2 documnt by urhgls' meant.

The only solution to this problem is for the government to distribute dymo label makers to every man woman and child. Formatted print with limited pictographs will take over the written word. They also last longer, and come in many pretty colours. Alturnatively, pen liceneses could require renewing with a handwriting test every 2 years until retirement.

glasnt can't work out if T's are L's with mislocated horizontal strokes.

Some language or another

2009-07-03T08:36:00.003+10:00

I like automatic translations. No, really. I do. There's nothing like trying to make sense of a japanese phrase only to then click 'Translate to English' to find that that word didn't actually mean goat, and there were no 'sacrifices' at all in the statement.

Thankfully, Twitter have added this functionality in a slew of updates to their main websites. There are no goats to be seen, but there are some lovely AJAX additions, including an automatic 'Translate to English' parser.

And like all automated systems, it sometimes get it wrong. Oh, but sometimes it gets it very very right. Like below.

I don't think even a human translation service could get that one reading in english.

Nudgebucket's computer has died, so updates will be few and far between until a new motherboard is found.

Misinformation

2009-06-30T08:55:00.003+10:00

Over the last few days, a great number of people have passed away. If you believe twitter, then Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Jeff Goldblum and many other big name stars have left this earth.

However, only the first two on the above list have been confirmed as deceased by official sources. And by official sources, I mean actual medical institutions who have the above persons' liveless bodies in their possession.

According to many a news outlet, a unnamed website tried to start rumours of other star's deaths, including Goldblum, in order to generate traffic to their website. Overall the entire traffic over the internet peaked over the past weekend, so there were a lot of users that could have been directed to that site. More traffic means more ad impressions and, hopefully, more ad clicks. Therefore, more profit. Ergo, more traffic, more profit. Simple.

But not as simple as that. You can't just make up stories to direct people to your site. Only The Onion can do that. And sometimes even they fail.

Then again they have enough money for a fake news crew, so they must be doing something right.

Become a Gmail Ninja

2009-06-24T08:37:00.001+10:00

Google has been pimpin' the Ninja theme for a bit now, with iGoogle themes featuring the little buggers, to nice Easter Eggs on Google Reader (try the Konami code while in Reader); but now, they've released tips on How to be a Gmail Ninja.

Complete with all their tips to get Gmail working for you, as well as a nice PDF quick-guide, this help page will have you flinging emails like they were numchucks in no time flat.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go meditate.

Can you hear an echo in here?

2009-06-23T08:58:00.001+10:00

Well, due to circumstances with our webmaster, we have had to move back to good old Blogger. This will be ok, because I'll be moving the url back to point here, and I'll be able to consolidate all the old nudgebucket posts onto this site, as well as maybe getting the old glasnt.blogpost.com posts back here as well.

:D

any posts prior to this one have been ported. I can't work out if I want to rebrand them as 'old' because I hope they'd still be news and may actually be read.

Nerd-gasm

2009-06-05T13:43:00.000+10:00

You can get them reading webcomics.. you can get them at product launches.. you can get them any old how.. as a matter a fact I have one now...

Nerd-gasm.

Glasnt, of Nudgebucket.com, finally has a popular digg submission, but it's also over 1000 diggs and counting.. it's a triumph. Although it's from Valve and not from Nudgebucket, it's still a step in the direction of one day hopefully having enough popular-power to help push a nudgebucket article into the limelight.

Gmail not always kinda nearly never display images below

2009-05-11T13:26:00.000+10:00

There is an ongoing issue with Gmail where if you ask it to always display images from a certain sender, it will not remember it for next time.

There is a discussion about it here: Discussion

From my troubleshooting, it looks as though clicking 'Display Images Below' will maybe save that setting for that email, but it will not remember it for other emails from that sender, nor if you have previously allowed it for other senders.

This is why gmail is still in beta. :)

Update: Well, not any more anyway.

Facebook Friends lists in Chat

2009-05-11T13:24:00.000+10:00

Now you can organise your chat by friends lists, and also block certain lists from seeing you in chat.

More information from Facebook's Blog

This is a very good thing. As soon as they removed Limited Profiles and added in the original Friends lists, I added all the Limited people to a new friends list called Limited. Now I can remove all information from their view, including my status and being able to chat to me.

Come to think of it, I can't even recall who I had on that listing and why... but the functionality is still there :)

VapourWare evaporates into a cloud of nothing but crushed dreams.

2009-05-06T13:42:00.000+10:00

Duke Nukem Forever, the game that was originally going to be released around the time of "Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus", will never be released.

Why?

Because 3D Realms, the company charged with bringing this game to live, has gone under.

Never will we see the great man himself kick ass and chew bubblegum in a new environment with enhanced gameplay and graphics.

Forever will we remember his 2D-antics and how we longed for more.

We hope you have an everlasting supply of gum in game heaven, Duke.

In webspace, noone can here you scream.

2009-05-04T13:44:00.000+10:00

So, you make a list, or have a rant about something. You place it on your website, be it LiveJournal, Myspace, your Blogspot or a seperate website all together. Will it get noticed? It depends where you put it.

A trend with social aggregaters like Digg and Reddit is that they will pick up content from known sites, such as TechCrunch, BoingBoing, etc, including all the newspaper websites, but they won't necessarily like what they see.

But unless you can get a continual flow of content into a format that people will see, like what they see, recommend it to their friends who will then spread the word, you're stuffed.

*crickets*

Nudgebucket.com is on a continual hiatus until glasnt gets her finger out of her butt and makes content.

Interactive Youtube Videos are ikky.

2009-04-13T13:44:00.000+10:00

Ever since the dawn of non-writeable multimedia, be it placecards, books, or computer-aided graphical stimulation devices, people have made shit stories.

A choose your own adventure could be invigorating, or even intriguing to the reader, but unless enough time is put into it, you're going to end up with a reader who isn't going to buy another one of your works due to being extremely bored and even concerned with your lack of creativity.

Which brings me to interactive youtube videos. There was one example of where someone made a Mortal Kombat "game" where you click on a hyperlinked area within the video, and that 'makes something happen'. It was ok at first, until I realised that if you click things 'fast enough', i.e. before the other person hurt you back about 5 seconds into the movie, then you could always 'win the game'.

However, looking at these more closely, I've worked out that this is the worst attempt at making media interactive. You'd probably get more consistant viewership and returning visitors if you had just kept your fighting movie as an original single track video and skipped the cutscenes.

This is coming from a person who is to the point of frustration a DVD 'bonus features' where you can 'play a game', but you can't. You don't have any dynamic variables in your environment, you just have prerecorded data and elements to click on. That's it. It's not rocket science, but it's not entertaining.

As soon as someone makes a good DVD feature, or a good interactive youtube video, taking into regard what I've said, I'll eat my hat. And I like my hat. It's a good hat. It's all purple and stuff.

Happy 5th Birthday Facebook

2009-04-02T14:18:00.000+11:00

Facebook celebrates it's 5th Birthday today, as it pokes and graffiti's it's way towards another five years. If you're not one of the 150 million people world wide who are currently being cyberstalked, then you don't know what you're missing out on. Those late nights of wondering who is at your window, all those messages from random people who's name you can't pronounce because you have no idea who they are.. ah.. there's nothing like it.

So come on, poke a friend and stalk an enemy, celebrate 5 years.

Updates to ACMA banned list stopping information about Monday's attack

2009-04-01T13:45:00.000+11:00

In a new update to the ACMA list leaked on Wikileaks, several popular Australian websites, including OCAU, Whirlpool, and Nudgebucket have been added to the Banned List.
Although declining for comment earlier this morning, it has been revealed that Sen. Stephen Conroy has personally added the sites to the list due to content being 'unfit for human reading'. It appears that he is now targeting any website that contains members that have half a brain. It cannot be determined if these sites, all based in Sydney, being shut down has anything to do with the zombie outbreak of March 30th in the central CBD. It is known that all sites on the list have physical ties to that location, having servers located there, or members of these websites living in or around the area. Since the brain damage of Monday's incident, it seems that Conroy, Master of the Undead , is going after the websites to keep them off the air from informing residents about the outbreak. News.com.au hasn't released a decent article in many a moon, so it probably isn't as big of a threat.

It is not known what other sites will fall under the cloak of secrecy, however, please, if you can read this page, spread the word before Conroy and his minions crack P2P, and all our other underground networking technologies. Spread the word, Sydney is under attack.

Help us :(

Tonight: Conroy mumbles about CP and tries to dodge questions.

2009-03-25T13:46:00.000+11:00

Tune in at 9:30pm this evening (26/03/2009) on ABC1 to see Sen. Conroy on Q&A. Watch him dodge the issue and not give any answers.

Collection of News

2009-03-20T13:46:00.000+11:00

Welcome to your weekly Friday. I hope you have survived it thus far, and look forward to the upcoming weekend.

Pig in a Box - DRM for Geeklings
From our file titled "Things we want if the US Dollar wasn't so bad", here is a nice kids book from ThinkGeek. It is a book abuot sharing and caring, and how PirateBay is a nice fun way to be nice to people nicely. Nice.

