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27:00 – Relevant links: The FreeBSD Project, Debian GNU/Linux AMD64 Port, NVIDIA UNIX Drivers, and DistroWatch.
Recorded in Singapore. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
I recorded this episode a few weeks ago, then promptly lost the audio file! When I find it I'll update this post. Thanks for your patience!
Akinori MUSHA announced today that Ruby 1.8.7 has been released.
The new version of Ruby includes many bug fixes, lots of feature enhancements backported from 1.9 and some performance improvements since 1.8.6 while maintaining stability and backward compatibility with the previous release to a high degree. See the bundled documentation for details about compatibility issues.
If you haven't checked your Whole Wheaty pages in the last few days, Jim Kloss has returned from his mother's funeral in Ohio. He's back on the air in Alaska, is receiving parcels at home for Esther, and is even having fun with domain registration scammers according to his latest audio magazine!! It's great to hear his voice again, I'm glad those really, really difficult weeks are over, and that his family was there for him. Now if only people would stop sending him damned hate email he'd be well on his way to recovering!
ASIDE: As with my post on Ed Craver, I’m finding it hard to figure out what to say let alone how to say it, so I get the feeling this will be a post that’s just one disjointed thought after another. I decided not to create a Rubenerd Show about it because right now I’m in the typing zone instead, plus it’s easier to delete, rearrange and clean up all the nonsense!
In particular I wanted to talk about a few of the ideas he brought up.
For me it was interesting to hear how he perceives the human body as largely a vessel that merely contains the soul or essence of a person, and how disconnected they really are at times of great hardship or when they eventually pass on. The inevitable result of which is being able to see a close person to you in said periods of time or at those inevitable milestones and not feel so upset or hurt.
Despite my best attempts and my own journey to understanding perceptions and spirituality, I'd say for the most part I'm a still a materialist; not in the sense that I value possessions over humans or the other negative connotations people have with that term, but just simply that I don't see the difference between life force and physical objects.
The way I see it at my own current level of personal exploration, when I see a flower I don't think of the energy contained within as being distinct and the plant is merely the object we see and use to interact with it, I see a breathtakingly complex organism that has been the result of an incomprehensible time period of natural selection that has given its own species' unique physical characteristics and abilities. When the flower dies, the cells in the flower stop dividing and the organism no longer sustains its own existence. What I mean is: without the flower there is no flower life, nor the potential to evolve to something even higher or more beautiful.
Perhaps this was what Jim meant by a container. In this case the flower is merely the container that has evolved to support the flower's life. My issue is that I see a container as more of a apparatus that just happens to hold a particular substance. Water in a bucket when spilled on the floor is still water; its properties and characteristics haven't changed. Again harking back to my limited materialistic perceptions, as a human being I feel intimately attached to my body to an extent where I couldn't feel as though I could exist without it. My body is not a container that could easily be swapped for another one, this body is me. In a sentimental way, this body has been with me though various iterations throughout my whole life, when I think about it it's the only thing in this entire universe that has.
I also feel as though my body is more than a container because it defines what I can and cannot do not only physically, but also in how I perceive things, remember things, feel emotions. The human brain, for all it's breathtaking complexity is still made of physical material that when changed chemically or physically affects what I feel, see and do.
To be very cold, unromantic and blunt (here we go!), I'd say if I were truly just being contained in this vessel, my thoughts shouldn't be affected by what happens to it. Quite the opposite, I know that if I drink a few Red Bulls, a cup of coffee or a few pints of Guinness my thoughts and perceptions change drastically. I'm not independent of my container, I am my container!
As Jim said himself, we might see things in this huge world in very different ways, but it is fascinating to hear how others perceive such life fundamentals, and damned f*cking comforting to know that no matter what we all do in this life, that we all have each other and that there are other people who can and do feel the same things we do. Just sometimes though (I know I speak from my own view especially): we need reminding of that fact.
And at the end of it all, the mortality rate of all humans is a perfect 100%. Well, unless Duncan MacLeod was really onto something. Black humour, both Jim and I are entitled to it right now. ;-)
ASIDE: Is it any wonder why I couldn’t bring myself to look at mummy and we needed a closed casket at her funeral? Perhaps I’ll grow, change and mature as I get older. I just wish I had been given the time to do so before she left.
These posts were imported to the Annexe from Jaiku, which Google bought and shut down.
Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam…
Gmail's spam filters have really been sliding over the last year. I never used to get any spam at all in the inbox folders, now I get half a dozen a day. Take this hilarious message I got this morning:
hayyyyy
I havent been introduced to yous but we know a person in comon who handed me your emaile since I just got to city. They informed me youd be down in hooking up with a gorgeous slap of boooty like mine haha. Neways I will not ever get on my email so don’t want to meetup i shall pass you my pics and show i’m as hot as i claim. msg me up on my Yahoo messenger.
so yes just send me a msg to Y! Messenger: NEWGWENNSN
Do not write back to this emaile since i don’t check it. google Yahoo messenger if you dont have it to download it
Later
Sorry darling, I don't swing that way ;-). Obviously our alleged third party didn't tell you that abbreviated txt speak pisses me off. I'm intrigued as to how you managed to spell "email" as "emaile" though, I can honestly say I've never seen it written like that.
AFTERWORD: I created this entry because I was frustrated that there were lots of guides to recover passwords in Safari (and Firefox, and Opera) on Mac, but not Camino. The procedure is about the same, but nobody had it shown anywhere as such.
