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

  • Thank goodness it is the end of the week.

    Today felt as though it had dragged on for longer than necessary but parts of it sped by but on my break I ordered a few things – pumpkin soup, some fresh fruit and I paired that up with the bagel that I put in my freezer last week, put garlic butter on it, wrapped it in tin foil and then heated it in the oven while I microwaved the pumpkin soup. Although the pumpkin soup I get is quite tasty I do like to add some cracked pepper and chilli flakes to give it an extra kick. The other thing I also like to do is sprinkle some chilli flakes on the garlic bread because not too long ago you used to be able to get garlic and chilli butter but they stopped selling it but standard garlic butter plus sprinkling on some chilli flakes does a good job without too much fuss.

    It has been raining on and off today but the temperature hasn’t dropped by much so maybe this is a good indication that there will be a mild winter this year. I haven’t been able to go for a walk for a few days so instead I’ve done some exercises at home – squats, free weights etc. I think that as I move into winter there will be plenty of days where I’ll need to do some exercises inside because the weather is too wet to go outside – gradually start building up more of a routine particularly on my day off.

  • Lousy weather but almost the end of the week.

    Sunday is almost here and it’ll be the end of the week. There has been nothing but crazy raining on Friday night and then all day today (Saturday) however it has now stopped it looks like it is going to start up on Sunday and then on Monday. Meanwhile I’ve finally used my toaster for the first time – I got it as part of those kettle/toaster combo deals from Noel Leeming but I never felt motivated to cook some toast but today I did and found that it works perfectly. The only downside of cooking Vogel bread from frozen is that you have to toast it twice but other than that I’m a happy lad and look forward to maybe getting some crumpets and/or muffins (preferably the cheese ones I can have with marmite).

    I’ve finally sold my old Surface Laptop 7 online, I’ve held onto it but I’ve sold it so I’ve cleaned it all down, boxed it up but before doing that I did a reset and clean install of Windows so that when the new owner gets it they can start using it I’ll be sending it off on Monday via overnight courier – the cost will probably be something like $30 or so but the benefit of courier is that it also includes insurance so it covers any sort of problems because we all know Murphy’s Law.

    Oh and funny enough there was an update to my U7 Pro Max access point which upgraded the firmware to version 8.5.21. Everything is going smoothly although I was caught off guard when my Wi-Fi connection suddenly dropped out.

  • A good day at work.

    Today was a good day at work, nothing out of the ordinary but for some reason I was feeling some good vibes throughout the day – I think it is due in part that the number of customers were regular but not overwhelming so that there is sufficient enough of a gap between serving one customer and then moving onto the next one. Being able to work from home makes it a bit more comfortable although I do like to go into the office so at least get out of the house.

    It has been raining today so I’ve had a quiet night in – for dinner I had some Mexican salad. I was going to save it for Monday but I thought it would be best to have it for dinner and grab a fresh bag of salad mix the next time I’m down the road. Although technically on the salad it has the best before date of 24 April, the reality is that salads tend to start to get sadder the closer to the best before date. One thing to always keep in mind is that the best before is just a recommendation rather than an expiry date that says something about the safety of the food.

    I did a fresh install of macOS and iOS – I noticed that with the clean install there has been a bit of a boost to performance but I’ve also noticed how the Mail app has all the aliases appear in the email addresses one can choose from when sending an email. I’ve also did a fresh install of iOS and noticed a slight boost to responsiveness (I did a DFU install – clean install). I also got rid of Chrome and went back to Safari because although Chrome works great on macOS the problem is that the integration isn’t all that good on iOS. I installed uBlock Origin Lite and disabled ‘prevent cross-site tracking’ in the Safari settings because

    I’ve had a look at the Apple for business to see what the t’s and c’s are. It appears that there are limitations on what Apple for business supports vs what iCloud support in terms of Apple Pay support etc. so what I’m going to do is stick with iCloud+ and if I do need extra aliases then I can either create a subdomain using the existing domains I own or I can easily buy another domain given that the price of having one is around 50 cents per week The one thing I have noticed is that rather than having to manually copy and past details into WordPress, Apple now makes use the of the WordPress API so that iCloud makes a link to WordPress then automatically adds the necessary DNS records to make the whole thing work.

  • A good day at work.

