Rubenerd

I’ve carried the same email inbox since I got my own Hotmail account as a kid in 1997. It’s been meticulously sorted into folders and carted between various email providers over the years, including Looksmart Mail, Gmail, a self-hosted Dovecot install, a shared webhost, and most recently Fastmail. If only I’d kept those Eudora email archives from our Singapore Pacific Internet email accounts from earlier still, imagine all the nostalgic fun.

But I digest. Wait, digress. Technically, I’m doing both right now.

I’ve been on a bit of a minimalism and cleaning binge recently, and began to wonder why I’m carting around all this old email. It’s only about 10 GiB, but how often am I going back to read school work from 2004, or mailing lists for software that no longer exists? Does this need to all be on an IMAP server somewhere?

It’s also increasingly limiting in other ways. My folders, filing system, and filters all start with the same letter in a most satisfying way, but admittedly haven’t been useful for how I work now for years.

A small part of me also worries about identity theft. Email has become the front line for all manner of auth systems, thanks to its use as a fallback to reset passwords. But someone getting access to my archive would see all the subjects I did, all my jobs, who my family are, where I’ve travelled, what I’ve applied for, and dark secrets like that order for 12-year Glenfiddich because I like it more than the older stuff. You could probably scrape much of this from social media and what I publish like a silly gentleman on my blog here, but email would be much easier to mine.

I belabour all of this, to share that phrase with five words. This afternoon I’ve been bulk importing all my mail into a clean new Thunderbird profile and exporting them as eml files. I’ll throw this onto my OpenZFS data backup pool, in case I ever want to search them. That’s the great thing about glorified text files and HTML email, the latter of which I still resent having been introduced, and not just because it made using software like the console Alpine email client untenable. But I digest.

I’ve also decided to change how I sort mail. Instead of sorting based on person or subject, I’m trying out a Getting Things Done approach with folders for Do, Defer, Delegate, Done, and Deleted (aka, the Bin). I cheat a bit with another folder called Info, which is for receipts and other records. It’s worked shockingly well for work email, so I’m going to give it a try here too. 📨

(Mailing lists will still get their own dedicated folders, because mixing them into one place sounds a like a shortcut to going batty… even if they do have the mailing list title in the subject line).

I’m thinking I might do more posts like this, where I write short snippets or include links that don’t need their own post. I used to do this indirectly with daily imports from del.icio.us, but what if I did the same thing but with one-off thoughts as well?

In the space of twenty-four hours, Sydney has gone from a smoke haze from back-burning, to being cold and overcast, to being clear and hot, to having an almost tropical thunderstorm. Having lived in Melbourne, three seasons in a day was almost nostalgic.

People saying “I’ll get into trouble for saying this, but…” belong to the same category as those who say “no offence, but…”. Anything proceeded by such a proverbial posterial prognostication can only be perennially and purposely provocative.

Today I learned of the phrase teetee on Ina’s latest Minecraft stream. It’s vtuber slang for wholesome or precious comments. Fun!

Sitting on the balcony this afternoon I counted an almost equal number of tiny, fuel-efficient hatchbacks, and SUVs. Nay a sedan at all. Would I be reading too much into it if I felt like it was further evidence of society stratifying?

I’m also relieved to see one of my old haunts from back in the day is still around. Lockdowns can’t have made the lives of coffee shop owners easy. They’re my favourite places in the world, and I feel for them.

A year ago I discussed the prospect of using a Kobo Forma as a manga reader. I stole some of Clara’s physical manga and realised the Forma was 90% the size, as opposed to my old Kindle Paperwhite and most other ebook readers that are too small to see the art and text clearly.

I’ve since got an iPad for work, and have been trying it out for reading books. It works, but I long for an eink display, especially in the evenings when my eyes and other body parts are tired.

Kobo are now taking preorders for their Sage ebook reader. It’s slightly heavier than the Forma, but has the same sized screen and is about the same price. The biggest external difference seems to be its support for pens for notetaking, and a new type of cover.

What I’m most interested in is its 32 GiB of internal storage. The Forma had 8 GiB, which was already more than what my Kindle had. But that extra capacity would let me put an entire manga series on there to read through, as opposed to dowloading a few at a time which becomes tedious.

