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

  • You win some, you lose some.

    Well, I got up in the morning at 10am then headed out for an 8km walk, came back home, had a shower, got changed then headed out to work – things were going great until I tripped over an uneven surface when walking to the train station and landed on my hands resulting in some nasty cuts on my hands. I got back up, lucky that I had some tissues in my pocket, I got to work and was able to clean myself up and start work. I have a sore knee and it makes walking a little difficult so I’ll just take the next couple of days to recover by doing some free weights but as long as I stick with my meal plan I should be all good.

    I thought to myself that “oh great, another one of these days when everything bad all comes at once” but I actually things started to improve when my doctor came back to me with the blood and test results. The HbA1c came back as stable at 37 and the urine testing came back that my kidneys were doing what they were meant to do – all the results are back within the healthy range which is a good sign that few years I was over weight hasn’t had an a permanent impact on my health so now it is just a matter of keeping on track with a healthy lifestyle and keeping tracking of those numbers so that there are issues that pop up that they can be addressed with lifestyle changes and/or medication if need be.

    I’lll be working from home on Friday, Saturday and Sunday but I’m hoping that by Saturday I’ll be able to get in some light exercise but I’ll take it easy. I’m looking forward to next week when Apple is scheduled to release 26.4 of their platforms to the public and I’ll be able to see how much Safari has been improved when compared to 26.3. On a side note, I mentioned that I checked out on macOS 26.4 that there were some frameworks that were modified and it appears that the update released recently was fixing a security issue in Webkit which lines up with the frameworks that were modified.

  • Off to work.

    Woke up before my alarm went off this morning, went for a 5.8km walk, showered and I’m relaxing before leaving home to go to work. I haven’t got the test results back but I’m hoping that if it is below 40 then I’ll be happy although I have a bit of work to do because my goal is to get my HbA1c down to the low 30s which will stabilise things over the long term. I think having a good routine in the morning will also help with a morning walk to get things moving.

    Google has released a Chrome update and I got it installed, it was a pretty big jump from 146.0.7680.80 to 146.0.7680.154 – I’ll check out later on today what the changes were. Apple also released a 26.4 release candidate for their platforms with speculation that a final release will appear around this time next week.

  • One day down, four more to go.

    I woke up this morning and my foot was feeling a bit better – I think what I need is some heel balm because the cracks in my heel can be painful at times. This morning I decided to work from home so I went for an 11.6km walk, came home, freshened up and then gently got into the rythm of work. At 10pm I finished work and then went for another 11.6km walk before freshening up again and then jumping into bed. I think what I’m going to do is stick to a 10am start everyday so then I get up at a consistent time rather than on some days I get up at 11am then on other days I get up at 10am with the benefit that my body will get used to that routine.

    I checked for updates this morning and Google didn’t release an update for Chrome – I’m unsure whether that is an indication that the extra update release last week covers this week or whether it is just a matter of requiring an extra day of testing before making the update available. There was a minor update that was made available for macOS and iOS today in the form of 26.3.1 (a) (25D771280a) which has been labelled as a ‘background security improvement’ but little in the way of details has been disclosed so I guess we’ll need to play the waiting game for someone in the tech enthusiast community to find clues in the files that were changed during the update to give an insight regarding what fixed. I’ve had a quick look myself and I don’t see any extensions updated however I have seen a few frameworks that have been updated with the date modified being 03/03/26 which makes me wonder whether the update has been in the works for the last couple of weeks,

    I’m going to get up early on Thursday but I’m tempted to head into the office if no other purpose to at least make an appearance and because they don’t have the bus replacement I’ll get home at a decent time so I can go for a walk before heading off to bed for the night. I want to squeeze in as much exercise as I can before we get into winter in the next few months and the weather can get unpredictable although the walk in the morning should mean if it does get bad at the end of my shift I can still take the win of having gotten some exercise in for the day.

  • Returning to work.

    Getting ready to go back to working, did some washing however I couldn’t go for a walk today because I have sore feed – there is a crack at at the back of my heel and it hurts when walking on it, the skin is dry and cracking so I wonder if that has something to do with it. I’ve applied some skin moisturiser and one of those band-aid ‘second skin’ to it but I’m unsure whether it just needs some rest over night so that I can go for a walk tomorrow before work – I’ll try to at least get a small one in so then I’ve got some fresh air before work.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2026.315.1814 is now available in the iOS/macOS App Store and the Chrome Extension store and I haven’t noticed any regressions and there have been some improvements with a few websites that resulted in some of the content getting through. It is kind of annoying that any sort of update to the filtering needs to be bundled with the extension rather than being updated remotely but maybe we’ll get lucky and WebNN will enable the use of LLMs created to help improve the content blocking experience. I remember there was discussion about extensions making use of LLMs for content blocking but I didn’t see much come of it so maybe the discussion of WebNN will make some of the ideas floating around will become reality.

