Rubenerd

Just thought I'd give people some updates as to what's going on and so forth.

Was able to go to Singapore for my birthday, but obvious family issue(s) meant I had to return the next day. I was able to go to the Weiner Kaffeehaus and talk to the owner who was a really fascinating guy, it's obvious he knew exactly what he was talking about and was very passionate about not only coffee and where it comes from, but the ethics involved. Did you know coffee is the second most traded comoddity in the world after crude oil? Yes, more than steel, more than maize, rice and so forth. I think that's insane; I also have to wonder how much of that demand has been generated by me over the last few years… blood pressure not withstanding.

Also managed to spend a bit of time at Harry's down at Clark Quay, a Jazz bar which has awesome music. I didn't get the names of the people from that night, but the lead singer had one of the most amazing voices I'ved ever heard.

Anyway I'm back in Kuala Lumpur now, back in the rat race. Actually I'm posting from the Starbucks in Cheras which has much faster internet that what we have at home currently. We've got about two weeks left here before we return to Singapore, the removalists are coming on Monday to do an inventory check or whatever they call it. So far we don't have a house, apartment or even suburb chosen in Singapore!

My Ruby on Rails assingment (I creatively call it Ruben on Ruby on Rails, hah, hah) is coming along very well, I just can't believe how easy it is to get the databases configured and working, it's insane. As a real world test of the platform the Rubenerd Show and Blog will be moving over to this programme sometime in April. I like to think of it as a Typo programme but with more of a wiki/CMS type approach to uploaded content such as images. Something like this has probably already been done (Radiant CMS comes to mind) but I don't think they work in quite the same way. Plus this way I can actually claim it for credit, which can't be a bad thing.

Cheers,
Ruben

Well here it is folks, the eve of my 21st birthday. I really don’t believe in numbers being a defining part of a person’s life (ironic considering my obsession with computers and electronics) and I felt no different the day I turned 18 than I did when I turned 17, but in any event it’s apparently a huge important day and so forth, so there you go.

I thought just for fun I'd get all self absorbed and compile a small list of things that have happened in my life up until this point to see where I've come and where I'm going to. If you're easily bored, hit the page down keys a few times!

1986

A terrible monster named Ruben Michael Schade (son of Debra Anne Ross and Rainer Hans Schade) was unleased upon the world in the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney. The fact Chenobyl happened around the same time cannot be completely discounted as being a coinsidence.

1987

Ruben says his first word: dirt. People recognise him as a romantic from then on in.

The Schade family moves to Patterson Lakes in Melbourne.

1989

The Schade family purchases an IBM desktop computer with MS-DOS 4, XTreeGold, Commander Keen and WordPerfect. Little Ruben is positively fascinated by this weird, bright, colourful screen that shows all the stuff he punches out on the keyboard thingy. He starts learning DOS commands without really knowing what any of the words meant.

Ruben's sister Elke Raina Schade is born in Frankson Hospital in Melbourne. Ruben no longer the sole recipient of parental attention. Jealouys ensues.

1991

Ruben starts school at Patterson Lakes Primary in Ms Brooks's Prep class. Is the only child in the class who cries his eyes out the whole day.

1995

The Schade family moves to Ascot/Hamilton in Brisbane.

Ruben's mum Debra discovers a breast lump which is later determined to be cancer. Nothing would ever be the same.

1996

The Schade family moves to Dhoby Ghaut, Singapore. Ruben's grasp on Aussie-ness starts fading.

Ruben discovers Sim Lim Square and Funan Centre!

1997

Ruben's sister Elke applies for voice-over job for Discovery Channel. Just for fun Ruben tries out as well. Both kids get the job, much to the relief of their parents.

Ruben gets computer of his own, a Pentium MMX 200MHz with 32MB of RAM and a 5GB hard disk. As of 2007, it's still running!

1998

Ruben's mum Debra is pronounced cured from cancer. To celebrate family goes on European holiday to visit relatives, see sites and so forth in Scotland, England, Wales, Germany, France and Switzerland (for half an hour!)

Ruben graduates from primary school at the AIS, not affiliated with the Australian Institute of Sport.

1999

Ruben's mum has a chest scan for a seemingly routine infection and more cancer is discovered. As of 2007 she's still fighting it.

