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

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    Well, that was a weekend over pretty quickly – I wish that the weekend dragged on as long as the week day but alas here I am getting ready for work on Wednesday. I helped mum cleaning the drive way outside – unfortunately it hadn’t been done in a while so it was a matter of hosing it down and then using the yard broom to scrub the drive way. After giving the drive way a good scrubbing I then hosed it down and found there was a lot of loose dirt that come off along with the culmination of dirt, dead plant material etc. Once that was all cleaned down I went back to mum’s for dinner and I provided a dessert, lemon icing cake that I picked up on Monday, then after all that I was dropped off home. Mum is off on a holiday with her camper van for the next 6 weeks – it is good to keep physically and mentally active as you get older because god knows it is easy to fall into a sedentary lifestyle only to then find that your health goes down hill shortly after.

    I’ve started watching season 2 of Paradise where as season 1 was filmed in the bunker with flash backs giving glimpses as to how it came into being, the focus on season 2’s first episode is another flash back to when the catastrophic event occurred. I think what we’ll probably see is maybe more time in season 2 being spent on the events leading up to the catastrophic event – something that I noticed other tv series tend to go where the story is jumped straight into it and then in season 2 there is a focus on how the world got to that point. The first three episodes have been released but tonight I’ll watch one episode and pace myself out for the other two episodes – savour the story line because this is one of the few interesting tv series that’ll be available until Silo drops along with Severance which are at least a year away.

    I spent some time today going through my t-shirt drawer and I have found some of the clothes I didn’t fit I can now fit – I now able to fit into a Mr Vintage t-shirt I bought many years ago which now can fit me. It really is serving a good incentive to keep on tracking when you see the progress in a practical way such as clothes fitting better. Having a good routine has helped particularly going into the office each day gets me out of the house, improves my mental health by meeting people, a change of scenery etc. On Wednesday I’ll be in the office but there is a train replacement when I come home – it is a bit annoying but the benefit is that the train replacement is free so it ends up saving a bit of money, I think the idea is that the local city council understands the inconvenience of having to use a train replacement so I guess by making it free it makes up for that inconvenience.

    Regarding the release of version 26.4, there is much chatter online regarding whether Gemini will be integrated in 26.4 or whether it’ll be pushed off until 26.5. One thing to keep in mind is that Apple has only said that it’ll be released in 2026 so there is a possibility that we may not see it until the version 27 is released. Personally for me I’ve never used voice control and what Apple Intelligence services I do use without consciously thinking about it I haven’t had any issues but then again my computing needs are pretty basic.

  • Tuesday, a day to relax.

    I woke up this morning to a chime that my package was going to be delivered today and it was delivered in the afternoon. I love the colour of the hoodie and the t-shirt. The t-shirt has kind of a orange-brown kind of colour which goes well with the print – a bit of a 1970s like vibe to the style and the icing on the cake being that the t-shirt is 100% cotton and the fabric isn’t thin like a lot of t-shirts are these days. The hoodie has a nice green colour, the fabric is great (it is a blend but majority cotton) and the fit is great as well. I’ve washed them both and they’re now hung up on the clothes drying rack and hopefully they’ll be all dried so I can wear them tomorrow when I go into the office.

    In terms of software update, uBlock Origin Lite 2026.222.1657 was released today – no major changes other than the usual filter refresh and I haven’t noticed any regressions. I’ve checked out a few websites and they’re all running smoothly and blocking all the ads required. It would be nice if uBlock Origin Lite could synchronise the settings such as ‘allowed websites’ to iCloud but I guess if you’re aiming your extension at multiple browsers that it would add extra overhead. As for what I do, I copy and paste the ‘allowed websites’ to ‘Notes’ and then copy and paste it from there to the settings on each of the devices I have it installed on.

    Things are progressing well with 26.4 and it appears that as reported by other media outlets they are working on addressing the complaints regarding Liquid Glass specifically when it comes to legibility of text (link). I wouldn’t expect major changes to the UI any time soon because such major changes would be disruptive and potentially undermine the stability of the system although Mark Gurman has reported that bigger UI changes will appear in 27 along with Apple Intelligence being built upon the latest Gemini model. I wouldn’t be surprised if, when 27 is released, it is based on a Gemini model that is currently being developed with Google using Apple as a show piece for their latest model.

  • A productive Monday.

    Monday was a productive day, I went for brunch and then helped mum clean up the rental property. My sister and partner had come over to do some deep cleaning and repairs at the flat and I came over to clean the outside of the house down, trim back the vine that had grown all over the fence and then cleaning the inside of the windows down. It took a while to get it all done because the inside of the window were pretty horrendous and it looks like they had sellotaped something onto the windows thus leaving a stick residue. On a good side I did eventually get it cleaned and I guess I had the luck that it wasn’t as heavy going as what my sister and her partner had to do. On Tuesday I’ll be heading in there again to clean down the driveway.

  • A good night sleep.

