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Leon Mika
Software engineer in Melbourne, Australia.
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  • 🖼️ Gallery

    Riding The Metro Tunnel

    December 13, 2025 4:15pm
    Reading Time: 2 minutes
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Photos

    Galleries

    Checking out the new Metro Tunnel, and taking lots of photos in the process. Continue reading →

  • Been a while since I visited Melbourne University. Good seeing the old haunts again.

    Auto-generated description: A large tree provides shade along a paved pathway beside a multi-story building and a quiet road.Auto-generated description: A red brick building with multiple windows and an arched entrance stands along a quiet, tree-lined street.Auto-generated description: A cityscape with modern buildings, a bus shelter, and a construction crane in the background.

    December 13, 2025 8:59am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    photos

    Photos

  • Someone should roll out vending machines that sell pocket-sized tubes of sun screen. At this time of year, such machines would be more useful to me that the ones that vend rechargeable batteries.

    December 13, 2025 8:08am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • iPadOS 26 is still quite buggy. Safari shows visual glitches when I switch over to it, only for them to disappear when I start scrolling. And today, I spent a good few minutes fighting the horizontal scroll-panes in the share sheet to scroll to the bottom. They really need to polish this up.

    December 13, 2025 7:58am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • 🛠️ Doom Text Generator

    Looks like fun. Giving it a whirl:

    Text in Doom-like pixelated font. Message: Am I asking for too much to want obsidian to add multi-cursor support? (Press Y/N)

    Via: Martin Hähnel

    December 12, 2025 3:14pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    screenshots

    Screenshots

    tools

    Tools

  • I’ve been thinking about my career recently, wondering what my next step will be. Part of me is starting to feel a little entrepreneurial, actually. I do have an idea for something. May spend my upcoming leave exploring it a little.

    December 12, 2025 6:34am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • One of these days, I really should take a real look at Rust. Had a great conversation with a colleague about the language today and learnt some interesting tidbits, such as Rust being one of the few languages allowed in the Linux kernel (not even C++ can make that claim 😀).

    December 11, 2025 3:37pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • From Robb Knight’s most recent blog post:

    Why am I making a blog post with the same information as the Reddit thread? The reasons are twofold:

    1. I’ll probably need to reference this in the future.
    2. I can’t rely on a random Reddit thread (or two in this case) still existing in a months time, let alone a year or more.

    That’s pretty much the same reasons why I repost instructions I found elsewhere here too (with proper attribution, of course). I’d also add that explaining the information yourself helps, just so that you know you know it.

    December 11, 2025 8:37am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • TIL that the publishers of Wingspan has published a similar game called Wyrmspan. Similar mechanics except that instead of birds, you’re tasked with building habits for dragons. Looks interesting.

    December 10, 2025 8:09pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • I’ve yet to ride the new Metro Tunnel (hopefully this weekend) but I did get a sneak peek of State Library concourse. Looks amazing. Looking forward to seeing the actual platforms.

    Auto-generated description: A modern train station features digital screens, advertisements, and passengers near ticket barriers.Auto-generated description: An indoor view of a modern transit station features a long escalator with people ascending and overhead signs guiding commuters.

    December 10, 2025 4:09pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    photos

    Photos

  • All the recent talk about Warner Brothers and Netflix has got me wanting to listen to Paul Simon’s Graceland. Why? Because the vinyl record we had when I was quite young was published by Warner Brothers and had the classic WB logo on the label. I knew how to operate the record player at the time, and it was one of the few albums I put on myself.

    December 10, 2025 6:48am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • I wonder which is harder: learning everything there is to know about Kubernetes, or starting a successful business where you don’t need to use Kubernetes.

    December 9, 2025 1:16pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Trying Out Pagefind in Micro.blog

    December 9, 2025 7:21am
    Reading Time: 2 minutes
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Screenshots

    Setting up Pagefind in Micro.blog and some early thoughts using it. Continue reading →

  • 📘 Devlog

    Godot Project - Level 3-2 And Bobbing Water

    December 8, 2025 9:32pm
    Reading Time: 3 minutes
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Videos

    Devlog

    Screenshots

    After some distractions, progress on a Godot game level is underway, focusing on design elements like a generator sprite and a dynamic water mechanic. Continue reading →

  • Pro tip: success in writing partly includes knowing your audience. Even if it’s an audience of just one (yourself) but especially if you know it’s for an audience of others. Some empathy in seeing how they’ll interpret your writing will go a long way.

    December 8, 2025 4:07pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • From the bridge.

    Auto-generated description: A modern city skyline with a river running through it features a pedestrian bridge and numerous high-rise buildings.
    December 8, 2025 6:21am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    photos

    Photos

  • The view from Violet Town.

    Auto-generated description: A quiet street features parked cars, bicycle lanes, clear skies, and leafy trees lining the road.
    December 7, 2025 4:04pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    photos

    Photos

  • Table legs: the natural enemy of knees everywhere. 😫

    December 7, 2025 7:03am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Dug out my Flutter RSS reader project and worked on it a bit today. The good news is that the release build doesn’t have the janky scrolling, so using Flutter is viable. The bad news is that there’s so much more work to go to make this anywhere near usable as a replacement for Feedbin’s PWA.

    December 6, 2025 10:39am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • If I ever built an RSS reader, I can guarantee you that you’ll be able to follow my progress… on my RSS reader! 😛

    (Although probably not because it’d like be a slow, buggy mess that’ll see no work for a full year).

    December 6, 2025 6:42am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • It seems like my Autumnal cravings have shifted into early Summer.