    Got up tody at 9:30am and went for my dail walk, I arrived home, had a shower, watched a bit of television and then headed into town to the office for the second of the two mandatory days in the office. Work dragged on – I need a good night sleep tonight and I’ll probably go for. walk after work but other that that I really need a good night sleep after dealing with a long day that I really didn’t feel like I wanted to work. I’ve been at the same job for the last 8 years and it hasn’t gotten any easier but I always keep reminding myself about the pay each fortnight because it isn’t the work itself that motivates me.

    Before heading home I picked up some food from the supermarket – a couple of salads along with some sliced carrots and cumcumbers along with some hummus to dip them into. I also bought some blueberries and raspberries as a bit of a sweet treat. I’ll be working from home on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I’ve decided to have Friday off from going for a walk but I’m going to use that time to get a good night sleep and then get back into the swing of things on Saturday by getting up at 9:30am and going for a 13.8km walk but I’ll see how things turn out. I might go for a small walk on Friday before work but nothing too strenuous.

  • An early start to Wednesday.

    Last week I started getting up on Wednesday and Thursday at 9:45am and on the other days at 10:45 but this week I’m getting up 15 minutes earlier so then I have my alarm go off at 9:30am and 10;30am which gives me 15-20 minutes or so to get up, have a drink of water, wash my face, get dressed in my work out gear then do some stretches before going for my walk. The weather for today is nice, the sun is out and there is a good vibe in the air which gives a nice start to the day – there is even a nice cool breeze as well which will make working out a whole lot more comfortable.

    I checked for updates this morning and Google had released an update for Chrome which upgraded the version number from 147.0.7727.56 to 147.0.7727.101. uBlock Origin Lite beta version has been released although there aren’t any big changes noted although that could change between now and the final stable version. Apple released the second beta for 26.5 which has modest improvements with any sort of major improvements going to be helld back for version 27 that we’ll see being announced at WWDC (rumour as it that it’ll be a ‘Snow Leopard’ release which will place a heavy empahasis on bug fixing, optimisation and making what already exists work better).

    Regareding why I keep utilising Chrome, I just find that I keep coming accross things that don’t work properly on Safari but work perfectly fine on Chrome. When it comes to Microsoft Teams the built in spell checker and autocorrect doesn’t work – click on the mispelled word, click on the correct one and the word isn’t replaced with the correct one. When it comes to Google Chat for example, if a friend sends a movie file (in a supported format) it will keep perpetually loading (in the movie box it is grey with circle going around) but on Chrome it loads normally and I can press the play button (the issue doesn’t occur on Firefox so it tells me that the issue is with the browser not Google).

    On the matter of ‘how do we know it is a bubble’, when a shoe companie ‘pivots’ to focus on AI then you know that all sanity has left the building (link). Remember the number of businesses who mentioned bitcoin wold find their stock would go up or yearrs earlier would talk about how they were a ‘dot-com first business’? I think there is an older example of when your taxi driver has a stock ticker then it is time you should exit the market. The longer this collective dellusion continues tha harder the correction is going to be then combine that with the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz, I would buckle up because the ride is going to get a whole lot more bumpy.

  • A productive weekend.

    The weekend has come to an end but looking back I’m pretty happy with how productive I have been over the couple of days off. I bought a new pair of shoes on Monday, picked up a television, sold off the Apple TV 4K and my old TV then purchases a Samsung smart watch. On Tuesday I went for my daily walk to give the new shoes a try – it felt as though I was walking on clouds the whole time. The experience was so much more enjoyable when compared to the hiking shoes I was wearing for the last week. I also wore my Samsung Watch and part of that has been learning how to customise the watch and navigating. When I first setup the watch i couldn’t work out why software wouldn’t update but then I found out that Wi-Fi isn’t enabled by default but when I enabled it i then found that there were a whole heap of software updates from both Samsung as well as through the Play Store that needed up dating.

    When I went for my walk today I was able to kep track of my progress including my heart rate. Part of the monitoring was seeing how closely my estimated distance was when compared to what my smart watch says which I assume is based on GPS data. At the end of the walk i had done well over 10000 steps. I think having those statistics with me when I walk will keep me motivated along with being able to keep track of time when going for a walk. On Wednesday I’ll be getting up at 9:30am which gives me 15 minutes to get changed into my work out gear then get going for a walk – keeping track with the goal of getting it done in 1 hour and 20 or 30 minutes although funny enough I find that the walk in the morning tires me more than if I did the same walk in the evening.

