Rubenerd

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

While it wasn't my favourite anime series in and of itself, Kallen Stadtfeld‎ from Code Geass and Code Geass R2 is one of my favourite characters of all time. Perhaps it's the whole double personality thing or the fact she could be a super duper underground figure while still being a sweet person. ^^;

Perhaps now the Konachan folks have their hosting problems down pat they've been paying attention to The Monnie's Cupcake Camp here in Adelaide (perhaps they have operatives tapping her phones), because their latest Code Geass desktop background wallpaper is this pretty colourful one of Kallen with a cupcake. It's adorable ^_^.

Better still it's 1920×1200 so I can scale it for my little ThinkPad X40 or use it full size on my MacBook Pro's external 24 inch Samsung display at full resolution which is sweet. Get it? Cupcake? Sweet? Hey, I thought it was funny. I'm so stressed about exams I'm starting to say even sillier things it seems.

On my old anime blog I had an A Team page and Kallen was the executive in charge of my blog's covert operations. Darn the more I think about that site the more I miss it. It was awesome in a very lame fanboy way :)

Dear Paul,

Just a quick message to say I’m keeping you in my thoughts through what my family knows personally is a freakishly scary ordeal. Stay strong sir, get better soon, and keep reaching for the sky. Or an American NBA field, I know you’re partial to those too :-).

Peace, health and happiness,
Ruben

Reading the always entertaining Slashdot I saw a story claiming the Russian government pulled Modern Warfare 2 (screenshot above… uh, yeah!) from stores, allegedly because they weren't too happy having their citizens being demonised as terrorists. Eldavojon asks "Is cultural sensitivity becoming an overly played card in the gaming world? Not too long ago, Wolfenstein was recalled in Germany for containing Nazi symbols." and I attempt to answer.

If you've read my blog for a while, particularly my posts about the Great Australian Firewall proposal you'd know I'm a supporter of free speech; perhaps in a more European sense that it's as important as other rights but not more so. In this case I couldn't help but think about the other side if only for a moment.

Firstly, a bit of clarification. The reason why Wolfenstein was recalled in Germany was due to the law put in place after World War II that displaying and publishing the Nazi Swastika was illegal. Even in a world where free speech is hailed as the one of the most important human rights you can see why they would have wanted this. The game had the symbol, and it was revoked. Case closed, moving on.

The case of Modern Warfare 2 in Russia is more complex in that the game didn't break any laws (as far as I know) and therefore I condemn the removal on legal grounds, but it's perhaps another situation where a bit of empathy for their side may help to understand motives. You've got to think that two decades after the Cold War ended Russians would be starting to get fed up with being cast as the evil guys in movies, television shows and games, particularly when the American government has been waging questionable military action in countries like Iraq. It certainly doesn't help to break old stereotypes.

I wouldn't have revoked the game, but then again I wouldn't have played it either. Perhaps this is a case where market forces would have solved the problem without government intervention, as opposed to the Wolfenstein where a clear law was violated. The Russian governments actions do seem heavy handed, and it's not as if there aren't any illegal avenues for people to turn to.

I have an exam tomorrow and I'm nervous beyond belief, so I'm writing blog posts like this. They're a good distraction.

Update

According to the UK Telegraph, Activision are claiming the game hasn't been banned. You mean to say Slashdot jumped the gun on a story? No, never ;).

Activision, the publisher behind Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, says that reports of the Russian government banning the game are ‘erroneous’.

The controversy surrounding Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has taken a surreal turn, with the game’s publisher releasing a [statement] saying the multi-million unit selling game hasn’t received a ban in Russia.

Some disturbing news about the state of tertiary education in South Australia being reported by Suzanne Tindal on ZDNet Australia. Flinders University and TAFE SA (similar to a polytechnic for my Singaporean and Malaysian readers) have adopted Microsoft Exchange based Live@Edu for a three year contract. While on the surface the features actually sound cool, the potential ramifications of adopting this expensive system are scary.

To Microsoft's credit they've done some stuff right recently, or perhaps "less wrong" is a more fitting description. Windows 7 improved the experience over Vista, Internet Explorer 8 renders pages in a somewhat more standards compliant way and is faster than IE7 or IE6, and while the hardware is still unappealing the Zune's music subscription service sounds like a great way to discover new tunes.

This education initiative is not something to add to that list.

I can't help but think Microsoft is worried about the increasing penetration of Apple notebooks in tertiary education as well as free and open source OSs in IT courses and that they'll use their Live@Edu service to provide a reason not to use Macs or FLOSS over, say, a Windows 7 loaded machine.

