• Back to work on Wednesday – the weekend always ends up finishing too soon but on the good side I did go grocery shopping and this week I decided to get unsweetened natural yoghurt to go with the chia seed breakfast along with some easy meals for lunch. Oh, and one thing I remembered to pick up was some Earl Grey tea for morning tea and afternoon tea. For dinner tonight I had some honey soy chicken kebabs, asparagus with hollandaise sauce and a Greek inspired salad. That was a tasty dinner and I had that along with a sticky date pudding I picked up at the supermarket.

    Tomorrow I’m getting back on track with my life – meals have been prepared, going to get a good night sleep by going to bed earlier and what I might end up doing is waking up early so that when I start work I’m fully awake rather than just waking up. I also think that having a good night sleep will help not be as hungry during the day – I tend to feel hungrier when I don’t get a good night sleep so that along with a focus on foods with protein and fibre will help me curb my appetite.

    uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1019.1656 was released – it is now available on Microsoft Edge and Mac App store however as of typing this blog post it hasn’t appeared in the Chrome store yet (it can take 2-3 days for it to be approved by the powers that be over at Google). I’ve been jumping between Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome with the one thing I have noticed is that when I put my laptop to sleep that Microsoft Edge appears to recover to a usable state better than Chrome which sometimes the network connection fails to wake up resulting in a page failing to load (thus forcing one to exit the app then load it again). I’ve gotten into a habit of quitting Chrome before I close my laptop lid ideally it isn’t something I should have to worry about given that Chrome on macOS is able to handle going to sleep without a problem.

    Microsoft released an update for the October update that fixed up a few bugs that were found after the update was released. It was a quick download but took a fair amount of time to install it. I’m unsure why it took the amount of time it did but upon reboot everything continued working as expected. On Wednesday there will be an update to Chrome but it’ll be part of version 141 with 142 being released next week – assuming no delays caused by show stopper bugs. Edge received an update on Tuesday from Version 141.0.3537.85 to Version 141.0.3537.92 – I’m unsure what the update includes but I have a feeling it is the same fixes that were included with Chrome being updated to Version 141.0.7390.108.

    I keep coming back to Microsoft Edge because the spell checking and grammar checking are really good – it is something that Microsoft does a whole lot better than Google. I also noticed that the spell checking in particular is more reliable on Microsoft Edge where as on Chrome it’ll randomly stop checking the spelling for no particular reason. The other benefit is that on Android it supports extensions such as uBlock Origin Lite but given the talk about Android coming to the desktop and laptops I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up seeing extensions officially supported on Chrome for Android.

    Daily writing prompt
    What food would you say is your specialty?

    My specialty meal I like cooking is a roast lamb along with lots of roast vegetables and gravy – if I am feeling a little frisky I’ll buy some Yorkshire puddings from the supermarket which can be heated up in the oven in the last couple of 10 minutes of cooking (so then it all comes out at the same time). Although I do like roast potatoes I prefer kumara, New Zealand yams, pumpkin, parsnips, a whole glove of garlic and a whole onion – a good selection of roast vegetables are always nice. I especially like it during winter when the weather is lousy and it has been a long day running errands then coming home to a comforting meal. If I don’t have a lamb roast ready then the next best thing is a butterflied chicken that is marinated in tandoori seasoning.

  • I spent today at home relaxing then headed down to the supermarket to pick up a few odd bits and pieces. I arrived back home and watched some YouTube videos but I saw that Google Streamer received an update so while that was downloading and installing I meal prepped my chia seeds breakfast but what I’ve done is put 185ml of water rather than 125ml because the psyllium husk needs additional water because without the extra water it almost turns to a firm jelly. It is now sitting in the fringe ready for the next couple of days. On Tuesday I’ve got dinner with mum along with picking up some additional stuff from the supermarket – milk, maybe some yoghurt, a few bottles of Pepsi Max since it is on special.

    Daily writing prompt
    What major historical events do you remember?

    I remember when 11 September 2001, I was laying in bed listening to talk back ZB on the radio as I was drifting off to sleep then suddenly there was a new bulletin that interrupted the show. The announcement was made regarding the terrorist attack so I went out to the lounge room to turn on the television then switch to CNN covering the events as they were unfolding. It was a very scary time and the next few years even more scary as governments around the world used it as an opportunity to infringe on peoples rights. expand the scope of surveillance that the state had, bad political players using it as a pretense to carry out geopolitical engineering that they had wanted to do for decades.