The price is on the steep side, but I want to read more with fewer distractions, and this seems to be the best device for my interests. I’ll set the money aside and see what reviewers say once the first pre-orders are out.

As reported in by Reuters, via The Asahi Shimbun:

Japan should strive for a new form of capitalism to reduce income disparity that has worsened under the coronavirus pandemic, says former foreign minister Fumio Kishida.

“Without distribution of wealth there won’t be a rise in consumption and demand… there won’t be further growth if distribution of wealth is lost,” Kishida said at a presentation of his economic proposals in Tokyo on Wednesday.

Makes sense.

When I can’t sleep, or am otherwise mentally exhausted but still awake, I tend to read or window shop on eBay. Yesterday I was reading up on Estonian forests, and going down the rabbit hole of “anime light boards” for gaming PCs. I was unaware of the existance of these ornimental addons, nor do I even have space or use for them. The boards, not Estonian forests. We need more of those.

I will go to the Baltic states one day, just you wait and see!

What struck me was how predictable so many of the listings were. What sellers put up for auction on sites like eBay, Etsy, Red Bubble, and the like says a lot about the popularity of franchises and characters. Sellers wouldn’t waste their time listing items that aren’t in demand, and they have the purchase histories to inform these decisions. Supply and demand, in other words.

If you just go by what people list, there is no question that Rem is still the undisputed queen of anime waifus. The blue-haired, battle-hardened maid from the breakout hit Re:Zero Starting Life in Another World first featured in web and light novels seven years ago, and the anime five.

Her enduring popularity is no small feat. Unlike Western comics and cartoons, most anime series have (relatively) brief shelf lives. There are notable exceptions to the rule (Naruto, One Piece, Sailor Moon, etc), but in my experience most people obsess over a character for a short while before the next one comes along to steal their attention with the attributes they admire.

There’s a socioligical reason why blue and grey-haired characters like Rem, Rei, Ami, Yuki, and my site mascot Rubi are successful, which I’ll admit I don’t fully understand. They certainly feature heavily in my lists of favourite characters (though I was more of a pink-haired Ram fan in Re:Zero). It’s a well-established trope that conveys calm intelligence with a dose of cuteness. Maybe because blue is a reassuring, unthreatening colour? Which is somewhat ironic, given how much you’d stand out in the real world with it as your dyed colour of choice!

Anyway, I just thought it was amazing that all these years later, she’s still the default in so many listings. How long will her reign last?

(The irony also isn’t lost on me that I can’t see blue right now. Maybe a light blue cast would be even more calming than a greyscale display).

That was my attempt at figuring out what the opposite of burnout would be. The original word was “icein”, but that sounded too much like ricin, and you can be burned by ice too. You’re as cold as ice. You’re willing to sacrifice…

A well-known YouTuber I’ve blogged about before recently admitted to her paying fans that she’d been feeling fatigue and a lack of creative spark in her streams of late. She’s going to continue uploding videos, but was taking some time to wind down, reflect, and get some of her mojo back. As a form of defensive blogging (which people shouldn’t have to do), she even said people should stop their monthly donations if they wanted.

I love my job; I must, or I wouldn’t still be in it after almost seven years. I like to think I’m good at it, that I bring something unique to the team in terms of skills and attitude. But I absolutely get where she’s coming from. What’s more, my burnout has been witnessed by a small company, not millions of streamers. The pressure to perform at that scale boggles my mind.

I hadn’t taken a break from work, but I decided to stop blogging or checking social media for a week. I replaced the urge to read short text snippets with books. Right now I’m reading Germany: Memories of a Nation by Neil MacGregor. The way he tells the story of the modern German state through surviving monuments, artefacts, and experiences is so unique and fascinating. I’m also getting back into the Monogatari series, which are among the most challenging light novels I’ve ever read. Having that complex storyline and characters forces you to dedicate you entire mental energy to it, which is exactly what my distracted and anxious mind needs.

(I say distracted, but I tend to have three books going at once: a non-fiction or Western novel, a Japanese light novel, and a manga. I can tell immediately which I’m more in the mood for when I pick up the Kobo. Maybe because they’re presented in such different ways).

