Rubenerd

I've had web sites in various forms since mid 1997, but only recently it seems I've started to be affected by an infamous admin internet scourge which probably is almost as old as the graphical internet itself: image hotlinking.

ASIDE: For what it’s worth, Hotlink was the pre-paid mobile phone service I used when I lived in Malaysia. Despite the name, it has little to do with web servers, and given their spotty coverage outside the Klang Valley it doesn’t really do much "linking" either!

Hotlinking of course is embedding media on your own web page that resides on someone else's server instead of your own, without their permission. The problem is each time someone accesses such a page, it adds to the load on your servers as well as theirs. When you're a uni student who can't afford web hosting plans with gigantic bandwidth limits, this becomes somewhat of a problem!

ASIDE: This post has the ID number 1212. If you split that up, it becomes 12 12. That’s spiffy.

For example, check out this post by a guy called Howard Jamieson, who apparently isn't actually called Howard Jamieson, but wishes his name was Howard Jamieson. About a third of the way down he's linking to a photo of a compactor that I uploaded on my post about compression algorithms (with a citation). He doesn't provide a citation, but I guess he does link directly to the photo.

For now I've put up with people linking media from my site because I figure anything that has my domain attached to it is free advertising… right? And I guess I've felt flattered in the past that people have thought my material was useful enough to include, not to mention happy that so much of my material is now showing up on searches. Searches rhymes with peaches. Wait, no it doesn't.

ASIDE: Move into the country… gonna eat me a lot of peaches. Move into the country… gonna eat me a lot of peaches.

If you have a medium to high traffic website, how do you cope with people hotlinking your stuff? I certainly don't want to implement a blanket ban that blocks everything because users who wish their name was Howard Jamieson aren't causing any harm, but on the other hand I get the feeling this problem will only get worse with time. By far the biggest drain in terms of raw megabytes downloaded are the MP3s for the Rubenerd Show which reside on the same domain and web host, but hotlinked images from here are starting to amount to something.

For what it's worth, as a common courtesy whenever I'm presenting media such as a picture of the very talented (and no doubt more acclimatised to the cold than I am!) David Francey from Whole Wheat Radio, I upload a copy to my server and link to the page containing the original, not the file itself. That way, if someone is interested they can look it up but otherwise I'm not hammering WWR's servers with requests which wouldn't translate into visitors.

David Francey, a Whole Wheat Radio artist.

I miss the WWR streams. Playing ripped CDs in iTunes that I bought from it replicates some of the experience now that I have over 120 songs, but it still isn't the same. Hotlinking is nothing like listening to the WWR streams either. Chuck Peddle.

These posts were imported to the Annexe from Jaiku, which Google bought and shut down.

Just got back from Funan. Got a new Cooler Master Notepal thingy for my VERY toasty 1st generation MacBook Pro!

2008-07-06 09:37:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Installing Vim.app :-)

2008-07-06 10:12:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Half way through Neomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine". Somewhat boosted my scepticism that pure capitalism solves everything!

2008-07-07 02:11:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Off to Subway for a breakfast deli roll while it's still morning :-).

2008-07-07 02:12:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Now that I know I'll be leaving my desktop in Singapore when I go back to Adelaide, I'm reconfiguring to make it easy to remotely connect

2008-07-07 11:18:00+08:00 on Jaiku

I have such a headache again, Tiger Balm to the rescue!

2008-07-08 05:43:00+08:00 on Jaiku

I have to talk to medical insurance agent arses again today, that probably explains this headache. Argh not looking forward to this

2008-07-08 05:56:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Realised I didn't have The Gimp installed on my FreeBSD machine. Typed in "pkg_add -rv gimp". DONE!

2008-07-08 13:13:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Was added by another 5 spammers on Twitter today!

2008-07-08 17:01:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Backing up a pile of CDs to ISOs on my external hard drive

2008-07-08 17:59:00+08:00 on Jaiku

... while listening to Herb Alpert :-)

2008-07-08 17:59:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Whoops! Retweeting @truemors: Rugby Viewers Treated to 4 Minutes of Porn http://tinyurl.com/68dvdr

2008-07-08 19:14:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Blackaaaaaaaaaaaadder, blackaaaaaaaaaaaaaadder

2008-07-10 06:38:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Reinstalled Leopard on my MacBook Pro, bought new screen protector, keyboard cover, port covers and handrest cover. Feels like a new Mac :)

2008-07-11 10:17:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Nothing like a fresh reinstall of everything to make an older machine feel fast and new :-). Now back to work I'm *supposed* to be doing!

