A walk and explore through the northern part of Waiuku Forest.
Photo: A walk through Waiuku Forest.
Photo: Auckland, City of Cones
Thought the cones in this scene may be a little excessive…
Moved from Google Keep to Joplin for note keeping
Have moved from Google Keep to Joplin.
Only draw back I can see is there is no Web based UI to the thing. Have to use the native platform specific Joplin apps.
Installed Joplin client on Ubuntu 22.04 using this command line.
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laurent22/joplin/dev/Joplin_install_and_update.sh | bashHowever, found that Joplin (after double clicking it’s short cut icon) refused to launch. So had to run these commands to lay down something called libfuse2
sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo apt install libfuse2…and then tried again, it launched after quite a few seconds.
Set up the path to my Joplin directory on my NextCloud installation.
https://[YOUR_SNAP_NEXTCLOUD_SERVER]/remote.php/webdav/JoplinAs for actually migrating your Google Keep Notes to Joplin, it’s a bit of a long winded process. Check here for some potential methods.
Photo of Sentinel Rock Walk Kaimai Ranges
An Individual Photo of the view at the top of Sentinel Rock in the Kaimai Mamaku Conservation Park.
The walk takes around 3 and half hours return. The Department of Conservation information page regarding Sentinel Rock Lookout walk can be found here.
Auckland Speed Limit Reductions – All stick but no carrot
TL;DR: Speeds limits are being reduced across the board. Driving is increasingly stressful as others will object to you following the speed limit. There are implications if you do receive an infringement. Driving is technically a privillege but alternative transport options for getting around Auckland remain disappointingly poor and impractical for many situations.
Noticed that Speed limits on some streets around the CBD have been further reduced. Now Wellington Street in Freemans Bay is down to a mere 30 km/h.
I can say that no cars whatsoever were doing 30 or even 40 km/h. In fact I had to pull over to allow a car to pass because they were right on my bumper while doing an already rule breaking 40km/h down Wellington Street. Walking back up Wellington street, I had observed basically every car were clearly ignoring the 30 km/h speed limit.
I’ve come to terms it’s only a matter of time that I’m going to end up with my first ever traffic infringement at this rate (basically not a matter of if, but when). Why? Because the agencies (including NZTA and Auckland Transport) by way of their “Vision zero” programme are dropping speed limits across the board and not just around the CBD. They’re also pledging to deploy more enforcement cameras everywhere and dropping enforcement tolerances and it only takes a momentarily lapse in judgement (e.g accelerating a touch too much in order to move safely into traffic or change lanes while looking over my shoulder to check a blind spot) right at an inopportune time and I will be done for.
The issue as well with infringements is that even if it’s only $30 low level speeding fine without demerits from a speed camera, apparently this still goes on your record somewhere for 5 years and apparently in many cases, you are supposed to declare this to insurance and needs to be declared in other areas as well (applying for a fire arms license, etc) so pays to avoid getting them where practical.
While I’ve continue for decades to express a strong desire to see alternative, more environmentally friendly and safer travel options opened up particularly in car dependent areas such as East Tamaki Industrial, the anti-car and climate activists have been exerting an increasing influence on Government policy and various government to make driving purposely more difficult and attempting to strong arm the motoring public out of their cars before we even have available working and viable alternative transport options that are able to realisitically cater to people’s day to day and household transportation needs in this city.
With the likes of Auckland Transport playing hard ball over Bus lane infringements and being inflexible even to those who have an otherwise squeaky clean driving record, the state will lose the goodwill of the public. Day to day life is already stressful for families as it is and the state to start ramping up the enforcement, widening the net, and pinging people over an increasing array of infractions while being out to disrupt people’s livelihoods is only going to accelerate the erosion of public goodwill and respect particularly if we continue to find excuses not to run the trains.
While I see we are building seperated cycle ways slowly (which admittedly, I’m generally infavour of should they go where people need to go and can be implemented in a cost effective fashion), however until we begin to see viable transport options able to meet Aucklanders’ day to day transportation needs emerge, I will as an individual ratepayer be vigorously and assertively pushing back at attempts by the more ardent climate activists who unrealistically demand we stop driving our cars immediately.
Raumaga Falls, Whangarei Photo
Picture of an urban waterfall, in Raumaga, Whangarei. Beware of the roaming / unrestrained Pitbull.
Installing Audacity without (Ubuntu) Snap packages and Error -9985
TL;DR Answer was found here. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1426476/ubuntu-22-04-audacity-does-not-show-up-in-pulseaudio-recording-tab
sudo apt install audacity -yAdmittedly, the process of trying to lay down and run Audacity initially gave me a bit of grief.
