By Ruben(nerd) Schade, a UTS university student and IT guy in Sydney and Singapore. c.2004
Photos, audio, video, TV, quotes, stuff that should really go on my Tumblr weblog I suppose.
This spring's major security breach has blemished the reputation of Sony's fledgling subscription-music service, Qriocity. And Sony already had plenty to worry about even before the intrusion. ~ CNET
Nervousness about security and privacy of Sony data aside, they were most likely worrying about what their marketing department was smoking when they called it Qriocity. Can't be good for the corporate health plan.
I'm unreasonably excited! And the art is beautiful! From the official mailing list:
Hi Everyone,
Michael's new album, "Time Together," was officially released officially yesterday. It is available online from most retailers including Amazon.com as well as in music stores around the country. Digital downloads are available from most services including iTunes.
Michael Franks has been my favourite singer/songwriter since before I could walk; my beautiful late mum passed on her enthusiasm of his offbeat, interesting and just a little cheeky lyrics and unmistakable smooth jazz sounds. This will be the first of his albums we won't be sharing together, though I'd like to think she approves that I'm carrying on the family tradition :").
I just ordered his album on Amazon so I can rip it as FLAC and Apple Lossless. They estimate shipping to take two weeks; I hope I can survive that long without it! I suppose I could buy a few digital download tracks, just to keep me going, right?
If you'd like to buy the album, you can use the link below which will earn me some referral commission, or if you'd prefer you can skip it. Cheers! ^_^
So I checked Technorati.com this evening, that former darling of the blogosphere (do people use that term anymore?) I joined in 2005. Four of the twelve top stories were about American politician Anthony Weiner and his schlong. One third.
It's so disappointing that for all the blatant ratings grabbing and race-to-the-bottom journalism we accuse the mainstream media of pushing on us, blogs seem to be following the same path with vapid news stories that just aren't news. At least when I post pointless entries, they're cute! But I digress.
I guess a sex scandal sells, it's why Clinton was impeached and not Bush.
SallehS: THEN & NOW - Picture of my wife Nori at the Esplanade taken in 1969 and 2011. The Fullerton Building and Anderson Bridge being the reference point.
I'm increasingly fascinated by images like this! I've started an urban history tag.
If you'll recall from my earlier post looking at Singapore in the 1970s, I'm fascinated with modern history! Today I unearthed the Historical NSW Railway Timetables website.
Firstly, yes I am aware the image above is clearly not a retro rail map, or even a contemporary rail map at all. In fact, other than a couple of physical train lines entering the bridge there isn't any indication that rail activity is taking place. It's called setting the scene, this is a photo of North Sydney taken in 1980 by nicksarebi on Flickr. Interesting how some things are clearly the same, but so much has changed!
Moving on! Hey, that was a bit of a pun... how come I'm only funny by accident? Don't answer that. The first map here is the suburban network in 1969, go the font!
Now we jump to 1987, when I would have been 1! You can kinda tell from the typeface and simplified, coloured block lines; perhaps a homage to the London Underground? :)
And finally we jump another decade or so to see the map Olympic people would have used to find their way to New South Wales Taxpayer Sinkhole Arena, as it was almost called:
What strikes me about all these maps is just how little things have changed in the intervening decades. Entire networks in other cities have been built from scratch during this time, and Sydney has barely had a dozen new stations introduced.
New map designs and signage, while being incredibly fascinating looks into our modern past, don't hide the fact the state has seen little new investment in public transport for a painfully long time. The new Liberal government claims transport is their "number one priority", but we'll believe it when we see it!
I didn't licence my name under the GPL, Richard Stallman stole it! True story.
An Apple mousepad for my Apple computer!
Posters aside, I haven't bought decorative things in a long time, I've been trying to reduce the amount of stuff I own. Every now and then though, it's worth it :).
For those not in the know, Typo is a store in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore that advertises itself as a "one stop concept store", whatever that means. What I do know is its quite possibly the greatest stationary and design shop out there, even if admitting this will have certain people label you a hipster. They shouldn't bother, they can just buy labels at Typo.
Anyone else notice Wikimedia Common's Picture of the day today?
File:On the edge - free world version.jpg
English: Drawing of a fictional landscape with a figure in manga/anime style. The title of this image is: On the Edge. Programs used: GIMP, Inkscape, Blender. ~ Niabot
Aside from being a really colourful and creative image in its own right (love the light coming in through the trees onto the Shinto gate), I applaud the editors at Wikimedia for not only allowing material like this, but gracing their homepage with it for a day and tagging it as "a featured picture on Wikimedia Commons" and "This image has been assessed using the Quality image guidelines and is considered a Quality image". Seriously!
I think it speaks volumes about our culture that images like this warrent a NSFW warning, but gory violence where people are graphically maimed or killed is perfectly acceptable, or at the very least is more leniently censored. I have my suspicions as to why that is, but at the risk of getting into further trouble, I won't discuss it here!
