Simon Rumble’s blog

Below is the eulogy I gave for Anthony at his funeral yesterday. It outlines his life, and his achievments. I have had many comments from my family that they didn't know he had achieved so much, and that many of these things they were hearing for the first time.

I have placed the slideshow that also played at the funeral online. You can view just the images (use the "Slideshow" button in the top-right ot view full-screen) or view it with the accompanying music (click "Full" to go full screen).

Before I begin I'd like to thank all those who have provided help and support to our family at this difficult time. The friends and family have been out in force with emotional and material support that is quite humbling and demonstrates the love there is for Anthony and his family. We thank you for all the kind words, flowers, support, meals and other help we've been given.

Anthony was born on 16th April 1972 to Chris and Ray Rumble in Port Macquarie hospital after a 49 1/2 hour marathon labour. He was a good baby and would sleep until he was due for his feed, which was handy as both his parents worked long hours, often tag-teaming child minding duties.

Early on Anthony showed many of the traits he displayed throughout his life. His knowledge ranged far and wide, and he didn't mind telling you what he knew. As fact. He was easy prey for the ribbing and stirring of his uncles and aunts, taking their gags hook, line and sinker. During his childhood he was very fond of animals: our pet dogs Buttons and Scamper, his aviary full of budgies and quails, and the Robinson family duck.

Anthony took an early interest in technology. Our first computer, a Dick Smith Wizzard, was purchased in 1982 and Anthony was immediately hooked. When we purchased the BASIC programming cartridge, he went to town writing software. Our games of "shop" with Kristy, Janelle, Susan and Kathryn had Anthony holding our money in computerised accounts at his bank, using software he'd written himself. Later on he wrote a database programme, modestly using his initials in the name: AERBase. Bear in mind, this was a ten year old who had taught himself programming and seen the necessity of a generic data storage mechanism. Anthony continued with newer computers, inheriting the computers that had outrgrown their usefulness in the family businesses.

When it came time to go to high school, Anthony went off to St Patricks College boarding school in Goulburn. I won't say he loved his time in Goulburn, not being the archetypal sporty type the school usually required, but he did well academically, studying four unit maths and getting time on any of the computers he could find around the place. At one point he was effectively administering the school library's multi-user computer network, saving the school thousands in expensive consulting fees.

After school Anthony went to Newcastle University to study Computer Science, briefly. He quickly got frustrated with ivory tower academics lecturing without recourse to the real world. In those days computer science courses taught lots of theory, with little reference to what was actually happening outside academia. He scored a couple of jobs for small engineering firms in Sydney, before landing a job he could really sink his teeth into at Netcomm, a manufacturer of modems.

It was around the end of Anthony's time at school that we bought our first modem. A modem allows you to connect computers to other computers through a phone line, but this primitive model worked at the blistering speed of 300 bits per second, about 40,000 times slower than the Internet connection in my home today. We started calling bulletin boards, which were computer meeting places that you could use to exchange messages and, in some cases, talk in real time to other people. Eventually discovered one of the more popular boards in Sydney, Active Fun Entertainment, which at the time sported five lines allowing five different people to talk to each other in real time. Quite a revelation. The main difference with this board was its social aspect, and it is here that Anthony met some of his closest friends.

One of the groups who frequented Active, and its many social events, ran another bulletin board called Arcadia. This group shared a quirky sense of humour and a plethora of obscure in jokes. Anthony was rapidly accepted into the group, and made lifelong friendships. I see a bunch of Arcadians present today, and I know a few couldn't make it today. Thank you for the kindness and companionship you showed to Anthony.

Soon after discovering Active, Anthony installed some software into the core of the bulletin board to allow people to play a real-time, multiplayer game. It was while installing and integrating this system that Anthony wowed Grant Parnell with his technical skills. Grant and Anthony became close friends, and eventually business partners. We're extremely fortunate to have Grant with us today, as he was scheduled for major surgery last Friday, but it has been rescheduled.

