Matisyahu's Blog

Admittedly I am late to the party but Apple released updates for all their platforms but the more interesting aspect to this is the progress that Safari is making in terms of fixing bugs and improved compliance with the work being done with the Interop 2023 team (link) (link). The interesting part is how a few bug fixes in combination with work being done by AdGuard Safari Extension developers is producing a more consistent content blocking experience where as in previous version of Safari I would routinely find that ads would be slipping through. It’ll be interesting to see what next version of Safari will be like given the stuff that has been added over the last year and can be tried out in the Safari Technology preview. For example, in a year Safari 16.2 passed 67.3% of tests over on wpt.fyi to now around 91-92% for Safari 17.2 (on Safari Technology Preview 184 it is sitting at 97%).

End of the year get to together is fast approaching and the good part of all this is I’ve been able to pick up some overtime from work which will give me some extra money along with picking up a lieu day. Things are finally getting back on track and part of this is saving up for spending money when I go over to Europe, the UK and Ireland – the travel and accomodation is all taken care of so now it is a matter of putting some money on my travel card. I am tempted to start buying up Euros and British Pounds when the price is good so then if there are any currency swings that aren’t in my favour I would have at least got some put aside when the price was good.

Next year I’m going to organise a servicing for my scooter along with updating my registration because at the moment I didn’t think it was worth paying for a rego if I’m not going to use the bike so I put it on hold. When you put your rego on hold if you renew it in 3 months then you have to pay for those months on hold where as if you renew after 3 months then it is from the day you renew. The big thing next year will be the company moving in to Wellington so I’ll be choosing to take in the train because there are too many crazies on the road at the moment so I’d sooner keep myself and avoiding running into such folk. With that being said, it can be annoying when I’m trying to do grocery shopping by catching the bus particularly on Sunday so that will be one thing I’m happy that I won’t have to deal with once I get my scooter up and running.

One of the things I hadn’t realised until a few nights ago was how much more expensive on peak fares were. The price had always never occurred to me because I work 1130 to 2000 and 1330 to 2200 so when I go to work and return it is always in the off peak hours so I’m only paying $1.51 one way where as if I go into Wellington on peak it costs $5.52 but off peak it is $2.76 using snapper.

The powers that be have decided to scrap the $3 billion ferry and infrastructure plan put forward by Kiwirail and although $3 billion sounds like a lot of money one has to take into consideration that a ship can be in service for 20 years (I’m sure these ones will be a lot longer given that they’re modern designs) so if you break it down then it works out to be $150 million per year. Lets take a more pessimistic costing and round it up to $200 million per year to include interest then the amount is still going to be cheaper than the tax cut the government is going to give to property speculators who are buying up existing housing and turning potential home owners into renters for life. I can’t help but get the feeling that this will be yet another ‘penny wise but pound foolish’ move by our new government and unfortunately the voters will find out in the future when Labour comes in once again to clean up the short sighted mess created by the three headed hydra (National, ACT and NZ First).