    It is something that many younger millennials and gen z don’t seem to grasp which was the importance of Obama being elected, the rise of social media with the sense that the world had become smaller because of a feeling that connections could be made across the globe. There was also a feeling of optimism that after having 8 years of George W Bush, neoconservatives and so-called compassionate conservatism, the divisiveness perpetuated by Republicans that any person who questions opposed the war in Iraq and/or Afghanistan was accused of hating freedom. I think for many liberals they saw this as a new generation of liberals coming through – the unfortunate thing is that 8 years after Obama became president it felt with the election of Trump that for the 5 steps forward that too place under Obama that under Trump it was 10 steps back and under the reelection of Trump in 2024 the very little gain that was made under Biden was wiped out and the US has gone even further back.

    Unfortunately the forces of reactionary politics have taken root and the centrists/liberal forces have convinced themselves that the solution is some sort of technocratic answer when in reality what is required is a robust left wing vision. That robust left wing vision needs to first recognise that there are large swaths of the population feeling marginalised but also politicians also need to push back at the culture war nonsense put out by the right by pointing out that these culture wars are distractions for the fact that it has been right wing policies that got them to this situation in the first place. The reality is that if the right wing had to run on their actual economic record and their actual policies rather than having culture wars as a distraction then very few people would actually vote for them except for the rich and those who convince themselves that they’re temporarily embarrassed capitalists who are waiting for their windfall to come in.

  • Today I finally replaced my current bed with a new bed and bed side tables along with cleaning the whole house from top to bottom – cleaning every skirting board, hoovering all the floors, wiping down the window ledges etc. I also took my mattress outside in the fresh air and sun that was out during the day along with cleaning all the sheets, airing the duvet resulting in the whole house having a fresh smell after having been closed up all winter dealing with the lousy weather. Tomorrow I’m going to get back into the swing of things with a walk, organisation of meals for the coming week and generally feeling good that the week has wrapped up nicely.

    It is interesting hearing the speculation in the media regarding the leadership of the National Party (and in turn prime ministership) given the current economic situation New Zealand find themselves in. I think it was mentioned this week on ‘The Bradbury Group’ that if there is anyone who maybe interested in the top job they probably going to wait for the fallout of the election next year before they make their move – let Chris Luxon take the loss and then go for the top job with the benefit of of the election loss giving the new leader the power to shape the policy direction going forward.

    With all that being said, I would be careful about speculating when it comes to the media claiming that a particular party is doomed especially given that the media tend to engage in behaviour of stirring up drama where no drama exists simply to get more clicks. It is very rare for a government to be a one term government – they would have to massively screw up things to the point that even those who swing vote but aren’t strong Labour Party voters may even decide that the promises being offered to ‘complete the job’ and blaming the last government aren’t going to win them back. It reminds me of an interview with John Howard regarding Anthony Albanese being voted in for a second term that generally Australians like to give someone a fair go – I’d say that is pretty close to the same sort of logic we see in New Zealand given how similar Aussies and Kiwis are in terms of their political temperament.

    I think I may have mentioned in the past but given how they had invited George Osborne to give a speech at the National Party retreat – yes, the same George Osborne who was the architect of the UK austerity programme, the plan for National was simple: austerity at home, export lead recovery and then after 2 years of tough going the government books would be closed to fixed up and then some additional spending to win the election. Long story short it sounded like a good plan assuming that no crazies got into the Whitehouse and the rules based order regarding trade would remain intact.

    The problem is that situation had changed but rather than National going “the assumptions we built the plan around have changed, we better change to meet those new circumstances” they instead kept charging forward as if nothing had changed. The big question is where NZ First is going to land because a portion of their base are those who are socially conservative but economically centre left – do they keep their wagon hitched to the National coalition? then there is the left with the infighting with great policies being undermined by drama and family members behaving like idiots which distract from what the focus should be on which is offering an alternative vision to the current government.

