Greg Ferro - Work to Live

www.youtube.com/watch

Heartbreaking. My own minor injuries are nothing compared to this.

A five-year photographic project exploring the long-term effects of conflict globally. Stories and images by Giles Duley.

Good for a break on a Friday afternoon - nicely done.

Link: - www.youtube.com/watch

Do I take my freedom for granted ?

Tanzania ordered all unregistered bloggers and online forums on Monday to suspend their websites immediately or face criminal prosecution, as critics accuse the government of tightening control of internet content.

Tanzania orders all unregistered bloggers to take down their sites | Reuters : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-internet/tanzania-orders-all-unregistered-bloggers-to-take-down-their-sites-idUSKBN1J71W6

Stop complaining about Back to School Shopping - YouTube

www.youtube.com/watch

youtu.be/GEWnXmDfV…

As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explained during the company’s Q1 earnings call in 2017, “You know, think about it, when you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night […] we’re competing with sleep, on the margin.”

The Rainmaker Platform is failing and they are doing nothing about it. I do not recommend My New Rainmaker. I’m trapped and I can’t get out. Here is my negative review.

I’ve been a customer of the Studiopress group for many years now. I was fortunate to purchase a Genesis Theme subscription way back in 2009 and my blog has flourished over that time. About 3 years ago the Packet Pushers business needed to grow further and we committed to migrating from a self-hosted blog into the Rainmaker Platform. I’m sad to say that this has been poor decision that has negatively impacted our business.

In short, the Rainmaker project is a failure. Recently, the business pivoted to professional services business offering consulting and design services.

Based on our experiences, do not do this. The infrastructure is failure. Let me explain.

Lack of Features

Big promises were made about new features, functions and products. Many exciting changes and developments were coming in the months ahead they told us.

The membership system is basic (at beast) and barely functional, the podcast engine is mediocre and the attempt to reskin the Wordpress interface is, I have to say, just terrible. Look at this mess:

The UX of navigating a Rainmaker site is disastrous. What does all that rubbish on the left mean ? Where is the Wordpress menus ?

The basic feature of email list integration took over 2 years to arrive and partnered with Feedblitz who is possibly the worst email provider available. Our personal experience with Feedblitz RSS has been worse than awful and there is no way I can trust their email platform. To make it worse, the integration with MailChimp is poor at best. They couldn’t have done any less.

Constant Errors

We are seeing almost constant errors and failures in delivering the most basic content. This is a total loss of all site traffic on Sunday:

Simple problems recur daily. This gif shows how slow the admin interface loads:

We reset your services, flushed the caches and your site is back online. Customer Success Specialist

This happens regardless of clearing caches, logging support requests and asking for escalation. This morning I woke up to messages from Google with large number of 5xx server failures.

I raised an site outage support request on Monday morning. 48 hours later the only response is :

This ticket has been escalated to me for review and I will be digging into this and follow up with a more detailed response at my earliest opportunity. - Cody, Director of Support

And thats the fourth time I’ve received that note in the last 3 weeks. So far “Cody” has done nothing. 

SSL Failure

Switching the site to SSL caused massive failures to our podcast feeds. The SSL certificate wasn’t signed by a recognised certificate provider and thus caused podcatchers to fail. This was followed by further operational problems when we asked to roll back the change. The roll back worked but two days later the SSL was reinstated and then hidden in a very difficult to find. It took two weeks to sort out this mess. We lost hundreds of thousands of downloads and thousands of subscribers.

The failure of SSL is partly a podcast problem but the lack of assistance from Rainmaker combined with operational failure and the poor interface.

Increased Spam

There was a time when we received just a few spam comments per month. Today I’m received multiples per day. Another sign of platform neglect.

Leaving

Yes, its probably time to leave but there is a problem. The Rainmaker platform is extensively customised / hacked up version of Wordpress,  moving will be very difficult and expensive. Yes, I am deep into buyers remorse and I can’t see a way out. At least when the platform worked reliably for the first two years I could pretend that things would get better.

But I’m losing page views, subscribers and my business is prevented from doing good things.The problems have been happening for some months now. Its not just today.

I do not recommend My New Rainmaker. I’m trapped and I can’t get out.

As as good as any motivational speaker

youtu.be/1Z7xba0is…

When a company like BP predicts peak oil in the near (-ish) future, you know that its real. I liked the balanced views in the this piece that point out the transition will take some time:

BP's latest Energy Outlook sees peak oil on the horizon for the first time -- driven by the rise of shared and autonomous electric vehicles.

