Matisyahu's Blog

Went for a smaller walk tonight of only around 9km but the main objective is that I get out of the house each night for some exercise even if it isn’t the normal 11.6km. I got back home, had a shower and jumped into bed to watch some news and catch up on what has happened in the world. I’m hoping that this year will be better than last year but the thing I keep reminding myself is to focus on the things I can control rather than getting overly fixated on those things I cannot control.

The one change I have made is making use of the 5kg dumbbells I have at home – during my breaks I’m doing a few reps then afterwards – basically when ever I have some free time I’m doing some curls and other exercises using them. It is funny because around 20 years ago I had the same sort of routine and I didn’t ripped by any stress of the imagination but I did get up getting some good lean muscle on the arms so hopefully the combination of the regular walking each night, a good diet most of the time along with some weights I’ll get closer to the goal.

I’m looking forward to next week which is when things get back to normal, people coming back into the office, business are reopening, maybe we’ll be lucky to get some more technology news and maybe even another beta for 26.3 from Apple which would be nice although as I’ve noted in the past I think we’ll be finding that the 26.3 will be a rather small update (based on the Safari 26.3 beta release notes) with 26.4 probably being the bigger update. There are rumours regarding the M5 Mac refreshes but I’d say that given how far ahead Apple are with the M4 combined with the recent memory shortages I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple aren’t in much of a hurry to get a refresh out that quickly.

One thing to keep in mind is that there is the big 2G and 3G shut down that is occurring in New Zealand at the moment. I’m with Skinny which is a sub brand of Spark who are closing their 3G network down at the end of March, One NZ (formally Vodafone) shut down their 2G and 3G network at the end of last year and 2 Degrees is currently in the process of doing a gradual 2G and 3G shut down as we speak. I think the interesting part will be what they will do with the spare spectrum and whether they’ll redeploy it for 4G or whether they jump straight to 5G. I have a feeling that what we’ll see is Spark probably redeploying 850MHz as 5G with 4G being used as fall back since it’ll provide a good balance between coverage and capacity. Regarding One NZ and 2 Degrees, both of them use the 900MHz so it’ll be interesting to see what they do.

There was a document not too long ago from the ‘Radio Spectrum Management’ (RSM) regarding the lower frequencies that used to be used for broadcasting and how it can be deployed for a variety of different wireless services ranging from IoT (such as smart power metres), internet broadband in rural areas and where the established mobile carriers fit into the equation.

A few things that’ll be worth also watching out for are some regulatory changes regarding the resource management act, the changes to local government etc. and how well it leads to things getting built in a timely manner and without the massive price tags. It reminds me of the city rail link in Auckland where some idiot claimed that he owned all the land underneath his home and held up the tunnel boring of a tunnel that is 30 meters beneath the person’s home. I really do hope that the regulatory changes because god knows there are legitimate concerns people raise but a lot of the time the chronic whining is actually code for being racist – we’ve all heard the ‘changing the character of the area’ excuse for not allowing a development to go ahead or claiming a building has some sort of historical significance when in reality it is shack with little in the way of historical value.