It's always fun to check into these sites now and then, to see the metrics they've allegedly collected about my site. Most of it is contradictory, inaccurate and/or wildly outdated nonsense!

I couldn't even stand to link to them with rel="nofollow", feel free to visit them via copy and paste. But you really shouldn't.

urlm.co/www.rubenerd.com

Rank in United States 567,077
Worldwide Rank 1,052,449
Monthly pages viewed 34,020
Monthly visits 9,863
Value per visitor $0.16
Estimated worth $7,920.99
External links 237

www.freewebsitereport.org/www.rubenerd.com

Rubenerd.com has ranked #1,477,161 in the world according to Alexa website ranking. Rubenerd.com has Google pagerank #4. The estimated website net worth based on it's traffic value and online website advertisement revenue alone is around $1,631. Rubenerd.com receives 745 pageviews per day and generates nearly $2.23 in daily ad revenue.

rubenerd.com.pandastats.net/

Rubenerd.com is the 982494:th largest website within the world. [..] Rubenerd.com Google Pagerank is 4 and it's domain is Commercial. Rubenerd.com estimated worth is $4,065.71, with 1018 estimated visites per day and ad revenue of $3.05.

www.markosweb.com/www/rubenerd.com/

Defining the site's cost isn't a simple task. We comprehensively evaluate site SEO, website traffic (quantity, source, geography) and make approximate conclusions about the website's cost. Special attention is paid not only to the current site's cost but to the growth (or decline) dynamic of the resource.

Rubenerd.com net worth: $90.4K

rubenerd.com/go-home-site-value-estimators/

Whatever you guys are on, that stuff is powerful.

This is the second in my lame networking meme series, generated here. The first one was here. You're welcome.

It started like any other day in my CCNA course. We sat down, were presented with some Cisco slides, and our lecturer started discussing the concepts we'd be exploring in the following lab. I'm a fan of this format; for IT courses there's really no point having us sit in a two hour lecture, then have us go home without actually doing anything with it. But I digress.

When we got to the slide introducing EIGRP, it mentioned the proprietary nature of the protocol. With enthusiasm though, our lecturer overlayed a bubble over the slide, proudly announcing this was no longer true!

Sure enough, on the Cisco website, EIGRP has been submitted as a draft informational RFC:

Cisco is opening up its EIGRP routing protocol as an open standard in order to help companies operate in a multi-vendor environment. Customers should be able to pick the best protocol that works for them, based on technical merits. Any networking vendor can now freely implement EIGRP on their equipment, and interoperate with thousands of networks running EIGRP today.

"Based on technical merits" are strong words. Clearly Cisco believes other protocols were being adopted because EIGRP wasn't open, not because of any technical superiority. A shot across the bow at the likes of OSPF!

For some reason though, I couldn't shake the feeling there must be a catch. It didn't seem right to suddnly compare EIGRP to open, standard protocols like OSPF, based on a draft proposal.

Sure enough, in the second paragraph:

Cisco is releasing the basic EIGRP to the IETF as an Informational RFC. This includes all the information needed to implement EIGRP, and its associated features, including High Availability (HA).

The key word being "basic". I'm not a networking engineer, but this reads to me like if you want more of the advanced features of EIGRP, you'll still need Cisco gear.

And then we have this:

EIGRP is being released as an "Informational RFC", and that allows Cisco to retain control of the EIGRP protocol in order to preserve the customer experience and deployment investments. The EIGRP protocol will not be changed.

If I were a third party network hardware manufacturer looking to implement EIGRP, some key phrases there would give me pause.

So, not to go against my CCNA teacher, Cisco should be applauded for making steps in the right direction, but at best EIGRP could be considered a "partly-open" at this stage.

Art of Tsugumi modifying what could be a routing table, by okitakung on Pixiv.

Doing group work for our Routing and Internetworks class yesterday, all these terrible network memes started appearing in my head. Initially, I included them in our group report, but for the sake of our marks I'll be putting them here instead.

This is the first one, generated here. You're welcome.

If you have Perl warnings enabled (like a good developer), chances are you've seen something like this when executing your script:

Wide character in print at ./[file].pl line [x].

As with everything in Perl, there are Many Ways™ to deal with this.

The first is to include the following line along with your regular Perl boilerplate. I always write my scripts and text files in UTF8, so this merely enforces UTF8 output.

binmode(STDOUT, ":utf8");

This will deal with those warnings, and let you get on with your work.

An alternative is to enforce UTF8 for STDIN and STDERR, as well as STDOUT with this line.

use open qw/:std :utf8/;

And of course, there's always a trusty environment variable.

export PERL_UNICODE=SDL

Sending huge congratulatory electronic hugs to Clara and a brohug to Robbie for graduating yesterday. There are so many clichés about all their hard work, the exciting opportunities that face them and so on, but they've no doubt heard that from everyone by now. Still ^_^.

Clara will be hanging around to do her masters, and I hope Robbie will drop in from time to time as well :).

Pictured above in all their finery, I can tell those colours will suit them much better than they will on me! About the only thing lacking was my cameratic skills. Is cameratic a word?

Updating to the latest version of Jekyll, I got the following error when attempting to migrate a WXR file:

You must install the 'jekyll-import' gem before continuing.
* Do this by running `gem install jekyll-import`.
* Or if you need root privileges, run `sudo gem install jekyll-import`.

