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

  • Getting ready to go to bed.

    I finished watching the first season of Pluribus and I can’t help but get ‘The Borg’ vibes from the whole way in which individuality disappears, it also gives MAGA cult vibes of how eventually MAGA types eventually end up repeating something they heard online without consciously thinking about what they’re saying. The idea of not having a moment of privacy, a moment where I can be alone with my own thoughts without anyone else listening in makes the whole idea of Pluribus as a horror movie. It reminds me of a discussion I had many years ago at university regarding the idea of idea of organising a society in a particular way which produces the most efficient outcome but at what cost does it come at – is a utilitarian argument a good enough reason to do something? is it better to have a society that isn’t ideal and has it’s problems but people have the freedom to able to live as they see fit even if it means that there is a price paid that some may choose to live a lifestyle that results in a shorter life span.

    This one of the reasons I’ve never been keen about politicians who make it their life’s work to go on moral crusades, a sort of “I don’t know what is best for you” paternalism that has always rubbed me the wrong way. Yes, I sit on the left but that being said I’ve retained many of the social libertarian ideas from my days at university primarily because the idea of telling people what to do with he force of the state behind it undermines the idea of individual freedom to live ones life as one see’s fit as so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else in the process. Yeah, a bit rambling but I thought I may as well throw my thoughts out there before I settle in for a good night sleep.

  • Back to work and back in the office on Wednesday.

    Had a relaxing day today, slept in until around midday then pottered around the house watching some television episodes then for dinner I ordered a mixed grill salad from the local Turkish restaurant because I really wasn’t in the mood to do any cooking but wanted something that was healthy. I’ve got the rubbish out for pick up tomorrow morning as well as setting the alarm for 11:30am so it gives me at least an hour before I need to catch the train into work. I’ll have a shave and shower before going to bed – tonight I’ll get to bed by 1am and then asleep by 2am which will give me a good 9 hours or so sleep. The big focus I’d like to make is to maybe start each day at the same time of 11:30am which will give me a good amount of time before work when working from home – maybe even go for a walk around the block before starting work in the afternoon where the shift starts at 1:30pm.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2026.118.1828 has been released and it is available in both the iOS and Mac App Store – when you update it you’ll need to remember to open up the browser and let the extension refresh the converting of filters from Decorative Net Request (DNR) format to the native content blocking format that Decorative Net Request (DNR) sits on top of which comes part of macOS. I also checked to see whether there was a 26.2.1 update but the rumours of it being released hasn’t come to fruition but then again we may see it tomorrow because there is still plenty of time for them to push out an update (I guess whether they do or don’t I guess depends on the urgency vs. just waiting for 26.3 to be ready for release).

    With all the craziness that is occurring in the world thanks to a country deciding that giving a reality television show host the most consequential job on the planet, I am happy that I am stuck down here at the bottom of the world. I think I’ve mentioned it in the past, it is important to keep up to date with what is happening in the world but spending too much time results in ones anxiety going through the roof which is made even worse by the fact that there is very little one can actually do about it – anxiety and helplessness is a horrible combination.

  • A relaxing day off and a hearty dinner.

    I had a good night sleep after going for that long walk on Sunday night, I woke up, went for a walk down to the local bakery to pick up some lunch. At the bakery I picked up a fresh roll and a chocolate caramel slice then asked back home to enjoy then for dinner I went to mum’s place where I updated all her computers, helped getting a few things sorted along with getting the clothes I ordered online adjusted. The dinner I had was salmon, baked potatoes and a salad:

    A tasty meal – I prefer getting the salmon tails because they have no bones and I was lucky in that the salmon was on special at the local Pak ‘n Save. A bonus tip is to sprinkle on a little flower on both sides with the result being that it creates a nice crust especially when it comes to the skin – and yes, I eat the skin of the salmon as well because my argument is that I paid for it so I may as well eat it. It was one of those meals that was filling and satisfying but without feeling uncomfortable afterwards (it looks like a lot on the plate but it is a fairly small plate and most of it is salad).

