Rubénerd :)

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.

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With my chronic sleeping problems, I’ve decided to try cutting back on coffee and replace it with tea. Ritsu is SHOCKED! And Mugi is… hold on, I’m distracted again.

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I was puzzled when Neal O’Carroll insinuated in the comments for a recent post that he’d used the Buy Ruben a Coffee button on my blog sidebar. PayPal didn’t — and still hasn’t — emailed me any record of this taking place.

Anyway I would like to sheepishly admit with a deep crimson face that Neal did indeed hit that Buy Ruben a Coffee button, it just appeared in my PayPal account, and I wanted to thank him for keeping this weirdo caffeine-d up for another day. Thank you good sir :).

Starbucks have released a PDF of their opening hours during the Chinese New Year long weekend. Their branches at Liat Towers, Pacific Plaza, Plaza Singapura (with the exception of Tuesday), Raffles City, Northpoint and all the airport terminals are still open 24 hours. All the branches in the CBD around Raffles Place are completely closed.

No word at all on the Coffee Bean’s website whether they’re open or not. Killiney Kopitiam seems to be closed from the ones I’ve been to.

This has been a public service announcement from the Rubénerd.com Coffee Obsessors Association, Pte Ltd, Pty Ltd, GmBH, Sdn Bhd, LLLLLLLP.

I’ve been so busy catching up and doing fun stuff on my trip back to Singapore I haven’t blogged as much in the last few days, though given my overarching verbosity you probably all think that’s a good thing :). In this post I regale you not with a tale of software or technology but with a coffee machine brought back from the dead!

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Since coming back to Singapore I’ve been packing in a lot of errands, exploring and walking around so I haven’t been blogging so much obviously. You can’t leave this city for more than a few months without so much changing that you become completely disoriented!

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In the movie About a Boy (I didn’t ever read the book), Hugh Grant’s character had a system whereby he’d split up his day into half hour units. A haircut would be two units. Having lunch would be another unit. Throwing grilled cheese sandwiches at kids who walk up his door would be three units.

I’m fortunate that despite having mountains of stuff to do every day, I generally have at least a few units I can dedicate to doing frivolous things like watching anime, blogging about nonsense and taking walks around the park while listening to Miles Davis and Michael Franks.

I belabour all this nonsense (even more than usual) because for the first time in over two months I had some… concurrent units! I instantly set about redesigning my site again, I’ve never been pleased with my designs and this latest one solves many of the problems with the current one. I’ve also tweaked my latest software redesign so I can finally get off WordPress once and for all.

Knowing me, neither will get implemented. Fun to think about alternative possibilities though. And as for the coffee? I put it on it’s side to imply greater impact. How does a coffee on its side imply greater impact? I have no friggen idea, but it sounded good in my head.

Three nonsense posts in a row? That’s pushing it a bit isn’t it? Well to be fair if this were printed in paper this would be of greater concern given paper is a physical product that’s made from trees, whereas electrons are generated from trees which are decomposed, compressed and put into furnaces to drive turbines several million years later. See the difference?

Anyway logging into eBay this evening to do my daily check to make sure nobody was selling my soul in a jar or my image on a grilled cheese sandwich or an image of my soul in a jar on a grilled cheese sandwich, I was informed by the super intelligent eBay data mining service that the above list of products were tailored "just for [me]".

Now to be fair, the coffee machine is a reasonable guess, but what they didn’t take into account is I already have one and it barely gets used because I spend my life studying and doing work in coffee shops.

Quite frankly, I’m not going to comment on the other items. Then again Nurie did say I look androgynous enough to cosplay as a female character. I think it’s something to do with the hair. Good thing I’m getting it mostly cut off tomorrow.

To celebrate my 23rd birthday yesterday, my sister (who’s in Adelaide studying at the same university I am) and I braved Adelaide’s bafflingly confusing public transport system and went to Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills for some German beer and grub, and for a bit of a photographic expedition. Good times!

I’ve been making the mistake of taking far too many photos and not uploading any of them, so this afternoon I made the time to pick the best shots and upload them to a Flickr photo gallery, surprisingly named Birthday in Hahndorf!.