Sure enough, along with an entirely new site, Jekyll now uses importers instead of migrators, which reside in their own gem. Unfortunately, attempting to install this resulted in a new error.

ready % gem install jekyll-import
ERROR:  Could not find a valid gem 'jekyll-import' (>= 0) in any repository
ERROR:  Possible alternatives: jekyll-ebook, jekyll-epub, jekyll-reposter, module-import

It turns out that jekyll-import is still technically in beta, so needs to be installed thusly:

ready % gem install jekyll-import --pre

At the time of writing, this works in my bog standard RubyGems environment on Mac OS X 10.8.3, with the following dependencies and docs installed:

Fetching: fastercsv-1.5.5.gem (100%)
Fetching: nokogiri-1.5.9.gem (100%)
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
Fetching: jekyll-import-0.1.0.beta1.gem (100%)
Successfully installed fastercsv-1.5.5
Successfully installed nokogiri-1.5.9
Successfully installed jekyll-import-0.1.0.beta1
3 gems installed
Installing ri documentation for fastercsv-1.5.5...
Installing ri documentation for nokogiri-1.5.9...
Installing ri documentation for jekyll-import-0.1.0.beta1...
Installing RDoc documentation for fastercsv-1.5.5...
Installing RDoc documentation for nokogiri-1.5.9...
Installing RDoc documentation for jekyll-import-0.1.0.beta1...

While searching for information on an End of Life Cisco router series, I unwittingly stumbled upon this.

Today ASSA ABLOY Australia is pleased to announce yet another improvement to this range. A new turn mechanism has been developed for use on 1800 and 2800 Series Brass Plate Furniture to improve the ease of installation of these products.

Sharing for your convenience.

Earlier today, the best university anime clubs in Australia (ahem) gathered at the Japan Foundation gallery for a sneak peak into some of the original art behind Neon Genesis Evangelion. Seeing the level of detail that goes into each frame, how all the different layers of colours and effects were added, it was an amazing experience.

We weren't permitted to take photos of the exhibits themselves unfortunately, but the few photos I got from the event are on my Anime@UTS Flickr gallery. I have some handsome club members, let me just say that!

There was merchandise (of course!), and I was lucky enough to snag a shitajiki (aka: pencil board) to frame on my wall, along with one for Clara.

A few million years ago, I celebrated her annual festivities by presenting her a virtual birthday crown made of grass. She's no longer grass, so instead have a four leaf clover! Why? Because you don't see them out all that often, but when you do they're special and lucky ^_^.

If that doesn't win the award for lamest birthday greeting she got today, I'll be thoroughly disappointed.

According to this article in Xconomy, Google's Eric Schmidt had this to say to people like me who dare to explore the privacy implications of Google Glass:

"Our goal is to make the world better. We’ll take the criticism along the way, but criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society to it"

So they want to make the world better, by being patronising to people with legitimate privacy concerns.

This is disturbing trend, harking back to Scott McNealy in the 1990s. I blogged a few weeks ago about Robert Scoble crudly dismissing Om Malik's concerns about Facebook Home. Google have really honed their technique over the years, even by going as far as framing (hah!) the debate on Google Glass as whether you look more macho using it than a smartphone. Oh please.

The good news is: you can defeat this by simply continuing the discussion.

There are amazing, fun, enabling new technologies out there that will push the world forward in ways we can't entirely see or understand yet. It's exciting. It doesn't also mean we should sit down, shut up and lap it all up without also considering the broader implications.

As I always say, never trust those who tell you to stop thinking.

As a child of the 1990s and early 2000s, I grew up with multimedia CD-ROMs. For the time, they were amazing. When drives were counted in the tens or hundreds of megs, a 650MB CD-ROM with text, images, short video clips and sound were amazing. Or perhaps I was just an easily amazed child.

The medium was largely extinguished with the advent of fast internet access that facilitated free, widely available and constantly updated material that an optically-powered sneakernet could never hope to match.

It's that inflexibility that continues to fascinate me about the multimedia CD-ROM. With so much of the web being created, revised and lost on a daily (hourly... second?) basis, multimedia CD-ROMs are unashamedly frozen in time. While in the past this was a hindrance to wider adoption, today they can serve as time capsules into how the world was seen during the time they were made.

My favourite example: my DK World Atlas 1995 CD-ROM proudly states that "Singapore is the world's largest manufacturer of floppy disk drives". This is why I collect them!

Fast forward to the present

So, long story short, while waiting for some Indian takeaway to be prepared, my father and I inadvertently stumbled across a second hand music shop. While he was immediently drawn to the shelves and shelves of $1 CDs, I ran to a dusty shelf near the door that was chock full of old computer CD-ROM discs!

Within half an hour of rummaging, and for $10, I had these:

• Borland Delphi for Windows (did stuff in HS with this!)
• Cinemania 96
• DK Eyewitness History of the World, from 1995
• Encyclopaedia Britannica 98, International Edition
• Encarta 95
• Encarta 97 World Atlas, World English Edition
• Encarta 98 Deluxe
• Pinball Arcade, from 1998
• Red Hat Linux 9.0 Bible (3 CDs!)
• Starfleet Academy: Chekov’s Lost Missions (from 1998)

Once I've cleared out my dearth of assignments, I'll have to crank up my Windows NT 4.0 Workstation VM and explore some of these. ^_^

Don't you love headlines that can be answered so easily? From Infoworld, one of my favourite sources of whitepapers which I read for a hobby because I'm a nerd:

The Ponemon Institute's research study, entitled "The TCO of Software vs. Hardware-based Full Disk Encryption," claims to provide an answer. The study, conducted last year, polled more than 1,300 IT and IT security professionals in four countries -- the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan -- for detailed information about their use of and expectations for hardware-based full-disk encryption.

