Leon Mika

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 21:17:21 +1100

Day 22: Beacon. #inktober

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:56:50 +1100

Strange of me to say this, but I’m actually a little excited about the Stripe sponsorship with Stratechery. While there are going to be sponsor reads now, being the resident “Stripe expert” it would be good to get a sense of what they’ve been working on.

The video Sharp Tech recordings I can take and leave. My only concern there is that video podcasts tend to devolve into a show that assumes that the person is watching, not just listening. They tend to be clip heavy, and refer to things in a video without fully describing it for an audio-only listener. I trust Ben Thompson and Andrew Sharp to avoid this trap, but I’m still a little wary about it. Yet, that’s offset somewhat by more Sharp Tech. I’m delighted to learn that they’re going back to two episodes a week.

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:36:51 +1100

Threads is really not selling itself very well, what with throwing up a dickover the minute I try to scroll someone’s profile. Maybe interesting things that are worth my time are written over there. Who knows? I’m unable to see any of it.

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 12:49:18 +1100

After working with some text in Dequoter, I needed to sum a bunch of new-line terminated numbers. Dequoter lacks this feature, and I was wondering whether to ask the agents to add one, until I remembered that Dequoter supports plugin¹. So I wrote one up. This takes a list of integers, adds them togeather, and replaces it with the sum:

d:filter "Lines: Sum" { |in|
    total = 0
    d:map-lines $in { |line|
        total = add $total $line
    }
    $total
}

It’s not perfect thought. Any value not convertible to an int, including any floats, will cause it to fail. And it lacks the arbitrary precision that some apps have: we are just talking 64 bit integers here. But that’s a limitation of UCL, rather than Dequoter. With what I have now, it seems to work well enough.

Honestly, I’m glad I wrote about these plugins here in the first place. I completely forgot how they work. ↩︎

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:46:58 +1100

I think this Godot game is ready. Spent the last few days fine tuning and clearing out some last minute bugs, and it feels like it’s in a pretty decent state at the moment. Just need to write up a small landing page, but I think it’s ready to ship.

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 20:32:28 +1100

Day 20: Lounge. #inktober

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 20:31:50 +1100

Day 19: Confused. #inktober

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:01:19 +1100

I appreciate those mourning the loss of their programming craft. Maybe the tasks they work on during their day to day is more interesting than mine. But much of what I do professionally, a sizeable majority, is pretty rote: define this interface, put this data in that database, contact this service. And lets not forget the effort that goes into fighting with mocks. I’ve pass the point of morning the loss of manual effort that goes into these. They’re tedious and uninteresting, and I’m more than happy to give that to the LLMs.

No, the coding challenges I find interesting, like language designs; or exercises that stretch me, like designing assets for games; I really only get to do in my spare time. There’s no call for doing this as part of my job: no-ones paying me for a half-baked language that’s useful in only a few domains. This, I keep for myself to work on.

For the code I write professionally, I’m still trying to find the right balance. There’s no real mandate to use agents, and my use of them on production code tends to be governed by the need to deliver something quickly. Time permitting, I do prefer to write the production code myself, and get coding agents to review and update the tests. That understanding that only comes from tactile feedback is real.

That’s not to say that everything I do professionally amounts to coding. It’s pretty much a minority of how I spend my day. Much of it is design, support, investigating things, helping others. Doing these activities, I think, is the bulk of the reason why I’m getting paid. And so far, no agent is capable of automating these jobs away.

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 11:16:50 +1100

Apple should add a “I choose to sell my soul for notarisation” option to their developer program. When enabled, it will auto accept any agreement they throw at me, just so I can keep their notarisation services from failing requests due to some agreement I failed to agree to.

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 16:23:49 +1100

It’s a strange property of software development that the higher quality the software is, the less noticeable it is. Think about the last time you thought about who is maintaining Vim, or Bash. Software that draws attention to itself does not win loyal users. Silence is truly golden.

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 07:56:00 +1100

Day 18: Flightless. #inktober

Sun, 18 Oct 2026 07:36:51 +1100

I’ve started listening to some of A Man from the Future by the Pet Shop Boys. Haven’t heard the whole album yet but the first two tracks have been real ear-worms. 🎵

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 07:53:00 +1100

Day 17: Contraption. #inktober

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 07:01:19 +1100

First time I’ve been on a flight where the crossing time is estimated to be so much faster than expected, we actually had to delay departure to arrive at our gate at the alloted time.

Sat, 17 Oct 2026 05:19:53 +1100

App recommendation: Organic Maps. Found this app to have the best maps for walking trails during my trip. Offline support too.

Auckland and Waiheke Island

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 16:55:23 +1100

Okay, one more short update on my trip. Today, I decided to take the ferry over to Waiheke Island. This was one of the original ideas while I was planning this trip, and I was indecisive about whether I would actually do it. This morning, after breakfast, I walked down Queen Street to the harbour building with no real plan to jump on a ferry. But when I arrived, I decided “why not”.

The crossing was about 40 minutes, and after leaving the ferry terminal, there was a bush walk that took you (almost) to Oneroa. I looked around town, had lunch, bought a gelati, and walked around the beach for a bit. The town was bustling, which is not bad for a Friday. The island was lovely, and I’m glad I decided to visit. The weather turned on the ferry ride back, but it was sunny when we arrived back at Auckland harbour. Naturally, I took the train back.

