2026-06-19 14:26:34
For much of the day Sydney time, the VM hosting this site and a few for my family have been smashed with traffic with spoofed headers, but from IP ranges associated with the Alibaba Cloud, specifically these:
47.79.200.0/2447.79.206.0/2447.79.207.0/24They issued a sufficient number of requests to overwhelm my php_fpm pool, resulting in sites sometimes returning a 502 Bad Gateway. Bad gateway, bad.
I’ve blocked the entire damned ranges for now and bumped up my server specs, which seems to have restored access. Thanks to Simon, Rebecca H, and Walter for emailing me today to let me know.
I’m not sure what the motivation was here; I don’t think they were “AI” scrapers this time. Maybe they don’t like phở?
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-06-19.
2026-06-19 13:33:52
I’ve been getting into FLAC this year, on account of having some minor ear surgery in Vietnam and realising I could now perceive a difference! It’s been a joy rediscovering old favourites, and listening to new music in higher fidelity than I could appreciate before. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are entire instruments and detail in songs I heard growing up I didn’t even realise existed (yes, this has as much to do with the mastering process and other attributes, not just the fidelity of the audio format, but I digress).
Therefore, it seems fitting that the next item in our Hi-Fi stack would be the pinnacle of analogue tape format quality: the 8-track! Clara’s colleague saw this stunning Realistic AM/FM Stereo 8-track recorder at a yard sale in his part of Sydney recently, and thought we’d appreciate it. That was very kind, and yes, yes we would!
This Taiwanese unit dates from the mid-1970s, if the stunning wood veneer wasn’t a massive giveaway. The stickers on the knobs are after-market and will likely be taken off when we do a deep clean, but for posterity I wanted to show it in its current condition. It also came with a bunch of 8-track carts, all but one of which have perished pads which will need replacement.
I’m most looking forward to listening to this homebrew cart with Supertramp and Kate Bush, if it still works! Below are some of the carts we received along with a Compact Cassette for comparison:
For those unaware of the history of 8-track, my comment about quality was most definitely tongue in cheek. You weren’t buying 8-track carts for their quality, you were buying them to be able to listen to your own music instead of the radio in a car (I’d say “I”, but I wasn’t alive at the time). Unlike streaming services today, you’d buy a pre-recorded cartridge, or record your own, and it was yours to play indefinitely without a subscription service, data plan, or advertisements. What a concept!
8-track is a fascinating format. Similar to the earlier 4-track with which it shares a common ancestry, the 8-tracks are large cartridges containing a single, endless spool of tape. The name is derived from the four stereo tracks (left and right) laid down on the tape, giving you four programs upon which to record and play back music. Rather than the side a and side b as we came to know on the Compact Cassette, 8-track referred to these as four programs. When the tape played through one program, the player would detect a strip of metal at the end, move the head down, and begin playing the next program.
8-tracks were popular from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, when improvements in recording tech and tape formations lead to the smaller Compact Cassette taking over. They weren’t as popular outside the US, and especially not in the parts of Asia where I grew up, but they did see modest success in Australia. Still, they weren’t really seen as a Hi-Fi format; again, these were for mostly playing in a car… or a Learjet.
At this point I’ve likely lost most of you my age or younger, and have summarised the format incorrectly for those older, for which I apologise. There may already be some of you furiously typing me an email saying that it was terrible and I’m silly for getting into such retro stuff. Hi, welcome, you must be new here!
As for this recorder, it has issues. It doesn’t advance beyond the first program, and the knobs likely need a bit of DeoxIT (cue an Adrian Black reference) as they’re crackly and imprecise. The radio works though, which is something we didn’t have in our setup before. I’ll also need to get an input or tape selector though, as our amplifier only has one tape loop. It’s tough being me.
Once we get it all working (hopefully!), I’ll spend some time doing a bit more of a deep dive into the format, and maybe even crack open one of the carts that came with the machine to look at. I’d never used 8-track before, so this will be fun :).
By Ruben Schade, 2026-06-19.
2026-06-18 12:07:30
Data centre providers usually provide a “smart hands” service that lets you hire one of their engineers to perform remote maintenance on your behalf. They can accept delivery of a drive and install it for you, patch a new cross connect, perform inspections, bump things by accident, and so on.
We just got a pricing update for one of our providers at work, with their four tiers listed below. See if you can spot the issue:
“Normal Working Hours Rate if Flexible Scheduling selected (Hourly)”
“After Working Hours Rate if Flexible Scheduling selected (Hourly)”
“Normal Working Hours Rate (Hourly)”
“After-Working Hours Rate (Hourly)”
Argh, the inconsistent hyphenation! I went back today, and it’s still there, staring at me. Or should I say “staring at-me”.
Thank you for letting me share this with you, I feel a bit better already.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-06-18.