This was the first -- and will be the last -- NSFW image on Rubénerd.com. I hope I didn't offend, or at the very least scar you for life!
UPDATE: It seems the image isn't the picture of the day anymore, in the time I wrote this it changed to something completely different. There's a Monty Python reference in there somewhere. Anyway, dang timezones, I keep forgetting their servers are in the US! There's probably an archive of previous pictures of the day somewhere on their site.
As a formerly obsessed aviation nut and a logo nerd, I felt compelled to comment on Virgin Australia's new brand design. Yes, I lifted that entire first sentence from my JAL blog post back in February, its called recycling.
Virgin Australia is the rebrand of Virgin Blue, the budget airline started by a consortium of Richard Branson and Australian investors shortly after the demise of Ansett in the early 2000s. Ansett was originally supposed to be sold to Singapore Airlines (imagine how awesome THAT would have been!) but instead was taken over by Air New Zealand and subsequently run into the ground. Well, I am aware planes land on ground and from the perspective of those watching in the airport it could be seen as running, though I believe that's a bit of a stretch. Now the DC-8-30, that was a stretch. But I digress.
Virgin Blue's rebranding entailed (hah, that's a bit of a pun) the adoption of the same slender typeface of their American and British operations, and a stark white livery in place of the awfully ugly yet colourful ironic red livery from Virgin Blue. Unfortunately owing to the parent company's part ownership by Singapore Airlines (those guys again!) for some reason this means Pacific Blue and the like can't also be called Virgin Pacific or something cool like that. Which makes no sense, oh well.
As with Japan Airline's new livery in February, I have mixed feelings about this one. Like JAL, Virgin Australia has adopted a clean, minimalistic new livery which appeals to someone like me who likes clean minimalism. Well that sentence was redundant. So was this one. And this one. Brown sugar... how come you taste so good?
Where was I? Oh yeah, firetrucks. Did you know in airports they're often coloured yellow for visibility? So "Fire Engine Red" in this case would be... yellow. Funny story.
Anyway, yes, so while I do like the new livery from a minimalism perspective, and while I think the stretched lettering over the vertical stabiliser and down the rear of the fuselage looks rather fetching and unconventional, the lettering towards the front is in the same boring spot almost every airline puts it.
Virgin Blue, sorry Virgin Australia, prides itself on being unconventional in a non-threatening, conventional way, but this new lettering at the front is a missed opportunity. Which is a shame, because repainting planes costs a lot of money that could be spent on more of those little crackers and cheese they sometimes give you. Oh yeah, and A320s instead of 737s, they have far more room per seat.
Despite those No Agenda folks who agree with more often than not, I do prefer trains to planes, and would rather travel on a high speed train between urban centres in Australia, though I know that will never happen because we live in a democracy where the people we elect are only interested in projects that generate short term political capital. The political capital of Australia in Canberra. I mean, what's the point of having long term plans if someone (or some party) other than you can take the credit for it later? Not that I'm cynical or anything. Planes are cylindrical, kinda.
Because really, Virgin Australia implies Australia had never had planes before. And she has. By comparison, she's never had true, regular, electric high speed rail before, so Virgin Australia would make far more sense for such a mode of transportation instead, right? I think I may have pushed that metaphor too far.
Our government funded ABC News delivering the important stuff, the same organisation that started Chasergate.
Update: This comment on the subject was too good to pass up!
To all those who are complaining about the hype, the media saturation [..] taking up half the news bulletins and entire sections of newspapers [..] would it annoy you, that something so pointless and irrelevant to you was given blanket coverage and that everyone you knew was really, really into it? Well, that’s how I feel about football.
Ruben attempts to guess the age of a photo, for no reason!
While looking for recipies for Singapore noodles this evening on The Googles, I came across the IKB Travel website advertising the city state and all its attractions. What caught my eye though wasn't the links to the Singapore Zoo or any of the other thingy whatnots (they're technical travel terms, look them up) but rather the photo they had chosen to accompany the page.
If you aren't Singaporean or haven't spent any length of time in the city state you could be forgiven for thinking the photo is current, and presumably the travel agent folks (or their website designer) clearly thought it was or they wouldn't have included it! That said, those with an eye for detail may notice a few things that give away the photo's true age:
All these point to one unmistakable conclusion:
One of my loves (dare I say, passions!) is finding old photos of places where I've lived or been to, and comparing it to what I've seen myself. Particularly with South East Asia in the last thirty years, cities in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand have been almost completely transformed. I find it fascinating :).
So how old is this photo? Well judging from the fact virtually none of the skyline is there yet, I'd hazard a guess that it was taken in the late 1970s. This is corroborated by the fact the recognisable triangular tower of the OUB Centre isn't visible yet, nor does it even look like its under construction! According to Wikipedia, they started building it in 1980.
For comparison, here's a photo of the same area of the Singapore River in 2010, by chensiyuan on Wikimedia Commons. The building locals sometimes call the "calculator building" is almost the only thing that looks the same!
