Rubenerd

Given John Walkenbach is an Excel guru, on a whim this afternoon I wondered what better way to pay tribute to his ended J-Walk Blog than by creating some graphs!

We begin, above, with the number of posts we've both written containing the name of the world's most awesomely titled location, your favourite place and mine, Saskatchewan. For this graph, I determined the number of posts containing said locale, then divided it by the total number of posts we've written. Judging from this, we can deduce John was at least three times more interested in ice hockey than I was, and three times more likely to have a live moose roaming in his pantry.

Here's a chart comparing the number of years the J-Walk Blog was active compared to Rubenerd.com. For interest's sake, I also included the late Whole Wheat Radio which was an influence on both of us, and that we both blogged frequently about during its heyday. John even met the site's proprietor, something I hope to do at some point as well.

According to this, I have two years to match WWR, and three for J-Walk. Wonder if I'll be able to overcome this apparent 8 to 9 year itch.

You think I blog too much? I'm a rank amateur compared to the blogging machine that was J-Walk, and who continues to be on Google+. Granted many of my posts tend to be longer than his, but given he'd only been blogging a few years longer than me, that's pretty friggen amazing.

Check out the specific number of posts too. Aside from the 3 in the middle, the numbers are the same. That's just freaky.

And now we end on something that Google proposes but I still simply can't believe! Despite his order of magnitute more entries than yours truly, and despite both sharing a passion for this most perfect of constables, both in relative and absolute terms I've mentioned them more often than he has.

DISCLAIMER: These charts were generated in LibreOffice, not Excel. Sorry John!

So Gaddafi, the brutal dictator of Libya has been captured and/or has died, depending on which news you read. Of course, Western political leaders didn't care about the plight of his country's people for decades until Chinese oil companies threatened Western hegemony there. Suddenly, we had to start another war (that was only supposed to take days), take him out, and put boots on the ground.

An awful person is gone now, but I'm in no mood to be jovial. The lesson here isn't that the West will come to the aid of oppressed people, it's that we'll protect our own interests under the guise of humanitarianism, and without due process. It's disgusting. Hey, at least other Twitter folks can celebrate and pretend they helped with their retweets, hashtags, green avatars and Gaddafi jokes.

An uncharacteristically serious post here, but there you have it.

Aiyo, why so long lor?

I do like their (albeit temporary) themed logo though. Can see the Merlion, the Singapore Flyer, Marina Bay Sands and the Raffles Place building things. Is my homesickness showing through yet?

This post on the Australian government's plan to "streamline" piracy controls" would seem far more authoritative if I picked appropriate images to accompany it.

(Unnecessarily pointless photo of a 1979 car phone by Ben Franske. Get it? Media cartel? Media Car… tel? Media car… telephone? I thought that was funny).

Govt proposes "streamlined" piracy controls

Always on top of such matters, Renai LeMay has reported something that should send chills down every Australian who access the interwebs. You'll want to be sitting down for this, or at least resting on one of those arse cushions they mount on the side of the refurbished Tangaras. Mmm, squishy.

The Federal Government has proposed to modify federal regulations to make it easier for anti-piracy organisations to request details of alleged Internet pirates from ISPs, in a modified process which would make it easier for organisations such as Movie Rights Group and AFACT to pursue individuals allegedly illegally downloading content online.

There are three key parts to this.

The three key parts

I already said that.

It's been said a million times already, but imagine for a second that these media cartels (calling a spade a spade) spent as much time and effort on making it easier for consumers to legally purchase their content. As it stands now, while some people are cheapskates and would never pay for content, I'd argue most people "pirate" content for convenience and due to a lack of access.

Secondly, I'm pretty sure most so-called pirates don't look like that. If they did, they'd be raking in far too much money from cosplay competitions to perform such things. Most likely, they'd be getting other people to do it for them on their behalf, once they realise the DVD they legally purchased can't be played in the media player they legally purchased because of some draconian digital restrictions management.

Thirdly, I'm not a lawyer so I can't comment specifically on whether such moves are unconstitutional, but I find it incredibly offensive that being accused ("allegedly") of a crime is enough to to involve judges and the law. The Stasi of East Germany and The Party of 1984 are calling, they want their methods back.

Icelandic web hosting looks pretty sweet now

Of course, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Mmm, ice kachang. That reminds me, I'm hungry.

