Day 28: workout

It was a quiet evening in the gym that evening, which is unusual for a Thursday. I suspect that bolt of lightening that blew up a nearby transformer scared people away. #mbsept

An empty gym, with machines for chest, back and legs vacant, a mural of kettlebells and TVs showing AFL in the back

After having some success getting my early QBasic programs running in the browser I had a bit of a look this morning to see if I could do the same for my Delphi apps. I found a project called BoxedWine which looks promising. Seems to be a minified version of Wine that that runs in browser using WASM.

I downloaded the example and had a bit of a play around with a Tetris clone I built. It worked… to a degree. It was a little slow, and some of the colours were off. But it ran, and was actually usable.

A screenshot of a Win32 Tetris clone running with BoxedWine running in Safari

I did another test with an app that used OpenGL, which was less successful.

A Windows style exception message indicating a null pointer running in Safari

I think some of the OpenGL shared objects are not in the minified Wine distribution it was using. It might be possible to include them: there are instructions, and a few demos, on how to load files from the full Wine distribution on demand.

Anyway, not sure if I’ll pursue this further but it was a fun little exercise nonetheless. I’m pretty impressed that this is even possible at all. The Web stack is pretty freaking awesome.

Day 27: embrace

Photo credit goes to my sister, who captured this pair showing affection for each other. #mbsept

Two sulphur-crested cockatoos perched on a wooden rail, with one preening the other

Day 26: beverage #mbsept

A can of Mornington Peninsula Pale-ale poured into an ATP glass, placed in front of a coffee machine

Day 25: flare #mbsept

Motorcycles and scooter travelling along a road at night, with a bus travelling behind them. Head-lights and the streetlights are flaring.

Day 24: belt

Sometimes a 40 inch belt is just a 40 inch belt, as I realised when I bought mine (honestly, they should describe belt lengths as a range: 38 β€” 42 inches, for example). #mbsept

Three belts lying diagonally on a brown sheet, with buckles facing the top-right side of the frame, with one belt extended beyond the other two

The day has arrived. After a meeting in the new office we were told to pack up our things. We won’t see them again until our desks in the new office are ready. πŸ“¦

On my last bus ride home from Port Melbourne. Can’t say that I’ll miss it. πŸ‘‹πŸšŒ

Lost another comment to Jira today. Oof! Don’t get attached to anything you write there. Jira will eat your comment and you’ll never see it again. πŸ™

You would’ve though, after 15 years of using Jira, that I’d learn this by now. πŸ€¦β€β™‚οΈ

Electrification of Melbourne Suburban Railways Plaque

Found this plaque while passing through Southern Cross station this morning.

Plaque about the Electrification of Melbourne Suburban Railways

I didn’t have time to read it, and the subject matter looks really interesting to me (Trains? Power Lines? What’s not to love? πŸ˜€). I also don’t know how long it’ll be up for, and I’ve been burned in the past of not capturing something when I had the chance.

So I’m posting photos of it here for posterity reasons. Enjoy.

I’ve got a bit behind my photos for the September Photo Challenge. I’ve got one for today that I’d really like to post. But I can’t do so until I post the days I’ve missed, lest they appear out of order. I better get on that.

I was planning to go into the office today. The train went two stops in before everyone was instructed to transfer to busses. Now on a train heading the other way so I can work from home instead. It’s great that this is now an option.

Day of firsts today. Had a session of indoors go-karts as part of a bucks party. Loads of fun. Won the wooden spoon (although only 3 second slower than the winner).

An indoor go-kart track with a couple of karts doing a circuit My disposable wooden spoon

Started practice sessions again as I’ve been asked to play the piano at an event. I thought I’d try something new this time, and start recording them. Sometimes, during these sessions, I come up with an idea or arrangement that sounds pretty good to me. But a few minutes go by and I forget exactly how I got it to sound that way. When I try to recreate it later, it usually comes up short. So I want to find a way to avoid that happening here.

Screenshot of Audio Hijack, showing Logic Pro and a mic input going to a recorder, and Logic Pro going to the output. Five existing recording sessions shown on the right pane.

Audio Hijack is proving to be quite useful for this. I’ve got my webcam, which I’m using as a microphone, and Logic Pro being piped into a recorder. My (music) keyboard is hooked up via MIDI and I’m using Logic Pro as a live software synth (I prefer the piano patches there). The mic is for making a running commentary of what sounded good or not. I didn’t want to monitor of my speech but I did need to hear Logic Pro, so that’s piped directly to the output and through my headphones.

This is the first session I’ve tried this and so far it worked well. Hardly stage quality β€” the mic is pretty ordinary, and picks up the action on the keyboard β€” but it’s good enough for what I need.

Day 23: day in the life of

Saturday mornings usually mean an extended walk to the cafe for breakfast. I took some photos of my route today. This is probably my favourite one. #mbsept

Road curving to the right, shaded by eucalyptus trees, with a playground on the right.

Day 22: road #mbsept

Dirt road travelling through a forest.

It would be nice if there was an option in Mastodon’s web-app to turn off displaying alt text as a popup when mousing over an image. Some alt test descriptions are quite comprehensive, and while I’m browsing the feed, my mouse cursor lands naturally in the centre of an image if the post has one. I start looking at the image and then the popup appears and blocks a significant part of the it.

Screenshot of the timeline in the Mastodon web-app with an image of text, and the alt text displayed as a title popup blocking a large part of the image, obscuring the text itself

I’m perfectly fine with having the popup show up by default, but having the option to turn it off would be nice. An even better option would be to position the alt text below the image, so that it appears without obscuring the image at all. That would also be welcomed.

Day 21: fall

This shed hasn’t fallen down yet, but it’s in a bit of a precarious state. #mbsept

A shed in a forest leaning on a tree with some graffiti on the side and the door fallen off it's hinges

Day 20: disruption

Going to take this opportunity to say that I like the design of our road works signs. They have a standard frame from which you can swap out the sign panels based on what you need to convey. Beautiful modularity. #mbsept

A road works sign with a 40 km/h speed limit, a man holding a stop sign, and the lower portion saying Prepare to Stop

🎡 Pippin, the New Broadway Cast Recording, by Stephen Schwartz.

One of the defining memories of my life was in Year 10, playing the viola in the pit orchestra of our high-school production of Pippin. Good times.

🎡 Stages, by Elaine Page

One of a handfull of albums I use to play constantly on the record player when I was a kid.