Rubénerd Blog :)

Just came back this evening from our (brief) trip to KL, as evidenced from the view from our hotel window above! I lived here in 2007-08 so it was good to go to all my old haunts. Will be posting proper photos and whatnot later this week.

We’ve got Tuesday in Singapore (going to make the most of it), then 09:00 on Wednesday morning I’m back to Adelaide to face those "people" at that university. Can’t wait.

With that in mind they’re will probably be a further interruption to your regularly scheduled blog posts here. If you feel the urge to read more Ruben sanctioned nonsense, feel free to browse the archive or barring that visit any of the fine folks on the site sidebar. They’re far more interesting, succinct, eloquent and funny than me anyway.

Danke schön, see you on the other side ^_^.

While we did live in Singapore most of my life, we did spent a short stint in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for my dad’s bidness, and I remember all too well when I used to sit at the airport waiting for my sister while I drank coffee at the Délifrance. Julee on Twitter just sent me the photo above a few minutes ago, glad to see its just as I remember it :).

Read this post >

As I eluded in the previous post where I was talking about eBay nonsense, earlier this week I spent two days and one night back in Kuala Lumpur. Doing errands mostly, nothing too exciting.

One thing I was able to do in the spare time before we boarded the bus back was to go to The Ikano Power Centre in Damansara. Because my family lived here from 2006-07 my dad and I often went there to pick up IKEA furniture and we’d always grab a bite to eat at the Norwegian sandwich shop. They desperately need to open a franchise in Singapore, their salmon sandwiches are incredible and the outdoor atmosphere was great.

It’s funny the things we remember isn’t it? Going through my blog archives here for example I remember I talked a lot about internet and phone problems in Malaysia. Also funny that the design of this site hasn’t changed much at all since then either.

We moved back to Singapore in June 2007.

I’ve felt embarrassed for Microsoft when they introduced the Zune, Windows Vista, the Office Ribbon interface, Windows Genuine Advantage, MSN and Windows Live search, the near constant security threats, their latest announcement of a Windows 7 version that will only run 3 applications at a time… but this could very well be their crowning achievement.

As someone who grew up in Singapore, I was buckled over in fits of laugher when I saw this report from Microsoft’s Research division!

Cibai: An abstract interpretation-based static analyzer for modular analysis and verification of Java classes

We introduce Cibai a generic static analyzer based on abstract interpretation for the modular analysis and verification of Java classes. We present the abstract semantics and the underlying abstract domain, a combination of an aliasing analysis and octagons.

We discuss some implementation issues, and we compare Cibai with similar tools, showing how Cibai achieves a higher level of automation and precision while having comparable performances.

Clearly they don’t have any Hokkien creole speakers in their ranks! Then again to be fair, I’m sure plenty of Microsoft employees in their research division would like nothing more than to do more cibai research ;) A cibai [...] analyser? Cibai [...] tools?! :D

It’s official, S. Manikumar has won the by-election for the seat of Bukit Gantang for Anwar Ibrahim’s PKR (People’s Justice Party). From The Malaysian Insider:

SUNGAI PETANI, April 7 — First-timer S. Manikumar has ensured that Bukit Selambau is represented in the state executive council after a hard-fought but convincing 2,403-vote win over Barisan Nasional’s Datuk S. Ganesan.

The PKR candidate polled 12,632 votes to defeat the former Lunas assemblyman who managed 10,229.

This of course is a huge win for Anwar Ibrahim’s PKR party and a particularly embarrassing one for the embattled UMNO coalition which only just recently got a new leader in Datuk Seri Najib Razak who, I have to be frank, scares me a bit.

I barely lived in Malaysia for over a year, but I still like to keep informed with what’s going on. It’s proximity to and shared history with Singapore where I lived since the mid 1990s also means what goes on there has a rippling effect. Plus I want to know how it’s affecting my friends over there.

ASIDE: If you’re one of my regular readers outside South-East Asia and I’ve lost you with this post, I hope to write more about this and to do some more explaining sometime later this week.

In the meantime if you’re interested, Wikipedia’s articles on Anwar Ibrahim and to a lesser extent The PKR, UMNO and the Controversy section of the Bumiputra article give you a pretty good idea. To say Anwar has put up with and been the victim of political mudslinging is the understatement of the millennium.

Congratulations to S. Manikumar, The PKR and to Anwar Ibrahim. Merdeka!

Singapore photo by User:Majush on Wikipedia

This is yet another example of why growing up in multiple countries and cities stuffs you up as an adult. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have traded living in different places for anything in the world because it really opened my eyes and allowed me to expand my views of the world outside Australia, but it wasn’t all a free lunch. Like having prata and teh tarik at 3am. Where was I going with this?

