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I think my recent pattern of constantly refreshing web-pages is going to inflate my internet bill, as I seek news updates on the Coronavirus and the US elections. #mbnov
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It’s puzzling but I’ve been finding myself having lunch earlier in the day than usual. I think it’s because I’ve joined a company that has their head office in Perth, which is 3 hours behind me at the moment, and the mornings are really quiet now. #mbnov
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It’s cold and wet today. The steps leading to my front door, which I think is called a stoop in the US, can be pretty slippery on days like this, so I’ll have to be a bit careful. #mbnov
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Passed by a kangaroo during my evening walk a couple of days ago. I was surprised by how unphased he seemed to be by my presence, given how near I was to him. #mbnov
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Tracking Down a Lost Album
Here’s a short story about my endeavours to find an album that seems to have disappeared from the face of the internet. I’m a bit of a sucker for original sound tracks, particularly instrumental ones. One that I remember being very good is the music from The Private Life of Plants, a documentary series from David Attenborough made in the mid 1990s. It was one of those sound tracks that occasionally popped into my mind, particularly when looking at lovely autumn leaves or other scenes from the show. Continue reading →
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The events of this year have been enough to astonish anyone. I can only speak for myself, but I’m hoping that I can get a break from feeling this way, at least for the next few weeks. #mbnov
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I’ve had some difficulty coming up with today’s Microblogvember post. I’m finding it hard to concentrate today, probably because it’s early morning and I haven’t had my second coffee yet. It doesn’t help that tomorrow is going to be a public holiday anyway. #mbnov
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📚 “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon. A great read and one of those books that can be read in a weekend (I read it in a day).
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October has felt rather dreary this year. I know people that find this quite dissatisfactory, and they have been yearning for the warm weather that starts occurring around this time. Personally, I prefer the cooler weather we have been experiencing. #mbnov
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Offical support for file embedding coming to Go
I’m excited to see, via Golang Weekly, that the official support for embedding static files in Go is being realised, with the final commit merged to the core a couple of days ago. This, along with the new file-system abstraction, will mean that it will be much easier to embed files in Go applications, and make use of them within the application itself. One of the features I like about coding is Go is that the build artefacts are statically linked executables that can be distributed without any additional dependencies. Continue reading →
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Advice to those working with annotations in Preview
For those of you using Preview in macOS for viewing an annotated PDF, if you need to move or delete the annotations in order to select the text, be sure to undo your changes prior to closing Preview. Otherwise your changes will be saved without asking you first.1 This just happened to me. I have a PDF annotated with edits made with the iPad pencil and I wanted to copy the actual text. Continue reading →
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Seeing the photos in this article of an empty airport, especially one I’m familiar with, is somewhat haunting.
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I’ve justed walked all the way to the shops before I realised I completely forgot my wallet. I didn’t come back with a coffee, but I did just setup Android Pay so that this will never happen again.
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Doughnut Day 2020
Good day today. From a high of 725 Covid-19 cases in August 25, Victoria has just had 24 hours of zero new cases and zero deaths. This is during a period of extensive testing in the north of the metropolitan, during a testing blitz in an attempt to contain an outbreak. Labs have been processing tests late into the night, with not a single one so far coming back positive. Continue reading →
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It’s coming to the point where I think I need a custom text entry control on all my devices that, when I try to post something, throws up a prompt saying “Are you absolutely sure what you’re about to post is right? Did you proofread it? Is the spelling correct? Please check!”
Case in point: it took me 2 edits to get this post right.
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Over the last few weeks, while Melbourne has been under lock-down to drive the Covid-19 cases down, the government has been ramping up it’s contact tracing infrastructure. It’s been quite flaky at the start but from what I hear now on Coronacast it’s in a pretty decent state. It has delt with outbreaks in both Kilmore and Shepparton, two regional cities here in Victoria.
