This is not to be confused with the Firth of Forth, as described in Wikipedia: Discover the World of Lviv Croissants That’s clearly the wrong article I pasted from my Good News Train. But still, I would LOVE to try that! Where were we? The Firth of Forth (Scottish Gaelic: Linne F … | Continue reading
To make up for yesterday, I thought we all needed some good news. Here’s what I’ve read this week: Ruben Schade got a Commodore 116. Apparently he was waiting for one for almost two decades, that’s wild. Whoa, so this is what it’s like to talk in the third person. Kyiv Independen … | Continue reading
Last week I finally got to ride in the new NSW Mariyung intercity express trains on a beautiful (cough) drizzly afternoon! They entered service from Sydney in December last year, and while I’d seen some of them flying past, I’d never got to see one up close. Unlike the ancient V … | Continue reading
I love blogging! Writing about a couple of things that interest me every day or so is one of the highlights of my life. That so many of you now read my ramblings as well is that much more lovely. I don’t dare take it for granted. Unfortunately, there are also topics that impact m … | Continue reading
Most of you are likely aware of the Ship of Theseus thought experiment. If not, it grapples with the question of whether something is still the same object if all its parts have been replaced over time. In the original example, imagine if the sails were replaced with a new canvas … | Continue reading
After months of saving and indecision, we’ve finally booked the hotels and flights: Flying into Tōkyō, and spending a few days there. We generally prefer flying to Kansai because Ōsaka is our favourite Japanese city, but we got some jaw-dropping rates with JAL. Maybe it has somet … | Continue reading
I read a lot of technical newsletters, product announcements, feature update notices, and related messages as part of my job. I guard my personal email like a hawk, to the point where I have a filter that matches on the word unsubscribe. At work, I have to keep tabs on our suppli … | Continue reading
In all my years of collecting, writing software for, tinkering with, and learning about 8-bit home computer hardware from Commodore, I never, never thought I’d see the day where a 1984 Commodore 116 would be on the table with my other 264 machines! Almost two decades of saved eBa … | Continue reading
I’ve talked again recently about my frustrations with certain Linux desktop fans directing their ire not at commercial software companies that are making the lives of people who don’t have a choice that much worse, but instead towards… the people who’s lives they’re making that m … | Continue reading
Transport Heritage NSW did another steam train event this weekend, ferrying Edwardian-era engineering fans from Central Station in Sydney up to leafy Hornsby in the northern suburbs. We met up with her at Hornsby Station to say hi. What a gorgeous machine! The Transport Heritage … | Continue reading
It’s been a while since I’ve shared a Wikipedia picture of the day when a cute bird is featured. This is the chestnut-naped antpitta, taken by Sharp Photography. It sure is! From Wikipedia: The chestnut-naped antpitta (Grallaria nuchalis) is a species of bird in the family Gralla … | Continue reading
I love the people behind Digital Photography Review, but there’s something so infectious about the enthusiasm of Micro Four Nerds. This is someone who, increasingly like me, is swayed by qualitative things over specification sheets. Though as she points out, this camera is amazin … | Continue reading
Last year when I was the Main Character™ in Linux social media for suggesting some people need to run Windows, a common reply was that switching to Linux rendered that point invalid. I wanted to ask those people if it was appropriate for them to be operating their smartphone or c … | Continue reading
I’m out on the balcony this morning, and some gentle rain has just started falling on the national park outside. I was knee-deep in reading about the new Linux container framework Incus, and now I find myself looking at the clouds, and listening to the pitter patter of the rain i … | Continue reading
I’m a big fan of ImageMagick, and use it regularly for all sorts of random tasks. It didn’t occur to me when I wrote my post about dithering images yesterday that I could use it for that as well. @cerement to the rescue: magick $INPUT -dither FloydSteinberg -remap netscape: $OUTP … | Continue reading
The Australian Associated Press reported, via SBS News: A program allowing expedited clearance upon arrival in the United States will be expanded to include Australian passengers, after laws passed federal parliament. The US Global Entry Program allows travellers to get faster en … | Continue reading
That came out of nowhere! Getting dinner with my Cantonese inlaws tonight, who are lovely. To celebrate, I’ve had money in savings for a saved eBay search since at least 2006 (!) and it just pinged me earlier this week. The seller was even local, which I also took as a sign. You’ … | Continue reading
This is something a bit different! Rebecca H. heeded my recent bat signal, and emailed me with some exciting news from her latest adopted home in Seoul, South Korea. Firstly, I was jealous of where she was living before let alone where she’s ended up. Secondly, is what comes afte … | Continue reading
Bluefrog emailed with a question earlier this month: I came across your retro-designed website. Mine is similar in design (basic HTML with a bit a CSS). I like how you stylized your in-line images to look like compressed images with low color depth. I’m trying to achieve the same … | Continue reading
I had a wander around a few electronics stores in Sydney recently—like a gentleman—and was immediately struck by the phone sections each time. Not literally, they thankfully outlawed that form of “direct” advertising many years ago. I kid, but I remember walking around department … | Continue reading
A bit light on blog posts today, on account of doing backend work on the server instead. I hate the word backend, it sounds like I’m… let’s just stop that sentence before it goes any further. Among some changes: I’ve reworked my ZFS datasets, though more for our wiki than the blo … | Continue reading
Via Mastodon: One way of archiving your messages is to include a reporter in all your chat groups. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-03-25. | Continue reading