With the the draconian ACTA being taken seriously in several countries including Australia and Singapore (so much for my backup living plan!), we can only expect more of this nonsense in the future. A sobering thought, huh?

Along with Whole Wheat Radio last year, another part of my teenage years finally ended last week with the closing of the The J-Walk Blog.

That’s a big zebra

From his last post, dated Friday the 14th of October:

After nine years, the J-Walk Blog has closed and will no longer be updated. However, the site will remain online (at least) through November, 2012.

Thanks for all of your support over the years. I’ll see you on G+ and The Spreadsheet Page.

I'll be honest, I'm not too sure about his decision to move over to the Google+ silo. Despite his optimistic feedback to people questioning the longevity of the service in his blog comments, we have no idea how long Google+ will last. Unlike his old site, we'll also need to be logged into our Google overlords to leave comments, which will be a pain. Still, as he said, Google+ is easier than blogging, so here's hoping the lower barrier to entry will facilitate further posts from him, albeit in a different form.

John appealed to us to not "get all sentimental and mushy", so instead I'll just wish him the best in his next endeavour, and thank him for all the years of entertaining and thought provoking entries on The J-Walk Blog, some of which inspired my own.

As stated on his sidebar: The Web has thousands of halfway-decent blogs. This is [no longer] one of them, from Tucson, AZ.

Clearly we underestimated just how much more concurrent traffic this new MikroTik router would facilitate! Insert commentary about how Australian internet sucks here.

Fortunately, I was at uni from early in the morning to just recently, so it didn't impact me too much. Tuesdays are more of a drain than… drains. Well, that's was inspired!

Admittedly my cooking is acceptable, though not fantastic. That said, I do love baking bread, and @hanezawakirika shared a recipe for a so-called Soft Sweet Pretzels that looks like something I'll have to try!

Top egg-washed pretzels with coarse sanding sugar before baking, or ice cooled pretzels with fondant icing.

Their sourdough also looks amazing.

I'm just ashamed that as someone with a German father, I'd never heard of sweet pretzels before! Das ist sehr nicht gut!

I was going to save this for tomorrow, but a series of tweets from the illustrious @talkingduck (private account) led me to finish this off and post it today. If you thought I was unfairly ragging on Victoria today, take a gander at this!

The political compass said I was a Liberal Libertarian

In what other field of work do you get benefits and perks even after you leave the organisation?

The news spreading around The Twitters this morning was that former New South Wales state premier Kristina Keneally had her post-leadership travel entitlements revoked by current premier Barry O'Farrell. These include the use of state cars (heaven forfend they take public transport like the rest of us!) and access to the series of catapults on the border that keeps those pesky Victorians from fining us. Presumably.

On the surface, I didn't have a problem with this. My "liberal" side (in the American sense) understands some government spending is necessary to compensate for market failures (economic terminology meaning services the private sector can't or won't provide), but my "libertarian" side loathes government spending that doesn't provide anything useful. Like… state government in a country with less people than many cities! Like this one:

Yes, I was able to work in another press image for the upcoming Guilty Crown anime I blogged about earlier today, in an post that has nothing to do with it whatsoever. Not only that, I did it while enduring an (albeit gradually improving) headache. Is that skill, or what!? Don't answer that.

But I digress

Shortly after posting my frustrations on Twitter, @joshgnosis pointed out to me part of the reason people are up in arms is that O'Farrell only penalised Keneally, not anyone else. While I agree this is dodgy, my point is why should anyone voted out of office still be entitled to our funds to use as they see fit?

What I found particularly egregious is the justification that state cars are used to ferry former politicians to charity events. While this may true, imagine if theses politicians donated the funds to maintain this fleet of state cars, and drove there themselves or took a taxi? The rest of us don't take what are essentially taxpayer funded limousines to such events, why should they?

I should contact the companies I worked for back in home and ask them when I can be expecting my return tickets to Singapore! I mean, I don't work for them anymore, but I'm entitled to them, right?

(Random photo of Sydney taken by… me! View on Flickr)

I'm waiting for confirmation before believing it given The Herald Sun and The Australian are reporting it, but apparently insulting the Victorian Gaming Minister Michael O'Brien will now land you a fine of roughly $12,000. I'm safe given I'm in New South Wales, right?

Interestingly enough, if you do a Google search for $12000 fine O'Brien, you get to this Wikipedia article that states that: "during his imprisonment at Crow Hill, O'Brien's mother died and left him $12,000." I'm not sure if this is related.