Rubénerd Blog :)

Friday 03rd July 2009

Singapore from my bedroom window

Clear day in Singapore

Twitter has become such an integral part of my life that I sometimes forget most people don’t use it. Probably everyone else has this thing called a "life" which I hear so much about.

This was a photo I took outside my bedroom window yesterday afternoon after I’d finished a coding session. Since the last time I was in Singapore back in March I can count two new apartment buildings and several more under construction. Time-lapse photography over a period of months would be pretty cool from here, I can tell you that!

What gobsmacks me is how ridiculously tall some of these apartment buildings are becoming. In Australia there’s the Eureka Tower and Q1… and that’s pretty much it. Then again, Australia isn’t trying to cram all it’s population into a minuscule island dot!

Friday 25th April 2008

Rubenerd Show 240 2008.04.25

Sitting at Starbucks with a certain brand of computer!The fast food and Starbucks episode!

ACT ONE: On hobgoblins and small minds (courtesy of Cranky Geeks 113!), where we are in Singapore, diamond shaped thingys.

ACT TWO: Pontificating on the reason why McDonald’s started printing nutritional information on place mats, a McChicken burger surprise!

ACT THREE: Discussing the question: would you prefer to study in a Starbucks or in McDonalds? Reading comments by Neil from IntoYourHead, GeekMommy and Sharon in Singapore!

ACT FOUR: Singapore housing boom, ridiculously tall buildings, weird designs that just don’t look stable!

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 33:10, 15.2MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.

Tuesday 11th December 2007

Rubenerd Show 229 2007.12.11

The super dark sky no cohesion episode!The super dark sky no cohesion episode!

ACT ONE: Show reminiscing, exponential curves in the morning, This is Why I’m Hot, Wikipedia excesses, getting Snitters, interconnected crap, Compton, Anglosphere rivalry, pavlova and trifle.

ACT TWO: Yuletide and Christmas coming, family shopping always the hardest, the Ducati USB thumb drive, 9-11 conspiracy theorists heckle Bill Maher, YouTube reviews, The Google, locked doors, senility, Nokia e61i, iPhones, Casey Stoner, Elke playing Neopets, great nerdy insult, grand pianos on lanyards, impromptu Starbucks thermos review, Costa Coffee in the UK, Singapore Post.

ACT THREE: Singapore PrimaDeli food poisoning scandal, the Ministry of Health is MOH, unfortunate cake ingredient lists.

ACT FOUR: Cheap bulbs in lava lamps, music review of Ska Cubano, Ay Caramba and Istanbul is Constantinople, Last.fm account, losing music in iTunes.

ACT FIVE: Alien DJs, music is the soundtrack to your life, work sucks time (no, really?), floods in Singapore, storms closest to snow we can get here, Dave Wares on tudor houses, and crazy dead lifts.

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 1:07:00, 32.10MiB

You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.

Wednesday 24th January 2007

We’re back from Fraser’s :)

Fraser's HillWell after three days of relaxation my family and I are finally back from our mini holiday in Fraser’s Hill. “I” in this case meaning myself and not the visual aids of which we have two in our heads collectilvely known as “eyes”. Hope that cleared up the apparent confusion.

The main reason we went on this trip was to give my mum a break from her always fun chemo regeme. She literally lives her life in her bedroom and commuting from that aformentioned place to the Gleneagles Intan hospital, or medical centre, or hospital medical centre or whatever they’re calling it now. Really not a fun thing in the slightest, so just a change of scenery does her the world of good.

Fraser’s hill really is a beautiful place. From what I understand (and given its not computers or coffee, that phrase is even more pertenent) the town is a 1920s era mountain station built by the British as a cool place to escape to when the tropical heat of Kuala Lumpur got to their poor little temperate-climatised heads. The architecture is very European and it certainly has very cool – some would even say chilly* – weather.

* I never understood why you call cold weather “chilly”. Aren’t “chillis” really quite hot? No I’m not hitting on a chilli by saying it looks attractive, I’m referring to the intensity of it’s flavour. Seriously.

From the obviously inpartial Tourism Pahang website:

Rising 1,500 meters above sea-level on the Titiwangsa mountain range of Peninsular Malaysia is Fraser’s Hill. Named after a solitary Scottish pioneer, James Fraser, who set up a tin-ore trading post in the 1890s, it actually consists of seven hills. Fraser’s Hill is truly an idyllic place for one to rest and to escape from not only the heat and humidity but also the hustle and bustle of city life. It is perhaps the prettiest of the Malaysian Hill resorts.

