Matisyahu's Blog

  • Another chilly day.

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    Yes, another chilly day in Wellington so I was happy to be working from home today with the heater going. I stopped tryign to do the impossible and took the clothes off the line and hung them inside so that they had chance of actually drying given that for the rest of the week the weather is going to be cold and miserable. I also went for a small walk after work for no other reason than to get some fresh air but it is really cold with the Metservice putting the temperature at 2°C (I use the Metservice because the weather from the Apple widget is normally off by 2-5°C in many cases) but it feels closer to 0°C.

    I was having a look around at the internet form information regarding the under the hood changes that will be coming in Android 17 because I hadn’t read much other than following what had been reported about the higher layers of Android 17. I tripped over an article I found when having a look on Google (link) and it appears that there is an industry wide push about getting the basics nailed down – Apple making their announcement regarding version 27 being able delivering Apple Intelligence along with optimisations, bug fixes and under the hood improvements in general. Microsoft is taking the same path with the work being done on their announced Windows 11 K2 – an on going project to address the laundry list of issues that Windows users have been talking about for quite some time.

    I think that what we’re seeing is the gradual winding down of the AI hype train – LLMs aren’t going to bring about AGI, that LLMs are a useful technology but the businesses that have been build on providing LLMs as a cloud service certainly aren’t worth $1 trillion or more. Microsoft is working on their own models, Microsoft no longer uses Claude Code internally in favour of their own tools and I wouldn’t be surprised that the capacity sold OpenAI and Anthropic will eventually instead be used to power Microsoft’s own AI models – same can be said for Google as well. Long story short, the technology will remain but many are realising that the promises were always overblown and many users would prefer that Microsoft, Apple and Google get back to getting their software to work reliably rather than trying to ram Ai into every nook and cranny.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2026.804.1652 has been released – it is available for Microsoft Edge and Safari however it is waiting for approval at the Chrome extension store. Nothing major in the way of features other than the usual filters being updated. Something that will be interesting is the development of filtering support for request and response headers – there is mention of it being a summer of code project for Chrome so it’ll be interesting to see how quickly it is adopted by content blockers along with support for such a DNR feature on Firefox and Safari.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s something you used to worry about but don’t anymore?
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    I used to worry about fitting in and looking the part but eventually half way through high school I just stopped caring because I quickly realised that it is all meaningless – that what I thought was ‘cool’ was just to happened to be cool based on was present in popular media or what I thought was important wasn’t actually that important once your expand your horizon beyond what is happening at school. I guess as you get older you learn how to triage what is and isn’t important.

  • Cold and crazy weather.

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    I woke up today and the weather was crazy – raining then to hail only to suddenly have some sunshine then back to more rail and hail. At the moment where I am the temperature is 5°C but it feels like 0°C with the possibility of getting even colder with some part of the Wellington region reporting to have received snow today. Today I stayed at home and made a chilli where I cooked some mince then added these two packets:

    The great thing with these two packets is that it has all the seasoning, vegetables and beans – it works well to have those who packets and combine it together with 500g of mince then a tin of cherry tomatoes along with salt, pepper and chilli flakes on the meat as it is cooked (I used some paper towels to dab up the excess fat and water that comes out of the mince as it is being cooked). The other benefit is that it has a good amount of fibre (I’ve hit 40g for today) – with all the obsession by many abour protein I think it is important that people remember to increase their daily fibre intake where possible. This is what it ended up looking like after cooking it:

    I had that with some corn chips and sour cream on top – it was a tasty dinner with a whole lot of flavour. The cast iron pot that I cook it in is great – it conducts the heat perfectly and even with the lid on the heat is retained for a good amount of time afterwards. Getting good pots, pants and other utensils for the kitchen is the best investment you can make because it makes cooking so much easier.

    On the technology front, I gave AdGuard for Safari a try with the 14 day free trial and I did find that the the performance dropped heavily when I enabled the advanced settings – the resolving of the website and downloading of it was horrible. I disabled the advanced settings but enabled all the other filters and tried it again and it loaded perfectly. I tried AdGuard on Chrome and it is also fairly reliable and the website doesn’t hang like it did on previous releases. I’m still going to stick to usign uBlock Origin Lite because it dos a better job ensuring that the websites I use aren’t detecting that I’m using a content blocker.

