Rubenerd

Screenshot is from my MacBook Pro taken on the 06th of September 2007. Yup, I was still running Mac OS X Tiger!

Cross pollination is a good thing. If you don't think it's a good thing then you're against flowers. You're not… against flowers are you? More to the point, that evil twisted genius Zombie Skittles has used two blog posts here recently as the basis for his own (Do You Have Flybuys? referencing Okay Woolies, you win and Funfact Bombshell referencing Rubenerd Fun Fact #80), so it seems only fitting for me to do the same with one of his.

For my derivative work I've elected his post titled On This Day in which he describes the following:

I have decided to come clean and admit to you all that on this day four years ago I entered a convenience store with a poster tube painted to look like a bazooka and demanded they hand over all their issues of Better Homes and Gardens otherwise I’d blow away their frozen food section. The owner called my bluff and had me placed under citizens arrest for making a mockery of World War II artillery by the Adelaide Historical Society of Southern Sri Lanka. True story.

Underneath this baffling admission he listed a series of things which he believed happened On This Day, which is clever because that premise also happened to be the title of his blog post. I've decided to blatantly copy him, by listing what happened on my blog On This Day being the 06th of September, and what happened around the world.

On this day on my blog

• in 2009 I was writing a weird blog post titled On this day…
• in 2008 I was rendering sports commentators obsolete
• in 2007 I was coming to terms with Twitter being down and my Twitter addiction
• in 2007 I was wishing aloud about things I wanted to see in 2007 iPods!
• in 2006 I tried to scare my dad by saying I wanted a Peugeot 307 HDi
• in 2006 I had updated my logos which have barely changed since
• in 2006 I was having a late night (also hasn’t changed)
• in 2006 I was also quoting Bender
• in 2005 I was recording a Rubenerd Show which I used to release the following day

On this day around the world

• A lottery company announced a bogus winner and kept the money for themselves
• A grilled cheese sandwich which was left out to cool caused subsequent gastrointestinal stress for a meek house cat
• Queen Elizabeth II had her plumbing checked out
• In a surprisingly well choreographed high octane fight scene, two people with the same name started a brawl and unwittingly took out a noticeboard when they were called for a plastic surgery appointment at the same time
• A dimwitted hamster fell asleep after crawling under a blanket and thinking it was night
• A cute, shy women slightly older than Ruben Schade briefly talked to him by asking if he had seen her boyfriend anywhere
• Several hundred people around the world dropped entire cartons of eggs onto the floor that they had just purchased soliciting various profanities in different languages
• A tapir skidded on a patch of mud but was able to maintain it’s dignity and composure by performing a perfect dismount
• A twisted person took the term for a gymnastics move to mean something else
• All of the Zombie’s Skittles and all the Kings Men, could not make Ruben Write a Succinct Blog Post Again.

Despite studying it again for several weeks, every time I see I have a Java "Class" on my timetable I chuckle a bit. If you haven't ever done Java or other object oriented programming before, Java is made up of classes, therefore the whole glorious thing is a delicious pun. Feel free to laugh.

Tee hee, Java classes.

On a slightly related note, who here thinks the old, impressionist Java logo that I've included here was better than their new stylised one? I can't be the only one. Or perhaps I don't want to know.

Since my MacBook Pro's latest in a long and painful run of hardware problems I've been entertaining the idea that I might have to replace it sooner than I thought. Since I got my iBook G3 back in 2001 it's never crossed my mind to ever look at laptops other than Macs, talk about brand loyalty!

A lot has changed with me since I got my MacBook Pro in 2006 though. For one thing, I'd barely used Linux in any serious way before then and now I'm more than comfortable with FreeBSD and several Linux distributions. The vast majority of the software I use on my Mac are cross platform that were originally designed for Linux such as OpenOffice.org, Gnumeric, VLC, The Gimp, UFRAW, Inkscape, Thunderbird, Firefox and Midnight Commander. When I use my ThinkPad X40 "netbook" with Debian Linux, I've been surprised by how ergonomic it is to use and how little I've missed from my Mac other than perhaps fonts, and iTunes to syncronise my iTelephone.

Brace yourselves!

I think I could picture myself not using an Apple computer. Have you picked yourself off the floor yet? Apple computers have always been a pleasure to use and Mac OS X is fantastic, but they've never been the most reliable machines with hardware, at least in my own experience.

