Posts
Bonsais at the Arboretum
Some of the cutest trees I’ve ever seen!
A day at the zoo
A giraffeA meerkat diggingA meerkat pancaking in the sunA meerkat on guard duty
Week 81 — Mother’s Day 💐
Another longie this weekend — we had our quarterly refresh day today. Abby and I spent this weekend packing more boxes and moving them in to her Mum’s...
Week 80 — A bye election 👋
Crumpet had a bit of an on-and-off sore tummy this week. I suspect it was because she managed to scoff a bit of chicken that I dropped while eating early...
A day at Tidbinbilla
Rusty-yellow MushroomsA brave magpieFeet in the air while we eat.Fire pitKnobly treeMore mushrooms growing in the crease of a treeWalkin' hard or hardly...
Week 79 — Easter break
I took 3 days off over the Easter / ANZAC day period for a whopping 10 days of value!We drove up to Sydney one of the days to check out some tiles we...
No wait, don’t tell me
We’ve been catching up on Severance this week.One of the things that I have been enjoying about season 2 is that there are just some out there episodes...
Week 78 — Pretty exhausted, hbu?
I spent most of this week in Melbourne for work. We had our (now annual) product kick off with all of the folks who work to build the product across the...
reduce, each_with_object, performance and you
I was debugging an oddly slow bit of code today at work. The code in question was fine for smaller collections but egregiously slow as soon as the collection...
Week notes 77 — Everything, right here, all at once
It's been a week pals! So far on trend for 2025 😆This week I spent a day in Melbourne for work to do some tech strategy planning in person. Super grateful...
Week notes 76 — Back to work for '25
This week was my first week back at work since parental leave! I'm so glad I took ~10 weeks off work! Not only was it really nice to get to spend a lot...
2024 — Year in review
Another year in the books, another chance to look back at the highlights and reflect!ProjectsI've been working on a handful of projects over the course...
Advent of Code '24 — Day 2
Day two! And things are already tricksy! Today's puzzle was about deciphering reports, to determine if each level in the report is deemed safe. A safe...
Advent of Code '24 — Day 1
We're back again with Advent of Code — one of my favourite times of year. Partly for the puzzles, and partly because it's a sign the year is winding up...
Week 75 — Welcome, Sebastian
It's been a while! And for good reason (I think anyway ;) ) Last week, we welcomed our first Son in to the world! Both Mum and kiddo are doing well and...
Week 74 — Loud noises
This was an odd week. I was one of a few responders on an incident early in the week. We were first raised at ~10pm AEST, and were able to resolve things...
Week 73 — Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays
Abby and I had Friday off last week to do some life admin things. Before we did though, we stopped for a coffee at the local shops which was super lovely...
Week 72 — 33rd Olympiad
Such a cold week — it's gotta be snowing somewhere nearby. Most mornings this week had a pretty heavy fog, which made for a pretty moody and interesting...
Week 71 — Elden Ringing
Quiet week outside of work this week. Work-wise, we kicked off our fortnight of performance reviews, which is always so difficult (but worthwhile). I...
Week 70 — Road Raging
We've made it half way through the year. Happy tax time, finance lovers! My team at work has been at work has been plugging away at a strategic piece...
Week 69 — Solstice, so long Winter
Feeling a bit run-down this week. I think it's a combination of long days and freezing cold morning walks. Destiny 2 has continued to take up most of...
debug_postgres_index.md
Debugging index concurrent creation in Postgres. Check if an index is still being created. The following should return something if an index is still...
On "Turning the Tables on AI"
Link: https://ia.net/topics/turning-the-tables-on-ai Some solid takes on the common use-cases for AI "stuff". It's refreshing to see some well thought out use...
Week 68 — One for the dogs
I managed to get a booking with a tattoo artist I have been keeping an eye on for a while now to get a tattoo of Barkly and Crumpet :D The guy was incredibly...
Best, First, Favourite — Alexisonfire
Inspired by this episode of Reconcilable Differences where John and Merlin introduce the concept of "Best, First, Favourite", I thought I'd do a version...
Week 67 — Back after a short break!
Short week this week because of a public holiday in Canberra on the 27th of May (though I took the previous Friday off instead). Abby and I were in Melbourne...
Switching up some of the tools I use daily
I've been trying to shake things up a bit in terms of my go-to tools in my work / computer life. Mainly out of trying to understand what else is out there...
RSpec bisect saves the day!
Over the last few days, our test suite at work had a pretty gnarly run of test failures. We run almost all of our Ruby tests through RSpec, and group...
Week of 6 May
This week's update comes to you from a park bench on a (what has turned in to) stellar autumn day in Canberra. The sky is clear, and I'm surrounded by...
