Rubenerd

Did that heading grab your attention? Yes, on the same day I posted a comment about how I dislike misleading headlines, I am guilty of doing the same thing. Aren't I a little stinker?

Yes the language translation service Altavista Babel Fish is no more. If you click on Babel Fish Translation in the footer of the AltaVista home page, you're redirected to Yahoo Babel Fish.

One more nail in the coffin of what was once one of the web's greatest search engines. I remember back when we first got internet access over 10 years ago, back when I was still a starry eyed child in primary school. AltaVista, HotBot, Looksmart, Infoseek (before it changed to Go), Lycos, Northern Light, GoTo (before Overture), Yahoo… they were sites you went to when you wanted to find things. I remember filling my bookmark toolbar in Netscape with links to these sites so whenever I needed to research an assignment, I'd try each engine one after the other. They all had different directories and different indexes (HotBot aside, but I preferred the style). Now we have Google, Yahoo, Ask… and… Google.

For what it's worth, I much preferred AltaVista's slick mountain logo. The new AltaVista is just a shell to Yahoo anyway.

Daylight Savings has started in most of Australia today. On a Sunday! We can't even get a break from nonsense on Sundays anymore or something!

Below is a very scientific chart I created to help my Aussie readers out, as well as the official announcement information from the Australian Federal Government peoples.

Daylight Saving Time is observed in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory and has been synchronised across these states. Western Australia began a three year trial of daylight saving on 3 December 2006. Queensland and the Northern Territory do not observe daylight saving.

Across the south-eastern states and the ACT, daylight saving for future summers begins at 2am Eastern Standard Time on the first Sunday in October and ends at 2am Eastern Standard Time (3am summer time) on the first Sunday in April.

For Western Australia, daylight saving in 2008 will begin at 2am Western Standard Time on the last Sunday in October and end at 2am Western Standard Time (3am summer time) on the last Sunday in March 2009.

Where daylight saving is being observed:

• AEST becomes Australian Eastern Daylight Time (AEDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +11.
• ACST becomes Australian Central Daylight Time (ACDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +10 ½.
• AWST becomes Australian Western Daylight Time (AWDT), and clocks are advanced to UTC +9.

This post has nothing to do whatsoever with Czech Airlines.
Photo by "Captainm" on Wikimedia Commons

It's been an eventful Sunday for some people in Australia: passengers across the country were stranded around 13:00 Australian Eastern / 12:30 Australian Central time due to a serious computer glitch in the Australian airline Jetstar's check-in systems. According to a Jetstar spokesperson, a power glitch was probably responsible. And here's me thinking airlines all had N+1 redundancy given that they essentially hold people's lives in their hands everyday. Huh.

Aside from thanking my lucky stars (get it, Jetstar? Stars? Oh come on, that was a quality joke) that I wasn't flying anywhere in Australia on Jetstar today, I found it amusing how different media outlets and newspapers reported the problem. The articles themselves were largely copied from press releases, but some of the headlines were obviously written to play up and overemphasise the severity of the situation through what I suspect was an intentional use of a double entendre.

ASIDE: For my ESL readers who don’t know, a double entendre refers to a phrase that has several meanings in the context that it was given, similar to a pun.

Jetstar Airbus A330 in Singapore. Photo by "My name" on Wikimedia Commons

For example, this is how the always reliable Adelaide 'tiser chose to report the problem:

Computer glitch delays Jetstar flights
A GLITCH in Jetstar’s computer check-in system has caused delays for passengers across Australia today.

The same story in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Jetstar check-in glitch hits passengers
A glitch in Jetstar’s computer check-in system has caused delays for passengers across Australia.

And here’s the same story on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp) News:

Thousands of Jetstar passengers stranded after crash
Thousands of Jetstar passengers are facing delays at airports across the country after a national outage of the airlines’ computer check-in system.

The ABC is the government funded news and television network that I tend to rely on more than the commercial news sources in Australia, though this sensationalist headline did remind me not to take everything I read at face value!

UPDATE: Before I even hit the Publish button for this post, the ABC has revised the headline to read: "Thousands of Jetstar passengers stranded after computer crash". Much better than their misleading and far more disastrous headline above, but still using the word "crash" seems to be a bit tacky when we're discussing aviation.

I guess it's true what John C. Dvorak has always said: the media can spin anything to make a situation sound better or worse by wrapping the facts in vastly different adjectives. Good thing I would never be caught dead doing anything like that here on the Rubenerd Blog. Uh, yeah.

The Andy Kaufman, the self professed living comedian who supposedly faked his death sometime between 1912 and 2041 has a series of questions on his website, surprisingly titled AndyKaufmanLives.com.

