By Ruben(nerd) Schade, a UTS university student and IT guy in Sydney and Singapore. c.2004
Don't look now, but WordPress has assigned the ID for this post as #11011. That's a binary number we'd express as 27 in base "10", which ironically could also be expressed as a binary, but base "2" couldn't be. When I finally make the move to Octopress, that'll render everything as base 8, right?
I haven't done a pointless milestone in a long time, it felt good!
The previous entry was Rubenerd.com post #4300! Time for another of our beloved pointless milestones!
Those of you who have been reading Rubenerd.com for years... you may need to see a therapist. You may also remember for each pointless milestone I include information on an industrial cleaning device as something utterly pointless.
How did this start? A very handsome question, and I'll answer it. When I wrote the first pointless milestone, I wanted to include a relevent image, but when I typed the post number into Google Images and hit search, all I kept getting were photos of industrial cleaning devices. Since then, I've made it a habit to do this on purpose!
For post 4300, I uncovered the Tennant Green Machines ATLV 4300 All Terrain Litter Vacuum! From their product specifications:
Could this image improvement also apply to those who ride these devices? I could go for an image overhaul, I'm just saying!
This ride on cleaning machine has disc brakes?! This ride on cleaning machine is better than some cars! Clearly, this really happy guy agrees:
Happy post #4300 everyone! Time for celebrations!
For reasons that escape even me, starting with this post in 2009 whenever I reach a blog post milestone I write an entry about an industrial cleaning device. For blog post 3800, we have potentially the spiffyist device ever reviewed here!
I typed the number 3800 into Google, and I landed on a page about The Gottschild-System CBS 3800:
The CBS 3800 of the Gottschild-System is a combined trimming and cleaning machine for foil laminated 3D furniture components. The proven overhead trimming system for removing the entire overlapping PVC foil from MDF furniture components is perfectly complemented by a brushing unit. The four-head or eight-head rotating brush system removes the glue overspray from the back of the furniture front components. Combining the trimming and cleaning units allows for trimming and cleaning in a single process.
I have to say, while I arrived at the page completely by chance, I've really stumbled upon something amazing here. As my old man pointed out, it may be my German side asserting itself, but I've always been a sucker for precision engineering and beautiful industrial design (it's why I'm an Apple guy!). The photos they have of this machine are just amazing.
This is the general data from their site:
Computer science is where my heart is, but I have to say engineers get to play with some pretty amazing toys! They even have a YouTube video demonstrating its automated operation, it looks like something from a movie!
I was not paid for this post, though if they want to give me a factory tour and a ticket to Germany to get there, I'd be more than happy to disclose it here and accept such a gift ;).
I don't mean to startle you, but this is COLOSSAL NEWS. WordPress assigned this post the ID of 8888! This is an extra 8 than post 1888, and therefore even luckier!
For those unsure as to its significance, the number 8 is considered lucky in Chinese cultures given the number sounds like their word meaning "to generate wealth". Phone numbers and licence plates in Singapore and Malaysia with 8s regularly fetch tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and apartment blocks and floor numbers with 8s are considered safer and fetch premiums over other floors in the same complex.
I can only assume the 8th stations on the MRT are also lucky (Paya Lebar, Marsiling, Farrer Park and Dakota). I wonder if living near those is prosperous? Closest I ever lived to any of these was Farrer Park, but it was still a ways off. Newton was a cooler station anyway, it was bright orange.
That's clearly Paya Lebar, not Newton. What a dumbarse.
Oh yeah, number 8! I must admit until this post I was ignorant of the fact, but 8 is also a highly regarded number in Japan as well! From the Book of Knowledge:
Eight (八 hachi, ya) is also considered a lucky number in Japanese culture, but the reason is different from that in Chinese culture. Eight gives an idea of growing prosperous, because the letter (八) broadens gradually.
I assume by letter they mean kanji. Looking it up on Wiktionary yielded another nugget of fascinating knowledge:
八 is two bent lines that signal divide. Eight is the single-digit number that can be divided by two the greatest number of times.
So here we are at post ID number 8888. Granted this is far less impressive than 8888 actual posts, but nonetheless a reason to celebrate and to receive some luck. Right?
I reach my actual 8888th post in... 5105 posts from now. That's practically nothing, better start planning what I'm going to write about, assuming I'm still writing absolutely riveting, educational and entertaining posts like this when that number rolls around.
This latest Pointless Rubenerd Milestone post is so useless (and derivative) it should not be read by anyone. If you're just seeing this summary, leave it and move on. If you're subscribed in an aggregator and you can see the whole post, disregard it.
