Rubenerd

Having installed Fedora 11 alongside FreeBSD on my ThinkPad X40 and deciding I liked it, I went ahead this evening and installed the current beta release of Fedora 12. So far I'm really impressed, but one thing is worrying.

After the OS was installed and I was presented with the default Gnome desktop, I noticed under the Sound & Video Applications menu I saw a link for the F-Spot image organiser. Its been a while since I've been a part of the Red Hat ecosystem so someone might be able to clarify this, but it seems after having it removed from default installs since Fedora 10, they've started bundling Mono again.

I don't want to debate the merits of Mono nor its patent scariness (pardon the terrible IP pun) here, all I want to say is for people like me this move by the Fedora team is worrying. Will this be a permanent feature?

My spell checker says "Uninstalling" isn’t a word

Fortunately looking at it myself you can remove Mono from the Fedora 12 beta by uninstalling the following packages:

• F-Spot
• mono-data-*
• mono-core-*
• mono-addins-*
• gtk-sharp2-*
• gnome-sharp-*
• mono-web-*
• mono-winforms-*

The last Red Hat based distribution I used was Red Hat Linux 9 back in the day so I'm very rusty, but with dependencies being what they are uninstalling just mono-core-* might be enough to be prompted for the removal of all the others.

Update

I installed Fedora 11 from a USB key made from a Live CD which is why I didn't have Mono. I'm assuming this means previous full releases of Fedora had it then. Still worrying though.

Today's favourite photo I found on the internets is the one included above for your convenience. Really, there'd be no point talking about a photo I'd found without showing you what it was, otherwise for all you know I could have been making it up. It's an integrity thing.

Said photo is by Paul Kippling on Airliners.net of a 707 business jet cabin in Rotterdam from 1983. Why is this aeroplane awesome? The fake wood veneer on the bulkheads and walls; the angular brown leather office chairs; the tartan upholstered couch; the ancient rounded television screen mounted in the wall; it couldn't be more retro if it tried!

In case you haven't figured it out, I revel in such retroness. Speaking of which, got a comment from the DOSBox folks.

Some more information from the Airliners.net page:

Untitled (Dresser Industries)
Boeing 707-123(B)

Rotterdam (- Zestienhoven) (RTM / EHRD)
Netherlands, July 1982

N5038 (cn 17652/77) In need for space? Try this! This particular 707 was parked in 1983 at Davis Montham AFB where it was used for C135 spares. Wonder what happened to the sofas…

More: pkaviation

Sitting at the Boatdeck Cafe in Mawson Lakes this afternoon I couldn't help but overhear some Indian university students and an Indian student with an Aussie accent loudly talking about living in Australia. He seems to be even more of a scatterbrain than me!

I’m a first generation Indian living here, I was born in Australia. So many first generation Indians here are confused about their identity, it’s crazy! They have no idea who they are and can’t relate to the culture here or at home, y’know?

I can partly relate, in many ways I'm not an Aussie but I'm certainly not a Singaporean.

I go to pubs here and so many of the Aussie girls are wearing almost nothing, and I’m all like, y’know, you’re not going to get any respect dressing like that.

Even if we all think that, I'm sure he would have been a very popular person saying that to someone!

There are so many more distractions now than when I was growing up. Back in India there’s still a core foundation of, y’know, here in Australia they just don’t have that.

Not quite sure what he means, wholesome family values or something? Or is it heritage and a sense of identity? I hope he meant the latter.

I’ve been to Singapore and Malaysia…

Oooh, a shared point of reference! Do tell!

But Singapore has basically become a European country, right? I mean, everyone there is white.

Wait, what? As a person of pasty white English/German heritage living in Singapore for most of my life I can honestly say that while there is a huge expatriate population we are certainly not the majoraty, not by a long shot!

Singapore is clean and has lots going for it, y’know? Malaysia has culture but it’s really not liveable. So many Malaysian Indians want to live here.

I'm not touching that one!

Engineering is a solid, core degree. It’s not airy fairy, it’s not arts, it’s not counting numbers. Engineering is a solid, solid degree. Science is kinda of a solid degree. When you study you need to, y’know, do a proper solid degree to get grounding and better finances.