Hahndorf is a beautiful little German heritage town in the Adelaide Hills in Australia with many German souvenir shops, restaurants, delicatessens, pastry shops, art galleries and coffee shops. Wikipedia’s Hanhdorf article has a lot of information about it’s history.

The Google Map for Hahndorf gives you an idea where it is in relation to the Adelaide city area:

The German influences are really noticeable in the architecture and design of many of the buildings and streets. At this time of the year when the weather is getting cooler in a part of the hills where it’s usually cooler than the rest of Adelaide it starts to feel really authentic. The only hint you’re still in Australia are all the Holden cars parked along the side of the road!

Our favourite German restaurant and pub in Hahndorf is the Hahndorf Inn on Main Street; we’ve been coming here since we first visited Adelaide back in 2004 when we were trying to decide what city in Australia to study in (it’s good to have some recent history to recall in times like this in my birth country!)

The food is ridiculously good and reasonably priced, especially compared to German grub in Singapore which can cost over $100 for my sister, dad and I. They also have authentic German beer from Munich on tap which tastes great and is also reasonably priced.

Given it was my birthday I got the German mixed grill which had roast pork, sliced potatoes with herbs, klöße, sauerkraut and a selection of würstes and mustard. As I said, it was ridiculously tasty! Elke got her usual schnitzel, and of course we got plenty of authentic warm pretzels! We had some chocolate cake and coffee for desert after sitting and talking for an hour or so.

I’m regretting posting these photos now, they’re making my hungry again! Do you reckon they do home delivery to Mawson Lakes?

After a certain time on weeknights the buses back to Adelaide only leave every hour, so after a few hours of eating, taking photos and walking around we rushed to the main bus stop with just a few minutes to spare. I’d love to come back with my camera when in less of hurry, as I said Hahndorf is a beautiful place.

You can view the rest of the photos I took in my Birthday in Hahndorf Flickr photo gallery.

As for my birthday, I had a great time even if I spent all morning doing homework! I got some great presents and an amazing delivery as well, but those will be for another post. Thank you all for your birthday wishes on Twitter, Google Reader, Facebook and emails :). I was worried how down I’d be feeling considering it’s only my second one since mum moved on, but it would’ve been hard to feel bad with all you guys sending me messages all day. Thank you again!

UPDATE: This post was originally written yesterday on Sunday, but I hit the "Save Draft" button instead of "Publish". Looking back at it now, I wish it were still Sunday.

I’m sitting here at the Boatdeck Cafe this Sunday afternoon with just my iPhone and a stable wireless network. Sometimes I need to lug the glorified monitor and keyboard stuck together, but today just typing on this feels fine.

It is definitely starting to show that it’s Autumn here in Adelaide; after almost every day being as hot as Singapore when we came back here, this weekend has been in the low 20s and drizzling. To the astonishment of many a person in the real world and online I’ve readily admitted I prefer overcast days; there’s something about them that allows me to relax more. Perhaps it was the positive cool change overcast days have on tropical climates that made me think of them positively.

Mugachinos are good!

As for today, despite university now being back for a fortnight now I’ve still been having a nagging enrollment issue that I thought would have been fixed but clearly not, so I had intended this afternoon to work on that, but unwittingly I forgot the online enrollment system isn’t functional on Sundays! Or at least the part I’m trying to access. I still haven’t even got a new student card yet!

So to be productive I’ve been watching some more Code Geass and going to the Boardeck Cafe! I figure my life is so dreadfully confusing and filled with anxiousness and dread that a Sunday where I only have a few responsibilities is, for an Atheist wanting a better word, a godsend! Plus it’s overcast, good times!

I’ve also finally recorded a Rubenerd Show again, the first since coming back to Adelaide. I had forgotten that I was supposed to be keeping shows under 10MiB so people on iPhones and iPod Touches (the phrase "iPod Touches" just doesn’t sound right, if you know what I mean) can download them on mobile phone networks, so I rambled on just as I’m doing here without any thought to the time until it was just time. The result was I had four things I wanted to discuss and I ended up discussing one thing, then getting sidetracked and talked about something else! Good times.

Well that’s my Sunday! Now if you’d excuse me, I’m going to turn to the Stanza iPhone app and continue reading The Counte of Monte Cristo [Wikipedia] while I finish my Mugaccino. Sundays are fun.