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

  • Well, that was unexpected.

    Following the early update pushed out by Chrome developers, normally updates are released on Wednesday New Zealand time but this time it was released on Tuesday New Zealand time (which roughly translates to Monday in California), Apple released an update for all their platforms which included a security fix for Webkit plus a few other odd bits and pieces that were fixed as well. I’ve updated all my devices and I’m not too sure whether it’s me but I’m finding Safari snappier but then again Apple relentlessly tries to squeeze as much performance as possible so I wouldn’t be surprised if there has been some optimisations behind the scenes. Edit: I forgot to mention that the update for the iPhone that I have included a minor modem firmware update so it’ll be interesting to see whether that translates to better battery life, more stable connectivity etc.

    Work is still happening on the next update for the Apple platforms – I’m looking forward to the changes in store for Safari 18.4 and Mail application although I have limited interest in the AI hype that far too many Silicon Valley organisations hype up to the ceiling as if it were the next big change. For me, I’m more interested in how it’ll be used in existing products to make me more productive rather than the demos they put out that get the plebs excited but I find myself rolling my eyes.

    I worked a little later tonight so I just had a 8km walk which was good enough, I had been eating pretty light today (soup for brunch and a strawberry smoothie for dinner), and also the fact that the weather wasn’t all that nice for a walk but I forced myself out of the house because I know I feel a whole lot better when I come back from a walk. For me, ask long as I have a walk every night and control calorie/carbo consumption then I’ll keep losing the weight.

  • Back to work on Wednesday.

    I finally finished cleaning my house from top to bottom, every cupboard was organised, finally sorted out my shoes so they’re in a single location rather than in random locations, organised the cupboard in my bedroom where I put all the boxes from things I’ve purchased, all of my clothes have been washed and dried not to mention hoovering the floor then removing dust and cobwebs. Long story short for the last couple of days I’ve been pretty busy but I’m wanting to get the place in a good situation so when winter comes along I can sit back, relax and enjoy sitting in front of my heater rather than running around dealing with stuff that I should have dealt with during summer time.

    It appears that the train will be operating on Friday and Saturday so I’m going to head into work on those days, enjoy the free coffee and I’ll fill up my metal drink holder with a whole heap of coffee shots that I can then add to cold water so I can have a cold brew at home. Hopefully they’ve gotten my whole payroll thing sorted out with ACC because they overpaid me and now I’m leaving the money in my account untouched to find out what they’re going to do.

  • A relaxing Monday.

    I walked down to my local Dutch bakery and cafe and had some Eggs Bene with two extra poached eggs, smoked salmon and some wilted spinach on the side along with a cappuccino. It’s my little treat that I have once a month as a special treat – if the option was between a pizza or popping into my local cafe and bakery I would prefer my local cafe and bakery any day of the week. Tomorrow (Tuesday) I’m going to have lamb burgers although I might need to pop out to pick up some lettuce and tomatoes.

    Today I spent my day finishing off washing all my clothes since they have been in the draws for a long period and have an old musty smell – I first washed all my sweatshirts/hoodies, then I washed my t-shirts and boxes, and today I washed my zip up hoodies. Once those zip up hoodies are washed I am going to wash my short sleeve and long sleeve shirts – those may take a few washes since there is some discolouration but eventually I want to get my clothes to a point where when I lose more weight I can start wearing clothes I couldn’t fit into.

    A lot of talk has been made about the Apple C1 Modem but given the lead time in terms of SoCs being developed it’ll be interesting to see whether we’ll see the Apple C2 Modem in this years iPhone refresh or whether they wait a year to get feedback on the C1 before making the big switch next year. It will be interesting to see whether Apple adds mmWave given that outside of the United States it is non-existent and even within the US there is only one carrier that has deployed it. Long story short, if I was Apple I wouldn’t waste my time implementing mmWave and instead focus on providing the best experience for sub 6GHz performance, signal quality and battery life which would be a lot more beneficial to the average consumer.

  • One more day to go.

    I was going to pop into the office on Saturday for my shift but unfortunately the trains going into Wellington were replaced with buses which unfortunately are always late so I decided I couldn’t be bothered in the end. What I am looking at doing is going in on Friday and Saturday, my fasting days, because of the good coffee and the fact that it keeps me busy although on those days I’ll just walk 8km rather than the 10 so then I get back in time for a shower then jump into bed for a good night sleep.

    On Monday I’m going to cook up a butterflied chicken – I’ll have some on Monday and then on Tuesday I’ll make a sandwich with the low carb bread or maybe even create a caesar salad with chicken. I’m gradually working through cleaning clothes that have been in my draws and wardrobe – lots and lots of washing but it’ll be worth it once I get the weight down I’ll be able to fit into them.

    I’m going to have an early night – I had a long walk tonight and now need my beauty sleep.

