Rubenerd

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24:21 – Join Ruben and Clara on the tarmac of the old Kai Tak Airport as they discuss their current trip to Hong Kong! Topics include the Kowloon Walled City, comparing Hong Kong to Singapore and New York, the view from Victoria Peak, monsoon rains, lemons, and other topics discussed in the first person. We ran out of time, so the next episode will be from Osaka. 唔該.

Recorded in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

Released July 2017 on The Overnightscape Underground, an Internet talk radio channel focusing on a freeform monologue style, with diverse and fascinating hosts.

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Most, if not all, of my best blog posts were written at cafés. I don’t know what it is about the atmosphere, the beverages, the calm music; but they have the effect of letting me write, code and think clearer than anywhere else. I’ve had days where I’ve smashed out a week’s worth of work in a day sitting at a Starbucks, or a Coffee Bean.

(I emphasise the need for it to be a chain, despite the coffee not being as good. Indie or hipster coffee shop proprietors will often, and arguably rightly, glare at you when you take out your laptop or tablet).

In this case today though, I’m at a Pacific Coffee with the best view of any cafe in the world. It’s on the top of Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island overlooking the entire city. It’s the same vantage point and architectural mix I’d see staring down at my SimCities of yore. It’s muggy and hot, but the rain let up just long enough to see as far as Mongkok in the distance, and the old Kai Tak runway.

Sorry Boat Deck Café in Adelaide, I may have a new favourite! Though arguably the chances to type and think here will be somewhat fewer.

On the same day Australia’s leadership questioned the laws of mathematics, we got the one-two punch announcement that Scott Ludlam was retiring from politics under section 44.

Before we go any further, you have to read about the first point above to believe it. From Chris Duckett and Asha McLean in ZDNet Australia:

“The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that,” he said on Friday. “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”

Halfwits. But I digress; Bridie Jabour wrote a great summary for The Guardian:

If he is not the only politician to properly understand metadata, cybersecurity and the internet, he is certainly the one who understands it best. He has fought, at times unsuccessfully, against the slow erosion of civil liberties through data retention laws and campaigned on the importance of net neutrality.

Ludlam thanked Abbott for sending him the “geeks and coders, network engineers and gamers who would never have voted Green in a million years, without the blundering and technologically illiterate assistance of your leadership team”.

You will be missed, Scott. Thanks for being that voice of reason, logic, and compassion. I hope this isn’t the last we hear from you.

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25:22 – Join Ruben as he harkens back to one of the first reboot episodes in 2015, when he was also wandering around an empty house that was once his home. Two years later, and he's moving out of the place he moved away from that earlier place to. This show description had several variants of the word “move” in it. Recorded 3rd of July 2017.

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

Released July 2017 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.

I got this alert when signing in:

We noticed that you are using a non-Citi certified browser. For the best Citi Online experience, it is recommended that you use a certified browser.

I was using the latest version of Safari, version 10.1.1. So I checked the linked page, emphasis added:

You are recommended to use supported and updated browsers to ensure that your internet banking is secure.

Solid advice. What versions are supported?

Safari 7.0
Safari 8.0

Most firms I’d give the benefit of the doubt, but poor showing for a company this size, folks!

I last mentioned Citibank in 2008, for some sneaky advertising.

I love seeing homelabs like this, but this especially is the most gorgeous home cable management I’ve seen.

Update 2019: The video no longer exists.

Remember VHS tapes? The labels from video rental stores imploring you to rewind after use, the read-write tabs to make sure you couldn’t overwrite them, making sure you had your timestamps listed on labels so you could squeeze another episode of Star Trek Voyager on one. Spoiler: Kes was the best character.

Were those of us in our late 20’s/early 30s the last generation to witness the glory of these terrible things?

I harboured grand ambitions of digitising our collection, but on the weekend the penny dropped that I hadn’t done this for a decade, so it was unlikely I ever would. So I picked a choice few, and decided to dispose of the rest.

But therein lies the rub. Few Sydney councils and recycling centres take tapes. I don’t know why, maybe they were Betamax or Laserdisc fans and find the idea of lowly VHS some sort of aberration. More likely, they’re just too old for people to worth mentioning now.

All I could find was The Hills Council in northern Sydney:

Council has a CD and DVD recycling program available for households in The Hills Shire. The CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes collected are rendered unreadable and recycled into new products. Please help us keep CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes out of landfill and take them to one of the collection point listed below.

They list the Hills Shire Council admin building, and a few libraries, none of which are easily-accessible by train that I can see. Darn.

If you know a VHS tape recycling mob in Sydney, throw me a tweet!

Here’s something I wrote eight years ago:

What I find interesting about all these articles about how netbooks and budget machines are making basic computing cheaper for the masses is that people continue to completely ignore the second hand computer market in their analysis.

I’d refer to this as a previous piece if I were a hipster blogger. I’d probably get paid more for doing this if I were.

Remember when netbooks were going to take over the world, and Apple were silly for not releasing one? Good thing they listened to those pundits! Regardless, I still see zero coverage about the second hand computer market in 2017. The latest articles are all saying the PC market is coming back to life, but these never – to my knowledge – discuss this veritable room elephant.

That tortured word play must surely qualify as being able to refer to this blog post as a piece.

Many – dare I say most – people don’t need a brand new machine each year. It wasn’t true back then, and it still isn’t. And for those on a budget, or have other priorities, a refurbished or second-hand machine would easily fulfill their requirements.

And yes, I count myself in that. One of my Microservers was bought from a colleague, and I got through various uni stints with eBay ThinkPads and a cheese-grater Mac Pro.

From the Pet Shop Boys 2009 album Yes:

I’m building a wall;
A fine wall.
Not so much to keep you out;
More to keep me in.

And from their 1990 album Behaviour:

You live within the headlines, so everyone can see;
How can you expect to be… taken… seriously?

This originally appeared on the Annexe, chronicling my adventures unsubscribing from email newsletters. The only acceptable outcome from clicking unsubscribe in an email footer is immediately being unsubscribed!

Email:

Updates to GitHub Terms of Service

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FAIL.

• Footer didn’t include “unsubscribe”, so email filter couldn’t catch
• Should not need to log in to unsubscribe
• Can’t unsubscribe from everything, so need to add to my delete filters