Matisyahu's Blog

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

recent posts

  • A long cold day.

    I’m happy that I worked at home today because the weather has been atrocious where at the time of writing my blog the temperature is 6°C and there is plenty of rain along with wind and warnings by the Metservice. I’m at home with my heater running and I’m thankful that I made the investment in insulation and double glazing resulting in a place that can retain the heat really well during the winter. Tonight for dinner I had chicken and corn soup along with toast and some relish with slices of cheese on top. It was a tasty meal to warm me but before jumping into bed. The weather is till pretty horrible so I’ve decided to have a bit of a sleep in on Friday – I may as well make use of this weather to catch up on some sleep.

    I was having a look through the release notes of macOS 27 Beta 2 (link) and I notice that there is quite a lot of changes that haven’t been give much attention. The first thing that popped out at me was the removal of DVD Playback support – VideoLan does the job nicely but I guess with people moving to digital media that is downloadable that Apple has decided that it is better to remove it and have one less having to be maintained. I’ve had a look at the Web Platform Test website and the Safari Technology Preview is still sitting at 86% but I’d say that with the focus mainly being around fixing implementation but then again I wouldn’t be surprised if things are fairly quiet until the release of version 27 of the platform with maybe 27.x series being where they pick backup in terms of adding functionality into the mainstream release to close that functionality gap as part of Interop 2026.

  • Getting back into the swing of things.

    It was a tough start to the day getting up at 9am after being used to getting up at a more leisurely time but I know that if I want to get back into a good routine then it’ll require maybe a week of discomfort then eventually my body will get used to the routine of going to sleep before or at midnight and getting up at 9am. Today I did some meal prep when working from home with the 25g of chia seeds soaking in Up and Go however I have added two tea spoons of psyllium husk to add some extra fibre which will boost the total fibre in it to around 18-20g and if I have that twice a day then I’ll hit my fibre goal per day without having to put too much effort into it.

    I didn’t go on a walk today because it was raining but I did stick to my plan of getting out at 9am and I’ll do the same on Thursday regarding getting up at 9am however as I am typing this post there is already some rain so maybe I’ll be lucky and it’ll all clear up by tomorrow morning. One habit I’m getting myself into is making sure that I don’t leave things for the next day, for example, I hung up my washing last night on the clothes rack, let it dry over night but rather than just ignoring it for the next week I forced myself to fold the washing and put it away. The other habit I’m getting myself into is that when I have a meal I clean things up straight away rather than just rinsing the plates, placing them in the sink then washing it the next day.

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    Laying in bed and relaxing before heading off to sleep. I finally made the decision and ordered some sheets for my bed, duvet covers, pillow protection sleeves etc. I’ve had to split it between Farmers and Ikea because there weren’t sheet sets at Ikea and Farmers had them on special so I thought I may as well split the difference. As for the old sheets and duvet covers, I’m going to donate them to the local Salvation Army because just like the pots and pans I donated, I may not find them useful but someone doing it pretty touch that needs some sheets or duvet covers will have something that’ll get them by until better times arrive.

    I’ve got the alarm on my phone set for 9am and I’ll go for a walk but I think I need to push myself to get into the office or otherwise I risk turning into a hermit – I’ll reward myself with a coffee and something nice for breakfast when I get into the office in the morning (they have a tasty Mexican bean wrap). I’ve been on a bit of a push to increase my fibre intake because although I am hitting my protein goals I think it is also important to get that fibre in as well which the chia seed pudding in the morning. The suggested amount for someone my age is around 30-38 grams so what I may end up doing is adding some psyllium husk to bolster up the fibre content.

    At the moment I’m looking at maybe some carpets for my bedroom, hallway and office because the floor is bit bare and adding a carpet will add some warmth to the place. At the moment I’m in no major push to get it done and in fact I may not even get it done given that it is pretty low on the list of things (along with the idea of getting a lamp – still mulling over whether it fits with the vibe) now that I’ve gotten the big things out of the way such as a new chair for my desk in the lounge room, cushions for the sofa, throw rugs to give a bit of colour etc. which has made the place a lot more homely which will be nice during the winter.