Perhaps its because I had a long day, but I reread that paragraph at least five times, and I kept seeing "Pokémon Institute".

The results, recently reanalyzed with new insights provided in a follow-up paper, showed that full-disk encryption came at a fair cost, in big part because of the time and labor involved in deploying it. But the perceived benefits for using full-disk encryption far outweighed those costs.

An interesting read, but nothing surprising. Whole drive encryption would have added tremendous computational overhead to already slow machines back in the day, but today there really aren't any good [technical] reasons for eschewing (gesundheit) it.

From an enterprise perspective, the biggest arguments I've heard against it have been those initial deployment costs, and the added potential complexity for data recovery. That's not a problem though, because everyone backs up. R-right?

Then there's the issue of vendor support, or lack thereof. Mac OS X, the BSDs and all major Linux distributions ship with whole drive encryption as a configuration option, but Microsoft's BitLocker is only offered on the non-consumer flavours of Vista, 7 and 8.

It's regrettable Microsoft places more importance on artificial product differentiation than the privacy of their home customers' data. No catching 'em all today.

Whenever you ask a question on a forum or answer site, invariably you'll be told to RTFM, to Google it, or have your intelligence questioned by someone hiding behind an anonymous pseudonym as they sit there in their home in their pyjamas with the Cheetos stains on them. Or whoever they are.

Oh sure, they'll provide reasons for these callous responses. They're tired of answering the same questions. There really are answers on Google if you try hard enough. If you haven't bothered to demonstrate you've done some research, why should they help you? Personally, none of these reasons justify being a rude douchebag, but that's just me.

Perhaps because I do perform searches, demonstrate research and ask politely, but I haven't had a reply like this in a long time. Instead, I have answers like these to contend with on a regular basis:

Why would you want to do such a thing?

This. In a nutshell. Is what's wrong with answer sites.

No matter what you're doing, there will always, always be people who either can't understand why you want to do something, or see it as an opportunity to be patronising. If they've never had to do something, clearly you shouldn't have to either!

A quick tip for people who answer questions on answer sites. Offer alternative suggestions for sure, but if your only contribution is a condescending why question, you haven't contributed anything. Congratulations, you're just as useless as those people who ask bad questions!

Remember my post earlier this week about Julia Gillard and Labor cutting university education spending in Australia? An excerpt from an article in The Age, retweeted by @Sebasu_tan on Twitter:

But [opposition leader] Mr Abbott said he would maintain the changes to university funding which the government announced earlier this month as a way of paying for the increased money that it wants to give to primary and secondary schools.

"I don’t think anyone should expect those cuts to be reversed," Mr Abbott said.

Surprising no one.

The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, told Fairfax Media that Mr Abbott was locking children into "being left behind".

Rich.

Earlier this week, one of the most upstanding members of the Anime@UTS club had her birthday. She's made a habit of doing this every year.

As someone who recently experienced that surge of pain at the prospects of becoming older than one preferred to be, I could relate to her hesitation to celebrate. We'd all planned to do something for her anyway, but always the illustrious Event Organiser™ she figured out several fun activities during the day, including a high tea and a piping-hot gastronomically delectable Korean dinner.

(Gastronomy has to be one of the most unfortunate culinary terms ever bestowed upon the language).

Clara and I don't drink, but we still had a great time seeing all our friends who we've barely seen owing to exams, assignments and all the regular fun stuff we otherwise occupy our existences with. She'd scoff at such a notion, but the turnout was just a testament to all the people who think she's a great friend. So there!

#tipsbowlerhat

As for the photo? Apparently that's me in cat form (private account link). Nyan~ ^o^

From my girlfriend Clara's site:

I heard today that uni funding has been cut again [..] the gist is that the 10% discount on upfront payments of HECs will be scrapped, voluntary paying back of HECs loans will lose the 5% bonus and Student Start Up Scholarships must be repaid once the student starts working.

The constant political infighting, the watering down of the Mining Tax, this complete and utter contempt for university students and the future of the country (paying back "scholarships" is my favourite)... I regard this current Australian government as nothing but a joke at this stage.

But here's the truly depressing thing. Labor knows I would never vote for the conservative coalition under Tony Abbott, so they know for people like me they can get away with this. I've seen Labor MPs on Twitter defend the plan by saying Tony Abbott would be worse. What a platform.

Update

Great catch from by Alex Masso on Twitter, seen via Greens Senator Christine Milne:

senatormilne: RT @alexmasso: "I fervently believe in and will continue to advocate that increases be made in funding the university sector" - David Gonski

Every man and his dog is asking why PC shipments are going down (many of whom don't have as much assonance in their headings... or is that alliteration?) so I couldn't be silent any more!

It's reason season

Some (well okay, most) armchair analysts blame users dropping Windows 8 like a metro-riding hot potato. Others point to the iPad and the general move towards the cloud and virtualisation as reasons why people don't see the need for new hulking towers. The Gruber says sales of PC "trucks" are in decline as we all move to smaller, more efficient "cars".

I suspect a large part of the reason is far less exciting, and has more to do with corporate rather than consumer decisions.

Care to buy a second hand PC?

