Rubénerd!

The Ruben is a cranky geek episode! With special guest Elke Schade.

New iPods introduced

What Elke thinks of the new Nano, what I think of the Touch, Apple disabling Linux support, downloading cover art in iTunes.

Local Singapore news

World's largest water pumps being built in the Marina Barrage, what prevents people from being sucked in?

Facebook news

Microsoft buying a pointless chunk, profile gluttony, voting for the Aussie Greens, Elke's rant on registration woes, I use Twitter to pretend I update my profile, CSS customisation would mean death.

Ruben tries to make Mr Kloss proud

Why doesn't everyone use metric, what they teach you in school is pointless, why the whole Product Red scheme is no good, why can't Microsoft even create a spreadsheet app that multiplies properly, why are all men on television fat and stupid?

And the ratholes...

Lava lamp confusion, Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong armbands, eating grapes, failing MadPlayers and tossed salad and scrambled eggs.

Download MP3 to listen ↓ 54:46 minutes, 25.10MiB

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

Hello everyone, hope you're having a great Saturday afternoon!

So yesterday I was bored silly with my studies and work so for a bit of an extended lunch break I went two stops on the MRT to Marina Bay, a reclaimed patch of land across the bay from the Singapore CBD. There are grand plans for what's going to be built there, but for now it's just an eerie plot of grass dotted with a few trees which feels quite strange when the centre of the city is within eyeshot!

The tall, geometric building in the centre of the photo above was where my father used to work when we first moved to Singapore which seems an age ago. All the above buildings are in Raffles Place, the buildings below are to the left and are part of the Shenton Way-Tanjong Pagar financial district.

And on the other side of the MRT station one of the expressways appears. I can't quite put my finger on it, but somehow from this photo you can tell Singapore has a British colonial past:

That's definitely one thing I always notice when I return to Singapore after being... somewhere else, all the gardens and flowers along the roads are so well maintained. There's no doubt in my mind I'm a city slicker but I love gardens.

You can view all the photos on my Marina Bay Zooomr page.