Rubenerd

Hey, I’m over my latest flu thingy! Which led me to think: what’s something I couldn’t do while cooped up inside? Carry things outside. This lead to a bit of a brainwave: everyone’s heard of a daily carry—one can only presume—but is there mass awareness of a weekly carry? I define the latter as a set of objects one takes for semi-frequent but not daily trips. Maybe they’re used on weekends, or on days off, and so on. The daily carry A ThinkPad Eco Toploader bag. I got it on steep discount with…

This has been a big month or so for my small circle of friends! I now know four people who’ve either had their permanent residency approved, or have become Australian citizens since May. The amount of work involved in doing these things is far higher and more convoluted than it should be, but that only renders what they achieved that much more impressive. I’m not sure how many of them (if any!) read this blog, but congratulations either way. Our communities are made eminently better having you…

Today’s Music Monday is an etymological road trip from Paul Simon’s 1983 album Hearts and Bones. The album was a commercial failure relative to his other works, but it happens to be one of my favourites. This cheeky song is mixed in with some of his most beautiful tunes. Clara and I were lucky to find an original LP pressing at a charity shop this year. Graceland is one of my favourite albums of all time, but I find myself playing Hearts and Bones and his earlier One Trick Pony album far more…

It might shock you to know that I put in an order for a retrocomputer earlier this month. Alas, it’s not going as well as one may hope. After saving and searching for this specific machine for months, I eventually tracked one down in serviceable condition on a US store that ran on Shopify. I prefer buying from outside the US thesedays if I can, because their shipping prices are wild. It typically costs half as much to get something from the UK, despite it being further away. But something…

A client recommended the Three Capes Track in Tasmania recently, and it looks stunning. From the Tasmania Parks and Wilderness Service: The 48-kilometre track has been designed as an achievable experience for a wide range of ages and abilities. It has been built to a dry-boot standard from a range of materials, including timbers, stone and gravel and is wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. The journey begins with walkers checking in at the Port Arthur Historic Site. You will then…

I saw this on AliExpress, and I may be more than a little obsessed: The entire case is made from 1.2 mm-thick steel, with support for the following features: Full ATX motherboards 120 × 25 mm front fan behind a removable panel 7 expansion slots 1× 5.25 drive bay, and 2× 3.5 drive bays Two cutouts for RS232 serial ports That classic serif font The position of the power supply over the motherboard would limit you to slim CPU coolers, unless you installed an SFX power supply with an adaptor,…

I’m conflicted whenever I feel the compulsion to discuss “AI”. I am beyond bored of it as a topic, and there are far more interesting and wonderful things I’d rather be spending my time here sharing. But it’s also the most consequential story in recent tech history. As I mentioned on my last show, I feel a responsibility as someone in the industry with an infrastructure-level experience and understanding to communicate my concerns. Anyway, here are a bunch of disjointed posts from my drafts…

Hot on the heels of seeing the 3801 steam by in all its restored glory, I was looking out the window and saw the R-766 steam by as well. Wait, WHAT!? I didn’t have my camera set up in time, so instead have this press image from the Picnic Train website, the organisation that currently operates the locomotive: I scarcely believed my eyes when I saw it. That’s not a metaphor or turn of phrase; I mean I literally didn’t believe what I was seeing. For context: The R-766 is from the Australian state…

Last April I shared some of what I called my post-smartphone devices, including the following: I still use that Tangara music player interchangeably with my Sony NW-A55. I also read a lot more books from those street libraries than I do the Kobo, though that still does get use. The one thing I stopped using was that notebook. I praised it at the time for being able to fit into my chino pockets, meaning I could jot down whatever came to mind, wherever I was. I walk and take the train everywhere,…

It’s surprising to me how I haven’t spent a great deal of time exploring Italian coffee culture, especially given my proclivity for consuming said beverage. I’ve been reliably informed that Australia’s coffee snobbery was derived in large part by waves of Italian and Greek immigration (and German, which included my dad). It’s regularly cited as the reason why chains like Starbucks have struggled to get as much of a foothold in the country, though I’ve argued that’s but one factor. One of these…