Today’s example is the XML language attribute which the relative XHTML standards demand. I could just define the xml:lang and lang tags in the html element as "en" for English. The problem is English is so generic these days as to be next to useless. I use the original English spelling instead of American spelling for most words given I’m an Aussie, but I also use more than a few Singaporean colloquialisms. Aiyo. For this reason using "en-au" probably wouldn’t be completely accurate, but "en-sg" would be even less accurate. "en-gb" would reflect the spelling, but then there’s the problem that Google might index my page as one originating from the UK.

Do Austrians who have since moved to Switzerland or Germany have this problem? Or Germans who have since moved to Austria or Switzerland have this problem? Or do Schweizerdeutsch speakers who have since moved to Germany or Austria have this problem?

Perhaps I should just set my language to Klingon and be done with it.

The double net whammy and computer speed episode!

Locations in web form thingys, a huge power outage in Singapore, nostalgia comparing how we thought of computer speeds in the 80s, 90s and noughties, my vintage 200MHz Pentium MMX machine still running, the megahertz myth, building computers from Sim Lim Square, the Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64 and Commodore 1541 disk drive, 6502 chips in everything, TMnet "high speed" monopoly in Malaysia, getting paid to podcast, stalling internet connections driving me crazy!

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 33:38, 13.8MiB

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

Salamat datang ke Rubenerd Blog p1181!

Well here I am back in KL again typing away in at the Starbucks in KLCC. Don’t let my archival Flickr photo above fool you though, it’s been raining the whole time I’ve been here! In the tropics a light shower is a good thing though in my opinion, the clouds block some of the sunlight and make the temperature a bit cooler, especially in the evening after a day of rain.

I’ve met up with a friend of mine for some semi-official business regarding semi-official business and it went surprisingly well, we’ve hammered out some plans. With all the talk about email, then instant messaging, then blog comments, then micro blogging on services such as Twitter, it’s still so much simpler and faster organising things in person. I always cringe whenever my dad says that the internet is amazing because you could work literally anywhere on Earth now and do a job through it; while I’m sure it’s possible and I know lots of people who do work like that, I couldn’t imagine giving up on human to human contact for 100% of a business. It would be downright maddening!

I’m here with my sister and we’ll be back in Singapore late this week.

The always impartial, unbiased and reliable Channel News Asia is reporting some good news in Singapore-Malaysian relations specifically related to Johor Bahru

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has responded positively to a suggestion by Johor’s Chief Minister Abdul Ghani Othman to link up the urban rails of Singapore and Johor Bahru.

[Some of the] issues discussed between the Singapore and Malaysian foreign ministers is how to further integrate the economies of both countries and to enhance connectivity across the causeway.

Photo of JB taken from Wikipedia by PM Poon

Having lived both in Singapore and Malaysia since the mid 1990s I’m used to hearing a lot of big talk and not much progress on most matters of collaboration, which even just from an economic perspective is such a shame. With so much competition from other players in Asia for the industries and services that Singapore and Malaysia both provide, it seems now that collaboration should be a top priority.

ASIDE: For my readers who aren’t from around these parts, JB is the near universally used name and acronym for Johor Bahru which is the closest Malaysian city to Singapore, separated only by tiny Straits of Johor.

Wikipedia articles on: Johor Bahru, Malaysia, Singapore.

Take Australia and New Zealand as an example: They’re separated by a strait of water (albeit somewhat larger!) and have roughly similar populations to Malaysia and Singapore respectively, but the difference in the amount of trade is huge! Now granted their economies are at different levels of development and the makeup of their exports and imports are different, but it shows that countries with a shared heritage can benefit each other even when socially and politically they may differ in many ways.

Google Maps imagery of Singapore and surrounds. The white stripe superimposed over the Straits of Johor is the national border between Singapore and Malaysia which is part of the Asian mainland.

Like it or not, Singapore and Malaysia are neighbours, and the only way they’ll each succeed in the long term is if they cooperate. Some more decent connections between JB and Singapore would be a good start.

The Whole Wheat Renovators episode!

ACT ONE: Elke in Malaysia, different sized pond thingys, scared of copyright law, making more money from concerts than recordings!

ACT TWO: Answers to my philosophical Twitter question, why I’m confusing even myself!

ACT THREE: Reviewing songs from The Renovators album Rhythm & Blueprints including Rip Up the House, It’s Been Done, Blue Reggae, I Don’t Ski.

ACT FOUR: Audio from a Whole Wheat Radio Audio Magazine including an American NBC anchor in the 1970s, the I Could Be Wrong song, and why I also can’t stand Dr. Phil!

STRONG LANGUAGE WARNING!

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 39:45, 18.2MiB

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