It took me less than 5 minutes to finish it with what I 110% guarantee are all the SUPERIOR as well as CORRECT answers that were all figured out after months of laborious research. Now it's just a matter of claiming my prize. Prize is spelt with a "z" right? To help me explain the salience in my answers (salience?), I'm going to employ some folks from Code Geass. The people from Clannad were getting fed up with my ramblings.

ASIDE:I believe it’s related to Santa Clause, Christ and grilled cheese sandwiches as part of a mission to expose covered briefcases that walk away from 70s era bubble walls. Slovakia is on the damned moon people, wake up from your coffee and smell the astroturf! It’s not hard to glance, pretend, expose or sauté mushrooms, all you need is a beginning, a middle and an end-faced bromide concentrate that doesn’t exist, but wishes it did. Damn it wishes it did. Like Baked Alberta. Wait, that was the wrong state.

I could be wrong though, I mean, there’s a first time for everything right?

Man on the Moon

1. WE WANT THE TRUTH, BAG THE TRUTH MY FATHER SAID, LOADED
2. He’s very creative, yes I am the babish bagman team oarswomen
3. Do impressions maybe some bean macaroni
4. He plans these things he takes over and helps absorb
5. Mr. Kaufman gets his own naughty Sabbath

Andy Kaufman Revealed

1. THE DEPTH OF THE CONSPIRACY WAS WITH WAG MACE
2. I said I was going to look for a walker but ran oat to the bowls
3. To Andy everything was theater and this was just more rock posture
4. It was Wednesday May 16 1984 and I had grey hose
5. Work them up get them angry stomping their feet ablaze, less faceless

Abel Raises Cain

1. SHORTLY AFTER HAM MADNESS, MY FABRIC DIED OF A HEART ATTACK
2. Taste it and say that’s Kapsiki not babka
3. Because this idea was so absurd at the time it sparked an Icelandic Ianthina
4. At this time I think we shoold talk about cannabis-resin
5. Traffic had come to a halt because a bull and a cow with heptic sap

The Book of Illusions

1. SUCH A BRILLIANT BOOK MR. ZIMMER YOU HAVE THE ROBOT TO KISS THE RAIL SMILE
2. Oh martin Claire says don’t be Calippic
3. I woold like to meet Hector Mann but how can I be sure he is alive to the baba
4. After those first hectic minutes there was a sabayon of cake
5. There is an irrefutable logic to Claire’s statement: Maglip kills his falafel

Bubba Ho-Tep

1. MR. KENNEDY ASK NOT WHAT YOUR ROAD HACK CAN DO FAN
2. It’s time for that laelia toast abbey
3. Big damn bugs alright the size of my fist the size of a peanut butter and banana sandwich man what do I care?
4. Well well well if it isn’t my favorite pachisi hat, and you!
5. What kind of life he had you know his kids his gaddingly hip losers

Lost in the Funhouse

1. WITH THE HELP OF MARTY KLEIN AND THE TALE OF OATEN ABACUS
2. George Shapiro and Howard West had sold him to the aberrant baked-potato cabaret
3. George quickly started selling Foreign Man with nagging sausage
4. Tony Clifton was his name although nobody in New York km/h or hPa
5. The movie was shot at Sambo’s and there was no Saigon

Eddie and the Cruisers

1. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU HAD THE TAPES DOC TWO MA JAWS TWO MA
2. I want something great I want something nobody’s else does bakery
3. In the morning they told me Eddie was gone they hadn’t found his ball
4. When you’re hot you’re hot where you been hiding yourself with Moe
5. Can I help you guys yeah tell Tony Eddie and the cruisers ass hats

The Rampler #23 through #30

1. (FROM #23) WHO’S ANDY KAUFMAN A LOT OF TRIP WIRES JUST HAVE NO IDEA
2. (FROM #24) So you don’t think we’re in some kind of a tabour shoe
3. (FROM #25) What is this thing called I always see this stupid thing in tacky shells patterns
4. (FROM #26) The chance that it’s the real andy kaufman is pachinko kool or law
5. (FROM #27) People just naturally walk at different speeds so they are not like really next to Y2K

Thank you everyone. Questions, comments and suggestions are welcome and will be answered in the reverse order received, so make sure you collate your questions, comments and suggestions in advance so you all know who should post in what order.

Sarah Palin seen here with John McCain opening Noah's Ark. Photo by Rachael Dickson on Wikipedia

It's another example of thinking a situation or person couldn't possibly get any worse, then realising that your error in judgement was bigger than a pair of pigs with lipstick. In the States this is old news already but I only just picked it up: the Vice Presidential nominee for the Republicans Sarah Palin claims the fact she can see Russia from her home in Alaska somehow gives her diplomatic experience with them.