2008-07-11 10:18:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Very cool: Retweeting @bbcscitech: New solar technology could increase the power generated by solar panels tenfold http://tinyurl.com/56692m

2008-07-11 10:18:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Long live iMovie HD '06! Wouldn't be able to do my assignments with iMovie 08, HD '06 rocks!

2008-07-11 10:21:00+08:00 on Jaiku

My partner sent me the video that he edited, but he sent me the finished version not the project! Going through and re-cutting it up

2008-07-11 11:26:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Perhaps it is time for me to invest in Final Cut Express! Does FCE have a feature to auto-split up scenes in a movie?

2008-07-11 11:27:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Uh-oh, this is no good Retweeting @abcnews: Tensions escalate between Russia and Georgia: http://tinyurl.com/6dtybm

2008-07-11 11:29:00+08:00 on Jaiku

The bookmarking feature in iMovie HD 06 is such a simple feature, but absolutely critically useful!

2008-07-11 13:22:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Argh got another headache all of a sudde, right when I have so much to do!

2008-07-12 06:48:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Spending my Saturday night in the CBD of Singapore... searching through someone else's code trying to figure out why it crashes :-(

2008-07-12 13:04:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Listening to the latest Security Now with Steve Gibson in the background to keep myself sane. Having nostalgia for Pascal ;-)

2008-07-12 13:05:00+08:00 on Jaiku

In case anyone hasn

2008-07-12 13:06:00+08:00 on Jaiku

In case anyone hasn't noticed, my current favourite word is "svelte" again after a 10 year break

2008-07-12 13:06:00+08:00 on Jaiku

If I build Flac from MacPorts with the "Darwin_i386" parameter, will it do what logically we think it will do, or will it do something else?

2008-07-12 14:01:00+08:00 on Jaiku

So tired though, I think my brain is just about dead after all the stuff I've done tonight

2008-07-12 18:52:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Only one problem with strong encryption! //rubenerd.comshow.com/blog/p1205/

2008-07-14 15:08:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Encryption is up to 11.56GiB. Perhaps it will take as long as it's saying... uh oh

2008-07-14 17:28:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Finally going to bed. My last night sleeping in this bed in Singapore until Christmas... spooky

2008-07-14 18:19:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Almost forgot... typing in "% rzip -9Pv *.dpa" to compress all those suckers while I

2008-07-14 18:22:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Almost forgot... typing in "% rzip -9Pv *.dpa" to compress all those suckers while I sleep :-)

2008-07-14 18:22:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Good morning everyone :-). Encryption up to 37.42GiB done.

2008-07-15 01:37:00+08:00 on Jaiku

TrueCrypt on Mac still isn't on par with the Windows conterpart, but it's still very effective

2008-07-15 02:56:00+08:00 on Jaiku

Using Twhirl to check my Tweets again instead of using my phone. Lots of direct messages to reply to!

2008-07-20 12:42:00+08:00 on Jaiku

ADELAIDE UPDATE: Just got some more furniture, got the phone and power connected at home. Internet connected next week :)

2008-07-26 02:21:00+08:00 on Jaiku

My sister Elke and I at Hahndorf, a German villiage in the Adelaide Hills

I'm typing this from a internet cafe in Rundle Mall in Adelaide, with a thick coat on, a tall Hudson's Coffee Americano in my hand and looking out over the street out the window next to me. How poetic! I've finally moved back to Australia to resume my full time studies after doing it part time during my mum's final days, and my sister Elke is just starting.

Because we're are going to the same university we're sharing a small house near the IT and Engineering campus of UniSA in Mawson Lakes, about 12 kilometres north of the CBD. The initial costs of buying white goods, beds and tables was pretty steep, but over the next year or so we will save lots of money instead of staying in the student housing. $130.00 for each of us makes sense to rent a house for less than $220.00. Plus with the Australian Dollar's latest rally our Singapore Dollars buy a heck of a lot less than they did before, this is an important consideration!

One thing that has really affected us has been the weather. Being in the southern hemisphere, Australia is going through winter right now. Coming from Singapore where the daily temperature averages around 32 degrees and 24 at night (about 90F and 77F), Adelaide's current winter temps of around 12 during the day and 2 at night (about 54F and 36F) have been a shock! Not only that, but some local Adelaideans say this winter has been one of the coldest they can remember. I do look pretty freaky with blue lips!

