2025 Roundup

It's the end of the year again, and time for another "year in review" post! (Just a quickie, to get it in before the end of the year - I'd intended to include a photo collage with this post, but don't have time + energy to put that together)

 

Highlights:
* First trip to Canada  (Vancouver + Okanagan Valley)
* Getting promoted to Principal Software Engineer + Getting to apply a release to the live system
* Staying overnight at Tekapo for the first time + capturing a lunar eclipse there
* Creating my "MediaSlurper" tool for automating backing up Camera + Phone data (which I've since been using *heavily*, multiple times a day)
* Formally wrote up a spec for "WhioDoc"
* Celebrating Dad's 70th birthday
* Getting my pretty ball dahlia
* Switching to new standing desk setup  (+ including a proper "Luxo" style lamp)
* Seeing one of RNZAF's retiring C-130H Hercules doing a short-field landing at the Airforce Museum in Wigram (i.e. its new permanent home)
* 1st full year living with a heatpump in my room! 

 

Canada Highlights:
* Treating Mum + Dad to High Tea at Empress Hotel
* A&W
* Victoria Tour day
* Capturing pair of Osprey at Vaseux Lake
* Spotted Lake
* Meeting relatives + family friends for the first time - Most notably, meeting a frail elderly relative who had a bad fall + subsequently passed away a week after our visit (!), along with getting to see see some others again for the first time since covid / or for first time in 30 years.

 

Challenges:
* Dad getting hospitalised + being out of action for ~2 months with a badly infected leg (+ subsequent slow recovery) - To say the least, it was a highly stressful, scary, and very sobering experience. I'm very thankful that we are all still able to celebrate the end of the year together!
* Disruptive Uncle staying with us for a month - Ugh... yeah, let's not mention this again. An even more stressful experience, but for different reasons...
* Losing my old desktop workstation to PSU failure (but *still* haven't managed to get around to fixing it)

MediaSlurper - December Updates

Merry Christmas!  It has been years since I've posted stuff here on Christmas Day, but since this is a personal project, this doesn't really count as "work-stuff" (and besides, I haven't been feeling that burned out this year by this time that I need a complete break)

This month, I added a bunch of quality-of-life tweaks to MediaSlurper to address a few issues I'd been increasingly running into, and couldn't delay addressing any more. Oh, and added a cute-as seasonal variant of the mascot, in homage to the VLC icon (which I also adore seeing at this time of year!)

Maybe one day I'll have everything generalised enough to release this tool for others to use too. But in the meantime, it's still only really for my own personal use... Expressions of interest may expedite when I consider making a public release possible...

Linux Migration Attempt 2 - Part 3 - Bare Metal Tests, Tangles with Secure Boot, and Rethinking Distro + Setup Choices

This update covers a whole bunch of milestones, including finally testing + getting a working LiveUSB Linux distro running on one of my desktop machines, and a whole bunch of new learnings about not only distro choices, but also the impact of different KDE Plasma versions, and also configurations that I like and/or install steps needed to get various distros ready to use. All in all - lots of interesting learnings since the last update!

Scott Jenson's Talk At Ubuntu Connect 25.10

Quick post that I'll probably expand upon in followup posts eventually, but this is one of the more inspiring talks I've heard in a long time! 

"Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? | Ubuntu Summit 25.10" -- Scott Jenson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ

It's been a while since I've been reminded of what got me into HCI research in the first place. *THIS* is the type of stuff that I love doing TBH. It's really refreshing hearing such a senior industry figure talking about trying to get innovation in these areas happening again.

 

Another interesting point:  The following interesting link from the end of the talk to some folk doing some very interesting stuff!

https://www.inkandswitch.com/

Ooh... now we're cooking! I've got a few project ideas that overlap quite heavily with some of these headlines on their landing page 🤓 

(The main challenge currently is just finding the time + energy to actually work on these things... not to mention that fundamentally, making the prototypes I want to make is currently constrained by the tools I want not being in place)

 

Late Night Birding Rabbit-Hole - Alternate Maori Names for Silvereyes

I was rearranging some files when I came across the pukupuku videos recently, and was reminded of the alternate Maori name for Silvereyes: "Pihipihi"

TBH, I've long disliked the standard one that textbooks often refer to (i.e. "Tauhou", as I've always found it hard to figure out the pronunciation of, and just didn't like the meaning either). Granted... tonight I have managed to narrow it down to sound like "Tau - Hor" (i.e. rhyming with, "Chow Hor" - i.e. fried thick rice noodles, such as "Beef Ho Fun" 😋)

But "Pihipihi" - well that I can certainly pronounce (and the name does have some links back to the sounds they sometimes make - e,g, when they hopping around the undergrowth, making contented vocalisations from all the feasting they're in the midst of... or maybe it's another way of expressing those rapid "fleeing triplet calls" - i.e. "cli cli cli" / "chie chie chie")

In addition, it turns out there are a bunch of *other* names too now that some tribes may have used. In particular, the ones that stood out to me are:
* 1) "Poporohe" - Yeah, that one sounds easy enough to remember + pronounce again
* 2) "Pikariahe" - Slightly less convenient, given the macron on the first i (which I won't be using)

* 3) "Whiorangi" - Given that I now have a code-documentation system named after the "Whio"   (blue-duck), calling them "blue-ducks of the sky" is a tempting idea!

I'll have to do some more research into all of these to double-check what's going on, but don't be surprised if I start adopting these names for various purposes going forwards  (e.g. for a photo editing + management tool being the most likely beneficiary!) 🤓 

MediaSlurper - November Updates

Another month, another bunch of updates to my "MediaSlurper" tools to fix a bunch of annoyances that have be gnawing away at me every time I'd been using them recently.

Such is the curse of writing personal tools: If it breaks, no one will magically fix it for you between when it broke and the next time you use it!  On the other hand though, considering that I literally use these things *MULTIPLE* times every day   (like, 2-3 times most nights to run backups of my devices), deciding to build these and getting them working well for the 95% of the times I use them has been one of the most satisfying and worthwhile things I've done this year!

Anyway, this month, I finally got annoyed enough to look seriously into the following 2 things:

   1) A longstanding bug in my SD Card (Camera Photos) download tool, relating to the duplicate-download prevention algorithm.  Basically, the problem was that it was redownloading any images that had their modified time bumped due to something like a description being added (even if subsequently removed), OR if I deleted the copy locally (i.e. it as out of focus), without having gotten around to removing it from the camera.

   2)  An optimisation to the login prompts for my Android FTP downloading tool, so that I wouldn't need to punch in the IP + Port numbers (or confirm the defaults) each time I used the tool, while retaining the ability to actually dial in a new value on days when new IP + Port values may randomly be required.

 

Yesterday's Thunderstorms

As you may have read, yesterday we had some crazy weather here. Crazy is probably the right word...

