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

  • End of a week, let’s hope for an uneventful one this week.

    I finished work tonight and I decided I needed to go for a long walk after dealing with a sizeable number of customers who put me in a bad mood. The most productive way I have found to deal with such emotions is to go for a long walk while listening to some music – completely empty my head of all the negative vibes that have built up during the day. I just put the route I took into Google maps to get a good indication of the distance and it was around 20 km with plenty of variance in terraine which is a nice change from the usual flat walks I have every evening.

    On my walk I was able to explore some infrastructure that were recently built such as the cycle path and the tunnels they’ve built under the train tracks to get from one side to another. It is remarkable what they’ve done and I do hope that they will expand it further because there is a lot of potential to build a cycle way that is grade separated and thus creating a much safer route for those wanting to cycle into the city when the weather is nice.

    On Monday I’m going to go shopping for the fortnight – I think what I’m going to do is organise a greater variety of meals so then I don’t find myself bored of the same thing every day. I’ve got my chia seeds and yoghurt but I’m going to have a look at granola bars that I crap break up and sprinkle over the yoghurt to give it some variety. Regarding lunch/dinner, I’ll see what the options are but it has to be easy to heat up or prepare because I only have 30 minutes for lunch and I don’t want to waste half my break cooking resulting in me trying to cram a meal in 15 minutes.

  • I’m going to say it, the new iPhone is pretty good.

    One more day to go and the weekend cannot come soon enough. After work I went for another long walk because I needed to get some negative vibes out of my system after dealing with some ‘interesting’ customers – the sort that insist because they’ve watched a few episodes of Perry Mason that it somehow makes them a legal expert. Sure, I’m not legal expert myself given my background is in religious studies and philosophy but I at least have a degree of self awareness as to my limitations not to mention that I don’t throw around idle threats when I don’t get my own way.

    Anyway, I had a look into the new release of the iPhone 17 to see what the details are and it is amazing the number of YouTube tech dude bros who believe that their opinion is the final say on any given matter. Dude, you’re one guy with a camera and a copy of Final Cut Pro, your opinion has no more weight behind it than any other rando posting their opinions on the internet (don’t get me started on the number of people who make videos who speak as though they’ve got constipation stressing and pushing out their words with over exaggerated articulation that sound unnatural to the point of being annoying).

    I’ve had a look at a few videos and the design has a feeling of brutalism to it and the iPhone 17 Air reminds me of the Google Nexus 6P at the back of the phone. I do like the orange colour, maybe we’ll some some fun and whimsy come back in the space of information technology rather than the bland brushed aluminum we’ve been subjected to for almost two decades. As for the shape, I love the brutalist outward appearance but considering that I keep my phone in a leather case I’m happy with the changes.

    There are rumours that there will be an event in October this year where Mac and Apple TV will receive a refresh along with a few other product lines. I’m in no hurry regarding getting a desktop so I’m going to see what Apple has in store. I’ve been following the development of maOS 26 – what I hope is that the glass effect over time will be toned down because at the moment the legibility and usability is undermined by something that may appear great on stage but in day to day use would drive me up the wall. Based on the fact that macOS 26 has already been released as a release candidate I wouldn’t expect UI changes until maybe the 26.x updates with the 26.1 being released a month or so before Christmas with maybe a 26.0.x release occurring if there is something that needs fixing promptly because it is a bug impacting a large number of end users.

    There are rumours that of a Mac refresh based on last year there being the M4 refresh so it may happen that there is a M5 refresh which will be interesting to see the refresh when it comes to the MacBook and Mac mini line up. It’ll be also interesting to see how well macOS 26 performs and how quickly issues regarding Safari are fixed because I reported a bug that has existed in Safari for years and as of this post the issue hasn’t been fixed or even acknowledge by Apple developers (I’m not holding my breath that they’ll fix it).

    As for how things are going with my Surface Laptop – the patch Tuesday for September went off without a hitch and 25H2 is probably going to be released maybe in the next month or two. 25H2 is based on the same foundation as 24H2 so the change shouldn’t be disruptive when compared to the move from 23H2 to 24H2 which was a jump from build 22631 to 26100 where as going from 24H2 to 25H2 is a jump from 26100 to 26200. As I’ve noted in the past, I would say that 26H2 will be another leap forward with some of the changes uncovered recently regarding dark mode will probably appear in 26H2 given that there is still a lot more that needs to be done to bring more WIndows components to supporting dark mode.