    Looking forward to getting paid this week and I may have a look through Amazon or maybe the Nick Cave online store to pick up a few bits and pieces. I’m still deciding what I’ll wear when I go into the office – I want something presentable but at the same time I want to also to be comfortable. What I’ll do on Tuesday is have a shave, shower and an early night in bed at around 1am then asleep by 2am so by the time the alarm goes off at 11:30am I’ll be all ready to get out of bed and ready to catch the train – assuming there is no maintenance magically appearing out of nowhere but I guess we’ll see on the day.

    Oh, and on a good side note, the external Blu-ray player I purchased a few years ago is working well and I’ll be making use of it soon. I am still tempted to get some Home Pod speakers for my setup but I’m still wondering whether I should wait for a refresh or will it be one of those devices that will have incredibly long upgrade cycles because the demand being placed on the hardware is minimal and thus doesn’t need to be upgraded.

  • The week is over.

    Finished work tonight and went for a walk – I decided to kick it up a notch and instead go for a 17.4km walk and I was able to get it down in around 2 hours and 40 minutes which is pretty quick when compared to the usual time of 1 hour and 50 minutes for a 11.6km walk. I came home, had a shower then I had some honey soy chicken kebabs for dinner along with some steamed vegetables. I was going to have something for dinner during my shift but I decided to hold off until the end so then I can cook myself something nice for dinner.

    According to the Metservice 7 day forecast it appears that towards the end of the week there will be more rain. Hopefully there will be a break in the rain but in the mean time I’ll make sure I take advantage of the weather to go for a walk when I can along with doing some free weights while I’m watching television. The weather is going a bit crazy these days but then again given that we’re in a world of climate change I guess things will keep getting worse given how a sizeable portion of the world have given up on trying to do something (including my own country).

  • Feeling good, can’t wait for Sunday.

    End of my second week back at work and feeling good. I’m having a looking at ordering the Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds Wild God album after much procrastination along with maybe a few t-shirts I’m at it but it will be ordered through the UK store since there is a larger selection then get it delivered via the UK remaining service via YouShop.

    I’m looking forward to the weekend and then getting myself prepared for next week when I go into the office for Wednesday and Thursday. It is going to be a bit of a shock to the system because I’m so use to having a lazy start to the day but with heading into the office I’ll need to get better organised but I think it’ll be worth it. On a good side though, they do have really good coffee in the office so there is always that along with the free meals so that’ll also save me a few dollars as well although I may still want to bring in a meal from home.

    There has been quite a bit of rain over the last few days and the lime tree appears to be doing a lot better now that I’ve moved it to a new location where it is able to get a lot more sun. I am tempted to get a few more plants as well as looking at making the backyard a bit nicer. I think the next big thing I’ll have a look at is having a an awning which will provide some cover on the patio because at the moment it is quite exposed especially on sunny days.

  • A busy day, now at the half way point.

    A busy day to day but looking forward to the end of the shift. What amazes me are the number of people who ring up who normalised the idea that they’re helpless and their first port of call is to ring up for help rather than attempting to resolve the problem themselves. I can understand if it is something that they cannot do themselves but many cases the solution is updating their browser, updating their operating system, clearing cookies and cache etc. basic skills that you should have acquired. This is the one thing I loath about the rise of AI where it’ll create a whole generation who will end up like an aristocrat who cannot cloth themselves because they’ve been had others do things for them their whole life.

    Which goes onto the bigger problem which is the focus on the achieving the end goal while ignoring that the journey of getting to that end goal is just as important. Through the process of researching, of finding sources, verifying those sources, looking into the background of those sources then understand the context in which those sources were created etc. it gives one a better understanding of what is being researched. The problem is with AI is that it flattens that process and you miss out on the nuance, you end up with a reductionist understanding of the world, a simplified understanding of why something happened to the point it becomes “why did x do something?”, “because x is evil”.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s your dream job?
    View all responses

    Working in an area of counter extremism which would put to use my degree in Religious Studies and Philosophy. I find interesting how people think and how seemingly normal people can go down a rabbit hole to extremism – what primes them for that? what compels them to keep going down the rabbit hole where as for others they’ll realise that they’ve ended up in a really dark place and then pull themselves out of that hole. What compels someone to remain within that rabbit hole, what need does it fulfil that isn’t being met within mainstream discourse. I guess it coms down to a curiosity of wanting to know how people tick – what makes them do what they do.