Ruben gets an iMac DV G3 with Mac OS 8.5. His journey to rid himself of Windows begins.

Ruben tries Red Hat Linux that came in a box. Is discoraged by the initial complexity but soon appreciates the power and customisability. Is that a word? He chooses KDE over GNOME.

2000

Ruben's computers are seemingly unaffected by Y2K, except his old XTreeGold and PowerMenu programmes which display the year as 100. Aiyo.

At the stroke of midnight Ruben sprays silly string everywhere. Gets some in his sister's hair: mission acomplished!

2002

Ruben gets job writing macros for ABB in Singapore.

2004

Ruben gets job at Vertias and learns Perl programming.

Ruben sees very nice, quiet Korean girl he met at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf at Bishan for coffee, books and company. She moves away half a year later :(.

Ruben graduates from high school, finishes his HSC and gets high enough UAI for university. Yay, more work!

Ruben learns about podcasting through the New Time Radio website and starts the Rubenerd Show!

2005

The Schade family move to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ruben moves to Adelaide, South Australia to go to university.

Ruben's room mates take him clubbing. Refreshes his disgust for trance.

2006

Ruben moves back to Kuala Lumpur to be with his mum and study externally.

Work, uni work, work at home. Lots of fun to be had!

2007

Ruben vows to use only open source software (unless the situation explicity warrents otherwise) starting January 2008.

Podcast: Play in new window · Download

45:00 – Wearing a tutu, the Malaysian powerpoint culture in coffee shops, signs you may have a nerdy son, Rubenerd Show host Ruben turns 21, the flotation ability of glass deodorant containers, irresponsible environmental wastage in razor packaging, reviewing Twitter, Rubenerd Interview (Ruben's sister Elke), Principal Skinner from the Principal's office, stupid product packages, Ruben's hopes and dreams, tornadoes on Taiwan, Ruben's half-arsed MySpace page, how to pronounce MyMyMyMySpace, evil apostrophes Billy Connelly, George W. Bush losing the war on drugs, coffee is disgusting apparently, getting a MacBook), and drying your hair in the shower!

Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0. Attribution: Ruben Schade.

If you listened to Rubenerd Show 221 you would know that while I think the Anything but Monday radio programme is good Mad Mike's comments on Kuala Lumpur were no good lah! Anyway since then on Anything but Monday number 5 Mad Mike explained his position, we had a good laugh and everything is just peachy :).

Now I must take aim at my good buddy Frank Edward Nora, the other host of the Anything but Monday show. On the same aforementioned episode he commented that New York is the greatest city in the world. Only one problem with Frank's logic: New York isn't the greatest city in the world! It's actually a tie between Singapore and Tokyo! Remember, you read it here first!

Think about it, Singapore is the fourth biggest centre for currency trading in the world, and it has only 4.5 million people… per capita it would be the biggest! It's also been rated number one place in the world to do business according to The Economist according to Wikipedia. Plus it's one of the few places in the world that will allow the import of locally-untested medicines at the recommendation of qualified doctors, meaning my mum is getting some of the best cancer treatments in the world! YEAH!

And Tokyo of course rocks because… well, because the Japanese girls I met in KL thought I was cute and Tokyo would be full of them… ahem. No further explanation necessary ;).

An added bonus as well, people in Tokyo and Singapore also drive on the correct side of the road like us Aussies and like the Brits: on the left, they both use the SI/decimal/metric system along with their decimal currencies and they're both much cheaper to access from Australia too. Plus the Japanese send more tourists (and tourism dollars!) to Australia than anyone else, and the Singaporeans are amongst the biggest investors in Australian real estate and financial services, so they must be on to something! :D

So Frank, I agree that New York is awesome, I'd love to go there one day, and it's certainly one of the greatest cities in the world, but it's not the greatest city in the world! :D

Now who wants to go get some prata or bento?

Since writing this post I have resolved the issue and have recieved a useful link for anyone who may be having similar problems, plus a message to forward to everyone:

Hi – Your blog is coming up as the first result for anybody who searches for this issue. Can you add an update to the blog pointing people to the following web page:

http://www.vmware.com/community/message.jspa?messageID=542008#542008

This details the cure that you used. It took me several hours searching to uncover this fix, and it would be great if you could help make it more accessible.

