Rubenerd

Has anyone else been irritated by the fact that Google obfuscates URIs for websites if you’re logged in? It’s been driving me batty, whenever I’ve found a site URI in Google, right clicked to save the link, then paste it into my blog, instead of getting the URI presented on the search page I get a string of alphabet soup nonsense!

For example, doing a search for J-Walk and copying the link for the first result won’t give you http://j-walkblog.com/, it will get you something similar to this:

http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&source=web&c
t=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fj-walkblog.com%2F&ei=rhPMSbnSE4G0s
dsAOSx9ScCg&usg=SOUPYMESSdq1i1cl6JCD_Q6SJii5NMBoKCA&sig2=
9aIRwQlX2iDhM5HZlN-8ivA

What’s curious (and maddeningly misleading!) is the link in the status bar of the browser points to the right link without any of this padding.

This is one thing I’ll concede to the Windows Live Search (or whatever name they’re using now) crew, they thankfully don’t do this. Neither does Yahoo.

Michael Franks and The Trashmen

I’ve noticed a reoccurring theme of posts on the J-Walk Blog wherein either John Walkenbach (or his stunt double) searches his music library for song titles based on the presence of a particular word. Given what today is, I figure it’s only fitting I do something just as fun and utterly unproductive myself.

For example, here is a list of songs from my music library on my MacBook Pro that contain the following words. Granted I only have a few gigs on music on here compared to my desktop back in Singapore, but it’s a start.

Shampoo

1. In Search of the Perfect Shampoo — Michael Franks, Burchfield Nines

Eggplant

1. Eggplant — Michael Franks, The Art of Tea

Toyko

1. Rainy Night in Tokyo — Michael Franks, Tiger in the Rain

Dragonfly

1. Dragonfly Summer — Michael Franks, title song

With all this talk about words in songs though, we mustn’t forget that The Bird is the Word. The bird bird bird. The bird is the word. Papa-oom-mow-mow-mow. Papa-oom-mow-mow-mow. Don’t you know about the bird? Everybody knows that the bird is the word!

Now if you’d excuse me, I’m off to find my way out of Sanpaku while in Search of the Perfect Shampoo. Here’s hoping I don’t get Popsicle Toes along the way.

Welcome to your sixth grilled cheese sandwich observation lesson. Feel free to take notes.

As far as I know this is not a grilled cheese sandwich, and quite frankly it concerns me that you think it is. Please seek counselling.

Previous lessons

• Lesson five on 2008.12.07
• Lesson four on 2008.11.14
• Lesson three on 2008.11.04
• Lesson two on 2008.08.21
• Lesson one on 2008.08.12

The last photo I took with my S9600 before moving up to a Nikon D60… how fitting!

I think I’ve talked about this on the Rubenerd Show many times, but I have some time here to go on a bit of a rant and I’m full of coffee, so here I go!

Why is it that as a foreign national I’m treated better in Singapore by immigration officials and the government than I am in my birth country of Australia of which I’m a citizen?

It’s really, really pervasive in all aspects of live back here since I’ve started studying part time. Dealing with the people at the airport in Adelaide is a cakewalk compared to Sydney where I’ve flown many times to visit family, but it’s still hard. I suspect the Federal Government has my name flagged on their computer systems as someone who’s spent more time overseas, because whenever I land I’m asked questions that I would think would only be asked of visitors. When I fill out my immigration arrival card, I’m always asked in a sly voice whether I really know where the address I’ve written as my place of residence really is. I’ve been tempted on more than one occasion to put on a fake accent and reply "uh yeah, the place with the kangaroos" but I haven’t been game!

Compare this to Singapore where I fly in, walk through the International queue and present my passport where the friendly person at the counter stamps my passport with a 3 month pass, hands me a mint from the dish on the counter and sends me on my way without any questions other than whether my flight was good and if I knew that the Flying Dutchman now has a new breakfast radio show lineup. This hasn’t been an isolated affair; I have been treated this way every single time I’ve flown in and out, for over 12 years. I’m not a citizen of Singapore, until I get my degree finalised I’m not even a PR or someone on a worker’s pass, and yet I’m treated with more respect and kindness than Australian immigration!

Ominously overcast!

Now I suppose there’s something going on here to do with recognising where I spend my time, where I spend my money and so forth. Perhaps the Singaporean government is pleased to welcome back to their country an expat kid who’s father is a high powered businessman and scientist who chose to work in Singapore and therefore pay all his taxes here. By comparison, the Aussies probably see someone who would prefer to spend his money and live overseas than back home. "Brain drain" and whatnot.

I have noticed a small minority of Australians really resent expats and especially children of expats who say they’ll be moving back overseas because they see us as being unpatriotic and abandoning our country. I’ve overheard people in coffee shops talking about how people like me should have our passports revoked and we should never be allowed to come back here. Certainly when dealing with government authorities and banks here I sometimes feel as though I may as well be a foreigner.

I could also talk about the disaster with dealing with the Australian authorities compared to the Singaporean police and medical services when my mum died in Singapore around Christmas 2007, but I think I’ll leave it at that.

I love Australia, it’s one of the most beautiful places on Earth, my family from my mothers side all live here, I have many friends here. I just wish that because I also love another city in another country and have friends there where I hope to live part of my life someday, I wasn’t treated like such an outcast whenever I want or need to do something. I’d think in the 21st century there are more people like me than ever before, isn’t it time to be more flexible?

Perhaps I need to pick up German or Japanese again and speak in one of them next time I’m at an Aussie airport to really make them earn their money! Or would that be pushing it? ^_^

Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam…

Thought I’d give you all another quick update regarding my spam efforts. The Akismet plugin hasn’t had to filter any spam now for weeks because TanTanNoodles Simple Spam Filer has been blocking all of them! Not 99.99% or some completely fabricated Google number, I really mean all of them!