    Two slices of fruit toast are on a plate next to a small bucket, with a coffee cup and butter packets in the background.
    December 5, 2025 6:08am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    photos

    Photos

  • “Get out more” goal for December achieved. ✅

    Ending the year much like how it began: with a work event. This time it was the office Christmas party.

    December 4, 2025 7:14pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • I keep forgetting that Mastodon offers a way to follow posters via RSS. Gives me an opportunity to follow those that post way to frequently for my liking to follow them in Micro.blog. Strips out replies too, which don’t interest me, although I do loose the boosts (and maybe quote posts too?).

    December 4, 2025 9:47am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Good to hear that Stephen Lemay, a software developer, is taking over software design from Alan Dye at Apple. Having someone who knows how to use git revert might be useful. 😛

    December 4, 2025 7:30am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • 🕹️ Downpour: A Proper Cup of Tea

    I find this delightful.

    December 3, 2025 3:57pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • When it comes to reading social cues, I am the absolute worst. If you need me to know something, please don’t be subtle. You really need to bash me over the head with it.

    December 3, 2025 7:09am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Kind of nice to see that my heater and winter jacket is still getting some use on this lovely, supposedly summer evening.

    A peaceful park setting features lush green grass, tall trees, and houses in the background under a clear blue sky.
    December 1, 2025 6:25pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    photos

    Photos

  • AWS should deprecate JSON and YAML CloudFormation templates and lean into CDK. As long as support for these formats continue, people will keep using them, and I’m left jumping through hoops doing things in these formats that would be trivial to do in a proper Turing-complete language.

    December 1, 2025 9:19am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Quite a shock to think about how fast 11 months have gone. I remember putting this tree away, putting the tape on and thinking “this will be difficult to untape without ripping the box.” Well, I’m faced with that challenge now.

    A closed cardboard box containing an artificial Christmas tree is sealed with tape and placed on a carpeted floor beside a leather sofa.

    15:40 Attempt failed.

    November 30, 2025 2:38pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Laughed out loud when I heard this as my experience with Stripe's API has been quite different. Stripe does quite well with keeping support for old versions of their API, but they're not afraid of making backwards-incompatible changes between versions. We encountered quite a few of these last time we were updating the SDK, and while I was going through their API docs a few weeks ago, I saw quite a few more that we'll need to make next go-around. I wouldn't call that "low needs" myself.

    November 30, 2025 2:24pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    videos

    Videos

    podcast-clips

    Podcast Clips

    stripe

    Stripe

  • Burning my 1,000th post of the year on the sad state of desktop monitors. I had a brief look at what’s available today, and I hope you like curves or the 16:9 aspect ratio (or narrower) because that’s much of what’s out there. Despite what I hear about the LG Ultra Fine from podcasters, it’s probably the best monitor I’ve used.

    November 30, 2025 1:12pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • 📘 Devlog

    Blogging Tools - Image Collections Triage App

    November 29, 2025 9:54am
    Reading Time: 9 minutes
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Devlog

    Screenshots

    Golang

    Using Google Antigravity to add an improved image triaging feature for Blogging Tools, allowing the user to categorise images from posts and automate header image updates. Continue reading →

  • I was pretty despondent with how little rain we got for much of the year. It’s all got made up in November though. 145 mm of rain this month, almost 3 times the monthly average, with the promise of more tomorrow. Good to have a wet start to summer. 🌧️

    November 29, 2025 6:54am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Liked this line from Dave Winer post about official show podcasts:

    i don’t know or care about the actors. If they’re any good they disappear. Whodat?

    Never thought it that way before, but he’s right: a good actor should disappear, much like how a good UI design should disappear while it’s being used. It’s the bad ones that call attention to themselves and break the illusion.

    (Don’t generally want to compare acting to UI design, but hey! It’s what I know, and it works as an analogy).

    November 28, 2025 11:43am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Seems like I’m not the only person excited about the Metro tunnel opening. A few people at work expressed interest at seeing ANZAC station when it opens, and we’re actually planning the location of our next bocce season around use of the tunnel. Ought to be good.

    November 27, 2025 3:55pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Hmm, it seems like my object-orientated design skills have atrophied to the point where a simple program requires 10 classes and 5 level of abstractions.

    November 27, 2025 11:39am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
  • Some Thoughts on the State of Python Package Documentation

    November 27, 2025 11:09am
    Reading Time: 2 minutes
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    The lack of standardized and accessible documentation for Python packages hinders the user experience compared to other languages like Java and Go. Continue reading →

  • 🖼️ Gallery

    Revisiting Preston Market

    November 26, 2025 8:22pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika

    Long Form Posts

    Photos

    Galleries

    I was rendezvousing with a few people for dinner around Preston this evening. I was early so I’d though I’d walk around the closed market. I used to come here all the time when I was a kid, and it was nice walking the laneways again, even if everything was closed for the night. As with most places you revisit when you’re older, it’s smaller than I remembered.

    Continue reading →

  • Under the big, grey sky-rail.

    Auto-generated description: A concrete overpass runs parallel to a paved pathway and landscaped area, all beneath a blue sky with scattered clouds.
    November 26, 2025 4:50pm
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    photos

    Photos

  • 🔗 (AI) Smells on Medium

    Just in case you need another reason to avoid Medium. Apropos of nothing, the post also includes some links about writing blog posts for developers which look interesting.

    Via: lobste.rs

    November 26, 2025 8:26am
    Leon Mika Leon Mika
    links

    Links

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