2026-06-18 10:10:55
I was more than a little interested with flags as a kid. I loved learning about the history of their designs, what they represented, their aesthetics, and how they’re used in different settings. Point out a national flag (and even some supranational and subordinate flags), and I’ll almost certainly be able to tell you the political entity it represents, the symbolism behind specific features, and what flags upon which they’re based (where applicable). Have you ever wondered why the five pointed star seems so ubiquitous, yet doesn’t appear on most European flags? Why the Union Flag is in a whole bunch of stuff? Why Malaysia and the US both have red and white stripes? Oh boy, one day I might answer all these, along with far more information you definitely don’t need in your life.
(That’s not to say I didn’t get this wrong. I had the Artsakh flag on my wall for years as a kid, thinking it was the flag of Armenia. I guess I wasn’t too far off).
Besides niche diplomatic roles, vexillological prowess is a completely pointless skill. It’s up there with being able to recite mathematical constants to a specific decimal point. It’s also a bit of a curse, because once you recognise flags, their designs, and their protocols, you become aware of their near-universal misuse! This comes from the fact that most normal people treat flags as a quick shortcut for identifying political entities and/or languages (the value and pitfalls of which are topics for another time).
Which leads us to the use of flags online (is there an echo in here?). Flags are useful for a few reasons. They’re not dependent on a client’s locale, installed fonts, or supported character sets (well, unless you’re Windows and don’t support flag emoji, that’s a separate issue). You can display a Dutch flag to indicate something specific to the Netherlands, and it’s instantly recognisable.
Mmm, stroopwafel.
But that leads us to this screenshot from the Down Detector website. Even if you’re not a flag tragic like me, you can likely spot something is a bit… off about this:
Many of the flags here look fine. But take a look at the UK or Australia: they look as though they’ve been cropped. Or what about the uneven bars on the flags of Nigeria, or Ireland? And Switzerland, what’s even going on there?
(We could yak shave about colour reproduction and accuracy here too, and how some entities define colour spaces we can use while others don’t, but this post is already getting a bit long, and it’s not the primary point here. At least, I don’t think it is. Where am I? Which one am I)?
This is where a reality of flag design comes into conflict with the need web designers have to group things into convenient, uniform shapes. Flags have different ratios. Hey, it’s like this observation is in the title or something. While some political entities and organisations don’t legally specify a formal ratio, the majority do, and it’s considered a diplomatic faux pas to get them wrong.
Most flags today fall into one of two ratios. As mentioned above, Japan and Vietnam use 2:3, which render correctly in that screenshot. I personally find this ratio the most pleasing, but again, not the point of this post, whatever that happens to be.
1:2 is the other common ratio. Here are some entirely unrelated examples that definitely aren’t regularly confused for each other on a regular basis because they’re both ugly, dull, uninspired handmedowns from a former colonial power that nonetheless did gift us parliamentary systems and the ability to bake excellent British-style scones:
Given these near-universal ratios, most websites opt to standardise on one, then crop and/or stretch the rest to accommodate. I am not unsympathetic to this approach as someone who likes uniform, clean designs, but it means a significant portion of the flags will be wrong.
This also becomes a bigger issue when your state doesn’t conform to either of these common ratios, like these specimens:
Granted, the State flag of Belgium is a 2:3, and I suppose the 11:18 of Finland’s flag is “close enough” to 2:3 that you could probably get away with that at smaller sizes. Or could you? You get my point… unless you don’t.
Or for bonus points, what about Nepal? I’ve seen this flag twisted into all sorts of shapes, and with white backgrounds added as though the country is surrendering to something. Designers of a certain persuasion really can’t handle the fact that not everyone is a rectangle, let alone those who are hip enough to be a square:
Thing is, these problems could be easily addressed. We have the technology. In short:
The ratios and/or dimensions of flags could be defined, so each one is displayed correctly.
If this isn’t feasible, then either the horizontal or vertical size should be considered a baseline, and the other be left at auto, assuming the image itself has the correct ratio. This way, everything gets rendered correctly. Happy days.
Likely not much, as is typical for my meandering posts into esoteric nonsense. But we’ve established that:
Flag recognition is a valuable skill. For certain Orange Peanut Gallery readers, that was a joke, please don’t email me.
Websites use flags as handy shortcuts to define countries, nations, and/or languages (these aren’t all the same thing, though).
Website designers regularly need to display flags in a grid, and therefore feel the need to render them in a uniform fashion.
This enforced uniformity results in many (if not most) flags being rendered incorrectly. They’re cropped, stretched, or otherwise mangled to conform to the desired ratio.
Website designers could fix this if they wanted to, but I suspect most are normal people with better things to do than entertain weird people like me.
Thank you. ⛳️
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-06-18.
2026-06-14 14:22:49
This post was backdated, because we were in transit at the time.