The Linux community has much to remember of Anthony. He was one of the early users of Linux in Australia, with his interest in Minix coinciding with that of a certain Finnish programmer. I remember him rushing in to tell me about a new operating system he'd found, which promised to be more useful than Minix. I was a bit bewildered, wondering how something that took so long to boot and seemed to crash constantly could be of any use. While going through his things, I stumbled on ancient floppy disks for Linux v0.12, the second ever release of the Linux operating system.

Anthony spent much of the early years of Linux distributing the software to others in Australia. He had an Internet account, a rare thing at the time, and so was able to keep up-to-date with the latest developments. People would post or hand-deliver floppies for him to copy, and eventually he set up a bulletin board to allow people to download it. Soon enough he helped found the Sydney chapter of the Australian Public Access Network Association (APANA), which was at the time one of the only ways ordinary Australians could get Internet access outside universities and a few big companies. His APANA node, lsupoz, was one of the first in Sydney and at one point was the hub for the Sydney network, running from the front room of our parents' house.

Later on, Anthony set up a business distributing Linux software and merchandise around Australia with his wife Laura. They got Linux into thousands of sites, distributing CDs and propaganda by mail order and at conferences.

With the dawning of the Internet explosion in public consciousness, Anthony scored a job with one of the early Internet Service Providers in Australia, Microplex. Here he learned many key skills in networking and business, and was fortunate to meet another close friend, Matt Perkins, who would later be Anthony's best man.

Anthony was next headhunted to work on an ambitious project by a large multinational stationery supplier with ambitions to control the entire market in Australia. Corporate Express wanted to move most of their transactions onto the Internet, which at the time was a radical idea. Anthony rose to the challenge, building an innovative online ordering system with a front-end simple enough to be used by the secretaries and admin staff ordering stationery in Australian businesses, government and academia. Soon enough, it was Australia's most successful e-commerce site, turning over many millions of dollars in orders every month. The technology Anthony developed handled the massive load with ease, and the project won a special commendation by the Australian Information Industry Association.

While still working at Corporate Express, Anthony met a young university student named Laura, and shortly afterwards they married in a big ceremony and party. While the marriage ended some years later, there were very happy times as Anthony and Laura built up a business and a family in their home in Croydon. Anthony and Laura set up a business distributing Linux software and merchandise, Everything Linux. This developed a sophisticated stock-management and online ordering system to handle mail orders.

Abigail Rumble was born late in 2000. Anthony doted on Abi, his beautiful daughter, and loved her dearly. After Anthony and Laura separated, they shared custody and he continued Abigail's involvement with cub scouts, which she loves. Under his parents' rearing, Abigail has developed into a beautiful, intelligent and loving young girl, who was the centre of Anthony's life.

The last few years of Anthony's life have not been perfect. He struggled with epilepsy, which was diagnosed about six years ago. The drugs used to control it have many negative side effects including mood disorders, memory loss and aphasia, and the doctors attempted to adjust the dosage to minimise these effects while keeping him safe from the dangers of epilepsy. During this time, his friend, business partner and flatmate Grant was an enormous support to Anthony. More recently things appeared to be looking up for Anthony, with his drug regime seeming to stabilize and cause fewer of the bad side effects. His epilespy seemed well controlled and his mood was good.

Anthony joined a support group after his divorce, Parents Without Partners and soon became heavily involved with the organisation. They gave him excellent support and improved his outlook enormously. He also took up Ceroc, a modern jive partner dance style, and was incredibly proud of his dancing ability. At one of the PWP functions, he met and gradually wooed his partner Rosetta. Rosetta and her family welcomed him into their lives and made him very happy, enjoying dancing and tons of blended family activities.

A few weeks ago Anthony took possession of his new flat in Belmore, and had just finished unpacking his posessions. It was a lovely place and I hadn't even had a chance to visit it myself when I got the phone call last Saturday and rushed over. Anthony's elderly Greek neighbours have told us about the impression he had already made, helping them with odd jobs around the place and always being friendly and polite.