The other reason I’m sure my mum likes it is she gets breakfast in bed and it’s extremely quiet and peaceful. Of course while she was enjoying the breakfast and the peacefullness (is that a word?) my dad and I managed to do some nature hiking and exploring around the waterfalls and rock formations through the forest. I’ll try and post some pictures when I’m not sitting at my Mac at 01am typing and rudely waking up when my head hits the table after dozing off.

Anyway we’re all back, so stay tuned for more posts and more Rubenerd Shows if not tomorrow then Thursday.

My parents and I are currently at a retreat in Pahang in eastern Malaysia to help my mum recover from her latest painful cycle of chemotherapy. The next Rubenerd Show will be available next week. There is limited internet access there so emails and posts probably won’t get replied to till then either. Thank you everyone – Ruben

- Rubenerd Show site as of yesterday, placed here for no reason other than to make the post appear longer than it actually is, that way I type less but it looks to the unsuspecting eye that I’ve typed more. Very clever technique if you ask me; feel free to implement this on your own blog. Don’t ask me for technical support when you need help implementing this though, I’m busy enough as it is.

Saturday 20th January 2007

Kuala Lumpur International Airport WiFi is sweet!

So I was at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA to people in the know) for a long drawn out reason which I won’t attempt to explain here, and I found myself trying their free WiFi access. Given my experience with TMNet’s WiFi at the Starbucks coffee shops here I was a bit sceptical about how good it was going to be. As it turns out it was faster than out DSL at home!

As you would know if you read this site in any manner resembling regularity I love screenshots, so here are some from my WiFi adventures :D.

Here’s the initial welcome screen when I logged on for free on my MacBook Pro:

klia_mac_thumb.png

Here’s the welcome screen when I booted into Haruhi KDE FreeBSD ;):

Haruhi KDE FreeBSD

And what better thing to do on free WiFi network in a Malaysian airport but listen to Whole Wheat Radio?

klia_wholewheatradio_thumb.png

Monday 14th August 2006

Singapore City in June 2006

Someone has put a great new high resolution picture of Singapore City on the Wikipedia article for (you guessed it) Singapore:

Singapore City
click image thumbnail to expand

The original photo page can be found on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons. I mirrored the image here so I’m not leeching bandwidth.

Wednesday 21st June 2006

Rubenerd Show 113 (Thu 22/Jun/2006)

Talking about trip with the Rubenerd Dad to Putrajaya, Malaysia (government buildings, deserted streets, lack of people, cleanliness, science fiction), spooky places, purpose-built capital comparisons (Canberra, Australia and Brasilia, Brazil).

Download MP3 ↓ 10:00 minutes, 6.4MiB

You can also stream it and view its Internet Archive page.

Monday 22nd May 2006

Rubenerd Show 090 (Mon 22/May/2006)

Theme song put on hold, athletes getting paid far too much, The Top Five (most overpaid occupations), the MagSafe power adaptor stuffed, comparing buildings in Singapore to Adelaide, and the Rubenerd Email Spam experiment.

Download MP3 ↓ 10:00 minutes, 6.4MiB

You can also stream it and view its Internet Archive page.

Friday 17th March 2006

Gunkanjima Index Vol One, Abandoned Buildings

I know it may sound weird, but I have always had a fascination with abandoned buildings, in particular with ones built in the last few decades. There’s something about seeing a gigantic modern structure – a shopping centre, a hotel, an apartment complex – which no doubt had thousands go through them every day, just sit there idle slowly falling into disrepair and nature taking back. I see abandoned buildings in the same way marine archaeoligists may see a sunken vessel: like a window to another time that you can experience. Fascinating stuff.

Anyway I was doing some research into the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong for Episode 70 of the Rubenerd Show and came across this mysterious site: all it has is the word “Colors” (American spelling), the phrase “Gunkanjima Index Vol One”, and stacks of thumbnails.

Check it out if you’re into this sort of thing, it’s pretty fascinating:
http://www.jp-hit.com/picture/image2/gunkanjima_reprise01.html

Dedicated to my groovy late mum Debra Schade.