Youtube RSS feeds

It's not widely publicised, but Youtube publishes RSS feeds so you can track the latest uploaded videos from your favourite users.

They take the form: http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/USER/uploads

Quite handy at times.

Acrobat rant

I knew there was a reason I'm an Acrobat luddite. What moron decided the toolbar options most frequently sought in a hurry, rotate page, should be removed from the default toolbars in Acrobat Reader 8? (The corporate PCs just got upgraded from 7 to 8. I haven't tried 9 yet.)

To get the Rotate back: View / Toolbars / More Tools. Scroll down the window to the options for the Page Display Toolbar and turn on Rotate Clockwise and Rotate Anti Counter-Clockwise.

Now, can someone explain to me how Acrobat has bloated so much over the years?

Acrobat versions sizes

And WTF was the deal with version 7.05?!

Summer 2008/2009 starts

I have a algorithm for detecting summer. Seven consecutive days in a row with a temperature of or above 20 degrees Celsius. I give you Summer, from the Bureau's seven day forecast for Melbourne:

Thursday      Fine.                                  Min  6    Max 21
Friday        Mainly fine.                           Min 12    Max 25
Saturday      Fine.                                  Min 12    Max 30
Sunday        Shower or two.                         Min 15    Max 22
Monday        Fine.                                  Min 10    Max 23
Tuesday       Fine.                                  Min 12    Max 28

I swear, this gets earlier and earlier each year.

McCain vs Obama.com

johnmccain.com and barackobama.com are both registered with GoDaddy, but McCain appears to have registered through GoDaddy India via Domains By Proxy… (Why does his campaign need to use Domains By Proxy, which is designed for anonymous domain registration? Maybe they just love outsourcing?)

JohnMcCain.com has been around since 1998; BarackObama.com since 2000.

McCain uses IIS running on Linux (?). Obama uses PWS running on Linux.

And the running mates? joebiden.com has been around since 1998; sarahpalin.com is not owned by the campaign, but is registered through the same proxy company as McCain.

Sarah runs Linux with Frontpage extensions (yeuch!); Biden’s running Apache.

AU online music bargain

With Bigpond Music now selling DRM-free MP3s, and their range increasing every week, they’re fast becoming my etailer of choice for music downloads.

Right now (and I don’t know how long it’ll last) they’ve got a 25% discount offer on music vouchers brought from Safeway/Woolworths, and possibly other retailers.

So tracks that normally cost $1.69 (the same as Apple’s iTunes in Australia) now effectively cost about $1.27, and an album about $12.37. Vouchers appear to be valid for about a year and a half.

You can browse the web site before paying to see if they have what you want. Admittedly, they don’t have as wide a range (even in their older format WMA) as iTunes.

Panasonic phone troubleshooting

My Panasonic cordless phone/answering machine (KX-A142 ALM) has been pretty good, though the interface is shocking. Who on earth decided “INT” then “#” should be the sequence to listen to messages?

Anyway, a couple of things were causing me problems.

1. When the clock resets itself, it’s not at all obvious how to set it again.

Eventually I found the manual and did it, but for the record:

  • Press the menu button (the box with horizontal lines in it)
  • Press the Down button until you get to “SETTING BS” (I guess it stands for base station)
  • Press right
  • It’ll say “INPUT CODE”. Rather than input the code… press * to set the time (hh mm), or ** to set the date (dd mm yy)
  • When done, press the menu button again to confirm

2. A couple of days ago it stopped being able to make outgoing calls. It could get a dial tone, but wouldn’t dial.

I fixed this with a reboot, which involves holding the red power button on the handset down for 1+ seconds so it switches off, then again to switch it back on. Voila.

Helpfully, Panasonic has manuals available on their web site.

Cleaning up your PC

I was wondering two things about “Snowy”, one of my PCs:

Why was the fan so noisy?

And why did it occasionally stop dead in its tracks? Typically when the machine was busy, and particularly noticeable while playing games. No warning, no graceful shutdown, just power off.

I had been planning for a re-installation of Windows, and started the process when it shut down again.

So I decided to open it up. Checked a few connections. Nothing obviously loose.

Then I looked at the fan. Caked in dust.

Using a vacuum cleaner, a duster and a pen (the latter for poking in to disturb the dust where nothing else would reach) I cleaned around the motherboard, and particularly on and around the fan.

What appears to have been happening is that due to the dust, the fan was having to work harder than usual. And when the CPU got busy/hot, the fan couldn’t cope, the CPU overheated, and something smart in the PC was cutting the power to stop it causing any damage.

Since the cleaning, the fan is not only quieter, but there haven’t (touch wood) been any more sudden shut downs.

Westpac banking online is broken

I’ve been handling my dad’s banking. Westpac banking online really needs some work.

The logon uses one of those awful click on the buttons to enter your password interfaces. C’mon, is keylogging really that big a problem? What about people watching you individually click each on-screen button?

The logon asks if you’re a personal or a business account. The bank lady explained that for some reason the account I’m using is business. If I forget to change it from the default Personal, but it hardly seems to make any difference. The colour scheme is slightly different, a few of the buttons are re-arranged and some extra options are available. All fine, but why ask me this in the first place? Can’t the system work that out based on the account number?

It’s broken in Firefox. The menus disappear under other elements, making it very difficult to click on things sometimes. Looks positively wizard in IE6, of course.

If you go into some screens, it insists it wants the password when you’re finished. Stupid.

It keeps badgering me to stop receiving paper statements, but when I try that option, it tells me the account is ineligible.

Mind you, I don’t remember seeing any of these paper statements, so Lord knows where they’re going to. I can’t find an option to view or change the postal address.

I looked for ages, and I couldn’t figure out where to order a chequebook. The Help feature was useless. I hope this doesn’t mean I have to go into a branch.

The basics like BPay and funds transfer work, but jeez, this could do with some work.

Another Hitchhiker's book on the way

AFP report: ARTHUR Dent will get to continue his adventures across the universe with another tale in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series announced.

Irish children's author and creator of Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer, has been commissioned to write a new instalment of the cult science-fiction comedy which became a worldwide hit, publishers have revealed.

Full story

BBC News story

I dunno. This could be good, or it could be very bad. I'm not convinced that at this point, the series shouldn't be left alone.