Looking around here today, I see that Anthony was loved far beyond his own immediate family. He'll be missed by all his friends and relatives, but especially by his mother Chris, father Ray, brothers Charlie and Simon, partner Rosetta and her children Jeffrey, Matthew and Catherine, and by his daughter Abigail. We'll miss you Anthony.

My beloved brother Anthony died unexpectedly last Friday in his flat in Belmore, Sydney. He will be remembered as a devoted father to his eight year old daughter, as a loving brother and son, and as a loving partner.

The Linux community has much to remember of Anthony. He was one of the early users of Linux in Australia, with his interest in Minix seeming to coincide with a certain Finnish programmer. I remember him rushing in to tell me about a new operating system he'd found, which promised to be more useful than Minix. I was a bit bewildered, wondering how something that took so long to boot and seemed to crash constantly could be of any use. While going through his things, I stumbled on these ancient Linux v0.12 floppies. Quite impressive historical artifacts.

Anthony spent much of the early years of Linux distributing the software to others in Australia. He had an (at the time rare) Internet account, and so was able to keep up-to-date with the latest developments. People would post or hand-deliver floppies for him to copy, and eventually he set up a bulletin board to allow people to download it. Soon enough he helped found the Sydney chapter of APANA, which was at the time one of the only ways ordinary Australians could get Internet access outside universities and a few big companies. His APANA node, lsupoz, was one of the first nodes in Sydney and at one point was the hub for the Sydney network, running from the front room of our parents' house.

Later on, Anthony set up a business distributing Linux software and merchandise around Australia with his wife Laura. They got Linux into thousands of sites, distributing CDs and propaganda by mail order and at conferences.

Outside the Linux world, Anthony had an active social and family life, especially his beautiful eight year old daughter Abigail, who he adored. He will be dearly missed by family, friends and his partner Rosetta.

I'll post some more about Anthony later.

Obituaries

Thanks for your kind words. Also thanks for the very kind emails and messages I've been receiving. They really are much appreciated.

• Anthony Rumble by Grant Parnell to SLUG
• Sad News: Vale Anthony Rumble by Donna Benjamin to LUV
• Anthony Rumble - Linux pioneer and enthusiast by conz
• Farewell to EverythingLinux founder by Suzanne Tindal
• Linux pioneer dies in tragic circumstances by David M Williams
• R.I.P Anthony Rumble by Roland Turner

Funeral

The funeral for Anthony Rumble will be held 11:30 next Monday, 18th May 2009 in the Camellia Chapel at the Macquarie Park Crematorium.

No flowers please. There will be envelopes for donations to Epilepsy Action Australia at the funeral.

Holly's pregnant. We're having a baby.

Didn't wanna beat around the bush on exciting news. Holly's 15 weeks up the duff, and we'll be parents in October. Very exciting, very life changing, very bloody scary!

Above you'll see the 12 week scan. It's a boy and the name I'm using is Laphroaig, to complement Jameson. I suspect I may be overruled at the final hurdle.

I heard from The Mayor that The Hub's development application has been rejected by the council. As such, it's now for lease, either long or short term, pending resolution of the DA issues, and I imagine an improvement in economic conditions.

At the very least this gives us a bit of a view inside. I've never been inside: it was an adult theatre when I moved into Newtown in the early 1990s, and since that closed I've never seen it open for any reason. Since it would be an amazing space for the emerging Sydney Hackerspace project, I thought I'd contact the estate agent and see what they wanted for it.

Now we know why it's vacant, and has been for so long. On a three year lease (with three year option) they want $350,000 a year (ex-GST), of nearly $7,000 a week! On a short term lease they want $5,000 a week (ex-GST). Yeesh! No wonder the place is empty. It's a brilliant space, but I can't think of many businesses that would be able to justify that, without some fairly major redevelopment -- which is exactly what the council has rejected.

It's a shame, as it's an absolutely brilliant space.

