Rubenerd

I like to keep a pretty tight ship as far as software goes. It’s why I only begrugingly use Microsoft and Adobe software with their rheems of supporting tools, updaters and other cruft clogging my Applications folder and menubar and other unmentionable places. What?

So I was in for quite the surprise when I found a GoToMeeting folder alongside the application:

$ ls -ld /Applications/GoToMeeting*
==> [..] Sep 19 15:42 /Applications/GoToMeeting/
==> [..] Sep  5 15:35 /Applications/GoToMeeting.app/

Why does it need another folder? Not to get all Malcolm Gladwell on you, but turns out the tool is keeping multiple copies of itself:

$ ls -lt /Applications/GoToMeeting
==> [..] Sep 19 15:42 GoToMeeting (5573).app/
==> [..] Sep  5 15:35 GoToMeeting (5530).app/
==> [..] Aug 31 13:53 GoToMeeting (5506).app/
==> [..] Aug 18 13:54 GoToMeeting (4962).app/
==> [..] Aug 11 13:38 GoToMeeting (5387).app/
==> [..] Jul  4 12:49 GoToMeeting (5174).app/

I asked around the office, and some poor saps had more than twenty entries in here, some of them dating back almost a year.

According to [Citrix’s knowledge base]:

In order to join a meeting, you must have the same version of GoToMeeting installed as the Organizer (host). We recommend enabling auto-updates to ensure that you are always running a compatible version of GoToMeeting.

I didn’t enable auto-updates, though I assume its the default now. I just click the link whenever people invite me to the meeting.

GoToMeeting will download the most-recently-released versions automatically, so you don’t have to wait to install a new version when you join a meeting. [..] Versions older than 90 days will be removed automatically

That doesn’t seem to jive with experiences elsewhere in the office, but 4th of July does fall within 90 days for me. Mystery mostly solved.

You know it’s big news when even the Murdoch press has to report on it.

Whistleblower public servants have told News Corp they had been told by December there will no longer be any face-to-face Medicare services and they had been banned from telling patients their Medicare claims will be sent off-site for processing.

Transparency!

Patients undergoing expensive medical treatments could be left out of pocket for weeks after the documents revealed the federal government has outsourced processing to new centres and closed Medicare shopfronts.

Weeks? For what’s supposed to be universal healthcare? Do these people appreciate just how expensive and terrifying medical treatments can be? If I ask enough rhetorical questions, do I get a prize? Did that question and this one count?

Human Services Minister Alan Tudge said [..] ‘This is a continuation of Labor’s Mediscare campaign … and frankly they should be ashamed of themselves and they should stop it.’

Introspection is seemingly not a strength of his.

At a meta level, 75% (9 of the 12 paragraphs) of the AAP report were dedicated to quoting the government and their defence of Medibank changes. I believe their colleagues in the United States refer to this as Fair and Balanced.

I’m one of those weird people who still syncs his phone with iTunes. In fact I remember when doing so was one of the primary motivations for getting an iPhone; third party sync software on Mac was pretty awful once Palm Desktop stopped being maintained.

Weirdly, after plugging in my iPhone and attempting a sync, the column for Apps on the left was completely blank. There were plenty of guides online for fixing the preview column on the right (change the background on the phone), but it seemed my.

The key to remember is the apps list shows what’s available, not what’s on the phone. So to get this app list back, you need to download your previous purchases. In iTunes 12.5.1.21 (current at the time of writing):

1. Go to the Account menu and choose Purchased
2. Click Apps in the top-right corner
3. Click the “All” pseudo-tab, instead of “Not in my Library”
4. Click Download in the bottom-right

This will start all your apps downloading into the standard iTunes “Mobile Applications” folder, and you’ll start to see them in the Apps column for the phone.

Almost. Frustratingly, if iTunes encounters an app that can’t be downloaded onto the local machine (like Find My Phone and Apple Podcasts), it will throw up an error message and stop like so many lightweights. The only way I could find around this was to right-click the offending app and choose “Hide”.

Clear as mud!

Last year I excitedly blogged about the latest fig rendition of Gurren Lagann heroine Yoko Littner. As I said at the time:

What sold her for me were her preserved trademark chopsticks and hair clip, along with her confident, yet subtly bemused expression at being dressed in such a ridiculous outfit. Yes, I preordered her, shaddup!

