Life

Saturday Ride

The ride to nowhere. Nowhere being the international airport. There was a security guy there who didn’t want us to take photos of the Rio Tinto COVID signs. Couldn’t figure out why, as there wasn’t anyone there, and we could take photos of the airport terminals.

Also interesting to see the new train station being built. Its strangely in the center of the terminal, near the air traffic control tower. That might seem good, but its actually a long way away from the terminals. Hope the travellators go fast.

Still a good 50 Km ride, the day before the storm.

Life, Technology

Weekend at Home

Can’t complain really – its been a nice weekend overall. Have enjoyed myself and relaxed.

I think its time to start getting back into the exercise again. Gyms open up in a week I think, based on the reduction in restrictions. I’ll need it.

Certainly had a good ride, even if the start had to be delayed due to the really cold weather.

Got to play with my raspberry pi’s. The new case works well without needing a fan. Definitely the way to go. Cute little critter. And really quite amazing for what it costs.

Life

Macbook Air

Just arrived today, making most of the updates, well, up to date.

I think I’m really going to like this laptop. Ironically not a pro model, but I think its going to do everything I need. I guess I can cope with the thermal heating when and if it happens for the harder stuff.

Its pretty well specced out:

  • Quad Core i7 – yes, arguably no benefit over the i5, but I’m good with that.
  • 16 GB ram. As much as you can put into an air in 2020
  • 1 TB SSD. Not as much as I could have gotten, but enough to future proof it.
  • Oh yes, it doesn’t have a butterfly keyboard, but it does have an escape key. I’m pretty happy with this keyboard. Its good.

Holidays, Life, Technology, Work

Mac Mini

Just spent the weekend configuring my Mac mini that’s arrived – its a 2020 model (ie the 2018 model with the feature bump):

  • 1 TB SSD
  • 16 GB ram (I know I could have got 8GB and expanded up for less)
  • Core i7 with 6 cores/12 threads.

Its a nice little server, and not a bad desktop. So I’m ready for when/if my 2012 Mac mini server fails… Amazingly its going strong to this day.

But this is a nice desktop, with room to grow. Interestingly, I noticed that my 500 GB server is actually doing ok now that I’ve pruned the snapshots of the virtual machines. So I have enough space for a while yet despite the emails that are filling it up. Still, ready for when that time comes, which will no doubt be fairly soon.

Life

The lucky Country

I think we are truly in the lucky country, although its more about being cohesive as a country than luck in reality.

We have pulled together and deaths from corona virus have been incredibly low by worldwide standards. So good that we are starting to relax the social isolation – groups of ten people permitted from here on in.

Just so lucky compared with other parts of the world.

Energy, Tech and Dogs