During the last economic downturn, companies delayed purchasing new machines. New machines translate to new licensing costs, training people, exhaustive compatibility testing. If you're being squeezed financially, it's understandable why you'd look at these expenses, and put them off.

In doing so, it's possible these companies realised they could continue using these machines productively. Extended support can be costly, but still far less than procuring new equipment they've since realised they don't really need. Besides, their employees probably use MacBooks and iPads at home anyway.

What we could be witnessing is the end of the 2-3 year corporate upgrade cycle, and the transition into something far more sustainable. It makes nothing but business sense, though you can understand why corporate IT providers are nervous. Perhaps there's something to this services-orientation stuff.

I'm only speaking from the inside perspective of two large companies, but I think there's a pattern here. Or I could just be entirely wrong; my haters would be the first to point out this possibility.

Which reminds me...

The word possibility looks like the word possum.

Picture of Hatsune Miku and that veritable ocean of windows by 7zu7 on Pixiv.

I am unreasonably excite, and not just for the cityscape pr0n either.

Honestly, sometimes I think I'm the only guy alive who preferred Raingun to Index. It's not everyday where you can say a spinoff or sequel was better than the original. Misaka Mikoto is boss. Actually, I like the whole gang, though I can imagine having Shirai Kuroko as a roommate would get awfully difficult after a while.

After my midsem exam, I'll be downloading and watching this. As well as catching up with all my Kyoani stuff, and maybe Vividred, and maybe some 90s stuff including the Evangelion manga on my iPad. Maybe.

Via @Euronews:

#BREAKING: North Korea urges foreigners in South to consider evacuation, Korean Central News Agency reported

I see. Anyone want to shout me a ticket to Incheon? You can go via Singapore or Hong Kong, I don't mind.

Footnote

I originally included an image of some rather fetching young Korean men, from this post of mine in 2011. I subsequently found an image of Ayanami Rei in Korean garb, which was also just too epic to pass up. Thank you for your understanding.

A day after we learned about the death of The Iron Lady, I read this piece by Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian:

News of Margaret Thatcher's death this morning instantly and predictably gave rise to righteous sermons on the evils of speaking ill of her.

I can relate. Twitter seemed to be a mix of people saying good riddance, and those espousing anger at those saying good riddance. I said I detested all she stood for, but RIP.

This demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous. That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power. "Respecting the grief" of Thatcher's family members is appropriate if one is friends with them or attends a wake they organize, but the protocols are fundamentally different when it comes to public discourse about the person's life and political acts.

I'm inclined to agree with this, on principle. I'm too young to remember Thatcher, but I was subsequently horrified to learn what she got up to, to put it at it's mildest. Her death, for better or worse, signals the final end of that rather sordid chapter in human history. For the sake of keeping this blog post under a billion words, and my blood pressure in check, I'll leave it at that.

On the other hand, I personally can't bring myself to hate upon someone like her immediately after their death. I despised Tony Snow, but when he died of cancer I still sent my best thoughts to his family. Having seen personally the horror and pain that disease that inflicts, I wouldn't want that put upon anyone.

I suppose it's easy for me to sit here in my comfortable home in Australia discussing the ettiquete of when someone dies. I wasn't affected by Margaret Thatcher's policies. If she'd affected me or someone I love, I'd probably have a different take.

I guess, as with a lot of things, it comes down to personal taste. I detested Margaret Thatcher, and my left-leaning side may even write a long diatribe about her at some point. Just not... today.

When we went through the latest family move, I wrote a ton of posts but didn't finish any of them. Here's one from March.

Michael Dell on Apple in 1997:

"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," Michael Dell said before a crowd of several thousand IT executives.

Dell on HP's plan to stop manufacturing PCs, which they've since reversed:

Goodbye HP, Sorry you don't want to be in PCs anymore..But we do more than ever. How would you say goodbye to HP? ~ Michael Dell

Dell announcing they wouldn't be selling netbooks, ironically not shortly after that remark about HP:

Dell is [no] longer interested in selling Netbooks--that category of 10-inch class laptops that saw mild success for a couple of years but is now facing a serious existential crisis.

HP on Dell's decision to go private, rather than shutting the company down and giving the money back to the shareholders:

Dell has a very tough road ahead. The company faces an extended period of uncertainty and transition that will not be good for its customers. And with a significant debt load, Dell's ability to invest in new products and services will be extremely limited. Leveraged buyouts tend to leave existing customers and innovation at the curb. We believe Dell's customers will now be eager to explore alternatives, and HP plans to take full advantage of that opportunity.

And now we've come full circle.

Photo by Eustress on Wikimedia Commons.

A writing tip for some easily confused prose.

veracious:

Adjective; truthful

voracious:

Adjective; Wanting or devouring great quantities of food; Having a great appetite for anything

The way I've decided to remember:

1. Alphabetise the words in my head
2. Remind myself that "I'm truthfully hungry!"

Ah English, you and your gloriously bastardised European funicular. Wait, vernacular. That other one refers to those brilliant slanted railways. They're found mostly in Europe, so what I said wasn't entirely absurd.

Om Malik on the new Facebook Home thing:

And most importantly it is Facebook, a company that is known to have played loose-and-easy with consumer privacy and data since its very inception, asking for forgiveness whenever we caught them with its hand in the cookie jar. I don’t think we can be that forgiving or reactive with Facebook on mobile.