Week of 29 April
Back to our regularly scheduled updates! A regular length week this week, who the heck thought 5 day weeks were a good idea? I've been toying with a new...
Week of 15 April
The weather has been ace in Canberra this week, and especially this weekend! Even though it's been cold in the morning and evenings, we're getting those...
Week of 8 April
Late one this week on account of a busy weekend! I was in Sydney on Wednesday this week to attend the first ever Ruby in Common! Ruby conf is one of...
Week of 1 April
A quiet one this week! Another four day work week (which felt like home), was incredibly rewarding. I've been working my way through more of the Playstation...
Week of 25 March
Short week this week on account of Easter. It's been super crazy at work these last few weeks, so the 4 days off is incredibly welcome. Renovations are...
Week of 18 March
I spent some of the weekend taking out some of the kitchen and bathroom installations in the new place. Most of it was simple enough, with just a handful...
My Home Screen for March '24
My Home Screen for March '24 Shrinking down the music widget and bringing in a couple more apps — specifically Mail. I tried opening it with a swipe down...
Week of 11 March
I spent some of the long weekend over at the new place pulling out more fixtures. We're just down to the bathroom and kitchen now which I should be able...
Week of 4 March
Summer seems to be back again this week! We've had a streak of a couple ~30° days this week. While I normally welcome the heat, I was kinda hoping to...
Week of 26 February
What a mixed week! This week was bookended with 2 pretty wild events. On Monday night, I flew in to Melbourne in preparation to go see Blink-182 on Tuesday...
Week of 19 February
It was a warm one this week! Perhaps summer giving its last hurrah before we dive in to the chill of a Canberra Autumn! Work has been quite stressful...
Week of 12 February
Lots of catchup this week, post company offsite! It was also my last official week as a team lead! I'm very much looking forward to being able to focus...
My Home Screen for Feb '24
My Home Screen for February'24 (Ignore the unreads — I will reply to them at some point!) Obsidian is a staple, notes used to be my go to, but I've found...
Week of 5 February
Abby and I spent this week in Melbourne — we both had work things that both happened to land this week. It was the first tome we stayed in the CBD since...
Week of 29 January
Busy week this week ahead of our work's offsite next week, trying to get a bunch crammed in before a week of interruptions, oh and it's performance review...
Week 52 — Year of blogging regularly!
This post marks a year of updating this site on a regular (pretty much weekly) basis! As the year has gone on, I have been thinking about how to title...
TIL: Testing actions in Hanami 2
I was pairing with a colleague this afternoon at work on trying to test an action in Hanami 2 where we explicitly needed to read the body of the request...
Week 51 — Back to it
First week back at work started off hot! Back to back meetings and onboarding new folks is one way to jump-start the old memory :D Thankfully I had written...
Week 50 — Holiday's end
It was a quiet week this week :) I spent the first half of it cleaning out and re-painting my home office. The walls were an odd yellow colour — which...
Week 49 — Birthday week
I had this week off work and have been holidaying & catching up on some life admin things. I managed to catch The Boy and the Heron before its run ended...
Week 48 — Smell ya later 2023 ✌🏽
We did it. We made it through 2023! onwards to all the great* things 2024 has to offer us. This week has been pretty relaxing! More relaxing than usual...
Week 47 — It's Christmas time, again
What a week! I was hoping for a quiet fade out to the end of the year — but as with most things this year — it was not meant to be! The week started...
2023 Tunes!
This year I tried my darndest to Scrobble more to last.fm like it was 2008. This was made difficult by how tricky scrobbling from modern streaming services...
Week 46 — The final countdown!
It's the last week of the work year! And with it comes the mayhem of trying to wrap everything up lest it's forgotten in the ~2-3 weeks between now an...
Advent of Code 2023 — Day 9
More camels and oasis-es, less cards. In this puzzle, we're using our trusty Oasis And Sand Instability Sensor — OASIS — to analyse our surroundings....
Advent of Code 2023 — Day 8
Another fun one! Today's puzzle had us navigating a sandstorm. Our map, a set of directions, through what looked like a graph. Starting at AAA, we want...
Advent of Code 2023 — Day 7
Day 7 saw us playing cards, on camels — camel cards! Camel cards are like poker. But simpler, so you can play it while on a camel. The hand-rules are...
Advent of Code 2023 — Day 6
Catchup time! 😅 Time for day 6 — on day 11. Today's puzzle has us racing boats. But not any boats, toy boats that are wound up with the hold of a button...
Week 45 — All the celebrating!
I spent part of this week in Melbourne, and I think 3 days or so is the perfect amount of time when I'm also travelling in to the office each day. Any...