I feel as though my life is getting back on track again. I do miss Singapore, and I intend to move back there when I finish all this studying whatnot.

Perth Skyline, Western Australia

Because my sister, dad and I couldn't get a direct flight between Singapore and Adelaide, we had to go via Perth. Given none of us had ever really spent much time there, we took the opportunity to stay a few nights and have a look around.

For those outside Australia, Perth is the capital of the aptly-named state of Western Australia with a population of just under 2 million, and according to Wikipedia it's one of the world's most isolated cities. Conventiently it's in the same timezone as Singapore!

You can see some of the photos I've managed to upload as I sit at this internet cafe over on my Back in Australia 2008 Flickr gallery.

I'm currently in the process of moving to Adelaide for my next 6th month study period ending around Christmas. I'm typing this at Adelaide Airport (the new one that I posted about back in 2006) because we're in the process of looking for houses and don't have a reliable source of internet just yet. I might be able to post a few short Twitter messages from my phone.

Photo of Adelaide: the colour saturation might be slightly off!

We went via Perth and spend a few days there, Perth really is a beautiful place. If I weren't already halfway through studies here I would seriously consider studying there! Again I've got some photos but the internet here isn't reliable enough to let me upload huge file right now. Stay tuned.

I'm missing Singapore, and KL, and Asia already, but we went to IKEA this afternoon and it felt as though we were right back there again! When people say how the world is becoming so generic as a result of companies setting up shop in multiple countries, a part of my appreciates the fact I can walk into a Starbucks and an IKEA in Adelaide, Singapore or KL and I'm in a familiar environment and I can order the same stuff… it's very comforting in a 1980s born child who's living in a place where he didn't grow up and who seems to be a hopeless consumerlittle commonality is good, right? It's okay to be all right with at least some of this right?

Perhaps I should just stop talking before I dig myself even deeper into this hole.

Cheerio everyone :-).

Slashdot is a fantastic tech news website not necessarily for TFAs that they summarise and present, but for the phone book length pages of comments. I generally skim and read the more interesting quips, but I do post comments of my own from time to time if I feel I have something to contribute; if someone's made a mistake I'm not the one who posts "Eeeeeeerrrrr, ur an idiot".

Unfortunately one person posting this evening on the article Should the Linux Desktop Be "Pure?" certainly deserved the aforementioned comment sent to him. Multiple times. Snail mailed, emailed, carrier pidgin-ed, sky written, stapled to his face if I had the choice.

To put the message in context, this was the comment above it in the stream by Loganrapp:

Hey, stop talking like this is a great and epic struggle.
Zimbabwe is a great struggle. We’re just talking about computer operating systems.

While I believe open standards and free and open source software have the potential to do tremendous good and revolutionise the world in so many ways, I do agree with this guy: what we’re sacrificing with closed standards and software is nothing compared to the struggles of Zimbabwe and her people.

It seems this view is not shared by Jah-Wren Ryel though. When I read this comment, I felt like putting my fist through the computer screen.

No, you are wrong.

Zimbabwe is currently playing out a story that the earth has seen thousands of times in all corners. Each time it plays out, it only effects a small group of people. Sure it effects them drastically, but in the big picture its nothing new and does not have much of an impact beyond Zimbabwe’s neighbors.

On the other hand, the current OS monopoly on the desktop affects hundreds of millions, maybe even more than a billion people world-wide across all countries. And in a more general sense, the “freedom vs control” of information conflict that this is a part of affects the destiny of the entire human race.

Just because the issues are more abstract with less of an obvious impact does not mean they are less important. To dismiss them in that way would be kind of like the farmers in the 13 colonies complaining that those dolts at that constitutional convention have their heads’ up their asses, they ought to be doing something about this season’s drought instead of blowing so much hot air around.

For some reason Slashdot’s server wasn’t letting me post my reply, so to help me feel at least a bit better I’ve posted what I intended to say below. Normally I like to remain upbeat in my replies to rude people and assume good intentions, because not only do I find it a nicer and more civilised thing to do, but in many cases helps to draw up a more meaningful conversation than one that just ends up falling into a name calling session. This post I took the gloves off:

Normally I like to think of myself as a good net citizen: I don’t abbreviate words, I form full sentences, and when replying to polarizing messages I try my best to assume good intentions. I’m going to break away from doing this for your message, because to be blunt, you’re completely full of shit.