    Ubiquiti has released UniFi OS 5.1.28 for the Dream Router with the release notes being pretty brief because it is most likely focus on fixing some bugs found on previous releases rather than adding new features. In the early access channel Ubiquiti made available UniFi Network Application 10.6.88 which includes quite a few changes. It is the first release of th 10.6.x series so it maybe quite a while before a stable version is released. Safari Technology Preview 249 was released recently (link) and the recent Web Platform Test it has Safari sitting at 92.6% which is an improvement from 87.9% which was the score for Safari Technology Preview 248.

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  • Finally all sorted.

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    I finally got it all sorted in the end today – the duvet cover I cleaned last night was all dried by the afternoon so I folded it up and sent it away. The clothes horse that was damaged I decided to throw it out and lucky enough a friend of mine had one of those big hoppers and I also used that to get rid of a broken fan that I no longer used. The clothes rack that had a broken wheel is functionally ok so I removed the other wheels and now if I want to move it I’ll just pick it up and move it but other than that it works perfectly fine for when I want to hang up shirts etc. to dry.

    Mum came over and we had dinner – she bought a casserole along with some potatoes to then we can have baked potatoes along with peas (I put some mint sauce over the peas to give them some extra flavour). After dinner I headed down to the supermarket – I didn’t have a very shop but there were a few items I had to pick up such as a mop bucket, some floor cleaning chemicals, toilet paper, a few bottles of soft drink plus a few other items. There is quite a bit of rain scheduled for the next 7 days so I might just work at home as to avoid the bad weather.

    Regarding the shed, because the fence is leaning on the shed it pushed the shed and made it a bit wonky so I sorted that out so now it is back to where it should be. It is looking a lot better but I still think that long term I need a new fence along with a new shed that had a proper floor and hooked up to the power so then I can move the freezer out there and enough room to have a clothes rack so I can dry clothes without having to worry about putting a dehumidifier on inside the house. That is more of a long term project but if I am going to do it I’ll want to make sure I do it well so then it stays up for a long time.

    I’ve ben following the Chrome Platform Status (link) page and it appears that Google has pushed the migration for IndexedDB to using the Sqlite backend out to version 154 where as before it had been scheduled for version 152. Given that a big migration it is I wasn’t surprised particularly the number of sites that are probably built based around the assumption of IndexedDB acting a certain way. I guess we’ll see what happens with release of Chrome 154 and what benefits it’ll bring. When I was looking up details regarding IndexedDB I was surprised just how many websites make use of it – the unsung hero working behind the scenes making everything work as it should.

    Ubiquiti has released to the early access channel UniFi OS 5.1.28 for Dream Routers, it’ll be interesting to see whether it makes its way to be a release candidate or whether there is still more work to be done. There is also talk about Microsoft working on replacing Windows UI components with WinUI 3 which is based on XAML. I’d like to believe that Microsoft is putting in a genuine effort improve Windows but having been disappointed on a regular basis when it comes to Microsoft’s promises I can’t help but get the feeling that I’ll believe it when I see it.

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  • A relaxing weekend.

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    I got up this morning at around 10:00 am and decided to head down the road to buy two pillows for the duvet cover pillow cases. After I came back home, I took the washing off the line that I put out last night and then after getting that sorted I made my bed and iit now looks like this:

    The previous duvet covers were 16 years old and faded so I decided that they needed to be replaced. They’re functional but I’d like something nicer so I’ve washed them and have donated them to the local charity store. I’m still making a decision regarding getting a rug to put in my bedroom and the one I’ve had a look at is one that is 3.5 metres by 2.5 metres (or maybe 3 metres by 2 metres) which would pretty much cover 90% of the floor in my bedroom – add a splash of colour when compared to the boring brown carpet that I’ve currently got now or what I could do is get the really big rug and put it in the lounge room then put the one in the lounge room in one of the bedrooms.

    While I was down the road I stopped in at the local Spark store to see the new Samsung Fold devices that were on display and the one that captured my attention is the Galaxy Z Fold8 – the passport style one. I love the design because it reminds me very much of the Microsoft Duo. I preferred the Microsoft Duo over the Galaxy Z Fold8 because rather than it having a foldable screen it was two distinct screens like how one would have with a multi-monitor setup.

