Finished work at 10pm tonight and went for a 17.4km walk – shorter than last night but that is all I felt like. Legs and feet a bit sore but it feels good having accomplished something with the reward once home being a nice hot shower to relax the muscles. On Monday I’ve decided to treat myself to eggs bene down at the local dutch cafe before I then head down to the supermarket to pick up some odd bits and pieces for the week – it’ll be a small shop since I’m only topping up a few items such as milk, yoghurt if it is on special and anything else that make for an interesting dinner.
UniFi Gateways 4.3.1 has been released to the early access channel – it’ll be interesting to see whether that is pushed to the release candidate then stable or whether it’ll continue being developed and released inline with the next update of UniFi which is currently sitting at 4.4.0 in the early release channel. I’m tempted to buy a UniFi Ultimate Router and then use the gateway and cloudkey on mum’s setup and maybe pick up an access point while I’m at it – install it inside the roof which will provide good coverage where it is needed.
The computer I ordered for mum has arrived in Auckland (according to DHL) so it wouldn’t surprise me if it ends up being delivered on either Monday or Tuesday. Once received we’ll head down to the local computer shop – I’ll get mum to choose the screen best suited for her eyes along with a keyboard and mouse plus a few other bits and pieces. I’m still looking at getting a better modem and access point for mum because the one she has at the moment is pretty lousy especially when it come to coverage where she uses her laptop downstairs at the dinner table.
I’ve just come back from a long walk night, slightly over 20km, but it was really cold tonight .The temperature according to the Metservice is 4 degrees celsius but it feels closer to 2 degrees celsius – I should have worn a long sleeve t-shirt under my jumper but I thought it would be sufficient to keep me warm, I guess I’ll chalk that up as a learning experience. Hopefully spring will be coming soon so the weather will get nicer and the days will be longer so that the walk after work is more enjoyable. When I got home I cranked up the heater, jumped in the shower and finally got warmed up then I followed that up with some pumpkin soup.
End of the week tomorrow and start of a weekend – I’ll follow up with my doctor regarding the test results but I’ll assume if the results weren’t good they would have rung me straight away (normally 3 days after the test) but the fact that they haven’t is a good indication that either things have improved or they haven’t regressed so I’ll keep the blog updated with the outcome.
I’ve been following the computer that I ordered for mum and it appears to have left Hong Kong after travelling from mainland China. It is scheduled to arrive on 27 August but as I’ve noted that when dealing with DHL they tend to deliver before the due date – a good example of that would be the Snakehive case I bought and it was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday but ended up arriving on Monday. If past experience is anything to go by I wouldn’t be surprised if it touches down in New Zealand either Sunday or Monday then is delivered on Tuesday. If it turns out to be a really good computer I may even buy myself one to replace my M1 Studio.
Samsung released the Samsung One UI 8 Beta 5 for testing with most commentators pointing out that this could be the last beta release before maybe a release candidate then the stable version being released in September. The kernel has been updated from 6.6.30 to 6.6.77 – the 6.6.x branch being the longterm servicing branch – you’ll find OEMs tend to stick with longterm servicing branch as it provides stability that can be carried over multiple versions without having to port then retest their drivers if they moved to a newer version but with that being said there is nothing stopping Samsung at a later date updating the kernel to a newer longterm servicing branch.
I went for a short walk after work today because light rain started and I wanted to avoid getting stuck in a downpour like what happened a few months ago when I thought that some drizzle wouldn’t turn into heavy rain. I came back and had a small snack – a tuna, rice and beans meal that I bought from the supermarket on Tuesday which is quite tasty and has a good amount of protein and fibre which is quite satisfying. I’ll probably buy a few more of them next pay day because they’re quite satisfying and throwing some hot sauce and a squeeze of lemon really lifts the meal quite substantially.