    The reason why I think there will a delay for the dark mode support because there is still a lot of work going on behind the scenes, making use of XAML and the Windows App SDK, building up functionality, replacing components of the Windows shell piece by piece, testing those newly implemented features, making tweaks such as the colour of the progress graph reflecting the colours chosen etc. All of that takes time. I also think with the jump forward in build numbers it also points to support for ARM processors from more vendors such as nVidia and others. All of this takes time and to be honest I’d sooner they take their time rather than what was seen in Windows 10 with the drama of two big releases per year, things breaking, the lack of a way to separate the bleeding edge from beta from a preview to provide adequate testing before merging the change into the beta channel then evolve it to the preview channel.

  • Why let facts get in the way of baseless speculation.

    Once again the ‘don’t politicise the shooting’ types are once again politicising the killing of Charlie Kirk – calling for violent retribution while speculating, based on no evidence at all, as to the politics of the accused killer. Why let facts get in the way of weaving a politically expedient narrative that allows you to claim the status of being persecuted for your political beliefs while you ignore that your fellow brethren control the entire government of the United States. These are not serious people, they treat politics like a game, an affiliation to a political party not based on policy and a philosophical worldview but a childish form of neotribalism where as long as their team is winning that is the only thing that matters – downstream consequences be damned.

    Regarding who it could be and their motivations, he could be anyone – it could be a Q Anon crazy who is angry because Charlie Kirk said that Trump supporters should move on from the Jeffrey Epstein situation. There were white nationalists who didn’t like him because they viewed him as a sell out because he wouldn’t support their world view. Whatever their motivation maybe the scary part, at least for me, is how it was a 200 yard shot from an planned position, two people were organised as distractions – in other words we’re not talking about a crazy individual who suddenly snaps, grabs a gun then goes on a rampage but instead something that appears to have meticulously planned what took place which makes the situation more concerning.

    The reason I find it concerning is that it indicates that such individuals aren’t just random lunatics who suddenly snap but rather a possible indication of groups that are organised and disciplined. The consequence of groups being organised and disciplined mean that their capacity to cause harm is a lot greater than the random lunatic but with that being said it is important not to downplay the actions of a random lunatic. One only needs to look at the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by an anarchist who probably thought his actions wouldn’t amount to much but given how Europe was a powder keg waiting for a spark to blow everything up – the actions of that one person set the wheels in motion for WWI which then set the groundwork for WWII and all the horrors that came from that.

    The question is whether all levels of society will wake up and realise that at this point history the outcome could go in one of two directions, the first direction being an FDR style ‘New Deal’ then followed by a grand bargain between capital and labour or the second direction that the country descends into a place of unimaginable darkness. Unfortunately there are too many people at every level of society that are convinced that they’ll be some of the few who will come out on top – the sort of people who watch Blade Runner and convince themselves that they’ll be head of The Tyrell Corporation or The Wallace Corporation when in reality the best case scenario they will be operating a noodle shop out of a makeshift caravan at the bottom of said corporate headquarters.

    What will happen at the midterms? there are moments where there is an opportunity to change direction and the question is whether the American people turn out, get registered to vote, if they’re in a state that requires voter ID to organise getting that approved ID, and turning out to vote or whether, like previous elections, half the population sit it out and allow their country to descend even further. Are the Democrats perfect? far from it but voting is never about choosing the best most perfect option but about choosing the one that sucks the least, the one that you have the most in common with, the fact that problems aren’t going to be solved with a giant leap forward but persistently working at it. I’m not hopeful given that I’m a half glass empty kind of guy but I’m happy to be proven wrong. The reason I am not optimistic is because how easily Americans are convinced that minorities with no power, influence or social capital are the source of their problems, how easily Americans vote against their economic self interest because of made up culture wars centred on non-existent ‘threats to social order’.

  • It was a good day.