This was the last day of our Vietnam 2026 trip. While it couldn’t hold a candle to our journey last year that also took us to Hà Nội and Đà Lạt, it’s still the most fun week I’ve had in a long time. Vietnam is, in case you haven’t noticed by my posts by now, one of the most incredible places in the world. I know it’s easy for someone like me in Australia to get to, but even if you’re further away reading this and have the ability to fly over, I can’t encourage it highly enough. The people are some of the friendliest in the world, the food is exquisite, there’s so much to see and do, and they have an ancient and modern cultural history I feel like I could spend my life exploring. I’m writing this back in Sydney, and I can’t help but feel as though I’ve left a piece of myself there again.
Our last day was a bit of a whirlwind farewell tour of sorts, but there was some real standouts. We started the day at a cute little French café (as one does in Vietnam) that had some of the best croissants and pain au chocolat treats I’d ever had. Because of course they did. The music was aggressively French, with that distinct accordion sound I’m sure you can imagine 🪗. Manifique!
We went for a walk down to the Saigon Centre for some last minute shopping, and to see some of the sights and streetscape along the way. Did I mention how much I already miss this?
The Saigon Centre is the home of Takashimaya in Ho Chi Minh City, the Japanese department store my parents and I used to go to all the time in Ngee Ann City in Singapore. The basement feels just like a Japanese department store, with small stalls selling meticulously wrapped culinary treats and local fare; only this time it had Vietnamese coffee in place of Singaporean snacks. It felt instantly familiar, but also a novelty.
We also ventured upstairs to the toy department—as one does—only to discover an entire wall of Hololive goods! The Hololive Vtubers were (and still are) such a massive part of our lives during those dark early days of Covid, so it’s always a joy seeing their stuff still for sale. I may have got a Shuba card folder (cough).
When we met with our extended family again, we decided to finally try the Coffee Apartments in District 1. This is a building from the 1960s that over time has amassed a collection of coffee shops catering to a range of styles, decors, and budgets. The building itself is quite grungy, but that’s part of the charm: this is an amalgamation of potential experiences that’s grown organically over time, not a commercial building that looks the same as every other.
We chose this cute little coffee house on the second-top floor called the Buihaus, with adorable graphics drawn by the owner’s daughter. We had another signature Vietnamese egg coffee, which for those uninitiated tastes like a strong coffee with a silky custard sitting on top. Highly recommend (and the view was great too)!
We did a speedrun through a bunch of the things we wanted to do and see after this, no doubt fuelled by the strong coffee and good vibes. One place we ended up going that we ran out of time for last year was the Vina Groove, a second-hand music store that’s deceptively small, but has a huge selection of vinyl. I managed to score an original pressing of Plastic Bertrand for 100,000₫, or about AU$5.40. Ça plane pour moi!
Wow, I’m going through my photos, we did a lot before we head to the airport on Saturday. Another highlight was a bit of a relax at our local Chagee, a mainland Chinese tea house. The decor upstairs was such a relief for sore feet; I’ve been in corporate airport lounges that weren’t as nice as this! We all had a specific tea that allowed Clara to redeem some adorable Hello Kitty merchandise.
We also managed to squeeze in a lighting-quick tour of the Fine Art museum, which we also didn’t get to visit last time. They frowned upon the use of cameras (for obvious reasons), but the buildings were interesting in their own right. I also thought it fitting seeing this massive new apartment building going up alongside it; a blend of the old and the new. No, I’m not going to say “juxtaposition”… wait, damn it. Our favourite exhibit was a recent collection of Asian artists from Vietnam and Hong Kong, and in particular Lai Wan Kwan Gideon’s lucid ink paintings of shophouses.
But it was soon time to head to the airport, but that turned into a bit of an adventure in its own right. Our driver was keen to tell us about his rural upbringing, and how Ho Chi Minh City was so overwhelming at first, but he’d eventually come to love and know it inside out. He was excited to hear we were Australian, and said we, Canadians, and Japanese were his favourite tourists. “You are all such lovely people!” Right back at you, my friend.
After we’d checked in and gone through immigration (much quicker this time!), we settled into some comfortable chairs at the Saigon Cafe Bar Kitchen in the departure area for a light meal and to perform a little tradition we started after our first post-Covid holiday: planting a flower on our Minecraft server for the city we visited. It was fun hearing the mix of accents; just in our corner we could make out Korean, Singlish, Japanese, what I think might have been either Croatian or Slovenian, and a lot of Australian.
Once we boarded, we settled in for the night, and had a nice cup of Vietnamese coffee in the morning before arrival :). What a handsome aircraft, if I do say so myself.
And there ends our week-long trip to southern Vietnam. Altogether far too short, but we had a wonderful time.
