The Lair of the SlowFox

Following up on the washing machine stuff, I kinda took it apart last night - not hugely, mind, but after some subtle hints on the interwebz, I did manage to find the filter - hidden beyond the wit of any thief, naturally, and pulled it out and cleaned it. Not that it seemed to need it much. Hmm.

Anyway, the dry run (no oxymoronic pun intended) seemed to remain dry, so am going to risk running a medium-ish load this evening and see what transpires.

As keen scholars of these pages will recall, I tend to load up on podcasts for dog walking (and the commute to work). Principally these are sourced from The Beeb, Teh Grauniad and TWiT. I've also started re-listening to Dan Carlin's Common Sense, which I'm finding a compelling listen, even if it is mostly concerned with US politics from a domestic perspective.

Anyway, even though TWiT and Common Sense are both available free, I pay a monthly subscription to each, because I think they're well produced, entertaining and worth supporting. Something similar, indeed, to the rationale that prompted me to initially support LiveJournal, Back In The Day™, and, currently, that ensures that I have a paid account here.

I think we're approaching a difficult point with the web - there's an expectation that so much of the content we access should be free (to the user), but obviously it costs money to create and host it all. Now, DW adopts the Freemium model for funding, relying on the assumption that the dedicated users who pay for a paid account will be sufficient to fund the architecture to host the entire community. Other places rely on advertising and marketing, but with an increasingly ad-aware/ad-immune userbase, I do wonder if present advertising rates can be sustained. If not, then funding from advertisers must surely drop, which, in turn, means that what can be provided on the basis of ad-funding must also drop.