  • The consequences of narrow self interest.

    Well, it is FAFO season once again or as it is sometimes called: “I never thought leopards would eat MY face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party. I see many videos being uploading of town hall meetings with Republican representatives from the senate and congress with unhappy constituents – questioning what DOGE is doing and voicing with great passion their displeasure with what is unfolding due to the negative consequences they’re experiencing. I really would love to believe that this is an example of a sea change but something tells me that these people only care because they’re negative impacted – if it were negatively impacting a person they’ll never meet, in a state they’ll never visit then that person becomes some ‘the other’, someone they don’t recognise as someone having the same value as they themselves.

    This is what the hyper individualistic “fuck you, got mine” has created, a nation of people with a narrow self interest who only care about things that directly impact them because they treat politics not as an outgrowth of some sort of guiding philosophy but one based on having a shopping list of things and voting based on vibes rather than what is best for the country overall. Then there was the selective hearing by some voters who are now claiming “but he only said he would deport the bad ones”, no, Trump never said that – he said he would deport all undocumented immigrants but would focus on those undocumented immigrants in the country who had broken the law. In other words, the primary focus at first will be on undocumented immigrants in the country who had broken the law but if they pick up undocumented immigrants who didn’t break the law they’ll still pick them up. In other words at no time did Trump ever say what many are now claiming. Imagine allowing machismo and bigotry to shape your politics and then finding it comes back to bite you in the backside when you or friends or family are targeted by ICE.

    This reminds me of the whole Brexit fiasco where the Brexit supporters were warned about what could happen and their response was “oh, that is just project fear, you just can’t handle the truth” and what happened all these years later? there is now Brexit regret – people admitting they screwed up but the problem is that the damage has already been done, 10 years of austerity under the Tories combined with not being in one of the largest free trade and free movement zone has come home to roost. Will the European Union welcome the UK back at some point in the future? possibly but I couldn’t imagine it being in the near term because there is still a significant minority who are hell bent on sticking with Brexit – that the pain of Brexit needs to hit those hold outs to the point that the overwhelming majority of people (upwards of 70-80%) cry out to politicians, “we want to get back in the European Union”. Given the demographics of age it might be a matter of, as morbid as it sounds, that generation to die off given that the younger people who did vote overwhelmingly voted to remain.

  • Rainy Tuesday.

    I was able to get a few things sorted out on Monday however on Tuesday (today) I’ll be heading off to mum’s for dinner along with picking up a few items from the supermarket – cleaning wipes for my computer because I want to avoid using traditional glass cleaners since they can cause damage to the protective coating on the screen due to them containing alcohol and/or ammonia. I had a easy brunch today, a smoothie with frozen boysenberries blended up in some low fat milk and flax seed oil for the omega 3 and some mushroom soup (which is nice on a rainy day).

    I’ve finally got my interest payments and contract with One NZ sorted out along with selling the Google Streamer, Chipolo (4 of them) and the Pixel 9 Pro XL with the Snakehive leather case sold off which will pay off the remaining balance of the interest free from One NZ. I’m now back using Skinny Mobile, $40 per month for 10GB of high speed traffic and unlimited (after 10GB) at a maximum of 1Mbps (which I never end up hitting because 10GB is more than enough). It’s the little things you miss from the Apple ecosystem such as the ability to answer phone calls on ones computer or sending text messages with photos without worrying that it’ll cost you $1 per picture and what ends up arriving is so low resolution it looks like it’s been taking using a potato.

    Regarding my weight loss, it is going well, clothes are fitting better, I was able to find a pair of pants that I now fit which I couldn’t fit before, there are some business shirts that now fit me, there are some shirts that are almost there that I could imagine being able to fit in around a month (I tend to prefer my clothing to be loose fitting). I prefer seeing things like that happening vs. seeing scales because weight always comes of as something abstract whereas with clothes it’s like “this didn’t fit me, and now it does”. You get to see in real time those changes and god knows I have a good amount of clothing that I don’t fit but when I lose the weight I’ll be able to wear and not have to buy new clothes (other than underwear and socks) for many years to come. Oh, and another benefit of weight loss, the clothing styles and variety are more readily available when you’re closer to a ‘normal size’ which is something I want to get back to enjoying – I love fashion as a vehicle of self expression which will also help lift my spirits and give me more confidence.

  • A relaxing Monday.

    I got up this morning and decided to treat myself to a couple of lamb burgers – I prefer to have my bigger meal when I get up (basically my first meal is brunch) then my second meal I’ll have a berry smoothie made with low fat milk (I’m phasing out having Up and Go in the morning in favour of making a fresh smoothie since I get to control how much sugar is in it – aka I add no additional sugar other than what is naturally occurring), frozen berries and a table spoon of flax seed oil which gives me an omega three boost without the price tag of buying an expensive item like salmon. The lamb burgers were nice – tomato, read onion, lettuce, mayo, pickle and some Ploughman’s Chutney (link) on the bottom (under the lamb Pattie). The great thing is that it is within my calorie and carbohydrate limits for the day – a great way to start the day. I had a 10km walk tonight and felt really good afterwards.

