Rubénerd!

Now I understand why people are so disillusioned with our politicians here, they don't have an online store... with puns!

Cup of Joe -- Start your day right with a fresh Cup of Joe, featuring the Vice President's bright smile. Made in the USA.

Now this is just too cool for words: a Starbucks branch in Singapore made from railway sleepers.

Reclaimed railroad sleepers from around South-East Asia have been used to line this wall. Where will it live next?

The store also uses LEDs for lighting, which are far nicer than those florescent tubes that buzz and make everyone look terrible.

Regular Rubénerd.com commenter and all around awesome person Nurie sent me a link to a fantastic Starbucks themed shirt on Nordstrom.com!

The iconic Starbucks logo is reimagined by designer and 2008 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner Alexander Wang on a soft knit tee. The exclusive style was designed to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the iconic coffee company.

The only catch: it's AU$91. I suppose its true what they say, Starbucks coffee is good, though a little overpriced ;). Still, a brilliant design, and I'd also feel less conspicuous if I spilled coffee on it in public.

After giving a talk at uni this evening, I took the train a couple of stops to Circular Quay and just wandered around for a while. Whipping out my cameraphone to take a picture of a very colourful paddlewheel boat thingy, I just felt the urge to keep taking grainy, awful photos! It was fun though :)

Wandering around

The Rocks area is really pretty at night, kinda like wandering around Marina Bay in Singapore at night only with way more music and a bit more chewing gum on the footpath ;).

Grabbing an evening snack

Yes, Starbucks. I happen to like them. If you don't, that's great, exercise your free will and let others do the same :). They even gave me a free cranberry and vanilla muffin, and it was super tasty!

Catching the train home

In the late evenings CityRail usually only operates trains every fifteen minutes or so to the places you want to go, but fortunately by sheer chance I stepped onto the platform almost as soon as the train was due. Surprisingly, it was on time too!

I really do miss Singapore a great deal and hope to return there, but this birth country of mine is slowly growing on me again :)

A few people shared this story on Google Reader, and a couple even mentioned my name! From Neatorama:

New research suggests that individuals who carry a so-called "high-consumption" variation [in two specific genes] appear to drink more coffee.

I'm not sure sure about genes personally; I started drinking coffee with my mum at a young age to keep awake during her early morning chemotherapy sessions. The oncology ward at Gleneagles in Singapore was always busy (a worrying sign) so we used to get the earliest appointments we could. When she moved on, I kept drinking the stuff.

Funnily enough, even the smell of decaffinated coffee boots my spririts and energy a little, leading me to believe there must be something else going on. A tasty placebo perhaps?

Read it on The J-Walk Blog from Reuters, so it must be true!

Coffee... Coffee Coffee!

From the report itself, which J-Walk also quoted, which means this post may qualify for some serious Inception:

Young American adults have increased the amount of coffee they drink daily in 2011, after feeling better about their finances following the global economic crisis, a survey showed on Saturday.

Funny, I would have thought drinking coffee to cram for more exams to get into the fewer available jobs would be endemic of further financial difficulties and job problems. Go figure!

For what its worth, I started drinking coffee when I was 14, so I could stay awake during my mum's super early chemo sessions. I used to drink six cups a day, but I'm down to two now and no longer get serious caffeine headaches if I miss out. Ironically, I feel I have more energy as a result.

That reminds me!

Having only just wrote an entry about coffee, I noticed in my PayPal inbox that Roel247 donated a cup of coffee to me a few days ago! I wanted to thank him personally here for being so friendly :).

For those who don't know, Roel was one of my most loyal supporters of the Rubenerd Show back in the day and is one of the most genuinely nice people I've ever had the plesure of conversing with. One of these days I'll go to The Netherlands and meet him, this much is sure :).

Nothing a refreshing can of JCAFE can't fix! Yumekui Merry #06: "Dream Encounter"

As if the writers realised that the last few episodes were a tad slower, this one started to drift into Bakemonogatari territory with the amount of complex dialogue explanations! By that I mean dialogue between characters explaining the situation with dreams, not explaining how dialogue itself works. Shaddup. Suffice to say, the lack of detail in the previous few episodes were sufficiently taken care of this round.

In the cliffhanger (is that supposed to have a hyphen?) last episode, Merry had been told by Engi (the dream daemon who uses Yui as her vessel) that she could never return to her world, and understandably she suddenly lost her fighting spirit. Hey, spirit, that's a pun. Yumeji with his manliness obsession rushed forward to deflect damage, which of course failed miserably but gave Merry the motivation to finish the job.