Advent of Code 2023 — Day 5
Please, my CPU, it needs help! A classic entry for AoC, in which there is a brute-force option that will melt any CPU. Today's puzzle was fun! But also...
Advent of Code 2023 — Day 4
My favourite so far! Inspired by some folks at work, I decided to try and do this as functionally as possible. Apparently there are some similarities...
Advent of Code — Day 3
And so the painful puzzles begin! Today's puzzle revolved around an ascii schematic and we were tasked with parsing it and finding adjacent elements in...
Authenticated routes with Hanami 2
As I was building out the admin area of this blog, I wanted to make sure only authenticated people could hop in an edit things. The first iteration of...
Week 44 — Beginning to wind it up
A productive week this week as the year starts to wind down! I am off to Melbourne in a few days, so super excited to go see some friends and family :)...
Advent of Code — Day 2
Onwards! To day 2. (at least until the rest of the end-of-year things start getting in the way — which normally happens at around day 6) Started reading...
Advent of Code — Day 1
Advent of Code is one of my favourite times of year. Partly for the puzzles, and partly because it's a sign the year is winding up. Like 24 ways to impress...
Week 43 — Big max
The December is screaming over the horizon and in to view, and with it, the many plans and things that need to happen by the magical time of "the end of...
My desks over the years
I was poking through my photo library this evening and thought it'd be fun to share some of the photos I had taken of my desk over the years! There's a...
Week 42 — Spending more time with Hanami 🌸
I made a couple of updates to this site this weekend. Mainly some behind the scenes things to update Hanami to 2.1.0rc2 and to bring some of the core...
Week 41 — 10-ex-productivity
It's finally starting to feel like summer here now! I've been wearing shorts and a t-shirt for most of the week. It's nice not not be freezing all of the...
Week 40 — A lot of nerding out
I started reading Berserk this week to have something not-so-serious to read for a change. I didn't realise just how much popular culture was inspired...
Week 39 — 👻
The weather was slightly better this week — no need for busting out the space heater at least! The last few weeks have seen a steady increase in halloween...
Week 38 — A full house
It's been freeeezing in Canberra this week! I had to turn the little space heater on on my office a couple of times this week — even after putting on a...
Week 37 — A change is as good as a holiday
For a couple of years we've been subscribed to Thieves coffee. They ship us a kilo of coffee roasted for filter each month, and each month is a new roaster...
Week 36 — 🐣
Abby is off to the UK for the next 2 weeks. So it's just been me and the dogs kicking about at home. The last time she was overseas while I was at home...
Week 35 — ADST, we've missed you
Week 1 with the new iPhone down, and it has been really nice! I didn't think I would adjust to the size as quickly as I did, and it is super nice to be...
Week 34 — Ooo shiny
Happy new iPhone and new iOS week to all who observe! I have been holding off upgrading my phone for a few years now. I picked up a 12 mini at the height...
Week 33 — 🫠
This week has been a planning week at work, along with the regular things that we need to keep on top of. And while I do enjoy being prepared for what...
Week 32 — Back to normal
This week, I finally feel like I'm back in the swing of things! But we'll see how long that lasts as we're getting in to planning for the next quarter at...
Week 31 — Something need doing?
This week was our first week back at work post-holiday. What a shock to the system 😅! While nothing at work was on-fire, there were several days in the...
Week 30 — New Zealand pt. 2 and back home
We spent the first half of this week in New Zealand, wrapping up the rest of our trip from last week. On Monday we drove out to Rotorua — a city with...
How I write this blog on an iPad
For the longest time, I have wanted to be able to write with just an iPad, with markdown, in some native text editor and not need to copy and paste text...
Week 29 — New Zealand pt. 1
This week, Abby and I have been travelling around New Zealand. We left Sydney on Monday night, and got in to our hotel in Aukland early on Tuesday morning...
Week 28 — Another birthday weekend
Short week at work this week. This quarter's refresh day fell on Monday. It was sunny up in Canberra, so I used it to clean the fly screens and do some...
Update 1 — G'day mate
The first few weeks of any new project are always the most exciting! When exploration and problem solving us abundant, and suffering for decisions of...
Week 27 — Blues and travelling
We're getting ready for a couple weeks of holiday in the coming weeks! It'll be the first time we've had a proper holiday since 2017, and I am so excited...
Week 26 — File > New Project
I started a new iOS project this week to help out Abby's sewing hobby (but also to take a look at some of the new things with SwiftData). The last project...
Week 25 — Social times
I caught up with a colleague from Melbourne and their partner this week for lunch, and it was lovely! Lunch time hangs and unscheduled social time are...
Week 24 — Excited about events
Almost half way through the year, and half way through winter! This weekend was a beauty here in Canberra. It was sunny as usual, but we had a couple...