    I was able to spend the day off the phones replying to emails and other office related work then after work I went for a walk then came home to have the last bit of the turkish bread I bought on Tuesday (I put in the freezer to keep it fresh – I defrosted it then heated it in the oven) and watched a few television episodes I have missed (on my day off next week I’ll try to catch up in my spare time on a few tv series I have missed).

    I’ve talked about looking into Microsoft 365 but I was going to fiddle around tonight but I’ll wait for my day off on Monday to be in the right headspace where I can put all my focus rather than being semi-focused resulting in a mistake being made. The downside with the Microsoft 365 account is the silliness of Microsoft creating an artificial distinction between their consumer service and their business service meaning if you want to make use of XBox or Phone Link then you need to have a consumer account. The big question is this – if I am going to go down the path of using Microsoft then do I have a consumer account as my main account where all my devices are logged into then setup an Exchange Online account purely for supporting the custom domain emails with my consumer one being where I store all my files. The other option is to have the Microsoft 365 account as my main account but leave the consumer account for when I want to use Phone Link and maybe use an XBox in future.

    I’m leaning towards the consumer as my main and a Exchange Online purely for my email so then I have a single account that glues together all my devices into a single ecosystem which also works better with Samsung given that the integration between Samsung Gallery and OneDrive only works with consumer OneDrive. With that being said, Android integrates best with Google Workspace not to mention Chrome, compatibility etc. I’m 99% sure I’ll stay with Google but it is good to see what the alternatives are that exist rather than blindly going with a solution without first doing an investigation into those alternatives.

    Regarding the September update, everything is working smoothly so far – no regressions. As I’ve said in the past, it is always funny how there appears to be a never ending of people posting their tales of woe on the internet about how the latest Windows update has broken something and yet here I am, as cool as a cucumber, without a single problem. I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb and guess that because I don’t fiddle around with things I don’t understand I don’t inadvertently break things then blame Microsoft for my own stupidity.

    There there some information floating around on the internet that the One UI 8 will start rolling out on 18 September 2025 (link) however there is also the September 2025 update for One UI 7 as well. Given the date it makes me wonder whether 18 September is when Samsung will start making it available to carriers then maybe we’ll start seeing the roll out begin in October after they get feedback from carriers, make any necessary changes then start rolling out the update to end users region by region.

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your favorite types of foods?
    View all responses

    My favourite foods when it comes to a meal I can make myself would be: lamb burgers with ploughman’s relish, lamb patty, beetroot, tomato, red onion, cos lettuce and garlic mayo in between a kaiser roll or a pan seared salmon with steamed vegetables with a drizzle of hollandaise over the top. For desert depending on the whether, if it is cold weather then it is something like a stick date pudding with either custard or ice cream (depending on the mood I’m in) or on a hot day then it is either a banoffee pie or a cheesecake with a berry compote. If it were a restaurant then it would be a slow cooked lamb shank on a potato mash, a red wine gravy paired up with a Otago Pinot Noir along with a rustic desert like a sticky date pudding or maybe a apple and rhubarb pie with some ice cream.

  • Meh.

    Today was pretty meh, got up, logged in, worked for the day – nothing unusual, the usual flow of customers so nothing out of the ordinary. After work I went for an 11.6km walk then came back, had a shower then completed a few puzzles on the internet.

    I had a look at Microsoft 365 when I wasn’t so tired and what I did was delete the data associated with the account I sent up – I’m wondering whether it was causing problems when I opened Outlook because of some licencing issue. What I’m going to do on Monday is spend some time giving it a try to see whether it is worth making the switch but I’m first going to have to study up on which Business plan is suitable for me.

    On a side note, I do enjoy using Microsoft Edge (the spelling and grammar checking is really good when compared to the rather pedestrian setup with Chrome) although I wonder whether I should setup a thirdparty password manager which has 2FA/OTP built in which would mean I am no longer dependent on always having my mobile phone on me. There is 1Password but there are also people who swear by BitWarden but I’ll need to check that out.

    I am getting closer to making that decision about buying a desktop but I’ll see how I feel after I sand down my desk and stain it again along with tidying up a few rough edges. I’m holding out to see what Apple will do but given the sad state that macOS and iOS look like at this stage (close to release) I don’t hold out much hope but then again I could be wrong and we could see a big update being released a few months after its release which will address some of my concerns but I’ll wait and see.