 

For those who aren't aware:

Yesterday, we had a sudden thunderstorm front pass through, where the weather went from sunny and mild, to suddenly storm + overcast, with dark ominous clouds, which quickly turned into thunder + lighting + hail + heavy rain (with surface flooding). Most affected were all the folks who had headed out to the final day of the A&P show  (i.e. farm folk bring their animals to town, to let us city people see their critters + lifestyle) and/or the horse races (i.e. where ladies dress up in fancy dresses, and consume too much wine) - as both of these events are held outdoors, and in the areas where the most hail fell. Large hailstones I might add apparently... From the photos I've seen, it was such a hailstorm, that it looked like snow had fallen out that way - it was everywhere, and enough for folks to make little snowmen (oh... *ahem*  "hail people") out of that white stuff!

 

Unfortunately, it seems we missed most of the most fun/exciting parts!  

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aligorith/albums/72177720330356928

Silvereye Season - Rain Day

Yesterday's rain day provided a lot more interesting SIlvereye Photos than I had been bargaining on!

Looking through all the photos, I realised that most of the day, I basically had two visitors (and an occasional mystery third or forth one).

 

As you'll soon seen in the following posts, I ended up naming these two:
1) "Mohawk"
2) "Humperdink"

"Mohawk" was the main one I saw, but it turns out "Humperdink" showed up a bunch of times too. Also, I reckon that actually, both may have been juveniles (or at least Mohawk definitely was!)

Emirates "NBA" A380

Yay!  After missing its last few visits for various reasons (including being out of the country, a snowstorm, and being far away from the airport occupied with other activities), today I finally got to see the "NBA" livery A380 (A6-EOD) with my own eyes at last!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aligorith/albums/72177720330215352/

Silvereye Season - Super Wednesday

Finally getting around to posting some of Wednesday's silvereye goodness today

Some highlights:
1) Mr and Mrs Harakeke Head

2) Check out this funky shadow cast on its head by the unopened (?) flowerheads

  

3) A different pair that happened to come at the same time but stayed apart. I love how this one looks like it's breaking the fourth wall

 

4) The juvenile - You can only tell from this photo from the slightly "fanned out" wings (i.e. whereas adults usually have those folds tightly packed, juveniles seemingly have some trouble with that, and often fan those out slightly and flutter them, along with their microtonally off-tune 3-note (f'' d#'' e'') repeating calls whenever their parents approach with food)

 

Loads MOAR pics here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/aligorith/albums/72177720330132688

Silvereye Season - Mr + Mrs Harakeke Heads

Well, this happened way earlier in the season than I had been expecting!

A BIG thank you to Mr and Mrs Harakeke Head for giving me the chance to take this shot during their lunch visit (having missed capturing them during their breakfast visit).

(Unfortunately, the image is not quite in focus - or at least not quite in the way that I really wanted, but will take this one for now, as it's better than nothing! Will try again when you next come :P)  

In case you don't know, the last few years, I've been trying to move from "single stationary birdy" into "multiple at once" and/or in motion. So being able to capture what looks like a mating pair (given how they arrived together, and happily feasted from the same flower in close proximity to each other is a relative rare thing)

Linux Migration 2nd Attempt - Part 2

In this update:

The saga continues. Turns out the distro I initially tried is quite badly configured for what I want in general, but the other two I will subsequently trial will also have their own set of issues too! 

Status: Still trying to figure out a good base setup via a VM.  (Actual hardware support when I finally finish up enough ongoing projects to justify rebooting will be another matter later - and will likely require another round of figuring out if the problems are worth self-diagnosing vs just trying something else)

 

Update 2025/11/12:  I've managed to get the audio problem on my Manjaro VM sorted by running the instructions from https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/Troubleshooting#stuttering-audio-in-virtual-machine, though I did have to restart the VM (as the systemctl command kept complaining about not being able to access other users / etc.) 

Silvereye Season - Early Birds

This year the Silvereye Season officially kicked off *way* earlier than usual, with the first flowers opening last Sunday on 26th October!  (Previously, this didn't happen until after 1st November)

The first bird sighting was the next day (though I didn't get any footage of that, given it was a fleeting visit behind net curtains, with no camera on hand, and a phone that couldn't focus in time).

In the days that followed, were the first photo of one (through the net curtains) on the morning of the 29th:

 

Fast forward to this morning, when I finally got my first "proper" shots - of a "Harakeke Head" no doubt:

Birds of Feather - Birding on New Brighton Pier in Strong Winds

This is one of my favourite photos from the other day when we headed out to New Brighton over the long weekend 

I got a whole bunch of footage I'm quite happy with, but what I loved the most from this set was all the photos I got of the seagulls being able to literally hover at a fixed point in space with their wings outstretched, due to the really strong winds out there that afternoon (which seemed to really pick up by the time we were halfway along the pier)

With this particular photo, I'd been taking photos of the gulls just hanging in the air, and then I hear + see this AirNZ jet starting to turn in for a northern approach, so i knew I just had to try and line them both up together in a frame together... somehow! 😂  

Upper Riccarton War Memorial Park

Last night, I finally got around to paying the Upper Riccarton War Memorial Park a visit. It's recently been opened on the site of the former War Memorial Library, utilising a few heritage items from the former library in its design.

What was most surreal though was standing there trying to photograph this "most Kiwi" of artworks (complete with a Buzzy Bee, Anzac Donkey, and Red Poppy), while smelling the fragrant dinner-rush exhaust from the nearby Chinese restaurants!

Crusade Against Smoking

It should probably come as no surprise to most folk that I am avowedly and firmly in the camp that is against any of the following:

* Smoking

* Vaping

* Recreational Drug Use

 

And yes, in case you're wondering: 

* I class "cannabis use" under "Recreational Drug Use" 

* I can't stand the smell + taste of alcohol either 

 

Windows 10 EOL -> Linux Migration Attempt - Part 1

With this week's official EOL of support for Windows 10, the impetus to try to look into migrating to Linux again for my personal desktop workstations has grown stronger again. Especially as I refuse to have my personal machines associated with Microsoft Accounts that will inevitably mean that various personal info gets inadvertently leaked onto OneDrive (including various sensitive files / settings / etc.), it feels like time to give this another crack, now that I'm using actual desktop workstations instead of laptops with weird hardware...

As I documented on this blog many years ago, the last time I tried switching to Linux, things didn't go so well back then. Particularly, as I was on a HP laptop that had a bunch of very-hard-to-support crap, and I was trying to dual boot it. I'm hoping though that things go smoother this time through a number of different decisions!

Tiffany Poon's Vlog on Visiting Ravel's House + Playing His Piano

 What an interesting mashup of two artists I quite like!

1) Ravel is one of my top 5 (maybe top 3 even) favourite composers. The others being Tchaikovsky and Thomas Newman.