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  • End of the week, start of the weekend.

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    Finished another week and looking forward to the weekend. I got around to washing the duvet covers that arrived and aired the duvet on the line along with airing out my bedroom – closed the door to my bedroom and then opened the widow to get some fresh air. After all that was done I made my bed and it is looking a lot nicer than it did before.

    On Monday I’ll be heading down the road to pick up two more pillows so that it completes my bed – I’ll walk down the road so then I can get some exercise in while also doing some errands. Funny enough when I uploaded the above photo it didn’t get stuck on the ‘uploading’ dialogue even after it had funny uploaded – did the powers that be at the WordPress HQ fixed the issue? I guess god moves in mysterious ways.

    Anyway, after getting all that soted I put together all the old sheets and duvet covers that I had and took them down to the donation bin that charities run. I’ve got a pair of trousers that I bought many years ago and I think that even if I do lose some more weight I don’t think I’ll ever fit them – I have thicc thighs and unfortunately the trousers are designed for those who have twiggy leagues. I guess he thicc thighs probably the result of the fat that I have short legs and a long torso but there is the benefit that I can bend over and not only touch my toes but my hands are flat on the foor – even at my age I have maintained my flexibility.

    Daily writing prompt
    What is your favorite quote?
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    “Everything in moderation, including moderation” – Oscar Wilde

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  • Almost the end of the week.

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    One more day to go and I’m looking forward to the weekend. I was surprised today that the Ikea order arrived on a Saturday but it allowed me to unpack it all and wash the duvet covers along with the pillow cases. I’ve got the duvet covers outside drying and I’d say that by tomorrow they’ll be all dry and ready to take in and as for the pillow cases, I’ve hung them up inside and they’ve pretty much dried by now with a little help from the dehumidifier. On Monday I’m going to change the sheets on my bed, air the duvet and wash the duvet cover and the make the bed using the new king sized duvet and duvet cover.

    Another interesting thing happened today which was an email from the NZ Post YouShop to advise me that the items I had ordered form the Peanuts store had arrived at the depot. With YouShop you have to declare the value of the items along with the cost of postage and packaging and then you pay for the postage and packaging to New Zealand along with any GST that is owed on it. For me, I cannot buy the items in New Zealand so it isn’t really a situation of buying it from overseas because it is cheaper but rather because it is the only option available to me. It’ll take somewhere between 7-9 days to arrive in New Zealand so it may arrive maybe not next week but the week after. I’ve got another order on its way so it’ll be interesting to see when that arrives but I’m in no great hurry.

  • A good day today.

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    Nothing major today other than the usual process of getting up, going for a walk, having a shower then starting work for the day .The weather was good outside and it was nice to get some fresh air after being stuck inside because of the wet weather. At the moment as I write this blog post there is some showers outside but given how unpredictable the weather is I find it easier to just play it by ear and not look too far into the future when it comes to weather forecasts. I’m making use of the fine weather when I can so then I get out of the house because as much as I prefer hanging around at home I also want to get out and do something different to break up the monotony.

    I’ve gotten around to installing Chrome 151 along with uBlock Origin Lite 2026.729.1529 tonight because as much as I like to give Safari another chance I keep finding that there is always something wrong. As much as I love Apple’s operating systems I do find that their cloud service and web browser leave a lot to be desired. I’m not too sure whether I’ve mentioned it in the past but YouShop doesn’t work properly, Microsoft Team throws an error message and yes I have uninstalled uBlock Origin lite believing that maybe it was causing issues even when I’ve allowed the Microsoft Teams website and there is Google Chat status not appearing in the icon in the tab to know whether a message has ben sent etc. I originally though the status thing with Google Chat was a Chrome only featue but Firefox also supports it as well.

