Both @matdevdug and my own work Mac laptop reminded me of something recently. A mood, and a feeling, so far gone from my current state of mind that it feels like an age ago. We used to look foward to Mac OS X releases! I literally used to take my SLR down to Apple retailers in Si … | Continue reading
I love going through old 43 Folders posts when I either need inspiration, or am stuck on something. In a post about email, he introduces the concept of the End of Message marker: In fact, if you’re relating just a single fact or asking one question in your email, consider using j … | Continue reading
I pay for everything using cards, as I suspect most Australians my age and younger do. It was less a deliberate decision, and more something that “just happened”. Thing is, I don’t like when something “just happens”, and would rather reflect on such circumstances and make a conci … | Continue reading
Michael Larabel over at Phoronix linked to the latest point release of the Rust Coreutils which was pushed yesterday. It’s fun reading all the changes, fixes, and improvements to such tools. I’ve namedropped the project here a few times here, but never called it out specifically … | Continue reading
I’ve got a longer post about mixed-language support in HTML and XML documents pending, but in the meantime I realised I’ve been defining Japanese wrong for probably years. This was the output from the W3C Validator on a test document I uploaded: Bad value jp for attribute lang on … | Continue reading
A lot of musicians and coffee shops I love host their material exclusively on Instagram. I used to have an account there, but I haven’t felt compelled to give The Zuck any more of my attention. A friend clued me into Flufi, an alternative web interface to Instagram. You type the … | Continue reading
ABC News reported on an article in the Nature Communications journal about this discovery in the Pilbara region in north-west Western Australia: The crater, estimated to be 3.47 billion years old, could have been 100 kilometres wide. Today, we can still see a raised area about 35 … | Continue reading
I have a terrible confession to make. Okay, I have many, but let’s take them one step at a time. I grew up on DOS and Windows 3.x machines, so all my 1980s home computer adventures have been retroactive. Retroactively awesome. But while I have way too much knowledge of the 486, d … | Continue reading
When AMD announced their 9000-series Ryzen CPUs late last year, the tech press largely reacted with bemusement and boredom. This was a shame, because as I wrote last August: They’ve managed to bring the TDP back down to what my two-generation old 5700X has, and with a significant … | Continue reading
Zerker asked on Vogons how to create BMP images with ImageMagick that would be compatible with old Windows. This is a summary of the thread, with words in bold directly related to the question, and italics for semi-related. OP asks question Another tool Spelling Spelling Spelling … | Continue reading
By now I’m sure you’ve read the news that Microsoft is ceasing development of Skype, the ubiquitous Internet telephony software. If this is news to you, ugh, I’m sorry! Or not, depending on whether you depend on it for your communications. I can’t express how massive Skype was, e … | Continue reading
Go’s templating engine in Hugo has mul, or math.Mul function, for performing basic multiplication: {{ $number = .Params.number }} {{ mul $number 2 }} I did this on some frontmatter for a post I was testing, but got an error: error calling mul: Can't apply the operator to the val … | Continue reading
I like them! They give me 1990s Lotus SmartSuite vibes somehow. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-03-05. | Continue reading
An earlier version of this post was titled “Phone reception in rural Australia still sucks”, hence the permalink. Maybe I should have kept it! There’s a trend among members of my family where they move up the Australian coast when they retire. My grandad bought land near Forster … | Continue reading
I try not to talk too much about politics here—at least directly—because I get the impression many of you read my sillyness for a bit of a break. I completely understand if you don’t need this in your life right now, so feel free to skip this one. … Australia and Singapore couldn … | Continue reading
Last December I received a new pair of glasses, a form of speculation equipment used to bend light entering my eyes such that the object of my attention is presented to my brain with sharper focus. While I tend not to need these devices when positioned at my desk, my self-imposed … | Continue reading
Rememeber that Free Our Feeds campaign to make Blusky and its protocols more open? How it seemed like something was a bit… off about it, despite all the regular news outlets obsessing over the idea? From a project that has since partnered with them: Ascute is a genus of calcareou … | Continue reading
@float13 asked on Mastodon, and I instinctively reached for the No option. But then I thought about it, and realised I had. I clicked banner ads as a kid constantly. This was back in the day when ads were simple animated GIFs that a webdev would put on their page. Heck, I was so … | Continue reading
It didn’t exist, so I added what I could: The OM System OM-3 is a retro-styled mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera produced by OM Digital Solutions on the Micro Four Thirds system. It is styled on the original Olympus OM-1 35mm camera. It is the first new product line introduc … | Continue reading
Remember those POP Vinyl things? Take a look through an image search if you haven’t seen them before. They were small plastic shells licenced from shows, anime, movies, music, and so on. They were everywhere in pop culture stores for a time. If you knew a character from somewhere … | Continue reading
I’ve been a bit under the weather the last few days, so I’m posting from the drafts folder from late last year. I don’t remember why I didn’t publish this. Maybe I was waiting to take a photo of a cleaned laptop, but that would just look like a normal laptop, so that doesn’t make … | Continue reading
Clara and I bought Kindles years ago to use as affordable ebook readers. I used the Calibre software to convert my epub books to the mobi files that the Kindle required, and I was off to the races. If by “races” I mean sitting on a train seat or couch and reading a book. Over tim … | Continue reading
Nerdy Pleasures has a post where he explores the legal ramifications of failed Kickstarters. It’s specific to the US legal system, but still interesting. I didn’t know 9-10% of Kickstarter campaigns fail, and only 13% of these backers receive refunds. Futurity discusses a study i … | Continue reading
I received an email from an Australian financial company with the blog title as the subject, and it’s been rattling around in my head for days. Do you not like money? Ruben… are you there? Look at me, Ruben. Do you… do you not like money? I know both the answers I’m supposed to g … | Continue reading