I’ve mentioned here before that I think we’re living during the golden era of retrocomputing. Designing, producing, and selling PCBs and other components has never been more accessible. The fact people are teaching these old computers new tricks, and in some cases even replacing unobtainium components to keep the joy alive is awesome. Tindie was one of the online outlets that made this possible. I described it as Etsy for electronics enthusiasts, many of whom were retrocomputer tragics like me.…

We haven’t had a Music Monday for a while, my ongoing blog series where I post about music on a Monday. Thanks Ruben, that clarification was not only helpful, but prescient. Wait, no it wasn’t. I have been getting back into Massive Attack again, and I can never decide what my favourite song is from their 1991 Blue Lines album. Today, it’s this incredible opener. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-07-13.

Minecraft lets you define your own world border, which limits the world to a specific size. This is helpful for sysadmins to limit the growth and file size of a map. For players, it keeps the map more compact, which also potentially lets you render new biomes closer to home when they’re introduced (thanks to the legendary Amelia Watson for this trick). World borders are defined as a square with a center coordinate, and a width defined by a distance. Note that distance refers to the width of the…

I’ll admit, I’ve felt a little trepidation approaching this new device, despite it ostensibly ticking all my boxes. It has retro styling. It’s taking a stand against the smartphones and social media platforms with which I’ve increasingly harboured resentment and frustration. It’s Commodore, damn it! And yet, look beyond the press releases, news articles, and wire services, and most technical people in my RSS aggregator seem… confused by it. Why would I want a phone that limits what I can…

We haven’t had a tier list here for a while, so I thought it’d be fun to do one to celebrate 2026-07-11. Japanese convenience stores are ubiquitous, tasty, and a cultural institution in their own right. I’ve decided not to include places we haven’t been to in a separate list this time; maybe I’ll add to this eventually. It’s worth mentioning this tier list only compares Japanese outlets, and where Japanese kombinis have branched out overseas. Including other countries in this list would be…

I’ve talked here about devices I’ve bought over the years that weren’t just good, but something that fit my use case so perfectly that I can still remember them years later. A few examples: The iPod 3G from when I was a kid The Olympus OMD E-M10 MkII mirrorless camera The tiny ThinkPad X40 The Sapphire Nitro+ RX 9060 XT (16 GiB) graphics card I bought last month is now on that list. It is embarrassing the extent to which this has improved my life. I’ve been putting the card through its paces,…

Did any of you play The Sims or The Sims 2? I can’t speak to the latter iterations of the game, but I did spend a not insignificant amount of my childhood designing and building houses. That worked out well in my family, because my sister was far more interested in designing the people who would end up living in the aforementioned dwellings. A neverending source of frustration was just how often something that looked better had lower stats. In particular, kitchen goods such as fridges that were…

Every week or so I get an email like this: $SPAMMER has sent you a Google Analytics report The substance of the email is, let’s just say, not ideal: Hi, Attached is your <spam URL> <spam URL> <spam URL> property. VIEW REPORT Note: This email is setup by a user, not Google Analytics. Please reach out to the admin of the property if you have questions on why you’re receiving this email. You can check out a screenshot here, though note it’s NSFW, and you should definitely not visit any of the…

I was walking back from coffee in northern Sydney earlier this week—like a gentleman—when I saw Australia’s most famous locomotive steam by. AAAAAH! I got my phone out and hurriedly filmed it as it went past. Now I just need to see the South Australian 520, and the Victorian R-761 in action. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-07-09.