The ferry building.

Aboard the ferry (you would've though I'd take a photo of the ferry 🤦).

An attempt to get a photo of the harbour bridge.

Arriving at Waiheke Island.

One last bush walk on the way back to the ferry terminal.

Shot of Auckland from the water.

After that it was a brief walk around Albert Park and the university, while avoiding the rain (I lost my umbrella on this trip). Then, it was a brief dinner now I’m back in my hotel room, contemplating my packing for my trip home tomorrow.

All in all, despite the ankle¹, a very fine holiday.

Oh, and P.S. When in Auckland, you scramble:

I also burnt my mouth more than a week ago, and I’m still working through the ulcers. But I guess any good holiday has their fair share of injuries and illness. At least, you’ll get stories from them. ↩︎

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:20:48 +1300

Asked the agent to make one small addition to my FollowSpec implementation: a button which will pick one at random and open the site. The goal is to discover new sites, and while the pickings are a bit hit and miss (there are a few dead sites in the lists I tried) I found one or two worth following. I guess I just need to cast that fishing line a few more times.

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 12:31:31 +1300

The gulls are frickin’ eager today. One nicked a chip from the table right in front of me.

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:50:57 +1300

Got excited with the addition of FollowSpec that I ask agents to add a “following” view to my vibecoded RSS reader. It’s a simple affair — it just opens the profile page so far — but it came out well.

Whitianga and Coromandel

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:38:59 +1300

Arrived at Whitianga, my penultimate stop, yesterday afternoon. It’s a lovely little town on Mercury Bay, with a nice beach, quite a lot of water activities (fishing, boating, etc.), and some interesting costal rock formations.

One of them, Cathedral Cove, was recommended to me by one of my work colleagues, along with the person checking me in. I kind of wish I planned this better, for to see it you’d have to drive back south for 45 minutes, board a shuttle bus, and walk 40 minutes. If I planned this better, I could’ve done this before arriving at Whitianga. What I probably should have done is stay another day, which would’ve given me time to do this. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time when I arrived, and while I did plan to go today, it would’ve thrown my scheduled out. Something for next time perhaps.

What I did do, after settling in, was take the ferry across to Cooks Beach and do the walk around Shakespeare Lookout. I’m actually quite glad there was a ferry between Whitianga and Cooks Beach. The ferry ride was not long, about a few minutes, yet it saved 45 minutes of driving. I was reluctant to go at all, but the walk did the trick. It was lovely trekking on the beach and around the kauri trees. Not too difficult either, yet the views were spectacular. This was followed by dinner and simply enjoying the beach in the fading light.

Hard to see in this photo but this is actually a native bird sighting: a pīwakawaka, or New Zealand fantail. If I was quicker with my camera, I would've got a better shot.

There were a few white-faced herons about, which are always nice to see.

Today was the day I had to return the car. And while I checked out early with the intention of seeing Cathedral Cove, I decided to skip it and head to Coromandel. This was purely a nostalgia visit, as it was our first stop when we were visiting New Zealand as a family a good 20 years ago. I wanted to see it again, mainly to refresh my memory as I remembered nothing of the town. I stopped for coffee, which is something I wish I did more on this trip: just stop, relax a bit, enjoy a coffee. While seeing stuff is nice, sometimes is good to remind yourself that you’re there on holiday to recharge, and for me at least, doing something like that is a nice way to do this. That said, I did get a walk in around Tucks Bay, to see more kauri trees, including one that is 1,200 years old.

Coromandel town centre.

The kauri tree walk at Tucks Bay.

This kauri tree is 1,200 years old.

The weather changed after leaving Coromandel for Auckland. When I stopped at Thames, the rain was pelting down and the wind was blowing up a storm. The drive back was a little challenging, but things improved when I was coming in to Auckland. I’m here for the next day, then I’ll fly back home. I’m actually staying in the same hotel I stayed in 12 years ago, when I was so sick I didn’t leave the hotel room. I had grand plans of visiting Coromandel back then (in hindsight, it would’ve been a bit of a stretch to visit for the day) and felt that the fates owed me a visit. Well, the fates can rest easy now, as I consider that debt repaid.

I’ll probably leave it here for these long form reports of this trip. It was a lovely time visiting Wellington and driving round the east coast. Hope to do it again. I here for one more day so I’ll need to think of something to do in Auckland, lest I repeat the same thing I did 12 years ago. Not entirely sure what that will be, but I’ll think of something.

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:04:36 +1300

Day 15: Hooray. #inktober

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:04:05 +1300

Day 14: Lady. #inktober

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 20:21:57 +1300

Got inspired by something Simon Wilison did and made, well “commissioned”, a small Skyroads clone called Cosmic Hyperjet. Runs entirely in the browser. And while agents built most of the game, I did design the levels. It even comes with the level editor I used to build them.

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:16:53 +1300

Back in Auckland and doing something I’d never thought I’d be able to do: take the train. Nice new metro guys! 👍

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 07:52:20 +1300

🔗 Brent Simmons

I wish people would stop calling it Twitter. Twitter is gone forever. It’s X.

I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I not polluting the archive of this blog with such a horrible name. It’s either “Twitter” or I never speak of that site again.