Well today, Google Reader just got that much better. If your a user of Google’s RSS reader you’ve probably been frustrated in the past with its inability to search back through your feeds for that specific one you forgot to star and is now lost in the sands of time. Located above the main feed section there is now a search box with a handmade drop down menu that lists your folders and subscriptions. Now searching is as easy as selecting your category, smacking in your search terms, and clicking search.

I must say, it’s about time.

In addition to the search box the “Loading” notifier got an update as well. Instead of hogging the middle of the screen it’s now located at the top middle of the screen is smaller and has a little spinner to let you know it’s doing its thing. Very nice.

### 1. Value
This is a big one. Telstra’s plans are close to the worst, if not the worst, in the business when it comes for cost/megabyte download. I cannot stress this point enough. Lets do a rough comparison of the [top five][1] ADSL providers that [Whirlpool][] users are signed up to. Take into account we’re only comparing ADSL1 not ADSL2+ and these are only the home plans, not Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) or business ADSL.

#### Single Student ($30)
iiNet: 600Mb prepaid, shaped, 512/128 (iiPhone bundled)
Internode: 500Mb prepaid, shaped, 256/64
Telstra Bigpond: 200Mb prepaid, excess $150/GB, 256/64 (uploads counted)
OptusNet: 300Mb, shaped, 512/128 (600Mb off-peak)
TPG Internet: 1 Gb, shaped, 256/64

#### High Flyer ($90)
iiNet: 10 Gb, shaped, 1500/256 (10Gb off-peak, quota doubled w/ iiPhone)
Internode: 40Gb, shaped, 1500/256
Telstra Bigpond: 10Gb, shaped, 512/128 (uploads counted)
OptusNet: 20Gb, shaped, 1500/256
TPG Internet: 25Gb, shaped, 1500/256 (+VOIP)

Looking at those figures it’s not hard to see that Telstra Bigpond is lagging in the bang for buck area. It’s a good thing they’re providing everyone else on the list with wholesale ADSL isn’t it …

### 2. ADSL2
ADSL2 is a relatively new thing around these parts. Theoretically you can get some insane speeds if you’re leaching off a wireless connection adjacent to the ADSL2 enabled phone exchange, but realistically it will at the very least kick the pants off ADSL1. The [graph][2] on this page should give you a pretty good idea on what you can expect in terms of speed when it comes to ADSL2. Currently Telstra Bigpond doesn’t provide ADSL2 services, only ADSL1, and when it comes to the geekage that’s happening around this place - that just don’t sit right.

### 3. Free Stuff
Any ADSL provider that doesn’t provide “free” downloads should never be considered - and Telstra Bigpond, while providing this facility seems to have the crappiest free service in ADSL land. For the non-geeks reading this article, “free” downloads are those that don’t count towards your monthly quota. As an ADSL provider when you’re letting people download at speeds faster than Granny’s dial-up account, you should be providing them with as much free stuff as possible so they don’t go busting that quota in the first couple of weeks after updating their Debian distribution.

### 4. Reputation
Now this is probably the most subjective point on this list, but probably close to one of the biggest. Telstra Bigpond, or Telstra in general, really seems to have a bad attitude when it comes their customers - be that the average Joe or businesses. Due to how they were started (government based and funded) they’ve been the biggest provider of telecommunication services in Australia. This gave them a virtual monopoly over this industry, stifling competition. I like competition. It makes for lower prices, sometimes better service, and a fair go.

So basically that’s the list. If I think of more points I’ll tack them on, but if you’re still using Telstra Bigpond broadband after that … have fun parting with your hard earned cash. I know someone’s laughing at you, and it isn’t me.

[Telstra Bigpond]: http://www.bigpond.com.au/ “Telstra Bigpond”
[Internode]: http://www.internode.on.net/ “Internode”
[iiNet]: http://www.iinet.com.au/ “iiNet”
[aaNet]: http://www.aanet.com.au/ “aaNet”
[Whirlpool]: http://www.whirlpool.net.au/ “Whirlpool Forums”

[1]: http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/
[2]: http://www.internode.on.net/adsl2/graph/index.htm

However, like most things that we experience, how we chose to percieve what happens to us dictates our experience and what we learn from it. In most cases while you have a negative reaction to what’s happened, by changing your attitude and choosing to see the flipside of the situation you find a positive to your negative.

