Rubenerd

Power outages do crazy things to people.

Electrical #fail

So there I was in our local coffee shop in Earlwood late this afternoon typing away on a laptop device. It helps typing on a laptop, typing on a table with no electronic interpretation going on only garners you curious stares and a trip to a squishy place in a strait-jacket. But I digress.

Getting an SMS from my sister (or "text" as Australians seem to call them), I was informed our abode was suddenly far less habitable owing to a lack of electrical power. Looking around the shop and down the road I saw plenty of other places of residence and business had ample power with their glowing lights and whatnot, so I chalked the problem up to a fuse. That's what TrueCrypt uses.

As I paid the bill and proceeded home under a rapidly approaching night sky, it suddenly struck me just how dark it really was. Having walked a block from the coffee shop, the street lamps that should have been lighting up the top of my head and the footpath in front of me were mysteriously dark. The houses along the street were no brighter. In fact, the only source of light other than the occasional motorised vehicle headlight and our natural orbiting satellite was a traffic light which bathed the whole area in a green glow. It was eerier than this:

Ruben != funny

When I finally arrived home, I was greeted by absolute darkness. Those strands of battery powered IKEA LEDs were surprisingly adept at lighting entire rooms, but I was more concerned that our broadband modem/router, refrigerator and water heater couldn't be run off them… in order of importance of course.

Deciding we'd rather not spend our time sitting in absolute darkness, my sister and I packed up provisions which consisted of overcoats, scarves, laptops, laptop power supplies, laptop power supply extension cables and CityRail tickets. It didn't occur to us that the electric trains may not have been running either, though we were assured by a friendly chap on The Twitters that they operate on separate grids. A relief, no doubt.

Having sat here in UTS for a while now using their surprisingly zippy internet connection and charging our phones, it's probably time for us now to head off into the night to take the train home, and to see whether our street has had power restored. If it hasn't, the students in my early class tomorrow morning will be resting their eyes on a cranky, handsome individual. I'll also be there, and I won't be too pleased either.

The last documented power failure to affect the proprietor of Rubenerd.com was in Singapore in 2008.

Not even a power failure could stop me from publishing this next Gurren Lagann summary post!

Empathy: While we can understand Yoko's disappointment at Simon tagging along with Kamina and her frustration at his lack of combat readiness, it still made me feel personally insulted when she talked behind his back like that! If I were in their situation, I'm clearly a Simon not a Kamina! Still, its a sign of how strongly cast the characters are here that I'm empathising with them so strongly already!

Physics: We get a glimpse into just how technologically advanced these enemies of theirs are that their machines can literally be merged together in a destructive drilling fashion (stop thinking like that), and they end up becoming stronger.

Innuendo: Did Kamina just say… merging? George Takei Voice: Oh my!

Enemies: So originally these enemies all looked like Chewbacca (in related news, Trek > Wars, just saying), but the elite guy Kamina and Simon battled with in the hunting grounds was creepishly human. He's a blond guy too, so he must be evil ;).

Facial expressions: Can you forgive me for being so mean behind your back if I pull a cute facial expression? Simon blushed, but I can tell you right now that wouldn't work on me. Which is to say, it most likely would.

Explanations: Their source food and weapons that I questioned in the previous episode's notes were explained. It also struck me just how successfully they've suspended my disbelief that these gigantic machines that look like faces can be piloted and merged, and that the characters came from underground, but I had a qualm with supply lines ;).

Heart tugging: I don't know whether its the characters, or the situation they find themselves in, or the pacing, or the story, or all of the above, but at the end as Kamina says goodbye and they leave for their quest, I choked up again. Gainax, what have you done with my brain!?

Bonds: I don't care for your reasons Yoko, you can't break us up. He and I are a team that believe in each other, and that's why we work! Awww :').

Conclusion: This anime wastes no time. These characters only just met each other, two of them have only been on the surface for a tiny fraction of their lives, and already they've banded together and are going on a quest reminiscent of Tolkein (that's okay to say, isn't it?).

