2026-01-24 08:00:44
It’s hard to belive given the current state of the industry, but there was a time in the 1990s when even large commercial software companies allowed you to customise your desktop. The horror! Even moreso, some of these companies even offered first-party visual enhancement packs with themes you could install.
Plus! 95 deserves its own dedicated post at some point. In the meantime, I was updating my first ever computer and decided I needed a new desktop theme. I hadn’t used Da Vinci for a long time, so here it is:
Between this, the themes in Mac OS 8, and the Fluxbox themes on every NetBSD partition, I think I have my 90s visuals sorted. I’m half tempted to take some of these assets and colours and make an .Xresources file for no good reason.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-01-24.
2026-01-23 06:21:31
I’ve been blogging for two decades, but it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve had to contend with the fact that people, y’know, read my ramblings on a semi-regular or even regular basis. Hi! Hope you’re going okay. And not in the insincere “I hope this email finds you well” sense, but in a legitimate concern for your peace, health, and happiness sense. There are too many people out there who would revel in denying you these. Those people are jerks.
When you’ve been writing a blog for yourself for so long, adjusting to the idea that people read it takes some getting used to. I wouldn’t pretend that what I’m doing is journalism or proper writing, but people I know in those fields talk of the sensation of “crossing a threshold” when a life spent writing as a hobby turns into a career, and you’re writing words people everywhere will read. It can be overwhelming at first.
I often write here that I’m trying something, or giving something up, or that I find something awful, or that a new thing is great. I do try and mix these up and talk about things I’m doing as well, but this is a blog that’s always been a stream-of-conciousness sort of affair. I can fake many things, but enthusiasm isn’t one of them. I’m not being paid for any of this (save for the precious few of who buy me coffee, thank you!), so if it’s not fun, or interesting, or something I care about, I don’t do it.
Anyway, those aforementioned posts invariably attract comments from people defending the opposing view, and why they need to use, do, abstain, or be excited by the thing I’m not. I think this is partly due to my use of absolutes, when often there’s an implicit “for me” at the end of each statement. I talked about this in the context of a Techmoan video earlier this month.
Short of obvious extreme examples, you don’t need my permission to use, do, or think something (or the opposite). As I say in my FAQ:
My interests, circumstances, preferences, use cases, locale, constraints, experiences, motives, priorities, and/or tastes may differ from yours.
And you know what? That applies for you too!
I’m not sure where I was going with this. Maybe there was something useful in there. If not, carry on.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-01-23.
2026-01-21 10:13:59
And now, for something, completely pointless:
package main
import (
"fmt"
)
func main() {
love := []string{"cricket", "reggae", "Jamaica"}
for _, value := range love {
fmt.Printf("I don't like %s! No no. I love it!\n", value);
}
fmt.Printf("Dreadlock holiday. ♫\n")
}
You could say it’s a slice of heaven. AAAAAAA!!! Wait, wrong song.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-01-21.
2026-01-21 07:59:03
I was going through my blog post draft folder this morning, like a gentleman, when I chanced upon something I wrote about brands I trusted in 2022.
I know there are people for whom the idea of “trusting” a “brand” is silly, and evidence that one is a sucker by marketing. I don’t entirely agree. Trust is earned, and these businesses have demonstrated to me over the course of years that the quality and availability of their tools and support are worth it.
Here are some examples.
I then went on to list eight consumer and server hardware manufacturers, what I’d bought from them either professionally or personally over the past decade, and why they’d earned that aforementioned trust. All fairly innocuous stuff.
But then I took a closer look. All but two of them were no longer in business, had been bought by someone worse, or were embroiled in a scandal or otherwise disgraced. Sad trombone.
I’m half tempted to publish the post as a bit of a retrospective. But I also fear that I’ve inadvertently written a Death Note for IT hardware vendors. How long before the penultimate and final businesses are struck off the list? I’m too scared to even list them!
It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious. Shifty eyes.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-01-21.
2026-01-20 14:38:07
Ed Zitron interviewed Steve Burke of GamersNexus on his Better Offline podcast again recently, this time about the sorry state of the Consumer Electronics Show. At about the 51 minute mark, they discuss how difficult it’s becoming to be positive about tech:
Ed: I think it’s hard to not be negative. Trying to be positive now makes you sound like […] “This is the year that agents take over!!!” […] you have to just start lying.