Sage your window. Sage them all.
Also from ThinkGeek, they have a compact hydroplonic herb growing system. Very nice for when you need parsley, sage, rosemary and/or thyme.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/FizzBinTheTechnicalSupportSecretHandshake.aspx
Apparently this man from Hanzel, Man, has suggested that there by a secret handshake to cut time off support calls. Unfortunately this was picked up by Slashdot, and now the handshake is just waiting to be brought into the mainstream. I can't wait for the day I get a support call with this phrase within it, only to inform them it was actually a PEBKAC error.

Facebook - get some freaking timeszone action!
I don't mind Facebook. For those playng at home, you may realise I actually like it. But there is one thing apart from the stupid group invites and the application spamming. And that's timezones. Or lack there of.
Hence why Australians are forced to accept that they are living in the future, and always have 'Tomorrow' as part of their timestamp. We are in the now, people. We are not the future. Well, maybe, but until the End of Ze World, we'd like to be noticed at +9 - +11 GMT, depending on the DST involved, thank you.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-in-labs-undo-send.html
Now you can have a 5-second delay when you hit that great big send button before the email is actually sent. Gmail only. It'd be good if it was configurable.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks_to_Conroy:_Go_after_our_source_and_we_will_go_after_you
Wikileaks, being in Sweden and all 'nerr nerr you can't get to us', has said that if Conroy goes after the whistle blower, then that rat in the pack will be protected by Swedish law.

Awesome.

Also, if you're in Canberra, there's a march on Pariment tomorrow. http://www.marchinmarch.org/

ACMA Leak, or whatever it is.

2009-03-19T13:47:00.001+11:00

There was a list released early this afternoon, apparently as a listing of what is going to be blocked in Australia as part of the Internet Filter. Most of these sites are fair enough, being abusive or of pornographic content. However, a lot of them are not what you'd expect.

If this list is to be believed, 4chan.org/b/ will be removed from use by Australians. This is probably because of one person linking to an abusive site. If the grapevine is to be believed, any website linking to a banned site will be removed from the approved listing. That is, if the wikileaks page that had this list on it was to be blacklisted for posting links to actually banned sites, would wikileaks then be blocked? What about pages that link to wikileaks? Or pages that link to those pages? If someone links to one of these 'ban-tree' sites on their facebook, will all of facebook then be blocked? What about a youtube page? Could no australian trying to use the internet anywhere on the mainland be able to view movies?

The problems with the internet filter have been many and varied, and today's events are just another snapshot of the chaos that one senator is promising Australians, purely on a foundation that it will protect children and their innocence.

The best way to protect children is proper parenting, not government blankets that inhibit everyday Australians' diplomatic rights.

What does your Top Level Domain say about you?

2009-03-19T13:47:00.000+11:00

Top Level Domains, or TLDs, are the .com or .org that you have in the URL of your website. My TLD is .com, as this is nudgebucket.com, unless this post has been grafted onto another site.

However, what does your TLD say about the way your website runs, or how it will be perceived around the internet? Nudgebucket investigates.

.com Websites using the generic .com TLD are your average Joe Smith trying to make their stand on the internet. They choose this domain because they want to be the same, but want more than their URL to make them stand out. This TLD hasn't been used as much in the 'Make A Funny URL using your TLD' game, as I don't recall a lot of 'cata.com'-like sites out there. .com's are your standard white-picket-fence TLD, and make the site's content stand out more than the URL.

.org The Organisation website. If anything within this website makes the average joe laugh then you have chosen the wrong TLD. .org's are more for officical organisations. If you have more .org's than .com's in your assignment bibliography, then you're off to a flying start. Your teacher will recognise that you spent hours trying to find information in the poorly indexed mess that are .org's, and you have proven your worth.

.au (country TLDs) Country code TLDs say that you are a conforming nationalist, depending on the country of your TLD. .us's are great big flashy 'WOO USA USA' style sites, where as your .fr's are a bit hard on the nose, your .ca's are still asking what's going on, eh? and your .au's are just waiting for Friday's pub lunch.

.info/.biz If your website has a .info or a .biz, then you are a cheapskate that just wants a small A4 letter on the internet, if that, in a web where most signs are A0 with neon flashing lights, or better. A .info or a .biz are cheaper and less populated than the .com's and .org's, as they haven't been around as long. If you want to grab a domain that's already been allocated in the .com/.org space, you can settle for a .biz, but you won't be as highly regarded as the one who took up the .com extention while they had the chance. Also, if you use your URL heavily in advertising, make sure you check your sister .com isn't very similar to your site, so you don't inadvertently acutally advertise for the other mod. For example, umart.net.au and umart.com.au.

.gov These are only for government websites. Usually for the Australian Government, these are appended with a .au as well, and this gives an overly generous steriotype to these websites. If you run a .gov.au, you are a political junkie, who think's its great that you are reaching out to the kids of today by showing them you too are cool. Your RSS don't work, you probably have backdated information as your current content, your archives don't work, and you've probably got a worse bouncerate than Facebook. (Bouncerate is the percentage of people who don't go further than the home page. Those who turn around and run in fear at the sight of your site.)

So, get going and try and get that .com. Except if you have to add numbers into your URL to make it unique. nudg3buck3t.com would never take off. Ever.

Review: YourFont.com - fonts at your fingertips

2009-03-16T13:47:00.000+11:00

Today's blog will be in a new font, created by YourFont.com

Basically, you just download a grid matrix of letters, numbers, and symbols, using a image editing service or a printer/scanner combo, you can write in your own text, upload the (scanned) image, then in just minutes you have your own font .ttf file that you can then move into your fonts folder on Windows (usually C:\Windows\Fonts) and away you go :D

What I've done is do the first sheet all normally, then used the symbols sheet just to go nuts with a few doodles. Just like wingdings, I too can have my own little titbits inserted into my text. Just remember that this is a special font, so if you want to share around a word file with it in, you have to send over the font as well. Or, you can take a picture of the font output and send it around.

No, you can't have my font. Make your own.

The New Facebook Changes - Why people hate everything

2009-03-15T13:49:00.000+11:00

Well, for those that have a Facebook account and actually use it on a regular basis, you may have noticed that it has changed a bit. The home page is looking different, groups and pages have had a face lift, and everyone's thumbnail picture now has rounded edges so you can't cut yourself.

Personally, I think Facebook needs to lose the safety scissors and get down to the thorns in facebook.

Just taking problems from the new update, I can tell you at least 3 things wrong:

Pages: You find a product or a company that you want to become a fan of. You search say "Lift Off", and you see a few results. You see a random company, then the page for the TV show you remember from the 90's. You see the little 'Join Group' on the side of the results. Not wanting to join a group without reading its content, you dive into the group, thinking to see a description, a nice big picture on the right hand side, a few discussion threads, and some wall posts. You click through and.. there's nothing there. Literally, nothing. You see one or two recent activity points where someone created the page and did nothing else. That's it. You actually have to click the 'Just Fans' link just below the 'Write Something..." combo box to even see the wall posts. And it takes another click to see anything that was previously right in front of you before when you clicked through to a group, that stuff being 'Information'. A tad annoying, but users will have to deal.

Next, groups: you click through to a group, say the Manu Feildel Appreciation Society. And.. nothing's changed. Not only have we now a section that hasn't changed, but it's not improved. It's the only 'box-y' type of thing left in Facebook. Everything else has been hedged with safety scissors, but not any of the Ye-Olde-Groups. A reminder of facebook's past that won't be removed any time in the not to distant future? Who knows..

Finally, friends. I loved how you could list friends. You could customise things so your old highschool buddies could see your pictures but not your wall, or you could limit anyone you work with to just basic information, so you can't unintentionally leak out your actual whereabouts on Friday arvo after that long pub lunch through a status message. However, apart from being able to collect people in little boxes, you can't do much else. You can't see who's in boxes and who's not. It would take a very long time to sort through every single person and work out that I've missed 2 highschool buddies from any list what so ever, and therefore they haven't been experiencing the entire glasnt facebook experience.

Mind you, they've removed the friends limit of 5000 maximum. That just means more street parties for Kevin Rudd.

Thank Gosh It's Friday.

2009-03-13T13:49:00.000+11:00

Here Comes Google Voice, that little voice inside your head.

For those that remember a nifty little (US only) service called Grand Central, they were picked up by Google not too long ago. Also, Google had a 411 service (US only) where you could basically query google using your voice. Now, Google has released Google Voice, their integration with Grand Central and their already working voice technologies (for US only and existing Grand Central users). It looks like it could be a little bit of ok, with the system bascially consolidating everything you tell it into text. It'd be good for those times you can't just quite get to your Blackberry to make a note to remember about your secret plans of world domination.
Youtube Video Preview.

Firefox Beta 3.1
There is a new Firefox Beta release out in the wild as of yesterday. I'm looking forward to any improvements they can make to this awesome browser. After hearing that IE8 is faster than Chrome and Firefox, and that apparently IE8 is going to be the last IE browser released, it's about fucking time microsoft gave up.

Dave, the TV station.
When I heard about this, I thought it was effing brilliant. It's a TV station in the UK that's been going for about 5 years now, but it's a station that shows bloke shows. Not sports or beer, but Top Gear, Red Dwarf, Who's Line, and many others. They are also the station that's bringing in the new Red Dwarf series in April. Let's hope it doesn't suck.

