Rubbish Optus Cable Internet

Well, Richard’s fix got over the ridiculous Optus cable internet issues we’ve been having accessing international sites… until this morning when, oops, it got turned off.

So, back to direct connections I went, and sure enough, come 12:30PM (for 30-40 minutes) pretty much every international site I’ve tried to access is unaccessible (including gmail – gah) and now the workaround isn’t getting me there either.

I’ve also now contacted them 3 times, and heard absolutely nothing through either their support or actual complaints lines (for which they guarantee a response!!!)

Each time I provided ping details, information and a cry for help… from a customer that uses them for 2 mobile, a landline and their most expensive residential net connection… but nothing seems to have come of it.

Anyway, I give up, iinet here I come and so should anyone else who actually wants to have a stable international net connection.

Update: If you’re having the same issue try switching your auto proxy config to http://webproxy.syd.optusnet.com.au/ (instead of http://webproxy02.syd.optusnet.com.au/) which might have fixed it for me. Still absolutely rubbish… let’s see if they bother to respond to my 3rd (or is it 4th?) support ticket.

Lulz

Oh, do come on, I thought I’d really reached the pinnacle of contrition on occasions over the last few years but this is just too funny :)

“We have learnt many valuable lessons during this process and would like to apologise for the way the transition period was handled.”

You’re not wrong – come on guys, a smiley wouldn’t have gone amiss :D

Not content with just creating new users?

Well, we’ve just added another feature to Edublogs that allows you to add up to 15 users at one time to your blog (and you can give them each a different roles too).

Neato huh :)

If you’re an Edublogs user go to Users > Add Users to have a play!

Funny names :)

How many of the following UK startups (as listed by TC) would you say have pretty silly names?

• Groupspaces – Can forgive this one, just
• Tioti – Surely there must be better 5 letter .coms around
• Exabre – Erm
• Coull – Sounds painful
• Zogix – Yay, a Z
• Byteplay – Hmmm.. not bad
• Trampoline Systems – LOL, at least it’s funny
• Hubdub – So Rubadub was taken,m right?
• WAYN – And Waynetta ;)
• TrustedPlaces – Not bad!
• Slicethepie – Not to trashy either
• Mydeo – Hmmmm
• Skimbit – Iffy
• Huddle – Finally a good ‘un
• Rummble – Didn’t misspelling names go out a bit back?
• Zebtab – Another Z :D
• Silobreaker – Makes me feel a little queasy
• Kwiqq – Um…
• edocr – …
• ShortFuze – Don’t get ’em angry!
Made me chortle, and yes, I know, Incsub isn’t exactly clear and simple but Edublogs is… isn’t it ;)

Um, ‘upgrade’ to MT :D

Heh, I worked with MT for a whole year at theage.com.au and basically the only thing they have going for themselves is static html… which of course Super Cache does for WP very nicely (so I really wishthey’d shut up about that bit – it makes our clients nervous and means we have t say bad things about MT ;)

So that aside, everyone needs plugins (we’re all different, right), stats in your dashboard are like, so, who cares (hardly a challenge with WP too)… and as for design and support… hmmm well that’s a bit subjective.

Seriously though, competition is good so I do with MT the best of success (and others), it’ll help WP improve, but as for being a competitive alternative, not by a long shot just yet guys.

Update: Hear hear… I forgot to mention that it’d be virtually impossible to build anything like Edublogs with MT. 

Lay off Jimmy Wales

Am getting annoyed with all this shit flying around about Jimmy Wales.

I met him, allbeit briefly, at an education.au event last year – heard him speak and had the chance to chat to him really briefly.

To be honest, I was all prepared to not like him… to find him arrogant (especially as Education is concerned – having got teh gist of a few things he’d said before) or to have not much interesting to say, or to just be on an aloof junket. So I went into it with a pretty bad attitude.

I know this isn’t very cool of me, but that’s honestly how I felt going into it.

However, I came out of it no less that utterly impressed.

He’s an incredibly smart,  interesting and genuine individual. He talked openly and with a great deal of time and respect for his audience and impressed me more than – and this is no small thing – any conference presenter ever has. He rocks out.

Now, everyone has their share of personal strife and difficulties – I’m no exception by a long shot on that one – and anyone with his profile or dealings is going to be without enemies or the occasional thing that might seem questionable about what they do professionally.

He deserves a lot more respect and lot less crap (especially the highly likely utterly incorrect crap) thrown at him.

Sure, there’s nothing wrong with criticism, but a lot of publications are taking the piss, and that’s not on.