I certainly went through a phase a few years ago of listening to his works while plugging through some rather tricky stuff at work (i.e. a "JSON diffing/patching/rebasing engine" *ahem*).

 

2) I've also loved watching Tiffany's vlogs for a long time now. Among other things, I've gained a *much* more thorough understanding + appreciation for piano music and the nuances of piano-to-piano differences + effects of playing technique. (Also, finally seeing how/why people always about spending time "practicing"... yeah, there are some things I could've done different in the past LOL).  Gotta also love the random squirrel / chipmunk sightings too!

 

3) Wow, it's very interesting seeing Ravel's house! That mix of an idiosyncratic little cottage filled with so many little interesting trinkets + art, surrounded by a nice garden with some colourful trees + water features. 

 

4) Also, it's always special getting to see talented artists getting to bring to life the instruments of historical figures. There's always something special about getting to experience a composer's music in the spaces they once inhabited, as they may have first heard them.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWvV62BAhd

Impressions of WOW 2025

As has become a bit of a family tradition in recent years, we've recently popped up to Wellington to attend the "World of Wearable Art" Awards Show (i.e. "WOW") again this year.

IIRC our first one was in 2015 (???), and again in 2016 and 2019  (with gaps in between due to busy years, with lots of other things / other big trips + travel taking place). Then COVID happened, before we finally started heading back the last few years again. So yeah... we've done this trip "a few" times now...

 

Overall Impression: This year was a massive improvement on the last few editions, re-centering the show on what made it great in the past (i.e. bringing it back to what it was like the first few times we came, pre-Covid).

Thoroughly enjoyed it, and more importantly, left creatively re-invigorated + inspired to try to do more awesome stuff again in what little free time I get.

The only real quibble I had about this year, is that I personally thought most of my personal faves were robbed / overlooked for prizes, OR even just placings (as at least in the awards presentation, they only had like a winner and a runner-up, instead of like "Top 3" as in previous years IIRC). Then again, a few of the categories had so much awesome stuff, it was hard to really pin down who *should* have won in that category, so it was tough work to be a judge I guess!   An interesting problem to have I guess!

On "Life's Greatest Pleasures" After A Period of Travel...