    I popped down the supermarket today and picked up some Kombucha sugar free while I wait for my order from Remedy to arrive – they’ve got a large variety of flavours all sugar free. They’re a bit on the pricey side when compared to traditional soft drinks but given that I don’t drink alcohol and they’re healthier for me I’m happy to shell out the money given that I don’t have any sort of expensive hobbies that are money vampires to my bank balance.

  • End of another week

    Went for a 10km walk on Saturday and then 14km on Sunday – I started off thinking that I’ll just do a 10km but I thought I might as well push the envelope and go for 14km. Yeah, I’ve got sore legs and I’m tired but I know in the morning I’ll feel a whole lot better for it by stepping out of my comfort zone. I’m going to have a relaxing day on Monday, taking it easy, pick up a few groceries, have dinner or lunch with mum.

    I’m a bit tired, going to head off to sleep – might make a longer blog post tomorrow when I’ve recovered.

  • I thought I had fixed it.

    Here was me thinking I had fixed up the issue I was having with AdGuard but it appears to have come back so what I’ve decided to do is uninstall AdGuard in favour of uBlock Origin Lite (which is the MV3 version of uBlock Origin) which isn’t 100% perfect but it is good enough that it blocks 99% of content that I want blocked. There is still a lot of work being done on MV3 particularly regarding blocking those popups that appear hen you click play on a video where as AdGuard appears to use a variety of Javascript to address the short comings of the declarative net request there appears to be work baking into the declarative net request the missing functionality so then the extension isn’t dependent on a complex array of javascript libraries. It appears that the reason why it worked was because when I disabled it the required files were cached but when I cleared the cache those files were deleted which is why it failed to load once again.

    After running with a Pixel 9 Pro XL for the last three months I have decided to go back to my iPhone 15 Pro Max – sure, there is the Google ecosystem but it never really competes with the level of integration that exists in the Apple ecosystem such as being able to answer telephone calls on ones computer (if I had a Windows computer the integration would be a lot better, it rather chafes me that Google seem to put little or no effort in support Android users who also prefer running a Mac), being able to send texts via iMessage to other iPhones vs no one outside of the Android ecosystem is using RCS in New Zealand due to none of the carriers supporting RCS. I’ve sold the ‘Google Bundle’ and I’ve already had a couple of people interested – I’ll use the money along with this weeks pay to clear off my One NZ interest free so then I can also cancel the pay monthly plan which will save me $50 per month.

    The Safari 18.4 beta nots are available and it appears that we’re in store for another big release that’ll be fixing up many, many, many bugs, removing deprecated non-standard implementations and much more which can be read here (link). Apple is making big progress closing the functionality gap and it’ll be interesting to see how this will flow through to mobile apps that heavily rely on Webkit at the core of the app (the place where I work makes extensive use of Webkit on iOS and Chrome on Android). It’ll be interesting to see how quickly Apple implement MV3 as part of Safari because at the moment not all of the Declarative Net Request has been implemented given that they’ve only just moved to the open source implementation so maybe it is a matter of seeing WECG stabilise the specification and then build out the functionality (which will hopefully mean uBlock Origin Lite making it’s way to Safari).

    On Monday this week I went for a 14km walk and then the next day I went for an 11km walk, then on Wednesday and Thursday I went for 10km on each of the days. 10km is becoming the new standard and I have found that my fitness has been improving to the point that I am able to walk faster – one of things I really needed to work on.

  • A productive first day of my weekend.

    Just to start off, I finally fixed up the problem with AdGuard stopping a few websites from loading but with a bit of trial an error I found that the issue could be resolved by adding the following to my user rules:

    @@||cloudflareinsights.com^$document
    @@||cloudflare.com^$document

    The websites used Cloudflare for protection against DDOS and AdGuard was stopping it from making contact with the Cloudflare servers which stopped the page from loading (you know the one with where Cloudflare is checking and then gives you the green tick then the website loads) because it couldn’t access the resources from Cloudflare domains. I originally thought it just required the first domain but it appears it needed both domains allowed in user rules which now allows the website to load without any problems.

    I went grocery shopping today and picked up some much needed ingredients now that I prepare all my meals at home – I’ve branched out and got some Rendang which I’ll use in conjunction with the lamb I’ve already got. While I was down the road I also picked up a blender so that I can make smoothies in the morning which allows me to have more variety than the limited range available for Up and Go not to mention it allows me to control how much sugar is in the smooth (aka, I put no additional sugar other than the sugar that already naturally occurs in the ingredients).