Speaking from experience

I'm a student at the University of South Australia which uses Exchange and Outlook Web Access which in any other browser except Internet Explorer 6 is terrible. Unlike Google Wave which warns people trying to access it in non HTML5 standards compliant browsers, Microsoft warns me when my browser doesn't contain their proprietary rendering engine and as a result is not capable of displaying a dynamic inbox that Google managed to figure out how to do in other browsers back in 2004.

I've made no secret of my general loathing of most Microsoft products and my dismay at their spectacular fall from grace (I grew up on Microsoft Multimedia titles in primary school and loved them), but if the South Australian government or Microsoft won't guarantee that contemporary browsers that meet certain open standards used by students will be able to access all these new services, this amounts to a monopolistic move and should be investigated by an independent body.

This is a Trending Topic

I talked about the lack of transparency with Microsoft and various Australian governments back in April of this year (It started as a Centrelink Windows 7 critique) in the context of the cost involved, something I haven't discussed here but that also bears keeping in mind.

To tell the truth I'm more frustrated with the South Australian and Federal governments than I am with Microsoft.

I'm in the market for a new mouse. After two years of fairly reliable service, my Apple Mighty Mouse has started exhibiting that maddening scroll ball problem and its time to upgrade. New toy!

The latest Apple Magic Mouse is a work of art (as to be expected from Apple!), but alas without a third mouse button it's just not feasible for the times when I'm booted into FreeBSD, OpenSolaris or Linux and I don't want to constantly swap mouses around. Before going Apple I was a Logitech guy because they were the most comfortable and well designed, so I'm thinking of going back and checking them out again.

The only requirement I have aside from lots of awesome buttons I can customize is Bluetooth. Don't get the wrong idea, I really dislike Bluetooth and constantly pairing my mouse with my MacBook Pro feels like a tiring and maddening exercise in futility sometimes, but I never have any spare USB ports and USB hubs won't work.

Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte recently recommended on Security Now 222 the Logitech Anywhere MX with the fantastic low friction scrollwheel but alas it needs a USB receiver. The Logitech Performance Mouse MX is positively droolworthy, but has the same problem.

As far as I can tell the only Bluetooth Laser mouse they have is the Logitech V470 which my father uses and is very happy with, but it doesn't have their Darkfield Laser Tracking technology which allows it to track on more surfaces, and only has a regular scroll wheel.

Perhaps I could get an ExpressCard with extra USB ports, or perhaps a powered USB hub. That'd work :).

Given I had so much work and studying to do this evening, I decided to take a break and instead of watching another adorable episode of K-On I thought I'd fix my theme here a bit. Hit [SHIFT] if you don't see a difference ^_^.

I liked the old Singapore skyline backdrop, but the problem was even with compression it was still over 85KiB and it kinda forced my crappy but nostalgically long-standing logo into a corner. I changed the header to match the sides, made all the colours a bit brighter, and got rid of the skyline entirely. I reckon it looks cleaner and more cheerful, and best of all it only weighs in at 25KiB now which will reduce server load and render much more fasterer. Yes, much more fasterer.

For historical comparison, below is what it looked like before. My sister much prefers it, but it is much heavier.

Up until a few months ago my sites always had a dark background with light text, but most people seemed to prefer dark text on a light background so I finally caved and redid it all from scratch. Much like the pet owner with a really, really ugly dog that's sweet and loyal, I'm admitting the new theme is terrible, but it's terribly mine and so I'm keeping it :).

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Unlike Fedora 11, in it’s default state it’ll let me take screenshots :)

I read this comment on an ABC Australia blog talking about human population growth and climate change and despite having other work to do I couldn't help but comment on it. It's an impulse thing.

freddy fentinghorn:

t is extroadinary!!!!
just the co2 that each of us breathes out each time we take a breathe!! amounts to a huge impact on emmissions,
lets see, i am no mathematics teacher but>>

[sic] [sic] [sic]

That's the potential problem with using a far out example in order to make a mockery of a proposition; sometimes you end up making more of a mockery of yourself!

There's a huge difference between human respiration and fossil fuels. We release carbon dioxide as a result of eating and being alive, and what we eat got carbon dioxide from the biosphere. By contrast, fossil fuels act as natural carbon capture and storage before humans decide to dig them out of the ground and burn them which does affect the balance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The only argument one could make about humans breathing out too much carbon dioxide and contributing to the enhanced greenhouse effect is that as the human population grows, land has to be cleared to grow food and pollution goes up.

Having already typed one pointless aviation related post, I figured one more before I head off to bed wouldn't hurt. I call it "what a bit of paint can do!" The photos were both taken this year by Jan Ostrowski and Nils Baker respectively.

And you know I never did learn what those "nostrils" in the DC-8 nose were for. Were they for bleed air? Because if they were, one could say the DC-8 had a… nosebleed! Get it? Get it? I'm going to bed now.