@aligorith@mastodon.nz

Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Aug 01, 2026

Hah... turns out the Spirit of Douglas DC3 was flying around this afternoon again. I thought I had heard something like it when leaving Briscoes this afternoon, but then brushed it off as the SUV rolling past at that moment 😅

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 31, 2026

You know, I still can't believe that FIFA's current chief is literally called: "Infantino"

Which, as any non-Italian speaker would surmise is how you'd "Italianise" the word: "Infant-like", or more directly, "Infantile"

Then again... we did name a government department "Oranga Tamariki" for many years here... which TBH I can't help but think of as a crude hodge-podge slur against old Drumpy (i.e. as in "Orange Children" descended from "Oompa Loompas") everytime I hear that name 😜

So, we literally have an Infantile CEO going around handing gold trophies to "The Orange Toddler" 🙄

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 31, 2026

Replying to @aligorith@mastodon.nz

#JukeboxFridayNight #Waiting On that note, here's one that many kiwi's will be familiar with when put "on hold" when trying to call customer support somewhere LOL (Maybe I should really put a content warning on this one as a result 😜) OpShop - One Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uausmg7Ls-g

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 31, 2026

#JukeboxFridayNight #Waiting Several different songs titled "Waiting" (or variations on waiting) from the same artist. (Honestly, I usually just think of the first one though) --- [1] IU - "Waiting" cover from The Producers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpt0SMtRmWs [2] IU - "Waiting" from Dream High https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EhGA72gmcA [3] IU - "Wait" from "Modern Times" album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i9ZhJJufiM (This one is interesting in the extended instrumental intro for over a minute or so, before the vocals kick in... gives it an interesting meta "phone-hold / elevator music" type vibe 😂 - In general, not really stuff I typically listen to, but something rather different for a change nevertheless)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 31, 2026

Here comes a strong wind blast, and what looks like a murky gray cloud layer!

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 30, 2026

Replying to @ottaross@mastodon.social

@ottaross@mastodon.social A "cat" you say? With that photo, I'm really not sure if I'm looking at a "cat" or a "black and white mammal with a distinctive love bombing / defensive mechanism" LOL 🤢☢️

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 29, 2026

Had to pop into the office to do some testing today (I usually don't come in on Wednesdays)

* 1) The room is boiling hot - the folks in the office today don't usually sit by the windows, so didn't bother putting down the shades, AND have only turned on a single aircon unit.

* 2) Ops had another crash (in the time I spent getting in), with a rather exotic presentation (I.e. a "window not responding" popup that is usually only seen on Windows, and *never* before on our Linux systems) 🤯

Gah... this week keeps giving! 🙄

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 27, 2026

Replying to @aligorith@mastodon.nz

Hearing that "quordle quordle quordle quordle" call made me immediately think of this old poem: Denis Glover - The Magpies https://allpoetry.com/The-Magpies

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 27, 2026

Woah! That's the first time I've heard a magpie in our garden! 😱

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 27, 2026

You know, the type (*) where you sign in for the day/week, and straight off the bat have a "not so great" looking defect to investigate from the weekend...

Only to then roll straight into investigating defect number 2 (that crops up just when finish analysing number 1)

But oh wait... number 3 rolls in mid morning too! (Before you've now finished writing up a ticket for fixing the first one!)

Then somehow, several hours have passed by (from the back and forth of everyone trying to narrow down number 3, in between looking at number 2), and then all of a sudden it's 5:30, and you can finally write up number 1...

Yeah... it's definitely "not ideal" when your original plan for the week was: "Try to finish off that tricky thing from last week, that you got bogged down on last week..." (especially, when it turns out that some of the complications now actually tie into Defect 1 😜)

(*) We have these once every other month... or maybe once every few months... It's not always this bad (i.e. we *do* have quiet weeks, when not much gets in your way), but days like these do sometimes crop up 😅

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 27, 2026

Replying to @nzdjb@cloudisland.nz

@nzdjb@cloudisland.nz Noted. Guess I should file away, "It's not ideal" either 😅

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 27, 2026

Replying to @futuresprog@mastodon.nzoss.nz

@futuresprog@mastodon.nzoss.nz Indeed. As soon as that "packaged here, but of imported ingredients" gets slapped on, they literally give themselves the license to import random crap from anywhere - AND they would still be justified in saying that the label was technically still correct in what nonsense it was spewing. If we cannot force them to produce in NZ, we should at least force them to have to explicitly state the countries of origin of *every* ingredient they say is imported. (e.g. A particularly evil variant I've seen is: "Made in NZ from local and imported ingredients" - WTF?! Are the *key ingredients* still NZ produce, or have they just gone "imported produce + NZ water to top it off"? 😡)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 27, 2026

On that note, have you taken a good look at the country of origin of stuff you're regularly buying?