Wanted to install Audacity on my freshly laid down copy of Ubuntu 22.04 and all the references I could find of Audacity was to either install using “Snap” or “Flatpak”. Was apprehensive about Snap versions of any software and recall having grief with Audacity Snap before on my older machine giving me vague errors (e.g error -9985) about being unable to save or being unable to listen to a particular recording device. “Going Transport” –> “Rescan Audio Devices” did absolutely squat.
Even went back into Ubuntu Store and enabled all permissions on Audacity with again, nil effect. Appears nothing has changed (at the time of writing this post) two years on. As a Ubuntu user, I don’t have an overall very good impression of Snap at all having had issues with other Snap packages including with Flameshot (a screenshot tool) being unable to save to the Picture directory.
Traditional Hangi Photo
Traditional Hangi at Christmas.
Desire to Travel is in a lull
Admittedly, my desire to travel anywhere is in a definite lull at the moment. I’m anticipating it will come back at some point, but I ain’t going to try and force it back. May be accommodation and general travel costs is impacting this a bit.
Might do some day or short overnight trips somewhere these Holidays depending on availability of accommodation / tent sites and depending on how I feel. Again, I’m not going to force it. Will spend my holidays how I see fit.
Average Picture of The Tron
An average picture of “The Tron” (Hamilton, New Zealand)
Warning regarding “3M Command” type hanging hooks
Please be aware the use of M3 Command or similar picture hooks can still cause damage to walls when one attempts to take them off. Had a case where a tenant (who has otherwise been excellent) while vacating a property tried to remove one of the hooks and ended up taking some paint with it. The property manager got their nominated handy man in to address it but saw in the property owner’s transaction statement I received later in the month that the cost of repair came to almost $300 (from looking at a copy of the Tradie’s invoice). Whether the charge is reasonable or not, I wouldn’t know as I’m not a tradie.
I now learn that other property owners on various private forums have suggested to their tenants to avoid the use of 3M Command type hooks as they can ultimately cause more damage than regular Picture Hanging hooks if they aren’t removed “correctly” which by itself seems rather subjective.
If you do a search for reviews regarding 3M Command hooks, it appears there’s a few repeating anecdotes suggesting that they may not be all they are cracked up to be so if you do choose to still use them for hanging stuff around the house (be it for your own home or a rental), do so with due care and awareness that the risk of damage is still present.
Fieldays 2022
Average Pic of Fieldays 2022…
A relatively quiet affair. Continue reading “Fieldays 2022”
Yes, admittedly, I’m still running around in that 2006 Toyota Wagon.
Admittedly, I did remark I would get rid of my car about 5 years ago. But have yet to do so.
To be honest, I just can’t be bugged with replacing it. While the paintwork is now well and truly fading and I get ribbed for it being the worst car at my workplace, the thing still reliably runs.
Have driven better cars in recent years mainly as rentals, and while I will admit they’re nice to drive, I don’t get enough elation to run out and get a newer car.
Home Gym Breakage
Unfortunately broke my Weider Home Gym over the weekend.
Have gone and put in a M20 bolt in the meantime. But looking at the whole construction, will need to replace it as it’s clearly under designed to handle the weight it was supposed to be able to handle
Australian Mastodon Server instances
Update 16 February 2023: mastodon.au have announced they are shutting down.
Update 21 November 2022: New Australian Mastodon Server instances theblower.au and mastodon.au are now live and accepting signs ups. Existing instance, aus.social has just re-opened to Sign ups again today.
Update 12 November 2022: Appears both aus.social and Chinwag have temporarily halted signs ups. There is a new Server being developed at theblower.au. Please read more about the new AU Mastodon server here.
In the meantime, If any one knows of any other Australian Mastodon instances that are still open (and have the capacity to take in new sign ups) please advise in the comments below and help your fellow Aussies out, thanks.
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If you’re in Australia and looking for a Mastodon (Twitter alternative) server to join, please look at…
theblower.au – NEW! Open for sign ups.
aus.social – Reopened to Sign ups 21 Nov 2022.
bne.social – NEW! Open for sign ups.
melb.social – Melbourne Based – Requires invite from existing user.
chinwag.org – Closed to New Sign ups.
mastodon.au – Instance announced it is now shutting down: See announcement.
There’s probably other Australia based (or focused) Mastodon instances. If anyone knows of any that are available to take sign ups, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll add them here.
Currently helping out at mastodon.nz in an assistant mod capacity to help get on top of reviewing sign ups and noticed there were a lot of Australians applying to sign up mentioning they could not find their local regional Mastodon server.
From Musk to the Tusk (Twitter to Mastodon)
There’s been some movement from Twitter to the Mastodon Fediverse since Elon Musk’s take over of Twitter.