And now, for a little bit of Trivia. Lindsay McDougall, presenter for Triple J's breakfast program and former member of Frenzel Rhomb, has always said that they are anti-commercial radio and anti-Kyle Sanderlands. However, recently the above information came to my attention. I didn't realise McDougall was part of Frenzel Rhomb, I thought it was Friends of Rob. But.. that's not the good bit, the good bit is coming... Frenzel Rhomb have actually sold out in the past. They were on the So Fresh Hits of Summer 2001 CD, along with Enrique Iglesias, Jessica Simpson and J-Lo. Their song was called 'War', which I can't find anywhere on youtube, so I can't listen to it. However, Lindsay and Jay and co, I'm sorry, but you sold out. You played at an Australian Jamboree FFS. To 11 year olds. You sold out big time.

Thursday Torture

2009-03-12T13:50:00.000+11:00

NZ Censor Threatens To Jail Parents Who Buy Violent Video Games For Kids

I'm not too sure not to make of this one. Someone in NZ thinks its a good idea for parents to be dragged through the legal system if they purchase games outside of their childs age barrier. No GTA for you!

Apple store down: 4GB iPod shuffle on the way?

After seeing a 'technical report' on a morning breakfast show, and hearing that there would be an iPod that talks to you, I then read Engadget speculating that there must be a new iPod on the market because the Apple Store was down. Yes dear, good thinking. Only a few hours behind, never mind. Not that I can talk, I'm currently about news site number #1338 to write about this. If only I was one spot quicker, damn it all. Anyway, the new iPod Shuffle is a 4gb speck of a thing, which requires the controls in the Apple patented headphones to make it work. No more having decent headphones for you. If you want to use your headphones that are actually worth the money you paid for them, then you'll have to go a Nano or greater. However, what has me is the 'Voice Preview'. I like how with Media Player, bless its poor poor heart, that you could have a 5 second cross over between songs, so they never stop you dancing. But with this new contraption, you'll have Steven Hawking letting you know that you'll have Beatie Boys up next, or 'dee-moos-five' instead of 'Deadmau5'. The only thing that can make this anywhere near something that I would personally purchse is if you could overwrite the default voice with a database from that GPS that was voiced by GlaDos.

Comment on your shared Google Reader Feeds. Annoy millions

I have near 50 feeds coming in on my google reader daily. I don't share a lot of them. I used to, but they were of no use to anyone. Now, however, you can comment on your shared feeds. This wouldn't be as bad of a idea if I wasn't already inundated with motorcycle and 'FAIL' images being linked on Facebook. I'm sorry, he-who-will-not-be-named-merudo, but a cat with a melon isn't all that funny the twenty-seventh time you see it.

Victorian Bush Fire - NASA Imagery
Something a bit different today. Here I have from Wikipedia an image from space of some of the effects of the Victorian Bushfires from last month. Note that the red is vegetation, tan is natural ground, and black is burnt. (False imagery)

I shall bring you a detailed review of the new Facebook changes as soon as I am granted access by the RollOver gods.

New Facebook format goes Live Today

2009-03-11T13:50:00.000+11:00

Once it's released, I'll give you a full review.

I'm sure this one will again turn heads, as it seem the generic user likes having social networking, but doesn't like change to their layout. Gee, an adopter who doesn't like change? Whodathunkit.

More here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/11/facebooks-real-time-homepage-goes-live-today/

Tawny Tuesday Tree-View

2009-03-10T13:51:00.000+11:00

Study shows the princess is in another castle 7/8ths of the time
Based on a statistical review of the data collected by a Italian plumber traveling around a principality dominated by toadstools, it has been revealed that 7 times out of 8 the princess is not in the castle the water piping engineer is currently within. However, novice plumbers, who are noted for their emerald overalls, have found that in fact the princess is never in the castle they are residing, because they seem to never check more than 2 castles without falling to their death.

Red Dwarf returns to TV April 10th 2009. Smeg.
Thinkgeek is celebrating the return of Holly and the gang with this smegging awesometastic t-shirt. Get in while the dollar is still relatively high compared to what it will be soon :D

Apple Store knockoffs being hassled for iMonopoly
Developers who have had their work kicked off the Apple's iTunes store have banded together and decided to release their own application hosting facility in order to allow their kiwifruit to thrive.

Monday Wrap up from the Chip Markets

2009-03-09T13:52:00.000+11:00

A quick news wrap up today. Nudgebucket.com is as of now down to one part-time reporter, as they have other commitments.

Seven leads download movie races, Content lacking
Channel 7 has released a statement saying they will help Tivo turn into a internet service, with uncapped downloads from Seven servers to provide limitless free-to-air and pay-per-view movies on demand. They hope to take away market share from Foxtel by providing the same content, hopefully achieving a decrease the number of people pirating TV shows and movies. Problem being that one of the main reasons people 'pirate' or share TV shows and movies is because of the 2 to 12 month or more delay between a episode or movie airing in the US or UK and them being aired in Australia. Research has found this to be the case, and shows that are made available sooner in Oz have lower piracy statistics. The problem is the lack of current content compared to other media providers, the internet included.

Status on Photo Storage Problems, your drunken pictures are coming slowly
Facebook has had a hardware malfunction that has caused a portion of their uploaded images to be lost into the ether. Luckily, they are working on their data recovery, and should have pictures back soon. Hopefully some of the less lovely pictures of yours truly, just some of the billions uploaded every month to the social network, are lost and replaced with hot looking blue question marks.

Google Privacy Blunder Shares Your Docs Without Permission, 3 files effected
Google Documents has had a bit of a scare over the weekend with privacy settings not being able to stop people opening uploaded documents. This is one of the many reasons why this reporter will never in their life upload anything into Google Health. There are enough diet pill and enhancement drug emails coming through the spam box already.

Dreamweaver is dying, stench lives on.
Dreamweaver, the worst WUSIWUG editor ever second only to Microsoft Word, has been named as dead, due to it's focus on static boring content. Other remarkable announcements include "Microsoft to release Windows XP" and "GeoCities dies a horrid ad-filled death after being bought by Yahoo!".

Facebook Pages and Profiles are the same thing! KRudd to increase street parties
A recent press conference has revealed that profiles will no longer have friend limits, along with other announcements. This reporter is waiting for the 300 status updates complaining about the new homepage design. The upgrade was awesome. Chat is great. Don't knock it, or go back to Friendster

Man fixes Guild Wars with Sata Port Swap
In local news, a man has fixed graphics and sound issues due to hardware interupts by changing the sata ports used by his harddrives on his chipset. The P5B suffered 'Nintendo Syndrome', where blowing the ports or trying another connection solved the issue. Steam is now working flawlessly, and the computer enthusiast is looking forward to more gold and green drops in the future.

Sprinkler Hide-a-Key - Annoy your neighbours and install a faux-water wasting system
Although this is quite a nifty little device from ThinkGeek, unfortunately anywhere south of the Tropic of Capricorn are going to have problems with robbers notice the sprinklers that have not been seen since early 2004. Nice try, geeksters, but maybe there should be a key-hiding system shaped like a mossie lamp.

Review: Digsby - the Multi-IM service

2009-03-06T13:55:00.000+11:00

Back in the early 2000's everyone you knew had a Hotmail account. Then in 2005 it was the gmail account. Between all the different social networking and instant messaging providers in the internet, is there a place you can check up on them all?

Well no.

But there is a client that does it.

Digsby, a popular third-party IM service, now has integration with social networking sites and email accounts. You can log in using digsby into your Hotmail, Gmail,Yahoo!, AOL, or generic IMAP email account and have digsby alert you when you have new emails. Also, you can sign in to your AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ or even your Facebook chat accounts to chat to your online friends. And if that's not enough, you can even have Digsby check up on changes to your facebook, myspace, linked in or Twitter feeds too.

Now there's no excuse to spam all your friends every month when you get sick of your bubbles_buffy_lol_45@hotmail.com and want to change your email to express your new found love of the Jonas Brothers by becoming jonasluver852_heh@gmail.com. You can create all these accounts, and access them all simultaneously using digsby, so all your friends can see you!*

* nudgebucket does not promote the creation of such hideous looking email addresses, and does not support the jonas brothers. Buffy is ok, but Firefly was better.

Doodle 4 Google

2009-03-02T14:20:00.000+11:00

Once again, Google has declared its Doodle 4 Google contest open. You know what a Google Doodle is don't you? It's when they change the Google Logo based on the current day, or with the image from the winner of a contest, like this one. Unfortunately, this particular contest is only open to school children. Sure it's great that the kids get to muck around with crayons and maybe see their imagery on the internet, but come on, what preschooler is going to recognise the artistic talent of a doodle? And its just that, a doodle.

Maybe I'm just upset because the kids get to have the fun while us grown ups don't get our silly pictures in lights. I mean, come on, who wouldn't want to see this image as the Google Logo:

The artistic ability is second to none, you must admit. I await my royalty check, Google.

Adventure Time Creator's Series Starting VERY Soon!