    Still a lot of hype regarding AI these days and the more I follow the development the more I see AI models eventually becoming commodified where the value won’t be in the LLM itself but instead who can deliver it competitively. What do I mean by that? those who end up winning run the model in a data centre with bespoke hardware so that the cost of delivering is done more efficiently than the current use of GPU to brute force their way through it (see how bitcoin mining went from GPUs to ASICs). Then once they get it doing the learning and inference as efficiently as possible (Google is already making big leaps forward with their own bespoke hardware) the next important factor is how it is integrated into their product portfolio – AI isn’t the end point but it is a means to an end.

    Then there is providing it as a service to third parties through turn key solutions such as APIs that abstract the complexity so that third party developers can build their product utilising the cloud platform while making use of the underlying AI model. The other benefit of abstracting that complexity means that in the future it will allow the provider to upgrade the underlying LLMs with the products sitting ontop making use of it to inherent the benefits without having to write an additional lines of code.

    What I do find funny are the number of executives who are quickly back peddling as they realise the whole ‘vibe coding’ ends up creating unmaintainable AI slop resulting in even more time and money being spent trying to clean up a pile of coherent barely legible code. It is always funny when I see executives get suckered into the sales pitch because rather than heading over to Amazon to buy a few books to understand ‘System Analysis and Design’ along with programming principles, they instead rely on consultants who have a vested interest to push whatever happens to be the product that their business partner is trying to push – see OpenAI and theim entering into multiyear partnerships with Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini and McKinsey & Co (as reported over on CNBC (link))

  • A very productive Monday.

    Today was very productive for a Monday – I was a man with a plan and I stuck to it. I woke up at 10am, my sister picked me up so we could head down the road to pick up the television. It was a pretty decent sized television size – considerably bigger than my old one which was 49inches. I’ve got an art print on the wall behind it so when mum comes back from her trip I’ll ask her for some help to move it to the right so that it isn’t being covered by the television.

    Once i got home I moved the old television and Apple TV 4K out of the way and setup the new television – I wanted to see what the One UI was like before making a decision to keep with the Apple TV 4K or whether I should go all in. It had been over 10 years since I had used the Tizen based smart television software so I was hopeful that there had been a fair amount of changes and I was proven correct. I setup a Samsung account, setup the television and then updated the software to the latest version (itc came with version 1160 and was upgraded to 1260).

    One of the first things I dd after navigating around to see how responsive it is was when compared to not only my old television but when compared to the Apple TV 4K. I found that it was more responsive. When it comes to the YouTube app, out of the box it supports AV1 CODEC that neither the Apple TV 4K or the Google Streamer support. What I also liked is the inclusion of a web browser so it is possible to visit Democracy Now! website to wtch their daily news show which unfortunately isn’t availabl in the full format on YouTube. Long story short the experience has been great.

    After lunch I then jumped on the train down the road to pick up a new pair of running shoes – I got the same brand as before, New Balance, and they were the same price as last year. I did a walk around at the store to see how they felt and it was a major improvement over hiking shoes I had. On Tuesday I’ll walk into town so then I can mix some exercise into my day because there are a couple more things I need to pick up and while i’m down there I’ll treat myself to a coffee and a scone while I’m there.

    I also took the jump and bought a ‘Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra’ and I’ve updated the software to the latest version. When I go down the road on Tuesday i’ll give it a try to see how well it performs in tmers of keeping track o how many steps, km walked etc. I’ll keep the blog updated on how things progress.

  • End of a week that dragged on, and start of a new one.

    Today was a very rainy day but I still got out of bed at 10:45am although I spent the time before work watching some news on YouTube and the ordered a few things I needed from the supermarket. I worked through the day but I swear the day just seemed to drag on and on and on so I was so happy by the time 10pm rolled around and I could log out for the night. By the time I had finished the weather was still pretty horrible so I decided I’ll just jave dinner, tomato soup with garlic bread, and then head off to bed. The weather is really strange given that technically we should be heading into autumn yet here we are with temperatures that are closer to that of summer or spring.