Robert Scoble in response:

The "privacy angst" folks like Om Malik are wrong

I just read Om Malik's post about why Facebook Home bugs him. Sorry, it's time that we stop listening to those who have "privacy angst."

"Privacy angst?" Class.

Personally, I am supremely thankful we have honest people like Om Malik thinking about these issues, and voicing them in a public space. The true enemy to privacy is complacency.

Don't trust those who tell you to stop thinking or listening.

Back in high school, I remember a teacher of mine telling us that Bill and Melinda Gates would often go to dinner together. While not out of the ordinary in and of itself, allegedly they performed this marital ritual while they both read books at the table.

Pass the hot chocolate, please?

I can still remember the mixed gasps of horror and derision of everyone in the class, and the other teacher who happened to be there. Even if the story were an urban legend, what a stupid idea, going out to a restaurant and reading! Bwahahaha! What a bunch of awkward, stupid nerds!

I'll admit, I was intrigued by the idea. Not necessarily with the reading, but the act of defying social norms and just doing what you want to do. If you love someone, and you enjoy their company in a cosy booth in a quiet restaurant while you both read, then fuck it, why not do it?

Whether it be avoiding loud concerts or alcohol by choice (rather than for cultural or medical reasons) or watching sport or constantly talking while hanging out, the Western world has its own unique number of social norms, all with their own justifications. Eating should be social, and "social" means talking, because you're together. You should want to get drunk and watch sport, because if you're not you're weird.

Which brings us to this afternoon

To use a term I otherwise despise, I was manfluing something fierce. I'd barely slept the night before; all the extremities on my head were red, swollen and blocked; I had a headache; the Bird wasn't The Word; and more.

To cheer me up and provide me much needed medicinal hugs, I met up with my wickedly smart, cute, talented girlfriend Clara at a local coffee shop. We sat on a squishy seat, leaned on each other, and started typing away on our iPads. We tweeted to each other, then looked at each other and laughed after the fact. Sometimes we'd share funny pictures we'd find, or interesting stories. Other than that, we enjoyed each other's company while performing the introverted tasks we both revel in.

It was wonderful, and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Well, except the manflu bit, that could have dived into a shark pool with a raw bratwurst strapped to each of its testicles. That was supposed to be "tentacles", but I'm leaving it as that.

My high school teacher and class would have laughed at us, and certainly a few people on Twitter mocked us. Even as recently as last year, that would have bothered me.

Today I realised: I don't care. All I needed was Clara to show me. Of all the gifts she's given me lately, this is one of them I'm most thankful for. You've helped me grow Clara, thank you. ♡

If you're introverted too, I encourage you to stop feeling bad. Believe me, I understand how extroverted societies can make you feel small and peculiar. It's not you, it's them. Read that book while other people get drunk. It's your life, there's no need to apologise for it!

How's that for a birthday age obfuscation? But I digress!

Forgive the ramblings of this ancient person

I've long since approached that age in my 20s where the idea of birthdays fills me more with dread than excitement. The fact my mum wasn't there to celebrate it still makes me choke up. Naturally, my birthday fell on my six-hours-of-class-without-breaks day. Our home has no internet, and is still filled with boxes. There's no World Peace, or jet packs.

By all accounts, it was shaping up to be a thoroughly depressing, awful birthday for a nerdy individual such as myself. As it turns out though, I had an amazing time!

Miku Miku Miku~

I met with my beautiful girlfriend Clara in the morning where I got lots of warm, tender hugs, some amazing ThinkGeek shirts, and a Good Smile Company Hatsune Miku fig! She'll be joining my Kyon and Yuki nendoroids and my Star Trek iPhone cover that she's given me over the last week. I don't deserve all this!

Before my six hours of classes, some of my closest friends from UTS met up and bought me Japanese Curry at Daruma in town, which I really appreciated. My friend Sebastian went out of his way and procured me some Coffee Alchemy beans! Marrickville is a LONG way from Hornsby, so it was thoughtful AND practical gift!

It turns out my networking and cloud computing tasks were relatively straight forward this week with summary routing and SaaS architecture. I'm sure the staff didn't do this on purpose for my birthday, but I'll pretend they did.

When classes had ended and it was 9pm, Clara and I hitched a ride on a comfy express train to Hornsby, eating some pollo quesadillas and guacamole. We talked, laughed, cuddled, made a huge mess of the Mexican food, and generally had a wonderful time. Did I say before I'm a lucky guy?

Arriving back in Hornsby, I met up with my epic sister Elke for some hot chocolate and family bonding at the late night Oliver Brown café, then headed to the 24 hour K-Mart to get a spiffy new kettle, as one does. It reminded me of our outings back when we were both studying in Adelaide, or our 7-11 runs we'd make in Singapore to stock up on supplies before we'd watch some LAO.

Satdee

Given we all had uni on the Wednesday, the following Saturday we all met at Starbucks in town, then headed to Hornsby for a Korean dinner. I was able to catch up with @fekete_rigo and @Valtism who I hadn't seen in a long while, as well as the @hanezawakirika, @@Sashin9000, @Sebasu_tan, @Adasifs, @maidforclass, and @JamieJakov gang.

While the presents were all fabulously thoughtful (Dennis Ritchie love from @Valtism, a hand drawn picture of The Hitch from @Sashin9000, cake from @Sebasu_tan and an amazing Homura fig from Madoka Magica!) the real thing I appreciated was the fact I was hanging out with friends who put up with my lame puns, bad jokes and whatnot. I've never had this many friends before... lesson learned, if you're awkward, join a club, seriously!