We've been recently very surprised to find that:
* Sunrice (Australia) now import from Thailand + India only IIRC

* Practically all cooking oil now comes from Malaysia... But god knows if some of that actually secretly comes from China now! (For record, China had scandals involving "recycled" cooking oil scraped from filthy back alleys... and/or other ones involving cooking oil transported in petroloum tankers!!!)

* Equally disturbing is how we're increasingly having no local garlic across increasingly many months (I.e. used to be only summer, but now winter too), with only the Chinese produced ones (looking way too artifically uniform)/beyond stocked!

* Oh, and Nashi pears have long ended up being mostly China only too, despite us previously having some local supply (oh, and the supermarkets often mislabel these!)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 27, 2026

What other brands does the multinational conglomerate owner of Heinz Watties own?

Perhaps it's time to slap that corporate behamoth with punitive tariffs and fines on its other non-NZ produced brands it is selling here, in response to its "rationalising" of its production facilities to only include those from outside NZ, while continuing to ship externally produced stuff here 😜

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 27, 2026

Woah.... the office apparently has only 21% humidity today / currently. It had been sitting around 30% all of last week, going as high as 32 and as low as 29. (It used to be up around 40-50% a few months ago)

For reference, my room at home had 47% after keeping the heatpump on all night long too, after usually being in the 55-64% range. (Heck, the one in my other house usually shows 63%, but I discovered that the cold has done in that one's battery, so I didn't know how cold exactly it was in there yesterday after the -4 nights!)

😳

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 26, 2026

Replying to @aligorith@mastodon.nz

Heck, I had been intending to get cracking with one last batch of fun hacking for the weekend, that I had held off from doing before I headed out earlier... Now, I'm still nursing a bit of a "cold weather exposure" headache... ugh 🤕 (Granted, it was my fault for doing an extended photowalk for about 2-3 blocks in this cold weather, going from Riverside Market all the way down to and around the Harley Chambers building being demolished, before coming back and spotting a neat powerbox painted with Disney style squirrels!)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 26, 2026

Reposting this from something a friend shared from evil network. Can concur with that assessment!

Image:
"Unofficial NZ Forecast" - Shows "COLD AF" everywhere... except for those banana farmers up at the very tippy top 😜

(I assume they're all the way up there, and not slightly down from there, right?)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 21, 2026

Dad just texted to say that this morning (right now actually) marks 40 years since they've been living here in NZ! 🥳 They moved here with literally just a suitcase and very little in savings, so that Dad could take up his job as an academic at the University of Canterbury, where he is still working today! (IIRC, apparently, they were offering a tenured position with citizenship, which made this the favoured option over taking up a similar position in St Louis (?))

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 19, 2026

Had a very productive trip to the Mitre10's garden centre today LOL:

* Got a replacement "Little John Bottlebrush" for the one that *DIED* this autumn as a result of the interminable roadworks outside our house making it hard to return home to tend to the garden for a good 2 months (after spending the first month enduring the shit)...

Therefore, I'm officially putting this on the tab of debt owed by the blasted roadworks company (on top of all the extra petrol costs incurred during the oil crisis spike from having to move out). 😜️

* Finally found some replacements for the "Ring a Ding Ding" Correa that I got from them a few years ago... that thing lasted barely a month! Will see if I manage to keep these alive for longer this time...

* Got some new "potting bags" as i've run out of those....

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 17, 2026

Replying to @curiousjay@mastodon.nz

@curiousjay@mastodon.nz Already?! Jeez... need to keep an eye out for what happens here then

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 05, 2026

Wow! Someone has finally figured out one dialect of bird language - i.e. the one used by Zebra Finches (i.e. "Honky Honky"... not to be confused with "Big Honk" used by geese and other large waterfowl) [1] A news article mentioning this https://www.freepressjournal.in/education/breaking-the-bird-barrier-scientist-decodes-zebra-finch-language [2] The original paper https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads8482

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 03, 2026

Replying to @aligorith@mastodon.nz

Of course, Yip Lai Yee is famous for her "Shanghai Bund" theme song... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Npu0LGn-kKA

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Jul 03, 2026

Well, that was unexpected!