    The risk that exists is if things become too uncertain then National may play to the argument of not changing horses in midstream (which is the same argument George W Bush gave when running for a second term), point to the infighting and chaos on the left and go “we’re in uncertain times, do you want these clowns running the country?”. Then add to that the legacy of 6 years where great promises were made but little of those promises delivered I can’t but get the feeling that such a legacy may very much be in the mind of voters unless some how Labour can demonstrate that when they talk a good game that they actually deliver on it.

  • Ever have one of those weeks where you feel as though the week feels as though it has dragged on for a lot longer than it should. Final day of the week tomorrow and I’ll feel all the better once it is all over and I can have a good rest – customer service may not being physically exhausting but it sure as hell mentally exhausting hearing the same people lacking in self awareness using me as an emotional sound board because they decided it is my fault that they didn’t educate themselves before making a decision.

    Tonight I felt like a treat so I ordered some mexican food – I always feel good after having some mexican food with the fresh salads that you don’t feel bloated after having dinner yet feeling satisfied. I’m waiting for that to get delivered which will be nice to have while watching Real Time with Bill Maher (it’s more about the guests than Bill Maher although like a broken clock he is correct two times a day). I then went for a 11.6km walk and when I came back it felt pretty good – the feeling of accomplishing something for the day after being inside tapping away at the keyboard.

    One video I was watching on YouTube was in regards to the avalanche of ‘tech dude bros’ on YouTube engaging in the same sort of pseudoscience that you see gym bros, ‘wellness influencers’, and audiophile types engage where they convince themselves that a $3000 speaker cable has a noticeable improvement in sound output or some supplement has boosted their recovery. If you jump to 40:40 in the following video (link) regarding the whole pseudoscience regarding people tweaking but having no idea what they’re doing which is right up there with people who muck around with their installation of Windows then act surprised when the whole system becomes unstable.

    Now, don’t get me wrong, many years ago back when my parents had a Pentium 75 I overclocked the CPU to 100MHz then pulled it back to 90MHz because it was unstable – back then I was trying to get BeOS to work at a reasonable level of responsiveness (I had sufficient memory, the CPU speed held it back). The one thing to keep in mind back then that the overclocking had noticeable benefits where as these days, as noted by many in the comment section of the above video, the CPUs being shipped are already very close to their maximum performance when they leave the factory. Could one win the silicon lottery and get one that one can overclock without hitting stability issues? sure but that is the exception rather than the rule. The reality is that if there is any sort of extra headroom then that CPU would have been put in a higher category to be able to sell at a higher price. It is always funny to see when lay people convince themselves that they know something that engineers don’t know – like the almond mum who convinces themselves that they know more about health than someone who has had formal training and years of experience in that field.

    On Sunday I’m going to have another look at GMKtec – I’m looking at getting the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395 –EVO-X2 AI Mini PC. The dollar is fluctuating so I may as well lockin the price when I can and then head down to my local store to pick up a monitor and keyboard.

  • Finished work tonight and then picked up a couple sandwiches from service station down the road – egg sandwich and a cheese/onion sandwich. I needed something comforting with the weather a big windy and cold outside. I also decided to have a quiet night in for the night and watch some YouTube videos, television episodes and reading some news. I then completed the Connections and Wordle puzzle for the day – I was able to complete both of them although it is annoying when outlets understand that they’re on a global platform yet make their puzzles so US centric in terms of the words being chosen for the Connections puzzle.

    Funny enough, I noticed a notification in the notification area on Windows and it appears that the Windows Update fairy paid me a visit and I was able to update to Windows 11 25H2 which updated the OS build to 26200.6899. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Windows 11 26220 and when that’ll be made available – will the make that an optional update for those who want it while everyone else can stick with 26200? The main thing I am looking for the Administrator Protection to be made available (at the moment it is available as an opt in on Windows 11 26220).

    On a side note, I installed the update and I didn’t notice anything major so I guess most of the changes must have already been enabled. The one thing I did notice however was before I installed the update Microsoft Edge said it was up to date and on reboot I checked for updates again and it updated itself to version 141.0.3537.85 so maybe there was something that was needed to be enabled in 25H2 before the update could go ahead? Unsure as to the reason but it’s all up to date now which is the main thing.