You can find out more at the VMWare Forums, and you can read all my posts (so far) regarding VMware on my blog here. Thanks to John for the heads up.

The Original Post

I've found for my university work virtualisation is a lifesaver. I can compile my programs for FreeBSD (my current pet project), NetBSD, Mac OS X, Slackware, Solaris and… heaven forbid… Windows 2000, all on the same machine. Most people in my class only compile for Solaris, and technically I don't get extra marks for doing it for multiple OSs, but I hope it it makes my projects look more complete and I figure if I can make the marker's life easier, perhaps they'll return the favour… cough.

Anyway I'm currently using Parallels Desktop on my MacBook Pro but with all the talk lately I decided to try out VMware Fusion. I had experience with VMware Workstation many years ago on Windows, Fusion apparently has better Linux and FreeBSD support, and you can register for a free beta trial key. I figured what do I have to lose?

Unfortunately not everything worked to plan; here I am two hours later after the first install and something is definitely screwy. Not only can't I complete an install without it failing at the last step, but it also claims that the serial number which I registered for and received from VMware is invalid.

Looking through my /var/logs/install.log file I isolated an individual error line:

Install failed: The following install step failed: run postflight script for VMware Fusion

I've uninstalled and reinstalled Fusion at least three times, registered for three different serial numbers and still I come up with these issues. I'm really dissapointed, I was looking forward to giving VMware Fusion a shot. I've had great experience with their products in the past.

I'll keep Googling and checking the support forums. This is no good lah.

The Ruby powered version of the Rubenerd Show and Blog are well underway and are looking pretty good! The way it is at the moment I'm using WordPress which I can't use for study credits but I can use a blog provided it is powered by a platform I've coded myself. I figure if I can get credit for all the work I'm doing here it would be a real help. The only major hurdle I can think of so far will be to transfer all the accumulated WordPress database information over to my program; perhaps I'll just stick with the WordPress database schema to save myself trouble.

I'm sitting at the Starbucks in Menara Great Eastern, across the road from the hospital where my mum is having her blood tested. From what I can tell the chemotherapy she was having has stopped working and the tumours on her liver have started growing again. Her doctor in Singapore Dr Tan is currently at a conference discussing what to do next. The way medical science is progressing I'm sure there will be another treatment she can go on.

Had a phone call from my good friend Kevin Tan from Singapore who I met in Adelaide last night; he's working for Sony now, amazing!

Rubenerd Show 222 has been recorded, but given the reliability of internet here I can't get more than 2/3rds of the way through the upload before it times out. I'll go to as many Starbucks WiFi hotspots as I can until the damned things gets up to that server!

Cheerio,
Ruben

As of today I've been offered a part in the next Anything but Monday show, the podcast by Frank Edward Nora and Mad Mike Masters through one of their Skypecasts. Booh yah!

I reviewed the Anything but Monday programme on Rubenerd Show 221 on Monday (I thought it an appropriate day of the week), and I posted regarding the dilemma I faced with paying for it back on the 21st of February.

As a sign of thanks Frank even gave me an Anything but Monday present as well! Here's hoping I won't be verbally torn to shreds by Mad Mike for my Kuala Lumpur comment retaliation :D.

Space this watch, um, watch this space.

My new favourite programming/scripting language (not least because it sounds just like my name ;) ) has been bumped up to version 1.8.6.

A shameless blockquote from http://www.ruby-lang.org/:

Ruby 1.8.6 has been released. (announced on [ruby-list:43267])

The source is available under three formats.

For a brief list of user visible changes and a full list of all changes since 1.8.5, see the bundled files named NEWS and ChangeLog, which are also available at the following locations:

• http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/tags/v1_8_6/NEWS
• http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/tags/v1_8_6/ChangeLog

After this announcement, we will start the development for 1.8.7 as well as maintaining the “ruby_1_8_6″ branch on which only critical bugs and security vulnerabilities found in the 1.8.6 release are fixed, and patch releases will follow on appropriate and timely occasions. Please check them out after upgrading Ruby to 1.8.6.

I'm implementing the next incarnation of the Rubenerd Show/Blog entirely in Ruby and am having a ton of fun doing it! Coming from a Perl background I feel right at home with Ruby's string pattern matching features and a large portion of the syntax, but at the same time it looks nicer and the OOP features are so easy to use.