While trawling through this I did find a DA for someone planning to turn the old shop corner building next to it, on the corner of Bedford and Denison, into a cafe. Looks quite cool.

Just discovered a really interesting food blog, STUDIOKITCHEN, written by chef Shola Olunloyo. It's got lots of cool technical experiments, and good ideas. Most interesting post I've found so far is this have you post, which just asks some simple questions about things you should try cooking.

Have You wrapped fish in Kombu and poached it gently. No I haven't but it sounds divine. I'll try it shortly I think. Fortunately I work above a large Asian supermarket.

Have you just for the heck of it made Miso Soup lately with Dashi and Bonito. No I haven't and it's insane that I haven't! Miso soup is one of the easiest and most delicious quick meals you can make. In fact, I think I'll make some tonight! I'm a big fan of (rehydrated, dried) Shiitake mushrooms in mine. And with the weather turning cool, there's nothing finer than a warming bowl of soup. Well, maybe a really hearty stew, but nothing finer for a weeknight.

Last night I knocked up a couple of changes to the shed plans, taking out the windows on the "shed" side and removing the door between the two sections to reinstate the separate doors. So we'll have a glass sliding door on the "office" side, and an ordinary external door on the "shed" side. There'll be loads of natural light and ventilation on the "office" side, and complete darkness on the "shed" side.

The purpose of all these changes is to finally get myself a meeting with the planners at Marrickville Council. I'll be asking lots of questions about the planning process and what I need to give them to get my Development Application through. We've got a few things that force us to go the DA route. The floor space of the "shed" is bigger than the "complying development" rules, and our house isn't detached so we can't use the new rules.

I'll have lots of technical questions for them too. Like the need for a retaining wall under the fence, as there's about a 50cm drop at the fence. And drainage is going to be an interesting issue, as the back of our block is lower than the street level. Big question is whether I can use a rubble pit for the gutters on the shed, or if I have to do the very complicated easement thing and drain into a public stormwater drain.

Over the weekend we made a few changes around the house. The hedge out the front came down, which means the front looks quite strange since we're accustomed to the hedge. I'm thinking of growing a lemon and lime tree out there now, but might change my mind and go for something deciduous to let light into the front room in Winter.

Also moved the Myth server into the lounge room, as I figured it's so quiet it might work out there. I'm not sure it'll end up staying there, as the hard drive can be quite noisy when it's in use. But using the Myth interface is brilliant, compared to the PS3. I can watch high def stuff, including downloaded video, without having to worry about the PS3's very finnicky format requirements. Ad skipping is just so wonderful for the few shows I watch from commercial telly.

I also measured up our house block and designed what I think is the eventual design I'll use for my garden lair. As featured on Shedworking last week I've been using Google Sketchup to design my lair. I'm pretty close now I think.

The shed is divided into two halves. One half is the more traditional "shed", with storage space and possibly a little bit of workshop space. I'll brew beer in here too, and if we have space put a chest freezer. The "office" side will be where I but my desk, computers and office space. It will have nice natural light access and shelves. The whole thing will be lined inside with plasterboard, well insulated (thermally and acoustically, as we live under the flightpath) and have a weatherboard skin. Roof will be Colourbond. There'll be a fair chunk of space inside the ceiling, which we'll also use for storage.

A couple of changes to the design you see above (click to see more angles) have come up. I think I'll skip windows in the "shed" half, to allow more wall-mounted storage. And the door between the two halves will go — I was thinking of putting a water tank in front of the "shed" half, but I think direct access to each half will be better.

I'm planning an office/shed in the garden of our house, to provide an office for me and storage for the household. I've been mulling over the design for quite a while and now need to finalise it and get plans into council. Above is my first draft which has windows in the space between horizontal and the sloping roof, similar to this building. The finish would be similar too, with either these kinds of boards or possibly weatherboard.

Yesterday while flicking through architecture books at Kinokunya yesterday I discovered these Gilbert Barker Pod buildings. I quite like this look too, particularly the way the glass frontage is recessed back from into the building. Angled the right way, this could be a passive solar element.

