I know these two quick observations are oversimplifications of broader, more complex issues, but I’m going to observe anyway. Have you ever noticed oversimplification is a less simple word than simplification?
Thursday 04th February 2010
Sunday 20th December 2009
I’ve studied economics extensively in school, university and by myself but I haven’t really done any business studies; perhaps with these points on why current internet business still surprises me will show this! Some random observations:
Thursday 22nd October 2009
When you work for a publication you’re presented with a series of style guidelines you have to follow in your work, if I’m to believe what people in the bidness have told me. Senior members of Rubenerd Blog management (myself and my teddy bear) have been complaining about a series of style issues for our blog here, mostly to do with names.
Tuesday 20th October 2009
So I’d just woken up after a terrible night’s sleep and was making coffee when I tuned into The Whole Wheat Radios on my Mac, and within 20 minutes none other than Jim Kloss came online and started chatting on the mic on air with all of us! He talked about a discussion he’d had with Marian Call about Twitter recently, the music that was coming up (in his own classic and imitable style), along with the progress he was making with his nuclear wheat powered ioniser that can bend space time. Unfortunately so far he can only beam one person at a time with his voice activated command processor, but it’s a work in progress.
He also asked a few questions which come to think of it I didn’t answer in the collaboration page chat thingy. To answer them here, Elke and I are in Adelaide until November, and while not technically correct in German, when my dad’s family immigrated to Australia they started pronouncing our last name as "Shade" for English speakers, so es ist gut so :).
As for the image above, this was a photo I took of Jim Kloss himself mowing the perfect green lawns that adorn the surroundings of the Wheat Palace where the independent music Whole Wheat Radio headquarters are located. You can tell it’s not an extremely crappy Photoshop job because I actually did it in The Gimp. I’d be hilarious if I could write and deliver good jokes.
Wednesday 30th September 2009
Checking my Google Reader page this evening I noticed all of a sudden I have 18 readers for my main RSS feed here at Rubenerd.com, and 34 readers for the old URL bringing the total to 52! I do admit I started blogging because I enjoy writing about my weird and disparate interests first and foremost, but it’s another world of good feeling knowing a few of you are interested in some of it too.
<Cheesyness> So I just wanted to get all soppy for a second and send out a thank you and a hug to all of you for thinking my material here was worthwhile enough to warrant some of the time from your hectic electronic lives. Its a fulfilling feeling that has helped a socially awkward, introverted guy like me in ways you can’t imagine. </cheesyness>
I’ll try my best to minimise the number of typos and grammar mistakes :). I chose the above photo from my Flickr account because it looked all dramatic and the primary colour is similar to uncooked grilled cheese sandwiches.
Peace, health and happiness,
~ Ruben
Sunday 27th September 2009
Without home internet and the huge difficulties I’ve already eluded to with publishing blog posts from the university computer pools I didn’t think I could be bothered going through the rigmarole (sounds like a dip), but this warranted the effort. This entire post summarised in one line: the new MacBook Pro inverter I ordered arrived, and it fixed the dead screen problem! I have my travel companion back!
Thursday 10th September 2009
Had a ridiculously busy day today with a ton of things that went wrong. Two conference calls; five classes with hour long tests in two of them; I had to see my sister off at the airport by taking public transport which took an age in an of itself; I had to work on an assignment because I’m a schedule freak and don’t like getting behind on university work I’ve planned; three lots of homework which I had to sprint to the computer pools at the campus to print because our printer stopped working; I had to deal with another internet banking glitch and subsequent explanation to the landlord; our internet was throttled; and while having one of my usual headrushes I blacked out for a second and hit my head on a light switch, something which doesn’t sound like it would hurt much but it really did!
Then after breakfast… I kid. I tell you what though, while days like today aren’t exactly the most fun, I think it helps at times to remind ourselves that’s it better than the alternative. I’m comfortable saying this now because today is over of course, if someone had come up to me and relayed that sentiment to me earlier today I might have relayed a frozen grilled cheese sandwich at their head. That’s my new weapon of choice by the way.
On behalf of the entire writing team here which consists of me, I apologise for the lack of posts today. I’ve been on a roll publishing posts these last few months, so I can understand it’s difficult to miss out, especially if you use Google Reader for example and are used to seeing all my nonsense scattered through your unread posts every day.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to put another ice pack on my bruised forehead and call it a day. Which would be disingenuous to say the least given it’s 00:26 and therefore it’s very early morning and still dark.
Monday 07th September 2009
Oh come on, nine lessons? Now we’re just getting silly people. Welcome to your ninth grilled cheese sandwich observation lesson. As usual, feel free to take notes.
As far as I know this is not a grilled cheese sandwich, and quite frankly it concerns me that you think it is. Please seek counselling.
ASIDE: I have been advised by my solicitors to disclose that while this information has been deemed accurate by most gastronomes, it should not be taken as sound legal advice when attempting to identify grilled cheese sandwiches in criminal and civil cases, particularly if you are serving with a jury of your peers.
If you do attempt to use such advice in legal proceedings however, please cite Neal O’Carroll as the creator of this post and not me so that I may not be involved and have to deal with the associated paperwork and litigation. Thank you ever so much.
Previous lessons
Adelaide Now is reporting that millions of Australians have had their first drink by age 10, and that it’s the reason for alcohol abuse later in life. I don’t buy it.
One of the things I’ve had to relearn in Java after not touching it for a while in a university setting is not the concept of linked lists specifically, but how they’re implemented. Despite Java having native support for them in its API, we’re expected to create our own Linked List objects to use in our programs, presumably to demonstrate we understand the concept and so we could create a really long linked list of grilled cheese sandwiches.