Week 23 — Playdate
My playdate arrived while I was in Melbourne last week! I pre-ordered it when they opened back in 2021, and it was absolutely worth the wait! The hardware...
Week 22 — Thank you MEL
Another week in Melbourne in the books! I spent this one mainly visiting family and working. The last time I was down, my team was all of 3 people. It...
Week 21 — Melbourne time
This morning I flew out to Melbourne. I have a habit, when travelling, to get to wherever I need to be well in advance of the suggested arrival times...
Week 20 — Stay a while and listen
I've been playing through Diablo IV this weekend — so far it has surpassed my expectations! Aesthetically, it feels much more like a direct sequel to Diablo...
Week 19 — *Skippy sounds*
It's been icy this week! So much so that most mornings have involved frosty grass (which is always entertaining to see the dogs walk on before they realise...
Week 18 — Discovering Hyrule
The weather this week was suuuper weird! It's like Autumn was throwing out one last hurrah. After a couple days of -6°C last week, we had some pretty warm...
Week 17 — So long, Mercury
I took down Mercury from the iOS App Store this week and have opened a PR to remove it from the Mastodon marketing site. I built it in my spare time over...
Week 16 — Four more months!
This week's post marks 4 months of weekly posts! I have never really gotten in to the habit of writing (as much as I have wanted to), but I have found...
Week 15 — Hiyah!
It's Tears of the Kingdom time! I played the heck out of Breath of the Wild, and am so excited for this instalment in the series. I am not usually a fan...
How I debug with Ruby
Over the many years that I have been working with Ruby, I have never really learned to use a debugger, and really only lean on tools like Pry to start...
Week 14 — Blog updates
Regular length week this week ;) I have been adding some behind the scenes features to this blog. Up until now, I have been using a handful of micropub...
Week 13 — Another longie
Yet another long weekend, making for a short week :D Though I think this is the last longie for a little bit now. This time, we were off on account of...
Week 12 — Layoffs
This week has been rough on many fronts. Layoffs at work have meant we have lost some of the most brilliant people I have had the chance to work with...
Week 11 — Easter
Another short week this week on account of Easter, which was nice! Speaking of, Greek Easter is this weekend — so Χριστός Ανέστη to all who celebrate...
How I use Obsidian
I've been using Obsidian for a little while now. At first, it was largely just a replacement for Notes.app, like Ulysses before it, I preferred it purely...
Week 10 — Double digits 🎉
I've been trying to get back in to scrobbling things I listen to to last.fm again. Partly so I can display the week's top track at the bottom of these...
Week 9 — Pizza time
We've recently purchased an Ooni pizza oven 🎉. Our closest Good Pizza Place™ is a 40min round trip away. Which is fine if we can eat in, but because the...
Week 8 — 🍂
It's been a bit f a quiet week this week — well, at home anyway. Work has been full on, and maybe that has contributed to the quietness of the week. Contrary...
Week 7 — Same same, but different
I finished the Lightfall campaign this week on legendary! It was pretty amazing knocking over the last encounter solo. It took me a bit of bumping up...
Week 6 — Sleepless in CBR
This week, the temperature has cooled way down in Canberra. I've had to double up on long sleeve shirts some days to stay warm, and some of the leaves...
Week 5 — Plant's alive!
I've been working on the backend of this blog to pull in all the stuff I have, from various places of the internet. So far, that's been photos off of Instagram...
Week 4 — Meet the team.
I am coming to the end of my week in Melbourne. It's been a great little week. Taking the train to work continues to be a novelty as does getting home...
Week 3 — Ruby Ruby Ruby.
I've been listening to the latest The Adventure Zone campaign, [Steeplechase](https://theadventurezone.fandom.com/wiki/Campaign7:Steeplechase) . Based...
Week 2 — Next week, and next week.
Nintendo dropped a surprise release of Metroid Prime Remastered on us this week! I remember reading, and re-reading all of the promotional material of...
Week 1 — This time, for sure.
📲 New blog, who this? I have been re-building this site with Hanami & Tailwind, following the W3C's Micropub spec (mainly so I can leverage plethora of...
Ruby learning materials.
I often get asked about recommendations for resources to learn Ruby (and how to program, generally). This list is intended to catalogue the various resources...
Deploying a Hanami 2.0 app to fly.io.
I have a couple of small hobby apps that were on Heroku's free tier (RIP) that I have now moved over to Fly.io. Fly.io has a migrate from Heroku process...
Managing dotfiles.
It's not often that I get a new computer, but on the odd occasion that I do, I like to have all of my config prepared and ready to copy over! To achieve...
Naming things is ~hard~ fun
Like most people*, I like to name the various devices in the house after a theme. For the longest time, my devices were unnamed, until I moved to Apple...