Rubenerd

🦅

Last weekend was a bit on the nose. In no particular order:

1. Sydney entered its 87th month of lockdown—or maybe it just feels like it—at the same time we passed more than 800 daily Delta cases. That’s not high for a city of five million, but it doesn’t want to go down.

2. Being stuck at home lead me to working and sitting outside on the balcony for a semblance of fresh air. It also helps with headaches. But backburning bushfire smoke was so thick we couldn’t even open the windows the entire time.

3. Our lone apartment bathroom is currently inoperable owing to a plumbing issue which has lead to… complications. Getting it fixed has also been an ongoing disaster. We’ve been using the shared bathroom downstairs which, given point 1, isn’t ideal.

4. The neighbors got new DOOF speakers and DOOF proceeded to DOOF start testing DOOF them from DOOF early in DOOF the morning to late at night. I couldn’t leave, I couldn’t go on the balcony, and I couldn’t DOOF sit inside without going around the proverbial DOOF.

5. A mild case of bad food lead Clara and I to have stomach aches and associated fun for much of yesterday which, given point 3, isn’t ideal.

6. Another tech journalist I used to respect, and who’s podcast was among the first I listened to back in 2004, came out as a cryptocurrency fan.

There I was, wallowing in tragic self pity. Then I get a message that a colleague and friend had to have emergency surgery, and another friend in Indonesia just lost two more of his family to Covid. I went out onto the balcony, smothered my headached brow with Tiger Balm, breathed some bushfire smoke, clutched my stomach, drilled some neighbourly dubstep into my ears, and thought hey, it could be worse!

I brushed myself off, sneezed, tripped over one of our outdoor plants, and laughed like nobody was listening. Curiously, the music stopped.

Clara and I are slowly catching up with latest generation of Hololive English debuts, which we’re watching entirely out of order. I say both of us, though of course she has seen them all already. Last night was for the HoloCouncil’s keeper of nature, Ceres Fauna.

I never thought I’d have to put a spoiler warning on a debut stream, but wow! She suckered us in good. The buildup, the subtle hints, then that mic drop with the lights and… why am I worried about spoling people, any of you interested in Hololive almost certainly know what the takeaway was by now. She owns us now… but she’s Mother Nature, so that comes as no surprise.

I appreciated that she listens to bossa nova—the other good genre of music—and is interested in playing Spore! I never thought I’d see the day. And her omage to Ina with that WAH… chef’s kiss.

I learned about the concept of desktop ricing a few weeks ago, in which creative people customise their desktops with their own themes, colours, fonts, icons, and layouts. The flexibility and wide range of packages can foster some pretty creative designs, especially after one is used to dealing with the rigid UIs of macOS and Windows.

I assumed rice referred to all the config dotfiles one would need to edit for window managers like i3, but according to Awesome Open Source:

“Rice” is a word that is commonly used to refer to making visual improvements and customizations on one’s desktop. It was inherited from the practice of customizing cheap Asian import cars to make them appear to be faster than they actually were - which was also known as “ricing”.

Even grim stereotypes aside, that connotation doesn’t sound all that positive. You’d think *nix people would be claiming their OS of choice (usually Arch) is awesome, not something cheap that a poser would tart up to look expensive. At best it sounds like a self-own.

Despite the awkward name and some of the surrounding culture, there are some great and creative designs. FlyingCake85 gets bonus points for using a stylised Rikka from SSSS.Gridman, as well as their Angel Beats audio collection:

And BrakpanMan used the Nord colour scheme to create this theme, who also has excellent anime taste:

Much of the early days of this blog were dedicated to customising my FreeBSD desktop before I started using the stock UI and icons. I’d be half tempted to do it again. Polybar looks especially intruiging.

I saw an ad recently for a new anime streaming service, and the first comment in the thread was “do not want”. I couldn’t have summarised it better myself.

I rambled about media accessibility back in February:

Whereas one could watch Netflix before (for example), now every media company is launching their own me too service. Even former computer companies… oh Apple, how far you’ve fallen. This dilutes the utility of any one platform each time, as more and more shows are splintered off into their own paid services that fewer people are likely to subscribe to in aggregate.

It’s a bizarre, though perhaps not entirely unpredictable situation. Media companies would rather silo their content into another streaming platform people will need to pay for, both financially and with their time. You can’t go to one place anymore, you have to remember which platform was hosting whichever series or show you’re interested in. Even season, in some cases.