Stop me if you’re Australian and have heard this story before. You find something online you need to purchase. You add it to your trolley, make a payment for the item and the requisite shipping, and wait for the invoice. So far, so good. You then receive a shipping notice and a tracking number, and your heart sinks. You develop a pit in your stomach. The sky turns to grey, and you hear what sounds like thunder in the distance. The V60 coffee you brewed comes out sour. Your packages install with…

ABC News reported on an Australian gentleman who’s vape battery resulted in the combustion of his trousers: The Northern NSW Local Health District (LHD) has confirmed a 56-year-old Brisbane man went to Byron Central Hospital at 3:15pm on Saturday. It is understood he told the hospital he had coins in his pocket, along with a vape containing a lithium-ion battery. According to FRNSW data, there have been 38 battery-related incidents categorised as involving “small portable devices” so far this…

Memory is a funny thing, especially during our formative years. The most random things can imprint, where other pertinent details are forgotten to the sands of time. There often doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it; or if there is, I’m oblivious to them. It wouldn’t be the first time. Such is the case with the Apple II and its descendants. I got seriously into retrocomputers when I was in school in the 2000s, but at that point my interest was mostly confined to Commodore kit (and…

This is the sixth post in my A-Z Toolbox series, in which I’m listing tools I use down the alphabet for no logical or practical reason. The letter F conjures many words in the English language, many of which don’t express positive emotional states. It’s often invoked prior to mentioning something frustrating, like Flipping Windows Server. That’s regrettable, because there are lots of useful and fun tools. For me it’s an easy win for FFmpeg, the Swiss Army Knife of video and audio editing. Every…

Wait, really!? I’m glad you told us that Ruben, I would never have guessed. Uh oh, he’s talking about himself in the third person again, that’s never a good sign. It’s interesting how the number of migraines I get has mercifully dropped since my early 20s, where I used to get them weekly. But their intensity has also gone up. I guess I’m more dedicated now than I used to be. That’s how that works, right? The good news is I have more mitigation stuff now, thanks in no small part to greater…

Qantas and Airbus announced the routes and aircraft to fly Project Sunrise starting next year, the carrier’s non-stop flights from Sydney, to London and New York. It means a lot, and I’ll attempt to explain why. “Hidden in the summer for a million years” Australia, you’re standing in it! I’ve been back here for more than a decade now, but I still feel like a guest in my birth country. There are mannerisms that still trip me up, cultural references I don’t get, and social interactions that throw…

I don’t remember when this started, but I like sharing featured photos on Wikipedia when they feature a cute bird. Today we have this photo of the Rufa Red Knot, taken by Chuck Homler: The Red Knot is a medium-sized shorebird in the sandpiper family, which to me always sounded like a musical instrument. By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-07-02.

Both the ones I tried were… fine. Too sweet for my taste, but otherwise unremarkable. I don’t harbour strong feelings for the flavour, smell, mouth feel, or texture. They existed in a can, I drank them, then got on with my day. Another thing ticked off the list! Only took me how many years? By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-07-01.

I worked briefly in process control when I was younger, and saw Things.™ One of those Things™ was a wall of LEDs to indicate statuses of various valves and sensors across the entire plant. It was old school, but it worked. It also made you feel like you were on a 1960s-era sci-fi set. What does this have to do with databases? That’s an extremely excellent, and dare I say handsome, question. While we’re on the topic of things I used to do, I used to work against a large database that had a…

An earlier draft of this post was called Xen. I’ve been using Linux hypervisors too much again. I like my AeroPress a lot. No, scratch that, I love my AeroPress. I adore it. It’s been one of the best, most consequential pieces of kit I’ve ever had the pleasure of owning. I’ve been using the same one for more than twelve years, and have only ever needed to swap the rubber gasket out once. This funky little gadget has made me thousands of cups of coffee, and made me have thoughts about the…

Sendai is a city on the central-north coast of Japan, in the Tōhoku region. I was looking up its prefecture on Wikipedia because I love their flag, and ended up going down a rabbithole about its festivals. They’re most famous for the Sendai Tanabata Festival. According to the official website: Sendai Tanabata Festival has been passed down through the generations as a traditional event that dates back to the era of Date Masamune, the first lord of Sendai Domain. Today, the festival is known…