☕︎ ☕︎ ☕︎
I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to have had an upbringing that let us travel regularly, and that we have the time and disposable income to do this in our adult lives. But with all these amazing places and experiences… Vietnam has done something to me that previously only Japan had. Everyone has their own tastes, priorities, and motivations for travel, so someone’s experiences and joys won’t always apply or translate to someone else. That’s what makes the human condition so frustrating at times, but also so rewarding.
I’ve been blogging here for twenty years, and by now many of you have an idea of the kind of person I am. While I’ve loved travelling to the dozens of countries I’ve visited, Japan was the first place where I felt like a different person when I returned. It wasn’t just a great travel destination and a wonderful holiday, it formed a bond that’s impossible to explain, but one that keeps tugging at my heartstrings to return, if I can mix my metaphors. When we go back there, I feel as though I’m having a hug with a dear friend.
Vietnam is now the second place to have ever done this to me. In the words of the late, great travelling soul Anthony Bourdain, I can tell I’ll be going back there for the rest of my life… I have to.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-06-14.
2026-06-13 12:22:35
This post was backdated, because I didn’t get around to publishing at the time.
On the penultimate day of our Vietnam 2026 trip, we packed our bags and bid farewell to the beautiful Vũng Tàu peninsula and made our way back to Ho Chi Minh City. In case my views of this area weren’t clear, it’s all so beautiful! The image below, as with all photos in this post, is unedited for colour saturation and/or brightness. It was just so warm, lush, and green everywhere we went.
We first went to the Museum of Global Arms, a fascinating cluster of buildings that housed a collection of everything from army patches to entire suits of armour. I was surprised that they had an entire hall dedicated to Australian and Kiwi history too, especially given Australia fought with the US against their country within living memory. I see a lot of Australian government signs saying they contributed funds to restore a Vietnamese building, park, or monument which is so wonderful to see (and worthy of my tax dollars… this is what reconciliation and respect looks like!), but this is a private collection with donations from individuals.
We also checked out the Vung Tau Museum, a modern structure showcasing the history of the area. One floor was dedicated to the Vietnam war with recovered munitions and equipment from both sides, and an impressively presented floor with archaeological finds from the ocean and surrounds. This is well worth a visit, especially if you have more time to really explore than we had.
I’ve talked about how cosmopolitan Vietnam is, and this was a perfect example. We had originally intended to go to a restaurant near the hotel before we checked out and went back to HCMC, but on the way we found a French bar and restaurant that looked too interesting to pass up. I indulged and ordered an espresso with a cordon bleu for lunch, and honestly… it was the best one I’d ever had in my life. It was cooked to a level of perfection and care that I don’t even remember having in Paris back in the day. Granted, I wasn’t going to ultra fancy restaurants in France at the time, but neither was this place! My in-laws were equally impressed.
We bid farewell and drove back to Saigon, surrounded on all sides by large semi-trailers the entire time. It’s impressive how fast and far Vietnam has developed especially in the last decade, and the evidence of that is everywhere. I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of those trucks had the parts for my OM-3 camera that was made in Vietnam; proof of the country’s rising capabilities in precision engineering and electronics. Some of the light industrial parks we ended up driving through looked practically brand new, and were already buzzing with life.
We got back to Ho Chi Minh City, and ended up at the same hotel in which we started our journey less than a week prior, but that already felt like an age ago! The Bong Sen Saigon Hotel was affordable, spotless, and in such a prime location in District 1 I’d recommend it. We were down the road from the brand new Metro, the Opera House, and many of the best restaurants and shopping areas.
We’d originally planned to get some food and relax after the trip, but I noticed that the Landmark 81 tower’s observation deck was open until late. So we jumped on the brand new HCMC Metro, and I was once again struck by how Japanese it looked, right down to the way the maps and signs were presented. Likewise, the platform screen doors look like the Singapore MRT, or the Hong Kong MTR. Clean, bright, and easy to understand. I can’t wait to see this system get built out over the coming decades :).
Landmark 81 is the tallest building in Vietnam, and the second-tallest in Southeast Asia according to my esteemed editorial friends over at Wikipedia. It was built on the former American Newport logistics base alongside a large collection of residential towers and other mixed-use buildings. The columns that make up the building remind me a bit of the Willis Tower in Chicago, if they were square instead of rectangular. I didn’t get a good photo of it on my proper camera, but this is a potato image from my ancient iPhone SE3 as we walked up to it at dusk!
The views from the observation deck were jaw dropping, as you’d expect! A light drizzle had started which we were worried would obstruct our views, but it only added to the atmosphere of this incredible city from above. Observation decks are a bit of a thing for Clara and I, and this view is right up there with Tokyo and New York.
Tomorrow is our last day in Vietnam before we head back to Sydney. I understand this was supposed to be a shorter trip for family, but I’m still sad it couldn’t be longer.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-06-13.