Tuesday

The last of the extended birthday celebrations occured yesterday, when my sister's and dad's present to me finally arrived! TNT tried their best to mess up the delivery, but after three attempts they finally delivered my new white cellular iPad mini this morning. It's white and shiny, and Elke even had the phrase "The Rubenerd iPad" engraved on the back!

Thanks everyone again for a wonderful week ^_^

Photo credits go to Clara. Check out her Flickr feed here.

Don't download the Windows Cisco Packet Tracer, then put it in your lowest spec VM to save precious SSD space, then let the installer run without problems, then try running it. It won't work.

This has been a public service announcement by me.

As someone who's counted himself a spiritual atheist for many years now, I read with much excitement this article in Time by Rabbi David Wolpe:

According to the latest Pew report almost one in five Americans identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious.”

There's hope yet!

In other words,

Oh boy, here it comes.

they have some feeling, some intuition of something greater, but feel allergic to institutions. Yet as we approach Passover and Easter, it’s important to remember that it is institutions and not abstract feelings that tie a community together and lead to meaningful change.

Yeah, doesn't it suck when people think for themselves?

Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes. Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is dissatisfied with the world. Religions create aid organizations;

Absolutely, I can't effect change or help people because I'm not religious. Glad the Rabbi sorted that out for me!

Feedback

From @Yaakov on Twitter:

@Rubenerd while i’d take what a ‘conservative’ rabbi says with a sack of salt, I don’t see where his post conflicts with your one from ‘08

I thought it was pretty obvious, but for the sake of clarity: the Rabbi's argument is spiritual people can't institute change or help the needy, you need religious institutions. As evidenced by non-religious people doing good things, this premise is obviously absurd, hence this post!

A new product announcement from Google:

With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand.

Not sure what they mean by "safely stored". What's certain (and unsurprising) though: no mention of privacy.

Update: Great tweet from @warrenellis, in light of Google Reader's closure:

Dear Google: why launch Google Keep when you've just proven you'll shut off productivity services when you get bored with maintaining them?

For someone who's been building home networks since primary school and when 10BaseT hubs were cheaper enough than switches to be worthwhile, I have a shocking lack of formal training. At UTS this semester, I finally find myself working towards my CCNA2 prerequisite (so I can do computer forensics), and this tool has helped me tremendously!

According to the site, "GNS3 is a graphical network simulator that allows simulation of complex networks." An amalgamation of various different tools and projects such as dynamips, dynagen and the Qt framework, the developers have even taken it upon themselves to maintain their own current fork of the former.

Using a Visio-esque drag-and-drop interface, you can configure your network topology, start routers and other hardware, connect virtual machines and monitor traffic. It's as close as having your very own Cisco lab running on your local machine, which is invaluable for study and gaining experience outside the labs.

The only caveat: you'll need to provide your own Cisco IOS images for use in the Edit → IOS Images and Hypervisors screen. Ahem.

So far I've just been messing around with dynamic routing protocols like RIP between routers, but the next step is to attach some VirtualBox VMs and check out some more complex topologies. Unfortunately, QEMU 1.3.1 and 1.4.0 have both decided to stop working on OS X 10.8.2, which is a right royal pain.

A quote from a Deutsche Welle article I added to my beloved Instapaper queue ages, ago but only just got around to reading. Use the original and best, people!

"The common goal of all the states in the region is, one day, to be part of the European Union, where we have freedom of movement for everybody," [German Foreign Minister] Westerwelle said. "That is why a redrawing of national boundaries is out of the question, including the Balkans. In Europe, borders are losing their significance."

If they're losing their significance, what's the harm in redrawing them then?

While checking some replies to my Rubenerd_blog account, I noticed I got some feedback from Gizmodo Australia for their inflammatory blog post that included a photo of me under the headline saying I'm willing to look stupid.

@Giz_au: Hey mate. I haven't deleted your comment. If we had, we'd see it there as deleted.

I'm interested how people saw my comment, but then it disappeared.

@Giz_au: Second, your image is CCBYSA2.0 and if you don't want it used you should change that

Yes, and if you want to use share-alike images, you need to change Gizmodo Australia to use that same (or equivalent) licence. Otherwise, "you should change that".

But that's beside the point. My objection was the tasteless, inflammatory article itself. Arguing over a technicality (which you even got wrong) when the issue is calling someone stupid is even less classy.

@Giz_au: Third, I own an iPod Nano watch myself, and love it, I get the attraction. It was a chatroom post

You shot who in the what now?

@Giz_au We don't think you're stupid at all.

Could have fooled us with that headline.

Anyway, I'm done with this and moving on. It's my fault for expecting more from Gizmodo.

Probably wouldn't offer equivalent protection as a tank. I really need to watch that series XD

Via http://blog.livedoor.jp/teaoevo/.

Without any touch of irony, Google have announced on their Official Google Reader blog that the service will be shutting down:

We have just announced on the Official Google Blog that we will soon retire Google Reader (the actual date is July 1, 2013). We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too.

Uh huh.

There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined

Because you actively made it less useful.

and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.

In other words, you want us using Google+ instead. How many failed social networks does this make for Google now... seven?

Google Reader was my Twitter

In 2007 (or maybe 2006?) I made the shift from Bloglines to Google Reader, largely because all my Whole Wheat Radio friends had done so already. The initial early-AJAX interface seemed more cumbersome than the relatively simple frame-based design of Bloglines, but I liked that I could star and share posts and view my friends' comments.