Suffice to say, I see why the critics loved this, with the exception of that silly writer for the Sydney Morning Herald who probably waves those darn kids off his lawn with a broom. That reminds me, I need to scan and discuss his qualms at some point too. Where does the time go?

Goodbye HP, Sorry you don’t want to be in PCs anymore..But we do more than ever. How would you say goodbye to HP? ~ Michael Dell

The same way you were ready to say goodbye to Apple? That company that has enough cash to buy yours now? Don't get too comfortable Mr Dell.

TT: “Don’t rock the boat” TCB: “We need to row together.” TJS: “Row the other way!” TKL: “We need another boat.” #sgpresident ~ @danielgoh, via @mrbrown

From its days as a British colony, Singapore inherited the so-called Westminster model of government. The President of Singapore, much like the Governors General of Australia and Canada, is a figurehead with theoretical powers rarely used, and a nice house often used. Naturally, lots want the job.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

A3 from Central to Bardwell Park

Cleanliness: Brand new and shiny!

This post originally appeared on the Annexe, in a post series pointlessly documenting every train I took.

A3 from Central to Bardwell Park

Cleanliness: Brand new and shiny!

My summary posts after watching another episode of Gurren Lagann continue!

Characters: So often shows go out of their way to be melodramatic or funny, but Gurren Lagann has just the right amount of both. Case in point, an ultra fabulous new character who in the midst of heavy artillery fire makes them all cups of coffee.

Conveniences: So they live on the surface now, but where are they getting their food? Their coffee beans? Their endless supply of weapons?

Breaking the forth wall: Yoko talking to us having been unimpressed with Kamina's shenanigans was hilarious ^^.

Going beyond limits: By believing in yourself and having passion, you can pilot your very own Gunman! Simon is able to pack quite a wallop in his little pocket rocket, and Kamina is able to overcome a system security lockdown with fire in the belly. I'll be sure to try that next time I want to launch my own privilege escalation attack against a server!

Nonchalance: So an acquaintance of yours is under threat, and you save them with a single fire from your overly massive rifle. No problem!

Conclusion: A bittersweet episode where they've come so far, learned more about what was causing events in their underground village, found what they're looking for… and have to live with it. For the second time in a row, I choked up at the end. Seriously.

They were out in full force this weekend in Earlwood. Over two days I had flyers handed to me about an End of The World seminar by the Jehovah's Witnesses, a Baptist pledge drive and an invitation for a "dianetic reading" for the low, low price of $1500. Pieces of Sweet Stars Yoko couldn't wait!

Ironically, just as people did with material from The Greens, these flyers were littered all around the street shortly after. Seems "Ruining The Earth" is a self fulfilling prophecy.

I'd already watched a few episodes of Gurren Lagann before, so this was more of a recap. Still, making good on my promise!

This is also first trial run of these summary posts! Instead of bullet points, though, I thought I'd use little heading things instead.

Setting: The introductory scenes where we first see the characters and their subterranean world is one of the best openings of an anime I've ever seen. Despite the implausibility of a society of people living underground, I instantly believed the world they were living in.

Characters: Likewise, I had an instant liking and respect for Simon; despite being poked fun at he's doing what he knows is right for his town. He's noble. Kamina… is simply too awesome for words! Yoko's sudden dropping in was just brilliant, and Kamina reacted to her exactly as we would have expected!

Coincidences: It's unclear how much time elapsed between Simon discovering the Core Drill and the giant head Gunman, but in any case its a staggeringly lucky coincidence! Just imagine how much rock is down there, and he chanced upon these two things… and in the right order! Not only that, despite these complex pieces of machinery having been buried under rock for so long, they still operate perfectly when activated. These things were built to last!

Credits: The opening title card looked like Iron Chef. Imajustsaying.

Fanservice: I suppose it would be pretty hot living underground, and if I spent all my time drilling I'd have the build to not wear shirts too. And just in case we were lead to believe Yoko's getup is supposed to be normal for their world, Gainax (of course) wastes no time in showing us just how attractive she is with a few opportune camera angles, and letting Kamina voice his approval, much to her initial disdain. And of course, Simon falls on top of her after they plummet from the sky.