From the Huffington Post's transcript of a televised interview:

COURIC: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land– boundary that we have with– Canada. It– it’s funny that a comment like that was– kind of made to– cari– I don’t know, you know? Reporters–

COURIC: Mock?

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that’s the word, yeah.

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our– our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They’re in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia–

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We– we do– it’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is– from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to– to our state.

I'm so glad I live in a country like Australia that has a Parliamentary system of government, meaning we vote for every single person we want in office. The Prime Minister can't appoint anyone he or she wants, only people who hold seats in electorates, and even if his or her party wins, if they lose their electoral seat they can't be PM. This also means technically we can't know for sure who the deputy PM will be until after elections and electorate votes are tallied.

It also means that we are completely immune from corruption and head smacking acts of stupidity in our elected officials.

Despite really like Ruby and Perl, due to time constraints and other obligations I'm still reluctantly using WordPress and PHP on most of my blog powered sites including this one. Until I make the desperatly wanted switch, WP news still affects me and I take a somewhat interested view of what's going on. Not exactly a glowing endorsement, but then again it is the middle of the day here in Mawson Lakes so if I started glowing it would be a bit of a waste of energy.

It seems the widely used Revolution Theme for WordPress has gone open source. From the Weblog Tools Collection article:

Brian Gardner’s Revolution Theme for WordPress is going 100% Open Source. All the themes that are currently on Brian’s Revolution site will no longer be available as or October 31st and will be replaced with a set of new themes that will be developed and released under the GPL. The original Revolution themes will continue to be supported for those who have purchased them in the past.

Now I hate to be a nitpicker and certainly I consider myself more practical than ideological when it comes to the great software debate, but isn't this an example of something becoming Free Software and not just Open Source? Aren't most applications written in interpreted languages Open Source by their very nature because you can read the files? If Brian Gardner is releasing his themes under the GPL, then wouldn't that make them Free (as in speech as well as beer) instead of just Open Source?

I guess it boils down to disclosure; if you purchase a theme from someone instead of downloading it gratis, there's probably a clause limiting your right to redistribute or share the code. Still, isn't that more of an issue of the software not being Free, rather than it not being Open Source?

In any event I congratulate Brian for going down this path. I suspect he will be getting far more users and interest after doing this, and he deserves all of it.

And now I'm off for a Caeser salad. I've been having cravings for Caeser salad. Is that healthy?

Sometimes you post comments about how you're going through a crisis of your own, only to see something that completely puts developed world problems into context.

First a bit of background: Channel Ten in Australia presents a 24 hour delayed telecast of the Late Show with David Letterman from the States on most weeknights which I treat myself to watching after a day of working and studying. Tonight, alongside The Virgins (a band I instantly liked after hearing less than 5 seconds of the song they played) and Anne Hathaway (call me… please?) Dave also had on Josette Sheeran from the World Food Programme.

It was without a doubt one of the most inspirational interviews I'd ever seen. They discussed the plight of starving children from Myanmar to Darfur in Sudan, and how by the WFP's calculations $3 billion these children could be fed.

$3 billion could feed every child on the planet. Let me say that again.

$3 billion could feed every child on the planet.

My thoughts turned to the nauseating $700 billion plan to bail out the arrogant bankers who exploited people through lax legislation, and it managed not only to boil my blood but turn the mild headache I had at that point into a migraine. $3 billion is NOTHING.

From the site URL they posted on the programme:

Welcome! You may have just seen me on the “Late Show with David Letterman” where I was talking about hunger and the frontline work of WFP. It is WFP’s goal to put hunger out of business. Together we can do this. Just 25 cents a day or 50 US Dollars a year can ensure that children have a nourishing cup of porridge in school – virtually transforming their lives.

WFP is as effective as it is efficient. 93 cents out of every dollar goes directly to getting food to those who need it. WFP is pioneering solutions to hunger including purchasing 80 percent of the food we buy from developing world farmers. This is a win-win that can break the cycle of hunger at its roots.

I have just come back from Haiti, which has been devastated by series of four hurricanes and tropical storms over a six-week period. I saw people in Gonaives walking knee-deep in grey-brown mud, and escaping to the refuge of their roofs, where they are living as they wait for water to recede and mud to dry.

Their children need your help now. Any contribution you can make will go to school meals. You can be part of the solution now.

Josette Sheeran
WFP Executive Director

Now to business. It's not often I explicitly tell people to do something, but I'm ordering you to do this right now.

If you have a credit card that has even $5 remaining on it, go to The World Food Programme website, click on "United States" or "Outside the US" depending on where you are, and donate some money. I was saving my credit card balance for a new internal hard drive for my laptop, but I'm giving the money to these folks instead.