2009-03-02T14:02:00.001+11:00

Pendleton Ward, the creator of the very very good cartoon Adventure Time, has been granted the green light to create a series on Cartoon Network, that will be aired in 'Fall 2009 - Winter 2010' - which is VERY soon. As in, starting Sunday-ish.

Also, he has released another cartoon only a week ago - The Bravest Warriors.

Shoe Phone invented, sends tongues wagging.

2009-03-02T14:01:00.000+11:00

An Australian engineer has invented the shoephone. So he claims. All he's done in this instance is broken a perfectly good shoe by putting in a phone and a blue tooth receiver into a man's dress shoe.

How exactly is this news? I could put a rabbit in a water bottle and no-one but the RSPCA would care in the least. Maybe the Today show needs to get it's heel into some new news. The above youtube vid is dated late January, and Today only had it on this mornings show.

I need a job so I can stop watching the morning onslaught of 'No DUUUUUUH's.

Yes Mel, there were fires in Victoria. Hence, it is a completely reasonable question to ask "How are the fires going, Super Intendant Chalmers?"

Or someone else being oh so funneh when they make a joke about the beached whales in Tasmania. You can't use a freakin' kiwi accent because it didn't happen in New Zealand. It happened in Tasmania. Try your tassie accent next time.

Geez.

Things to make Twitter worthwhile.

2009-03-02T13:59:00.000+11:00

Some may have noticed that I have actually started using twitter, even though I directly called it a bumbling buffoon in an article a few weeks ago. I've always wondered why you couldn't thread conversations, or have private statements to particular people or groups, or other such niceties. Well, the people down at sixrevisions have actually created a list of a lot of the things I have found lacking in twitter. And if these could be implemented, it could actually be really really good.

#3 Text links in Tweets. I've been using TinyURL to link to my blogs in my tweets, because you can't really have the entire URL to a blog post in there without having room to actually type something. However, having wrappers around keywords is going to greatly change how the engine works. They'd have to allow for HTML coding, or in fact take suggestion #10 Add a built-in URL shortener and have that create a short url on the twitter's site, as opposed to a third party, and then have a 'linking text' in there, so the result is something that looks like a hyperlink, but doesn't use any of the HREF tags that could break a tweet.

#4 Tweet threading. This is one that's always annoyed me, because if you tweet back at someone, there is no way to actually get a contextual displaying of the conversation. You reply to a person, not a tweet. Therefore there is no way to work out what tweet relates to what other tweet, and therefore no way to link things. Unless you have like a 'Wall to Wall' feature, a la Facebook, but that only works to display the conversation between two people over all time. Add a third person into the mix and it breaks.

#5 Allow tweets directed to a group of people. This would be awesome, because sometimes people don't want or need to know things, and there could be such a thing on twitter as PRIVATE TWEETS. I don't want the whole internet knowing what I'm doing on the weekend, so I could just tweet people I've selected in a certain group to alert them that I will be late/early/drunk/piking, etc. :D

The i's have it - iChat now in iGoogle.

2009-03-02T13:58:00.001+11:00

Ever wanted to iChat from the comfort of iGoogle?

Well, now you can!

Google is rolling out their Google Chat system into the iGoogle framework. Now you can chat while reading your feeds on iGoogle and feeding your fish, if you have an aquarium app installed.

Also, since this is coming to the US first, you can opt-in here. This will automatically allow you to use iChat within iGoogle.

iLikeIt

How fluff gets in your navel: A study

2009-03-02T13:58:00.000+11:00

I don't have a problem with bellybutton fluff. I know people that do. They can find orange fluff in their navel when they haven't warn that sweater in their cupboard of orange threadage for weeks. However, the secret of how fluff gets in there has been discovered, by chemist Dr Georg Steinhauser.

It appears that the hair around the navel is actually a bit like little 'barbed hooks' that captures small strands from the clothing warn around it. The spiral formation of these hairs around the navel actually slowly pull in any captured fluff during the day, and deposit it into the navel area. The actual fluff in the navel is a combination of fat, dust, sweat, and dead skin, as well as clothing fibers.

Since the hairs around the navel are the collectors of the fluff, the one way to stop having such a full bellybutton is to shave your stomach. This is why men who have more testosterone, hence are more hairy in places, tend to have more fluff build up. I don't have this problem, because I have only the tiniest follicles around that area. Hence I have no collection service at my disposal.

Prior to Steinhauser's study, Australian Dr Karl Kruszelnicki worked out that the most fluff found in navels was produced by those who had much larger, hairier stomachs. Also, because of the use of demin for a pant material for many australians, navel hair tended to have a blue hue to it, because pant fibers as well as shirt fibers were transported to the navel.

The mystery of how Guiness World Records for the most amount of collected navel fluff, Graham Barker, had a lot of red fluff although he rarely wears the colour, is yet to be solved. I suspect that he may wear red socks or undergarmets, or that he wears white clothing which is stained some how into a red fiber in his navel. Perhaps he is subject to bleeding in the navel, and the fluff soaks up this material, staining it? Sounds like an Agatha Christie novel already..

Live Search to be rebranded Kumo.com: Rumour

2009-03-02T13:56:00.000+11:00

According to MarketingPilgrim.com, Microsoft is going to be rebranding their Live Search to Kumo.com.

From a leaked memo:

"The Search team needs you. We’ve been working hard to improve our search service and want to share the progress we are making with you. We are launching a new test program called kumo.com for employees to try and provide feedback. Kumo.com exists only inside the corporate network, and in order to get enough feedback we will be redirecting internal live.com traffic over to the test site in the coming days. Kumo is the codename we have chosen for the internal test.

In spite of the progress made by search engines, 40% of queries go unanswered; half of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and 46% of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes. These and many other learnings suggest that customers often don’t find what they need from search today.

We believe we can provide a better and more useful search experience that helps you not just search but accomplish tasks. During the test, features will vary by country, but you’ll see results organized in a way that saves you more time. An explorer pane on the left side of results pages will give you access to tools that help you with your tasks. Other features like single session history and hover preview help accomplish more in search sessions."

Courtesy of MarkingPilgrim.com

Let me give you a big fat hint, Microsoft. The world of search engines is dead to you. Game over. You have no chance in the world to get any market share off Google. None what so ever. Take your 'Search' team, and get them onto the Windows 7 team so you actually have the man power to release something that isn't a major embarrassment to your company.

Things I have learnt as life lessons from fmylife.com

2009-02-26T14:03:00.000+11:00

(Musings as seen on www.fmylife.com)

You will always inevitably send an email, SMS, or social networking message stating something sexual, rude, or just plain wrong, to a member of your family or church, instead of your partner or friend.

Having a comeback to someone's taunting at you that includes "your mother" will always result in the taunter saying that their mother has died or is very ill.

The person you yell at for being slow is always blind.

SMS's that you send drunk is always be mispelt to produce an statement that reflects badly on you as a person.

There is a 24% chance that when you are making love to your partner, they are either a) texting, b) talking on their phone, c) eating or drinking something, or d) asleep.

You will always have a worse sex life than your younger sibling, your parents, or your best friend

Sexually designed items will always be found in your parents or grandparents possession.

There are no FML's that mention anything to do with FML itself that are actually original or humourous.

In a conversation, you will always be mistaken for a person of a different gender, orientation, or race, but when you correct them, the facts are ignored.

A lot of people spend a lot of time reading the FMLs, only to realise they, in fact, have no life to f**k.

Windows 3.1 in your pocket.

2009-02-24T14:03:00.000+11:00

For those who have a Nokia with their Symbian OS, you know how fiddly it can be at times. Have you ever thought of a operating system for your phone that can actually be useful?

Well, a polish hacke.. I mean.. computer professional, has successfully run Windows 3.1 on a Nokia N95.

Unfortunately, the N95's resolution isn't big enough to be able to actually use the 3.1 interface without half the pixels for the letters not appearing, but it still works.

Here is a link to the translated site. The original polish site can be found here.

I, for one, really enjoyed using Windows 3.1. I could do anything a 6 year old wanted to do on a computer in the early 90's - play Spice Girl CDs, draw in paint, play with the colour scheme to make everything look really ikky, play a bit of Lemmings here and there. As soon as we upgraded to Win 95, I was shocked. There was a bar at the bottom of the screen, and it look so many clicks to get back to a program-manager-esk environment to actually do anything.

Mind you, I'm a simple gal. You can take your Vista and Win7. I'll just sit back here with my XP SP2 and continue randomly searching for ways to install the other Windows versions I still have sitting around here on floopies and CDs. Ahh.. nostagia.

Facebook no longer supreme ruler of personal information.

2009-02-18T14:03:00.001+11:00

Facebook has listened to the people, and has reverted it's change to its Terms of Service, where they announced the right to own all information every posted on facebook, including all deleted accounts and removed content.

It seems that people we're too happy about the changes, and so the current Facebook TOS stands as this, as taken from the Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities group:

1. You own your information. Facebook does not. This includes your photos and all other content.

2. Facebook doesn't claim rights to any of your photos or other content. We need a license in order to help you share information with your friends, but we don't claim to own your information.

3. We won't use the information you share on Facebook for anything you haven't asked us to. We realize our current terms are too broad here and they make it seem like we might share information in ways you don't want, but this isn't what we're doing.

