Rubenerd

With 2019 almost upon us, I thought it’d be an opportunity to reflect on one of the goals I had for 2018.

We hear so much about online search bubbles and echo chambers. When you only follow people on social networks who agree with you, or read news services that conform to your world view, you’re limiting your perspectives. Break through this, and open your mind.

I’m increasingly of the opinion this sentiment is another example of what’s good collectively isn’t good individually.

This year I followed a ton of news outlets, talking heads, and people with views I don’t share, in the hopes it would help inform me on what the other side thinks, and maybe even learn something. While it did achieve that, it also left me irritated, angry, and frustrated. I gritted my teeth and kept them around, hoping for a piece of insight or a fact that would have otherwise not been available to me. Nada.

It’s an unpopular view, but there really aren’t two sides to many issues; you either have the facts or you don’t. And the mental gymnastics on display by those from certain media outlets left me in a state of awe. If anything, I lost even more respect for them, as commentators and as people.

Like the foodies who say you didn’t go to the right place then, or you didn’t order it right when you’re disappointed with a supposedly fabulous dish, there will be those who claim I didn’t follow the right people. I’m as unconvinced as those who told me pretzels from those carts in New York are a tasty morsel.

So in 2019 I’m going to unfollow those people and outlets. Sorry Chris Kenny, Sean Hannity, and co. I gave you all a year to change my mind, but if that’s the best you had to show, I’m going to take care of my mental health now instead.

I had a text file in nvALT titled iOS Apps that hadn’t been edited since 2013. It contained two words: Cookie Dozer. Wait, what?

So I looked it up. It was a mobile game released in 2012 and according to the developers was the #1 app in Japan, the UK, Hong Kong, Macau, the Netherlands, Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, France, Belgium, Denmark, and Indonesia. I have no recollection of it whatsoever.

Here’s a screenshot from the App Store:

These were taken over the last couple of months around Sydney, for no particular reason. This is part one of three.

North Sydney, around the post office:

The overpass near Darling Harbour:

And dusk around Central Station:

I know, never read the comments. But this one left on the Fedora Magazine site was a work of art; name withheld:

Why publicize a command line calculator in a time when the computer should read the mind of people and execute the operation ( i’m exceeding, I know ). There are already, formidable and computational complex online tools that allow to do this, see wolfram. Or very complex software like matlab even if not free. What I perceive is that linux doesn’t have innovation to offer than a calculator and this is quite sad Cit “Is this (is) the end my only friend”

bc is a supremely useful command line calculator that’s great for quick one-liners, or for inclusion in scripts.

I’ve only written two other calculator posts here, one on xcalc in 2011, and on galculator in 2014.

I was looking up eBay for vintage computer keyboards, like a gentleman, and came across this beige Lucent 901928-01. It looks like a standard IBM 101-key keyboard, but there are a couple of interesting differences.

If you look at the photo above, you can see that awkward gap between the Alt and Ctrl keys are filled with longer Ctrl keys. So you don’t accidently hit them, they have the same depressed edge I’ve only ever seen on Caps Lock.

But most interesting of all, there’s an additional key on the top corner labelled Clr/Rfrsh. I’m assuming that’s for clearing the screen, or refreshing a view. I’ve never seen it before.

Thanks to azsurplusandmore for this delightful oddity.

Podcast: Play in new window · Download

30:06 – A Christmas special coming to you from a Sydney Boxing Day in the heat of summer! Topics include a winter trip in Germany and Ireland, yuletide family traditions, how others celebrate or don’t, the best holiday foods from the UK and Germany, music, and a somewhat minor personal inconvenience! Also retiring the Rubenerd Annexe, self-titled Blogging Experts, a shoutout to Radio Free Shambles and The Midnight Citizen, and best wishes for the season.

Recorded in Sydney, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

Released December 2018 on The Overnightscape Underground, an Internet talk radio channel focusing on a freeform monologue style, with diverse and fascinating hosts.

Subscribe with iTunes, Pocket Casts, Overcast or add this feed to your podcast client.

And speaking of old bookmarks, here’s one from 2012. You’re looking up towards the ceiling of the atrium in the Marriot Marquis in Atlanta. It reminds me a little of the Pan Pacific in Singapore, if it were far taller and somewhat more sinister in its brutalism.

Between this, the Delta Flight Museum, and dropping in to see Alton Brown live, I may need add Atlanta to the travel list next time we’re up there!

Thanks to MyStudentBody for the photo.

I found another cache of old bookmarks, some of which have aged in interesting ways. Take this article from the American ABC about spending money in virtual worlds, published in April 2010:

“The idea of spending money on virtual items seems strange at first,” said Castronova. “But when you think of it [money] is virtual too. I see a competition emerging from virtual life and real life. Virtual life will remain attractive. But I think real life will start to incorporate some of the things that virtual life is discovering about how to make people happy.”

This seemed so strange and cutting edge in the 2010 world of Second Life and Farmville. But mobile games now make billions.

I wrote this in my post about ed25519 public keys last month:

This doesn’t sound all that significant, until you see an example publuc key:

I’m not sure what a publuc key is. Let’s check out spellchecker.net for what it could be:

bloc: Of course it was the same copy that our friend had missed previously, the owner having sold his books en bloc in the meantime.

pabulum: They mean that the public is to be given up, not as a heathen land for conversion, but simply as a pabulum for experiment.

pluck: I never saw a crew, though so many of them are sick, more resolute or full of pluck.

I’m glad that’s now sorted.

I’m clearing out my bookmarks folder for the year. Here’s some randomness:

• I couldn’t stop looking at this beautiful artwork by Shi Yu on Pixiv, pictured above. They’ve got a ton of amazing landscapes.

• A Melbourne cafe was slammed with negative Google ratings when their name was used in a year 12 exam. Why didn’t the exam writers check this first? Seems utterly irresponsible.

• Nvidia classes any GPU older than the GeForce GTX 480 as legacy. You can use their Nvidia legacy drivers page to determine which FreeBSD X11 driver you need for an older tower.

• WireGuard purports to be faster, simpler, leaner, and more useful than IPSec or OpenVPN. It was originally written for Linux, but now also runs on FreeBSD and other OSs.

• This figure of Steins;Gate’s Makise Kurisu was re-released this year. In the words of a certain Apple executive, it took a tremendous courage not to purchase her!

• This GnuBee device looks like a great, low-cost NAS. This is their 2.5-inch model, but they also have a 3.5-inch version.

• Educating Archie is one of my all-time favourite old time radio programmes, and it’s on the Internet Archive!

• The Dell C3765dnf — gesundheit — has drivers for older macOS versions, but it still runs fine on Mojave.

• I use Ansible on FreeBSD, and now you can create jail hosts courtesy of Joerg Fiedler.