    On a side note, I have a seperate profile on Chrome to test out extensions before using them on my main profile – see whether they’re worth making the investment. I’ve been following AdGuard and it has been going pretty good with the weird freeze occuring on some website is no longer a problem and a strange slow down also not appearing these days. At the moment I use uBlock Origin Lite for for main Google Workspace profile and my Gmail profile although it would be nice if there was some way to synchronise the settings to the cloud and automatically keep things in sync but I guess the next best thing is downloading the json settings file to my Google drive and do it that way (or in the case of Microsoft Edge to back it up to the Microsoft OneDrive).

  • Second day getting back on track and sticking to the plan, taking one day at a time and working towards the end of the first week. I went for an 11.6km walk tonight which was done in around 1 hour and 50 minutes and I arrived back just after midnight and I felt good – legs a little sore but it is a good indication that I had a good work out and made use of those muscles in my legs. Once I got back home I jumped into the shower and I felt relaxed, now I’m in bed catching up with some news and a focus on getting ready for tomorrow.

    Apple release an update for the MacBook Pro 14″ and iPad with the release of the M5. I was getting excited thinking that maybe we’ll see the Mac mini updated and a few other products but it appears that the M5 is still using the old Wifi 6E chipset rather than their new N1 that was announced for their iPhone 17 series. It’ll be interesting to see whether there is a refresh for the Mac line up next year in around March 2026 – maybe that’ll include the N1 chip? It makes me happy that I made my choice to get the Microsoft Surface Laptop that already comes with Wifi 7 which has been pretty rock solid so far. It’ll be interesting to see next year whether there will be some mini-PCs with the Panther Lake SoC and what the real world performance is like when compared to the current 200 series.

    I was reading through comments regarding the ‘No Kings’ march that is scheduled in the United States and the usual pessimistic and cynical folks come out of the woodworks to complain that because the whole Trump regime didn’t crumble the moment the poster finished then the whole exercise is a wasted effort. The problem is that such cynics fail to understand that protests like ‘No Kings’ serve as a reminder to the many Americans out there that they’re not alone, that their sense that something is wrong with society isn’t just then but there are many, many, many Americans who share the same view that they do, that they aren’t alone and encourages more people to come out and stand in opposition to Trump.

    Safari Technology Preview 230 has been released (link) – it’ll be interesting to see when we’ll see some of those changes merge into the main build of Safari. I couldn’t imagine them being merged into 26.1 given that they’re already in the beta testing phase but I could imagine some of the appearing in 26.2 appearing before Christmas and 26.3 appearing in the new year. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the WWDC 27 – maybe for all our sake the whole AI bubble will be over and there will finally be a return to sanity of addressing real issues rather than putting out AI slop to make shareholders happy but leave the average user asking “why?”.

  • Back to work today and I feel good after resetting my life back to where it should be in terms of routine and meal prepping. I stuck to my meal prep for today and then went for a walk tonight and felt that the walk was so much easier for me to do – better weather? back to a good meal routine? I’m unsure of the reason but I’m happy that by the time I’ve done this for a few weeks I’ll get back on track and work towards the big goal of getting below 100kg before the end of this year. The holy grail in terms of a weight loss goal is to get it down to around 85-90kg which will put me around the right waist/height/BMI for my heigh. I’m also hoping that by the time I get down to that weight I’ll fit into the three pairs of pants I’ve got sitting in my wardrobe.

    I woke up this morning and there was a good number of updates that needed installing, the first was the update to the One UI 8 October update which updated the modem baseband along with patching the kernel which updated it from 3 September to 29 September.

    Then after the phone rebooted I then updated to the September Google Play Service which was around 65MB – it appears that I’m trailing behind by around a month so I’d say the October update will probably appear at around time in November.

    I then moved onto my laptop and found that it had updated itself overnight to the October update for Windows 11 although it is still on 26100.6899 I have decided to leave it up to the wisdom of Microsoft to decide whether I am ready to be updated to 25H2 because knowing my luck if I forced an update to the 26200 series it is almost a certainty something will go wrong. While I was there I updated my Chrome from version 141.0.7390.77 to version 141.0.7390.108 – I noticed there is a slight improvement in performance for some websites and uBlock Origin Lite had updated to uBlock Origin Lite 2025.1012.1712 as well. Another uneventful patch Tuesday which is always nice – a day without drama is a good day in my books.

