June 2023 – Something Odd!

Goodbye Mommy Cat

Mommy Cat, the mother of four cats who became part of our family for varying lengths of time, passed away today. She was probably 17 years old, it’s hard to know for sure, but we had her for more than 15 years.

She was a wild cat. Many years ago she appeared and adopted us, dragging in with her four kittens. For most of her life, she wouldn’t let anyone touch her. She’d gladly accept our food and shelter, though! But, in the last few months of her life, with encouragement from my wife using treats, she came to accept us rubbing her head. At first, she’d flinch away, but in the last few weeks she moved into the rub, enjoying it. She even followed me from the kitchen, to the garden and back again, looking for treats all the way, looking up at my face in that piercing way cats have.

Her daughter Hoppy is still here. She’s as adorable as ever, and it appears she’s none the worse for the loss of her mother. Mother and daughter led quite separate lives. Mommy Cat rarely left the garden for the last two or three years.

Caring for Mommy Cat has been pretty intense in the last few months. It’s going to be very odd to go down to the kitchen in the morning and not hear her screech for food, or gurgled attempts at purring. Where once there was a fence around a kennel to discourage her from roaming around the kitchen, we are now back to the dog’s bed, where Hoppy will sleep tonight.

She’ll be missed. We love her. She was such a feisty creature. A presence in our lives for most of our married life.

Eighteen Years at Automattic

I started work at Automattic 18 years ago today. Matt offered me a job working on a new WordPress based website a few weeks before. I had just bought a house the year before, I had become engaged the month before, and left my old job at the same time, so I jumped at the opportunity to work on WordPress full time!

It started out small with us working on 2 servers and an invite system. I felt I was doing as much admin on MySQL and Apache as coding. More people were hired. Many of them are still at Automattic. We worked on lots of cool little things like the global tag system, and so much else that I’ve forgotten about. Then moving onto the billing system because I had done billing at my previous job, then on to Crowdsignal, on to Jetpack Forms and finally onto the team working on Jetpack Boost and WP Super Cache.

WordPress.com is unrecognisable from what it was 18 years ago, but if I run “blame” on the right files, I’ll sure I’ll still see my name on some ancient code nobody has touched in all that time.

Fast forward 18 years, and I’m in the same office at home. I definitely made the right decision that day in 2005.

Thanks, Matt.

The Evil Ending of Game of Thrones

It’s funny how an awful ending to what was an amazing TV series has almost wiped it from the face of popular media, but this ending. This ending would have been amazing. It was Bran all along. All the way down.

Mojo

An amazing C64 demo. The quest to find a friend.

Mork Meets Robin Williams

I used to love watching Mork and Mindy when I was growing up. Robin Williams was a wonderful comedian, but in this scene he’s not the funny, mad cap comedian we know. It’s heart breaking.

This Reddit is a private community

The moderators of r/programming have set this community as private. Only approved members can view and take part in its discussions.

In a dramatic turn of events, a wave of subreddits has gone dark today, making their presence disappear from the digital landscape. These virtual communities, brimming with discussions and camaraderie, have taken this drastic action to protest against recent changes to the pricing of the Reddit API for third-party mobile apps. It’s a bold move that could potentially alter the Reddit landscape forever, for the worse.

Among the affected applications is Apollo, a highly regarded iOS Reddit app. The developer of Apollo would have been burdened with an astonishing $20 million annual cost to keep the app running. Such a financial blow would have undoubtedly crippled their operations. As for me, I’m an avid user of Reddit is Fun, a cherished app that has become an integral part of my daily routine. Unfortunately, the costs associated with maintaining this beloved app have also skyrocketed, forcing the developer behind it to announce its impending shutdown on June 30th.

I tried the official app, but it’s not as polished as RIF. The second post I saw was a promoted post, which is, of course, one of the reasons for pushing users towards that app. Many point out that Reddit wouldn’t be Reddit if it wasn’t for all the volunteer moderators who keep the site running. Annoying those moderators isn’t going to encourage them to volunteer more time.

I hear that the Reddit app can be modified and patched (no, I won’t link to it) but I’ll probably visit Reddit a lot less now. There’s always Hacker News, where there are already two threads this morning about it. In one of these threads, a user conjectured that Reddit may be intentionally shedding its current user base to appeal to a less technically inclined, more advertisement-friendly demographic. It begs the question: who will shoulder the responsibility of moderation in this new era?

As well as the protest, Reddit seem to be boycotting themselves. The site went down today for a while. It might be all the private sub Reddits don’t cache that well, and the traffic to so many of them is bringing things down. Ouch.

I guess I’ll be reading more books. That will be good for my peace of mind.

An umbrella for the sun

Why don’t people use an umbrella to shield themselves from the sun when they’re out for a walk? It’s a perfectly natural item to use if rain is falling from the sky, but if it is the UV radiation of a sunny day, there’s none to be seen.

A screenshot of the weather forecast showing it will be 19C - 20C today under clear skies.

It felt weird, but I took my dog for a walk and I used a black umbrella. OK, it felt more than weird. It felt stupid. I mean, it wasn’t raining. There’s hardly any cloud in the sky. I had an SPF 50 mineral sunscreen on already.

DIego, a chihuahua lying down in his blanket

But, you know what? I realised I was a lot more comfortable than I normally would be. My dog, Diego, sniffs around in the grass, forcing me to wait around on the other end of his leash. There are trees about, but not enough shade. I had a black umbrella over my head, covering my upper torso and arms. I took my baseball cap off because I didn’t need it. It was nice.

Diego was happy, reading the unseen and unsmelt messages we humans can’t perceive.

On the way back, he stopped, and wagged his tail slowly when I asked him if he wanted to be picked up. He is a 2.5 kg chihuahua, after all. He lay on my arm, and cooled down in the shade cast by me and the umbrella!

I’m not a huge fan of the sun. You’ll never find me sitting in a chair soaking up the rays, so when I do go out in it, it’s nice to be prepared.

PS. I realise 19C (66.2F) isn’t that hot, but I’m melting here!