Under the Evolving Transition (ET) scenario, which assumes that policies and technology continue to evolve at a speed similar to that seen in recent past, oil demand slows and eventually plateaus in the late 2030s.

BP Forecast: Shared, Autonomous EVs Will Help Drive to Peak Oil Before 2040 | Greentech Media : https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bp-forecast-autonomous-electric-vehicles-peak-oil

I’m often asked how to blog but the real question is WHY you blog. How you do it is a very personal, intimate experience on deciding content that is worth sharing. If I can reach a handful of people that is enough because at least I’ve shared my thoughts with someone. I don’t want to be read by large numbers of people who don’t know me and what I have to share.

“Small b blogging” tomcritchlow.com/2018/02/2…

The 61% ownership of Facebook by Zuckerburg is a problem. In my mind, he has poor personal qualities to be a leader. He repeatedly stole ownership of the business from co-founders, he has limited emotional capability and I’m reasonably sure that he has limited understanding of the real world. Where real = people, politics, society etc.

Soros began with the social problems, noting that social media companies “deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide,” acting like casinos that “have developed techniques to hook gamblers to the point where they gamble away all their money, even money they don’t have.”

George Soros isn’t a model of social good, but the points are valid.

This move is not purely an effort to confront Facebook’s problems, it is, I suspect, in large part a desperate attempt to distract the media and public from the social issues that Facebook knows it cannot resolve without inflecting serious self-harm.

In view, the widespread disengagement from Facebook is systemic. The platform offers value for a while until people realise that better options exist elsewhere. In effect, you use Facebook for a while until you get bored with it.

I’m bored with it. I think many other people are too.

Facebook’s Desperate Smoke Screen - Study Hacks - Cal Newport : http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/02/09/facebooks-desperate-smoke-screen/

Enjoyed this

Neuroscientist and public science communicator Anil Seth uses the power of Twitter to answer some common questions about neuroscience. How does memory work? Can we delete memories? Do blind people dream? Anil answers all these questions and more

Neuroscientist Anil Seth Answers Neuroscience Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED - YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EklA4lAkkoA

Not gonna argue, the numbers are about right. You can cut costs by doing audio editing yourself because it simple (but trade time for money).

Podcasting is harder than people think but anyone can do it. Look at me, I do.

The financial and time breakdown of producing your own podcast.

— Read on work.qz.com/1152960/podcasting-is-the-new-blogging-if-youre-rich/

Crazy application. And the sound is horrendous, as you might expect.

www.youtube.com/watch

The Science of Sample Rates (When Higher Is Better — And When It Isn’t) - SonicScoop — Read on sonicscoop.com/2016/02/19/the-science-of-sample-rates-when-higher-is-better-and-when-it-isnt/

Brilliant read on the science behind acoustic sample rates and, more importantly, the subjective experience of “listening”.

A film that reveals an unlikely truth about Australia’s love-hate relationship with its beloved icon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Oaeaqndd7g

I love fonts so this tickled my whimsical font nerve.

Pop Culture Typography - YouTube

Pantagruelism, n. [‘The philosophy and practice ascribed to Pantagruel; extravagant and coarse humour with a satirical purpose. Also, more generally: coarseness, vulgarity.’]

There are some truly great words in the English language. Via Oxford Dictionary.

youtu.be/-c9-poC5H…

“The Freakishly Fast World of Robot Sumo - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS-L2fpV1Is&feature=share

www.youtube.com/watch

youtu.be/aj8mN_7Ap…

My perspective on the Milky Way is changed.

www.youtube.com/watch

In technology, 70% chance of being right when someone in their 20’s tell you you’re wrong. 50 years ago it was 100%.

Hello ? Suicide Hotline ? My boss is interested in Microsoft Surface tablets……

Explaining the difference between a medical incision & slitting someone’s throat to the sales grunt. Not sure why I’m warning her.

“What do you think of the network proposal ?” Me: “It’s in my top eight.”

Bring a tambourine to the next vendor review meeting. Sing inspirational songs before they hand you the quote/proposal.

Looks like we will be getting whitebox.  Yeah, the Reseller said they will have to run a credit check

This Sales grunt’s seduction technique is to submit the wrong quote and then play hard to get.