Insiders MP3s Sunday, Nov 26 2006 

politics and tech and tv DrWorse 8:48 am

I just discovered that the ABC’s Insiders is now making the complete show audio available through a podcast, which I think is an extremely clever idea for this type of TV show.

The fact is, I “watch” Insiders most weeks but I rarely look at the screen while doing so – I have the TV on and work on the computer or read while listening. Apart from the “Talking Pictures” segment on political cartoons, there is pretty much nothing that requires one’s visual attention in the show – it’s talking heads on a screen and then four people sitting and talking to each other.

When I have missed the show in the past I have usually ended up reading the transcript because I couldn’t see the point of wasting bandwidth on a video download. Now, with a 12MB MP3 file giving me the audio of the entire show, there is no way I won’t make use of it. Good job, Aunty!

 

Blogging tools Friday, Nov 24 2006 

tech DrWorse 12:48 pm

Up to this point I have been posting to the blog using the Performancing for Firefox extension. I’ve just installed the beta of Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer and this is my first attempt at using it.

I like that it has (sort of) got the actual styling from my site in the editor, so I have some idea what the end result will look like. However, it doesn’t seem to be working quite right – I’ll have to do some reading to see whether I can make sense of it.

I also noticed that there is a Blog This for Firefox extension, which would seem to help overcome one of the downsides of Live Writer compared to Performancing – PFF is integrated with my browser. The Blog This button is on the Firefox toolbar rather than down in the statusbar, so I’ll have to get used to going in the opposite direction with the mouse to start a blog entry. I’ll keep playing with both tools and try to figure out which one I prefer.

 

Episode II: Revenge of the Spam Thursday, Oct 12 2006 

tech DrWorse 9:58 am

After yesterday’s post, it seems the Gods of Spam are intent on hurting me. I am being bombarded with messages that are getting past the filter this morning. Add to that the fact that the messages I tried to release from quarantine have not arrived and I’m on my way to Bizarro World.

 

Spam soup Wednesday, Oct 11 2006 

tech DrWorse 2:10 pm

I just had to go trawling through my quarantined messages because the spam filter on our Exchange server became a bit overzealous. Reading 33 uninterrupted pages of spam subject headings feels a little like wading through a sewer. Ick.