    On Monday I’ll be picking up my new television but while i’m down there I’m going to buy a new pair of running shoes. I was going to wear my hiking shoes but the problem is that there isn’t the memory foam support for my feet. I’ve been walking in this hiking shoes and I’ve found them not only heavy but the lack of memory foam not only results in sore feet but also legs that are also sore. I’ll pick those up at the store but I’ll do that after I pick up my new television (I’ll head down after picking up the television). Regarding my old television, I’m going to give it away because it is over 10 years old, it is still working but I wanted to upgrade to something better but I would sooner give my old television to someone who needs it.

    I’m going to also have another look at a smart watch while I’m down the road and a few other bits and pieces while I’m down there. On a side note, moving the base station for my security cameras has resulted in the battery life lasting longer which is kind of strange but I guess as part of power management there is the power management relating to the wifi connection and if they can use less power because the base station is closer then it saves energy.

    One of the things I do like about Chrome (and on Firefox) is that when I am using Google chat there is a red dot that appears when someone has replied to a message I sent where as with Safari the red dot doesn’t appear. I had a look around online looking to see whether it is just a matter of enabling a setting in Safari but apparently the only thing suggested is to enable notifications. Personally I avoid turning on notifications because all to often you end up getting an avalanche of notifications where as with a nice little dot on the tab then it is a discreet way of telling me someone has replied.

  • Almost the end of the week.

    I woke up this morning and went for a walk – 6km, I really wanted to go for an 8km but I was sweating big time with the heat and humidity being uncomfortable but stuck to it so then at least I would get a 6km walk in before work. As for work during the day, I’m at the point that I I’d like to change jobs to something that doesn’t involve interacting with the customers I have to deal with on a regular basis but given the economic circumstances I’ll just have to suck it up and ride out until economic conditions improve. At the end of the day I went for my nightly walk – 14km so in total today I did 20km. I am still contemplating whether a smart watch is a good tool to help motivate me and keep track of my statistics but I’m still thinking about it.

    It is amazing the amount of hype that AI companies are putting out there with the latest hype being about how their current build is so super dangerous that only a small number of companies can use it. JFC this sort of nonsense is the marketing hype that a restaurant selling chicken wings would do by claiming that their wings are the hottest in town and that they’re so hot you have to sign a legal waiver because they’re that hot. As many people have pointed out, this is all marketing hype – selling you the promise that their latest model is more powerful than the last. What amazes me are the number of companies who spend copious amounts of money on consultants who are little more than sales reps for other companies then act surprised that consultant recommends a product from the very company their consultancy organisation has a relationship with.

    I’ve checked the Metservice forecast and it says there will be rain all on Sunday but as of 1:42am here in the Wellington region, apart from a few spits of rain while I was out on my walk there has been nothing so far. I’m still scheduling myself for a walk on Sunday but even if it is raining I’m still getting out of bed at the usual time so that I can maintain a good routine. I am reminded of what my dad told me about building up a good habit – if you do it consistently for a month then it becomes a habit then eventually you start doing it without even having to consciously thinking about, a bit like muscle memory.

  • Pondering.

    I woke up on Friday at 10:45am, left home for an 8km walk and arrived back home – absolutely drenched in sweat resulting in me having to have to have a shower. Normally after going for a walk I don’t feel yucky so I just start work, go for my after the work walk and then having a shower before going to bed. Work today was a bit ‘meh’ – at that point in the week where I just want to veg out and not have to deal with the world which probably explains why I like watching videos about log cabins and living off the land where I don’t have to deal with grown adults who can’t seem to take care of themselves.

    On Monday next week I’ll be picking up my new 65″ Samsung television (my sister is helping me pick it up since I don’t have a vehicle to pick it up in) but before I hook up my Apple TV device I’m going to setup the One UI based system along with upgrading it to the latest version. I want to see how it integrates into the Samsung ecosystem and how that ecosystem compares to the Apple ecosystem. I’m still making a decision regarding a smart watch but I’m cautious primarily because if I do buy one I want to make sure I get the most of out of it rather than it being a cool gizmo that in a few months end up in the beside table draw.

    On Saturday I’m going to get up, go for my daily walk and squeeze in one after work just to try and get as much exercise in before the rain that is scheduled for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and possibly Wednesday. I’m getting used to the cross trainer hiking shoes but so far they’ve been comfortable although the sole isn’t as flexible – the feeling is quite flag but that is probably probably the result of the lack of memory foam that the come with my old running shoes. On Monday I may end up just buying a new pair of shoes since I’ll be heading down to same area to pick up the television.