    As for the weather, it is gradually getting colder however the coldest time will be over July and August then once we’re through all that then we’ll come out the other side with warmer weather going into spring then into summer. I’ve got the time off organised for November where I’ll travel to Australia and over Christmas I’ll take a week off which will be a total of 9 days off. In the past I used to be a bit of a martyr of not taking holidays but as I’ve gotten older I’ve realised that no one gets a reward for working yourself into an early grave – if you’ve got holidays then you may as well use them. What was the old saying about being that no one wishes they spent more time in the office while on their death bed.

  • Another relaxing day.

    Had a great night sleep last night and I’ve decided that I’ll just stay at home instead of going down town. I’m still having a look at the duvet covers and sheets – checking out Ikea which are located in Auckland but you can order their products online to get delivered. I’m still trying to work out what kind of vibe I’m going for, what kind of pattern and colour will complement the furniture I have in my room. I’m also looking at maybe getting myself a duvet as well – I’ve got a queen sized bed but I’m tempted to get a king size duvet which I can order at the same time I order the duvet cover.

    Back to what is happening in the world in regards to the Iran vs United States/Israel war, the whole ‘memorandum of understanding’ is falling to pieces just as anyone with an IQ above room temperature expected. What I find interesting is the fact that no details were given in regards to the $300 billion reconstruction fund – is it $300 billion in cash? if Saudi Arabia said “we’ll build $30 billion in new schools using our own construction companies” is that considered an investment according to that number given? then there was talk about JD Vance having to to speak to congress which I assume relates to getting rid of the sanctions on Iran and the talk about “not using American funds” does that translate to “we’re to giving them cash but we’ll pay contractors to over to Iran and build stuff”?

    The fact that the ‘memorandum of understanding’ leaves so many unanswered questions makes me wonder whether this is a genuine good faith attempt by the United States to wiggle their way out of a mess or is this the attempt by Trump and the Republicans to buy time for the mid terms. This isn’t the first it was done – remember how the United States lured Iran to negotiations only to wipe out the negotiators with an air strike? At this point I really have to wonder why anyone, friend or foe, would take the United States at their word given how Trump and the Republican Party have made it abundantly clear that a relationship with the United State is a one way transaction for the benefit of the United States.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?
    View all responses

    Some advice for younger people:

    a) What you see on social media is a highly curated insight into a persons life, only the highlights but none of the lowlights so as a result you get the impression that people are doing better than you when in reality there is a lot of faking it till they make it – check out numerous videos on YouTube about influencers renting a mansion or an expensive sports car for a video or photo shoot,

    b) Life doesn’t work in a perfect sequential order and we all reach different milestones are different points of our life – no one is ‘ahead’ of anyone else. For me, when I ended high school I worked for 8 years before eventually deciding to go to university because for me I wanted to get out in the world, experience life, earn some money, have a sense of independence and once I was ready to make that commitment to study I then decided to go to university.

    c) It is up to you to set your own goals and aspirations – don’t look to others for what makes you happy or otherwise you’ll be chasing the illusion that your happiness is found by trying to achieve the aspirations of others rather than of your own. One thing to always keep in mind is that the importance you place on something is subjective – what maybe important to you maybe of little or no interest to someone else thus the comparison of oneself to others makes little sense when viewing it from that perspective.

    d) What is seen as ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ doesn’t occur organically but is manufactured – savvy people working in marketing and product design who know how to tap into the human desire for wanting acceptance, approval, adulation and admiration. It makes sense that humans are a social creature and we like the idea of being accepted by a group or winning over acceptance by a group because we signal to them, through our acquisition of stuff, that we’re ‘one of them’. When you get older you’ll look back at what you thought was important and realise it wasn’t so.

    e) What happens at school before going to university and polytechnic is largely irrelevant to the rest of your life outside of getting a good education. There is a reason why the meme of ‘high school hero, real school zero’ exists because once you leave high school no on really cares about who was the cool one at high school, whether you were the captain of a sports team or whether you were a prefect. Oh, and as for going to university and polytechnic – since tertiary education isn’t compulsory then you will find that those who do attend are doing so because they want to rather than they’re being forced so the sort of idiocy you saw at primary, intermediate and college disappears in tertiary education.