    At the moment I’m watching Silo season 3, episode 5 and I’m really enjoying the season so far. One of the things you’ll notice is the use of going back in time to the pre-silo society to give context to what is happening in that moment or covering the same time period but what was happening elsewhere in the Silo. Episode 5 of Silo for example covers the time from the first episode of season 3 until now but what was going on behind the scenes that wasn’t being shown in those episodes. From what I understand, based on rumours, the gap between season 3 and 4 will not be long because season 4 will be the final season . I’ve checked to see when Severance will return but that may not be until 2027 at the earliest and many others aren’t returning until end of 2026 or sometime in 2027.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s a skill you consider basic, that most people don’t actually know how to do?
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    I had to think long and hard about that question – I first thought budgeting skills but as I thought about it for longer, maybe cooking skills would be basic skill everyone should but very few people have. After much reflection I’d say that the basic skill that many people lack is critical thinking skills. We can complain about a laundry list of issues but the reality is that they’re symptoms of a bigger problem – the lack of critical thinking skills being taught at school. When people lack critical thinking skills then what takes over as the basis of making decisions? vibes, gut instinct, the well trodden path, doing something because that is what other people do etc. The end result of this lack of critical thinking skills is a voting population primarily motivated not by an understanding of policy, the pros, the cons, the opportunity cost etc. but instead many vote based ont he vibes – does it tap into some deep seated prejudice? does it tap into nosetalgia by a politician promising a return to ‘the good old days’? does it offer a scapegoat for society’s problems but no real tangible solutions?

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  • Two good days in the office.

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    I woke up today at 9:30 am, went for a walk, had a shower then I started getting ready for work. I jumped o the train into town and worked until 10:00 pm then caught the train home – during that time in the office it had started raining but it really picked up on the train ride home but luckily when I got to my stop I was able to get off the train and onto the underground connection to my street then back home without getting too wet. Once at home I heated up some oven fries for dinner – I wanted something comforting on a cold day and on Friday Ill be working from home so I may just adjust my alarm because it’ll be raining by the time I get up anyway. Although I will change the alarm time if I do wake up early without the alarm then I’ll get out of bed and start the day because I know if I lay around in bed having a sleep for even another hour I end up feeling more sleepy than if I just go out of bed and started the day.

    When I got to work I checked for Chrome updates and Google has pushed out a huge update with 370 security bugs fixed (link) so if you haven’t updated your installed version of Chrome then this is the opportunity to do it before something nasty happens. uBlock Origin lite 2026.729.1529 was released and it is available on the Chrome and Edge extension stores however it is still waiting for approval on the Apple App Store. I have noticed that on YouTube there is a couple of bugs I’ve noticed, the first being when you click on the three dots in video shorts the click on ‘don’t recommend this channel’ it doesn’t move onto the next video like it used to. Another bug is when you download a file, delete it and the find in the downloads it doesn’t have the usual line through the file name to indicate it has been deleted. I’m unsure whether that is a Microsoft issue (I haven’ tested it on macOS yet) or an issue with Chrome.

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  • First day back in the office.

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    first day back in the office after not going in for quite some time and waking up at 9:30 am I really wanted to have another hour of sleep but I know if I force my body into routine then eventually I’ll be able to get to sleep at a good time and wake up refreshed. I caught the train into town and started work at 1:30 pm and finished at 10:00 pm however they had a train replacement but on the good side the cost of the train replacement is around NZD$2 cheaper than taking the train so I guess it isn’t so bad. I have to admit, I missed the coffee machine they have at work – it has the sort of good quality coffee beans that mean you can have a black coffee and enjoy the flavour and aroma because they use good quality beans and haven’t been burnt to a crisp when roasted.

    I received notification from Ikea that the order I placed is getting ready to ship – they go through Mainfreight and once they pick it up I’ll be able to opt in to letting them leave them on my back door because I’ll be hope all day when they eventually deliver it. The trousers I bought recent I wore to work and they are very comfortable and tomorrow I’ll probably given the olive coloured ones a go with the shirt and long coat that will work all together nicely. The weather was still a bit chilly especially when coming home at night so I am tempted to wear maybe a woollen jacket so when I come back from work I don’t feel as cold.

    The one ting I always find funny is the American political system and the number of Democrats who chant ‘vote blue no matter who’. That sounds ok until you realise that it doesn’t apply if the candidate who ends up winning is backed by the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) then at which point the ‘vote blue no matter who’ crowd throw their toys out of their pram. This goes back to the larger thesis I’ve been saying and many others say online – the so-called ‘moderates’ and ‘liberal’ Democrats compromise to the right but punch to the left – the old fish hook theory that moderates are more willing to compromise with the right than find solidarity with the left.

