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Leon Mika
Software engineer in Melbourne, Australia.
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  • When all you have is wood, the one thing you are in want for is someone who has access to a fireplace.

    (In other words, I finally organised removal out the wood that has been in my yard since, well, this post)

    January 3, 2026 9:43am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Flies are annoying, and it’s hard to resist brushing them off when you see one on your clothes. But a static fly on clothing is one less fly buzzing around your face, so if it’s not on skin or irritating you, it’s always best to leave them where they are.

    January 3, 2026 8:27am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Making use of that animation package: test scene and interaction for something I’m putting together for my niece.

    January 2, 2026 9:54pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Videos

  • 🔗 Wikipedia: Rubber-tyred tram

    Some follow-up on my speculation of how this one-rail tram vehicle that I saw in Italy works. Turns out that the single rail is used for guiding the vehicle, and the one pantograph variant does use the rail for the return current. But there is a two trolly-poll variant that only uses the rail for guidance, and can disconnect from it to form a bog standard trolleybus. Bit weird to consider the rail at all at that point, but still quite intriguing.

    January 1, 2026 8:00pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Links

  • 2025 Retro

    January 1, 2026 5:51pm
    Reading Time: 3 minutes
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    No, not the good retro: the “agile” one. I felt that I didn’t have enough material for a comprehensive “year wrapped” post, but I did want to be a little reflective on what was . So it seemed fitting to use an approach favoured by software teams, where the points are brief, and the action items are never followed up. Keep Doing Public goal keeping: Documenting my goals, and when I achieve them, on this blog was a massive success. Continue reading →

  • Happy New Year. Let’s make this year a better one than the last.

    January 1, 2026 7:15am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • 🖼️ Gallery

    Rail Infrastructure Around Taradale

    December 31, 2025 5:33pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Photos

    Galleries

    Since I was in the area, I figured I’d take a quick detour to Taradale to check out some of the local rail infrastructure: the closed station and the viaduct. Here are some photos of both. Continue reading →

  • Enjoyed a nice walk at Trentham this morning. Good to get out of the house.

    A narrow path winds through a lush, green landscape flanked by tall grass and trees under a blue sky.A dirt pathway surrounded by tall trees and greenery extends into the distance under a clear blue sky.

    December 31, 2025 12:27pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Photos

  • Oh, to have the endless optimism of a pigeon hanging around outdoor cafe furnature.

    December 31, 2025 8:10am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • 📘 Devlog

    An API For a Keyframe Animation Package

    December 30, 2025 5:42pm
    Reading Time: 4 minutes
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Videos

    Devlog

    Golang

    A Go-based key-frame animator for Ebitengine projects was developed, emphasizing a clear API for animating float values with room for future enhancements. Continue reading →

  • 🔗 Steven P. Wickstrom: Over 300 words to use instead of SAID

    Filing this for later when I want to write some fiction (it could happen).

    Via: summeroakes.bsky.social on Bluesky

    December 30, 2025 8:52am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Links

  • Released version 1.4.0 of Postlist for Micro.blog. New feature is the ability to turn off summaries in favour of the post’s body when using content display mode. This is achievable with the added content-options parameter:

    {{< postlist display="content" content-options="no-summary" >}}
    
    December 29, 2025 11:27am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Releases

  • Listening to the latest ATP, it’s just killing me that the hosts are saying “iPhone XX” (as in “i-phone-ex-ex”) without considering that, given that the X in iPhone X refers to the Roman Numeral for 10, XX could refer to 20.

    December 28, 2025 5:43pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Achievement unlocked: setting up a CI/CD pipeline the builds a Go WASM project and deploys it to Netlify that worked first try.

    December 28, 2025 11:11am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Golang

  • Rendering Outlined Text in Ebitengine

    December 28, 2025 10:34am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Screenshots

    A method for rendering outlined text using the Ebitengine and the shapes package by creating a separate image for the text and applying an outline to it. Continue reading →

  • 🛠️ Textarea

    A minimalist text editor that lives entirely in your browser and stores everything in the URL hash.

    An interesting idea. Gave it a try and it seems to work. There’s more info about it on the Github repo.

    Via: Simon Willison

    December 28, 2025 8:49am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Tools

  • Just placed the exit on Level 3-2 on my Godot game. The level still needs prettying up but the critical path is now done. I’ll think this will be the last level I build. There’s still so much work to do: polishing, backdrops, menus, etc. But no more content. Kind of want to put a pin in this one.

    Auto-generated description: A 2D platformer game level with block structures, steps, and floating platforms.
    December 27, 2025 10:15am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Devlog

    Screenshots

  • 🔗 Simon Willison: How Rob Pike got spammed with an AI slop “act of kindness”

    Rob Pike (that Rob Pike) is furious […] Rob got a 100% AI-generated email credited to “Claude Opus 4.5 AI Village” thanking him for his contributions to computing. He did not appreciate the gesture.

    Got a lot of emotional swings while reading this: outrage that someone would use AI agents to send spam like this, understanding as to what actually happened, then distaste with those responsible in their belief that the time wasted receiving emails like this is an acceptable external cost.

    But really, the whole experiment seems irresponsible. I can understand the want to see what these models could do, but come on: don’t given them access to a computer open to the Internet without any supervision. Rob Pike, a notable computer scientist that would be known to all these models, is right to be outraged. I would be too if I received this sort of unsolicited slop.

    December 27, 2025 8:32am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Links

  • Dec 26 - Home

    #12days

    A small, brightly lit Christmas tree is set up in a dimly lit living room next to a couch and in front of closed curtains.
    December 26, 2025 9:01pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Photos

  • 🔗 Weird Medieval Guys: How birds got human names

    Magpies were originally known simply as “pies” until the nickname “Mag”, short for Maggie, short for Margaret was added to the front sometime in the Middle Ages. Before it began to be treated as a single word, it was rendered as “Mag Pie”, a sort of fanciful full name for the creature.

    Fascinating. This is, shall we say, the “money” quote of the linked post, but the rest is still quite an interesting read.

    December 26, 2025 7:51am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Links

  • So this is what Christmas in winter feels like. 🥶

    Auto-generated description: A weather forecast for Phillip Island shows possible showers with windy conditions and temperatures ranging from 14 to 18 degrees.
    December 25, 2025 7:29am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Screenshots

  • 2025 Song of the Year

    December 25, 2025 7:24am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Once again, a need to play something during Christmas Eve Mass has come around, so it’s time to elect 2025’s Song of the Year. No obvious song stood out this year, unlike 2023 and 2024. Looking back on what new music I listened to, it was mainly a lot of Enya and Lee Rosevere, with a bit of Anders Enger Jensen. Near the end of the year I also started listening to Jon Hopkins, in addition to one or two other artists featured in the “medleys” published on Music For Programming. Continue reading →

  • Dec 24 - Travel

    Taking the scenic route. #12days

    A driver's view from inside a car shows a rural road lined with trees at dusk or dawn.
    December 24, 2025 10:03pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Photos

  • Dec 23rd — Baking

    Ahhh! When I ordered this, I didn’t think it would be a whole loaf. It’s a little much for one person. #12days

    A sliced loaf of bread is placed on a black rectangular plate beside a wooden-handled knife on a wooden table.
    December 24, 2025 6:47pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Photos

  • TIL that you can make a call to someone, put them on hold, then start a second call to that same person, and the POTS network supports this without any issues. You can even merge the two calls, resulting in two active calls to the one recipient.

    December 23, 2025 9:05pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
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