4. We will not share your information with anyone if you deactivate your account. If you've already sent a friend a message, they'll still have that message. However, when you deactivate your account, all of your photos and other content are removed.

Finally, they seem to understand what people want in a social networking site. They want privacy, while being able to see information in a way that is interesting and portrays knowledge, not just data.

I can't wait til they start data mining. I've already bought stocks in Aluminium companies for all that tinfoil hats that will be required.

I can has legal reprezentations?

2009-02-18T14:03:00.000+11:00

Can a cat be held legally accountable by accepting an End User License Agreement?

According to a recent slashdot story, Anne Loucks has built a device that allows her cat to agree to a EULA, legally making it the cat's choice to install the product. The device, shown here as a strong-build cardboard spacebar depression device, is generating a lot of debate on the technology website, with Lolcat jokes flowing left right and centre.

However, Anne has described the situation as this:

... I lure Simba over the cardboard platform with the promise of petting.
Success!! He presses the button of his own free will.

Yes, Anne, because a kitty wanting a pet isn't persuading anything..

Admittedly, he was coerced and rewarded, but really, nobody forced my cat to step on the button and become party to a software license agreement. At the very least, we know he was not under duress.

Telling a kid to take a lolly from a shelf and then give it to you for your consumption is being an accessory to the theft of said lolly. You are an accessory to the clicking of the EULA. You have made your partner in kitty crime to commit the act for you. Therefore, you are still legally responsible.

Silly cat. Aww.. but he's so cute and fluffy ^_^

Facebook Fallacy. GIVE BLOOD.

2009-02-17T14:04:00.000+11:00

With all the stories about Facebook recently, it's a shame that it is being portrayed as a soup box for racial hate and vigilante justice groups.

But please understand all the good people are doing on the site. Facebook's Causes are a way people can stand together and support those in need. The 2009 Vic Bushfire Support Cause already has 647 418 members, with people joining up by the minute.

Also, the Australian Red Cross Blood Service group has expanded rapidly since the fires, but even before that, people were joining the Red Cross, then with a few clicks were showing their support on Facebook, and then inviting their friends to do the same. I'm a member of this group, and I received a message from the admin of this group, and it make me feel all warm inside.

You guys rock. No really, you do.

I'm lost for words with the effort we've seen over the past week, some of the stories I've been reading & hearing, all positive and negative. So in being lost for words, I'll keep this message nice and brief.
Thank you. Thank you for your first blood donation. Thank you for your last blood donation. People all around Australia thank you, and it's time you guys just stopped for a split second, thought about and smiled at the good that you've brought to someones life, their family and all of their friends.
Nuff said :)

I want everyone to think about how they can help out their community, localy, nationally and globally. We can make a difference. We have. And we need to keep giving in the times of happiness. It's not just about being there when times are tough, it's about the long waul.

Be wary of Cupid this Valentines

2009-02-14T14:07:00.000+11:00

This Saturday is Valentine's Day. With all the messages being sent around the world to lovers, husbands, wifes, partners, friends, and family, please remain vigilant about how you are being targeted by internet advertising, especially with suspicious emails.

If you receive an email with a subject line relating to this special day, be sure to be cautious of any executable attachments, and any unfamiliar senders.

Take care, and make sure you stay safe in love.

Conroy announces ISPs. Obsurity remains.

2009-02-11T14:05:00.000+11:00

The Australian Internet Filter is set to be trialed soon, as Sen. Conroy has announced six ISPs that will assist in running live trials of the system.

These ISPs are:

Primus Telecommunications
Tech 2U
Webshield
OMNIconnect
Netforce
Highway 1

I'm sorry I couldn't get a link to Netforce, it seems that they are either a Managed IT service, or a hacking site. And thus the problem appears. Apart from Primus, I have never even heard of the ISPs that are going to participate in this test. Thus, the test is flawed.

If we are going to have a mandatory filtration system, then we have to test it with an ISP that delivers internet services to more than two customers outside of Black Stump, QLD (no offense iPrimus). But without even having Optus, Telstra or Internode involved, there is no way that they can test whether a large ISP will choke and die on the masses of sponge that Conroy wants to coat our Cat6 cabling with, just to protect the children.

This system was doomed for the beginning, but now I think that it will die among the remains of the One Nation party and Low Calorie Beer.

I like Facebook's posted item.

2009-02-10T14:05:00.000+11:00

Previously, Facebook added a feature where you can comment on other people's actions. Well, now you can indicate you 'Like' these actions, and the feed item will show up who 'liked' said action. This is in replacement of the avalanche of comments saying 'Lol' at the end of someone mentioning that they tripped over at school yesterday, as indicated in their Facebook status.

I'm waiting for when we can automatically say we were 'Not Amused', 'Less then pleased', or 'Violently Sick' in response to the facebook action.

Victorian Bush Fire Fund - Please donate Sen. Conroy

2009-02-09T14:08:00.000+11:00

Amongst the bushfires completely decimating towns in Victoria, and fires in New South Wales over the weekend, it has been called upon Senator Conroy, the man behind Australia's Great Internet Wall of China, should donate the money to the bushfire relief instead of promoting today February 10th as 'Internet Safety Day'.

So far in excess of $13 million has been donated to the Red Cross for the relief effort by every day Australians, not including the millions donated by corporations, plus the man hour from the SES, CFA, RFS, the Defense Force, the Salvos, St Johns Ambulance, and many many other organisations, to help the communities effected try and reform their life, and comfort the families of the 173 people and counting who lost their lives.

One story recently covered by the Today Show is of a group of young teens who hadn't heard from four of their friends since the fires on Saturday night. However, according to the reporters the friends 'Facebook messaged', or most probably changed their status, to indicate they were ok and all four were alive. Having that message instantly received by all their friends must have been a tremendous relief for al involved.

Youtube labels videos

2009-02-09T14:06:00.000+11:00

If you have any embedded youtube videos on any webpage, you will now see these clips have Titles and their rating stars clearly displayed on the preview view of the clip.

So, if you are trying to rickroll someone, make sure that your movie is rated highly and has a title in no way related to Master Astley.

Apple blocks Facebook at it's stores. Rumour or truth?

2009-02-08T14:17:00.000+11:00

In a story picked up by the WSJ, a blog has stated that Apple stores have blocked access to Facebook permanently.

.. I'm sorry, I shouldn't be talking about such 'important' (sarcasm) news, but it did emerge that Facebook isn't blocked, and site access is at the discretion of the store owner, and not Apple.

What I would like to point out is that public access points can block things. They provide a free service to people, such as Apple's internet access on their demo machines, and if people abuse it, then the service will be limited, suspended, or made a pay-for-use service. Such as my local gym. They have half a dozen iMac machines for public use, but never have I been able to access Gmail on these machines. Probably a good thing too, otherwise I'd never actually do any gyming. If only the treadmills had internet. At least they have TV and a few Foxtel channels, even though they didn't pay for the National Geographic channel. Nothing beats running along watching a lion chasing a zebra across the Sahara. Ah well, maybe I should just load an episode or two into my iPod and play that on the crosstrainer..

Apple blocks Facebook at it's stores. Rumour or truth?

2009-02-08T14:10:00.000+11:00

25 Random Information Probing Chain Message Blitz

2009-02-08T14:09:00.001+11:00

1. Although the 'Answer these questions about yourself and pass them on otherwise a young boy in Usbectswanaville won't get a goat for Christmas' chain emails are long and buried in the piles of spam emails from the late 1990's, Facebook seems to have sprouted a new generation of annoying crap.

2. I should define that in that 'annoying crap' I termed in the last point, I am not talking about Facebook itself.

3. I am talking about the '25 random things about me' chain message that has the attention of many 'journalism' groups.

4. Not that I'm bandwagoning just because I saw a lot of this stuff being picked up by other websites.

5. I just got tagged in something this morning.

6. Most of my friends have been on the internet long enough to realise a personal information spreading scam when they see one.

7. Because you know, one in 25 people may actually tell everyone on their friend's list their mother's madien name, year of birth and credit card institution in the one list of 25 questions.

8. Sure it might be a networking exercise, but seriously, why can't you just ask someone if they enjoy movies instead of forwarding them a infinately indented forward from someone else that wanted to know your star sign.

9. But you know, 25 questions spammed out to everyone you know could fill in a few holes.

10. Such as if you noticed in my last post about my local fitness facility, you could have worked out where I, indeed, work out.

11. But, then again, that was just trying to sound cool because I totally work out.

12. I'm all trying to be fit and stuff.

13. Doesn't help that I was at SOGC on the weekend and ate pizza.

14. I'm still waiting for pics from that event.

15. I made a pixel Goomba!

16. And came last in the Quake 3 contest

17. Oh no! I just revealed personal information!

18. A talented Google-monkey would work out who I am!

19. Oh wait.. it's ok. My alias is attached as the author of this post.

20. And in fact this entire website.

21. Teehee, personal information WHEEEEE

22. What else can I pad out these 25 points with?

23. I'm not sure, but I think I'll sign out now.

24. Go out and try and rebuild your life, oh victims of the Victorian Fires. God bless you. Love glasnt.

25. ~(]

Oh tweet me.