After nodding off after an early start this morning, I staggered out to find the oldies were blasting a Yip Lai Yee concert from 2003.

The last time I saw her in concert was over 20 years ago: Well it had to be, as Grandma was still alive (i.e. she died 20 years ago this September), and it was the one time that she (of really any HK singer of note) came and gave a concert in the Christchurch Town Hall!

When exactly this was I can't remember though 😅

What I do remember:

Apparently this was very memorable event for Grandma
We went to the old "Boaters" restaurant in the town hall for our preshow dinner, which was run by CPIT hospitality students back in the day

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 17, 2026

Replying to @ErrolNZ@mastodon.nz

@ErrolNZ@mastodon.nz Ouch! Sounds like you're getting a real traffic-jam tiki tour of the medical system! Best wishes for a speedy resolution!

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 14, 2026

Replying to @bluewave_kiwi@mastodon.nz

@bluewave_kiwi@mastodon.nz @BobLefridge@mastodon.nz By and large, I agree... However, on the other hand, there is some substance to Act's claim of certain "relatively useless" professions seeing an influx of immigrants - namely, the sudden proliferation of "beauty therapists" (in the form of nail salons in particular) and "bubble tea shops" that have been popping up like wildfire all over town recently. (That said, I do prefer that these go up vs yet more Vape stores, if I had to choose one)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 13, 2026

Replying to @NZChineseGenealogy@mastodon.nz

@NZChineseGenealogy@mastodon.nz Hang on, is she the one behind that clip about Melbourne being effectively filled with Chinese speakers only now? 😂

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 07, 2026

Replying to @ErrolNZ@mastodon.nz

@ErrolNZ@mastodon.nz Heck, seeing a bunch of the "cheaper" helis in person recently (i.e. things like to Robinsons and the Calibri's), I was very surprised how *small* they are! Heck, looking at them, I wondered whether I could actually fit inside one or not (probably not... Even disregarding weight and balance restrictions, which would likely be a whole other world of pain LOL)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 07, 2026

Replying to @ErrolNZ@mastodon.nz

@ErrolNZ@mastodon.nz I always felt that some of those felt really flimsy, like a piece of junk someone bolted together in their shed! Then again, I guess for a utilitarian military craft, you do kinda want to minimise unneeded heft and/or don't really need to "make it look nice" 😜

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 07, 2026

Replying to @Xas@mastodon.nz

@Xas@mastodon.nz Interesting! I've been keen to try one myself since seeing the ads pop up Might have to go find one...

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 06, 2026

Replying to @nzJayZee@mastodon.nz

@nzJayZee@mastodon.nz @ygathgoch@cloudisland.nz

Reminds me - Things I've tried that didnt go well:

Cross stiching a little scene of penguins IIRC. Never did get around to finish it! I only got a few steps in, as it took ages. Can't remember why I stopped, other than it taking way too long, and maybe getting injured from pulling the needle and thread in and out so many times!
Making a fluffy cat plushie from a kitset I got at that old teddy bear store on the ground floor of the blue building on the corner facing Oxford on the Avon + Victoria Square. IIRC, the problem was that that used a grey "fur cloth" that may have shed a few too many fibres everywhere - So, after barely getting the first steps done (ie. Cutting out the front and back sides from the fur using the templates) I had to give it up as I kept having nose bleeds everytime I opened up the bag! Otherwise, it would in theory have made a very cute grey persian!

Things I haven't tried but am curious about:

Knitting and crochet - Not really things many dudes do TBH, but given that grandma used to always do this when I was a kid, AND she was apparently really good at it too, I am admittedly curious if I have inherited some of that talent 😜

Something tells me it should feel very similar to the feeling you get writing assembly/machine oppose sequences - i.e. There's a "manual yet rhythmic feel" to it once you get into a groove

(I am admittedly early good still at threading up needles and sewing machines - even after not doing it for decades!)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 03, 2026

Replying to @jernej__s@infosec.exchange

@jernej__s @tj The problem though is that as the thumb starts getting smaller, it becomes harder to hit it to drag. Then you're annoyed that you first have to make a big movement over to the scrollbar, and then also all that muscle tension trying to hold down your pointing device and carefully drag that thing. IME, it's way faster and less annoying really to just click in the rough zone you need, then drag up and down (preferably with some of those control gain ladders with indicators - e.g. see some Houdini demo videos where they're playing with the sliders). Experiencing a scrollbar like this is what changed my mind about them a lot I gotta admit It went from: "why do we have these big bulky things", to, "oh, that's like a little visualization of my viewing area relative to the whole space".

