Rubénerd!

I've always been fascinated by iron structures, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Cavenagh Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. How these complicated, heavy structures could have been conceived and constructed without computer aided design (or even electronic calculators!) boggles my mind. Honestly!

For those interested, I took a whole bunch of photos around the bridge last year, including what I hoped were some more unconventional ones.

It also goes without saying that all the best things/people were opened/born in/around March. Ahem.

I know this is rather beyond the scope of a weblog of nerdish interests, but this story really grabbed my attention over the last few days. It also gives me an excuse to an impromptu book review!

Artsy image of the Goldman Sachs headquarters by Quantumquark on Wikimedia Commons.

The story

For those of you who don't follow this kind of thing (and I don't blame you!), a former worker at the investment bank Goldman Sachs has publicly come out describing the firm with some... rather choice words.

From a Reuters report by Douwe Miedema and Lauren Tara LaCapra, which you can tell because the first word of the report is "Reuters":

(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs faced an unprecedented assault from one of its own on Wednesday after a banker published a withering resignation letter in the New York Times, calling the Wall Street titan a "toxic" place where managing directors referred to their own clients as "muppets."

Disgruntled staff talking bluntly about their previous place of employment is hardly new, but these comments from Greg Smith made me raise an eyebrow. If I were capable of raising a single eyebrow. I tried my best to teach myself as a kid, but I never could do it. Perhaps I should have spent that time studying finance. But I digress.

The book review

One of the first books I read when I procured a Kindle was "Money and Power". In the book, William D. Cohan outlined in painstaking detail the history of Goldman Sachs, paying particular attenton to the course of events that led to what the firm is today, how they bundled and marketed all their derivatives into "products", as well as opinions internally and externally about the firm. I find myself shaking my head in disbelief at times, but there was no doubt it was fascinating.

The recurring theme from the book was the idea senior management (the "partners" everyone strove to be) wanted to give the impression that the firm only succeeded when their clients did. There were some glaring examples of where this clearly wasn't true; such as their numerous conflicts of interest.

Still, the press release from Goldman Sachs in response to Greg's comments seemed to reinforce this sentiment. Good heavens, that was a long sentence.

"We disagree with the views expressed, which we don't think reflect the way we run our business. In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful. This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves."

Hmm, wait a minute!

This is where it gets interesting though. Read this report much further, and towards the end we get this comment from a banker at a competing institution:

"In my experience ... client success and firm success can peacefully coexist; in fact thrive," Harris Private Bank Chief Investment Officer Jack Ablin said in an open letter.

Note the wording. Mr Albin didn't say client and firm success "always coexist", or "needs to coexist", he said "can coexist". That suggests the capability to coexist, but whether or not that's what happens in the real world is another point entirely.

Perhaps I'm reading a little too far into a single word, but it sounds like political speak to me. You don't want to admit your firm is doing something, but on the other hand you don't want to deny it and later be called out for it.

In any case, Jack Albin doesn't work for Goldman Sachs, but I think he spoke an untold truth of the whole investment banking community with that comment. No doubt Goldman's PR department would be far too sharp to let such a comment slip ;).

Tristin Hopper writing for the Canadian National Post:

He felt that in Canada the risk of violent protest was simply too high,” said Ryan Ruppert, president of promotions company Spectre Live Corp., which had booked Mr. Cheney for an April 24 appearance at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

So you're brave enough to send thousands to their deaths and shoot animals in a reserve, but not to face your critics? You sir, are beneath contempt.

It's sure been a month of anniversaries and milestones, for better or worse. Here's one that I feel compelled (and able) to discuss in more detail, the last revenue passenger flights of the Singapore Airlines 747.

Photo by Terence Ong on Wikimedia Commons.

No more SIA 747s

From Asian Skies on Flight Global:

After nearly four decades of successful operations, Singapore Airlines is about to retire its last remaining Boeing 747s from passenger service. The Boeing 747 has been an icon of Singapore Airlines’ fleet since a pair Boeing 747-200s first landed at Paya Lebar Airport on the 3rd of September of 1973.

Since that date the Singaporean flag carrier has operated several variants of the Jumbo jet, adding its first Boeing 747-300 in May 1983 and later on the 747-400. Its first international Boeing 747-400 service, from Singapore to London, was flown on 31st May of 1989.

