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12:00 – Ruben trying to be serious alert! Ruben attempts to apply his university computing and economics studies to answer the question: why are there so many versions of Windows Vista? Oh and seriously being serious!
Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
Wow, Chinese New Year is almost upon us, and it feels very strange. Here I am in KLCC, the Petronas Twin Towers, the premier building in Malaysia and there are no Chinese people… anywhere! For once I'm walking around and all I see are Malays, Indians and Caucasians. There's nothing wrong with it, it just feels very eerie!
Of course Chinese New Year here in Malaysia is a big deal given the Chinese are the largest and most visible ethnic group after the Malays. It's even more so in Singapore where the vast majority are Chinese. The closest I can come to describing it would be to compare Singapore on Chinese New Year to Australia, North America or Europe on Christmas Day. Just this feeling of deserted-ness… very strange.
Wishing all my Chinese friends (and my Chinese-obsessed ang moh friends) a happy, healthy and prosperous year of the boar.
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13:00 – Frank Edward Nora is my radio idol, Singlish rubbing off, spooky night traveling in Kuala Lumpur with missing people, Scottish holidays, listener feedback (Dave, Matt, MannyTheMailman, Felix) and gong xi fa cai everyone!
ou can also stream it and view its Internet Archive page.
Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
Not to be confused with the Aussie gitarist John Williams who I am also a fan of.
I think it's something different when you're listening to Whole Wheat Radio or any other internet radio station and something comes on that you recognise. I've discovered so many artists listening to WWR (Kevin So, Guy Clark, Esther Golton (d'uh!), Doofus, The Philadelphia Jug Band, Gypsy Jazz, Jim Brannigan, Caleb Coffee), but this is the first time I've come across someone I already knew.
I originally discovered John Williams not on Whole Wheat, but on Magnatune, the record label and website that isn't evil:
I’m a guitar player, mostly electric, steel string acoustic too. I do session work, songwriting, and production projects. I have a well-outfitted home studio for songwriting and some production, and I also work with a nationally acclaimed pro studio here in Seattle.
I love his blues and jazz compositions and really appreciate the depth of his music. His Dusty Porch and Long Ride Home albums are on my (increasingly lengthly) Whole Wheat shopping list. My favourite song of his so far is Almond Joy which you can preview before you buy on Magnatune.
Given Magnatunes' very liberal and friendly licencing policy for podcasters, I might play a sample on the next Rubenerd Show… hey I hadn't thought of that. I'm smarter than I look.
John Williams links:
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30:00 – Good afternoon Jeff's Plumbing, book review (Britain's answer to Freakonomics: The Under Cover Economist by Tim Harford), John Williams (on Magnatune, Whole Wheat Radio, musical preview of Almond Joy), dropping things, child fantasy, Rubenerd housekeeping (new links, Konqueror), people's funny phone voices, two sets of grandparents, why it was never "Throw A Shrimp On The Barbie" in Australia, huge Kuala Lumpur shopping centre (Berjaya Times Square, photos) and what music isn't evil!
Recorded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Licence for this track: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Attribution: Ruben Schade.
Happy Vanentine's Singles Awareness Day everyone. Yes, much more politically correct lah!
On to other matters though, it seems the situation at home has become a bit more stable now, so I'm looking forward to creating the Rubenerd Show again starting later this week. Stay tuned for the latest.
As usual I'd like to thank Felix, Dave, Matt, Bird/Liz/Elizabeth/Something, Ruth, Jimbob and of course you for the support you've given my family and I over these last few weeks.
At the expense of possibly up-to-the-minute stories and so forth; I'll be resuming the recording by doing shows a few days in advance to give myself some buffer space. Ideally I'd love to do shows a week in advance in case when something else happens but for the time being that seems a bit silly. I am still determined to do weekdaily shows instead of a weekend one though!
In the criminal justice systems of the countries I have lived in (and given my server logs, most probably yours too) it's not only accepted that you are innocent until proven guilty, it's the law.
DRM, or digital restrictions management is a series of technological measures implemented by paranoid corporations to protect them from the biggest evil force in the world: consumers. Give a consumer the freedom to use the content in the way it was originally intended to be used and they'll end up just ripping you off and not use your technology to use said content right? Horror of horrors!
This arrogant position of most media companies will be their undoing eventually, but in the meantime it just bugs me that they're taking advantage of consumers and taking away our rights that are written in law and unwritten in common decency.
Steve Jobs from Apple even admitted that he wouldn't be using DRM in iTunes if media companies were reasonable. I'm a tad skeptical, but at least he said that instead of nothing.
Now there seems to be some legitimate reasoning behind DRM. By theoretically preventing the copying of media they can protect themselves from piracy. The problem is DRM is rarely used for this purpose; instead of protecting themselves media companies seem instead to be using it so they can re-sell you the same content over and over again. Why let someone buy media to play on their TV, their portable media player, their phone and in their cars when you can sell it over again for each one?
But the part the really boils my blood is that by using DRM companies are sending out a clear message: they don't trust us with their content. They assume we're all out to destroy them, and that we have nothing but malicious intent. They're treating us like little kids; it's beyond contempt.
Just came back from working (on a Saturday, argh!) only to discover that I couldn't access the Whole Wheat Radio website, and both the low and high audio streams just keep buffering without sound :(.
Screenshot on my DIY Athlon desktop (FreeBSD 6.2 of course!):
Our DSL connection here in Malaysia is far from reliable so quite possibly this is a local problem, or it could be something else. Anyone else having trouble? I was all ready to put in another Kevin So request :(.
The only other thing I can think of is maybe it's offline for maintainence because at this time of day most of North America is asleep.
UPDATE: Sunday, 01:30am: The streams not being able to connect were a result of my computer changing its IP address. DHCP sucks. But I still can't access the site
You remember back on the 17th of January I posted a Desk entry about how my mum was losing hope? Well today I can honestly say the mood now is even worse.
Let's just say when I was 17 and my sister 14 my father did some things with a certain person that did not go down so well with my mum to put it lightly. Coupled with her decade long cancer treatment side effects, the pain, the frustration, the constant tiredness and now the suspicion that just maybe he might be at it again is making her more upset.
My mum and I seem to be connected somehow mentally; when she's depressed or upset it affects me too, and right now I am really, really, really down in the dumps and depressed I knew I was because I listened to an Overnightscape episode and didn't smile the whole time. I don't think I was even paying attention.
I really don't know what I'm trying to accomplish with this post, other than to vent. In which case, thank you for being said vent in which I could vent to. Did that make sense?
And she's got another major dose of chemotherapy tomorrow. Great.
I also apologise for the show lag time again but my mum comes first.
If you're a use of KDE and would prefer to have the British English spelling instead of the Americanizationed English (is that a word), there are several ways to get it.
The KDE Localisation project has an en_gb team at http://www.kde.me.uk/index.php?page=kde-en-gb.
If you use KDE on FreeBSD like me, there is also a localisation tarball in the ports collection.
Now only if they had a Singlish version as well. Can you imagine it?
Salamat Datang ke KDE! Apa kabar? Program install fail. Wah lah. Hey ang moh, chicken are you?