I’m not sure when I’ll be back on Mastodon or The Bird Site again. When I do go back, it’ll likely be with a locked or private account. I want to follow and converse with people I care about, but not have that other pressure. I’m probably going to be ruthless and cull almost everyone I follow, then start adding people back. I haven’t decided.

Thanks to Hales, Rebecca, and Jonathan for the well wishes after my abrupt departure, it was appreciated. ♡

Cheers.

I’m not sure if it’s months of Covid lockdown amplifying what was already there, but my anxiety boiled over this week. Clutter affects me negatively, so I’ve been trying to make my workspaces cleaner and more deliberate. Anything to restore a sense of control, really.

One thing I didn’t expect to work so well was having my computer screen set to greyscale mode the past few days. I’d enabled it to test the accessibility and contrast of a design I was working on and… I didn’t turn it off.

Everything feels clearer. All my words, terminal windows, chat applications, email, and documents are still there, but with fewer distractions and less stimulation. It’s like I’m writing on backlit paper, not interacting with a telescreen.

I’ve got the Mac Accessibility Shortcut pane in my menubar, so I can toggle colour back on for games like Minecraft, or YouTube videos. But then the work day begins again, and so does greyscale mode.

I have no scientific or medical basis for doing this, and I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it up. All I can say, anecdotally, is that it’s helped me. Give it a try if you think you could benefit too.

Bonus points: I wonder if KDE offers a similar mode?

A quote from a Curiosity Stream documentary:

If I knew where I was going, I wouldn’t go there.

There were certain things that I’ve preferred buying online if I could. Anime magazines and figures, because I used to fear judgement. And among the things I’d prefer to buy in person: fresh vegetables, coffee, and hard drives… though not from the same location. Maybe Tesco, Carrefour, or Giant could do it.

There was something about having the delicate sensibilities components of a hard drive rattling around and being manhandled that made me nervous. I’d rather go to a brick and mortar store, pick it up, and carry it home on a pillow before installing it into its pedestal case. I joke, but that’s what tower server cases seem to be called.

It is a bit absurd when I think about it now, given the drives would have had to go through transit to get from the factory to the distributor, then to the retailer. But I’d expect a pallet of the things would be treated better, and have more packaging, than an individual drive being rattled around in a postal sorting room.

My fears had thus far been unfounded during These Times™ of working from home, with multiple new HGST and Seagate units arriving without any issue over the course of two years. Here comes the proverbial posterial prognostication: but… yesterday was different.

(I won’t disclose the manufacturer of this specific device, lest I be told about a certain backup provider’s statistics of their unusual use case, followed by someone else saying I made the right decision given another manufacturer’s SMR shenanigans, followed by someone else saying the manufacturer everyone cites as the most reliable is owned by the aforementioned shenanigan company, followed by another person asking why Toshiba doesn’t get more love, followed by…)!

I like to think of myself as a rational person (glaven), but somehow I opened the box from this large Australian retailer and was immediately filled with trepidation. I couldn’t tell you why, but something didn’t seem right. The padding and packaging wasn’t as good as others I’d seen, and had seemed to be chosen so they could shoehorn the larger 140 cm Noctua fan into the same box. But I’d seen far worse, including a bottle of whisky that had managed to arrive with nay a layer of bubble wrap and miraculously survived.

Plugging the drive into my homelab server tower and powering it on resulted in that dreaded metal-on-metal grinding sound that so routinely inhabit my nightmares. I also learned a new feature about my Supermicro board: it beeped at a regular interval to indicate an IO issue. Unplugging the drive silenced these beeps.

ipmitools, dmesg in FreeBSD, and even the BIOS didn’t report any drive was connected. The drive had replaced a previous one, so I knew the SATA cables and the board connector were fine, but in case I swapped the former and changed the latter, with the same result.

Now I get to learn how to do another thing during lockdown: file warranty claims and ship devices. I’m sure it’s a barrel of fun, unlike the barrel that aforementioned whisky was aged in. Wait, that’s the wrong way round. It is round though, at least in one dimension.