Rubenerd

As far as Firefox releases go, I've been so unimpressed with the latest 3.5.1 version I've done what I've never done before and reverted to an earlier version. For me it's been more agitating than the memory leak issue from back in the 2.x days because instead of just steadily getting slower this release is close to being unusable.

First of all, it crashes. A lot. On a good afternoon it will crash around 5-10 times an hour. It can restore all my tabs after a crash without any problems other than the mild irriration of re-entering in my login credentials for each page that were closed, but it's still obviously a pain. The second issue is tabs will sometimes ignore mouse input, meaning I have to use keyboard shortcuts to reach certain tabs.

I'm not sure whether it's something to do with my extensions, my Core Duo MacBook Pro platform or a combination of the two, but I've moved back to the 3.0 series with 3.0.12 and everything has been working beautifully since.

I rely on Firefox because of all my privacy and security extensions that no other browser even comes close to matching (perhaps that will change), but ironically such plugins might also be it's archilies heel when it comes to reliable performance. Bummer.

It seems somewhat ironic that my latest song obsession would be about a place I'm homesick for since I just left it again, but this time it's the Manhattan Transfer's cover of On a Little Street in Singapore, originally written in the 1930s. I no nothing about music but when I was told it's played in a minor key I could tell it's quite different. The trumpets also sound "old", probably using some specialised mutes which again I know nothing about.

You can watch and listen on YouTube.

According to those dang Wikipedias:

"On a Little Street in Singapore" is a jazz song written by Peter De Rose and Billy Hill. Though now obscure, it had some measure of popularity in the 1930s and 40s, marked by a number of high-profile performances. Artists to cover the song included Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Bert Kaempfert, and Jimmy Dorsey among others. Manhattan Transfer covered it again in 1978. The song features a haunting, lazy hook in a minor key, with numerous diminished chords. The overall impression is both languid and wistful.

They're right, it has a laid back, summer sound. Singapore has changed a bit since then (the understatement of the century) but sitting at the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel, the Riders Cafe, the restaurant at the Botanic Gardens or even a hawker centre having kaya toast for breakfast the song lyrics still fit :).

Given we moved around Australia and South-East Asia when I was growing up which firmly established me as a third culture kid, I'm glad I was able to live in a place long enough to consider it home… or at least more home than anywhere else.

This check-in was imported to the Annexe from Brightkite, one of the first geolocation social networks.

Checked into Millenia Walk - Paulaner Brauhaus (9 Raffles Boulevard #01-01 Time Square@ Millenia Walk, Singapore,, Singapore).

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Typing up the last post about how copyright infringement isn't stealing, I entered the word "movies" and was told by the spell checker it wasn't even a word.

<oldmanvoice>
Back in my day we didn't have no stinkin' movies, all we had to entertain us were still JPEGs we had to craft from raw hexadecimal code in text editors! Because it took so long we would entertain ourselves with spell checkers, which in those days were called spelling verification modules. They cost $9 million dollars for a licence, which in those days you had to order over the phone and have delivered to you on stacks of punch cards. And you felt damned good for the privileged gosh darn it! You kids today with your weird motion pictures and obscure word concatenations!
</oldmanvoice>

I think I'll stop now.

Comment by jenny on an ABC News (Australia) article in response to a person claiming they pirate material online:

It is not pirating, it is THEFT!! People who steal from others probably don’t have any ethics, oh wait, you don’t even bother to view it, its just a protest, rubbish!!

Sorry to burst your bubble jenny [sic], but media piracy is not theft, it is copyright infringement. Let me put this in a bigger font to emphasise it:

It's amazing how many people (and media companies) think they're the same thing. Those silly ads that say "you wouldn't steal a car…" that are sometimes played at the beginning of movies and DVDs don't help either.

They're business model is failing, and this is the best they can come up with? Collusion and intentionally misleading the public? Making examples of single mothers by suing them into oblivion? I would say what a load of bull but that's an insult to bovine creatures.

Three nonsense posts in a row? That's pushing it a bit isn't it? Well to be fair if this were printed in paper this would be of greater concern given paper is a physical product that's made from trees, whereas electrons are generated from trees which are decomposed, compressed and put into furnaces to drive turbines several million years later. See the difference?

Anyway logging into eBay this evening to do my daily check to make sure nobody was selling my soul in a jar or my image on a grilled cheese sandwich or an image of my soul in a jar on a grilled cheese sandwich, I was informed by the super intelligent eBay data mining service that the above list of products were tailored "just for [me]".

Now to be fair, the coffee machine is a reasonable guess, but what they didn't take into account is I already have one and it barely gets used because I spend my life studying and doing work in coffee shops.

Quite frankly, I'm not going to comment on the other items. Then again Nurie did say I look androgynous enough to cosplay as a female character. I think it's something to do with the hair. Good thing I'm getting it mostly cut off tomorrow.

As I eluded in the previous post where I was talking about eBay nonsense, earlier this week I spent two days and one night back in Kuala Lumpur. Doing errands mostly, nothing too exciting.

One thing I was able to do in the spare time before we boarded the bus back was to go to The Ikano Power Centre in Damansara. Because my family lived here from 2006-07 my dad and I often went there to pick up IKEA furniture and we'd always grab a bite to eat at the Norwegian sandwich shop. They desperately need to open a franchise in Singapore, their salmon sandwiches are incredible and the outdoor atmosphere was great.

It's funny the things we remember isn't it? Going through my blog archives here for example I remember I talked a lot about internet and phone problems in Malaysia. Also funny that the design of this site hasn't changed much at all since then either.

We moved back to Singapore in June 2007.

This check-in was imported to the Annexe from Brightkite, one of the first geolocation social networks.

Checked into near Race Course Village, , Singapore.

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One of the current trending topics as of 22:00 Singapore Time on Twitter is #crocs4ever. Of course #crocs4ever, they're made from non-biodegradable plastic!

This is of course a shameless reposting of this tweet I wrote on Twitter, just in case you were smart enough never to have got addicted to the service.

I'm back in Singapore from my quick trip to Kuala Lumpur, so I thought instead of talking about it I'd discuss something utterly pointless!

In another email conversion I've been having with a close friend for several years now, the current topic has steered (to pardon the automotive parlance pun) to personal vechiles. I can never spell the word vehicles. I personally don't have a car and given I live so close to public transport hubs in Singapore and Adelaide I don't need or want one, but I was asked hypothetically if I were to get one what would I want.

The photo above is of a Sisu Pasi, a Finnish made six-wheeled armoured personnel carrier originally designed for Finnish Defence Forces. Screw Hummers and their environmentally friendly two axles, I want the real deal! Nothing says "get out of my way pedestrians and cyclists!" like a 10mm-armour clad war machine.

The scary thing is, I could conceive of a time when we have another combination of a cheap oil price cycle and another lax administration in the US when the Big Three are bailed out for the ninth time and decide to invest in armoured personnel carriers instead of the lowly humvee. Can't you imagine rich parents picking up their kids from school in these things to save them walking two blocks? I mean, these would really give [the impression of] safety! Genius!