As I've said many times, the other line of computers I've always liked alongside Apples have been ThinkPads, and looking at the specifications for their T400s and the T400 with discrete graphics they're are very competitive, sleek machines for much less than a MacBook Pro. Not only that, but they have expansion slots not just a SD card adapter and a decent number of USB ports! Of course the ThinkPad will come with some ugly flavour of Windows not Mac OS X, but that's something that can be overwritten with a real OS. Wonder if you can get refunds on Windows licences?

I'm bluffing and kidding myself of course, I'll probably get a unibody MacBook Pro when I can afford it, but like a religious person who used to be certain they knew their creator but has read one too many books on evolution and now has small inkling of doubt, if I do decide to get a Mac again, it won't be after giving a PC serious consideration for the first time in 8 years. That's already a huge change for me. Don't think Steve will lose much sleep though as long as I'm still buying.

I value government integrity and I'm willing to pay for it!

This evening while grabbing a bite to eat I made the mistake of reading the Adelaide Sunday Mail. I know, I know, it was reckless and irresponsible, but sometimes I feel as though with my news sources from around the world on Twitter and predominately from Singapore I forget about more local news. Ah but The Sunday Mail tabloid newspaper has nothing to do with news… touché sir/madam.

What I did read though in the opinion section was a brief letter from someone in Hahndorf (beautiful place in the Adelaide Hills) talking about how having a registry of lobbyists won't solve any problems. Now right off the bat I don't have the faintest idea what this proposed lobbyist registry is, but I'm assuming its something lobbyists have to register with before they can pay politicians to do their bidding. Maybe?

Onto the primary issue though: can anyone actually explain to me why lobbyists are tolerated at all? Isn't the idea of paying off or financially persuading a politician to advance your position in the hopes of legislation in your favour going against everything democracy stands for? Doesn't lobbying concentrate the power in the hands of the few instead of the many that democracy is supposed to be about?

I'm not a legal student, but I am an economics student (and computer science, but not sure what bearing that has) and all I see of lobbying from my perspective is the means for the rich or powerful in business to institute change or to get around perceived government "problems" in their businesses which may or may not be in place for a reason. For example, not being allowed to dump waste into rivers or allowing people to grill cheese sandwiches in areas where the population is lactose intolerant.

Leaving aside the more sarcastic answers that could be given, why is it that lobbying is legal in most democracies? Do they serve a legitimate function I'm not aware of? Am I being overly simplistic by dismissing them?

Yesterday I talked about how my MacBook Pro's screen backlight seemed to have died. It's as if the brightness has been set to 0 and no amount of keyboard button pressing or changing the brightness slider in the Display prefpane made any difference. If I shine a torch at the screen I can just barely make out a picture though, which led me to believe it wasn't the display itself that was dead.

I contacted an Apple support representative this morning and described the symptoms and initially he wanted to know if I'd installed Snow Leopard. Turns out some people's MacBooks and MacBook Pros from 2006 have been having problems with black screens, but that a restart fixed it. Unfortunately I had already rebooted several times and reset the PRAM and PMU with no effect but because I could still make out images on the display he told me it was probably an issue with the inverter board and not the display.

This seems to echo what iFixIt says:

My screen looks black, but I can see very faint graphics on it.

Symptoms of this are a dark screen, but everything else seems to be running. If you get in close with a flashlight, you can usually see the image faintly.

If your backlight isn’t working, the inverter may be bad. Other parts that may be bad are the display or the logic board. If your backlight fails intermittently while moving the display, the problem is with the inverter cables.

I try to see the positive side to everything (even if most of the time I fail miserably) so I'm just glad it's not a problem with the display itself or the graphics chip which would have cost well over a thousand dollars to fix. A replacement inverter is less than $50, but apparently they're very complicated to install, so I'm going to drop it off at the Apple repair centre in the city on Monday and (for want of a better phrase) count my blessings. I could try to fix it myself, but I don't want to end up with more problems!

The timing could not have been worse, but there you go.

"Worried"

I've had such wild, runaway success with my Know Your Anime Moods blog post series with so much overwhelmingly positive feedback (hack cough splutter) I figure Friday is as good a day as any to compile another. I present to you Know your Akiyama Mio moods II, taken from episode 04 of K-On. Feel free to take notes, and refer to Know your Akiyama Mio Moods I if you missed it. Arigato and all that.

This post is not intended as a replacement for legal counsel and comes with no warranty expressed or implied.

"Worried (and… worried)"

"Intrigued (and worried)"

"Scheming (and worried)"

"Eh, probably more worried again"

When I turned on my first generation Core Duo MacBook Pro I got in early 2006 this evening the backlight refuses to turn on using the function keys on the keyboard. All other keyboard functions are fine.