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 03, 2026

Replying to @HunterZ@mastodon.sdf.org

@HunterZ @tj Perhaps unfairly, I'm gonna blame Apple for this one 😜 Sadly, large swathes of the UI design folks are acolytes of whatever Apple cooks up as being "The New Fashionable Thing (TM)", and all jump on that bandwagon readily. So, even if they didn't entirely kick this off, they certainly would've inspired a good few folks down the path...

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 03, 2026

Replying to @tj@howse.social

@tj I'd argue this applies not only to web developers (who keep trying to hide them outright), but also all OS designers who keep working harder and harder and harder to make them all but invisible + unusable! 🤬

Among other annoyances in this category are:

Scrollbars that are often now too thin to even aim at, which is made worse by
Scrollbars that are not visible by default, and will disappear mere seconds after the most recent scrolling interaction ends
And even when they are visible + not too thin, they are configured to be very low contrast + translucent...

Having lived through the 90's / early 2000's ugly grey MS Windows type scrollbars, I can understand why a lot of people are scarred from that experience.

But IMO, most designers took the wrong lessons from those. Key things we should've done different:

Changed from "click to go up/down a page" (i.e. mostly pointless) to opening up "click anywhere to scroll there" (which is what a few enlightened designs do)
Instead of making them smaller and smaller and less visible, we should've tackled instead the problem that they were no offering enough value, and instead leaned in hard on covering them in clickable markers (with optional additional details) to jump to useful landmarks

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 02, 2026

Replying to @willhbr@ruby.social

@willhbr@ruby.social I guess they trained it more on my writings than those of traditional books then 😜 Have increasingly found that italics mostly just dont stand out enough in most cases thse days. That may partly be a font choice thing

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 02, 2026

Replying to @kferrand@mastodon.nz

@kferrand@mastodon.nz I think it was more that the steps felt very shallow depth-wise, so you could only really shove half a foot in before stubbing your toes, which made it more worrying when needing to step sideways from the handrail towards a row of seats But certainly, that first level where the wheelchair seats are seem "perfect" for folks like me / my folks I particularly liked how you reach the concourse, and then go:, "Oh, the action's right there!"... Then, you take a few steps forward, and all of a sudden, you get this "opening up" feeling as you step out from under the balcony... But I reckon, the best seats would be if they just opened up those corner access tunnels, and let people walk straight in via those 😜

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · May 02, 2026

Replying to @kferrand@mastodon.nz

@kferrand@mastodon.nz Went to have a look too (as did much of Chch it seems) 😂 Didn't make it down to "The Pad" / "The Gap" (oh.. so that's what it looks like from there!), but did give the steep upper seats climb a go (*). (*) I didn't get to the very top though. I figured I didn't want to get all the way up there, figure out that I'd have a hard time getting back down only after getting there, and then be stuck up there)... so, only went halfway, got wobbly knees, sat down for a while, then turned around and headed straight back down! Is definitely easy going down than up I reckon.

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 30, 2026

Replying to @cousinsd@mastodon.nz

@cousinsd@mastodon.nz Hang on... just scrolled back to see your flu + covid booster post

Yeah, that's probably your immune system doing weird shit. In other words, if you got a flu or covid for real, you'd probably feel the same thing too (e.g. for me, it's my right knee going off, from that time I landed heavily on it on that Milford Sound tour day)

Other examples:

In the past 2 years, 2 different colleagues have been wiped out by the flu vaccines
Mum and I were also completely wiped out by our 3-4th or was it 4th-5th covid boosters (you know, raging fever, chills, full body pains, debilitating fatigue, etc.) - for a good 48hrs, starting about 10pm following a 2:30 jab. Really horrid stuff...