In another ode to Sailor Moon and their very spiffy "attacks" that take a while to summon (which would have left them vulnerable during that time, right!?), this time Merry generates a powerful [and very pretty purplish] aura that destroys the moon, the lifegiving force during the dream. I think that's what caused the daydream to fall apart so they could return to reality. Maybe. Kinda? Not sure.

It seemed so long ago since they'd entered that daydream that I'd forgotten they'd been grocery shopping and Merry still had the bags in her hand! Needless to say, when one enters the dream world, your clothes remain the same and the injuries you sustain in the dream world come with you to reality (ouch, what a twist! INCEPTION) BUT... you don't bring irrelevant objects with you into dreams that you happen to be holding. Like shopping bags. Considering what happens in these daydreams, its probably a good thing, they'd just get in the way.

Yes Merry, I'm poking fun at your plot holes ;D.

Of course things aren't that simple either, it turns out the dream daemon we thought Merry destroyed or sent whimpering back (aka Enri) is actually still "alive" (if that's the right word to use) and still using Yui as her human vessel... and that she may not be one of the bad guys after all. After said vessel Yui asks if Enri if she's okay, Yui's friend comes back who for some reason reminds me of Kafuka Fuura from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei. If she had blond hair. Just saying.

Anyway our struggling author and epic hat protagonists make their way home, and needless to say after being injured in a fight Yumeji struggles up into his room. Isana assumes they both look tired because they've been playing a lot of video games which Merry clearly hasn't got her fill of yet. They don't have video games in the dream world you see!

Yumeji collapses onto his bed, his injuries now too painful to bear. This time his dream returns him to that familiar weird cat world with the floating fish skeleton and Mr Phantom of The Opera, better known as John Doe. Instead of fighting though, some fanservicey nurses dressed as cats bandage up his wounds (of course!) and he's able to get John to explain some stuff.

Allegedly that Pharoah Heracles that he and Merry had been asked about before, wait Pharos Heracles, is a nightmare dream daemon who entices others to enter "reality". Heracles may also know some information about Merry. Screw Inception dream machines that Leonardo DiCaprio has to use to join people into a shared dream, John is the guy who allows/enables Yumeji to enter other people's daydreams. And so on.

At this point I must admit that... despite this episode attempting to be more dark and serious, this assertion made me laugh out loud! Sorry I can't bring myself to say LOL. Wait, I just did. LOL.

So get this: The upshot of dream daemons continuing to invade people's dreams... and its what the literary club is realising... is that teenagers in high school are losing motivation! They seem "listless" and "lethargic".

THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!

My sister and many of my friends, teenagers in high school, ME, we're lethargic and tired all the time because dream daemons are taking over our minds! It makes sense now! Anyway, not sure if that was a gentle jab at my generation by the writers or not, but I chuckled anyway ;)

Speaking of writers and artists laughing at my generation... I didn't intend for this to be a regular feature, but Midriff Fanservice Watch counted far fewer this episode, most likely because plot kept getting in the way. OH NOES! I've already seen at least one forum post by a certain type of fan who was upset about this. I guess its all about what you expect to get from a series.

That reminds me, I started watching Infinite Stratos recently too expecting a science fiction comedy, but its more of a implausible-clothing science fiction comedy harem. Oh well!

Anyway after we were left with that cliffhanger last episode, this time Yumeji finally wakes up and Merry is Teh Happeh ^___^. Will they continue to be a nightmare fighting duo? Having had his arse handed to him on a platter, will Yumeji continue trying to be macho, or will he be nervous about tackling people now? Will Isana have coffee with Chizuru again?

Of course, I've already seen the title of the next one suggests its the Obligatory Beach Episode. Here's hoping that whole idea of a "plot" can make it bearable :P. Haha, "bearable" that's a bit of a pun too. I'm full of it today.

This story could potentially be bigger than The Gap's ill fated new logo that looked like a blue version of PricewaterhouseCoopers or however you spell it. Waterhouse sounds like a company that fixes dodgy roofs.

Photo from the Starbucks weblog, under the "Available for Download" sidebar heading.

Disclaimer

First of all, to get it out of the way because I've heard it all before every time I mention Starbucks on Twitter, Gowalla and Foursquare.

Starbucks is a heartless megacorportaion, their coffee is terrible, and Ruben Schade is not only a stupid sucker and a pawn, he's also not politically correct saying he likes spending time there having caramel macchiatos. He's a poser and a fool, and spending just as much time at a local family run coffee shop in his neighbourhood does nothing to clear his super evil conscience. He should go to the Starbucks CEO and offer him sexual favours in exchange for his servitude, and just move to Seattle to pretend he's Frasier like all those other stupid people who think Starbucks is a relaxing, nice place to have a cup of coffee and get a little work done. They're all just so arrogant imposing themselves on others with their holier than thou attitude and their cups with paper sleeves. Why don't they just accept that different people like different things already?