2009-02-08T14:08:00.000+11:00

witter is a complete waste of time.

If you tweet, you are a twat. There. I said it. Why, you might ask, am I disrespecting such an 'innovative Web 2.0 technology'? Because it's dull.

For those that don't know what Twitter is, imagine MySpace but with a 140 character limit. It's pretty much a platform for people to sit on their soapbox and tell anyone who will listen.

Now, I have a twitter account. I won't deny it. However, I set it up about 4 months ago and this is all I have in it.

Now, I have blurred out the contents of said twitter, but you should be able to work out who I am on this network. Well, so I thought. As of a few minutes ago I was trying very hard to find where the privacy settings were on this system. I failed. There are no privacy settings. Well, except for this little tickbox buried at the bottom of the settings menu under the tab Account.

So. I have an account that I never use, with friends who I already have on Facebook, and catch up with regularly in real life in any case. Why do I want a Twitter anyway? I try and delete the message aforementioned relating to smell and what happens?

It breaks.

How can a website break just trying to do that? Oh wait, I was in Firefox. Perhaps this system should stick to IE users. Funny, because I can't seem to bring up the error again using Firefox.

In any case, because I'm not using to any credit, I think no one else should use it.

I may only retract this statement when I can get it to automatically update when I post on nudgebucket.

Maybe.

Eye Tracking Studies from Google

2009-02-07T14:18:00.000+11:00

When you design an ad, a supermarket layout, or even a webpage, you need to know where people will look, and how to make your message about your product be visible to people who may look for 30 seconds and browse away to another area.

Google has done such a study on their search results page, by tracking where people look on the screen, so they know what results are being noticed. And by tracking eyes, I mean looking at were the users eyes are looking by means of eye tracking with a camera near the screen. The results are suprising, but not that obsure. Here is a Youtube Clip giving an example of where a user looks on the page.

You can read their entire article here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/eye-tracking-studies-more-than-meets.html

Google Latitude: Real-time location tracker

2009-02-04T14:20:00.000+11:00

Get some Attitude with Latitude! Google's new Mobile feature Latitude allows users to opt in to allow their friends to see their location, using their mobile phone. Of course, there is a privacy settings video that shows users how their details will not be shared with anyone else.

Am I the only one that's worried that I'll be shown to be in the middle of Sydney Harbour if Google Maps doesn't fix the alignment problem with the Bridge?

WoW Illegal. Raids not cancelled.

2009-02-04T14:19:00.000+11:00

In what seems to be an attempt to get young people out from behind the computer screen, it seems that in NSW games without ratings classifications are illegal. This includes the popular MMO World of Warcraft.

Read all about it at Fudzilla.

The way it currently gets around this law is that only internet games escape classification. However, being a game that is sold in stores as a box set, and with real life 'recharge' cards on sale for players to update their subscriptions, it doesn't seem very online only to me.

Then again, I've never been a fan of dressing up and parading around a virtual world where everyone who's female is male, and all the children are undercover agents.

Facebook pondering selling your details

2009-02-02T14:21:00.000+11:00

The website once thought to be a CIA-funded information gathering coverup, Facebook as finally stated that they are thinking of officially realizing gathered information to marketing companies in order to boost profits.

For a company that apparently started not being able to gain revenue from ads, and that started targeting ads to try and gain more moolah, this doesn't really come as that big of a shock, as everyone thought that Facebook was doing the dirty in the first place.

With millions of users generating clicks faster than a chipmunk on helium, it's a wonder how a website with that many hits isn't satisfied with their kingdom size. Analysts reckon that it's slowing overtaking MySpace as the most used social networking site around, so they can't be doing everything wrong, right?

Being a securly minded individual, I've always used a fake name and address when registration forms required it, to the point of answering falsely in questionaires if they are mandatory. Nore: please don't donkey vote in questionaires, it wastes people's time and yours. If you want to quicky get through a quiz, answer only mandatory questions. In other cases, I don't answer them at all. Facebook is the only website that I have had to use my real name on. That was a tad annoying, but no other information on the website can link me to anything that important. Sure you can find out where I went to uni, but so did 1248971243 other people. Big deal. Then again, some other people like to enter in their mother's madien name into their friend's wall every other day, making them an easy target for marketers! *duh duh duh*

So, all in all, your information can be used, so just don't publisise it. Even if you enter it into a 'private secure place', it is never completely safe.

Lots of love,

your friendly neighbourhood nudgebucket ~(]

GDrive coming this year

2009-01-20T14:23:00.000+11:00

In the most anticipated vapourware release since Duke Nukem Forever, technology analysts are saying the GDrive, Google's cloud storage system, will be released this year.

The GDrive has been on the tip of everyone's tongue since Cloud storage became a reality. For those not familiar with this term, it is using a 'cloud' of servers to store information, while being completely transperant to the user.

However, the GDrive is about as real as DNF. We have heard rumours for years about the product, but why would it be coming out this year? Google has just retired a half dozen of its programs, moved people around, slashed benifits.. why would they then release something that isn't that unique (Microsoft has the same thing) in this turbulent time?

I reckon its all a ruse to try and stimulate talk about Google being awesome again. For now, I'll stick to my floppy drives.

Happy Obamarama everyone.

Download youtube videos. Officially.

2009-01-19T14:23:00.000+11:00

Youtube has had a record of trying to plaster its copyright execution procedures around its website, with everything from removing videos to muting them. But now, it seems that they have gone a step in the other direction, and created an integrated downloading link into its service.

According to Ars Technica, only Barack Obama's youtube Channel ChangeDotGov has downloadable videos available. And just as well. With all the censorship issues which such a rich multimedia, it stands to reason that once this technology is fully operational, it should be an opt-in service only by the uploaders. People don't want to allow their intellectual property to be ripped off more easily than it already is, don't you know.

For the rest of us, you can find software around the place in various forms that can take streaming video and audio off a website and create a single file for playback at a later date, but I shall not link any of them here, because that's piracy, children, and that is a bad thing.

No Agora for you.

2009-01-17T14:23:00.000+11:00

This is why Australians can 't have nice things. It seems that due to circumstances beyond its control, Google's Andriod phone for Australia, the Agora, will never be made.

However, don't go reaching for the Apple number to buy a iPhone just yet. There are rumours the G1, the phone released with Android in the US and UK will be deployed here.

I'll stick to my Nokia 8310 for the moment, kthx.

Youtube mutes copyright violations

2009-01-15T14:24:00.000+11:00

Let me link you to a nice song I enjoy: "I'm Yours", by Jason Mraz.

Can't view the video?

Oh, it looks like youtube has struck again. Instead of removing copyrighted videos, it looks likes the empire has taken to muting the audio of violating videos, as long as the imagry content is unique. So, music videos from Sony, etc, will be removed, but clips with user-added pictures with the copyrighted accompaniment will be muted. Awesome.

I'm waiting for the movie commentry videos to have blanked out video feeds, because of the copyright, but the commentry stays because its not an issue.

Yeah, that'll work.

~(]

Windows 7 Beta offically released, breaks internet

2009-01-12T14:30:00.000+11:00

Since Windows 7 Beta was "unofficially" leaked, and had such a large uptake on torrent networks, Microsoft has decided to host the software on its servers for anyone to download and try. However, the 2GB file being served to thousands of connections had unwittingly caused the distribution servers to die due to overloaded use.

Microsoft has since opened the period users can download Windows 7 for another 2 week period, to try and meet the demand for this software. A trial key is being distributed, details below, and is valid until August 2009. However, you may be able to get the full version for free, if reports from the Vista beta release are repeated. Beta testers who submitted a valid bug report to Microsoft were rewarded with a free version of Vista Ultimate or Business.

How to download Windows 7 (from MaximumPC.com):
- Use Internet Explorer to navigate to http://technet.microsoft.com, and log in using your TechNet credentials, or your Windows Live (Hotmail, etc) credentials
- In a separate window, open one of the following links:
- For Windows 7 32-Bit: https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/gcs.aspx?Product=tn-win7-32-ww&LCID=1033
- For Windows 7 64-Bit: https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/scripts/gcs.aspx?Product=tn-win7-64-ww&LCID=1033
You should then be presented with a key, and a link for downloading the software, including installation instructions.

As with all Beta software, be wary that the software is provided 'as is', and it is recommended that you don't install it on your primary machine, or if you do, make sure you back up data and if possible, run it on a virtual machine, just to make sure that it doesn't affect your other installed OS.

~(]

Review: NotAlwaysRight.com

2009-01-12T14:29:00.001+11:00

For those that have had the unfortunate pleasure of working in retail, you know how much that one customer out of one hundred can make your day go from ok to horridly awful. There is a website that I stumbled upon where you can vent and read others venting about how customers are not always right, on NotAlwaysRight.com

Contained within this wordpress nutshell are hundreds of humourous stories ranging from screaming kids, to picky parents, and snotty rich people, just to name a few.

I couldn't help but share this little anicdote with you.

As a person who's conversations with their partner usually degrade to "Your face." "Your butt.", this was quite humourous in its nature.