One of the greatest pleasures in life is having that first bath / shower after travelling - especially the first one when returning home to your own bathroom after being on the road! 😊😍

~~~

The next best one is collapsing in your own bed again, which I'm feeling is gonna happen very soon.

The "first sleep" will probably not be evading this insomniac for much longer tonight...

What may be a challenge though is staying asleep after waking up in the middle of darkness, still absolutely exhausted and buggered, but also not enough to go back to sleep for longer than a shallow almost-an-hour burst...

We shall see! The land of nod beckons!

 

On "Viruses"... (Biological Sort, Not Digital)

Another day, another headline about discoveries of viruses causing cancer  (and an aggressive one at that)...

 

Yeah... reading that, I'm reminded again of those biology classes where we first learned about viruses:

* Not "alive" in the conventional sense

* "Microscopic Particles"

* Can get into all sorts of weird + wacky places, and do stuff to the cells there (e.g. "bateriophages", and/or how viral genetic material has been detected in various DNA before...)

* As they aren't "alive", they also aren't that easy to "kill" (aka destroy + nullify)

* Oh yeah...and they mutate like hell.

 

Uh huh... 

 

IIRC, I distinctly recall before justifiably somewhat scared of them then (IIRC, it was probably the bacteriophages that really creeped me out most at the time). But also, with what we now know having dealt with (and continuing to deal with) COVID, viruses are truly very nasty + scary things!

Saturday Morning Music Writing Rambling

Since changing my main workstation this year (and needing to run different versions of many of the tools I use), I haven't been writing much music anymore. 

(Well TBH, I'd probably really started running out of steam again last year after COVID. But also, the newer tools having a bunch of nasty design changes that make them uncomfortable and annoying to use doesn't help)

Anyway this morning, I happened to have a snippet come to mind (i.e. the way that most of these *always* start), so I went in to jot it out.

When saving this, I noted that my previous one was already a month ago (and had been sitting open as  "todo to finish sometime"). So, as you do, I opened it up to give it a playback...

While listening to it, I switched back to today's one, intended to get back to work on it, but whatdoyaknow! I pressed play slightly too early, and then discovered that this second thing goes really well underscoring the end part of the other one!

(It did help of course that they used the same ensemble type)

The better part of an hour or so later:
Hang on...  I think I can probably draw the line under this one now 😂 

So yeah... I've now just completed my 1st or 2nd piece for the year LOL 😜 

(I may revise it later for a 2nd polished / extended edition, but this seems good enough for now)

Software Wishlist September 2025

On that note, here's a bunch of other things I wish various software I use often would introduce

Summary:

1) Firefox - "Private Browsing Container Tab Type

2) Desktop Window Managers - Project-Based Application Window Grouping + Complete Window State Restoration on Restart  

 

Mastodon UI Wishlist

As I've mentioned a bunch of times on here, ever since the hostile takeover and demise of Twitter a few years ago, I've switched over to Mastodon (+ posting / reposting stuff on here again).

Here's a list of things that I wish that there was a Mastodon UI that did. Unfortunately, the way things are going, it also seems that I'm likely gonna have to implement all this myself in my own client / frontend to get any traction on it...

MediaSlurper Updates - Ep 3 - Multi Device Support

It's been a while since I've posted any updates about my "MediaSlurper" project...

Well, that's largely a good thing! Given that it was built as a personal tool to solve some very specific bottlenecks in my data management workflows, that means that in practice, it's largely been working very well for my needs (or at least, "good enough!), which is no mean feat, given that I run it at least 3-4 times a day, almost every day!   Granted, there are a handful over "very annoying" bugs relating to the various heuristics in use to avoid making duplicate copies of anything!)... but those only happen in very specific cases that I can always manually enable escape-hatch hacks in the code to work around! 

But yeah, in general, it's been working well enough that I've been able to pause active development efforts to focus on other more pressing matters  (e.g. "Picasa Replacement Project", and/or general life stuff)

 

Anyway, with the recent need to start urgently investigating properly migrating from old phone to new one (NOTE: I actually made the switch early this morning, and apart from a "major heart attack / moments of sinking terror" trying to get the Whatsapp transition to transfer over smoothly), I ended up running both phones for a while, and needing to be able to use MediaSlurper with both. This lead to a flurry of activity for the past few weeks, culminating in some of the final most useful stuff only coming online today, *AFTER* I have already effectively transitioned off the old phone.... 

Nevertheless, given that I don't know when I might need this stuff again (or whether someone else might find it useful if/when I ever release this tool), I have decided to keep plugging away at it to finish the last push of new functionality that should address a bunch of other things I've found myself really needing over the past month or two.

Blender Addon - Hand Drawn Timing Chart Paths to Animation (3rd-Party / Not Mine)

It's been a while since I've posted about any Blender or animation related stuff on here, having moved onto other pursuits these days. But tonight, I'm going to briefly break my silence to link to the following demo clip for an addon that I've gotta say is pretty awesome looking!

  

Well done to everyone involved in making this happen! Very nicely done! Simple yet effective  😍 

 

Picasa Replacement Project - Update 4 - Roadmap + Component Breakdown

The other day, I went through and did an initial breakdown of the components that would need to be developed as part of my "Picasa Replacement" project, in order to have a workable alternative.

I made this breakdown as a way of going in more level-headed about what exactly I was about to lock myself into (and hopefully convince myself against rashly diving into headfirst), as I was definitely getting "the itch" to just dive right in and build "just the basic photo management tool" part (i.e. "part 4", with "part 1" thrown in to have anything to show, and part 2 inevitably having to be done to before I could even contemplate setting up part 4), with the idea that the actual non-destructive image editing engine would be more of a slow burn afterwards (i.e. the exposure + colour edits would then be ported over as-time-allows, once I had the functional media management tool that I needed first)

(*) I must admit, I have also been slowly digging through Darktable's source code, trying to figure out how much of the iop code can be harvested + refactored into powering the core of my own pipeline  (as some of those operations are really powerful in the ways I want, but simply using the sidecar files to pass data to it doesn't seem as viable an option as I had though, given the horrid way it handles storing state - i.e. obscure hashed / binary-dump data in the sidecar files, coupled with only the database actually having the most recent settings once it loads a file once) 

Anyway, here is the breakdown notes from my notebook, in case anyone else would like to attempt this (or join in the efforts at some point).

 (TBH:  Seeing this breakdown is and should be very sobering... It is probably a decent 4-5 years of man-effort - assuming semi-consistent progress at a fast rate gets made even - to get to a somewhat useful point.  Hence why I wouldn't really recommend anyone attempts this on a whim!) 

Phone Migration Notes

This weekend, I've finally been looking into finally transferring across to using the new phone I'd gotten a few months ago (*).

As feared, there are currently a whole bunch of "manual intervention" bottlenecks that are not syncing over and require lots of manual effort to fix. Some of which are really silly and should be rectified by various vendors, while others are historical mistakes coming back to haunt 

Public Transit Audio-Only Recordings - A Fun Travel Keepsake

A discussion with a friend yesterday about portable audio recorders had me thinking about something fun to do while travelling that I only really recently realised I should try doing more of.

That is: Recording short audio clips (in addition to any video clips I'm already capturing, though again... more random clips from different places are again something fun to have) from various places during my travels - and in particular, doing it for any public transit route you end up spending a lot of your time during the trip using. 