Solid, right? Solid? Solid? I guess everything is relative though, isn't it? And there's no point someone who's extraordinarily talented at writing but not good at engineering… doing engineering! Solid.

And then the Aussie dollar went down because interest rates went up which, y’know, made people scared about having it.

Clearly one of his solid degrees isn't economics ;-).

I have no family in Adelaide, all in India, over there, right? If I have problems I have to, like, y’know, deal with them myself. It’s tough and everyone wears hats over there, and fewer people do here. Baseball hats look weird. Squandering money on silly things, y’know?

y'know… what?

Haha, yeah, y’know it’s just like that, y’know. I mean, y’know, are like, there and here, y’know, and it’s not easy.

I think someone slipped something in his coffee, y'know.

I want to stop using the train here, y’know, because students live in this suburb and the train is, y’know, full every morning and the parking around the station is, y’know, bursting!

My bad, well at least for the first part!

I hope Patrick Conlon is taking notice though, there's a surge in interest for public transport and some are being turned off using it because of it's popularity.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic and drawing too much attention to myself, I often find talking about this kind of stuff helps. And heck, if I can't blog about on my blog, where else do I blog about it?

It was an episode of Penn & Teller Bullshit discussing how television psychics who claim they can talk to the dead are performance artists and nothing more. My hero and an awesome guy Penn Jillette had taken an uncharacteristically stern yet humbled tone on screen as he started talking about both his parents who had recently passed on. He bowed his head, closed his eyes then looked back at the screen and said "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss them". I've since started following Penn on Twitter and he posted similar sentiment recently:

Reading this along with all the blog posts Dave Winer has been publishing about his recently departed dad on Scripting News, I've been thinking a lot about my mum again even more so than usual. Over the last few days it's been really, really hard to concentrate and my dreams have been a mixture of happiness and crushing despair when I wake up. I also made the mistake of visiting the Whole Wheat Radio page we all wrote together in 2006 talking about our mums back when she was still alive.

In a kind of cruel paradox, I believe her illness drew us even closer as friends which made it even more difficult to say goodbye. She'd often be in a hospital ER for weeks at a time after having cardiac arrests or a host of other treatment complications, so it was normal for me not to have her around aside from visits for extended periods of time. Part of me still expects to have her arrive home back in Singapore or even here in the clothes she last went to the hospital in and asking what happened while she was gone. I expect people who've lost loved ones in war have the exact same kind of feelings.

I wouldn't call it a midlife crisis given I'm 23, but up until she left us my primary motivations in life all had something to do with her. I wanted to do well in high school and university so I could be eligible for a Singapore work permit so I could be around her again, to take care of her well into her old age and help financially with her medical bills. I wanted to help give her back all the things her illness had so cruelly robbed from her. I wanted to sit with her and loudly laugh our arses off to British comedy on my laptop as we sat at a coffee shop. I wanted to make her breakfast in bed, to be there to help her up the stairs, to give her bear hugs and to remind her that her condition and other family issues were not her fault. I wanted to take care of her forever, and above all I wanted to make her happy.

She was an extraordinarily powerful force to want to succeed, beyond anything a self help book could teach. To be blunt, I don't know who (or what) I'm living for now. After sailing so strong towards a definite destination for over 12 years, there's no longer wind in my sails and my ship doesn't have a rudder or a compass.

ASIDE: And to those religious people on Twitter who said I lack direction because I haven’t accepted their particular god(s), that’s a cheap shot even for you guys :P.

I'm not the first person to lose a loved one so soon from a debilitating disease, and heck I'm a damned lucky person in other aspects of my life. I suppose all I'm looking for is purpose without her in my life any more, because since she's been gone I haven't found it.

Don't worry, this will be the last time I blog about this. I will resist future temptation to!

Here's something to try if you find yourself at home on a Friday night and you want some excitement. For legal purposes, I must state you should not attempt this.