    Oh, and on the matter of the desk, I might get myself a more comfortable chair but I’ll want to go down on Monday or Tuesday to have a look myself because it is once thing to see it on the internet but it is another thing to sit on it in real life.

  • I wouldn’t wait with bated breath for the corrections.

    Well, it appears that all the hype and hysteria was about nothing – as I noted in a previous post, there are many factors at play and given how limited the report there must be a logical reason for what is occuring. Well, it appears that the problem comes back to out of date firmware thanks to SSD vendors and hardware OEMs not making available firmware updates that would address the issue along with the BIOS in some systems not being updated as well (link),

    I’ve just had a quick search on YouTube to see whether those spreading ‘the sky is falling’ hysteria have back peddled or maybe accepting that they had jumped the gun before having all the details. Did I find any of the main instigators doing a back peddle? nope, not a single one. No correction, no mea culpa, people replying to their their original video completely obvious that 9 hours ago The Verge put out an article outlining what the situation was.

    Once again, this is the reason why I loathe the tech YouTuber space because it is filled with far too many people who know enough of the lingo to appear that they’re knowledgeable but in reality they’re just as clueless as someone who doesn’t know the lingo. I’ve had a look around at a few SSD and motherboard vendors and it appears that these problems may have been fixed by firmware updates released months ago. As for me, my Microsoft Surface Laptop (ARM based) has been rock solid and I’ve installed the September update (along with updates made available as part of patch Tuesday) without any problems.

  • Back to work tomorrow.

    Today was a busy day. I had a wonderful sleep last night after having a bit of a shocker of a sleep from Sunday night – 5 hours of sleep vs a solid 10 hours of sleep. I woke up this morning with the sound of mum telling me that we had dinner tonight and wanted to know whether I wanted to go grocery shopping – I decided I needed to pick up a few bits and pieces along with buying a new pair of running shoes because my old ones are complete had it but keeping in mind that I’ve walked over 2800km since the beginning of the year with those shoes not to mention wearing them out quicker due to my heavier weight at the beginning of the year.

    After getting the phone call from mum I then got a phone call from Microsoft to get the 2FA sorted out and this time I didn’t trust Microsoft Authenticator but instead I not only set it up on Google Authenticator but also set it up on my browser extension and then backed up the file so that if I had to manually recreate it I wouldn’t be locked out again along with adding my phone number to the account as alternative back up along with an email address. Yeah, I’m making sure that it doesn’t go pear shaped this time by ensuring that all my bases are covered.

    Now that I have gotten my Microsoft 365 account sorted out the big question is whether I should move from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 for not just email but cloud storage etc. which would become my main account for everything stored in the cloud and then having my outlook.com one for when I want to setup Phone Link to my laptop (and in the future my desktop) and use my gmail.com email address for my phone and Google TV device.

    Tonight I gave it a try and what a mess it is – Microsoft truly make something, that should be relatively easy to configure, into a complete nightmare. It is amazing how easy Google make setting up Workspace – a few clicks and everything is working. In the case of Microsoft, I signed in, bought a product, assigned it to the user, opened up outlook.com and it complained about a licence not being assigned, so I tried again, I then set up my administrator to the onmicrosoft.com domain, unassigned the licece, then created a new user then assigned the licence to that – exact same error message again. Life is too short to have to deal with the incompetence of a multibillion dollar organisation who cannot seem to get things working smoothly so why I should I rase my blood pressure and getting frustrated when I can stick with what I know works.

  • I need a new pair of shoes.