    Oh the update theme I just noticed then that my gateway had been updated from 4.1.3 to 4.3.1 – smooth sailing so far and I’d say that it shouldn’t be too far away for the 4.4.4 update to be upgraded from the early access channel to the release candidate channel. Regarding the firmware update I installed on my access point, everything is going well so far without any dropouts and no problems when it comes to mDNS support although I don’t have MLO enabled since it is still considered ‘early access’ (although I don’t think it makes a huge lot of difference unless you’re using many devices and have a internet connection greater than 1Gbps).

    Daily writing prompt
    What are you most proud of in your life?

    The proudest day was when I graduated university with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Religious Studies and Philosophy. I think I mentioned in the past that I didn’t think I could finish a degree because I had struggled with completing tertiary education in the past but 4 years later (I took extra papers out of interest) I ended up graduating from Victoria University Wellington. I felt so proud wearing the graduation costume with the hat, mum and dad looked proudly on as I went up on stage.

  • I’m heading back to worn on Wednesday but tonight I went to mum’s for dinner along with updating her phone, laptop and desktop software. Next week we’ve organised replacing my current bed because at the moment it is a bit worse for wear due to the middle of the bed lacking support (the newer beds from the same company now include a support for the ‘spine’ of the bed (imagine slats for each side of the bed with a single length of wood in the middle as support but nothing under it)) so that also involve hopefully being able to put the mattress outside on a fine day to get some fresh air.

    That reminds me, at the back of my place I have a porch but what I’d like to get is a roof/cover for the area so then it provides a degree of shelter from the elements which will allow me to setup a clothes horse to dry clothes outside or have the door open on a day where it maybe raining or there is some wind but i want to get some fresh air inside. Hopefully next week the weather will be better and it is looking good according to the Metservice but I’m not going to put my hopes up given how quickly the weather can change.

    On Wednesday there is going to be patch Tuesday and possibly be some other updates along with Chrome and Microsoft Edge then in two weeks time Chrome 142 will be released to the mainstream channel for everyone to access. I would say that around that time there will be the October update from Samsung along with the Play Services update for September or October (assuming they roll the two into a single update. I haven’t seen any news on what is happening with the One UI 8.5 but I’d say we’ll probably see it when the Samsung S26 is launched although I could bd wrong given that from what it appears the changes are more around the UI (focusing on refining rather than major changes) with the kernel version remaining the same.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s something most people don’t know about you?

    I ran for parliament when I was at university and it was an interesting experience. What I did find is that most people who do get involved with policies do so for the right reasons. This is the reason I’m happy I got that exposure early on because there is a tendency to be negative about politics, the game of false equivalency is prevalent online with the sort of jaded ‘they’re both as bad as each other’ that ignores there are genuine good faith actors. There are those who are involved in politics that actually want to make things better – many of them with good intentions but unsure how best to achieve the end goal of making life better for everyone.

    This is the reason I find a lot of the discourse in opposition to Trump ends up turning into a circular firing squad where liberals, leftists and centrists turn on each other because of impossible levels of purity testing, an expectation that something can be achieved instantly where it may require the initial policy then over the next few years making amendments as the short comings of the policy to be addressed. As a good friend of mine once said, in response to my moaning and groaning about the tax policy being pursued as not being bold enough for my liking, by asking me “but are we 80% closure to where we want to get to” and which point I had to admit that yes we were closer. One of those situations that you ‘take a W’ when you’re given the opportunity rather than getting angry because you didn’t get everything you wanted.

  • I had a restful day off from work although I had a sleep into around midday I then headed down to the supermarket to pick up some soup and fresh bread for dinner which is a nice way to feel warmed up after a day of rain and wind. I’ve been enjoying some YouTube videos although I have to admit that I prefer avoiding politics because it becomes very much repetitive – once you heard the bad news one I don’t think much is gained hearing it on repeat but said by a different commentator. It is something that I see all to often with the extreme of being completely ignorant at one extreme with the other extreme being of someone so engaged that one is sitting around huffing farts from ones favourite talking head even if what they’re saying is entirely devoid of detail other than it getting you angry and worked up.

