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Leon Mika
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  • I didn’t expect to like today’s Stratechey interview, what with “turnarounds” sounding somewhat corporatey in the abstract. Yet, I found it really enjoyable. Matthew Bromberg gave some fascinating stories of his career.

    November 14, 2025 12:12pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • New album discovery: Immunity, by Jon Hopkins. 🎡

    A quick review card of Immunity, by Jon Hopkins, 2013. Rating: Liked It. Review text as follows: Discovered this by listening to Music for Programming #22. I can't claim to have listen to every track on this, and there are a few that aren't to my taste. But Abandon Window and Immunity are two I really like, and I look forward to exploring this a bit more.
    November 13, 2025 9:30pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Media

  • πŸ”— Android Developers Blog: Android developer verification

    Under the heading “Empowering experienced users” (emphasis original):

    Based on this feedback and our ongoing conversations with the community, we are building a new advanced flow that allows experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn’t verified.

    In other words: side loading should be possible without verification. This is good.

    Via: Hacker News

    November 13, 2025 5:18pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Links

  • I could be the only Melburnian I know that enjoyed travelling on the Hitachi trains on hot days. To hear the deafening journey they take through the loop with the windows down was always a thrill.

    November 13, 2025 5:02pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • β€œGet out more” goal for November achieved. βœ…

    Boardgames at the Melbourne Central Lion Hotel. Bought along Wingspan tonight. Was a huge hit: better than I hoped. Played a full game with 3 other players. πŸ‘

    A group of people are gathered around a wooden table playing a board game with various colorful cards and pieces.
    November 12, 2025 8:43pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Photos

  • I will admit, I was a hater of Stripe’s new developer tools that slid up from the bottom when I first used them. But I’ve grown to really like them. They have the one thing I’ve been wishing from Stripe from the beginning, which is showing how the entity you’re looking at looks from the API.

    November 12, 2025 5:57pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • On TOON And Human Readable Data Formats

    November 12, 2025 12:42pm
    Reading Time: 2 minutes
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    My thoughts on defining human readable formats that are difficult to modify by hand, and taking it out on TOON which is geared towards LLMs. Continue reading β†’

  • Did not expect to be back here again, riding the Comengs like it’s going out of style. Such is this year’s theme, unfortunately.

    Auto-generated description: A person walks towards the entrance of a modern train station labeled Coburg with various signs and a small food stand nearby. Auto-generated description: A person sits on a bench at an empty outdoor train station platform under a clear sky with train tracks extending into the distance.
    November 12, 2025 7:19am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Photos

  • TIL that βŽ‹ is the symbol for the Escape key. HT @jason@social.lol

    November 11, 2025 5:28pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • It happened again today.

    Auto-generated description: A sign humorously tracks the number of days since a department confused brew update with upgrade, encouraging teamwork to set a new record.
    November 11, 2025 12:31pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Memes

  • Slow strobes.

    November 11, 2025 7:52am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Videos

  • This clip made me think. Not because of anything to do with Apple, Google, and their dealings. Rather, it made me wonder if this is applicable to things like how one spends their time and effort at self improvement. Focusing more on what you know your good at, for example.

    November 11, 2025 6:44am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Videos

    Podcast Clips

  • Oof! Stock music is expensive, but I found the track I’ve been craving. One useful feature of the stock music site: ability to filter songs based on key and tempo. Tapped what I thought the tempo was on my keyboard metronome to get around 8 BPM off the actual one. Perfect pitch did the rest.

    November 10, 2025 8:59pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • I think I know why it always takes two attempts to get the Myki readers to work with Google Wallet. The new readers throwing up the error “credit card not supported” provides a decent hint.

    November 10, 2025 4:25pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Idea for browser plugin: something that scans all the links on the page, and annotates each one pointing to YouTube, offering you to add the video to your “watch later” list. I see plenty of interesting videos I never watch because I find a link to it at a time that’s not ideal for watching video.

    November 10, 2025 12:43pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Watched an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. In one day the crew of that sub encountered:

    • a collision with a whale,
    • being threatened by sea monster,
    • the diving bell getting loose,
    • overpressure in the ballast tank,
    • a smoke bomb,
    • a sabatour sending fake radio signals,
    • an explosion of the main tank causing flooding, and
    • getting hijacked by a duo of criminals, twice.

    Not a dull moment on that sub, apparently. πŸ˜›

    November 9, 2025 8:17pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Ooh, looks like the Pixel 9 Pro has a HDR screen. I’ve been using this phone for 10 months and it’s only today when I’ve noticed it. So this is how the other half were living all these years.

    November 9, 2025 3:13pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • I β™₯️ Stock Music.

    November 9, 2025 12:11pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Lazy vibes on this cold, wet Saturday afternoon. 🦜

    A person is sitting with a small parrot on their chest and another perched on their head.
    November 8, 2025 4:48pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Photos

  • Devlog: Laying The Groundwork For Dynamic Header Images

    November 8, 2025 12:11pm
    Reading Time: 6 minutes
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Devlog

    Screenshots

    Making some changes to the Card theme I’m using for this blog. First think I’m considering is a banner image, similar to the one in Scripting News. And like Scripting News, I’m hoping for the image to change occasionally. I’d like the change to happen when the blog is being built, and in order to do this, I need a way to configure this value. I’m hoping to use Blogging Tools to do this, but to actually make use of these values, I’m hoping to use Hugo’s resource data methods. Continue reading β†’

  • πŸ”— Raph Koster: Game design is simple, actually

    I’m only half way through this, but I’m finding this post on the theory of game design absolutely riveting. I’ve already got a bunch of linked posts ready to go, marking this one as the entrance to a good ol’ blogging rabbit hole.

    Via: Simon Willison

    November 8, 2025 8:55am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Links

  • The ultimate irony of fully understanding Stripe and its API is that you really need to use it to sell something. You can understand a lot just by working on the customer facing side, but when it comes to understanding how payouts work end-to-end; well, owning a business would come in handy here.

    November 7, 2025 2:08pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • I really need to get a lower desk. Long periods of typing cause pain to form in my palms. In lieu of that, I am reminded that I can just take advantage of the wirelessness of my keyboard. It’s actually more comfortable than it looks.

    A split mechanical keyboard resting on a persons crossed leg with an orange enter key, sitting at a wooden desk with programming books and a coffee mug.
    November 7, 2025 10:19am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Photos

  • I find it ironic that the concurrent logic added by my colleague, design to (theoretically) save the a nanosecond or two from each API request, has cost me an hour and a half of my time trying to debug it. I doubt the API will see the 27,000,000,000,000 requests needed to offset these “savings”. πŸ˜•

    November 6, 2025 2:37pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Today’s comp sci’s version of a Freudian slip: typing whomai instead of whoami in Bash. “Whom AI” is the question of the day, apparently. πŸ˜›

    November 6, 2025 9:16am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
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