In this case while I don’t think I’ve got the full grasp on the lesson, I certainly need to play some more 500 ;)

After doing some serious damage to my [Wordpress][] installation today, where I basically dumped all my themes and plugins into the trash (thankfully the posts are stored elsewhere) on the assumption they wouldn’t be removed, I had to go looking for my [Textile][] and [Markdown][] plugins again. Previously, both of these markup languages were managed by a single plugin that allowed the user to set the language for each post. Unfortunately, as I found when trying Markdown on the blog (the reasons for the need to upgrade to 2.0.3), I couldn’t use this tool to have both types of markup coexisting, i.e., a post using Markdown followed by a post using Textile.

Good news is that you can make this happen without to much fuss and no fiddling around. Simply follow the links and download the plugins available, install them the same way you have with your other plugins, activate, and whamo, you’re up and going!

*Wordpress 2.0 Textile Plugin*
[http://www.huddledmasses.org/jaykul/textile-plugin-26-released/][textile_plugin]

*Wordpress 2.0 Markdown Plugin*
[http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/][markdown_plugin]

*Wordpress 2.0 SmartyPants Plugin*
[http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-smartypants/][smartypants_plugin]

[Wordpress]: http://wordpress.org/
[Textile]: http://textism.com/tools/textile/
[Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

[textile_plugin]: http://www.huddledmasses.org/jaykul/textile-plugin-26-released/
[markdown_plugin]: http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/
[smartypants_plugin]: http://www.michelf.com/projects/php-smartypants/

If you’re using a Mac for web development and you haven’t heard of Textmate you’ve probably had your head removed from your body and stored in a glass jar somewhere, well away from an internet capable computer. Textmate has been popularised as the best editor for writing “Ruby on Rails”:http://www.rubyonrails.com/ web applications and after “using”:http://www.jedit.org/ a “few”:http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ “editors”:http://www.radrails.org/ over the past year or so I’d have to say it wins that claim hands down.

Recently, a programmer by the name of “Brad Choate”:http://www.bradchoate.com/ decided he’d write a bundle (application extension) to allow Textmate users to compose and post blog articles from Textmate, thus removing the need for applications such as “MarsEdit”:http://ranchero.com/marsedit/ and “Ecto.”:http://ecto.kung-foo.tv/ Note, I claim that there was the intention to remove the need for other blogging programs - a claim that the author has not made (yeah, I’m covering my backside on this one). But why write a utility like this if that wasn’t the intention?

Anyway, before I get really off-topic about the appropriateness of such a plugin (bundle, add-on, whatever), the verdict is that it’s a pretty sweet addition to an already highly competent editor. If you haven’t given it a go, take 10 minutes out of your day, brew some coffee, and give it a whirl.

I do apologise for the last couple of posts being concerned with the new technologies that I’ve been playing around with to post to this site. It does remind me of the reaction after my 4th post about updating the look of the website a while back.

Promise better content :)

First impressions are pretty good but it’s certainly a beta product and still has a few bugs running around that need a squashing. I’ve just been playing around with the blogging tool.  While being a breeze to setup it certainly lacks many features that most blogging backends provide as standard.  If you’re into playing around with newish technology and think you could use a browser with built in RSS, blogging, and photosharing capabilities (and plenty more) give it a whirl. You could be converted.

If you’ve been browsing my “Flickr”:http://www.flickr.com/ “photos”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/38174277@N00/ you may have noticed some weird happenings - things not showing up, access being denied on some photos etc. A good example of this is the shot I’ve taken of my sets a couple of minutes ago. The kid in the preview is not part of the photo set, or any photo set for that matter. In fact, where the heck did that kid come from?

I’m assuming this is a Flickr problem mostly because I tried to fix a few things I thought were my fault and ran into more weirdness in the backend. Hopefully this will get fixed up sharpish. It’d be nice if they had a status page, similar to what “dreamhost”:http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/ has, so we don’t think it’s something we’re doing wrong and that we know to be patient. “Gamma”:http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2006/05/alpha_beta_gamm.html teething issues? Possibly.

I’m still trying to get the rest of my photos from home up on the website, but I haven’t had too much time in the past week. Most of the free stuff has been spent configuration the home network so we can share media between all the desktop machines, wired and un-wired and to the xbox. It’s been an interesting, and at times harrowing, experience but lots of fun and plenty to learn.

_Update:_ Seems the Flickr people have been “working”:http://flickr.com/forums/bugs/23158/ on the issue, though it would have been nice to see something on the blog to this effect considering how major the issue was. -Everything seems to be working nicely, though- I lost a couple of pictures I uploaded yesterday and one of the set thumbnails isn’t working properly.