    Even when the left is willing to compromise the moderates keep pulling to the right – for example the left were not the ones undermining the ACA in its original form, it was the so-called ‘moderates’ and ‘blue dog’ Democrats who gutted the ACA in the name of bipartisanship even though not a single Republican voted for it even after giving them everything they wanted. Then to add insult to injury we have Joe Lieberman who threatened to filibuster the ACA unless the public option was taken out – so moderate that he was more concerned about protecting the private health insurance businesses bottom line than actually fighting for better health.

    Getting back to the issue of the primaries – don’t complain when there is a candidate you didn’t like but you couldn’t be bothered getting involved in the primaries. When it comes to the primaries, push for your candidate to win and who ever ends up winning then get behind that candidate, don’t just throw a temper tantrum because you didn’t get what you want but understand that politics don’t stop the moment you don’t your own way, it continues going by lobbying who ever is the winner and push them in the direction that you want them to go in. At the end of the day if the candidate wins and wishes to keep winning then they have to start delivering – an organised movement that pushes representatives ensures that they’re kept honest because they’re constantly reminded that they’re being monitored and will be called out when they do something that isn’t in the interest of those who voted for them.

    There are reports that Apple will be releasing a refresh to the HomePod in October which would probably put the announcement at around the same time as they do their iPhone refresh. I wouldn’t be surprised if we also see an Apple TV refresh – hopefully betting updated so that it can support hardware accelerated AV1 playback which will allow higher resolution videos on the many different streaming services that have adopted it over HEVC. I’ll be looking forward to that along with the release of version 27 of the Apple’s next platform upgrade – when it is released I’lll be doing a clean install on all my devices to ensure that nothing strange or unusual occurs because an incompatible app or setting causes problems.

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  • Back to work on Wednesday.

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    I caught up with mum for dinner and we popped into a local restaurant to grab something to eat and then popped over to Pak ‘n Save to do some shopping. I normally go to Woolworths but given that we we had already parked at the Pak ‘n Save carpark we may as well do the shopping there. While I was there I picked up some extra frozen food for the freezer as well as picking up some odd extras such as chilli beans for when I have chilli in the future, canned tomatoes along with a few other items. I did notice while I was down there a jar of Shakshouka style tomatoes – I have to admit I was interested but maybe next time when I grab some eggs I’ll grab a few jars of it to give it a try.

    I’ve got the alarm set for 9:30 am so I’m all set to get out of bed and go for a walk – I’m still a little bit sore from the walk on Monday but it felt good pushing myself to do a long walk and I think I might start doing it more often on my days off. On my walk I listened to some music as well as listening to a few podcasts – it was a great way to pass the time while getting up to date politically with some interesting interviews. When it came to the music I did recompress the music again but I disabled the volume normalisation. The reason why is that I found a lot of the music was coming through really low volume no matter how high I put would the volume up so instead I recompressed the music, played it back and now everything is working normally.

    I’ve been having a look at maybe getting myself an ottoman for the lounge room because the chair isn’t really big enough to lay on but a decent sized ottoman may do the trick. I saw one at Target Furniture of around the same size as the chair that I bought for my desk in the lounge room . Long story short, I picture myself being able to sit on the sofa, feet on the ottoman, a blanket over me and being able to settle in to watch a movie or tv series. The ottoman looks like the following:

    Which should go with the general tone I’m going for in the house. The other purchase I am looking at is some carpets for around the house – adding a bit of colour to the place and making it a little more cosy. The bigger long term goal is to replace the fence at the back along with the shed I have outside in favour of a shed that is big enough that it has a proper floor, power going out to it so then I can put my freezer in there as well as the ability to put a clothes horse in there so when it is raining I can dry the clothes without the dampness that would occur if I dried it inside. Something like that is more of a long term project because of the cost involved – the shed however I would get a kit set one but I’d want to make sure it is done correctly so then it lasts a long time.

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Hello,

I’m Matisyahu

An open diary of my life as I navigate the world – the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles.

“When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called ‘the People’s Stick’” – Mikhail Bakunin

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