    I had a good night sleep last night, woke up, freshen myself up and then walked down to my local cafe for eggs bene with a side of wilted spinach and mushrooms. The walk to the bakery is around 2km so a total of 4km which is a good bit of walking during the day – I’ll go for a walk tonight after 8pm when the weather is a bit cooler but other than that I am feeling good.

    I checked the tracking of the parcel from the United States and it has arrived in Auckland so there is a good chance it’ll probably come down on the overnight truck to Wellington and delivery on Tuesday. I’ll wash them before I wear them – I always like to clean them before wearing so that if there is going to be any dye that’ll run that it’ll get washed out in the first wash. The black Impulse hoodie that arrived fits perfectly so if the other two articles of clothing are anything like that then I’m all good.

    The big question is whether I need to get a tallboy for my extra pieces of clothing that I’ve been hanging up in the closet but I’ve been slowly running out of space. It isn’t really a matter of purchasing too many items of clothing but more the fact that clothes I had put away in clothes chest because I couldn’t fit them I can now fit them so I want to take them out and start wearing them again.

  • Another week is over.

    Another week is over and I’m feeling good going into a new week. Mum has asked me to help out cleaning out the rental property after the tenant left a complete mess but I guess that’ll keep me out of trouble for the day. The one thing I am going to make sure of is that when I am doing yard work that I’ll wear sunscreen because I made a huge mistake last time I did some work outside by not wearing it. Something to remember about the sun in New Zealand – you can easily get burnt on an overcast day and I was really burnt on my back resulting in blisters, peeling skin etc. it was not enjoyable dealing with a sore back.

    It is interesting to see how the players in the AI space are slowly walking back their robust commitments they made publicly only to then spend an extraordinary amount of time parsing what they said when asked follow up questions by the media. As I’ve said in the past, this round of AI hype is the modern day equivalent of radium water – a lot of pseudo science around radium but eventually an actual useful use of radium is eventually found. Apple is siding with Gemini along with Salesforce any many others, Microsoft working on their own specialised models with some of the players probably gearing themselves up not to go public but to be eventually bought out by a larger company.

    For those wondering, I’ve still got my Surface Laptop ARM based laptop – keeping it up to date so that I can keep abreast of the latest Windows 11 developments. As I’ve said in the past, I’m pragmatic about the platform I use because at the end of the day it is amount using the right tool for the job. I think the interesting part will be when Nova Lake is released and when Windows 11 will support the new architectural changes that both AMD and Intel agreed to. As Jim Keller pointed out, the ISA itself plays a very small role when it comes to energy efficiency so it is possible that we may see Intel and AMD close that gap between themselves and Apple’s ARM CPUs to the point that the gap is so small that it becomes a none issue for 99% of laptop purchasers.

    On my Windows laptop I have Chrome for ARM64 installed and it is buttery smooth however I did try the latest version of AdGuard and it keeps hanging when it is being applied to websites. The strange thing is that when I do delete the AdGuard extension and install the uBlock Origin Lite extension then visit the same website the website hanging doesn’t occur. The other thing I noticed, which is quite odd is how Chrome is more responsive than Safari but I wonder how much of that will be addressed in Safari 26.4 when the 26.4 platform update is released.

  • Almost to the weekend.

    At the half way point and feeling good – I like to have a fast on Friday, Saturday and Sunday then break the fast on Sunday night. I used to do it and I stopped but I’ve gotten back into it because I have found it as a way to reset and afterwards I feel a whole lot better. I break the fast with a John West tuna meal along with some roasted seaweed and an Up and Go Iced Coffee with the total number of calories around 600 or so. The main thing to remember when having a fast isn’t to go crazy and eat everything that isn’t bolted down afterwards or otherwise there is a high likelihood that it’ll make you either sick or feeling really, really crappy. I also make sure that I keep hydrated, light weights during the day and having a power walk.

    I like tracking the package that I ordered – here are the two articles of clothing I am waiting on.

    It is the first time I’ve had a top of that colour but I guess it’ll go well with the brown Dickies trousers that I have. Hopefully it’ll get delivered maybe next week or the week after.

  • A busy day but an enjoyable day.

    It was a fairly busy day today but on a good side I am able to work on the days when it is busy so that makes the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. Finished work at 10pm, went for a 11.6km walk and I have to admit I really didn’t feel like going for an 11.6km walk but after doing 5.8km I thought I may as well go all the way since I had already done half of what I normally do.

    I’ve also had a look online and I finally found the two CDs that I wanted to buy. Years ago (something close to 20 years ago) there used to be a blog called “My Jazz World’ that would have vinyl rips from out of print records. I downloaded the everything the blog had available however I was foolish enough not to back up the music to a secondary source with the result being when my external hard disk died it took all the downloads with it. Anyway, long story short, I found the two Arthur Adams CDs (It’s Private Tonight and Home Brew) which are available to purchase so I bought those tonight but I chose to the cheapest postage to save money so I’ll probably see them arrive in a couple of weeks.

    I was going to watch ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ but god help me because I’m not going to watch an episode where I’m having to deal with the moronic ramblings of Lauren Boebert twisting herself into a pretzel as she defends the god king himself. Why waste what little time I have each day watching something that’ll just get me annoyed so instead I decided to relax tonight by watching another episode of Fallout season 2 which allows me a moment of escapism from an otherwise crappy world.