    Fediverse reactions

  • A great day relaxing at home.

    I slept in today and decided to have a lazy day at home – no going down the road, just enjoying the vibes of being at home and watching television. Mum dropped off some food for me to cook tonight when we have dinner together – roast chicken, potatoes, kumera, parsnips and pumpkin, boiled broccoli and cauliflower, and topped with a chicken gravy. I’ve been able to make use of all the cooking utensils I’ve bought over the last month which makes the investment all the more worthwhile. After dinner I headed down to the supermarket to pick up a few bits and pieces – I’m getting myself into a habit of making sure I always have cupboards that are full or otherwise I’m tempted to order take aways and although they are healthy takeaways I would sooner avoid that and use the money for something more productive.

    I was watching the news today regarding the National Party announcing their Kiwisaver policy of making it compulsory along with a $1500 starting amount when a baby is born they’re automatically signed up for the Kiwisaver scheme (I assume that parents will be able to make contributions). It sounds like a good idea at least on paper but the problem is that:

    a) The government haven’t addressed when employers do the dodgy with the whole ‘total renumeration package’ nonsense where employers will double dip into the employees salary or wage. A while ago there were some minimum wage employees who signed up for Kiwisaver believing they were doing the right thing only to find that their employer was double dipping resulting in them earning below the minimum wage as a result. Has the National Party mentioned anything about fixing that up? nothing has been announced so far.

    b) When it comes to the issue outlined in (a), how are the government going to ensure that wages aren’t stagnate as in any pay increases go to the Kiwisaver rather than in the employees hand? once again you need to force the hand of employers because when employers are left to their own devices they willl do everything humanly possible to screw employees over.

    c) If the government are going to encourage New Zealanders to return from Australia to New Zealand, are they going to make it easier to move savings from Australia to New Zealand? I’ve currently have some money in a superfund in Australia from when I was working over there and yet the Australian provider I was with, Rest Superannuation, have made it as difficult as humanly possible to transfer that balance from Australia to my New Zealand Kiwisaver – get this document, get that document, talk to a government department etc. basically the ultimate test of endurance to see whether you’re worthy to get access to your own money. All I should need to do is provide my bank with my details for my superannuation provider and that is the end of the conversation.

    We need to improve our rate of saving and investment but when you have one half of the equation playing silly buggers and the other half are struggling to make ends meet thus they need every single dollar they earn to keep their head above water…well, lets put it this way, it isn’t going to end well. Yes, you have to plan for the future and 99% of people understand that but at the same time you also have to deal with the here and now which means paying the mortgage, groceries, petrol for the car, electricity and all while getting the kids off to school. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a good policy at least in abstract but something tells me that National isn’t going to address the concerns that many have raised when speaking to the media.

  • End of the first week back at work.

    Had a great day today, finally caught up on some office work that thad been building up and hopefully that as long as the team on Monday and Tuesday keep on top of it then it should mean it doesn’t build up again. I ordered some shopping online from Woolworths because I wanted chicken burgers tonight for dinner but I lacked coleslaw and some sauces. The sauces I ended up getting were: Sidecar aioli garlic, Sidecar mayonnaise original and Sidecar mayonnaise smokey habanero. The Sidecar mayonnaise smokey habanero is what I put on my burgers and good lord it is so good – the spiciness, the smokiness coming through. I then paired it up with the spicy Tegal chicken burgers, Japanese coleslaw, pickled red onions and Swiss cheese – a meal fit for a king and a lot cheaper than if I bought it from a takeaway store.

    On Monday I’m going to head down to Bed, Bath and Beyond as well as check out a few other stores regarding sheets and duvet covers. I did buy some sheets a while ago but they were these cheap polyester sheets and the problem is with them is that they don’t ‘breath’ and become quit stuffy and uncomfortable particularly during summer. I’m going to have a look at getting some 100% cotton sheets with a high thread count – even though they cost a bit more than the cheaper low thread count mixed fibre blend, I find that they last a lot longer and you don’t get the sort of pilling that I’m currently getting with the cheap ones I bought (the ones I bought are less than 6 months old).