How is any of this better than the cable TV that cord-cutters cut? And how many woodchucks is that? Not to mention compatibility and accessibility concerns; I cross my fingers each time I try to access a new streaming service on FreeBSD or Linux, because we all know how much they love catering to people on alternative platforms. And you know that each one will launch with different and arbitrary geographic restrictions.

Think about the reaction of that commenter above. New streaming services today aren’t just seen as competitors, they’re actively not wanted by the people who use them. It’s a classic web anti-pattern that puts the perceived and self-defeating needs of a business over people. There’s a reason physical media format wars were never tenable long term.

My only hope is that these services see a drop-off in the number of people watching their shows. But even then, given the history of media company obstinacy, they’d probably blame that on piracy or geopolitical squabbles, and not on the real fact that they just made it more frustrating for the fans and viewers of the very content they publish to watch.

I found a pile of old magnetic Adelaide Metrotickets from when I studied there in the late 2000s. Each used to come with a few words of inspiration on the back, which one of our figs got to reading rather intensely.

These were the five that came on this specific card:

You can’t get anywhere unless you start.

Each day comes just once in a life time.

Fear is the parent of cruelty.

Timetable/Route information call the Passenger Transport InfoLine on 8210 1000. Lines open 7am-8pm daily.

Subject to Passenger Transport Act and Regulations and Conditions of Travel.

The first three were more inspirational than the latter two.

Fun story, I thought I recognised these from back in the day. Turns out, the Paris Métro also used the same system. There’s a joke about French rubber-wheeled trains and the Adelaide O-Bahn in there somewhere.

This post is a bit weird. Even the title makes no sense. Is it machine language for games? A language for game machines? Is this post (excuse me, “piece”) an example of the aforementioned language? How could it be, given it was written by me and not a machine. I do feel a bit like a blogging machine sometimes though, but one that targets games? Or game machines? Don’t worry, the advertisement I’m about barely makes sense either.

I had my second shot of Covid vaccine yesterday. The side effects aren’t nearly as bad as the first shot, though today I’m feeling noticeably listless and foggy in the head. As opposed to foggy in the hands, which sounds like I was summoning clouds with my outstretched palms. It’s a surreal feeling; I’m not physically or mentally tired in the sense that I’ll collapse onto my keyboard, but every mental task takes twice or three times longer. I’d be more accurate in my calculations if I weren’t so foggy in the head. It’s a surreal feeling; I’m not physically or mentally…

I saw this social media advertisement for a premium game machine brand on social media that was advertising their premium game machine:

Be who you want. Go where you choose. $REDACTED is your portal to worlds where limits don’t exist and you’re free to play by your own rules.

It could be the vaccine I just had, and am relieved I just had, but what in the flame broiled burger are they talking about? I was never really a Whopper person, my favourite foods from Burger King were their excellent onion rings, and the BK chicken sandwich. Australia has Hungry Jacks which people here claim is the same thing, but it isn’t. No really, it isn’t.

Let’s break this advertisement down into its constituent components. Let’s go old school on them like fractional distillation, pulling apart each segment into individual sentences so we may figure out what in the actual ever loving sandwich this game advertisement is saying.

“Be who you want”. Assuming you can afford a premium game machine? There’s a barrier to entry to being who you want? And even if you could, how does a computer let you do that? It’s a computer. I’ve spent my life in service of these ungrateful machines, and let me tell you, they have no emotional state or desire to have you be whomever you want. That’s another thing, the grammar sounds lazy. I’m off my face right now and my sentences are more cohesive than this, if a bit on the verbose side of verbosity in which more words are said than what are necessary to convey an idea, thought process, or verbosity.

Maybe the next sentence makes more sense. “Go where you choose”. I can’t, Sydney is in lockdown. Even if you were making a sweeping statement about venturing into virtual worlds, read the damned room!

Then they say they’re “your portal to worlds where limits don’t exist”. Except, you know, the physical limitations of the system. What if I want over 9000 FPS on a Retina-grade screen? Wait, I can’t? Why not? Oh, there’s a limit is there!? I kid, PC makers are only capable of shipping rubbish screens even in 2021, let alone ones where limits don’t exist.

(“Live without limits” has to be among the most grating, pointless, nonsensical platitudes advertisers ever got their hands on. It manages to take up three words in a sentence without saying anything that’s grokkable or even factually true. I could pull three words off this pamphlet about Covid vaccines the nurse gave me and generate a more meaningful string of words. Here, let me try: “headache brings recycled”. Genius)!