Now that I think of it, Google Reader was my Twitter from back in the day. Rather than being a single user blog reader desktop application, the key was you were sharing thoughts and stories with people you trusted, as well as just pulling feeds. I discovered so much stuff from Jim and Sparx and Atuuschaaw and the whole gang.

Google tweaked the UI several times during the service's history, rendering the interface gradually uglier and more difficult to use, but with some simple Greasemonkey scripts you could be back to the old goodness again without too much trouble.

The beginning of the end

The wheels started to come off for me when Google+ launched, and all those social features were stripped out in favour of a +1 button. It was obvious at this stage that Google saw no future in the service, and that they wanted everyone using Google+ to share and comment on stories. Like so many applications throughout tech history, it had become an awkward stepping stone we were all expected to accept and move off from.

(To be fair, I also jumped ship at this stage because they said my name wasn't real. Stay classy, Google).

As with so many terminated sites, I'll miss Google Reader for the community of people we had there. They're probably mostly on Google+ now anyway given The J-Walk has abandoned blogging.

Final random thoughts

In looking for Google Reader replacements, it continued to baffle me that so many third party services relied on Google Reader to sync. I wonder how they'll be dealing with this?

Also, I find it ironic that Bloglines, the original web-based blog reader that's now owned by the tiny Merchant Circle, was able to outlive Reader, the service released by the Google Behemoth. The lesson here, backing from a huge company doesn't always (in fact often doesn't) buy security.

It's the built in excuse every Sydneysider has heard a million times: I was late because of CityRail. Today an alleged "twisted wire" overhead caused delays or total outages across two of the lines, including the ones my girlfriend Clara and I take to commute to town. Over all, a 37 minute express trip turned into a two hour ordeal with packed replacement buses and a skipped connecting train because of overcrowding.

Where to begin!?

The problems with the CityRail system (or "network" as they refer to it as) are too numerous and complex to detail here. From what I've seen as an outsider moving back to Sydney, most of these issues stem from the system's age, the lack of foresight and planning that went into various line extensions, chronic lack of investment, and the bizarre convolution of CBD metro and suburban rail into one tangled, brittle, fragile mess.

Numerous politicians have proposed to fix the system. Our latest transport minister talked a big game as she entered her seat in state parliament, but unsurprisingly has failed to deliver. The problem is all these issues will take planning and foresight that will last longer than an election cycle to implement, and no politician wants future leaders taking credit for their work. Democracy in a nutshell.

What we need is for the City Circle to be severed from the rest of the network (ah they have me calling it that no!), expanded and turned into a true metro system. The suburban trains should be expanded with more lines and stations, and their electrical systems completely re-engineered. The result would be a more reliable, efficient system more people would use.

Of course the chances of those happening are slim to absolutely-friggen-nothing, so I propose a shorter term band-aid solution that's so simple even our current Premier will understand.

Image by Kishi Nisen on Pixiv!

More communication

Most times when something bad happens, the poor staff at CityRail stations seem to know little more than we do as commuters. Automated announcements regularly contradict themselves. The CityRail website offers terse explanations.

It's akin to going to a doctor and having he or she tell us that condition isn't anything to worry about, but that we need a ton of tests and we should prepare a will just in case.

We just want to know what's going on, and how we can get to where we're going. You have all those wonderful LCD monitors everywhere, why not use them more effectively during such problems? Whichever system you're using to inform your staff, it's not enough. I can't imagine how much grief they must get when another piece of your failing network falls off, and they're the public face of the corporation that irate passengers have to deal with.

I'd love for the system to be fixed, but for now I'd just appreciate more information. Be kept in the loop, as it were. That's not too much to ask for, is it?

When I first got my MacBook Air, naturally the first things I took care of were desktop backgrounds. I mean, these things won't resolve themselves. Which is to say, they will, but I wanted something more fitting for a machine that would be used for coding, writing posts such as these, and watching anime.

I opted for this image of Nagato Yuki with Hatsune Miku for the main desktop, and on a whim an image of Yuki in her trademark blue mizugi as my Terminal.

Unbeknownst to me, my lovely girlfriend Clara tirelessly tracked down a mini-fig of Yuki wearing that exact outfit, and gave it to me as a present yesterday! In an ocean of packing boxes, tape, paper and other nonsense from our move still littering our house, her attire seemed oddly fitting XD.

Photo is by KawaiiKiri on Flickr, who lives up to her handle ^_^.

@risuchiin on The Twitters:

I must've spent 3 hours already just reading @Rubenerd's blog. It's incredibly interesting.

It's readers like you that make blogging worthwhile, thank you ^_^

Now that I think of it, it's all you readers. I blog partly so I don't forget stuff, but also in the small hope that what I write may be fun dash useful dash interesting dash mildly amusing to someone else in the future. There were more reasons, but I forgot.

Remember the orgasmic furore we had to endure when Apple didn't include NFC in the iPhone 5? The Gruber links to this Verge article:

When we asked why Samsung did not include NFC tap-to-pay features in Wallet, the company said that retailers prefer barcodes over NFC because they don’t have to install any new infrastructure to support it.

Good thing I'm not one of those people who says "told you so". Filing under It's Not Apple, So It's Okay™

Don't look now, but WordPress has assigned the ID for this post as #11011. That's a binary number we'd express as 27 in base "10", which ironically could also be expressed as a binary, but base "2" couldn't be. When I finally make the move to Octopress, that'll render everything as base 8, right?