    Daily writing prompt
    Who are you most inspired by?
    View all responses

    I’m inspired by Henri Rousseau – a self taught painter who created his own style of art that people are only now are appreciating it for its uniqueness. Charles Mingus because of his music style that paid respect to the past, acknowledged the present and pushed boundaries in future directions to where music could go. Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson that developed C, UNIX and other key pieces of technology that even today form the foundation for so much of what we take advantage of – things we create today that we think will never be a major force in the world suddenly take on a level of importance that would have been difficult to predict (which reminds me of this comic (link)).

    Fediverse reactions

  • A very productive day today.

    I got up this morning and it was raining so I did some free weights before work. It wasn’t too busy but there was a back log of office work that needed to be done with all the excitement about the Football World Cup. I love how it is now possible to work from home and being able to avoid the nasty weather which makes life a lot easier but even without going into the office we (my workmates and I) all keep in contact via Slack so one doesn’t feel isolated.

    I was watching a video on YouTube of the trams that used to operate in Wellington:

    And it reminds me of a conversation I had my grandma a few years ago about how the trams in Auckland were ripped up and how the council are now talking about putting down light rail. My grandma pointed out how silly it was to rip up the tram lines in the first place and now the rail lines are being put back down again. It appears that there is a habit in society of discarding something because it isn’t considered ‘modern’ or ‘the in thing’ only to find out years later that there was actually some wisdom behind having that there. I’m a firm believer in the idea of ‘Chesterton’s Fence’ – find out why it was there and is the reason for it being there and ask whether its usefulness still holds true today. I wish that humanity would learn from past mistakes but I guess humanity has a lot in common with the movie ‘Groundhog Day’.

    What I find rather funny is how the AI industry is playing on this nonsense of every new model being ‘so super dangerous’ is starting to backfire on them. Well, they thought it was a great marketing gimmick but it has backfired with the government now putting export restrictions on Anthropic models and I could imagine now Anthropic are probably wondering whether their whole marketing hype has actually backfired and maybe they should just be honest with the public about what the model its actually capable of doing. On a side note I always find it funny when I hear the Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei talk about how Mythos is super scary and very dangerous it is but the claims have all the credibility of a new chicken wing restaurant opening up in town and their shtick is “we have the hottest wings in town, they’re super dangerously spicy so we’ll get you to sign a waver so we don’t get sued”. The hype dies down after all the influencers upload their obnoxious TikTok videos only for the general public to realise that the chicken wings are tasty but they certainly don’t live up to the hype of being super dangerous.

  • Another good day.

    Woke up this morning and went for a walk but I decided to go for the walk a little later – left home at around 11am and go back in time to have a shower and get ready for work.. The one thing I found out is that tI thought two table spoons of chia seeds equalled 100gm (50gm per spoon) when in reality it is only 25gm (12.5gm per spoon). Not that it mattered a great deal when it came to calorie counting given that I calculated on a larger number of calories but in reality I was eating less than what I had calculated. when you do the numbers of the chia seed pudding with the Up and Go it works out to be around 330 calories which is a good breakfast to start the day.

    I was checking for updates over on Ubiquiti and have released UniFi OS 5.1.19 for my Dream Router and everything is going very well. On the UniFi Dashboard I am being shown the following message which disappeared for a while but suddenly appeared again:

    Spark appears to be testing ipv6 and I’m guessing they’re wanting to test the various modems they’ve handed out over the years that there aren’t any compatibility issues and if so whether a firmware update can be pushed out or if it is out of stock then maybe offering customers a free upgrade to a newer router. I generally hang out on Geekzone so I’m sure if there is going to be any announcement then I’ll see it pop up there but I guess if there is going to be a big change then the few Spark employees who hang out on Geekzone have to get the boss to sign of before they can disclose anything online regarding any thing happening in the future.