  • What is old is new again.

    I find it interesting how there was first the trend of vinyl returning then tape and how CDs are making a comeback as people realise that paying to hear the same music over and over again isn’t a smart way to spend money. I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing a return of DVDs and BluRay as people have found out that the films they thought they had bought from their favourite service couldn’t easily disappear from their library of videos in the cloud.

    I’ve probably mentioned it in the past of when I tried Spotify and Apple Music a try with the problem being that you’ll find an album then discover that not all the tracks are available or it is an edition that is missing the songs you like (Joe Cocker, Mad Dogs and Englishmen, the version available online is missing ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’) then if you’ve found the holy grail of the entire album available you then run into a problem 2-3 months later when there is a falling out between the streamer and owner of the music resulting in the album disappearing out of your collection.

    If you are wanting to start up a music CD collection the best thing to do is start off by picking up a few CDs when they’re on special, I did that when I lived in Christchurch where there was a Borders where they would routinely have specials such as ‘buy 2 CDs and get a third one free’. I also took advantage of specials on Amazon, there was a closing down sale where I had a hunt through all the CDs they had which were selling at over half price. In a space of around 25 years I’ve build up a pretty decent collection and I am still buying albums today but at a slower pace.

    For the software I use on my computer, I have a copy of dbPoweramp where I rip all the music to FLAC then upload it to the cloud for backup purposes and then encode the ripped music into AAC format with true VBR (Variable Bit Rate) on the highest quality setting. The net result is that I have around 60GB+ music and the audio quality is transparent when playing through the speakers I have on my computer (along with the headphones when listening to it on my iPhone).

  • A good day at work.

    Finished work tonight and the weather was looking pretty lousy so I decided to settle down with a bowl of pumpkin soup and fresh ciabatta bread with garlic butter and chilli flakes. It was a tasty dinner and filling then I finished it off with some blueberries for desert. I’m looking forward to my weekend but the week is going quickly although Saturday tends to be our busiest day so once that is over it will be smooth sailing for work on Sunday and then Monday where I can have a sleep in then maybe just lazily hang around at home.

    I mentioned about some clothes I bought, the company I was buying it off stopped making clothes to order on 14/01/26 so unfortunately I missed out on the opportunity to order a few more items but I’m happy with what I got. I also finally gave myself a haircut because my hair was getting too long and I was finding it uncomfortable with the working out every night, the drying of my hair after a shower not to mention on hot nights that the sleep was uncomfortable. Oh, and I tried on some of the hats I got with he clothes I bought (they came free of charge) and they look neat – I guess it is a matter of choosing the right place and time to wear them.

    I’ve been following Google Gemini and it is interesting how around 3-4 years ago we had the usual suspects on Wall Street claiming that Google was too far behind OpenAI, that they would never catch up etc. etc. Where are these great analysts now? it is funny how those who speak with much confidence suddenly disappear much like George W Bush voters were such loud mouths during his president suddenly cleared their social media of any mention of them supporting George W Bush. It reminds me of IDC in 2000 claiming that Titanium market would be worth $28 billion in 2004 but we all note that it never happened yet some how these consultancy firms some how keep getting consultancy gigs even after monumentally screwing up their forecasts. Spoiler alert, it was x86-64 and Linux that put the nail in the coffin for Titanium and traditional propriety UNIX vendors such as Sun Microsystems.

  • A good work out tonight.