I was watching a recent video by Parkrose Permaculture:
Just to build upon what was covered in the video – it reminds me very much of those who are trying to discredit climate change activists and policy. There are three ways that it is done, the first is the most obvious which is to sow doubt and push climate change denialism – to a certain extent that kind of wins over those who understand climate change is real but they want permission to continue the status quo by having some sort of plausible way of pushing back. The second method is employing doomerism by perpetuating the ideal that all is lost, we’re totally screwed and any attempt to address it will be doomed to failure with a lot of pain but very little accomplished. The third way taps into the ‘well meaning, but entirely useless’ that are about preserving the status quo by commodifying being environmentally conscious by making it out to be something you can achieve through purchasing (the fallacy of dealing with climate change within the capitalist system would be a TED Talk in its own right – no, it cannot be done in any reasonable extent because ultimately the capitalist system is predicated on infinite growth on a finite planet all for the sake of worshipping at the altar of ‘line go up’).
The other point I am reminded of was a talk about was how the fight is never ending – this idea of fighting for something and once you achieve it then you can go back to what you were doing before ignores the forces within society that are always trying to push back against progress. Once you have fought for something and achieved what you set out to do it isn’t just a matter of moving on but a concerted effort to defend the gains made because there are always going to be those who wish to undo them – a good example is the constant pushback from the business community who want to roll back workers rights in the workplace under the guise of ‘workforce flexibility’. Another example is the recent challenge to the same sex ruling in the United States that could be undone by the supreme court – most people probably thought that society had moved along, that it was a settled issue but it ignores a significant portion of the population that are reactionary in their nature who bide their time and wait for the opportunity to reverse progress made. Keep in mind that the overturning of Roe vs Wade by the supreme court was a 50+ year concerted effort by the religious right to overturn the ruling (the religious right agenda is a lot more than just overturning Roe vs Wade) – they continued fighting and they struck the moment when large portions of the electorate convinced themselves that it was a settled issue and that the issue of abortion being overturned in the 2016 election was simply fear mongering rather than reality – unfortunately for those who took what they thought was settled ruling for granted quickly found out that the religious right had patiently played the long game and eventually got what they wanted.
Today was uneventful at work and then afterwards I went for a 17.4km walk which was done in under 3 hours – I like to keep track of time so that I maintain a decent pace so then I get the most out of the exercise. I was lucky in that when I came back it just started spitting and now around an hour later it is now raining. The big focus for the next 16 weeks is to focus on getting as close to my goal of below 100kg before the end of the year – I may not get there but I’m hoping to get as close to it as possible.
The order that I placed has shipped via DHL coming direct from China to New Zealand – it says it’ll arrive on 27 August but I have a feeling that DHL will probably deliver it earlier based on my experience so it may arrive on Monday or Tuesday next week and if so mum and I will pop down to PB Tech to pick up a monitor, keyboard and mouse – I’m tempted to get a monitor that uses USB-C so then i can use the monitor as a hub which should reduce the amount of clutter on the desk. Another thing I’m hoping to grab is some shelves so that I can put the printer on the bottom shelf and on the top shelf the scanner so it tidies it all up. If it all ends up working out well I may consider getting myself one because it is great value for the amount of power that can be contained in such a small package.
I’m gradually getting used to using the Samsung phone and finding that the lack of integration isn’t a major issue given that everything is sitting the cloud and Samsung Files allows me to download whole directories, such as my music collection, from my Google Drive to my phone which avoids the need to fluff around with finding a MTP synchronisation app. I’m still tossing up whether I should get a Samsung television that is being offered through Mercury Energy which will fit into the Samsung SmartThings ecosystem. At the moment even though I’ve now got a blended/heterogenous ecosystem the problem with Windows is that it still has many rough edges that need addressing but I’m in no hurry.
Today macOS 15.6.1 was released to address a security vulnerability that is being exploited (link) which probably explains why 15.7 hasn’t been released – it probably won’t be released until the iPhone announcement along with the iOS 26 release date. Mimestream 1.8 was released but I’m still holding off for at least the non-IMAP push to be implemented but at this stage the web app Google provides is a pretty awesome experience to the point that web apps these days pretty much feel as though they’re native given all the all the technologies that have been developed that make using apps as responsive as using a native app such as changing directoris, creating labels, being able to drag and drop files into specific labels or a directory.