The current foremost instance for New Zealanders is mastodon.nz. (Due to the influx, new account creation is currently set to manual approval). Others include mastodon.nzoss.nz (Being the oldest of the NZ specific instances) and cloudisland.nz, a more heavily moderated instance.
My Current handle is “Nui” on mastodon.nz. I’ve never had a Twitter account and this is perhaps my first foray into any sort of Microblogging hence still trying to find my feet as it were.
Update 11 November 2022: Been brought on as an assistant moderator (at least in the interim) to help with reviewing and approving sign ups during this massive influx of interest.
The “Fake Mistake” overcharging. Could this possibly be a thing?
Could some unscrupulous businesses as a business strategy possibly be intentionally sneaking on extra charges onto selected customers hoping the customer not notice it? And if the customer does notice the discrepancy such as an unusual charge (or line item) and queries it, simply say sorry, correct the billing error and say it was a mistake?
Been a few cases recently when procuring products or services, errors have been spotted in either the quote or with a given invoice and have usually given the business the benefit of the doubt. I like to think (and still believe) the vast majority of these have been genuine and innocent mistakes, but the increasing frequently of such experiences in recent years has left me to question, is it a possibility that some businesses could be feigning mistakes? Particularly in these more challenging economic conditions?
My concern is that it can be extremely difficult if not downright impossible to determine between what are genuine billing mistakes that any business (despite the best of intentions) could still make and what could be feigned billing mistakes undertaken willfully as a business strategy by less than honest businesses.
Auckland Rail Closures 2023 – A Stark Wake up call to NZ regarding our infrastructure projects
Admittedly, initially had to actually check whether or not it was in fact April 1st. This afternoon, I learn that whole sections of Auckland’s Rail network is to be closed for lengthy periods during the coming 2023 year. Please read the details about these Line Closures here on AT’s Website.
Greater Auckland have already expressed their own dismay and concerns about this on their “GA” Twitter account.
I feel this ought to be a stark wake up call to New Zealand and the need to look into the way we do things in this country. Needed is an urgent nationwide inquiry into our infrastructure works and why everything gets done so glacially slow in this country and continues to get slower. Is it the project management process? Too many differing (unconnected) sub contractors making scheduling and coordination difficult? Overzealous Health and Safety? Too much needless bureaucracy? Lack of Will? Lack of incentive? Same questions go for our Roadworks as well which seem to take forever.
So just what were KiwiRail doing during all those Rail Closures and shut downs in the preceeding years? Did they only just discover the work needs to be done now? Were AT only informed of this now? It’s as if the rail line closures during the prior years (including during the weekends) weren’t already a sizeable inconvenience, It’s going to be just that more difficult promoting Auckland’s faith in the Public Transport network and enacting an effective modal shift away from dependence on the Private Motor car.
Would we be better off being served by Bus ways rather than any sort of Passenger rail if this sort of rather disruptive and lengthy ongoing maintenance is required of rail? What assurances are KiwiRail and Auckland Transport able to provide to the public that there won’t be yet another round of hugely inconvenient, costly and lengthy disruption to the rail network in the years to come after all this work is supposedly complete? How do other countries manage to do it? Or is Auckland simply too small to pragmatically run a reliable and dependable Passenger Train network due to the lack of redundancy in the system (afforded to bigger rail networks in larger municipalities)?
Rightly or wrongly, I am forming an impression that the people in charge of these organizations aren’t serious enough about doing their job properly nor delivering for the public and hold very little, if any, sense of duty/responsibility or accountability to New Zealand. I will admit this is just my opinion as a lay person / ignorant armchair critic who undoubtably won’t have the full picture, but something almost undeniably and certainly seems amiss and some hard questions need be asked of those in charge.
Spotify Android App and api2.branch.io
Got a new Android tablet and noticed that Spotify has been continuously phoning home to places such as api2.branch.io and app.adjust.com (every few seconds). If I force close the App, the DNS calls immediately cease.
Have flicked Spotify support an Email about this asking how I can turn this off on the Android version of their App. However, If I get no joy, will most probably move forward with ending my Spotify Premium subscription.
Use of photos
While most of the pictures as found on this website and on NUI.NZ are essentially personal photos taken on my compact camera or phone (unless otherwise stated), people are welcomed to use / share any of these photos around for personal or commercial use (except for resale) provided these photos are appropriately attributed (e.g “Photos: Fergus Young / NUI.NZ” is acceptable).
Been seeing the odd photo of mine popping up in random places without being properly attributed / credited. (e.g articles such as on LinkedIn). Appears to be more the photos here on peak.nz as opposed to natural landscape / hiking photos on nui.nz.
So long as any photos taken are properly credited / attributed, there’s no need to contact for me for permission..