    It has been almost a year, and I need to buy a new pair of shoes – the heel my right shoe is falling to pieces but keeping in mind the number of kilometres I have walked since the beginning of the year. Tomorrow (Tuesday) I’ll be going out with my siter, partner along with mum to celebrate mum’s birthday but before we go to the restaurant I’m going to pick up a pair of running shoes. Tonight, I went for a 17.4km walk – it felt good that as I’ve done more long-distance walking, I am finding that my body is getting accustomed to it

    I got in contact with Microsoft to get the Microsoft 365 sorted out – hopefully I should receive a call back in the next couple of days to confirm the 2FA has been reset so then I can set it up using decent authentication app rather than using the Microsoft one. The one thing I will make sure this time is that I’ll set up a few alternative methods if the authentication app fails for any particular reason. The big question is whether I stay with Google Workspace or go with Microsoft 365 given that Microsoft integrates with Windows really well but Google does a better job integrating with Android and Google TV. On the other hand when I did have Microsoft 365 working with my Samsung S25 Ultra I didn’t have any issues with email or contacts synchronisation,

    There is one benefit of moving to Microsoft 365 which is Microsoft Edge and being able to use extensions on the phone along with extensions (specifically uBlock Origin Lite) appear on the extension store quicker than on the Chrome extension store. I also noticed that it is slightly faster, more responsive along with it using less memory – there was an article a while ago outlining out Microsoft Edge uses a memory allocation feature in Windows that makes it more efficient in terms of memory usage.

  • End of another week.

    Well, that is the end of another week and start of a new one. After finishing work my goal was to do at least 17.4km but I was hoping to do walk 23.2km but my legs were too sore and the temperature was too cold that I really needed to get home. I got home around 30 minutes ago and my legs are sore – muscles that I didn’t know existed are reminding me that yes, they do exist. I then had a nice hot shower then jumped into bed to do my Wordle and Connections puzzles before checking out some videos on YouTube along with catching up on a few tv series episodes that I had missed during the week.

    Tomorrow I’m going to go shopping – I’m looking at getting some spicy chicken nibbles along with the Mexican salad that they have. On Wednesday to Sunday I only have around 1/2 hour for a meal so I have to keep it pretty basic such as a soup or chia seeds with yoghurt but on my days off I have the benefit of more time to be able to put together a nice meal. I might pair that up with some fresh ciabatta bread – I don’t normally have bread but when I do I prefer ciabatta style sourdough bread which has a lot of flavour particularly when a thin layer of garlic and parsley butter is spread on it.

    I’m still having a look at Beelink but I also found GMKtec who offer something similar to Beelink but is available to order and delivery right now. I’m also comparing it to a Dell Tower Plus and although it does have a Intel CPU I doubt I’ll notice the difference not to mention what I’m looking at comes with a nVidia 5080 w/ 16GB memory. I’m still procrastinating mainly because I want to see what happens with Apple, macOS and the Apple Silicon M5 along with rumours of a refresh from Intel then there is Zen 6 to be released next year. Keeping in mind that I’m happy with the laptop I have for everyday use I want to make sure that something I buy will last the distance.

  • That was a good work out.

    Finished work tonight and went straight into my night walk – I’ve just come back and all I can say is that it was one heck of a work out. My original goal was to do 17.4 but I decided to go all the way and complete 23.2km which took around 3 hours and 45 minutes which is around 5.8kmph which is a brisk walking pace for me. I’m back at home relaxing and I certainly can feel it in my legs but I also feel good know that I set a goal and bet it – the feeling of accomplishment makes it all the worth some soreness. I’ve also got my chia seeds soaking and in around an hour I’ll put the lids on them and then put them in the fridge for tomorrow.

    As for tomorrow, if I am feeling up to it I am tempted to do another 23.2km – I want to hit my goal of getting below 100kg or as close to it before the end of this year. If I can reach the goal then it would be a great end to the end of the year – hopefully I’ll meet with my brother who is living in Australia because I think he’ll be surprised at the massive transformation. I am feeling so much better now with this change in direction in my life – not just the fact that I can fit into the clothes I have but also the fact that I can get out of bed without struggling, go for walks without running out of breath, the confidence I have and no longer feeling self conscious when a photo is being taken.

    I installed Edge 140 today (it appears that Microsoft release their Edge updates on Friday US time which translates to Saturday NZ time) an so far I haven’t noticed any issues. uBlock Origin Lite 2025.906.1308 has been released but it’ll take a few days for it to appear in the respect browser stores. I’m holding out on maybe getting my Microsoft 365 account sorted out because Microsoft Edge does have the benefit of being better optimised – lower memory usage, better integration with Microsoft 365 etc. I haven’t received a reply from Microsoft yet to the email so I’ll ring up Monday or Tuesday to see if I can get it resolved