The Pixel 10 has been released along with the Pixel Watch 4 and other products – it’ll be interesting to see what happens once they’re released and I’ll see whether it is worth it when compared to the Samsung S25 Ultra that I have at the moment. When it comes to how well Zen 5 compares to the M4:
At some point the battery life gets to a certain number of hours that for the vast majority of people, primarily people such as myself who browse the internet, use productivity apps etc, the massive number of hours of battery life becomes rather meaningless. I’m unsure what is happening in the land of Intel given all the drama that is unfolding but AMD appears to have their ‘eye on the prize’. Over on Tom’s Hardware there is an article regarding Zen 6 details and much more at their 2025 Financial Analyst Day on Tuesday, November 11, 2025, in New York City (link). It’ll be interesting to see the release dates given that the rumours I’ve read online put it end of 2026 or beginning of 2027 which will include a die shrink along with architectural improvements which will make for interesting reading once those details are made publicly available.
The one thing that is interesting is the nVidia SoC aimed at the desktop market and beyond which has been delayed – Microsoft appears to be dragging their feet in regards to Windows so are we going to see further delays or maybe a special release of Windows 11 next year that adds support or maybe big under the hood changes for 26H2? I guess we’ll need to see what happens with Qualcomm’s developer conference and whether we’ll see a Surface laptop refresh as well – as I’ve noted, there are plenty of sales at the moment with the current ARM based Surface Laptop which makes me wonder whether Microsoft is clearing inventory before they announce a Surface laptop refresh.
Today was a good day and I finally worked out what may have happened in Sunday – it appears that the AWS Connection integration with Salesforce goes pear shaped if you set yourself offline but not log out. Oh well, you live and you learn so tonight I made sure I logged out of Salesforce on Sunday so when I logged in on Wednesday I didn’t have an issue.
Google released the weekly update for Chrome which updated it from version 139.0.7258.128 to version 139.0.7258.139 – I haven’t noticed any changes or regressions which is a sign of a good update. The uBlock Lite 2025.817.1539 has been made available however shortly after the 2025.818.x was released which is availble for Safari and Edge but it is still waiting for approval from Google (it is normally a 2 day turn around from when it is submitted). One thing to remember with Safari is if you’ve opened Safari it cane take a few seconds for uBlock Origin Lite to fully load so that is something you may want to check by clicking on the uBlock Origin Lite before loading any websites so then you know the extension is active and is ready to start content blocking.
I went for a longer walk tonight because the weather was so good – wasn’t too cold, fresh air, with a total walk of 17.4km which took 3 hours. Today I had a calorie deficit plus the exercise I did today which offset a hearty meal I had at mums with soft shell tacos with plenty of salad along with the left over mince and salad I had when I got home because it was so tasty. If you’re wanting the Old El Paso style seasoning then Masterfoods in NZ have ‘Steak seasoning’ which has the same smell and taste which works great on a variety of different meat. I’m looking forward to having some lamb burgers on my day off – I went with the Silver Fern Farms rumps that’ll cook in the oven and I’ll match it up with some low carb burger buns with lots of salad, beetroot and some ploughman’s relish.
It’s cold, it’s rainy and it is miserable so I have decided to take a day off from exercising and instead enjoy a relaxing time at home with the heater going and keeping warm. I went to mum’s place to have dinner and order a ‘Beelink SER9 Pro AMD Ryzenâ„¢ AI 9 HX 370’ computer (link) to replace her current Intel NUC i3 (7th generation) that is too old to run WIndows 11 because it doesn’t meet the hardware requirements. I’ve ordered that online but we’ll be heading down to the local computer store to purchase the keyboard, mouse and monitor – we’ve also got to to organise the printer and scanner because at the moment the office is a bit chaotic. Regarding what will happen with the old computer, I’ll probably set it up as a Linux server on my network to operate as a streaming server for music and video with it setup in my office since that is where my router is located. I have to admit, I am tempted to move from having a Mac to having a AMD based computer but I’m going to wait until I see what happens with macOS 26 and Apple’s other platforms.
The update for uBlock Origin has made its way to the Chrome store however it is still waiting for approval for the Mac App Store so it’ll be interesting to see what happens. There are a few bug fixes for Safari to work around bugs so I’m hoping that we’re going to see Apple move to fix those bugs in a timely manner although I am not confident given that the bug was reported in 2023 and it still hasn’t been fixed over 2 years after it was reported – but hey, I’d love to be proven wrong. What I’m hoping is that if it doesn’t get fixed in the first release of macOS 26 that one of the 26.x releases will receive an update. I guess it is a matter of priorities given that over the 15.x they’ve been making big updates to Safari in the 15.x updates.