Open a Terminal or shell in Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, OpenSolaris or your other *nix of choice and navigate to the root directory by entering the following commands:

% cd /
% echo "Grilled cheese sandwiches with pickle"

Now keeping in mind that root is the highest you can navigate to in a file system, attempt to navigate one directory further by entering this command while smacking yourself repeatedly on the head with a breadboard:

% cd ..

You should see a number of stars flashing across your eyes before you head hits the table. Last time I tried I saw William H. Macy and Alan Alda. Brilliant!

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

Обои для рабочего стола, посвященные IBM

Series of IBM ThinkPad wallpapers

(categories: thinkpad graphics design desktops wallpapers ibm lenovo)

Обои IBM Logo

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Time to Say Goodbye to IBM ThinkPad Logo | Logo Design Blog

"Lenovo, the world’s 4th largest PC manufacturer who bought the IBM PC business 3 years ago, has decided to stop using the IBM ThinkPad logo earlier than expected. Given its robust financial performance, this Chinese company believes it does not need the IBM brand to drive the sales of its laptops and notebooks. Instead, it will re-brand the IBM ThinkPad to Lenovo ThinkPad."

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Of all the people from my class of 2004 in Singapore, I'm one of the few who didn't go to university in Melbourne or Sydney, and it seems every few days someone feels compelled to ask me why; often from people I've never met. The conversation usually goes something like this…

• Hey Ruben, where are you thesedays?
• I’m studying in Adelaide
• Eww! Why Adelaide?
• Because.
• Lame/Boring/Stupid! What’s wrong with you?
• Your fly is undone. Ha, made you look!

I'm tired of having this same conversation, so I've decided to put all my answers on this one blog post. If you've poked fun at me then asked why I'm studying in Adelaide instead of Sydney or Melbourne, take your pick from these pre-written answers below. It's like Ikea, but these are flat packed answers!

Why are you studying in Adelaide Ruben?!

• Its different.
• I grew up in large, crowded cities and wanted a change.
• People here are friendly and the atmosphere is more relaxed.
• People here don’t have a superiority complex (Melbourne, cough!).
• Given how much time I spend at them, the new airport is schweet.
• Farmers Union Iced Coffee, Coopers Mild Ale.
• My extended family are in Sydney and I wanted a fresh start.
• More affordable.
• Rundle Mall is like a miniature Orchard Road!
• UniSA staff are extremely understanding of family issues.
• Very friendly local Twitter community.
• I’ve already lived in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Trying something new.
• The state’s name is self documenting!
• Internode, Oracle, Australian Central Credit Union.
• Metro area is a navigable size without a drivers licence.
• Trees, clear air.
• Hahndorf, Barossa Valley, Flinders Ranges.
• Public transport is easier than Sydney or Melbourne.
• Only six hour flight from Singapore, and Singapore Airlines flies direct
• Mawson Lakes is a pretty little bubble that has my uni campus, a fantastic family run coffee shop, my house, a Woolies, lots of cute ducks, a GP, a train station to the city and everything else I need :).
• Why do I have to justify my life choices to you? ;)
• If you don’t like Adelaide, don’t come :)

To be fair, any negatives?

• Half hour off timezone! Why not +0900?
• Having internet quotas (though to be fair that’s all of Australia)
• Designer Direct closing down sale ads!

Hehe Safari 4.0.4… I suppose if it doesn't download properly you get a 404 error? HA!

Moving on, I just finished downloading the new Safari 4.0.4 release. Reviewed in one sentence: its one slick, fast browser. As I said on MacRumors though (and was promptly ignored) there's still one huge reason why I can't use it.

Each new release of Safari makes it even harder to be a Firefox user, and 4.0.4 is no exception I’ll tell you that. Its beautiful and fast even on my 32bit Core Duo MBP.

The only thing holding me back still is a lack of a NoScript alternative for Safari. Having got used to blocking JavaScript and selectively enabling it only on sites I trust in Firefox for so long makes me nervous about using anything else.

Unless there is a Safari extension/plugin that does offer that functionality that I’m not aware of, granted it’s been a while since I’ve really checked.

I suppose vendor lock-in comes in many forms.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.