Reaction to "Enough AI copilots, we need AI HUD's" - i.e. Thought Provoking Ideas on Reframing the UI / UX of AI

I just read a very thought provoking blog post from Geoffrey Litt, based on some ideas pitched some 30-ish years ago by Mark Weiser

Blog Title: "Enough AI Copilots, We Need AI HUD's"

https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/07/27/enough-ai-copilots-we-need-ai-huds


My (Non-AI Powered) Summary, with additional spin on top: 
1) The industry at large is going about this all wrong!

2) The "me too" industry frenzy currently of just piling in on top of the "tasteless" (to paraphrase Steve Jobs) zombie train of building digital versions of Tom Riddle's horcrux-diary is stupid.  

    I'm with Mark on this - as those who've followed me for long enough know, I'm very much against all this "chat" and "agent" style crap that all the AI-TechBros are currently all still hyping up.

3) HCI + Interaction Design specialists/experts such as myself should really be stepping in and stepping up to meet this challenge head on - to get back in there to steer the ship as it were, instead of being backseat passengers to an almost certain trainwreck - by doing what we do best:

    a) Taking a step back, and asking the essential basic questions about what exactly we're trying to really achieve, and **WHY**...

    b) Crucially, not letting the existing framing cloud our judgement, and obscuring our own personal ethical + philosophical principles on the direction that we wish to steer technology in

4) What is it that we have to offer then?

   A) Show Don't Tell - If your tech is really that fancy, it doesn't need to be in our faces all the time. We shouldn't *need* to be constantly "conversing" with it, like micro-managing a third-rate annoying minion

   B) An Assistive Superpower - (Now where have we heard *that* before?  ;)    Yep, the emphasis here should be on the tech taking care of the mundane stuff, while using its strengths to highlight stuff we can't figure out as humans...

*NOW* we're talking.
  i) Harnessing tech to help people do what they couldn't otherwise do
  ii) Augmenting + Building Up, NOT Replacing + Subjugating!

These are indeed very much things that are right in my wheelhouse, and problems that I can get behind!  (Whereas the "AI" discourse to date has very much been a very alienating, and unpalatable soup of world-destroying slop that make me and countless others sick to our very core)

Thanks for the reminder Geoffrey!

 

As for the rest of us:   It's high time we started getting cracking, and righting this ship! There's lots of work to do!

Picasa Replacement Project - Update 3 - Some Easy Wins

In the latest installment of my ongoing series of posts about my current "Picasa Replacement Project", a few days ago, I managed to make a few more easy wins:

1) First, by applying some of the simpler manipulations to a "calibration" image, and trying to match the results - This has quickly revealed some starting points for working with the "Tilt" and "Color Temperature" sliders (even if the values obtained still seem a bit odd / weird, and may still need some fine-tuning)

 

2) It turns out that during an earlier search session, I had in fact managed to dredge up a bunch of very useful posts about the various formats used - especially for the on-disk thumbnails / preview images databases (which will prove useful for having a way to batch-test some of these filter calibrations later  (i.e. the thing apparently uses the standard Windows "Thumbs.db" format, for which libraries do exist !!!)

However, to protect all this info, I'm gonna have to make sure I save off all of it on the various archive sites (in addition to having already grabbed copies for my own stash, in case they disappear before I manage to do even that)... So yeah, I'm not going to publish the list of links until I have secured them. 

Picasa Replacement Project - Update 2 - Initial Working Parser

It's taken a few more days than originally planned, but I've just reached a first concrete milestone:

The rudimentary parser for Picasa.ini settings file is now able to fully parse the settings file for the test folder I chose from my collection!   (Albeit, this was one of the newer ones that I haven't applied as heavy edits on as some of those in the full collection... but it's still a starting point!)

There's lots more to do still to make it actually useful, including:
* 1) Set up a Git repo for this project, so it can be used by others  

EDIT:   The code can be found here            https://github.com/Aligorith/picasa_lib_utils 

* 2) Need to unpack how a handful of other filters I've sometimes used on other photos have their parameters done too

* 3) Figure out what the pixel-level operations some of these were actually doing (i.e. most critical is the "finetune2" filter though that is the hardest; but even something like the "tilt" filter will need translating into a concrete rotation angle)

Late night musings on Pixar's relative "downfall" in recent years...

What follows are a bunch of late night ramblings + musings about things I can't help wondering after seeing seeing a YT rabbithole analysing the relative downfall of Pixar in the last few years...

 

(Disclaimer:  As some of the topics here are apparently contentious, I will be moderating any comments on this post heavily as I see fit... you have been warned) 

Picasa Replacement Project - Day 1 Status Report

Following Monday's incident, I have decided to urgently bring forward + accelerate my plans to start developing a replacement solution to my Picasa-based Photo Management workflow. As this incident had highlighted, I do somewhat urgently need to find a reliable automated solution to migrate my almost 2 decade library of non-destructive edits over to a future-proof solution I fully control!

As a result, I made a bunch of promising progress on my Picasa Reverse Engineering project last night - i.e. the first night of a new journey!

Fixing Picasa3 suddenly freezing on Windows10 (July 2025)

This evening, Picasa suddenly started freezing on Windows 10 here.  (Yes, it has been officially discontinued for years now... but for my workflow, it is still much better than many of the alternatives I've tried, and so, until I manage to get my own self-built alternative up and running, I'm continuing to use it...)

After a whole bunch of sleuthing (including deleting my old DB and rebuilding it, in case of some database corruption there), it turns out that the culprit was Windows Defender!

TLDR:  To fix this, add an exclusion for the following setting (i.e. "Block Untrusted Fonts") for Picasa3.exe 

EDIT:  Posted too soon!  While doing that gets things moving a little at least, a few seconds later, after letting you scroll, it will again lock up, while it now starts another batch of CPU activity.  Doh!   (Trying again with disabling a whole lot more to see what sticks...)

EDIT 2: Tried a bunch more stuff, but annoyingly each "fix" only seems to last about 5 seconds before Windows Defender catches on and locks down even harder!

Things that didn't go down well:

* Going through disabling *every* checkbox in that infernal program-settings-override dialog.  Doing that just makes it worse it seems!

* Switching "Compatability Mode" to "Windows 8" - This worked for about 5 seconds (i.e. longer than when just doing "open + scroll" tests, but still it locked right up!

Ultimately, after an hour of testing this crap, I'm going have to call it a night on this here, and have ended up filing a bugreport with MS about this... hopefully they do resolve it!  Gah!

(PS:  The project to again try to migrate my personal workstation to Linux ahead of October just got another massive boost again tonight!)

A Piece of Old Christchurch History - First "Jade Garden" Location

Many people know this old building as the old "Canterbury Public Library" building

For me, this was and always will be: "The Original Home of 'Jade Garden' - Dim Sum Chinese Restaurant"  (although apparently, they may have been in one other location before this one IIRC)

 

I was inspired to write this little oral history down for posterity when stumbling across the photo below earlier today (complete with the caption that showed below it). It was one of the first times I'd come across a decent photo of the place, so thought it was a good chance to write this down. 

Canterbury Public Library 19 December 1981. Exterior of the former Canterbury Public Library building on the corner of Cambridge Terrace and Hereford Street. Christchurch Star archive photo

(NOTE: Once again, am reposting this long-form post from my Mastodon for archiving - though this probably means the AI's will now ingest this too... sigh)

WhioDoc Updates - Version 1.1 just released

I've just released a minor update to WhioDoc to add some clarity + tweaks around the formatting of range-specifiers, and guidance on how "complex type specifiers" should be documented (i.e. "there is no established standard here yet, as you're probably doing something wrong if you need it")

 

Links to WhioDoc Repo:

* The Repo:  https://github.com/Aligorith/whiodoc