    I was watching the the latest episode of ‘Bradbury Group’ and although the number of construction businesses going to liquidation has increased what wasn’t discussed (and I thought it was bought up by a NZ Herald business journalist) that many businesses were on borrowed time when it came to the loans provided during COVID with both Labour and National kicking the can down the road to eventually the loans had to be called in. The reality is that many of these businesses would have gone under if it were for the IRD giving out 2nd and 3rd chances but in reality some of these businesses just simply weren’t viable.

    With that being said, when the National-ACT-NZ First government got into power one of the first things they did was to reset the infrastructure pipeline meaning that for many of these businesses who looked to that pipeline as a way for their business to be saved ended up going under. With all that being said, it goes back to what I suggested which was to nationalise all these struggling construction companies, put them under the umbrella of a newly formed ‘Ministry of Works’ and then use that army of skill trades people to engage in nation building sized projects with housing being at the centre of it – decommodifying housing by turning ‘Housing New Zealand’ into the primary provider of rental accomodation and rallying the skilled trade people of New Zealand to build a robust supply of houses close to where the jobs are.

    There ist much discussion regarding petrol and diesel supplies – once again just like back in the 1970s when National cancelled the investments into electrifying the rail network and failing to support Mayor Robbie’s mass transit system for Auckland, they’ve cancelled renewable energy investments, rebates for solar energy and batteries for homes and removing the assistance to make EVs more affordable. What is the old saying – history doesn’t repeat but it rhymes, and National have demonstrated they haven’t learnt a single bloody thing and unfortunately the situation is made worse when the collective memory of New Zealand is that of a goldfish (which isn’t unique given that after 8 years of George W Bush causing in two quagmires and an economic collapse resulting in Barrack Obama being elected then 2 years later the Republicans being given a majority in both houses not to mention flipping a whole heap of state houses in the process which laid the foundation for a decade of gerrymandering that cemented a permanent majority for the Republican Party).

  • A productive day.

    Woke up at 11am, got dressed and then headed down to the blood testing lab for a blood and urine test – just the usual testing to make sure everything is on track and that there aren’t any sort of issues regarding my blood sugar. I think I’ll be all good but my main focus will be what the stats will be like in another three months after doing the new routine of getting up, going for a walk in the morning and then having a walk at the end of the day after I come home from work.

    While I was down the road I picked up a couple Mexican salad mixes, one for Monday and the other one for Tuesday, along with a few other bits and pieces and then on the home I stopped off at the bakery I picked up a filled roll for lunch. Once home I had lunch, watched some YouTube videos and tidied up the house then around 5pm I put on dinner, a butterflied roast chicken, and I had that with the salad mix.

    I watched a few more bits of news – trying to keep up with what is happening with the world but at the same time avoiding getting too overwhelmed with the world going to hell in a handbasket. After catching up on the news I went for a 13.8km walk – the weather was nice, a slight bit of coolness in the air but it was comfortable enough to be able to walk wearing tracksuit pants and a t-shirt. After I got home, I had a shower then jumped into bed.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2026.315.1814 has been released but at the moment it is only available on the Microsoft Edge store with the other stores pending approval. I can’t work out how Microsoft approves it quicker than Google and Apple – I guess that it’ll be just one of life’s mysteries lol.

  • Getting ready for Monday.

    After work tonight I went for a 13.8km walk with a total of 21.8km walked today – feeling good and no sore feet which is a small achievement. I got a message from my doctor about having a blood test and I’ve been putting it off but the continued pestering I thought I may as well do that on Monday – I don’t see the numbers changing much from the last time so I’ll get it out of the way and then afterwards I’ll pick up a few things from the supermarket, maybe check out the stores and then head home.

    I’ve got the chicken out of the freezer and I’ll pair that up with some salad and for Tuesday I’ve kind of been putting it off because I’m lazy but I’ll be making nachos but that’ll require me to purchase some corn chips, sour cream and a few other ingredients such as capsicum, mushrooms etc. I have some chilli flakes that’ll add some extra heat and the steak seasoning smells almost exactly like the Old El Paso taco seasoning but if I don’t have that then cajun seasoning does a pretty good job.