According to it’s configuration screen, it’s blocked 18914 spam messages since going online recently. I couldn’t be happier with the results.

If you were planning to use the Buy Ruben a Coffee link on the side of the site here today, I encourage you instead if you have a WordPress blog to download SSF and donate to it’s creator instead.

You can also read my Simple Spam Filter review, and the followup post.

Class 95FM in Singapore, one of the stations I tuned into on a regular basis from Adelaide

Back on the 11th of this month I wrote a post talking about the coming demise of Singapore internet radio. It was even picked up by SingaporeSurf, a Singapore news aggregation site studiously run and maintained by Heng-Cheong Leong:

Is It RIP For Singapore Internet Radio? Probably.
by Rubenerd

I’m going to be blunt, it’s for the same reason why internet radio has been stifled so many times in the US: arrogant old media authorities who pretend to be working in the interests of artists and the public when in fact they’re trying to milk their dying cash cows for all they’re worth and crush new technologies that could be percieved as a threat.

Well according to Channel News Asia again, Tuesday was the official last day of streaming Singapore internet radio. No more will I or Jacky who commented on my previous post will be able to listen to Singapore radio from overseas to keep ourselves up to date with goings on back home.

I guess it’s always the case that people feel more strongly when issues affect them personally; in this case I’ve personally been bitten by greedy old media companies for the second time in my life, and to put it bluntly it’s made me mad.

Pardon my French, but to said greedy media companies: bite me.

Aussie PM Kevin Rudd with Barack Obama

Reading the Adelaide Advertiser online this morning I noticed this photo of Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama. According to the article, Kev and Barack have had their first formal meeting which aside from some awkwardness regarding troop deployments in Afghanistan (which most Australian’s don’t support), it went really well.

Barack Obama gives Kevin Rudd the thumbs up

The US President has made much of his rapport with the Prime Minister after their first face to face talks in Washington. Reports of the meeting carried around the world have described the pair as political "soul mates".

"I think he’s doing a terrific job, and I’m looking forward to partnering with him for some years to come," Mr Obama said after meeting Mr Rudd for more than an hour.

Mr Rudd has said it was good to have the US "back on board" on world economics and global warming.

I just have to say this, right up front, that the relief I feel seeing our new PM with America’s new President is overwhelming. Whenever I saw photos of our former conservative PM John Howard standing with George W. Bush it made me shiver and cringe more than nails on a blackboard. To be fair, they were suited for each other!

An automatically posted Clipmarks blog entry failing validation

Having now used the Clipmarks service for a day now, I have to say I’m impressed. The interface for their Firefox plugin could use a bit of polishing but other than that it’s fast and easy to use, and the blog export feature after I’ve saved a block of text is insanely convenient… almost!

ASIDE: I’ve largely tried to avoid sites like this because I’m paranoid about having my own data locked away somewhere that if I chose to move to another platform or service I’d be stuck, but the fact Clipmarks lets me export all my items to my own blog makes me feel much better.

There are just three small problems preventing me going crazy and using this service to tag and subsequently share everything I come across with you all here:

1. Their white colour scheme doesn’t match other posts on this site at all.

2. It doesn’t automagically create grilled cheese sandwiches after it’s automatically posted entries to my blog after I’ve bookmarked something

3. The resulting automatically generated posts aren’t XHTML 1.0 Strict or even valid HTML 4.01, even if the quoted material was. They also generate a gigantic amount of HTML code for just showing what I’ve quoted plus a few links.

So close, and yet so far!

I can solve these problems by modifying the source HTML for each Clipmarks generated blog post after they’re published, but that negates any benefit of using an automated service in the first place!

I might contact the people running Clipmarks asking about whether future versions will have custom colours and XHTML validation options. If they ever implemented these features, this service might become more addictive than coffee! If they’re strapped for cash and time, I’d gladly pay a few bucks to unlock "advanced features".

Clipmarked from Slashdot:

By xenobyte (446878) on Monday March 23, @05:35PM (#27295215)

Good for them if they did.

This whole censorship scheme is deeply flawed and morally bankrupt. Any society that feel the need to implement censorship in order to ‘function’ is already badly broken and censorship will only prolong the suffering and delay the inevitable, making it unavoidable. If there really is a need to prevent access to something, use sound advice and education so the need to access ‘the forbidden’ goes away. It is this need to will be the downfall of any society that use censorship because the human spirit can never be kept in a cage, no matter how many bars and locks you add to it.

Hummer outside the Boatdeck Cafe yesterday

Yesterday I noticed on Google Reader that Jim Kloss approved of my tweet regarding a Hummer which had parked just outside the Boatdeck Cafe I was having a coffee of all things in:

@toddtyrtle I saw a Hummer parked here in Adelaide this morning. First time I’ve ever felt the need to put a rude sticker on a car.

Well in the spirit of this message, here’s that Hummer taken with my iPhone yesterday. Granted at least it’s the smallest model I think, but it still looks like a monster compared to the little Toyota sedan next to it.

I’m not even going that far, I’m learning how to ride a motor scooter so I can zip around town on a Piaggio when I miss the bus or train here and waiting 45 minutes for the next one isn’t feasible.

My dad says a 100cc model up is safer than a 50cc despite my insistence I don’t need anything powerful at all, because he says with the extra power you can avoid messy situations.

The Aussie Piaggio website

The Aussie Piaggio website is pretty spiffy, you can check out all their models and even the licence requirements for each state! I’ve been told by friends here that depending on how you look at it, South Australia is either one of the best states to learn to drive and ride or one of the worst because they’re much stricter. I’m leaning towards the former.

I love how I can go so far off topic that I start talking about scooters when I take a photo of a Hummer. Do either even have anything to do with the internet or computer software?