According to the site, the type's final scheduled flight will be from Singapore to Melborune and back on the 25th and 26th of March, and that cargo 747 operations will continue. In other worse, unless we're crew on a freighter, no more SIA 747 service for us!

Photo of Singapore in 1998 from here, of all places. It's sure changed a lot since! :O

Nostalgia time!

With the possible exception of Concorde, few airframes are as instantly recognisable to the general public as the Boeing 747. With its forward upper deck (FUD, to you non-IT people) and large wings, it was the first commercial widebody passenger jetliner, and became a household name. We started referring to things by comparing them to the size of a 747.

For my sister and I though, the Singapore Airlines 747 fleet will always hold a special place in our hearts and minds, as it were. Boarding our flight from Brisbane in the mid 1990s, it was the first part of Singapore we saw having been told our father's job was transferring us there.

Aside from transferring us away from Australia and forever changing our perceptions of life, the universe and everything (as well as firmly cementing my obsession with Asian culture, food, history, language, people and living!), at the time what we were most excited about were our seats. My father's company had shouted us business class tickets, which meant we got to sit "upstairs"! Compared to the gigantic cabin downstairs with its rows of cattle class seats and noise, the top section felt cozy. It was small, had few seats, and was tiny!

As my sister said:

That's one of the few flights I do remember... which is weird!

Ironically enough, with my father being transferred back to Australia recently and my sister and I being accepted into UTS, our last flight back from Singapore to Sydney on Singapore Airlines was on one of their brand new A380s, the very plane that most likely lead to the retirement of their 747s. Funny how the world works like that.

Anyway, another aspect of our childhoods flying away. Which reminds me, something else from our childhoods had a massive anniversary recently, I'll need to blog about that soon too!

Observing a minute's silence for those affected by the horrible Japanese Tsunami last year. And a second minute for Douglas Adams on what would be his birthday. From Stephen Fry, who could almost be speaking for the victims as much as Douglas:

Happy 60th Douglas Noel Adams. 11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001. As revered, admired, [..] needed & missed as ever #DouglasAdams60th

Graphic by ShingetsuXMangetsu.

The 29th of February! Such a monuments (though chronologically predictable and necessary) occasion warrants a post I have precious time to write, so instead of a well thought out, logical post I've decided just to ramble for a bit. That's so unlike me.

When did this happen last time

To get into the spirit of writing, I thought it best to check out what I was blogging about the last time it was the 29th of February. Given this happens every four years, I was able to ascertain I needed to look up the 29th of February 2008. No, I'm not a mathematical genius, I just used a calculator to deduct 4 from 2012.

What happened last time

Turns out, the post I wrote for the 29th of February 2008 was a rather unsalubrious rant regarding sites taking my blog posts and wrapping them in ads. No, I'm not talking about Google (haiyo!), I mean spam sites. Ironically, those that Google used to be infested with and are starting to slowly creep back.

Let's take a look! Step into the four year time machine!

At first spam bots harvested email addresses from search engine indexes of web pages, then when the concept of posting comment on blogs started reaching critical mass spam bots started pumping spam through those [..]

It seems to me though that blog spam in itself is evolving though. I used the word "though" twice in that sentence. When previously they mostly consisted of masses of links to get more Google juice, now they seem to be latching on web feeds that blog software exports and creating more and more junk blogs with this plagiarised information. Some of them try to pass themselves off as legitimate by creating faux introductions that go along the lines of "Hey I found this blog entry and it's really interesting, here's a summary!".

I even took a screenshot of Camino showing one of the spam sites in question.

29th of February 2012

So now we return to the future, or the present, or whatever this period of time is. Einstein's Law of Relativity would imply that in this current time we would see it as the present, but had we stayed in 2008 we would have seen the present as the future. Right?

This reminds me of that episode of Star Trek Voyager with the USS Relativity where the first officer is trying to explain to 7 the idea that time travel is plausible if one understands effects often precede causes, and that temporal paradoxes can cause headaches. Wait, that was Captain Janeway, never mind.

So-called "True Trekkies" aren't supposed to like Star Trek Voyager, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching it growing up. That could be read as me watching it while I was growing up, or that I was watching the show itself grow up. English is such a clumsy language, one need only be a programmer or know other languages to be aware of this. Hey, at least we don't have seven different tenses! Right?