She arrived in the post last month, and she hasn’t left her box. Unfortunately, since ordering her I’ve been on a decluttering/minimalism binge, and the shelves I was expecting to put her on have been emptied and thrown away. With the prospect of moving into an even smaller apartment in the not too distant future, it’s pretty obvious I don’t have space for her.

So I’ve decided to sell her. If you’re in Australia or New Zealand and are interested, check out my listing on MFC:

Australians: Selling mine (sale #111411), unopened in AmiAmi box. Would love to keep, but run out of space in this tiny apartment :’( #AustralianHousingMarket

AU$260 with free shipping in Aus, but also willing to negotiate. Please let Yoko pierce the heavens once more.

It sucks especially given her face is even warmer than the original press photos. Thanks Celestial Lightning Maid for bestowing the world with that epic name and image.

I’ve installed Dave Winer’s 1999.io blogging software, at the uninspired location of:

https://1999.rubenerd.com/

Right now I’m using it as an annexe, to replace Tumblr.

My primary blog will remain generated with Hugo, because its literally the only static blog engine that can chew though more than 5000 posts without breaking a sweat.

UPDATE, 2018: I’ve taken it down, and merged its posts back into the main site here.

If you want some really wonderful, hard science fiction written by real scientists, you have about seven days left to grab the latest Humble Book Bundle. I was already a fan of Stephen Webb, but there are dozens of authors with topics ranging from space exploration to medical science and engineering.

This is also basically an advertisement like yesterday’s post, but I think this is all wonderful stuff, and for good causes. Make sure to spruik US$15 so you get the entire collection.

The registration process threw me a bit though. If you purchase the bundle, then decide you want an account with your purchase, follow these steps:

1. Buy the bundle with the email address you want your account created under. This doesn’t need to be the same address as your PayPal account, if you use that for payment.

2. Click Login/Sign Up on the home page, and create a new account with the same email you used in #1.

3. A page will appear asking you to verify. It also told me my “email address is not valid”, but it delivered it anyway.

4. Copy and paste the activation link sent to your email, and log in.

5. Click the Purchases tab, then the Claim dropdown link to claim the bundle.

Yes, it’s basically an advertisement. And yes, it’s horrifying that anyone in this day and age would resort to using 2 digits to represent the year. Damn it though, I’ll take what I can get!

September 20th is IT Professionals Day. Celebrating the unsung heroes who impact our lives every day, because IT is everywhere.

The Overnightscape Central is a fun weekly podcast hosted by the illustrious PQ Ribber. Hosts and listeners of The Overnightscape Underground participate in a topic each week, and you’re welcome to join.

59:23 – Frank Edward Nora!! Jimbo has the ONSUG Week in Review!! Rubenerd is Warmer!! PQ Ribber hosts this briefer-than-usual, but superb entry in this incomparable series of weekly collaboratoriums!!

You can view this episode on the Underground, listen to it here, and subscribe with this feed in your podcast client.

Podcast: Play in new window · Download

58:39 – Getting family podcast balance right; deciding what's breakfast food (English and German); broken neon signs (The Good Guys); Airbnb; Mercedes A Class; eschewing (gesundheit) new Western franchises for anime; memory/latex foam mattresses; Captain Snooze got a promotion; computer data rot; and an indulgently-rambling discussion on building a fault-tolerant personal archive out of MicroServers, FreeBSD and ZFS. Recorded mid-August 2016.

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

Released September 2016 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.

We’ve got a slew of new Apple goodies to play with, but I’m always most interested in iTunes. When will the former centre of the Apple media ecosystem get better? I defended iTunes for years on the basis that version 1.0 running on Mac OS 9 on my blueberry iMac DV was so much better than anything else, but there’s no doubt it’s long past its prime now.

No substantive changes this time that I can see, though their imitation of the Rubenerd blue and pale grey colour scheme and bold headings (heh) are a welcome change from the pencil thin lines and muted colours taken from iOS 7.

The confusingly named “New” tab which lead to Apple Music has also been changed to “Browse”. Somewhat of an improvement, but not ideal.

Above all though, I’m disappointed to see the adaptive album colours gone. Recent versions dynamically chose a colour palette based on the current album’s art, which made for some striking themes.

For reference, I reviewed iTunes 9 in 2010, and iTunes 7 almost a decade ago to the day! I also posted excitedly at the airport in Kuala Lumpur when I was able to log in and stream Whole Wheat Radio; seems like a whole other time ago.