Rubenerd

After giving a talk at uni this evening, I took the train a couple of stops to Circular Quay and just wandered around for a while. Whipping out my cameraphone to take a picture of a very colourful paddlewheel boat thingy, I just felt the urge to keep taking grainy, awful photos! It was fun though :)

Wandering around

The Rocks area is really pretty at night, kinda like wandering around Marina Bay in Singapore at night only with way more music and a bit more chewing gum on the footpath ;).

Grabbing an evening snack

Yes, Starbucks. I happen to like them. If you don’t, that’s great, exercise your free will and let others do the same :). They even gave me a free cranberry and vanilla muffin, and it was super tasty!

Catching the train home

In the late evenings CityRail usually only operates trains every fifteen minutes or so to the places you want to go, but fortunately by sheer chance I stepped onto the platform almost as soon as the train was due. Surprisingly, it was on time too!

I really do miss Singapore a great deal and hope to return there, but this birth country of mine is slowly growing on me again :)

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

shityes:

I LOVE THIS.

And very happy to hear Gaga approved - I was super disappointed when I thought she’d got pissed off about it.

He’s definitely back! Can’t wait for his next album, hope it has that new polka he played at his concert!

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

M2 from Circular Quay to Bardwell Park

Cleanliness: Great!

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

S81 from Bardwell Park to City Circle

Cleanliness: Some rubbish

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

kari-shma:

(via Funny Superhero Bikes - My Modern Metropolis)

Mike Joos is an illustrator who loves to make people laugh. In this hilarious series, he places superheroes and other characters on bicycles. The catch is, the bikes have some type of funny relationship to the characters. 

click through for the rest.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

comakarma:

「ずっと！」/「あきかん」の作品 [pixiv] #pixitail

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Not making any kind of political statement, but do Hafez al-Assad and Joe Scarborough kinda look alike, or is that just me? Was just browsing Wikipedia this afternoon when it struck me!

Joe and I need to grow moustaches. For me, so I don't keep getting confused as a 16 year old. My spindly build is the result of occupational hazards, thank you very much!

As well as being a valuable library for web services, MCrypt is a simple tool for encrypting/decrypting files. As per a request from one of my coffee buying supporters, here’s how to build it on Mac OS X!

Dr Hook sang a song called Levitate

Before we get into it, if you don’t remember how to build software on *nix, here’s the procedure for installing in /usr/local as root:

% sudo -s
# tar xzvf [app][version].tar.gz
# cd [app][version]
# ./configure
# make install clean

This is the way you do it ~ Dr Hook, Levitate

1. Mhash is the library MCrypt uses to generate hashes. Download the tarball from its SourceForge page, and build to taste. You can also use cvs, their page has instructions.

2. MCrypt comes in two parts, the command interface and the libmcrypt library. Download the library tarball from its SourceForge page, and build to taste. Alternatively you can install it from Homebrew with brew install mycrypt [sic].

3. Download the MCrypt tarball from SourceForge, and build to taste!

Look at me taking off! ~ Dr Hook, Levitate

MCrypt works in the shell by encrypting files with a cipher of your choice, and spitting out a name appended with mc, presumably because the programmer was a fan of MC Hammer and because encryption means bad guys can’t touch this. No wait, its short for MCrypt, never mind.

For example, my favourite cipher is Twofish so here’s how we would encrypt a dodgy photo you wouldn’t want people to see. You’ll be prompted for a password.

% mcrypt -a twofish photo.jpg

The procedure to decrypt is basically the same.

% mcrypt -d photo.jpg.mc

Of course regular encryption recommendations apply. Decrypting files to a local drive or volume that isn’t itself encrypted could potentially allow future people to gain access to your plaintext. Use strong passwords. Employ liberal amounts of common sense. And so on :).

Marge: Why are you frosting that old throw pillow?
Homer: I… could ask you the very same question!