Be sure to check out other submissions, and don't be afraid to rate your favourites, or even digg or stumble a few. That's right, Digg and StumbleUpon have just been used as verbs. Deal with it.

~(]

The Importance of being Prepared

2009-01-12T14:29:00.000+11:00

Like many households around Australia, you may be unfortunate enough to suffer a black out during these warmer months, or in fact any time of year. Blackouts as a result of storms, floods, fires, or technical issues are something that can't be avoided, and something that you should be prepared for. Energy companies like Energex and Energy Australia have advertisements addressing the importance of having a torch, candles, other electricity-independant lighting sources on hand, as well as a battery-powered radio so you can keep in touch with updates on power restoration.

I would like to take this oppertunity to reassert these preventative measures to protect your sanity during an extended blackout. Yesterday, parts of Sydney's Northern Beaches experienced up to 12 hours of blackouts. Unfortuneately, I was in this outage, hence I had no internet nor Nudgebucket updates yesterday. I spent most of the day reading Dr Karls Latest Great Moments in Science, a 1991 publication telling about how Pluto the planet has a moon, and that Los Angeles will have no petrol-powered cars by 2009, only electrical ones, to help reduce smog. Quite entertaining, I can assure you. In addition to this, I spent a good amount of time, over 300% more than usual, preparing caffienated beverages on the gas-burner we have for our BBQ, and making toast on said burner. One additional setback with my day was that since my home's hot water supply is powered by a mains-driven digital system, the home was without hot water, hence the boiling required (it was required anyway, as I have never had a hot-water-tap-coffee I've enjoyed). I can tell you, it is not enjoyable to be woken up by a partner who has just dropped their core temperature 10 degrees and thinks that snuggling up to you in a nice warm bed is the best thing to wake you up of the morning.

So, much aside from my rambling, make sure you have supplies on hand if you lack power for extended periods of time.

Many cold snuggles,

~(]

Viral Videos and how they can suck

2009-01-12T14:28:00.000+11:00

Let me share with you a viral video

Evolution of Dance 2

Now, this is the squeal to Evolution of Dance, the highest viewed Youtube video of all time. Its by the same guy, Judson Laipply, but this video just doesn't have the 'roar' of the older one. The new version has had just over 600 000 views in 4 days, and has just hit the front page of Digg, with only 50 or so diggs. Why is this so?

Another study: Numa Numa. When a young 18 year old Gary Brolsma uploaded himself lipsyncing to O-Zone song "Dragostea din tei", he never thought it would be the internet smash hit that it turned out to be. But, he never saw a cent form his fame, until he tried to create a New Numa, to try and cash in on his fame. It didn't work. You can't market success.

Well, ok, I lie. I've seen a few videos that were marketed for viral attention, such as the Banned Xbox 360 ad, which gained popularity because it was too obscene for television, or the video with the guy riding a bike around a Guitar Hero course, which turned out to be a fake, CGI being used to create the effect. However, these are few and far between.

Viral videos need to be unique, entertaining, completely off the wall, out of the ordinary, and preferably filmed using a grainy camera, as you really can't have a HD viral video that isn't staged. Unless you're into that kind of thing. Which I'm not. Viva la 320x280!

Best Fair Dinkum Sangers Ever

2009-01-12T14:27:00.000+11:00

ScrewAttack has a interesting article regarding someone's Pick for their 'Top 10 Sandwiches', and I couldn't help but notice most of them are just meat and a high-fat condiment. So, I present to you, my pick for the Best Fair Dinkum Sangers Ever.

Vegemite Sanger

The most Australian sanger on the market, using the folate-rich Aussie icon.

Ingredients:
White, or Multigrain Bread, 2 slices, toasted if you prefer
Vegemite
Butter (Butter works better on toasted bread, but if you're using untoasted, go with the margarine, because otherwise the bread can rip if you use a hard spread.)

Method:
Toast bread, if desired.
Using the buttery-spread of your choosing, lay a light layer onto the wheat-product.
Then, depending on your fancy, spread an even layer of Vegemite onto your base. A light scraping is recommended for first-timers, or for those who are more advanced in the consumption of the yeast-extract, a more generous usage can be used.
Slap the two pieces together, buttered sides facing each other, ensuring that force is used to squash the bread in the places where your fingers are.
Consume.

Recommended Beverage Accompaniment:
A large glass of strong Milo (place a heaped tablespoon of Nestle Milo into a long glass, fill with milk, stir generously. To consume, eat the undissolved milo from the top of the glass, then drink the remaining liquid)

Chip Sanga
MySweetRhodora got this one right, the Chip Sanga is a delicious, if not nutritious, sandwich that can be consumed day or night, depending on when the local Fish 'n' Chip shop is open.

Ingredients:
White bread, 2 slices
Hot chips, just out of the deep fryer
Tomato Sauce (or BBQ if you prefer)

Method:
Place bread side by side on a overused Tupperware plate, the more scratches the better.
Place chips lengthways so that half the slice of bread is covered in chips, the other side is bare. Repeat for other slice.
Cover chips with a generous amount of your chosen sauce, ensuring a decent coverage.
Fold slice in half, so that you can grab the bread like a sausage roll, without getting your fingers burnt or covered in sauce.
Consume.

Recommended Beverage Accompaniment:
Weak Cottees Cordial, using warmish tap water, whatever comes out of the cold tap in the middle of summer. Serve in an overused Tupperware cup for added authenticity. Recommended Flavours: Apple and Raspberry, or Lemon and Lime.

BLT
Again, another sandwich that goes down well, especially if you have left over uncooked bacon from your breakfast fryup.

Ingredients:
White bread, thick slice if you can get it
Bacon
Lettuce
Tomato
Aioli (garlic mayonnaise)

Method:
Fry bacon, using a small amount of olive oil. Try and use as much of the bacon fat as a frying agent as possible.
Remove bacon to teatowel lined plate, leaving oil in the pan
Place a slice of bread into the hot pan, cooking both sides until lightly brown. Repeat for other slice.
Place bacon onto your freshly pan-toasted bread, add generous helpings of lettuce and tomato, and cover with Aioli.
Top with second slice of bread. Consume.

Recommended Beverage Accompaniment:
Your favourite Coca-cola beverage, served luke warm and sweating, preferably in a can.

Awesome Sandwich

Although not an 'Australian Traditional', this sandwich is indeed awesome, hence the awesome sandwich title. Don't be daunted by the preparation of this one, it is well worth it.

Ingredients:

White bread, 2 slices. If you have gourmet bread, now is the time to use it

Lettuce Mix (rocket, purple lettuce, watercress lettuce, etc; Woolies has a Gourmet Lettuce, or check if your local Fruit 'n' Veggie shop has something similar)

Semi sun-dried Tomatoes

3-bean-pack (Mung beans, sprouts, alfalfa beans) or similar

Mayo

Philadelphia Cream Cheese

Hummus

Meat - your choice of ham, turkey, beef, etc. I'd recommend a deli-sliced meat, or you could go all out and get a slice each of Ham, Turkey and Beef.

Method:

Spread Philli on one slice of bread, Hummus on the other.

Place meat selection, tomatoes, beans, lettuce and mayo on the philli slice.

Top with Hummus Slice.

(I recommend doing it this way, because the mayo and philli work well together, and the meat and hummus accompany each other well.)

Recommended Beverage Accompaniment:

Ginger Beer, either a pre-bottled Bundaberg Ginger Beer, or using a mix of 1 part Bundy Ginger Beer Cordial and 5 parts Soda Water, make your own ginger beer. Alternatively, mineral water will complete the illusion that you are in a posh Melbourne cafe with a sandwich of awesome.

Lox and Cream Cheese

Lox, or Salmon, and cream cheese is a combination that when served on a bagel is absolutely beautiful, and I strongly suggest you try it. I had one using fresh Atlantic Salmon, and hot out of the oven bagels at the Granville Markets in Vancouver last year, and I have been on a mission to recreate the taste sensation in my mouth on a regular basis, it is that wonderful.

Ingredients:

Salmon, 40g or so per sandwich, preferably fresh or flatpack sealed, not tinned

Philadelphia Cream Cheese

Capers (near the other pickled bits in your supermarket)

Red onion, finely sliced

Fresh bagel, or sour dough bread works well.

Method:

Toast the inside of your bagel, if you're using one. Otherwise, leave the bread fresh.

Spread a generous amount of philli on both sides/slices

Add salmon, a generous amount of red onion, and about a dozen little capers.

Place other slice/side on top. Consume.

The fishy taste combined with the vinegar and onion with the sweet cream cheese just creates a sensation that your taste buds will thank you for later.

Recommended Beverage Accompaniment:

Iced tea, or mineral water. Something light and bubbly to wash away the onion breath you'll have. Avoid mouth to mouth interaction with anyone if they do not enjoy onion breath until after beverage is consumed, or teeth are brushed if the residue is too overwhelming.

Enjoy your new found collection of munchable goodness. I'm off to find some bacon.

~(]

How is internet formed?

2009-01-12T14:26:00.000+11:00

History of the Internet

Here is a documentary, which is very sleek, explaining a bit about how the internet was developed.

Alternatively, you can watch the Youtube version.