Steve: Or hide from it. I can find a computer case to be happy, and we’ll publish reviews that are good… but you can’t strip out the general undertone.
Oh boy, can I relate! I’ve been publicly voicing my personal concerns about this for a while now, but especially in the last twelve months. In April I talked about how sick I was thinking about “AI”, and in July about how I missed having childhood wonder about tech. I tried to play it off to an extent, but I can’t describe just how heartbreaking it was writing about that.
Not to get too melancholic about it, but it felt 2025 was the year the industry hit a low point, and dragged me down with it. You likely feel the same way, based on your overwhelming feedback (except for one of you who said Claude Code was “good, actually”). I don’t want to go as far as to call it a mid-life crisis, but more a general sadness and sense of ennui at a world seemingly hellbent on seeing the two possible ways of doing something, and choosing the bad one every time. 2026 has only accelerated this trend, whether it be represented in shows like CES, or the continued hosing down of fires with investor capital.
Like Ed and Steve, I’m looking forward to when the bills come due, and these companies will have to explain what the hell they did during this frenzied time. Whether it be to an American Congressional hearing, or a court room, to their investors, or even journalists once they feel its safe to take a dissenting view rather than being steganographers.
☕︎ ☕︎ ☕︎
That’s the mental space I was in last year, and I expected to be in for 2026 as well. But something has changed.
Lovely friend of the blog Torb provided a counterpoint which I also wrote about last year. Torb explained that business tech may be circling the drain, but that there’s still so much cool stuff going on otherwise that’s cause for optimism. The perspective made logical, rational sense, and I agreed on principle. But I didn’t internalise it.
Weirdly, I think I now have. I wake up in the morning, and in the words ol’ Blue Eyes sang: “find it so amusing”. Whereas before it pulled me down, it seems so… unreal now. It’s like watching a sitcom from a distance, and all the actors are playing their part; leather jackets and all.
In a more practical sense, I’ve also found renewed interest and joy in all the stuff that Torb describes. Paring down my RSS feeds away from the general tech news and focusing on real people doing real things and thinking real thoughts has been nothing short of a revelation. All that cool, innovative, fun, creative, wonderful stuff that I missed is all still there, it’s just buried.
This leads me to my revelation. I agree with Steve and Ed that there’s a sense you’re living in an alternate reality if you don’t acknowledge all the bad things that are happening. But I also don’t want to contribute to the burying of the goodness either. I need to write more about this great stuff. Why it makes me so happy. What I’m learning.
The world may be going to shit, but cynicism is quitting. And that is something up with which I will not put.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-01-20.
2026-01-19 06:11:26
Last September I’d had my eye on a specific electronic diagnostic tool at a $LargeRetailer for several weeks, to the point where I had put it in my “cart” and taken it out several times. It would make my life significantly easier in one key area, but I couldn’t justify the cost. The problem was, there were precious few of these devices available. Turns out, this is fertile ground for some retail dark patterns.
(I write in vague tones because the device itself isn’t that important to the lesson; maybe I’ll talk specifics one day).
A dark pattern is an intentional design choice to coerce you into doing something you may otherwise not. Think of those Yes and Maybe Later buttons that demonstrate the Valley’s wilful inability to understand consent. You may otherwise not want to install a slop machine or TormentNexus, but pressing Maybe Later tacitly leaves the door open to be asked again in the future.
Anyway, I got suckered in real good! I had gone back to this site, and a notice popped up alongside the item claiming that it was the last one in stock, and that I’d better hurry if I still wanted it. It’s a classic high-pressure sales tactic, but I knew this was the only retailer in town that had this specific device, so I panicked and bought it.
Wouldn’t you know it, but the very next day the page refreshed, and they claimed to have restocked with “100+” new items of that exact SKU. On a weekend. Sure.
I felt silly, but perhaps a bit wiser. If someone is attempting to pressure you into making a decision within a specific time, they’re (usually) working in their interests, not yours.
By Ruben Schade in Sydney, 2026-01-19.
