Oh, I’m having a day at work today. Everything’s broken, or not built right, and Slack has been pinging me non-stop with people experiencing problems. The original goals for today have been thrown out the window. I guess the only goal remaining is to get something better than it was yesterday. 😮💨
Day 7: panorama
Might go wide for this one. View from the Paps, near Mansfield. #mbsept
Day 6: well
Taken from the Churchill Island homestead. I’m trusting the sign here to be correct in it’s assertion that there used to be a well here. #mbsept
Day 5: forest
I consider myself extremely lucky to live near a forest reserve. I walk through it several times a week. This forest, however, is absolutely nowhere near me. #mbsept
I had an alternative idea for today’s photo challenge, which is “orange”. I was hoping to post a photo of something related to Melbourne’s busses.
You see, PTV has designated different colour for different modes of transport. Blue for metro trains, purple for regional trains, green for trams, and orange for busses. And from my experience using the service, they’re pretty consistent with adhering to this design language:
Anyway, they’re doing train works along my rail line over the past few weeks and this morning I noticed this sign (forgive the lighting, it was before dawn):
It’s not the first time I saw this sign, but I had orange on my mind and the fact that it mentioned busses got me thinking, “how cleaver, they’re maintaining the design language through and through, using an orange sign to reference the bus service that would be replacing the trains.” Or so I thought, until I saw this sign:
Ah, that blew that theory out of the water. And also the opportunity to use it as today’s photo. I mean, I could’ve still used it — it’s still orange after all — but it doesn’t have the neat adherence to the design language that I was hoping it did.
Day 4: orange
Taken near the day 2 photo. You certainly can’t miss these. #mbsept
Day 3: precious
A photo of the Hope Diamond, taken while touring the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, in Washington, DC. #mbsept
I only just discovered yesterday that Feedbin has a read-it-later feature. The section only shows up in the sidebar after you add your first page, so I had no idea that this feature existed before I added one via the link popup-menu in the article viewer.
Day 2: buildup
New shed being built nearby to house the spoil from a new road tunnel. It’s quite large. I guess they’re expecting quite a large build-up of dirt. #mbsept
Day 1: abstract
Photo of an abstract(ish) sculpture of Bunjil, an eagle regarded as the spirit creator of the Kulin nations. #mbsept
Feels good putting up another project on my omg.lol page.
Feels less good when I realised that I actually got the name of my own damn project wrong in the blog post I wrote yesterday. 🤦
Project update on Mainboard Mayhem, my Chip’s Challenge fan game. I didn’t get it finished in time for the release deadline, which was last weekend. I blame work for that. We’re going through a bit of a crunch at the moment, and there was a need to work on the weekend.
The good news is that there wasn’t much left to do, and after a few more evenings, I’m please to say that it’s done. The game is finish, and ready for release.
So here it is: Mainboard Mayhem: A Chip’s Challenge fan game (and yes, that’s its full title).
At the moment it’s only available for MacOS. It should work on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs, although I’ve only tested on my M2 Mac Mini running Ventura.
It’s good to finally see this project done. It’s been in development for about last ten years, and I spent half of that time wondering whether it was worth getting it finished it at all. Not committing to anything meant any work I did do on it was pretty aimless, and I always felt like I was wasting my time. Giving myself three weeks to either kill it, or release it helped a lot. I’ll start making deadlines for all the other unfinished projects I’m working on.
As to what that next project will be, I not sure at this stage. Part of me wants to wait until this crunch time ends, but I suspect I’ll get antsy before then and start work on something else. I’ll keep you posted one way or the other.
But for now, if you happen to give it a try, thank you and I hope you enjoy it.
GitLab is requiring me to manually click “automatically rebase” when I try to merge a MR. This option is only available after the CI/CD runs, which means I have to wait for the build, click “rebase”, and wait for another build before I can merge. Why doesn’t it just rebase automatically if it can?
Missed the train this morning, but grabbed a photo of it travelling back to Newport this evening. 🚂
A note to self for next year: the steam-train for the Wattle Festival comes through at around 9:00. Try to be around the railway line around then. 🚂
I got a phising message last night. At least, I think it was a phishing message.
It was pretty convincing. It said that my address is wrong and needed to be fixed for a delivery. Clicking through — I’m actually expecting a delivery, which is why I clicked through — brought up a site that looked like a form from AusPost asking for my home address. It was styled like an AusPost site, but the domain ended in “.top” instead of “auspost.com.au”, and revealing the menu, which worked, I saw links pointing to the real AusPost site.
I’m taking all this, plus the fact that it was sent at 2 AM, as signal that it’s not genuine.
Seeing a lot more EVs driving around recently, with the record being 12 sightings during one commute. Not all of them have witty number plates thought.
Currawong close-up (okay, not really, but any closer and it’ll fly away).
While passing this sign on the way to work, I always wonder if they ever considered the name Catstruction.
The ice bus returneth. 🚌🥶
I’m sorry, but Apple’s magic mouse and keyboard are the absolute worst. I’m making so many typing errors on the keyboard and scrolling with the mouse is absolutely impossible. I’m willing to admit that I’m just not use to them but gosh I wouldn’t choose them if they weren’t provided by work.
My recent YouTube watching has been about theme-parks, predominantly Disney. I’m not an theme-park enthusiast but I found both Theme Park History and Defunctland really interesting channels to watch. HT to Reconcilable Differences and Really Specific Stories, which mentioned the two channels. 📺
Can someone follow you on Substack without you even having a Substack? I have an account but I’m just a reader; I don’t publish anything there. Yet somehow I got a follower. They may be disappointed as I do my Substack subscribing via Feedbin.
I have passing fancies of re-theming this blog, mainly to improve the style of code excerpts. I resist the temptation, not only because I’ve grown to like the current theme, but I’d like to avoid posting too much code here. I can post code elsewhere. This site can be about other things.
Project update for Mainboard Madness. Well, today’s the deadline for getting the thing code complete, and what a surprised, it’s not finished.
To be fair, it’s pretty close. All the levels are more or less done, and the beats of the in-game lore have been added. It all just needs tightening up a little. I spent today working on the end-game phase, which mainly involved coding up the credit sequence, and making sure I include credits for those involved in the original game (and who’s artwork I lifted).
The work remaining is to finish one or two game elements, adding a proper app icon, and finishing off the website. I’m wondering whether to add sound, but I feel bad enough taking the artwork from the original game, I rather not take the sound effects as well. That will mean the game will remain silent for the time being, but I can probably live with that for now.
I think we’re still on track for getting this finished by this time next week. Last dash to the finish line, then I can put this 9 year project to rest for a while.