There has been a 7th beta released but I’m unsure how close they are to a release candidate but it’ll be interesting to see how far off they are from iOS stabilising given that there is the iPhone event in September so it’ll be interesting to see when the announcement is, when the phones will start shipping to customers and how that will line up with the release of iOS 26 (macOS tend to get released after iOS releases). The Safari Technology Preview 226 will be released in the next few days and tomorrow will be the release of an update for Chrome 139 with Chrome 140 stable marked for next week and then the following week it’ll be released to the public – the features that’ll be included with Chrome 140 can be found here (link). It is frustrating how Google can move so fast at addressing bugs and problems and yet, as mentioned before, there are bugs in the Webkit bug database over 2 years old and still not addressed. I could understand if Apple was some plucky small startup but they’re a massive company so there is no excuse for not hiring the man power to address these shortcomings particularly when you consider the recent layoffs of programmers from multiple companies – there is a massive talent pool they can choose from.
I’ve just come back from a 24km walk – my legs are sore, my feet are sore and I am exausted but I feel good after having a good work out. I guess that feeling is in part due to setting out a goal and then going to achieve it and not giving up at any point even though I was getting tired and my legs felt as though my feet were covered in cement. I’m now laying in bed relaxing and looking forward to a good night sleep after all that.
On Tuesday I’m going to pick up some more groceries and maybe while I’m there I’ll pick up a few extra things from the butchers especially if they’re on special – maybe I’ll be lucky enough to find some lamb that is close to the best before date that they’ve marked down in price. I remember the last time I was at the supermarket I was able to pick up a rack of lamb for $10 off the original price so I grabbed the 2 that they had and when I got home I put them in the freezer to have on my day off. I’m still on the look out for the low carb high fibre burger buns because if I am going to have some lamb burgers I want to ensure that I’ve got some good macros rather than it being a meal of empty calories.
I woke up this morning just before midday and headed down to Awanui Labs which does the blood testing – the test was for liver function and blood sugar to see how things are progressing. I’ve continued losing weight since my last blood test so hopefully that should translate to better blood test results but at the end of the day I’m doing all I can so hopefully it’ll translate to a good result.
Another update has been released for uBlock Origin Lite has been released – uBOLite 2025.817.1539 has been made available on Edge but it is waiting for approval on the Chrome extensions store. It has quite a few changes so it’ll be interesting to see whether it’ll translate into any user visible changes that are noticeable.
Oh how I love online banking – I had some money I inherited and like a good steward of my finances I put them into a term deposit for 6 months (I bank with ASB Bank) at 3.80%, if I wanted more than that I would have had to lock it away for 5 years and that is far too long. I’ve also paid off almost all the debt that I have which has put me on a much better financial footing long term. The whole experience has reduced the amount of stress down to zero or as close to zero as possible.
On a side note, what we see with the Trump administration is the end result of congress for decades delegating more and more power to the executive branch which has allowed congress to abdicate their responsibility for holding the executive to account and make the tough decisions. Two things people need to realise is this a) Once power is consolidated in the hands of a small number of people or one person that power is never given up voluntarily and b) If you have a look at the dictatorships that emerged in the early 20th century their power grab was enabled through emergency powers granted in the constitution who made sure there was always a crisis or an emergency to justify that consolidation of power – “you need to give me the power to protect the country in this time of crisis” they will claim.
We only need to look at the Trump administration invoking ‘International Emergency Economic Powers Act’ in justification of tariffs (tariffs are never mentioned in the bill itself but by the time something is done the damage is already done) with the court system so feckless and lacking in testicular fortitude to do something about it. I don’t expect the Supreme Court to do anything about it given that the ‘conservative’ judges (I put in quotations for the very reason that they’re as far from traditional conservatism as possible – a conservative would oppose the consolidation of power in the hands of the executive as many high profile conservatives have voiced their concerns going as far back as the passing of the Patriot Act) will roll over and allow the expansion of executive power to do whatever they want which of course will magically change the moment a Democratic president gets into the White House.