Now that's out of the way we can get down to bidness. Despite missing it by a few posts (this is actually post number 3669!) this post is a celebration of reaching the completely pointless mystical post number 3666, which not only contains the super evil number 666, but the first digit even represents how many sixes proceed it! It's akin to a recursive acronym, but with integers in lieu of Latin alphabetic letters.
You know what isn't a recursive acronym, AFAIK? Saskatchewan.
This is only the fifth time such a milestone has been reached on Rubenerd.com; I blogged about this pointlessness (is that a word?) with my:
And as I said on all of them, Elfen Lied scared the heck out of me.
Surprisingly, blogging about this pointlessness also serves to show some historicalness (is that a word?), like an even cruder Wayback Machine. With each celebration of this pointlessness (is that a word?) I take a screenshot as proof of what we're up to here, and coincidently my theme has always changed in the intervening posts.
In another coincidence, Mac OS X Snow Leopard reports file sizes in KB not KiB, and the screenshot for today's entry is 66KB (61KiB). If that isn't a syncronicity of some sort, then... it isn't.
According to the internal WordPress database, this entry has an ID of 8555, which you can verify by going to http://rubenerd.com/?p=8555.
I mentioned to my sister Elke hat 8555 sounded like a fake Singaporean television phone number. Get it? 555 because 555 is 555, and 8 because 8 is just so gosh darn lucky in Chinese cultures. Hey Moses Lim, better call Lucky Plaza tailor at 8555-UHYEAH!
Her response, from her Tumblr feed.
How did marking a post number milestone with an industrial cleaning product device become a tradition!? I blame this post, this post and this post.
My birthday post from earlier today was post 3400, so here for your reading entertainment is information on the Tennant 3400, a pretty spiffy vacuum cleaning device if I may say so myself.
It is a first-class machine, made by TENNANT N.V. at their factory in Uden of The Netherlands. It is distinguished by its extraordinary high quality, extremely modern design, and long service life.
You know, people sometimes say that about me.
The 3400 is the quit, dry vacuum cleaner setting new standards in filtration and sound level.
Ditto.
The 3400 is one of the most quiet vacuum cleaners in market place making it eminently suitable for use in noise-sensitive environments such as hospitals, schools hotels and offices, avoiding disruptions of working activities. With tree stage filtering system it is also the cleanest professional vacuum cleaner available, with filtration level of 99,99954%.Light and easy to transport, the 3400 is designed to give excellent handling qualities and high degree of comfort.
That's a pretty high filtration level, if I may say so myself. Wait, I've said "if I may say so myself" twice now, or three times including my use of it just then. If I may say so myself.
Sure thing! Here are its technical specifications:
SUCTION: 220 mbar
AIR FLOW: 180 m³/h
SOUND LEVEL: 58 Db(A)
CAPACITY: 8 L
CABLE LENGTH: 10m
CONNECTED LOAD: 230 V 50 Hz
POWER: 1100 W
WEIGHT: 5.5 kg
PRICE: € 278.50
And finally, here's some information on its manufacturer, TENNANT N.V.:
Claoxylon indicum is a dioecious flowering plant in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae. The specific epithet comes from the Latin Indicus (Indian), referring to the locality of collection of the type specimen, which was probably Java, part of the Dutch East Indies at that time
Who says I never post useful information here? Don't answer that.
I reached 2222 posts in October 2009 (2222 posts, and goodbye to GeoCities), and as I recall I spent much of that post imagining what my 3333rd post would be about. Fast forward to now, and I spent post 3333 reviewing Yumekui Merry #04, with no mention of 3333. Gosh darn it! Did you get me my Cheez Whiz boy? And so forth.
Wonder whether I'll remember 4444.
WordPress, for convoluted reasons, has assigned this post an ID of 8000! Click to see!
http://rubenerd.com/?p=8000 → http://rubenerd.com/wordpress-id-8000/
Of course, such a milestone is entirely meaningless as this is only the 3294th post, but I still thought it to be an occasion worthy of merriment, particularly given where I grew up! And it's not as if this is the first time I've celebrated such a pointless milestone! Anyway, happy WordPress ID 8000!
Despite the frequent occurance of a certain digit this evening (and this morning) in certain timekeeping circles with 11:11 11/1/11, today wasn't so big for me because I write my dates the Singaporean way. I grew up with it, the other way looks weird ;).
11:11AM on the 11th of November 2011 will be more exciting.