    Finished work tonight and I was keeping my eye on the weather the whole day and it was just my luck that the weather all fined up tonight so that I was able to go for my nightly walk. I’m in a calorie deficit so the body has to work harder to access that stored fat but hopefully with that calorie deficit I can work of the fat and hopefully get down to my goal of being below 100kg by June this year (something I keep in mind so that I stay on track). I have been continuing to do some free weight exercises even a when I get up in the morning – it is a way to wake myself up and get myself in the mood for a day of working. When I head into the office on Wednesday and Thursday next week I may need to wake up a little bit earlier than normal so that I can squeeze in a work out before heading off to catch the train.

    Safari Technology Preview 235 has been released (link) and I was expecting it to be light on details release but there is a sizeable number of fixes with a few new features thrown in. I have a feeling that we won’t see those changes in 26.3 given that it is feature frozen meaning the only changes occurring will be bug fixes rather than any new features (although new features can be added but generally that is because they’re either well tested internally or the risk associated with including it with the release is minimal). There are rumours of a 26.2.1 in the works from the few tech news channels I follow but I haven’t seen anything yet but then again they are rumours so I always take them with a generous helping of salt.

    Daily writing prompt
    If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
    View all responses

    Social media or more specifically the culture around social media platforms in the form of ‘influencer culture’, the parasocial relationships that people build up with people they subscribe to, the fact that subscription has been replaced with the term ‘follow’. I remember back when YouTube was a platform where it was a platform where people could be creative, experiment, try new ideas, when the videos were rough and ready but there was a certain charm, an authenticity that is sorely lacking these days. A time in the past where no everything had to be a ‘side hustle’ or a fixation that anything enjoyable had to be eventually monetised in some way because god forbid someone just simply enjoys doing something without a monetary reward at the end of it.

    I remember Facebook back when it wasn’t about endless fights over politics but sharing funny memes with friends, uploading photos from a recent holiday then having friends and family comment, ask questions about the trip etc. Now it is an unrelenting hellscape of people grandstanding and trying to say the most incendiary takes on the latest hot topic of the moment in an attempt to build a following then use it as an opportunity to make a quick buck. Instagram was similar, sharing photos, good vibes and the occasional person talking about something they bought or a new item of clothing they thought was cool and wanted to share it with others.

    This is the reason why I never have any intention of monetising my blog – it’s a place where I can put my ideas out into the ether because I enjoy having a platform where I can express myself. I really do hope that at some point there is a tipping point where there is a backlash by normal folks to this fixation of monetising every aspect of life and hopefully as a result there is a return to some sense of moderation.

  • An okay day today.

    Started work today, had a one on one to discuss the new year, a catch up on how things have been and organising the days I’ll come into the office now that the powers that be have decided hybrid working is now the ‘in thing’ to do. I’ll pop in on Wednesday and Thursday although that will mean I’ll have to get up at the ungodly hour of 11:30am but I guess I’ll make it – oh the burden of it all lol. I went for a walk after work and it was spitting a bit so I thought I may as well get some exercise but I found that by the time I got half way through my second lap it started pouring down so by the time I came back I was completely drenched. On a good side I have found out that the running shoes I have are water proof which is nice not having deal with drying out wet shoes when I came home.

    I checked out Webkit and there hasn’t been a Safari Technology Preview 235 released so maybe it’ll happen at the end of next week or maybe next week. I don’t think we’ll see any major changes because Safari 26.3 beta that is currently in testing for older versions of macOS has some bareback changes with the focus mainly on bug and security fixes with most of the effort probably going into 26.4. It appears that Apple has taken a bit of a ‘tick-tock’ strategy with Safari on their mainstream platforms – x.0 a big update, x.1 a minor update, x.2 a big update, x.3 a minor update (based on what they’ve included with the change logs for those releases).

    I’ve been doing free weights for over a week and I’m already seeing results. Today I added an extra exercise and I may also start doing some squats as well to tone my legs and butt which builds upon the walking I do every night. Building up and maintaining that muscle will ensure that as I am losing weight my BMR doesn’t drop because muscles aren’t being maintained through resistance exercises. I’m add more exercises to the routine and spacing them out during the day so that they become a regular thing I do. The new few days it appears that raining will be the norm so I’ll do some free weights to make up for the lack of exercise outside as well as keeping an eye on calorie intake.