Yeah yeah, whatever. Moving on.

This Is The New Sh*t

I don't listen to Marilyn Manson at all and think his music is terrible, but I have respect for him. Like Lady Gaga, or that guy who's always playing that weird guitar at Central.

I had no idea but the current Starbucks logo has been in use since 1992 when they had their IPO. I know this because I read their press release, and if information is in a press release, it must be true.

The updated logo isn't really new per sé, they've merely removed the phrase "Starbucks Coffee" from the name, expanded the mermaid woodcut and changed the colour to match the aforementioned name that was once there. From their weblog post Bringing the Siren to Life, second paragraph:

From the start, we wanted to recognize and honor the important equities of the iconic Starbucks logo. So we broke down the four main parts of the mark – color, shape, typeface and the Siren. After hundreds of explorations, we found the answer in simplicity. Removing the words from the mark, bringing in the green, and taking the Siren out of her ring. For forty years she’s represented coffee, and now she is the star.

So that's my problem, I'm trapped in a green ring that says "Ruben Schade"! Maybe if I took myself out of that ring and painted myself green I'd be more dynamic and synergistic. Yes, apparently synergistic is a word. *facepalm*

Thoughts

I'm of two minds about this. First, to paraphrase Einstein, I'm generally not a fan of change simply for the sake of change unless there's something meaningful derived from it. This updated logo doesn't really seem to do this, at least to me as a non-graphics designer. The typeface and stars and colour balance in the current logo are just brilliant.

Perhaps wrapping the logo in "Starbucks Coffee" was part of an elaborate, two decade long scheme to get us to associate their logo with those words, much like Nike had their name next to the swoosh for a while before removing it, or Apple Computer having their retro typeface "a" as part of the bitten part of the logo and pple proceeding it, then having no lettering at all.

Its the Illuminati, or something

Of course conspiracy theorists no doubt will claim the removal of the term Coffee from the Starbucks logo is akin to Kentucky Fried Chicken changing their name to KFC because their stock was so heavily genetically modified that they couldn't legally be called chickens any more. Oh you didn't hear about that? Yeah, its all true! Its not because its so fatty I always feel green afterwards, its for THAT reason I don't eat it!

You see, Starbucks doesn't sell coffee, they sell coffee flavoured floor sweepings, and all those pesky truth in advertising laws would have meant a drastic logo change anyway, so they may as well disguise their products true origins as well as save themselves the hassle of adding all those extra words to the logo which is already big enough. I mean, only a Venti cup could fit a real description in the logo rather than just Starbucks Coffee.

Con Clus Ions

I dunno, on the one hand I'm pleased they're retaining the main part of the logo, but call me a cranky old man who drinks terrible coffee or any other insult you care to throw at me, but I like the current one better. And to prove it, I'm having a drink from their branch in Wynyard now as I speak. Or type, or whatever this is. Near the station of the same name.

Hey, at least they're not pulling an Adelaide in Sydney :O.

I didn't know this: Wired has a How-To Wiki you can edit. One article proports to teach you how to prevent a hangover with these tips:

• Don't drink on an empty stomach
• Drink water between alcoholic drinks
• Know your limits
• Pre-Load with Vitamins and Antioxidants
• Put a B-complex vitamin, electrolyte and water on your pillow
• Take N-acetylcystine, NAC
• Read Rubénerd.com

I have an even more effective approach, and its far simpler than ingesting a bunch of terms I only know because I studied chemistry: drink coffee instead. Now if you'd excuse me, its been two hours since I've had a cuppa and I'm having withdrawals.

There was a discussion on Slashdot this morning about WiFi access at Starbucks in the States, so I added my own SG$0.02 about the free access here.

Probably not all that relevant to this discussion, but my SG$0.02.

All the Starbucks branches here in Singapore have free WiFi provided you register first, it's part of the government's Wireless@SG initiative, which I can forgive the corny 1990s name for because it Just Works. The irony is this free internet is faster and more reliable than the ADSL I was paying a small fortune for back in Australia!

There's a huge coffee shop culture here. It's really fascinating to see Starbucks (and Coffee Bean, and Killiney etc), even at 11pm they're absolutely packed with students studying on their MacBooks and business folk frantically typing away. I asked a few local friends why, and mostly it's because apartments here are so small an overpriced cup of coffee is a small price to pay for a comfy chair, relaxing music and a place to do some work on the Internets without your siblings making noise in your ear.