If I shine a torch at the screen I can just barely make out the windows and can adjust the brightness slider in the Display prefpanel, but nothing happens. Using an external monitor I can use the machine, but the internal display is still black.

Not sure whether this is a problem with Snow Leopard, I sure as heck hope so but it's looking increasingly unlikely. I didn't have the backlight Snow Leopard installation problem, but could this be related?

Things I've tried so far and have failed:

1. Resetting the PRAM (three times)
2. Resetting the PMU

This is really serious. I need to take this machine to classes. If it's a hardware failure and I can only use an external display, I'm in big trouble.

Even before my family left Australia to move to Singapore, I remember every time we went to our nearby Coles supermarket we'd be asked if we had a FlyBuys card. I think it was the same with Myer, Kmart and Target too. Good afternoon, do you have FlyBuys? Hello, do you have your FlyBuys today? Hi there, are you a FlyBuys cardholder? Do you have FlyBuys? Good morning, is that a FlyBuys card? FlyBuys? FLYBUYS?! I'll show you FlyBuys, it's right next to my STOP ASKING ME THAT card!

When I started studying here and living part time in Mawson Lakes I got used to walking to the Woolies down at Mawson Central, and fortunately up until last year they didn't have such a loyalty card programme, but now they do. Good afternoon, do you have an Everyday Rewards card? Hi there, got an Everyday Rewards card? ARGH!

Call it caving in or succumbing to pressure, but decided to give up and sign up for a Woolworths Everyday Rewards card. I figure when I make it to the checkout I can show them this piece of plastic which is akin to a giant sign asking them not to ask whether I have an Everyday Rewards card. It's like being a lightning fast ninja, but without all the physical exertion and mental training.

They'll no doubt keep track of what I purchase and use it for advertising purposes, but it's a small price to pay for my sanity. Heck, I might even get a couple of free things after I've spent money at that same Woolworths every week for fifty years or however long it takes.

I think I also got a Qantas Frequent Flyer account too. Can I transfer them to Singapore Airlines you think? ;).

I remember reading on one of the Mac forums I frequent that somebody thought it wasn't the major changes that Apple makes to it's software that set it apart from other vendors, it's the little, less publicised things that make their systems that much more of a pleasure to use in little but meaningful ways. Aside from a couple of of blunders I completely agree.

Case in point, Snow Leopard comes bundled with a new monospace font called Menlo which is shaping (ha, pun) out to be one of my favourite new features. If you haven't noticed it, launch Font Book.app and bask in its awesomeness!

If you're on Snow Leopard reading this, you should be able to tell the difference:

This is Monaco, my previous favourite
This is Andele Mono, from the Home Brew Terminal theme
This is Menlo, my new favourite monospaced font!

I'm not a graphics designer so I don't know the language I'm supposed to use when describing fonts, ligatures, serifs and the like but Menlo is brilliant. It's as if they took Monaco and Fixedsys from the early Windows and DOS days and made a slightly more "retro modern" typeface. Because each character is slightly shorter, lines of text also seem more evenly spaced. The font smoothing and anti-aliasing also look really good.

I've set Menlo as my default font in Terminal.app and TextMate and am thorougly loving it. I've also gone ahead and added it to my CSS for this site, so if you're running Snow Leopard you'll see it in code samples! Font porn?

code, pre, .mono, .grilled_cheese_sandwich {
    /* Mac, Mac, FLOSS, Windows, All */
    font-family: Menlo, Monaco, "DejaVu Sans Mono",
        "Lucida Console", monospace;
}

As much as I love Linux and FreeBSD desktop environments like Gnome and Xfce, the presentation of fonts and typefaces still keep me looking forward to programming and working on my Mac above all else, though they are improving in leaps and bounds. I don't consider Windows to be a viable contender with it's subpar onscreen font rendering.

Time to quickly share some more photos I remember I took earlier today with my iTelephone before I head off to bed.

With all the recent rain Mawson Lakes has been getting a lot more ducks quietly waddling along and quacking. Perhaps these ducks grew up around the sounds of people and are used to us, because unlike the other birds that fly away as soon as you approach them, these are more than happy to walk over and say hello.

I was walking back from the post office this afternoon and saw these two rather well fed little ducks walking alongside me. I sat down on the footpath cross-legged and reached out with my hand and they came over and started tapping on my fingers :). I was even able to pat them lightly on their heads before I stood up and kept walking.

As with watching a silly series like K-On, when you're dealing with a lot of stress sometimes it's worth taking time out and doing something like this to make you feel happy again, even if only for a short while.

Quack quack :)