Rubenerd

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.

01:41:17 – Smidge Kurdlebaum!! Frank Edward Nora!! Rubenerd!! Jimbo with the ONSUG Week in Review!! Albums is the topic and will be, next week, as well. Make sure you listen and join in the hi-jinx!! PQ Ribber is your interlocutor!!

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

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32:02 – A quiet, late night by a power transformer pontificating on origins of light and energy, taming nature, work-life balance, “y’know”, quantum observation, robots running the world, Waking Up with Sam Harris, artificial and alien intelligence, and is human evolution really the peak? Recorded 07th June 2016.

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

Released June 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.

The character designs, graphics and scene detail in Overwatch look amazing, and its already spawned some serious cosplayers. But what exactly is it?

Overwatch is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game [..]

Ugh, nevermind.

I did a Myers Briggs test today (insert your derision here), and was surprised at how I’ve changed. As a teenager right through my 20s, I was overwhelmingly an INTJ “architect”, but according to this obviously reputable site, I’ve tipped over to being an ISFJ-T “defender” now.

The strengths and weaknesses page was shockingly accurate. Especially this section:

Overload Themselves – Their strong senses of duty and perfectionism combine with this aversion to emotional conflict to create a situation where it is far too easy for ISFJs to overload themselves – or to be overloaded by others – as they struggle silently to meet everyone’s expectations, especially their own.

The good news is:

Good Practical Skills – The best part is, ISFJs have the practical sense to actually do something with all this altruism. If mundane, routine tasks are what need to be done, ISFJs can see the beauty and harmony that they create, because they know that it helps them to care for their friends, family, and anyone else who needs it.

I think it overstates the case, but I do derive satisfaction and calm from cleaning and organising, especially in common areas.

For reference, my colleagues were either INTJ or INTP. For an IT company, that makes sense. Our only extrovert was in sales, where I’m sure such a trait does them (and us) good.

Apple has referred to their desktop platform as macOS in their iTunes Partner FAQ:

After a subscriber completes one year of paid service of your auto-renewable subscription, you automatically receive 85% of the subscription price, minus applicable taxes, on the subscriber’s subsequent renewals. Service level changes within a subscription group do not interrupt days of paid service.

The ability to earn 85% takes effect in June 2016 for subscription renewals occurring after that date. iOS, macOS, tvOS and watchOS apps are eligible.

The capitalisation kills me, but the name makes sense. “Mac OS X” was more descriptive than “OS X”. It leaves the door open for releases after 10. And it’s a subtle but fun homage to the classic Mac OS… well, after System 7.x.

I still say “homage” sounds like a French cheese.

While it will also stop people calling it “OS Ex”, my biggest concern is it’ll have people calling it “Mac OSSS”. I have to deal with enough of that with CentOS gaining an extra S. It’s an initialism, not an acronym!

It’ll also be another Rubenerd tag I have to track! I already apply mac-os-x and os-x inconsistently enough.

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.

02:56:05 – A superb collaboration-extravaganza!! Shambles Constant!! Doc Sleaze!! Smidge Kurdlebaum!! Chad Bowers!! Frank Edward Nora!! Rubenerd!! Jimbo does the ONSUG Week in Review!! PQ Ribber commentates and babbles!!

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

I’ve been a Firefox (ne Phoenix) and Camino user since the early 2000s. No browser before or since matched its flexibility, plugin library and community.

I wasn’t tempted by Chrome. Safari was always a solid backup, but was never my primary browser. Opera, Rockmelt and Flock were interesting, but never caught on.

Then I tried Vivaldi, and within a few minutes I knew I was using something special. Started by former Opera engineers, its a Chromium-based browser with a feature matrix that eerily aligns with everything I care about. Some of my favourite features:

• Sidebar tabs. How anyone can use tabs crammed into a horizontal line in 2016 baffles me.

• Dedicated search box option, so you’re not awkwardly typing search terms into a URL bar.

• Detailed progess bar showing the KBs downloaded and remaining for a page, ala Opera

• Docked sidebars for downloads, bookmarks and notes

• It has a status bar. Haleluyah.

• One-click image disabling in the aforementioned status bar, so one can use expensive and slow Australian mobile internet.

I’m impressed.

Over the last few years I’ve used the following as desktop password stores:

• Keypass, works fine but the binaries are clunky
• LastPass, works fine but is stored on US servers
• A homebrew solution in Perl and OpenSSL, yikes!
• Hashicorp’s Valult, worked fine but a bit of overkill for this

And then I tried 1Password, and have never looked back. It’s polished, easy to use, keeps my passwords local, and doesn’t rely on hacky scripts I wrote myself! I can’t recommend it highly enough, its right up there with Alfred, Itsycal and nvALT in my list of Mac essentials.

Which lead me to this latest software update:

1Password for Mac 6.3 is now available [..] We’ve added support for the Vivalidi, Brave and Opera Developer rowsers

YES!

I haven’t written a proper post about it yet (owing to work stress and sleep), but I’ve made the sudden jump to Vivaldi as my primary browser. All that was keeping me back was an official 1Password plugin, given I didn’t like the idea of disabling 1Passwords’ browser code signature verification to use it with it.

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30:13 – What happens when Ruben is too tired, busy and/or stressed to do a show? He does one on a routine work trip to OfficeWorks! Hilarity and deep, philosophical discussion also ensues (not a guarantee). Recorded on Thursday, 02nd of June.

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

Released June 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.

It’s a political trope as old as time:

1. Pull funding, or destroy something;
2. Reinstate or refund a small portion of it;
3. Claim political capital for being wonderful!

And I for one am tiring of it. As I am tired in general thesedays, not least due to the politicians claiming to represent us. At least I’m in a safe Labor seat now, the party that’s decent other than agreeing with the Coalition on brutalising refugees. Wow, that went dark fast. I need a kitten picture.

So we come to this report in Lifehacker Australia by Hayley Williams:

As part of promoting the Government’s $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda, Malcolm Turnbull has promised $15 million, if he is re-elected, will go towards the startup sector via his Incubator Support Program. This is a step up from the $8 million originally given, with an eye towards boosting the number of startup accelerators and incubators in Australia, especially those in regional areas.

A solid national broadband network would have done far more for those in regional areas than this empty, token gesture. Our media need to call out people when they do this.

I also hate when blog networks say I look stupid, but Hayley had the best summary.