I hold archetype tests in the same esteem as I do those Myers-Briggs personality quizzes, and horoscopes more broadly. But it was still a bit of fun. This latest one my colleague clued me into was massive, but it returned these as my dominant archetypes: This was the description … | Continue reading
I’ve seen smaller Give Way signs used for cyclists, but this is the first time I’ve seen a regular-sized sign mounted to such a tiny pole! This was on a side street in Wahroonga in northern Sydney: I wonder why it’s like that? By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-02-25. | Continue reading
Last December I wrote a meandering post describing the challenges with Mini-ITX builds. While the form factor lets you build in beautiful little cases like my old NCASE M1, there are financial, thermal, and feature compromises that may prove limiting, especially when it comes to … | Continue reading
I’ve made no secret of the fact I love working from coffee shops. I don’t know if it’s the surroundings, or being an introvert who can be around people without having to interact with them, or the smell and taste of the coffee itself. It’s magic, in the sense that it makes no sen … | Continue reading
This was the most important thing I’ve read in a long time: It’s good to still have joy in your life. It’s crucial. It’s cool. Swing that sword while you bake a pie. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-02-24. | Continue reading
When I finally sought help after last week’s misadventures, one of the topics that was raised was whether I had notifications turned on. I joked that it almost felt like a screening question, to which I was told “there’s no joke about it, and it definitely now is”. Huh! Everyone … | Continue reading
I’ve reached that point in my amateur electronics experience where I want to buy a desoldering gun, or a desoldering station. Solder wick, a sufficiently hot iron, and a solder sucker is serviceable for small jobs, but when faced with the prospect of desoldering 64 pins for an en … | Continue reading
I received the bat signal from Deborah Pickett regarding submissions for a revived CRANK. Let’s do this! Food delivery was a lifeline during Covid lockdowns. It allowed restaurant staff to cater to people at a distance, and spared those of us with hectic jobs the thought of rehea … | Continue reading
I’ve waxed lyrical about my love of OM System (ne. Olympus) cameras here of late, saying they were some of the best electronic devices I’d ever owned, how much I loved their mechanical dials, and how wonderful the Micro Four Thirds system is for travel. I’ve even used them in dis … | Continue reading
Ukrainians are, to use geopolitical language, fucking awesome. No really, every Ukrainian I’ve met is. The war in Ukraine was started by the government of Russia. The democratically-elected leader of Ukraine is Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukrainian borscht is the best borscht. It is the … | Continue reading
I’ve been on record here espousing what may charitably be described as a dislike of motorised conveyances of an automobile nature. The more rational and level-headed among urbanists may be more specific in decrying car dependency over the cars themselves, but I just don’t like th … | Continue reading
I’m working remote today, so I tried somewhere new. The coffee shop/roastery smells amazing, and has bar chairs and a long, thin table overlooking the street and surrounding landscape. It’s lovely! Though let’s just say I’m glad I brought an umbrella in case. By Ruben Schade in S … | Continue reading
Podcast: Play in new window | Download 14:22 – Bit of a weirder one today; talking about the time last week when the trolls won! But I got some amazing feedback and some help, so maybe there are lessons here I can pass on. Have you heard of this thing called the block button? I s … | Continue reading
You know the feature I wish LibreOffice Calc and others would implement from Google Sheets? Or from database views, in a matter of speaking? Being able to delete columns and rows. To be clear, I don’t mean: Clear columns Remove the contents of columns Collapse columns Hide column … | Continue reading
The Fruit Company launched the iPhone SE in 2016, a handset with the same form factor as the iPhone 5. It offered people a more affordable, smaller alternative to the iPhone 6 and 6s, with the same access to software updates, and the company’s ecosystem of hardware, accessories, … | Continue reading
This was such a fun video! Teachers that can explain abstract or difficult concepts using relatable analogies are worth their weight in linear power supplies. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-02-20. | Continue reading
Yesterday I made this throwaway comment: Forget about it, as my beloved New York friends would say in an accent I can’t muster, but it doesn’t stop me trying. That public troll earlier this week must be infuriated that once again I’m quoting someone, only this time it’s… myself! … | Continue reading
I was reconciling my accounts over lunch—like a gentleman—when I went to my budget view and none of the resulting numbers made sense. All these accounts, transactions, and budget envelope amounts that had been zero’d out suddenly had wildly incorrect numbers going back to last ye … | Continue reading
This is a bit of a thinking out loud post that normally I’d push to drafts, but Wouter has convinced me that it should go out into the world anyway :). I don’t know how else to say it, but it’s a weird time to be building PCs. After a brief reprieve when blockchain guff fizzled o … | Continue reading
I’ll admit, I had three ulterior motives when posting that quote from Joan Westenberg yesterday about complexity. (1) I wanted to promote her blog which I find massively valuable. (B) I wanted to prove to a troll that quoting people is perfectly reasonable. And (三), I wanted to h … | Continue reading
Today I learned that you can stop FreeBSD jails in reverse order from when they were started. Say you have the follwing configured in your /etc/rc.conf: jail_enable="YES" jail_list="database web varnish" You can add this: sysrc jail_reverse_stop="YES" And those jails will be st … | Continue reading
When I first started making coffee for myself and my family when we lived in Singapore in the early 2000s, I reached for a few different types of beans. Illy coffee was one of them. It was consistently decent, widely available, and adverb coffee. When we moved to Malaysia, ditto. … | Continue reading
Saw this at a coffee shop yesterday: By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-02-17. | Continue reading
Today’s Music Monday is another Paul McCartney classic. My favourite Beatles song was always Here Comes the Sun by the late great George Harrison, but this always came close. That piano line is probably my favourite of any pop song, and the guitar in the coda… amazing. I bring th … | Continue reading