Trivializing what the people in Zimbabwe are going through right now is, to use the most polite word I can think of right now, disgusting. I don’t care how you rationalise it by saying that it’s a repeated story throughout human history, the people of Zimbabwe (and many, many, many other countries) are going through absolute hell right now and they don’t need a rich person in the developed world thousands of kilometers away who can afford a computer, food and shelter saying that they’re struggles to stay alive and raise children under a brutal government are less important than a damned operating system.

I tell you what Jah-Wren Ryel, grow a pair and you make your way down to Zimbabwe right now, live how the people are living there now, then come back to me and talk about why the great software struggle is more important. Until then, shut your closed-minded, arrogant mouth and stop spouting garbage.

My other concern is that people seem to feel the need to say that "one issue" is more important than "the other issue" when they’re either mutually exclusive or might as well be. The dignity of the Zimbabwean people doesn’t need to be trampled to make a case for free software.

What bothers me even more though is that this jackass was actually given "+5 Interesting" in moderation points, when the poster above him who made the initial comment was only given a "+4".

I am so absolutely disillusioned with people in my own industry and with humans in general right now.

Welcome to Zimbabwe sign, by the writer of the Esibayeni Diaries

I'm typing this post in Vim because Vim is infinitely sexier than GNU Emacs. I'm sorry you may not agree, but that doesn't make your point of view any less incorrect. Vim also wasn't named after a CRT budget Apple computer… uh, yeah.

With my latest move back to Adelaide for the next semester imminent, with assignments due and with a work project needing to be finished… all before Monday… I figure now is as good a time as any to sit down with a fresh cup of coffee that will no doubt at this time of night give me insomnia again in a few hours, and discuss something utterly pointless, trivial and serve just to trumpet my own frustrations which very few people would actually care about.

This is a picture of an IKEA chair. Probably make of wood.

My current favourite word again is "svelte". No, I'm not describing my favourite word as svelte, I'm saying that my favourite word itself is the word "svelte". Clear as mud, right?

According to the English Wiktionary, the dictionary sister site to the English Wikipedia with a logo that's somewhat less interesting and certainly not as visually dimensional (it's missing one entirely, to be accurate) the word svelte was originally derived from the Italian "svelto" which means "stretched out". In English we've adapted the word to mean "Attractively thin; gracefully slender" which is "Used mainly as a compliment, whereas words like thin and skinny could be used in negative connotations.".

Now bear with me. With the latest trends in consumer electronics emphasising smaller, more lightweight, more efficient, more portable… words such as cute, sleek and stylish are used in reviews and by people more often than… something that is used very often. A "nerd getting the nice girl" anime plotline? Excuses by apologists to dismiss criticism of Windows Vista? Lindsay Lohan's breathaliser?

ASIDE: The next computer that tells me one more time that I’m spelling emphasising and breathaliser wrong is going to be kicked black and blue. Those colours aren’t really my favourite but they convey the message I’m trying to conceptualise.

This is a great post so far, isn't it?

For example, take a look at this fair and impartial statistical comparison of the occurrence of the adjectives I just listed according to this particular website which searches other websites by using some form of backend engine, or "search engine" to use the current lingo. I added an unrelated phrase to be the scientific control.

Search Term	Google Results	Notes
Cute	about 327,000,000	Wow, that’s a lot!
Sleek	about 46,400,000	An enviable number
Stylish	about 101,000,000	Aka: lots
"Grilled Cheese Sandwich"	about 377,000	Our very scientific control
Svelte	about 1,920,000	That’s it!?

That's right; a word which is able to condense three separate terms into one is used at best 4.14% of the time, and at worst 0.59% on the intertubes. Not one single intertube, every single one. Curiously, it is more commonly used than "Grilled Cheese Sandwich" which is interesting considering Yahoo (a competing search engine) claims it is their number one query. I base that on absolutely nothing, but that's okay because I've heard from some American friends of mine that some people over there are paid to do it, so it must be a legitimate way to pake a moint. Sorry, make a point.

Funny, it doesn't LOOK like a grilled cheese maker…

This is a serious problem. Not only is the repetitious use of those words very repetitive, but also turns articles about up and coming technological devices which deserve far more interesting language and thought, into dull boilerplate derived yawnfests that read virtually the same every single time. It's also exceedingly repetitive.

There's also a technological price to be paid every time those three words are used instead of such a an efficient words as svelte. What absolutely astonishes me is that people are so concerned about the role peer to peer software, streaming vidoes and internet telephony…

ASIDE: Telephony to me always sounded like a word for a telephone system and network that unsuspecting people use and end up getting royally ripped off on. In other words, every telephone any of us will ever use.