Nonchalance: Yeah, don't you hate when pets do that?!

Heart tugging: When Simon piloted the Gunman and won the battle with the larger, evil Gunman with very nice teeth, I didn't bat an eyelid. When they broke through the ceiling and saw the sky for the first time, I actually choked up. From the first episode of a series!

Conclusion: This anime has everything. People saying no to dreams (I meant for that to be less corny) and others still believing regardless. Awesome characters and settings. Weird contraptions. I was a Crown Royal Dumbarse for not watching it in 2008. And if these summary posts are anything to go by, they're only marginally shorter than what I was doing before! At least this way they're much faster to write because they don't have to flow! ^^;

When I went to bed last night, HP were still making computers and webOS devices. A lot can happen in one night!

Then rhymes with "Gwen"

See what I did there?

I don't know exactly when this started, but lately I've prefaced most of my blog posts with rambling bouts of nostalgia punctured with lame attempts at humour, then signed off with a submissive "but I digress" before launching into the meat of the matter. This post will be no different.

My first experience with HP was a year before I got my first iMac DV in the late 1990s. The 200MHz Pentium MMX machine we'd built at Funan Centre was starting to show its age (though ironically it's outlasted ever other machine I've ever built and still runs even now!) and we were on the lookout for something new. Out of the blue at COMEX in Singapore, HP were having a sale on the Brio BAx line of business desktops, and we snagged one.

Compared to the ugly, overly plastic boxes the Pavilion desktops came in, the Brio line looked rather smart with its simple lines and slight curves at the front. The machine had a blazingly fast 450MHz Pentium III (or "Pentium !!!" if you took their marketing seriously), a 8.4GB Seagate hard drive and 128MiB of PC133 memory. Because it was technically a business machine it only had onboard graphics, but it was all someone like me needed, particularly when I spent most of my time in an editor hacking away at my latest favourite programming language and only briefly stopping for some SimCity 3000.

Cooler still was what came with it. It happened to be the first computer I owned that came with a CD burner, and a gigantically massive 17" display instead of the crusty 14.5 I'd been using as a loaner from our original 486 machine from 1991! It was also a fateful machine in that it was the first one I tried Red Hat Linux on back in the day, but that's for another post :).

The only other piece of HP hardware I had from that time was a so-called "handheld PC" Given I was still a kid, my dad didn't trust that I wouldn't drop a laptop, so he bought me this little HP 620LX Windows CE 2.0 device for my birthday one year. For family trips overseas where we'd be away from my beloved desktop, this little machine let me keep programming and tinkering :). As of today, aside from a vertical cyan coloured stripe across one side of the screen, it still works!

Today rhymes with "away"

So now we finally come back to the present. Hewlett Packard, one of the original icons of technoligical innovation and progress, has had a troubled recent history. Carly Fiorina's acquisition of Compaq gave them the server hardware and expertise they wanted, but also a legacy of race to to the bottom hardware.

In trying to be Dell, they only hastened the demise of their personal computer unit. Their "The Computer is Personal Again" campaign was embarrassing, couldn't shake off their reputation for being a business company, and fell on deaf ears as creative professionals and those really looking for Something Different fled to Apple.

On the mobile side, their acquisition of the troubled Palm didn't reverse their fortunes either. webOS, in my opinion the finest mobile operating system on the market today, was doomed from the start by slow hardware, face-palmingly poor marketing and a strategic position that none of us understood. It wasn't much cheaper than the also vertically integrated iPhone, didn't offer the breadth of devices of Android, and was only sold in a few select markets.

While for my own personal reasons I'm disappointed in the latter, from a business perspective it makes sense for HP to do this. Junky desktops and laptops simply aren't profitable anymore, and their webOS devices always seemed like an odd fit for an enterprise company who's only other consumer focused devices were high end calculators.

I'll be interested to see where they go from here. I suggest they do some Invent-ing.

Now if you'd excuse me, I'm off to mirror their site with httrack. I'm a sucker for nostalgia, not that you'd know.