So any ideas on this shed? Inspiration to share? I have a whole gallery of inspirations. The actual space looks like this photo and we're looking at dimensions of about six metres by four metres. I hope to have a wall down the middle to separate the "office" and "shed" parts of my lair.

Having shamelessly stolen Danny's excellent research I've finally finished building my new quiet server for MythTV, Squeezecenter and other serverly duties. It's brilliant!

The Antec Mini P180 case and Antec NeoHE power supply provide the core noise reduction. The case is solid and with an enormous, but slow, fan at the top of the case providing quiet cooling. The mounts for all the drives have little silicone grommets to cushion their vibrations. Seems to work very well with my four 7200 RPM SATA drives, which previously resonated inside the case and made a very loud, high-pitched hum that was audible from the lounge room.

I don't yet have the CPU heatsink, as my supplier sent the Xeon version instead of the 775 socket version. The supplied Intel fan is bloody quiet anyway, only moving at 800 RPM. I'm sending the heatsink back and will see if they'll give me a refund instead of a replacement.

The result is that unless you put your head almost inside the cupboard, you can't hear the computer. This contrasts rather well with the previous systems, which had quite the roar going on. Cooling is okay, though I'm gonna have to keep an eye on it. Running two burnP6 processes sees the temperature (presumably CPU, but lm-sensors labels it core 0 when another is CPU temp) shoot up to 61 °. Perhaps that big mama heatsink will help there, as it's not the ambient temperature in the case that's the problem. See the graphs.

In fact it's so quiet I'm tempted to move it into the lounge room so that we can use the MythTV software for playback, rather than the PS3 which has plenty of problems with file formats (though has spectacularly good picture quality). If I can convince the boss of the merits, I might buy one of the more-appropriate HTPC cases and move all this hardware into it. Then I'll build myself a nice quiet desktop. I'm sure she'll claim this was my cunning plan all along...

I'm very happy with this system. Total cost around $650. Thanks for letting me steal your research Danny!

There's a bit of a furore over the costings of the Notional Broadband Network, with the Conservatives claiming $150 a month or more. I thought I'd do someback-of-the-envelope calculations.

Assumptions

Number of Australian households: 8,321,000 (projected for 2009, series 1 which was lowest)

Number of households covered: 7,488,900 (90% coverage, assuming they all take it up)

Ten year government bond rate: 4.605% (though I'm not sure I understand the terms "Coupon" and "Yield" here so using the lowest number)

Cost of NBN: $43,000,000,000

Calculations

So the interest on $43 billion is $1,980,150,000 per year. Divided by the number of households that's $264.41 per household per year, or $22.03 per month.

So without factoring in any payment of the principle, it looks a whole lot like the Telstra tax (line rental), which you must pay today to get xDSL-based broadband. Of course you'd need to pay back some of that money, or at least the half that isn't being stumped up by the government, at a commercial rate of return. But even doubling it to $44/month to give some payment of the principle and if you get a few services over it (phone, pay TV, broadband internet, smart electricity grid) that's still okay.

But part of this whole process is to preserve the competitive tension between the new NBN and existing ADSL1/2- and cable-based broadband services. Keeping the NBN honest, so to speak. So what happens if only half take it up? Well then we're looking at $38.25 a month per household, only paying off the interest.

Assuming more numeric minds than mine, who know the fudge factors for "commercial rate of return" and understand what bond rates are, it sounds like the Tory claim of $150/month upward would be at the wide end of the calculations (say your Internet provider was BigPond), but aren't out of this world.

The basic fact of the matter is that we shouldn't be expecting this thing to pay for itself directly. Roads don't, nor does any other infrastructure project. At best we should expect to pay the interest on the bonds, and make the project a gift to the people of Australia. The sooner the ALP has the honesty to say this (hell, did the Hoover Dam pay for itself?) the sooner they can shut down this attack on the project.

Here's my spreadsheet. Feel free to point out my mistakes.