* Today's Updates:   

    https://github.com/Aligorith/whiodoc/commit/66aba8762073eabd948872e149323f17584a2b87

 

Key Points:

* Changed the delimiter for "type vs range" parts of the range-specifiers to use "::" instead of "-" 

   This has been changed after I realised on my current project that the "-" is really not too visible in my text editor (where I usually have "show all whitespace" enabled now - long story for another day), and a more heavy-weight symbol was needed.

  i.e. The recommended format is now something like:

         (Num :: 0.1 <= v < 0.9)

 

In other news:

The lack of news / updates here recently is because I'm currently hard at work on a bunch of projects, with a view towards getting some of them in a shippable state. And with that, I need to get back to actually building stuff, and less time talking about building it!  Over and out!

Blast from the Past: Cathay Pacific 747 Cardboard Model Plane / Glider

When doing some long overdue cleaning of one of our bookshelves yesterday, I ran into the following fun little guy:

IIRC, it's a Cathay Pacific 747 cardboard plane model from a Meadow Fresh milk-carton promotion here in NZ. It would have been from the mid-late 90's (as it uses the "brush tick" tail).

(At least that's what I think it's from! I could be wrong, with it potentially having come from an in-flight activities pack for kids instead, since I do have a few of those... somewhere...)

 

Thoughts on Windows 11's "Recall" Feature

Seeing one of the latest threads this morning about Win11's Recall feature, I'm not surprised that it does what it does TBH

Some of these points overlap with comments I made earlier when news of this feature first broke. I can't easily find those now, but if/when I do, I may amend this post with those notes as well, as they better cover a bunch of other insights I don't think I've captured here as well.

 

EDIT:  Cool, according to this Ars article, they do seem to have put in place most of the reasonable safeguards I'd expect / recommend them to have.

PureQML Followup - Initial Code Audit Notes

Following on my previous post, I did some more poking around the PureQML code as an initial stage towards vetting whether it is a suitable and/or trustworthy codebase to build any projects with.

Here are some observations I've made regarding things I'd want to fork + hack the codebase to do before I did anything more serious with it. I thought I'd post these here in case I lost the file I kept these notes in when I came back to try to work on this later (and also for anyone else considering using this)

DISCLAIMER:  I still don't know all that much about this project, so some of these may be able to be fully disabled + fixed in ways that I haven't found yet.

 

EDIT 2025/04/25:

* Have forked the pureqml/qmlcore repo with these changes to

    https://github.com/Aligorith/pureqml_qmlcore/tree/PureQML-Clean

* Added "Issue 5" below

 

On Approaching Composition Line-By-Line (i.e. Per Voice) vs Vertically (i.e. Chord Progressions)

Just saw a very interesting video looking at music theory / analysis at a different way than "chord chord chord chord chord" (to paraphrase the video) 😜

Instead, this video argues that we should be focussing more on the horizontal movements of the parts (i.e. "voice leading"), which thus helps draw your attention towards the flow / journey of the piece more...

Link: "Inside the Score - Most musicians learn harmony wrong"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJYj57TUKj

 

MediaSlurper Updates - Ep2 - Introducing a basic GUI + Cute Mascot

Time for another (hopefully) quick + brief writeup following another busy but relatively successful weekend of hacking away on this project. In short: I managed to tick off the biggest todo I had planned for the weekend (along with a few other smaller tasks), and with a few additional bonus points for good measure.

Introducing, the initial MVP UI for "MediaSlurper"

1) MediaSlurper  MVP GUI

Perhaps the biggest achievement this weekend was managing to put together an initial functioning UI for the media-backup scripts I've been working on for the past few weeks (see screenshot above).

Functionally, it's still very very crude (i.e. those buttons just call the existing scripts, but then they just execute in that existing terminal window backing this GUI (instead of in a dedicated GUI-wrapped window, OR via nicer GUI-driven UI's). But, most importantly, it serves the original goal of implementing this GUI in the first place (i.e. allowing me to launch these tools in ~2 clicks from the Start Menu, without needing to keep open a dedicated terminal window with 2 tabs - one for each script - open so that I can run them on the near daily / every-other-day basis that I end up needing these)

PureQml's Python-based QML Compiler - A tempting starting point for Kea's UI-Definition Compiler...

I know I already have too many open / unfinished projects (and a bunch more un-started yet)...

BUT, I was "doing the rounds" again after work today on HTML/CSS alternatives to doing web-deployable apps, and ended up looking at the QML situation again...

(Unfortunately, while I'll try to finish current project using HaxeUI, I'm running into too many weird update bugs + other hard-to-overcome limitations that I'm currently inclined to go back to looking for another solution for the next test project / whatever will be used to implement Parus)

 

TLDR:  Am again getting itchy hands to jump back into building my "Kea" language compiler in Python (possibly either hacking OR deriving significant inspiration from "PureQml"'s Python-based "QML-subset -> HTMl5 / Javascript" compiler), but focussing first on the QML-like UI-definition syntax   (before adapting the wider language later, and for non-web backends for those other parts)...

 

Stocktake of Current Projects in Progress (23 March Edition)

Time for another stocktake of all my various projects currently on the go. I typed this up more for my own benefit than anything.  (Also, considering that my last attempt at such a list from early January ended up being 6 pages in my notebook, this is already the "cut down" version LOL 😅)... 

* 1) Revival of app in HaxeUI for Dad  (Hard Deadline: Mid May) = Stalled. Am facing intractable toolkit related bugs.

* 2) Media Import/Backup from Devices = In progress / partially working. Need another push to complete.   (A blog post was in progress about the state of that from last weekend, but may now hold off until I'm done with it, as finishing it is more important, than ranting about half-progress)

* 3) Picasa Replacement = Not started

* 4) MusicViz = Paused. Haven't had time to start showcqt-hacking phase

* 5) Kea = Paused again. Too many concrete projects to do first. (Had dabbled with the UI language side of things a few months ago, initially starting to work on trying out the 7Guis tasks... that said, satisfying those succinctly may direct things in a bad direction relative to all the "real problems" I encounter in general instead)

* 6) Parus = On hold. Was originally going to use #1 as a testbed for doing it in Haxe + HaxeUI, but I now have to rethink those plans...

* 7) Collagen (i.e. Collage Making Tool) = On hold. Pending Parus being usable in some or other language, so that I can actually build the thing without wasting time doing more plumbing (like I'm doing on #1 currently)!

 

Others (Lower Priority):
* WhioDoc = Spec written. Tooling will have to wait till I have time

* Music Sketch Pad = Comes after Collagen and Maybe After Diagramming Tool (but may need to come first)

* Diagramming Tool = On hold indefinitely, but definitely needed more and more.

 

 

 

 

PhotoTool Project Updates Ep 1 - Initial Steps Towards Scripts to Ease + Automate Import + Backup of Media Data

For the past few weeks, I've been having a blast hacking away at a pair of scripts for automating some steps of my current photo management workflow that have thus-far been very labour-intensive to perform:  Namely, importing/backing up photos and videos from my camera (R5)'s memory card, and doing the same with my phone (Android).

The Last Lunch

Wow, it's been 5 years ago to the day when this photo was taken.

Yum Cha at "Tai Chi" (Spitfire Square, Christchurch) in March 2020

 

It was from our last "dine in" meal at a restaurant before the first COVID lockdown (that we headed out for shortly after Ardern's first 1pm nationwide address).

This photo then went on to be one that I wound up staring at longingly for *months*, desperately craving some Cheng Fun (and being unable to make any ourselves). You could say it got me through the pandemic...

On "Sci-Fi" and "Fantasy"...

TBH, I personally generally dislike most "Sci-Fi" and "Fantasy" stories / media. Among other reasons... they suck! 😜

[MusicViz Project] Part 3 - Breakdown of FFMPEG "showcqt" Experiment

This is the third installment of my ongoing series of posts on one of my long-term projects to develop a new automated technique for visualising music.