    The UniFi Access Point (U7 and E7 models) 8.2.17 has been released and is available straight away (at least it was for me). I’ve updated my UniFi Access Point U7 Pro Max to 8.2.17, it took a few minutes as it had to install then reboot once back up online I have a rock solid connection and I also noticed it was slightly more responsive but I’ll wait for a few days to see if I notice any other changes. My laptop is WiFi 7 compatible so it connections via 6GHz which insulates the connection from the growing popularity of 5GHz networks where I live (still not as bad as the amount of 2.4GHz that is causing a decent amount of interference).

    This week is when the October Patch Tuesday will be made available along with any other associated updates however I maybe lucky enough have have the 25H2 made available but I have a feeling that Microsoft will want to test it before allowing it to be deployed to Microsoft Surface laptop devices. uBlock Origin Lite version 2025.1012.1712 has been released with some filter updates along with bug fixes for Safari – it has appeared in the Microsoft Edge store however it is waiting for approval on the Apple and Chrome stores.

    It has been a while so I logged into the WECG meetings minutes to see how things are progressing in terms of adding more functionality to Declarative Net Request (DNR) and the project regarding the equivalent of WPT for web standards but geared up for MV3 compliance testing to ensure that implementation bugs are detected and fixed in a timely manner. Something tells me that Google and Firefox will fix bugs quickly and Apple will keep dragging its feet every step of the way. At the rate things are going I wonder whether Apple should just throw in the towel and adopt Chromium because it is clear their Webkit team don’t seem to have the motivation to fix bugs and add functionality in a timely manner to the point it resembles Microsoft Edge in the pre-Chromium days.

    Daily writing prompt
    Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?

    I used to feel unproductive at first because I didn’t feel as though I was using my time efficiently when i had a lazy day at home – the idea that I have freetime and I should use it for something productive. What I have found is that by having a lazy day it allows me to be more productive after I’ve fully rested. Having those breaks makes all the difference when working as well – avoid being burnt out at work by ensuring that after work you find a health way of unwinding and then having a good night sleep so then the next day you’re ready to do it all over again.

  • End of another week and stat of a new one. I have to admit over the last couple of weeks I’ve been pretty lazy but what I’m hoping is that with the start of a new week that I’ll get back on track again. I’ve meal prepped my chia seed breakfast today for the next couple of days although I am looking at heading to the supermarket on Monday or maybe Tuesday to pick up some Greek Yoghurt to pair up with that along with some bottles of Pepsi Max if they’re available.

    A new Window insider build was made available (link) and they’ve expanded dark mode to the run dialogue box. I was watching a video on YouTube and someone was unhappy it was taking too long to get dark mode available. I originally thought that maybe it had to do with them re-writing the dialogues in XAML however i have a feeling that it may have more to do with them integrating the common controls and dialogues into the Windows App SDK to take advantage of the framework so when you change the theme in a XAML/Windows App SDK application that the theme is automatically inherited by all UI components. Long story short, I think long term they’re wanting to move things over to Windows App SDK but in the mean time to get the results quicker they’re probably doing something not as radical. It’ll be interesting to see when these improvements make their way to the mainstream release of Windows 11.

    As I’ve said in the past, the reason why things are more coherent in macOS resulting in a consistent UI experience when dark mode was made available was because in macOS 10.6 the Finder was re-written in Cocoa with the move to a pure 64bit operating system. It would be no different than if Microsoft re-wrote the whole Windows Shell using Windows App SDK which makes use of XAML with the end result being a consistent experience. The problem is that unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn’t have the luxury of being disruptive because their biggest customer’s aren’t Joe and Jane Smith but are large enterprise customers running tens of thousands of desktops whose organisations depend on knowing that disruptions are kept to a minimum so that employees can be productive.

    It is always interesting to see how the platform is developing around the Windows Runtime environment – gradually building it up over releases and although as a user I am impatient I also understand that you want to make sure that when you design the framework to meet the needs of the target audience rather than designing, implementing and then realising that what you have created is great for what you do internally but fails to meet the needs of third party developers who will rely on it. I guess it is one of those things of moving the platform forward in a careful and considered way – ensuring their is progress with minimal disruption.