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 30, 2026

Replying to @ojala@mastodon.nz

@ojala A most sensible outcome! Sadly, we have to waste all that time and effort to go through the due process of letting him have his day in court, along with giving him the chance to address someone outside the prison walls! 😡

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @fboldog@mstdn.social

@fboldog@mstdn.social @pluralistic@mamot.fr Dunno why, but somehow I looked at that Hungarian translation and somehow read: "A nasty case of escargot hemorrhoids" 🤣

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 26, 2026

Replying to @kferrand@mastodon.nz

@kferrand@mastodon.nz Yay! I've encountered a bunch there over the years (usually near the Riccarton Ave carpark entrance in the trees near the Azalias). Also a few bellbirds too (near the "Rose" sign for the rose garden), and of course fantails... lots of fantails! But Silvereyes... I haven't actually snapped any there actually! (*) Any day you manage to get a bird on camera is good. Better yet when they are in flight, and somewhat recognisable still. (Of course, it's nice when they are in focus... but even when not, it's still cool to see)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @aligorith@mastodon.nz

Oh, and a word about some of the motorists tonight:

There was one jeep-like vehicle, who was violently zig-zagging across the center line in a hurry, trying to find the parking lot they were looking for. They did this right outside the Central Police Station FFS! 🙄
Half a block earlier, we watched a SUV circumvent the line of cones preventing driving into Lichfield St heading east (i.e. the stretch where The Crossing Carpark is), clipping and driving over that first one!
There were a few other vehicles out there that were driving a bit erratically

Sheesh! 😬

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @aligorith@mastodon.nz

Also, dunno if it was just that tonight is Anzac day, but:

"Lots" of Chinese Restaurants were closed tonight (e.g. in particular Joyful, Little Spicy, Shanghai Bistro).
Joyful in particular was weird: All the lights were on, the kitchen exhaust fans were running full bore, the manager was there doing stuff, and there were 2 tables of people inside! BUT... the sign on the door said they were closed!

There was no notice that they were closed today / tonight though... Am almost wondering if someone played a cruel trick on them, and flipped their sign. (OR, some of the employees were disgruntled at having to work... OR, just that someone forgot to check on the sign!)

In any case, it was suspiciously quiet there tonight!

The other 2 I mentioned were all darkened
Various other places were open though. Kind of busy too...

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 25, 2026

Tried to pop downtown after dinner to check out what it was like tonight with the stadium in action. Some firsthand findings:

* 1) If this first weekend's traffic management plans are indicative of the future traffic management for this venue, then:
a) Madras St (running right in front of it) is *CLOSED* to traffic 1-2 blocks either side of the thing (i.e. starting St Asaph, and up till the one in front of the Cardboard Cathedral I think (but cannot confirm))

b) All the streets from Manchester St eastwards, along those same lines are also closed. You'll likely have only walking options from the Bus Exchange all the way down there, past all the bars + restaurants in that region whose time to shine + reap have finally come.

c) Those parking buildings in that area? Yeah, I highly doubt that anyone's getting in or out of those!

d) Taxis / Ubers? Look like they are diverted to Tuam (outside Alice's), before the "SOHO" (?) area... UNLESS they are all going on Barbados instead?

* 2) You know those aerial shots from outside? Yeah, I reckon those are probably from a small fixed-wing plane (ZKTIE - a Cessna 152), and not a helicopter / drone 😜

EDIT: Edited to include a small selection of images from around there

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 25, 2026

Based on my experiences today, I'd like to offer the following feature requests to Linux install tool partition editor UI devs:

1) If you have to use MiB, just give us an alternative units drop down for MB (defaulting to MB), and do the necessary calculations / conversions under the hood

2) It's high time to add the option to do a "Standard multi-partition install" equivalent of the "Erase Disk (and create single partition install)". This would essentially ensure you have separate root and home directories (*), with swap + anything else needed all getting auto included too. All of these would be set to default sizes relative to the available disk space, that can then be tweaked as desired (ie mainly OS vs Home dir split).

(*) In this day and age, that would seem a sensible default choice, given how many OS's need reinstalling every few years anyway, whereas your personal files are often a lot more persistent (i.e. you really don't want to have to keep restoring those from backups all the time)

3) Lower priority, but could we also get the option to reorder partitions we're newly creating / don't exist yet. Makes it easier to figure out how much space we can play with?

#Linux #UX

mastodon.nz

Mastodon NZ

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 24, 2026

Yay! My laptop is finally booting from it's SSD from Linux (instead of the live usb only)! 🥳

This has taken about 3 install attempts:
1) First one I made the mistake of trying to set up a manual GPT setup on what was apparently a legacy BIOS that could only support MBR and MBR only (presumably... or I stuffed it up, and only after wasting *ages* grovelling over the partition sizes in MiB vs MB/GB)

2) Second time, I tried doing a MBR one with multiple partitions again. This time sticking the root one first. Again that failed. (Or maybe I still did stick in a "bios-grub" one at the start, which is again where it fell down)... Should I ave mounted that as "/boot" to get it to work? Or selected something else?