To motivate today's discussion, here is the final video clip rendered from the experimental technique being discussed in this post: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTMpzmdI9qQ

 

And here is the command used to render that:

ffmpeg -y -i 20230803-v02.flac -filter_complex "[0:a]showcqt=s=500x1920:axis=0:cscheme=0.6|0.7|0.1|0.1|0.8|0.5,crop=500:1392:0:4000,setsar=1,transpose=2[vcqt]; [0:a]showwaves=mode=cline:s=1920x100[vs]; [vcqt][vs]overlay=y=H-100[v]" -map "[v]" -map "0:a" -c:a aac "mv_20230803.mp4"

 

Let's annotate that to show the different parts more clearly (see the breakdown following this for a rough description of what each part does):

ffmpeg -y -i 20230803-v02.flac -filter_complex "[0:a]showcqt=s=500x1920:axis=0:cscheme=0.6|0.7|0.1|0.1|0.8|0.5,crop=500:1392:0:4000,setsar=1,transpose=2[vcqt]; [0:a]showwaves=mode=cline:s=1920x100[vs]; [vcqt][vs]overlay=y=H-100[v]" -map "[v]" -map "0:a" -c:a aac "mv_20230803.mp4"

Flow - Blender Animated Feature Film

As many in the Blender world will know by know, Flow - a Latvian animated film created by a small team in Blender, and rendered using Eevee just won this year's Oscar for Best Animated Film!

Woah! What a moment! The first Blender animated Best Animated Feature award winner! WOW!  😱🤯😍🥳

A *VERY* big congratulations to all the team who worked on this!!! A very well deserved win!

Introducing... "WhioDoc" (formerly "Quack!" / "QuackDoc")

I guess this weekend can be considered somewhat successful on the projects front (even though I only really got around to 1 of the 3 projects I'd wanted to work on, though it *was* the most important one I wanted to knock off too)

Following a few sessions of toil, I have successfully put up an initial attempt at formalising all the conventions I've been using for writing inline code docs for all my projects over the years!

While there are still a few small loose ends to tack on, at least I can finally point to this thing and say: Here's the spec!

(And eventually: "Here's all the docs-compiler tools + editor plugins everyone asks for these days")

 

https://github.com/Aligorith/quackdoc

https://github.com/Aligorith/whiodoc

 

Reflections on my time working with Lilypond

Recently, I saw a post from a music student mentioning that they were thinking of writing up some stuff on the techniques they'd learned while using GNU Lilypond - i.e. a LaTeX-like "music typesetter" with its own custom input/programming language (doused / polluted with a heavy dose of Guile-Scheme).

This post gathers up some of my own notes on my own journey with these tools, and how this has tied into where I am today. Come to think of it, this year actually marks something like "just over two decades ago" that I was doing this shit (since IIRC, I probably started doing all this back in 2004!) - jeez... time flies and makes you feel old when put like that!

C17 Landing at NZCH - 2025 02 24

Here are bunch of heavily-edited snaps from the C17 (8202) landing at NZCH earlier this week that I quite like.

I really love the combination of dramatic lighting, tyre smoke, and the funny look on the faces of those sheep - especially on that second one!

Had to heavily edit to improve colour + contrast - mainly to just bring out a bit more colour from all the washed-out / desaturated light and dark areas (which were a consequence of shooting into the sun near sunset... granted, the lighting would conventionally be better considered "better" from the other side, but the roads on that side are scary, and you wouldn't get to see the smoke backlit like this either!)

Nike Eskilstuna Drafting Table

Earlier this evening, I came across the following video on Facebook of a 1950's vintage architect's drafting desk - apparently manufactured by "Nike Eskilstuna" from Sweden.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2626640980856219

 

Wow! This is so freaking awesome! TBH, if I had the floorspace, I'd probably get one for my office-space / living room, especially if I got hold of one with wheels for easier moving! 😍

Rant About Office Chair Sizing

Sigh... it's looking increasingly like I'm going to have to give up on this new office chair after all, after using it in anger for a few days with an adjustable desk that I can try to work around its height-limitations with.

The problem is that it is ultimately way too low for me.

So, just as it was 3 months ago, I'm back to square one in my search for my next long-term office chair it seems.

 

Trip Down Memory Lane + Resurrecting An Old Project

I know it's technically a "work night", but I just went through my drawer trying to dig out my ancient mockups for a project I've recently revived.

I had originally built it as a thing for Dad to use for outreach activities - Back in the day (i.e. back in 2009, from the comments in the source code I've been porting between machines), I'd managed to get the core engine running, but ultimately ran out of time (+ also, a suitable distribution tech stack back in the day), so had ultimately abandoned that project.

Anyway, recently I've been resurrecting it as a motivating toy app to play with Haxe + HaxeUI. 

 

* This seemed like the perfect project for learning this stack + playing around with it. It was a relatively simple + straightforward little piece of tech that is small enough to be easily implementable / portable (i.e. within constraints of what I can safely manage energy-wise + time-wise on top of long days of fulltime 9-5 weekday job commitments). 

* It was also an almost perfect case for this tech stack (i.e. the HTML5 deployment option is particularly attractive for someone who has never been able to get CSS layouts + Javascript coding to really sit well with my worldview).

 

In other words, this was the PERFECT type of small toy project to tinker around with during the evenings now, as I try to re-establish a small pipeline for me to get a bunch of small fun projects done for myself, where I have full + complete control over every aspect. No questions asked. No input from third parties accepted or needed. 100% owned by me, and for the sole purpose of me having a creative outlet to do fun stuff for myself.

Canon R5 - One Year On Review

Yesterday (or actually two days ago now, if I end up finishing writing this post tonight) marked a year since I got an R5 as the successor for my 7D. Its funny how, earlier this evening, I'd been wondering: "Hah... I wonder what day exactly it was that I got my new camera last new year... I'm sure it was around this time of year-ish"

This is a follow-up to my earlier posts a week in, and a few months in. 

Key Points:

* Overall, I ended up filling 2x 256GBmemory cards (give or take) this year with this camera - Which also means, I've quickly burned through half a TB of disk storage (vs under/around 150 GB a year previously)... More on this in a bit

* By and large, it has now ended up becoming my daily driver. While initially it was just to get used to it under different lighting conditions, later the increased image quality + better performance in a wide range of lighting conditions was a major drawcard.

* I've been on two multi-day trips with this camera now, so can say quite a bit more about how it handles for such usage

* In terms of battery life - I've got a total of 3 batteries, though in practice, I've only really needed 2 (with the third coming into its on those occasions where I'm too lazy to charge the one in use (and forgot to charge the other one, which had gone flat a while earlier). For typical cycles, they usually average around 400-600 (centered around 550 ish), though sometimes that figure can be as high as 1100 - 1300. Lowest would've been around 250 - 300 ish.

* The improved light gathering capabilities have really come in handy with the increased major Aurora storms this past year, meaning that I've been able to see + capture Aurorae for the first time in my life

Observations on Grading Assignments (and Parallels with Screening CV's)

Earlier I came across an article discussing the findings of an interesting study (i.e. https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-last-name-skew-grades/) where the authors claimed to have detected evidence of a systematic bias against students whose surnames fall later in the alphabet than those whose surnames appeared earlier (when assignments / exams get presented to the marker in alphabetical order, due to the increased used of Learning Management Systems that commonly sort in alphabetical order by default).  

TBH, anyone who has spent enough time grading large sets of assignments (*) can probably explain why:

The first time you see a particular mistake / class of stupidity, you do tend to react kinder to it. But by the nth time, it really starts to grate...

 

A similar thing applies when screening through CV's and applications for a position:

The first time you see some new-grad / early career applicant mention doing an internship or something with some name-brand company, it does sound pretty impressive. However, if they have the misfortune of also applying for the same position along with a bunch of other new-grads who also took part in that same internship / etc., this now starts to count against *all* of them (i.e. "meh... it was maybe just a class assignment / group project type situation, where all the interns were held in an sandpit and given some kind of toy / training exercise")