Which leads us to the glorious last part of the last sentence in the advertisement, a form of media people regularly abbreviate as an “ad”, though my use of it is entirely pointless given I’ve already used the full word “advertisement” at least ten times now. We’ve yet to hit a synergy or dynamism or paradigm yet, which I insist on pronouncing para-didge-ee-um because if they didn’t want it pronounced that way they should tone down its use and substitute alternative words for it sometimes. If you don’t know what a thesaurus is, maybe you need an alternative word for it first.

Here we go: “you’re free to play by your own rules”. Oh yes, I’m sure jumping into a multiplayer game and using cheats to play the game by my own rules will go down supremely well, like the best pizza I’ve ever eaten, with pineapple, because I’m not a simpleton who can’t mix flavours without disrupting my delicate sensibilities. Pineapple on pizza is glorious. And if you don’t think a fruit belongs on pizza, what do you think the tomato sauce is made from, beetroot?! Is beetroot a vegetable? And if you think sweetness doesn’t belong on pizza, you sure as hell better not read the ingredients for that tomato sauce either. I’ll bet people who get angry about pineapple on pizza are the same ones who blanch at the idea of cheese foam at a bubble tea place, then go home to eat a cheesecake.

This has been a Weekend Post on the Rubenerd Blog. Thank you. I’m going to go lie down.

It’s hard to keep up with all the Hololive news over the last week. Or the last month; we’re still not current with IRyS despite her debuting for Hololive English a month ago. Where would we be during Covid lockdown and home isolation without these entertaining people (home obviously, it was a metaphor. Wait, who am I talking to)?

Clara and I finally caught up with our favourite Hololive Indonesia character’s outfit reveal yesterday. Batik, a cute bob, and glasses!? Bagus!

Reine now not only has the best Minecraft BGM, but the best shawl.

I think I’ve set a new weekly record for the number of posts including a spelling, grammar, or punctuation mistkae. Wiat, mistake. WAIT, mistake. Thanks to all of you who sent corrections, and others who saw the mistakes, shook your heads in bemusement, and moved on.

People ask me how I blog regularly. Turns out it’s the same way that all but guarantees such linguistic issues. Are linguistic issues limited to speech? Most of my posts are written within the space of a few minutes, if that. I find the stream of conciousness approach easier to write, and sounds more conversational when read back.

Long-form posts tend to be written on weekends. Those are ones that have more research, maybe inline images, and references. With hindsight I should have classified them differently from posts like this, so you could only read long-form content if you wanted. I suppose I could write a script to tag each post with more than a specified number of words. I’ll just add that to the burgeoning one day pile, along with migrating my Jekyll paper theme to Hugo to replace this one, and learning how to fry garlic without it spitting everywhere.

I can’t remember who’s book on writing I gleaned this from, but they suggested the best way to write is in “typewriter” mode without a backspace key. It forces you to get your ideas down so you can wordsmith them later if needed. It’s such a simple idea, but it’s the best bit of advice I’ve ever read.

Ideas are what are import to me, not flair or style. As I’m sure you’ve noticed!

Big Brain and Certified Legend Simon Whistler has made the decision to change the name of YouTube’s most excellent YouTube channel (allegedly) to Brain Blaze. I was enjoying the dichotomy between “business” and the actual topics Danny ended up writing for Simon each week, but I approve. I’m sure he was waiting with baited breath for that.

(Why would you bait someone’s breath? I don’t want a bass flying into my mouth from a river or some sh•t. Also, wouldn’t putting bait in your mouth taste awful? Better than being stuck in a basement I suppose, without the finest of vintage memes. Danny [sic], chill)!

I purched the merch yesterday to celebrate this historic milestone of one of my favourite independent media creators, and to get something with Business Blazyness while I still can. You should too. Also, check out Megaprojects, one of his many other channels I find delightful that I’ve mentioned here before. Geographics is another favourite.

Did I just do an unsponsored ad for Simon? Yes. But haughtiness aside, his videos have made living through Covid, quarantines, and lockdown that much more tolerable. I appreciate all the laughs and thought he’s brought during These Times™ across his three hundred or so channels. Purch some merch, don’t make me come over there. Because I’m stuck at home, and it’d be difficult.