Now the real test comes, with the potential of an outbreak at a school here in the north of Melbourne, a few days before restrictions are lifted. From what I’m reading, it looks like the testing and contact tracing infrastructure has moved in quite rapidly. The school has closed due to a precaution, popup testing sites have been deployed, and some 300 people have been told to self-isolate.
We’ll see how this goes over the coming days. If all goes well, then I will have greater confidence that the Vic government will be able to handle these outbreaks and we can move to Covid-normal like the rest of the country.
P.S. Only 5 cases today. This is a little higher than the 1 to 2 that we’ve been experiencing over the last week or so, but still quite good.
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Reflections On Writing On The Web
I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole about writing and publishing online yesterday after reading this article from Preetam Nath and this article from James Clear. I’ve been thinking about creating and publishing on the web for a little while now, which is probably why these two articles resonated with me. These articles highlight the importance of creating and publishing regardless of what the topic is. There have been a few things that I’ve been wanting to share but I haven’t done so, probably because I worry about what other people think. Continue reading →
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It wasn’t until about a week ago, when I was looking very closely at the Robot Or Not show art, that I realised how cleaver the name and logo of this 🎙️ podcast actually is.
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I’ve removed Twitter my iPad and my phone. I’m starting to get a bit sick of it. It’s not doing anything positive for my mental health anyway.
No more news for the day either. Just RSS and micro.blog.
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Daily walk after work, today through the forest reserve near my home. I didn’t think I had something to say until I started blogging, and the micro.blog community is the friendliest and most welcoming on the internet.
Melbourne, AU at 4:58 PM AEDT (+11 UTC) #adayinthelife
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Unit Tests and Verifying Mocks
I’m working with a unit test that uses mocks in which every method in the mock is verified after the method under test is called, even if it is not relevant to the test. Furthermore, the tear down method verifies that every dependent services has no more interactions, which means that removing a verification that is not relevant to the specific test case will cause the test to fail. Please do not do this. Continue reading →
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Looks like Google Play music is no longer letting me play the music I’ve got stored on the device without setting up a YouTube music account, which I’m not interested in doing. It looks like I’m going to have to start relying more on the music player app I’ve been building on the side over the last few months. Probably a good testing opportunity to iron out all the bugs that are still there.
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After moving from Mac to Linux for work 1.5 months ago, I’ve lost the abiliy to be remember keyboard shortcuts on both platforms. Just now I’ve tried typing Option-Left Arrow to move back one word, and the browser window snapped to the left side of the screen.
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Be forewarned: this might not be a happy post.
I’m feeling a bit dispirited this morning seeing 15 new cases of Covid-19 in Victoria over the last 24 hours, along with the Melboure average rise for the first time in 2 months. All last week the case numbers were just under 10, and the weekends usually have lower case numbers anyway, so seeing 15 new cases yesterday, and 14 cases on Saturday does not feel me with optimism.
It also doesn’t help listening to the ABC News Coronacast episode this morning where they were talking about how Victoria’s contact tracing system is coming up from behind. I can’t imagine it being easy overhauling the entire contract tracing infrastructure during a pandemic. I just wish it was up to snuff before the coronavirus came to our shores.
I understand the state government is doing all they can, but I am upset that these series of mistakes have led to this situation. I can only hope they can get on top of it as quickly as they can. Optimism can only take you so far, and I bet most people are just getting tired by the whole thing. I know I am.
Update: I feel a little better this afternoon, especially after hearing that 10 of the 15 cases seem to be linked with known clusters. The government is also expanding the number of people that are considered close contacts, which is hopefully why the case numbers are slightly higher today in that they’re catching these cases before they spread.
Update 2: I should also note that, as fustrated as I am about the numbers today, I still rather the state government do the safest thing they think is possible to avoid a third wave. If that means staying locked down for a while longer then so be it.
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I don’t know how this keeps happening, but it feels like the Bluetooth stack on Android gets a little worse every release. Now with Android R, it takes a good 3-5 seconds since turning on my headphones before the audio is routed to them.