I haven't done a pointless milestone in a long time, it felt good!

A while ago I signed up to Pinterest, given a substantial amount of my uploaded media has been appearing there. Then I promptly forgot about them.

An email they sent me this morning:

Here at Pinterest... Get ready to change your life! We teamed up with The Biggest Loser to share tips from each episode. From Dolvett’s fitness guides to healthy recipes, The Biggest Loser (Mon 8/7c) on Pinterest has what you need to turn motivation into reality.

Something tells me I haven't been missing much.

Just so I understand what's going on: Gizmodo Australia writes an article asking how stupid people are willing to look for Apple, and uses a photo of me wearing an iPod nano watch to illustrate it. I leave a comment, and it gets deleted.

You can read the original in full on my post from earlier this week. In short, I calmly defended the reasons why I use an iPod nano watch, criticised their inflammatory headlines, and made a subtle dig at their US counterparts. Certainly nothing as rude, trollish or condescending as what Sam Biddle wrote in the original article, though apparently enough to warrant deletion.

I'm not looking for an apology, Gizmodo Australia have every right to delete my comment. It could have even been a technical or editorial mistake, or perhaps I was downvoted by the same users who have left far more inflammatory and rude comments than what I did.

Either way, stay classy Gizmodo Australia. I usually have a sense of humour about things like this, but this just wasn't cool.

Oh Goodreads, you so funny.

Perhaps its a remnant of my dial-up days, but I'm one of those old fashioned people that keeps local copies of all the stuff I download. Saves me having to download them again if I need to reinstall.

In the case of Xcode 4.x, components are downloaded and installed from the Preferences screen, but you can still keep the downloaded disk images by navigating to:

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode/Downloads/

Ironically enough, I only remembered this again when I was going through my home folder backups, and realised my Caches folder was way larger than it should be.

In 2009, my beloved Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debated that the Catholic Church was not a force for good in the world. In this part of his opening statements, Steven discusses Pope Benedict XVI.

I hope this retiring Pope is proud of his legacy.

(I found a version on YouTube that doesn't need Flash ^_^)

An hour ago, my sister tweeted that my wrist was on Gizmodo Australia. Sure enough, there I was on How Stupid Are You Willing To Look For Apple’s Magical iWatch?

My response (pending moderation):

I'm the guy in the photo who's "Willing To Look Stupid For Apple". My sister tweeted me and said my wrist was on Gizmodo Australia.

For me, this generation iPod nano is really useful. I use the built in pedometer constantly (a feature that's barely mentioned in the press). It's a memory key I'm guaranteed to always have around, more so than other keys that so often get left in the wrong trouser pocket. As a watch, it's easy to see at a glance. The wristband for it came from an official Apple Store. In a pinch, I can dump some podcasts onto it if my phone is running low on space.

And now I go back to ignoring Gawker sites and their regional clones with their sensationalist, click-bait headlines. "How Stupid Are You Willing To Look For Apple’s Magical iWatch?"... good grief.

It's a shame nobody has a stolen prototype iWatch for your American colleagues to buy.

Stay classy, Gizmodo. Reach for new standards in journalistic excellence and integrity, while insulting the people you sourced your free image from.

So we're moving house again, and it's a lot of work. My first task, cleaning out and throwing away more of my stuff.

I'm certainly not at the level of a hoarder, but I'm a "collector". Coins, stamps, computer cables, business cards... and for some reason thoroughly-washed beverage containers. Most of them have a history that are either far too personal or embarrassing to impart here! XD

As with my old display, I find taking pictures of things renders them easier to dispose of. Perhaps immortalising them on my Flickr feed means they're still with me somehow. I'm a weird person.

From top left to bottom right, immortalised forever here on Rubénerd.com:

1. An IKEA apple cider can
2. Two Starbucks coffee cups from my first year back in Sydney
3. A "Drink Responsibly" coffee cup from the Coffee Club
4. Two Starbucks Yuletide-themed cups
5. Two cans of Mr Potato, my favourite snack from Malaysia as a kid
6. A Starbucks cup with an earlier logo sleeve
7. Two years of The Rocks Aroma Festival cups
8. A carton of Paul's Egg Nog I took to an Anime Club event
9. A Maxwell Coffee can from one of my earlier dates with Clara
10. A Selamat Wafer, which is far too bagus to mention!

If I were into paranormal stuff, I'd claim it was a syncronicity.

Today, in Sydney:

Trains across most of the CityRail network are delayed up to 40 minutes after a fire safety alarm activated because of smoke in the Strathfield Signalling Complex earlier.

Today, in Singapore:

[a fire in an MRT tunnel] involving electrical wiring disrupted train services on the North-South line at about 9.05am. [..] Train services between Marina Bay and Toa Payoh stations resumed at 11.30am

So a fire alarm goes off, and the entire CityRail network goes down in Sydney for the rest of the day. A fire hits the Singapore MRT, and the affected line is fixed in less than 3 hours. Good to know.

Photo of the Newton MRT station by Terence Ong. Newton was the station I lived closest to for most of my time in SG, funnily enough ^_^

Between packing, moving and working on my university anime club's website and membership systems, I haven't had time to review the last two Tamako Market episodes Clara and I watched. I know, I'm as horrified as you are!

While we wait for me to have a sliver of spare time, have this super cute Megami image of the girls from the series instead. Arigato.