What was the photo?

So we finally come to the photo from the very beginning of this post. As I did while looking for previous blog entries written on the 29th of February 2008, I ran my master Swiss Army Chainsaw Perl script to spit out photos on my SLR backup drive taken on that day. I didn't take many, but one was that view above from my bedroom balcony at the time. You can view the full photo here, if you really want to.

Suffice to say, set homesickness mode to full! It was such a shock to have a quiet, dark bedroom when I came back to Sydney, I can tell you that much!

Another photo I had for some reason was this "screenshot" of installing Nvidia binary blob drivers for my FreeBSD tower.

The End

The irony hasn't escaped me that I spent my 29th of February 2012 post taking about the 29th of February 2008. That's fine, on the 29th of February 2016 I'll talk about the 29th of February 2012. Better make notes about Raspberry Pi for that day. The system works!

From Channel NewsAsia, regarding Singapore's Foreign Affairs and Law Minister's current trip to the US:

SINGAPORE: Singapore and the US have reaffirmed their desire to enhance the existing strong legal cooperation between both countries.

Ah crap.

From the Australian @ABCNews:

Big four banks warned they may be downgraded by Fitch because of reliance on offshore funding

The Coalition and its sympathisers regularly take credit for the reforms instituted by Hawke and Keating, but what's really kept the coal-fired Australian juggernaut moving are mineral exports to booming markets, and a ready pool of cheap foreign credit. Banks could take money from depressed markets with low interest rates, then charge Australians local rates. Obviously, this disparity fuelled a gravy train like... a train powered by gravy. Mmm, gravy!

As for ratings agencies: well, I've voiced my opinion of them before, especially with regards to Ireland.

Compared to the horror that was yesterday, today was spent with good friends in one of my favourite places! I'll let the illustrious Sebastian (pictured above) take you through it in detail, but essentially we strolled around the wonderland that is IKEA, shared lunch, cracked jokes and generally had a great time. For someone still coming down from shattered nerves, it was wonderful... well, other than for the sudden floods of course!

Thank you to @Sebasu_tan and @hanezawakirika :)

So I was walking down our two lane street, when a large family car travelling in the opposite direction to me suddenly started careening towards the footpath. Next thing I heard was a loud crash as it hit the high curb a metre or two behind me, and the back of the car swung 90 degrees to hit a masonry fence, breaking off huge pieces. A chunk of plastic from the car and some small pieces of rock hit my leg, making a small tear in my pants.

The few of us on the footpath watched dumbfounded as the driver climbed out of the car without a scratch. We started talking about how if we'd been a few seconds slower, we would have been in a car fence sandwich. Would it have killed us?

It's cliche to say, but the next half an hour were a genuine blur. I don't even remember making my way to my regular coffee shop until I was almost there, and sat down to calm my nerves. The barista who served me asked if I'd seen a ghost! I guess... I almost did.

I really started to have doubts whether I was just dreaming when I noticed the man at the table next to mine was none other than the Mayor of Canterbury, our area of Sydney. Another weird occurance, the TV they have installed at the coffee shop was playing a hit music station (Channel V, or Max Brenner, or whatever), and I swear I watched the same music video play for more than half an hour.

But I digress. This all occured in the morning, by the mid afternoon crane operators were already at the scene repairing the electrical poles and clearing away rubble (photo above). The car was nowhere to be seen, though there was still plenty of debris littered across the footpath and down the road.

Coming back later this evening, I noticed the hubcap from the ill fated car was still next to the footpath. Creepy.

Needless to say, for much of the day I almost felt like a living ghost. I shouldn't be alive. Had I taken a shorter period of time to tie my shoelaces before bolting out the door, there's a good chance I (and the people walking in front of me) would have been splattered across the fence. I just... it felt so unreal walking away from an incident like that with only a torn pants leg to show for it. It could have been so much worse.

Not be overly melodramatic, but I suppose we all have our brushes with death at some point. Rather than feeling terrified that I came that close to being crushed, I should be feeling overjoyed and happy that nothing happened, and that I'm here to write this.

I don't care how cliché it sounds, this whole incident really made me stop and appreciate my life again. To quote Sting, how fragile we are.