This is probably the newest song I’ve featured on a Music Monday for a long time. But I overheard it at a restaurant with Clara over the weekend, and the 1980s-style synths and compsition were a lot of fun. I didn’t know about Chappell Roan until yesterday, but wow. By Ruben Scha … | Continue reading
The men on my mum’s side of the family all had hair throughout their lives. My dad, and the German side of my family, not so much. I wasn’t sure whether I’d win the genetic lottery or not. In the last few years it became apparent I hadn’t. What’s strange to me is that everyone lo … | Continue reading
Mentour Pilot’s latest episode about Jet2 Flight 2152 was thankfully an example of a near miss, not an incident. His team also keep doing a stellar job; the production values of his channel, and his clear explanations, have long surpassed all those Air Crash Investigation-style s … | Continue reading
I was in a melancholic mood last night, that may or may not have been partly the result of reading dystopian news stories. So I went back to my childhood and tried running Winamp in Wine. It worked! I did nothing exotic whatsoever. I had my old Winamp installer I’d downloaded ont … | Continue reading
I love virtual machines! They’re a computer, in my computer. They let me tinker, test, and build things, then blow them away and start from scratch. We can even run different architectures on our computers, albeit with a performance penalty. We can emulate an entire machine from … | Continue reading
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-03-21. | Continue reading
On Tuesday I wrote a post about upgrading from an iPhone 15 Pro Max to a refurbished 2022 iPhone SE. This generated a bunch of comments (thank you!) which I’ve aggregated and summarised below. It’s not really an upgrade though, is it? Yes, the title of the post was a bit cheeky. … | Continue reading
This is not something I expected to write, but turns out writing about fun things is fun. This is especially true when you can turn something bad into something good! I had terrible insomnia again earlier this week, so I found myself at the computer idly scrolling. I don’t recomm … | Continue reading
Hi Tim Apple, How are you today? I hope this email finds you well, happy, suitably adjusted, healthy, wealthy, wise, merry, and/or all of the above. Look, I’ll cut to the chase here. Spill the beans. Cut the mustard. An Apple a day keeps the doctor away, but the dentist employed, … | Continue reading
Via @bofh_excuses: YOU HAVE AN I/O ERROR → Incompetent Operator error Reminds me of the dreaded PEBKAC: problem exists between keyboard and computer. No, wait. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2025-03-20. | Continue reading
I subscribed to Mathew Duggan’s blog after reading his post about creating brown noise in Python, something that has made a massive difference to the quality of my life. He recently wrote an article about Slack and attention, which was one of the best damned things I’ve read this … | Continue reading
I’ve waxed lyrical here about my love of coffee shops for doing work and personal projects. Whether it’s being around people without the social expectation of interaction, or the exercise outdoors going to and from them, or even the coffee itself, it’s an oddly invigorating and e … | Continue reading
This post is dedicated to Rebecca H, who’s insistence we exercise during Covid lockdowns was instrumental in keeping our spirits up. Swimming was one such activity! I saw this article by Eelemarni Close-Brown scroll by this morning, and I’ll admit it gave me pause: Almost half of … | Continue reading
Remember when buying a new phone was this exciting thing you did? Maybe it was just me, but I remember getting the Palm Tungsten W home when I was in school, or the Palm Centro, or my brief foray into Symbian with the Nokia E61i, and being so psyched I couldn’t sit still. Each of … | Continue reading
Lots of food-related conversations happening around me today as we share our conciliatory Monday French toast: “It’s just good to have onions in general.” “What’s the smallest tomato juice that you have?” “[Tagalog]… it’s integral damn it… [Tagalog]!" “Nobody wants carrot in thei … | Continue reading
Something happened to me on the weekend that I’m still coming to terms with! And now I get to share it with you. You all know by now my interest in retrocomputing; some may refer to as harbouring an obsession. Neither of you are wrong. Everything from this, to my literal current … | Continue reading
John Gruber posted an article regarding the “credibility” Apple has lost with its borked Apple Intelligence services. I’d unsubscribed to Daring Fireball after his bizarre stance against the EU, but he’s clearly hit on something given the responses people are posting on MetaFilte … | Continue reading
Clara and I don’t collect anime figures anymore… much. But that doesn’t stop me being a masochist and checking out the regular retailers from time to time to window shop. “Screen” shop? Some of these are pre-orders, others are available for sale now. Tamaki Kosaka 20th Anniversar … | Continue reading
There was a time in the mean old days of Windows where it was a basic requirement to reformat and reinstall it periodically, lest the performance and reliability go to absolute crap. Maybe the way I used machines made the situation more acute, but I always found reinstalling Wind … | Continue reading
Sydney’s transit system is a farcry from those in many Asian cities, but it’s above average by Western and Australian standards. That is, until a signal fault develops on one of the lines, and your afternoon commute suddenly looks like this: Given the heatwave we’re going through … | Continue reading
This might seem weird coming from someone who famously struggles to reply to emails people send him, but I do see this blog more as a conversation. I used to write for myself, but in the last few years this shifted. I write now as though someone I care about is reading it. Maybe … | Continue reading
Your friend and mine Wesley Moore pinged me about this post by Tom MacWright, in which he discusses theming his own blogroll with XSLT: This website has a new section: blogroll.opml! Ruben Schade figured out a brilliant way to show blogrolls and I copied him. Check out his post o … | Continue reading
When I was studying in Adelaide as a teenager, my roommates would invariably have the TV going in the common area. I don’t think they were even watching it half the time; it was more just a source of background noise. I think it’d drive me up the wall today, but at the time it wa … | Continue reading
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