  • A couple more days to go.

    Work today was so-so and I finished it up with an 11.6km walk tonight along with some free weights when I got home (on top of the ones I had done during my breaks while working from home). I’m looking forward to getting the week over and done with but on a good side I am feeling a whole lot better than I did a week ago where I had a sore throat, sore nose etc. basically just feeling straight up lousy. What I have done over the last couple of weeks is making sure I get a good amount of exercise, a balanced diet, drinking lots of water and getting out in the sun on my days of to boost my vitamin D.

    I finally ordered the temperature knob for my oven – it was starting to ‘spin’ when I turned it thus not gripping the metal rod that the knob sits on top of. It arrived today (this morning) so I replaced it and checked to see whether it worked. After getting that all sorted out I had a check to see where it was failing so I could see what maybe the cause and it appears that where the metal shaft goes into the plastic casing cracks over time from continued use and the heat from the oven (when the oven is opened) probably makes the plastic weak as well. Anyway, long story short, got it all installed but it wasn’t cheap with the cost of it plus P&P costing around NS$32.14 delivered.

    It is always funny to see middle class people convince themselves that the problems they face are due to those who are barely surviving wanting a decent minimum wage. It is amazing the number of people who fail to understand that the amount they get paid is set relative to the minimum wage and when the minimum wage goes up their wage or salary also goes up. Why? let’s say there is a fast food place and workers start off on 50 cents above the minimum wage but now you need someone who is going to run the shift – is someone earning 50 cents above the minimum wage going take on the additional responsibility but earn the same as an entry level staff member? no, so obviously you have to pay them more. You set the hourly supervisor at $1 per hour above the crew wage which is set 50 cents above the minimum wage. Fast forward to the minimum wage increasing – it goes from $19.50 per hour to $20 per hour which would make the entry level worker $20.50 per hour and then the hourly supervisor on $21.50 per hour.

    An increase in the minimum wage increases everyone’s wage because there needs to be sufficient enough of a gap between the different levels as to make each job worth while for the person to take on the additional responsibility or training required to do the job. This is the same situation where I am at the moment, the minimum wage goes up, the living wage goes up and then my salary is updated to bring it in line because the failure to do so would make my job unattractive – why take on a whole lot more responsibility and stress when one can move to a job where you may earn slightly less but without all the stress associated with it.

    I really do wish that the ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’ realise that they’re closer to those barely making ends meet than the illusion of being a millionaire let alone a billionaire. Just as a side note, I really have to wonder what motivates so many such social ladder climbers – are they seeking validation through some sort of gamification of life – he or she who has the most number of goodies at the end of ones life wins the game of life? Sigh, I could never quite understand so much obsession about continuously seeking the validation of others to somehow bring meaning to ones own life.

  • The day is looking good.

    The day has been pretty good so far – the weather is nice with the temperature not too hot or cold which will make going for a walk after work a whole lot more enjoyable. I’ve been working my way through he speech that Marco Rubio gave at the Munich Security Conference and once I’ve watched it while taking some notes I’m going to write up a blog post regarding it. I made a post on BlueSky not too long ago making a few observations and at least from my perspective it is a reheated version of neoconservatism through the lens of the Trump administration rather than a wholly original foreign policy – it had the the sort of vibe one associates with Samuel P. Huntington book ‘Clash of Civilizations’ when listening to it.

  • End of the night power walk.

    I finished work tonight at 10pm but before I caught the train home I made a quick dash to the local New World which is around 2km from the office – in a space of around 40 minutes I was able to walk from my office, carrying my laptop bag, get into the supermarket, do my shopping then back to the train station. I only had around an hour to do it so I really had to make sure I was motoring. On a good side, I made it back to the train station and caught the last train home for the night. I wanted to get a walk in so I guess that was the easiest way to get it done with minimum fuss and bother. Would I do it again? probably not because it wasn’t particularly enjoyable when you’re carrying a whole heap of stuff while trying to rush to the supermarket.

    For dinner tonight I had a smoked fish salad and a chicken satay salad with dessert being blue berries and some fruit salad. The chicken satay salad was particularly tasty with the satay sauce having a hint of chilli in it which gave it an added bit of kick and the chicken was actually real chicken rather than the horrible tasteless chicken that are used by so many businesses these days – there is a pizza company that I am thinking of which markets has ‘seasoned chicken’ where it isn’t seasoned and it is questionable as to whether it can be classified as chicken.

    The black Impulse hoodie arrived today before I left so I put it in the wash along with my other washing. When I get new clothes I wash them first before wearing them – it is a habit I’ve gotten into years ago because I don’t know where it’s been, whether it has been sitting a warehouse for a while before it was sent out. The two remaining items I’ve ordered are coming from the United States that is coming via DHL which may take up to a couple of weeks to arrive but then again my experience has been that DHL under promise and over deliver so sometimes you get told a set amount of time but they end up delivering it sooner.