Blog

The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.

Working on a MacBook Pro

Categories Geekery, Rants, Technology, Work

Regular readers could be forgiven for thinking that I have an anti-Apple bias. Although I'm definitely not a fan of the company, I'd like to think that I am mostly objective when it comes to my views.

I've been pretty consistent in my position that I would never buy an Apple computer for my own personal use. The price-to-value return for my own circumstances isn't justifiable. I like the flexibility and customisation of Windows/Linux PCs, not to mention things that are practically impossible on a Mac, such as high-end gaming.

The one area where I use what I'm given (although, … Read more →

Migrating to Zsh

Categories Geekery, Technology, Work

A few years back, I posted on open-sourcing my .bashrc file on GitHub. Up until very recently, I'd been using the same configuration (with some additions and updates) ever since.

Now that I work on a MacBook Pro (btw, I've been meaning to write a blog post on that), and Apple recently announced that they will be changing the default shell in the next version of MacOS from bash to zsh, I decided to make the change myself.

I've always been tempted by the increased friendliness that Zsh has to offer. However, I couldn't really justify … Read more →

Yoshi’s Crafted World

Categories Gaming
Yoshi's Crafted World logo

One of the things that committed me to buying a Nintendo Switch was the promise of a new Yoshi game for the console. It's hard to believe that it's now been almost two years since I bought the Switch, but earlier this year (pre all the transplant dramas), Yoshi's Crafted World came out.

Although I finished the main story a while ago, it's only now that I had the time and steady hands to actually finish it 100%.

Crafted World is a decent Yoshi game, but it didn't live up to the expectations that the excellent Woolly World set 4 … Read more →

Getting on the NBN

Categories Internet, Technology

Since having my transplant, I've been doing a lot of things around the house that I've put off for a while: cleaning out my wardrobe, comms cabinets, rewiring smoke alarm connections, to name a few.

Around the same time that I went into hospital, the NBN was made ready for connections in our area. I've posted on the NBN a few times over the years, but after originally expecting a FTTP (i.e. fibre) connection to be ready sometime around 2015, the Coalition government was elected in 2013, and it took until now to get a HFC connection (i.e. … Read more →

Getting the Call & Post-Transplant

Categories Life

I promised in the post on receiving my liver transplant (please read that post first before continuing on with this one) that I would elaborate on the circumstances of getting the call for the transplant, as well as the hospital stay after the surgery. I'm a man of my word, so here it is!

The Call

Receiving the call was a bit of an unexpected experience. I was already in hospital when the news came through. I had been admitted into hospital the week before the transplant for an infection in my liver, and had already spent 4 nights there … Read more →

Transplant: Life Changing Event

Categories Life

I think the term "life changing" gets thrown around a bit too freely these days. Up until now in my 36 years on this planet, I only considered a few events in my life as honestly 'life changing': meeting and marrying my wonderful wife, and the births of our children. Sure, other things have definitely been big events and pivot points, but I wouldn't classify them in the realm of 'life changing'.

However, a few weeks ago, I had another life changing event.

On the 17 June 2019, on our daughter Zoe's 1st birthday, I had a liver transplant.

Although … Read more →

Going On “The List”

Categories Life
Simpsons stupid liver

TL;DR version: After spending most of this year jaundiced, I'm now on the liver transplant list.

This post has taken a fair bit of mental and emotional energy to write, both of which are in short supply at the moment, so please forgive me if it isn't up to my normal (sub-)standards.

To say that this year has been challenging in terms of my health would be the grossest of all understatements. It's been a while since I last mentioned my liver disease on this blog, because for the most part, it has been pretty uneventful. It's just been the … Read more →

Making Split Pane Mode More Usable in the New Gmail Interface

Categories Geekery, Internet, Technology

tl;dr version: I made a userscript that forces the new Gmail interface to show the email list as the expanded 3-line-per-thread display. You can find the userscript on my GitHub gist.

Although I don't use it for my personal Gmail account, I have long used the 'Split Pane' visual mode (with a vertical split) for my work Gmail. I find it easier to go through a lot of email by having the list of email threads on the left, and the currently selected email thread showing on the right.

However, with the recent Gmail interface changes that landed around … Read more →

The Lego Movie 2

Categories Lego, Movies
The Lego Movie 2 poster

Today I saw a preview screening of The Lego Movie 2. It was a preview screening, because although it was released globally a few days ago, it is not actually released here in Australia until the end of March. Yes, Village Roadshow are again pulling the whole "but kids don't watch movies outside of school holidays!" timing excuse. However, these limited preview screenings in sync with the global release are a compromise that I can live with.

Getting to the actual movie: I really loved it. I had pretty high expectations, especially considering how much I loved the first … Read more →

2018: Year in Review

Categories None

Well, that sure was an... interesting... year! I can't complain that 2018 didn't have its fair share of big events, because it sure did. So big, in fact, that I'm actually writing these 'end of year' blog posts in the middle of January 2019 and pre-dating them back to December.

Of course, the biggest event was the arrival of our second child, Zoe, but others were still notable, including ending an old job and landing a new one.

Blogging was very sparse this year for a number of reasons, but the underlying one was lack of time. Almost every post … Read more →