I'm doing work mostly in mod_ruby because I'm a control freak, but perhaps I'll give Rails a go soon too.

2009 UPDATE: I’ve long since moved to VMware Fusion and Parallels has long since moved out of beta, so as it stands this page should now be considered historical. Some very helpful people have posted comments though, so it seems most of this can still be used. Thanks everyone.

If you're in a hurry and just want the damned xorg.conf file, you can download mine here. Do NOT copy the text, right click and save the file.

If you've read any of my blog by now you know I use FreeBSD 6.2 in Parallels Desktop on my MacBook Pro. I've received two emails from people asking how I got X11 working, so for the benefit of those fabulous people and anyone else who's interested I thought I'd post a quick how-to.

Essentially configuring X on FreeBSD in Parallels Desktop is the same as a normal machine but with a few quirks, especially if you're running a widescreen MacBook or MacBook Pro.

Firstly after you've installed FreeBSD (I just download the ISOs and mount them directly in Parallels), log on as root and run the X11 configuration script, which will dump an xorg.conf.new file into your /root directory:

Xorg -configure

Next open the xorg.conf.new in a text editor. If you're fairly new to UNIX and FreeBSD the Easy Editor is probably your best bet:

ee /root/xorg.conf.new

Most of the heavy lifting has been done for you; from my experience FreeBSD in Parallels Desktop detects the virtual keyboard and mouse just fine. We need to add some more information though for our widescreens.

Scroll down until you see Section "Monitor" and add the following lines (make sure each Modeline is on one line though, not wrapped like this):

HorizSync 31.5 - 100.0
VertRefresh 59.0 - 75.0
Modeline "1440x900_60.0" 106.47 1440 1520 1672 1904 900 901 904 932 -HSync +Vsync
Modeline "1280x800" 83.46 1280 1344 1480 1680 800 801 804 828

The modelines allow X11 to use the widescreen displays of the MacBook Pro and MacBook respectively. Even though I have a MacBook Pro I tend to use the “1280×800″ because it fits nicely in a window on my OS X desktop.

Next under Section "Device" add the VideoRam line followed by the amount of VRAM you allocated your virtual machine in kilobytes (ie: multiply by 1024). The default is 16MB, which would be 16384:

VideoRam    16384

Really unless you’re using an external monitor there is no point at the moment allocating more than this to your VM; Parallels Desktop takes this from your host machine’s normal RAM not video memory and uses it to increase supported resolutions.

Now scroll down to Section "Screen". You should see several SubSection "Display" configurations with different colour depths. Scroll down to the last one and add the appropriate Modes line:

SubSection "Display" 
	Viewport 0 0 
	Depth 24 
	Modes "1280x800" (for MacBook)
	Modes "1440x900" (for MacBook Pro)
EndSubSection

FreeBSD should auto-detect under most circumstances the highest colour depth the VM supports, but I usually put a DefaultDepth line in right under Section "Screen" for good measure:

Section "Screen"DefaultDepth 24

Now you're all set! All that's left to do now is rename and move the changed file over to the X11 configuration directory:

mv /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now the moment of truth: testing if it works!

startx

And that's all there is to it. To return to the command line, just type ctrl alt delete/backspace.

The next step would be to go to your ports tree and install your favourite window mananger or desktop environment. For example if you want KDE, as root:

cd /usr/ports/x11/kde3make install clean

Or if you if you'd prefer not to wait two days for the entire desktop to be compiled ;):

pkg_add -rv kde

Then add exec startkde to your .xinitrc in your home directory (create it if it doesn't exist).

Don't forget to read the FreeBSD Handbook chapter on X11 Configuration as well.

Podcast: Play in new window · Download

45:00 – Ruben's sexuality (don't take that the wrong way), changes to the programme, listener feedback on the Rubenerd Forum (Dave on Plunger coffee, Manny the Mailman's huge wallet), signs you are too dependent on your laptop, podcast review (Anything but Monday by Frank Nora and Mad Mike), Chinese high school girls, sinking plastic deodorant containers, irritating time zone differences, insane stalling downloads, power(point) struggles at Starbucks, dorky high school codenames, guys with long hair, exam halls next to gyms, John C. Dvorak gets no spam, and a row of cards that go to Jupiter!

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