One of the (many, many!) problems I encountered when I lost my phone recently was losing my password for Wireless@SG! When I signed up for the free public wifi system in Singapore I was issued a password in the form a text message on my phone. Of course, now that my phone and I have parted ways I don't have that password.
ASIDE: I really should have written the credentials down somewhere safe besides my phone! Hindsight is a remarkably powerful and largely useless tool.
As it stands now though I can still log in to Wireless@SG because Camino remembers my password and enters it in for me automagically. What I wanted to know was, is there some way to retrieve the password from Camino in a form other than a string of asterisks? As it turns out, one of the primary reasons I still keep going back to Camino (greater Mac integration and consistent Mac interface) turned out to be my saviour, in the form of the Mac OS X Keychain.
If you have a password that Camino remembers but you don't, you can retrieve it by opening Keychain Access.app in /Applications/Utilities/. You'll be presented with a list of accounts that OS X has remembered the passwords for.
Double click the site that you can't remember the password for, then click the Show Password checkbox at the bottom of the window that appears. You'll be prompted to enter your Mac OS X login credentials. Voila, your password is presented:
Of course, I changed my password shortly after!
Salamat datang ke Rubenerd Blog p1181!
Well here I am back in KL again typing away in at the Starbucks in KLCC. Don't let my archival Flickr photo above fool you though, it's been raining the whole time I've been here! In the tropics a light shower is a good thing though in my opinion, the clouds block some of the sunlight and make the temperature a bit cooler, especially in the evening after a day of rain.
I've met up with a friend of mine for some semi-official business regarding semi-official business and it went surprisingly well, we've hammered out some plans. With all the talk about email, then instant messaging, then blog comments, then micro blogging on services such as Twitter, it's still so much simpler and faster organising things in person. I always cringe whenever my dad says that the internet is amazing because you could work literally anywhere on Earth now and do a job through it; while I'm sure it's possible and I know lots of people who do work like that, I couldn't imagine giving up on human to human contact for 100% of a business. It would be downright maddening!
I'm here with my sister and we'll be back in Singapore late this week.
Brian Jude has been listening to some Rubenerd Shows, and surprisingly he's still alive to talk about the experiences afterwards! In his latest detailed comment over on Rubenerd Show 235 (2008.04.10), he made some really nice comments, along with his review of the chemtrail part of the show:
Hey, Ruben! Just finished listening to your dad’s debunking of chemtrails.
What strikes me is his claim that it would take hundreds of planes to affect anyone. Hate to break it to you, but I’m pretty sure there ARE hundreds of planes (I’m sure at least around 100 daily) over the skies of the NYC area dumping this stuff on us. Add to the fact that this has been going on for many years…
And mind control is only one theory of what they’re for. It could also be weather modification, among other theories.
Very curious what your father would say if he read all of the information there is out there, and what he could debunk, and what might make him think could be the explanations!
I’m really loving your show, BTW. Keep up the great work!!!
Brian
Unfortunately my dad doesn't come back from his latest business trip until tomorrow, but I posted a response to help defend his position:
G’day Brian, thanks for your response, I’m glad you like the show!
As for the hundreds of aeroplanes comment, Singapore is a global hub for Asian-Pacific air travel itself as New York is important, the difference is that not all of these aircraft are over the same, small enough airspace at the same time, and even if they were the supposed biological or chemical mind control material they’d be spewing would not only be oxidised (something I forgot to mention on the show) by the engines and chemically altered when they were superheated, but dissipation forces would render them useless by the time they reached us.
You also have to notice how these purported mind control chemtrails have changed shape and appearance over the years as jet engines themselves have evolved to turbofans, to more efficient turbofans etc. If they really were specifically spewing chemicals, you would expect a similar visual pattern regardless of the aircraft dumping it.
Call me an anti-conspiracy theory guy, but the evidence for most conspiracy theories are either insufficient or downright terrible! I am a skeptic and don’t believe everything I’m told (I’m sure we all are to a certain extent), but asserting something on insufficient evidence sounds much more like Illuminati thinking than the events they’re supposedly uncovering. I’d go so far as to say that people who form conspiracy theories and who misinform people who then take those theories seriously (as opposed to fun, idol speculation we all have from time to time!) is almost akin cult thinking, and is actually not just some harmless fun to those who take them seriously, but is causing real and observable sociological damage.
That could just be me though! Personally I think Hanlon’s razor answers most conspiracy theories quite well, in a fun tongue and cheek way! I guess my biggest problem with people who have conspiracy theories is that they can’t laugh about it. If we don’t have a sense of humour about things, what’s the point of living? Plus what’s a surer sign of confidence than someone who can poke fun at their own position right? :)
Thanks again for the positive comments, I’m no Frank Nora, Jim Kloss, Israel Brown or Brian Richmond but I’m giving it a shot!
Cheers
Ruben
I'll be off to Malaysia tomorrow, so depending on whether I can get internet access I may not be able to reply to any comments over the next few days.
After listening to a recent episode of Security Now I've gone ahead and purchased myself a Yubikey!
The Yubikey is a phenomenal new device that's smaller than most memory keys that when plugged into a USB port and the loan button on the case is pressed, a one time password is generated and entered. It does this on any HID enabled operating system including my beloved Mac OS X and FreeBSD without extra drivers because it shows itself as a regular USB keyboard. It's so beautifully simple!
The best part is that the API is open and accessible from a number of different programming languages such as Ruby, PHP and Python (not sure about Perl just yet).
In the coming weeks I'm going to try to implement my Yubikey into my Ruby CMS. I'm really excited!