    Good news on the CD I ordered online, it arrived in Auckland and is in transit so hopefully that’ll mean it will arrive in Wellington and then out for delivery on either Monday or Tuesday. There are a few more CDs I’ve got an eye on over on discogs but I’m going to do some price comparisons before making the jump into buying them.

  • Almost there.

    Today has been good, work hasn’t been too busy and very little drama and hopefully that’ll carry over to the rest of the shift – fingers crossed. I checked for updates for Chrome only to find that there has been an update pushed out to address a pretty serious security issue (link) so if you haven’t updated I would suggest you check to make sure you’re running the latest version of Chrome. I’m looking forward to the end of the shift – I’ll go for a walk, unwind and look forward to the weekend.

  • One more day to go.

    Today I got up at 11am and decided that rather than go for my usual 5.8km walk that I would go for an 8km walk before work.- it felt good pushig myself to go a little further and I love the feeling of the warm sun before midday along with the cool breeze. I was surprised at the number of cars out this morning given that there is so much talk about oil prices going up, energy security and the limited amount of supply on hand. I think for many New Zealanders they are going to have a unwelcome surprise when the price of petrol goes higher and they’re having to consciously think about planning out there day so that they do everything in one trip rather than doing multiple trips.

    After work tonight I went for a walk and this time I pushed myself a little further by having a 13.8km walk (8km loop followed by a 5.8km loop) – I have arrived home, had a quick shower and now watching some YouTube videos before I head off to sleep. When I go to sleep I try to aim for at least 8 hours of sleep – I can survive on less but I feel horrible the next day so I would sooner get a good night rest and recovery. I did have a day off on Friday due to rain in the morning and I thought I’d get lucky at night but by the time the weather did clear it was already too late.

    Daily writing prompt
    You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
    View all responses

    I would go on a train – having my own private cabin. I have always wonder what the The Trans-Siberian Railway would be like, travelling for days, just alone in ones cabin, writing on ones laptop about the experience, travelling over multiple time zones. I’ve always liked the idea of travelling long distances on a train – when confronted with either a 6 hour flight or a 24 hour train ride in my own cabin I would sooner take the train rather than being crammed in a seat for 6 hours.

  • Looking forward to Saturday.

    I was hoping to get some exercise in on Friday but it has been raining all day but if everything goes according to plan I’ll get getting up at 11am on Saturday and go for a walk – I might even go for an 8km walk since I’ll have some extra time up my sleeve. For dinner tonight I had some pumpkin soup and some fresh ciabatta that I ordered from Woolworths along with a few other necessities for the weekend.

    At the moment I’m still giving Chrome ago as well as Google services on iOS to see how well they perform. I don’t see myself going to Android because it would mean giving up the integration iOS has with the Apple ecosystem however Workspace does have the benefit of Chrome integration, cloud services appear to be better when it comes to Google Drive etc. but I’ll keep plodding along until I I can make a decision.

    I’m having a look over at Ubiquiti release candidates and I was hoping that the 5.0.16 firmware for the UniFi Gateway would be released but unfortunately it hasn’t. I guess what I’ll need to do is see what happens but then again when you have a large product portfolio you have to triage what are the most important things that need addressing.

  • Start of a new day.

    Woke up this morning before the alarm and I had a look outside thinking “ooh, the weather is looking good for a walk today” and now it has suddenly started to rain. I have to remember next time not to excited about the possibility of good weather because all to often it starts to rain. I had a look on the Metservice website and it appears that it’ll be raining all today as well as into the night so I guess I can do some free weights, squats and other exercises inside.

    I checked for updates this morning and Google had released an update for Chrome which updated it from 146.0.7680.72 to 146.0.7680.76 to address security (link) however Edge hasn’t been updated. Microsoft tends to update Edge on a Friday (Saturday NZ Time) although since it is a jump from 145 to 146 it may not be until next week but given there are security fixes included with 146 I would say the most likely time would be sooner rather than later.

    Safari Technology Preview 239 has been released (link) – light on new features with a heavy focus on fixing up bugs. There was also beta 4 of 26.4 that was released a few days ago so it’ll be interesting to see whether a release candidate appears sometime next week and then the week after the stable version is released. It’ll be interesting to see whether some of the bug fixes snoted in Safari Technology Preview 239 will make their way into 26.4.