[Firefox Tip] Useful Shortcut for Checking on What's Going Bad (Memory / CPU Usage)

Just learned of a useful tip for current versions of Firefox to bring up the "about:processes" page (that shows memory + CPU usage of various pages + extensions)

It turns out you can use the "Shift-Esc" hotkey to quickly activate it 

Noting this here so I can find it more easily for myself in the future

Thanks @carey@mastodon.nz for the tip!

Thoughts on Teaching Human-Computer Interaction University-Level Courses

Those who've followed me on various other platforms will probably have heard bits of this spiel before, maybe worded slightly differently in each instance, but ultimately discussing the same ideas / talking points. So I thought it'd be good to write up a canonical version once and for all - especially since it's unlikely that I'll end up doing this anytime soon anyway  (i.e. never say never, but at least for the foreseeable future in the next 3-5/10 years, I'm honestly not really that interested in a return to academia or teaching).

Key Points:

1) I've seen things. Perhaps a whole lot more than most people get the chance to see, and with a bunch of variables controlled for (or at least held somewhat constant).

2) From my observations, left to their own devices, the majority of students gravitate towards doing certain things that, left uncorrected / undiscovered (until too late usually) practically mean they probably don't learn half the lessons they probably really ought to  (i.e. From my perspective, they practically learned nothing (beyond maybe picking up some new trivia that'll be gone soon after the final exam) and just tried to get an easy pass on a course they may have thought was one of the "easier" ones they may be required to take).  At least IMO.

3) "UCAPT" - A useful mnemonic I developed during my time doing this, which I adopted for evaluating student's work (+ and also later in my own practice) to check if all the necessary things have been accounted for.

The Quest for a Replacement Office Chair - Part 1

For the nth time in as many years, I've recently been hunting for a new office chair for my home office setup.  Unfortunately, every time I go for another round, the options seem to have gotten way worse than the previous round!

To put everything in context, here is my list of (seemingly impossible to satisfy in the current market) requirements:

  a) I want something with an "executive chair" type high-back form factor with sufficient base + back padding 

     (i.e. It should be suitable for someone about 6 foot 1-2'' tall to comfortably sit/slump on it for hours (i.e. no sore back or butt, and head able to easily reach the headrest without having to lean/snap backwards to do so), and also allow me to easily + freely sleep / recline on it via the "butterfly tilt" mechanism - where the whole L-shaped seat tilts back instead of just the back)

  b) It should NOT be made out of fucking "PU Leather" (as I'd have the same problem again in 2-3 years, with yet more bulky trash to find a way to dispose of, along with having to deal with all the flaky mess in the meantime)

    TBH, I don't care now whether it's real leather or fabric. But this fake plasticy leather alternative is definitely out (and I strongly urge you to avoid these too for ANY products you may be considering getting)

  c) Needs to have a gas cylinder that would put the seat at at-least 50cm (and would have weight rating to sustain that, to not degrade over time). 

     It seems that pretty much all newer seats are NOT being made with suitable ones  (either they are too low - i.e. usual situation;  OR  they are don't have their weigh capacity I'd like to have a safety margin on it failing and repeatedly sinking below a usable height)

     Also, I'll get onto this later, but WHY is it that they don't make recliner chairs that sit MUCH higher off the ground?!   (It is a serious mystery why so much of the world is built + designed for mystical MIDGETS! Gah!)

  d) I want *long* padded armrests at decent/adjustable height + a headrest (suitably positioned high up and forward-facing) that I can easily reach it when leaning back for a nap

  e) Does not give me back pain after sitting on it - either just a < 5 minutes trial, or after sitting on it doing work for a ~10 minutes

  f)  It should be built to last (i.e. should be able to take daily punishment for >= 10 years) vs failing in 2 years

  g) For bonus points, it should come fully assembled (vs trying to mate bottom-back cushions and arm rests together... ugh! The last three I've build were physically-taxing *hell* on that front)

 

At least in my corner of the world, a chair matching ALL of these requirements does NOT exist on the market today. I know, as I've gone through the various shops trying all the ones they have on offer.  (There were a few others seemingly matching a good subset of these that I've been interested in trying, but no one *ever* seems to have them on display - in a few cases, they actually left the showrooms like the day before I got there)

Getting Old and Realising that Some Projects *Do* Fall into the "Too Hard" Basket...

Every time I see the mass of multicolored cable bundles behind the dashboards of cars and planes, and also the trouble that folks go to to not only access those areas to begin with (i.e. pretzel sausage origami, plus effectively dismantling the whole interior - stripping away panels / etc.), but to then make tweaks +  fixes (i.e. tracing what each cable does and where it goes, etc.), I'm glad I decided to stay away from DIY-ing any stuff like that OR working in fields that do it.

 

The SWE part of me wonders why they don't just like simplify everything to like aggregate all the cables into bigger feeder boxes for each subsystem that then only export a single cable that goes to a central thing that delegates throughout the rest of the systems... then you'd maybe only have ~5 (?) fat cables to deal with?

Then again, if they did that, that removes a lot of the redundancy and systems isolation (i.e. single direct circuits!) we kindof expect safety critical systems to have 😬

 

On Outsourcing, Delegation, Code Review + Mentoring of Juniors, and Alternative Paths Not Taken

This started as a series of response to a thread discussing Boeing's disasterous decision to outsource the coding of their firmware "to the lowest bidder", with the thread starter originally claiming that "you still have to spec and test" the outputs of those outsourced workers. In general I agree that, the senior folk who were responsible for writing the specs that the code followed (AND most likely should also be responsible for testing/verifying that the obtained results were fit for integration into the codebase)  *SHOULD* bear some responsibility for ensuring that the work done is up to required standards. However, I'd also like to point out that in many ways, this way of working is in many ways much harder for everyone involved, so the blame-torch shouldn't be aimed at these folks dropping the ball (save for complete systemic dereliction of duty). My own mini-thread of response follow (inlined together + tweaked to follow read a bit better).

2024 Recap

Happy New Year!  Time for a brief recap of 2024 I guess.

Main Highlights

* Trips to Mt Cook, Sydney, and Wellington

* First full year at work supporting the important operational system we're responsible for (and getting it stable / fixing all the major-ish quirks that popped up after it launched in late October 2023)

* Taking the plunge and getting a new camera setup (Canon R5 - Mirrorless) after years of using my trusty Canon 7D

* Capturing multiple Auroras, after years of trying unsuccessfully

* Starting a mini collection of my favourite aircraft as detailed diecast models at 1:200 scale (i.e. Emirates A380 + Cathay Pacific 747 in old "green-white-stripe" livery)

* Finally getting a heatpump for my main home-office  (hot room days be gone!)

* Hosting visitors a few days ago + reconnecting with a bunch of old friends

* Returning to actively posting longer-form posts on here (after a few years away mostly posting on Twitter) 

   * I'm still trying to figure out some plans for migrating off this platform onto a more stable / sustainable solution under my own control...

 

Firsts

* Spending time actually exploring the Mt Cook national park  

* First overseas trip post-COVID 

   * And, actually, having this happen after actually contracting COVID for the first time - probably at a local healthcare facility

* Flying in Premium Economy - especially on an A380 flying out of my home airport - that I paid for myself.

* Visiting the Blue Mountains + various other Sydney locations

* Seeing + Photographing an Aurora for myself... and from my back yard at that!  Then getting to do so again multiple times again during the year!

* Capturing a kookaburra + pelicans + "garbage bird" in Sydney