I wish the United Nations and the World Food Programme the best of luck in their efforts. If they're part of a conspiracy to instigate a New World Order, I'm look ing forward to it. Time to put aside this 19th century mindsent nonsense that countries are still relevant in this day and age and start helping… people.

From Wikipedia: United Nations transports deliver food to Sudan

Podcast: Play in new window · Download

09:18 – It's official ladies, gentlemen and everyone else: the fine folks at the IntoYourHead show are officially at war. In response to this situation, I have recorded this highly sophisticated response. Please listen to in a well ventilated area, for the fumes of professionalism may overwhelm you.

Recorded in Adelaide, Australia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

An ominous sign of things to come?

It's crunch time: alas after months of neglect and with so many assignments and projects active and being worked on at any one time, my internal 149 gibibyte (aka 160 gigabyte) hard drive has finally been maxed out. Bummer!

Having used Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Mac OS X on computers with drives that are nearing breaking point, I do appreciate how incredibly stable the BSDs and Mac are under capacity stress. By comparison the general wisdom with Windows (at least when I still exclusively used it before 2003) was that you must reserve at least 10% of your drive at all time to maintain stability, NTFS included. By comparison, this MacBook Pro has been close full for a while now and still only EyeTV and the slow as molasses Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac applications are capable of crashing it.

As I've discovered the hard way though, notebook computers present their own set of storage challenges! For most of my life I've been a desktop computer user; it was only in 2006 when I made the decision as a computer science student studying overseas that a souped up notebook computer would make more sense for taking around to different houses and around campus than a new desktop.

Of course the problem with said notebook computers is that you can't just easily slide in an extra hard drive when your existing one starts to fill up! Sure you can buy external drives, but they still won't match the performance of the internal drive. What happens then is I tend to backup material to the external drives, but projects I'm compiling, editing video for or otherwise working on end up staying on the internal drive.

What can I say, I love toying around and exploring operating systems!

This is also a problem for virtual machines which I spend lots of time using and writing about. To satisfy my own addiction and fanaticism for studying operating systems, as well as for my work which involves compiling and testing applications, I have multiple VMs on this internal drive. Running these virtual machines on an external drive is completely out of the question given the performance would really, really suffer. Having 12 virtual machines which combined take up 72GiB on a 149GiB notebook drive though is also completely out of the question!

With my desktops in the past I tended to dedicate a smaller drive with the fastest RPM for the operating system and two larger, equally sized drives mirroring each other (later using RAID instead of software) for the data. On my current desktop back in Singapore which I SSH and SFTP into from here in Adelaide I have FreeBSD 7.0 AMD64 on its own dedicated, 10,000RPM SATAII drive with 32MiB of cache shared with binaries, and two 7,200 RPM drives for the home directories, port collections, documentation and served data. Ideally I'd love to have another super fast drive just for /swap too!

On this laptop I've got everything under the sun on one drive. Perhaps partitioning the drive and assigning the /Users directory to a secondary partition might help to compartmentalise the information and improve performance. On BSD and Linux it's trivial to assign the /home directory to a separate volume, on Mac OS X I'm not so sure. Seems like I have some homework ahead of me!

This much taken up… on a 149GiB internal notebook drive.

Of course it probably wouldn't hurt cleaning this drive out either. I have a few Ruby scripts which I run each afternoon which cleans up my desktop and puts files in the appropriate places, but it can't determine what is safe to delete and what isn't. I need an electronic secretary I think. Make someone sign a NDA, then go through my drive and get rid of things. No, wait… perhaps that isn't such a good idea.

As my fabulous father always says after ringing me from his office in Singapore which has more paper, books, phone receivers, emails and blood pressure tablets than Parliament House: "All I need is a time machine Ruben… then I'd work just fine"

Phone reception in canola fields isn't as good as you would expect.

On a more serious note this evening folks. Now that my mum has moved on, I feel as though my primary motivation to succeed in studies and work – to care for her and give her everything she deserved – is gone too. She never hurt anyone, was such a nice person, and deserved so much more. I know it sound cheesy, but it was the most powerful motivation to succeed in the world.

Now that a year has almost past, I feel as though my progress in life is slowing down and I have little to no purpose or direction whatsoever. I'm studying and working, but what for? I'm terrified of my dreams, and my idle thoughts. I'm an introvert, and society tells me that's not a good thing. I'm not another lame emo person, I'm just scared of where I am now, and where I'm going, and am questioning my relevance on this planet. I don't know how else to explain it, but I'm sure others understand.

I know most people didn't live their childhoods by looking after and out for a parent instead of the other way around, so I know it is possible to have a sense of worth and importance without it, and it's certainly not a conscious decision on my own part to think little of my abilities and purpose, but it still doesn't change the fact that I do.

Is it possible to have a midlife crisis when you're 22?