    I wanted to see how much Safari had progressed so I’ve installed Safari Technology Preview 246 which includes most if not all the improvements that now appear in Safari 27 beta on Apple’s next OS release. So far I’ve been giving it a try with all the website I visit and the performance is definitely noticeable on the more heavier web app websites or websites that use a decent amount of JavaScript. I’ve also noticed that resolving host names and loading websites feels a lot faster and when I ran the Speedometer3.1 benchmark on Safari 26.5 I got 46.4 and on Safari Technology Preview 246 I got 51.66. Then I ran JetStream3.0 benchmark on Safari 26.5 and I got 410.55 and on Safari Technology Preview 246 I got 438.42. There has been a big uplift in the speed of the WebAssembly implementation although I haven’t been able to find a benchmark specifically to stress test the JavaScript implementation.

  • A good day but a cold night.

    I got up today at 9:30am and went for a walk before work and came home to have a chia seed pudding (100g of chia seeds soaking in 250ml of ‘Up and Go’ protein drink) – decided to work from home. The day was pretty uneventful and when I clocked off from work tonight I was happy that I made the decision to go for a walk in the morning because the temperature outside at the moment is around 5°C and could drop even lower. Funny enough a couple of days ago I was thinking that we’ll end up having a mild winter based on the few days – got the heater running and keeping warm in bed.

    For dinner tonight I had some fish pieces but I’ve used the last bit of aioli but I guess it is good that I used it up because I hate the idea having to throw out food that is no longer edible. I’ve got some beer battered fish fillets that are a reasonable size and I like to have them with some steamed vegetables. The great thing with these fish fillets is that they’re actual real fish fillets rather than the sort of mashed up processed stuff that don’t even resemble anything fish like. Tomorrow I’ll go for a walk before work but I’ve decided to keep this blog post quick as I’m going to head off to sleep so I’m all rested for a fun day at work on Friday.

  • A good first day at work.

    I woke up today at around 9am, I was deciding whether I should lay in bed for another half hour but I thought I may as well get out of bed because I’ll end up feeling more tired the more I hang around in bed. I got changed, warmed up with some stretching and then went for my morning walk – I was able to get down to 9 minute and 54 second for 1km meaning I was able to do 8km in under an 1 hour and 20 minutes which is around 6km per hour. Although my Apple Watch does keep track of the calories, the problem with the calories counter is that it isn’t always accurate but I tend to operator on 70 calories per kilometre so in a normal 8km walk I’m burning around 560 calories. The one thing I don’t do is include the calories burnt as part of my calories intake for the day because as I’ve noted in the past there isn’t a guarantee of always being able to get out for a walk especially during winter.

    The mobile phone carrier I’m with had a nationwide outage, nothing was updated on the outage page nor was it updated after the issue had been resolved. There appears to be a habit by businesses who think if they ignore a problem it’ll go away, if they hide the status of their service on their website then that ia good business practice because god forbid being transparent. As someone who works in a call centre, so many calls could be avoided if there was proper communication with the public which would avoid people from having to ring up to find out what is going on – whether it is an issue on their end or whether the organisation is having technical difficulties. I sometimes wonder why a business have a communications team given how often things are poorly communication or requiring those on the front line having to traverse through layers of bureaucracy just to get the information out there to customers. I’ve said it once and I’ll again – just because you ignore a problem doesn’t mean that it’ll go away.

    I’ve been having a look at the latest polls and it appears that there is potential for a centre left government but that is assuming the upswing in support for the Greens holds through to the election, The problem is at the moment is the fact that there are so many variables, there is the 60 day ceasefire where there is negotiations taking place but one thing to keep in mind is that even if an agreement is signed that agreement has to be submitted to congress, pass both houses and then signed by the president. There is also the uncertainty about whether Israel will abide by it given that if they do start attacking Iran or Lebanon that I don’t see the United States doing anything to bring Israel to heel meaning that the treaty maybe over as quickly as it was signed. Then there is the unclogging of the Strait of Hormuz which may take months or possibly years but that is assuming that in the meantime there isn’t a shift towards electric cars, hybrids and greater investment into public transportation so that there is greater resilience to future energy shocks and the industries that depend on that energy.