It could also mean than the phone itself is phoney and actually serves another purpose. Why, the fax machine for example is just a waffle iron with a phone attached right? Why not a device that looks like a phone, but is actually a shoe? Wait, I got that the wrong way around. I’d better start getting smart.

…being targeted as the reasons why the intertubes are slowing down for so many people, nobody is bothering to discuss or investigate the role inefficient language is having on traffic and available bandwidth. Useless weblog posts that are largely fluff and add nothing valuable to internet discourse as a whole are also to blame for lots of wasted bandwidth, not to mention time.

You know who never had bandwidth problems? MacGyver. I don't have a picture of him handy though, so here's a picture of a couple of cops on Segways.

So the next time you see an iPhone (that the owner managed to activate, zing!), or a new portable GPS device for your motor scooter, or a titanium cheese grater complete with leather case and gold plated handles, consider using the word which this post has been all about, instead of a combination of less efficient – and far more common – words. I forget now what the word I was advocating the use of is exactly, but I'm sure it will come to me when I'm thinking about something else.

For example, I was searching for my denture adhesive this afternoon. I don't wear dentures and have therefore never needed to buy denture adhesive, so searching for it was proving to be exceedingly difficult and largely fruitless. However while performing said search I was able to locate my long lost… wait now I forget what it was I found. Svelte! That's the word I was trying to think of above! Works every time. Unlike this ridiculous post that should never have been created, and for it's existance I sincerely apologise.

Ruben, I didn't understand a word of what you posted

Most of the time when I find a useful website I post it on my del.icio.us account and leave it at that. This site was so good though I figure its worth its own post.

The Evolt Browser Archive on the Evolt.org web designer network site is simply amazing; Adrian Roselli and a slew of contributors have created the most comprehensive online archive of older web browsers of any site I've ever seen. The potential for site designers (and nostalgic 90s web surfers) is huge; from this one site you could download virtually every older browser and test your designs and site functions in them.

Aside from the regular Internet Explorers and Firefoxes, they also have such gems as iBrowse for the Commodore Amiga, classic NetPositive for BeOS, WorldWideWeb by Tim Berners-Lee and the long since dead NeoPlanet, the browser I used for a while when I was in primary school! They're not limited to graphical browsers either; Links and Lynx both have a huge number of versions available.

My only gripe would be that their emphasis seems to be on proprietary and older browsers; Konqueror, Epiphany and my lovable speedy Dillo (that didn't sound right) aren't archived at all. The latest versions of these browsers are easily installed with your Unix-like system's package manager though I guess.

I pass this site on to you simply because it has made my life much easier, and if you're a designer I'm sure it would make your life easier too. Now if you'd excuse me, I'm off to install Netscape Navigator Gold 2.0 on my Windows 95 virtual machine.

I remember back in 1995 when I was 9 years old our family excitedly got its first CD-ROM drive. This was just before we moved to Singapore and were still living in Australia, and that small little Creative Hex Speed optical spinning wonder cost us a small optical spinning fortune. It was proudly installed above the 5.25 inch floppy drive in our generic 486SX PC clone tower. It came with 10 CDs, we had 2 already. I still have that CD-ROM drive.

MENTAL NOTE: Spend less time on the introductions and more on the actual content on the post. Nobody cares about your first CD-ROM drive!

Here we are in 2008 and despite the fact I haven't toasted or bought a CD for years I'm literally swimming in thousands of them. As a Windows user back in the dark days I remember I used Nero Express to create backup ISOs out of CDs, then either burn those ISOs to a single DVD or store them on a backup hard disk. Fortunately FreeBSD has similar capabilities with the venerable command line dd utility.

Spiffy icons from the Tango Desktop Project

Insert the CD you want to copy (no, really?), then enter the line below. Substitute acd0 with an alternative device if you have multiple optical drives:

# dd if=/dev/acd0 of=[YOUR_NAME_OF_IMAGE].iso bs=2048

This will take some time. Naturally the CPU power your machine has and the read speed of your optical drive will affect performance. A 52x optical drive on my 3.0GHz E8400 Core 2 Duo desktop takes a few minutes, my MacBook Pro a few minutes longer still, I'm sure our family 486 with a hex speed drive would take considerably longer!

For what it's worth, the same procedure can be used on NetBSD and Mac OS X from my own testing. Just switch the virtual device /dev/acd0 with the relevant line for your OS. Isn't BSD heritage fantastic? :-)