I must however say, I was a bit concerned when I actually saw that the movie was merely showing the icon set as part of a diploma for the director of this movie. I'm upset because if someone can get their piece of paper from a set of vector icons.. why didn't I think of it first :(

Preventing Virtual Blight

2009-01-12T14:25:00.000+11:00

Preventing Virtual Blight

It had to be someone from Google, didn't it. "Preventing Blight" is putting the science into internet spam.

Its a very good video, that Matt Cutts has compiled and uploaded onto Google's youtube page, with has a lot of solutions to try and prevent 'Blight', a.k.a spam.

Overall the message to take home is if you're creating your own community:

- have user privilege restrictions: don't let new users have the right to post comments the day they register

- don't let users insert code into comments

- if you have 'landing pages', e.g. profile pages, that people can use to link to other things, have preventative measures, e.g. CAPTCHA

- protect your administration portal to prevent hacking

- think like a spammer, and work our how your site can be abused.

In addition, DO NOT GO TO THE SITE THAT THE PRESENTER TELLS YOU NOT TO GO TO

Its incest and rape porn. Nasty stuff.

P.S., blight is taken from the biological world, and "refers to a specific symptom affecting plants in response to infection by a pathogenic organism." (from Wikipedia).

Review: Short Form Blog

2009-01-10T14:30:00.000+11:00

There is so much information on the internet, ranging from long rambling political opinion stories to a few mono-syllable words on a twitter feed. However, for those who wish to get the facts without all the long-winded conversation, Julius can help.

Julius is the character that runs shortformblog.com, a site based on presenting the facts in only a few words and numbers, much like an article from Reader’s Digest, or Times newspaper. Shortformblog.com is the brainchild of Erine Smith, a recently laid off American journalist. He has created a site out of a wordpress template, and with a “metric ton of freaking work”, had designed a website that draws the eye at each of its articles.

So go on, take a look at the numbers, and shortform it.

~(]

Updated: Twitter hacker comes forward

2009-01-07T14:32:00.000+11:00

The case of the hacking of Twitter has been solved, with a teen coming forward claiming responsibility for the intrusion.

The teen used a password-guessing program to brute force the password to a popular users' account, who was in fact part of the support team for Twitter, and had administrative access to the system. The password for the compromised user was 'happiness', and using this keyword, the hacker was able to take control of whatever he wanted in the site.

This should be a reminder for people that when choosing a password it should not come from the dictionary: these passwords are too simple to guess, as in the case of the twitter account. Security analysts suggest a password made of alphanumeric characters, including upper and lower case, and at least one symbol.

However, if you are going to choose a password, say, h4ppiness, because its simple to remember, be warned that a simple number replacement can get the password back to a dictionary word. It isn't recommended that you replace digits like this.

Check out wikipedia's article on Password Security for more hints on how to keep your accounts secure.

~(]

Facebook Login Warning

2009-01-07T14:31:00.000+11:00

A warning for those who use Facebook, or any other website that uses an email address for a username.

This morning, I found that my Windows Live Messenger account had been compromised, by someone or something gaining access to my account, emailing all my contacts a spam email (apologies if you received it), and then removing all my contacts.

My computer is free of adware, so says two independent virus scans, but I think it may have been related to my Facebook account. The only place I (used to) use my old Hotmail (now Windows Live) account is MSN Messenger, and as a login for Facebook. However, my password for both sites -was- the same. After logging in to Facebook from a public terminal yesterday, I think that somehow my login details may have been copied, and used as an attempt to access the associated email address, which succeeded. (When I was using the public access point, the browser shut down unexpectedly a few times during my session, so this may be related).

This should be a reminder to use unique passwords for any account you have, in case one is compromised and others fall in the process.

I've since changed the login I use for Facebook, and have removed rectified my MSN contacts back. If anyone else falls for this, your contacts can be found in the sent items folder were the spam emails that were sent, or if you have MSN Plus!, in the Contact Cleanup menu.

~(]

Lively Dies.. in case you missed it.

2009-01-07T14:30:00.000+11:00

A community annoucement.

Google's experiment 'Lively', its "second-life killer", has silently died as of January 1st, 2009.

.. can't say much else.

~(]

Apple to discontinue DRM

2009-01-06T14:32:00.000+11:00

A Jobs-less presentation today ended Apple's presence at Macworld, as announced in December. Together with the announcement of changes to the iPhoto, iLife and iWorks, Apple's VP of worldwide marking Phil Schiller told the audience about Apple's changes to iTunes - a change in pricing structures, and the end of DRM.

As of April this year, new songs to the iTunes collection will still be sold at $1.69, but new 'smash hits' will be slightly more expensive, and older music will be cheaper. Also, after starting to move towards DRM since 2007, as of today 80% of the iTunes library is DRM free, with the remaining 20% being converted by April.

Mentioned in the speech was the opening of Apple Stores in Beijing, Munich, and Sydney. For those who haven't seen the Sydney store, look out for the glass building on George St. There are products for testing out all over 2 levels, the Genius Bar, and some very funky looking stairs. Also, look out for a 17" Macbook, coming out soon.

More Macworld reviews can be found at smh.com.au, informationweek.com, and pcmag.com.

Update: Windows 7 Must Deliver

2009-01-05T14:33:00.001+11:00

It seems that Microsoft may indeed be cutting jobs, 17% of its workforce, if this article is to be believed. According to reports, a restructuring is occurring instead of removing divisions, due to the tightening market, as well as the global financial crisis.

Additionally, it seems that Microsoft may have leaked Windows 7 to pirates already. Even thought the 30-day activation period security measures haven't yet been hacked, this early release may provide an extended time frame before release where the software can be made freely available by way of hacked copies, hurting Microsoft's bottom line even more.

~(]

Twitter hacked

2009-01-05T14:33:00.000+11:00

Twitter, the up and coming short messaging service, has recently been compromised by hackers obtaining administrator access and then taking over 33 celebrity feeds.

It seems this is completely unrelated to the phishing attacks trying to compromise accounts, it does add to the problems that the system has been experiencing.

Although the service does have potential, it has been said to be just a spam-generating system, and hasn't gone without its parodies.

Facebook has a similar Status Update field, and has received negitive feedback from users who have been subjected to their homepage filling up with spam and useless messages from friends who spam their status updates to the world.

Hopefully, Twitter can patch up the problems, and grow into a service that can be used for good and not evil.

~(]

NudgeBucket

Mix tapes

Review: HTC Legend

Nudgebucket on the move

Consolidating.

Fish fingers and custard.

Dragon Age and why it fails.

Dear Sysadmin

Update... update.. Update.. UPDATE!

In case you notice this notice *is* worth noticing

Google Maps Traffic - Now live in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne

Drinking coffee's awesome.

Shh.. something big is nearly here...

Full Circle

Printed media gets techo-funkay

Pointless Babble?

MySpace finally shuts up.

Sarcasm, yeah right ؟

Rest In Peace, Sam the Koala

Pork Belly Speakers

Happy Birthday StackOverflow

On behalf of google, lots of love.

JamLegend: Custom songs

Bunni

Advertising things

Detailed Programmatic Specificity

Stephen Conroy: Internet Villian 2009

Firefox Personas

Well, that was interesting.

Anti-sec Movement

Google OS - Late 2010

Beta be gone.

Handwriting

Some language or another

Misinformation

Become a Gmail Ninja

Can you hear an echo in here?

Nerd-gasm

Gmail not always kinda nearly never display images below

Facebook Friends lists in Chat

VapourWare evaporates into a cloud of nothing but crushed dreams.

In webspace, noone can here you scream.

Interactive Youtube Videos are ikky.

Happy 5th Birthday Facebook

Updates to ACMA banned list stopping information about Monday's attack

Tonight: Conroy mumbles about CP and tries to dodge questions.

Collection of News

ACMA Leak, or whatever it is.

What does your Top Level Domain say about you?

Review: YourFont.com - fonts at your fingertips

The New Facebook Changes - Why people hate everything

Thank Gosh It's Friday.

Thursday Torture

New Facebook format goes Live Today

Tawny Tuesday Tree-View

Monday Wrap up from the Chip Markets

Review: Digsby - the Multi-IM service

Doodle 4 Google

Adventure Time Creator's Series Starting VERY Soon!

Sponsored links still confuse the elderly

Shoe Phone invented, sends tongues wagging.

Things to make Twitter worthwhile.

The i's have it - iChat now in iGoogle.

How fluff gets in your navel: A study

Live Search to be rebranded Kumo.com: Rumour

Things I have learnt as life lessons from fmylife.com

Windows 3.1 in your pocket.

Facebook no longer supreme ruler of personal information.

I can has legal reprezentations?

Facebook Fallacy. GIVE BLOOD.

Be wary of Cupid this Valentines

Conroy announces ISPs. Obsurity remains.

I like Facebook's posted item.

Victorian Bush Fire Fund - Please donate Sen. Conroy

Youtube labels videos

Apple blocks Facebook at it's stores. Rumour or truth?

Apple blocks Facebook at it's stores. Rumour or truth?

25 Random Information Probing Chain Message Blitz

Oh tweet me.

Eye Tracking Studies from Google

In case you notice this notice is worth noticing