3) This last time, I gave up and just let it use the "Erase Disk" option, which generated a single partition (ugh... I do want my homedir separate from the OS stuff!). That finally worked.

Then I just had to copy the ".config" and a bunch of other data dirs from the liveusb config I'd set up, *AND REBOOT* after that to seemingly get back the config I'd set up there...

At this point, I may just leave it at this, until trying to reinstall the LTS over the top after checking it works stably for my machines... But still, 1/3 "current" Windows machines is now converted now!

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 24, 2026

Oh... so it seems Israel's militant war monger in chief had / has cancer! No wonder he's been going all in on doing all the bad stuff ASAP 🙄

* If he succeeds, he dies one of the greatest leaders of his country

* If he fails and tosses the world into chaos, there's a good chance he wouldn't have to care about the consequences as he'd die first

Bastard!

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/netanyahu-hid-prostate-cancer-from-public-because-of-iran-war/46SDM4AIBVELBJ5VPT325JXOC4/

NZ Herald

Benjamin Netanyahu hid cancer diagnosis because of Iran war

The Israeli PM delayed revealing his condition to avoid it being used against Israel.

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 22, 2026

Replying to @aimee@mastodon.nz

@aimee@mastodon.nz What the?! Did their site get hacked, or did their domain expire or something?! Can't say I was ever too fond of having to use it (the few times that I did have to use it), but still! EDIT: Damn... it looks like a real legit pivot! 🤯

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 21, 2026

Replying to @mwt@mastodon.nz

@mwt Ugh... I hate it when folks in customer facing positions start getting into annoyingly burecratic "strict rule-adhering" and inflexible modes like that! 😡

Can safely say a bunch of those love the power trips they can go on doing it...

Heck, we encountered a pharmacist just last week like that.

On one hand the pharmacy had texted Mum to say she had repeat prescriptions ready to pick up.
On the other hand, it turned out these were only some of her prescriptions only (and as it turns out, the ones that Mum no longer wanted to pick up, as they weren't working so well)...
BUT the ones she did want they refused to hand out, as the pharmacist had already gotten on their high horse on to lecture us at length about them having doled out enough supply for now, and that we'd have to come back later. (Did I mention that they'd staged their counter so it looked like it was closed for the day at that point?)... Yeah... I kinda think it was something between "can't be assed doing more work for the day" and "rationing order slapped down from up high... bitchy mode engaged"

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 19, 2026

Replying to @colinburgess@mastodon.nz

@colinburgess@mastodon.nz Yeah... all this constant chasing of "double digit, constantly increasing GROWTH" at all costs to "satisfy the shareholders" is just crazy and unsustainable! So much of what's wrong in the world can be traced back to that! 🙄 Growing up with Hong Kong TV shows, you'd always here things talking about a marker of success being that your company "went on the stock market" (aka "got big enough" to do so) However, over the years, I've never really understood why on earth that matters or is even a good thing: 1) How does "stock price value" even translate to "money in bank" that can actually be spent exactly? What if they spend such money and then rhe price drops? 2) Once you're on the sharemarket, then your company is apparently constantly fair game for immoral greedy leeches / vultures whipping things up with the sole aim of easily gobbling all the shares in your company and doing hostile takeovers... 3) Companies that big just start getting WEIRD! And then the "rules" of that world then start demanding "quaterly" reports, and hence, all the evil stuff about profit number chasing Yeah nah... if the "market based" approach that is often espoused by capitalism's loudest cheerleaders as being "a good thing (TM)" equates to "everything must be sold at auction, under fierce bidding rules" then yeah... I don't really like or agree with that! (I don't agree with the govt owning everything either though)

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Joshua Leung @aligorith@mastodon.nz · Apr 18, 2026

Replying to @rogerparkinson@mastodon.nz

@rogerparkinson @chopsstephens @futuresprog @stephen Indeed. The first time I really read about how the various banking / finance / etc system actually worked, my system designer gut instinct kicked in, and I just immediately got that "this thing is inherently unstable / buggy / unreliable" feeling... 😬

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Joshua Leung

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