Matisyahu's Blog

I had work today which wasn’t so bad – the morning was quiet but in the evening it started to get a bit busy but it’ll be interesting to see whether it is busy tomorrow with the Matariki public holiday result in a quiet day because families are going away to take advantage of the three day weekend. Maybe we need to go back to the old days of stores closed on the weekends – make Matariki weekend into a time where all the stores are closed and people actually have to do something other than spend money they don’t have on something they’ll lose interest in 5 minutes after buying it.

1Blocker released an update (Version 6.1.4 (1014)) and so far things are working very well – I have offered my feedback to uBlock Origin Lite – I’m unsure how beneficial the feedback is but I guess you can insert “I’m doing my part” meme here. I’ll keep using 1Blocker since it uses the native content blocking API however if the bugs in Apple’s implementation of DNR get fixed then I’m open to giving uBlock Origin Lite a try (at the moment Safari Technology Preview 221 and Safari 19 (included with the developer betas of macOS, iOS etc) have some of the DNR implementation bugs fixed). It’ll be interesting to see whether AdGuard follows the uBlock Origin Lite lead and make their MV3 extension available on macOS rather than having a special build for Safari – hopefully if that is the case then it may translate to updates being released in a more prompt fashion.

I went for a walk down to the store which is around 8km in total to pick up some stuff I forgot to – I really needed some dental floss along with some other teeth caring things. I brush my teeth every night but I really need to spend some extra time doing some detailed cleaning primarily because after I had my scooter accident I couldn’t use my hands so I wasn’t able to brush my teeth for close to a month as a result. It isn’t bad or anything but there does need some detail cleaning so I’ll fill up my time when I get bored by staring into the mirror and making sure each tooth is in tip top shape. Although I go for a walk every night I also try to fit exercise into my daily routine so that it becomes part of my life rather than something that I have to set aside time for.

I had a look at some of the videos on YouTube of people using iOS 26 in reduced transparency mode and you know, I have to admit, I was wrong. I though iOS 26 would be a horror show but as others have pointed out that this is the first developer preview so a lot can change based on feedback Apple receives and word case case scenario there is always reduced transparency available (which I use on macOS and iOS). I’ve seen some commentators bring up Windows Vista while others have bought up Mac OS X when it was lunched with the ‘lickable’ interface but I have to admit I was never a fan of the whole transparency look – I quite liked the Windows XP beta (pre-Luna) and macOS X 1.0 Server. I’m hoping that they’ll gradually tone it down – developers will provide feedback and hopefully Apple will realise that some of the UI elements may look great for presentations but would be horrible for day to day use.

On a side note, I noted that with my life style change I cannot longer eat chips or any deep fried fast food – I find them too greasy to the point of being unpleasant. I went out for my birthday and ordered fish ‘n chips but I couldn’t get over how greasy they were and then I ordered them again believing maybe it was just prepared badly. Another thing I noticed is that bags of chips (crisps) are also very greasy tasting – so bad that I ended up throwing out the remaining of the bag because it was that unpleasant. I guess if there is a silver lining it is the fact that it is easy to resist unhealthy food when the food doesn’t taste very nice to begin with. I guess when you’re eating health 95% of the time and you eat something unhealthy your body goes “good lord! what the hell was that?!”.

I’m probably going to look at writing up a blog post about the Iran/Israel situation along with a bit of commentary about other contemporary matters but it is still very much a ‘work in progress’ – I go for a walk each night, come home, right down in OmniOutliner some of the ideas that popped in my head then sit down and try to bring together random ideas into a coherent blog post.