Finally made it through the week and I’m looking forward to the weekend. Today was kind of weird, I work from home answering calls but no calls came through, logged out and logged back in, refreshed the page etc. so I assumed that maybe I had been put one of the other queues. Long story short I spent all today replying to emails and other office work that needed to be done – I’m one of those people who can deal with ‘doing nothing’ for a short period of time but then I feel the need that I have to do something productive rather than just watching YouTube videos or read news. Long story short, I got a tonne of emails out of the way and other office stuff so at least if there is a follow up it isn’t as though I’ve wasted my time during the day.
It is the one habit I have to admit I’ve taken from working in the fast food industry which is the idea of not leaving work for the next crew who comes in or in my case when we closed up at the end of the night the last thing the morning crew want to do, on top of preparing for the day (cutting tomatoes, preparing the condiments for the burger board etc) to clean up what should have been done properly by the night crew. It is the reason I don’t like the idea of leaving stuff that rolls over to the new week because the problem is that eventually it builds up as a little bit is left over at the end of each week. A bit like cleaning, if there an extra bit of detailed cleaning done each night then it means there doesn’t need to be a big top to bottom clean and a mad rush around when head office come in to have a look around.
That does into my bigger pet peeve which is the mythology of being more efficient by multi-tasking – the reality is that you’re better off focusing on one thing at time, giving it all your attention rather than switching between tasks and giving each task part of your attention. The problem is if you only give part of your attention then you’re bound to make mistakes. The best thing to do is set a list of tasks and work through then one after the other, giving each task your full attention and getting it don’t quickly. It is the reason when I worked at a supermarket when I came in at around 6am I would bring the pallets out before the shop opened and just go hard at it filling up the freezes for around 4-5 hours so then by the time the first wave of customers came in the freezers were all topped up and it was just a matter of topping up during the day without having the stress of running around all day.
In a recent developer release of Windows 11 it appears that Microsoft is focusing on unifying their UI around a common UI framework. This was uncovered by phantomofearth over on X/Twitter:
Windows 11's file operation (copy, access denied, etc.) dialogs are FINALLY getting support for dark mode! Here's how the dialogs look in dark mode at this point, hidden in build 26100.5061.
Also notice the light buttons in the top right, still a work in progress of course. pic.twitter.com/3D00lWIJcn
It is work in progress but the one thing people need to recognise is the fact that yes Apple were able to deliver dark mode but that was because they rewrote Finder back in Mac OS X 10.6 in Cocoa (along with remaining components still using Carbon to be moved over to Cocoa) around 16 years ago meaning that making dark mode available was a fairly easy process. In the case of Microsoft not only are they gradually replacing the components of the Windows shell but they’re also creating a new framework as they go about doing it (see Windows App SDK, XAML and all those other wonderful projects on Github). It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Windows 11 25H2 – personally I don’t see it being released for 25H2 given all the rumours that it’ll be a relatively conservative update so it wouldn’t surprise me if 26H2 ends up being an update with a UI refresh, maybe an official announcement that Control Panel has been removed? one can only hope I guess.
On Monday I’ll visit mum and organise ordering a Beelink SER9 Pro AMD Ryzenâ„¢ AI 9 HX 370 running Windows 11 but I’ll order a new keyboard, mouse and monitor from a local reseller. Regarding the phone, I’ll see what mum is interested in given that she is looking for a phone with a big screen but I’m wondering whether she would be better off getting an Android phone such as one from Samsung given that her laptop is a Chromebook and computer is running Windows 11. Regarding the laptop, I wonder whether we should replace it with one running Windows 11 given how it would work better with Android or an iPhone through the use of the Phone Link that Microsoft provides.
I decided to go for a longer walk than usual tonight after work, 16.2km, and when I came back the hot shower felt so good soothing the muscles in my legs and my sore feet. It is funny how the small things in life such as a hot shower can bring so much joy after a long day at work then followed by a power walk. I’m might watch a video television shows before going to bed although if I am too tired I might just wait until tomorrow or maybe Monday – no urgency to see then, they aren’t going to suddenly disappear.
Monday I’m going to head in to get a routine blood test to see how things are progressing – ensure that my blood sugar is normal (hba1c test) along with any other things that need to be on the lookout for. Although it is annoying it is best to keep up routine checks and catch a problem early when it is treatable vs when it is caught too late resulting in a lower quality of life (and possibly shortened life).
