I'm a software engineering student, developer and musician.
I finally used Codex Computer Use and it's pretty insane. I had to setup a bunch of events on Eventbrite that were duplicates of each other except for different locations, dates, and times. The Eventbrite website is somehow painfully slow, its Copy Event feature is inefficient and there's no way to create a "template" event. This made my job a very slow, manual, and tedious process. That's when I…
Pour one out for the Messenger app on macOS. Facebook recently announced that they are deprecating it and in 60 days, the app will stop working entirely. I don't remember when I started using the Messenger app on macOS, but it's probably been more than a year and it's been great way to access Messenger on the desktop. Sure, you can access Messenger through its web interface, but it was nice having…
My favourite clothing store, Johnny Bigg , recently changed their logo. When I first saw it, I thought there was a rendering issue on the website, like the font didn't load. But then seconds later it dawned on me that it was just a new logo. Sigh. Yet another brand to change their logo to "just a font", removing all traces of personality and originality. Their old logo looked classy and it was…
Two weeks ago, I participated in my first hackathon . It was tiring, but it was also an incredibly fun two days. I loved seeing everyone's creative and interesting ideas. It left me feeling inspired to build cool stuff. If I had infinite time, I would be starting side projects and tinkering with new ideas, jumping on them as soon as they come to me. Is that a sustainable thing to do? Probably not,…
Last week, I upgraded to Moom 4 . I have held off from upgrading since it came out in August, because frankly I didn't feel any need to. What led to me finally bite the bullet was the Use Grid feature. It was previously accessible through the green button palette, although I was able to trigger it via keyboard shortcut with a hidden feature flag. In Moom 4, it is now an official feature exposed in…
Recently my dad gave me his old Akai MPK Mini MKII MIDI controller with a few dead keys. I found this helpful guide by EducationAboutStuff who, having the same issue with his keyboard, fixed it using copper tape to reinforce the conductive contacts which power the keys. I only followed the first step which is cleaning the membrane layer and underlying circuit board, but it worked like a charm. No…
Just giving a quick shoutout to my new favourite Obsidian plugin, Latex Suite. As an engineering student, I take many notes involving mathematical formulas. I did this a bunch last year, using the built-in LaTeX support in Obsidian. Thanks to Markdown, it was quite easy, and I could write equations both inline or display math mode. Learning LaTeX syntax wasn't too hard either, although it…
Inspired by Robb Knight , Stephen Hackett and many others who have come before me, I have created a now page on my website. This is one of few additions to the site thanks to the recent rewrite using Eleventy that is now super easy for me to implement. [1] For those unaware, a now page is simply a page you periodically update and talk about what's been going in your life recently. I'm planning to…
At the end of 2023, I decided to sign up for Fitbod after hearing about on Relay shows (I did take advantage of a discount code. I may not have tried the app if not for this). After a year of using the app, here are my thoughts. What attracted me to Fitbod at first was the personalised training plans. I was doing some basic routines before, but it got a little boring doing the same exercises week…
Last week, I released an album. I wrote these songs back in 2021. It was a transitional time of my life, before and at the beginning of my military service in Singapore. While they're not masterpieces, these songs still mean a lot to me and represent what was going on in my head at the time. This album has been my labour of love for the past year. While I recorded demos for all the songs as I…
Welcome to my all-new, redesigned website built from the ground up for 2025. Why did I redesign my website? The old design was fine, it had a few weird formatting issues but it did its job so I never bothered to fix it. With the new year approaching, I wanted to get back into blogging. It had been more than a year since I launched my website and blog, with the goal of writing one post every week.…
Intro Alright, let's give this another shot. I did a write-up of my top albums of 2022, but did not finish writing it in the end. My yearly theme for 2024 is the Year of Expression. My efforts to do more writing haven't exactly gone very well, so this is a final effort to finish the year strong in that regard. It should be easy enough because I have thoughts about the music I love. 2024 has been a…
In a bit of an unusual move, Apple has an "exciting week of announcements" for the Mac starting next week. You can find several articles reporting on what's rumoured/likely to be announced, so instead here's my list of things I would love to see Apple do but most likely will not happen. Oh well, a boy can dream. USB-C peripherals : this is an obvious one, but sadly it doesn't feel guaranteed at…
I have always struggled with having poor posture. Growing up, I spent a LOT of time sitting down either over a book or in front of a computer screen, so my posture was a kid was not great. Hunched shoulders, craned neck, the works. I lived in the fear of permanently having a hunchback once my bones hardened as an adult, so I tried my best to improve my posture. It was hard because it did not come…
Here's some new music I've been enjoying lately: KID AGAIN - Jon Bellion Babylon - Gore Blast Beast and Melodies - Rob Scallon Whisky and Mes - Sungazer, Shubh Saran What do you think? Let me know on Mastodon .
Recently, I've fallen in love with Mario Tennis on the Game Boy Color. I started out by playing the exhibition matches to get a feel for the controls. I thought the mechanics were pretty good, requiring shot-making strategy and precise timing. However, I was playing on the Delta emulator and the on-screen touch controls were not precise enough for me to get past anything harder than the Easy…
As a big Apple fan and music nerd, I loved Twenty Thousand Hertz 's podcast series on Apple sound design. It's super fascinating to hear about the process and decisions that went into designing the system sounds and ringtones. I've tried designing my own alert sounds before and as simple as they may seem, creating sounds that are effective and sound nice is deceptively difficult. It's a shame that…
Here is some of the music I've been enjoying in the past weeks: Oscillator - Make Them Suffer Make Them Suffer's latest single is heavy, blending their new industrial sound with a bit of their older, blackened sound. Their next album comes out 8 November, and a week later they're playing a show here in Auckland. You already know I bought tickets, November can't come soon enough. HOW 2 GET AWAY…
DogPack404 is back with another video exposing MrBeast, this time with strong allegations of some highly messed up stuff as told by former employee Jake Weddle . I'll let the video speak for itself: And if this and the first video weren't bad enough, DogPack teased a third video with even more allegations. Things are NOT looking good for Jimmy.
A person on YouTube, going by the name DogPack404 uploaded a 53-minute-long video exposing MrBeast's shady manipulation tactics and claiming that he fakes videos and runs illegal giveaways. I've watched my fair share of MrBeast videos over the years. While I'm no superfan and have not spent any money on his merch or products, I have enjoyed his videos in the past, and have a lot of respect for the…
Here is my draw prediction for the 2024 Olympics Men's singles draw. I think Alcaraz will continue his hot run and win gold with Zverev getting silver. Not super certain about Djokovic winning bronze, his form is questionable so he could get knocked out in an earlier round. Medvedev is also questionable on clay. I'm definitely biased as a fan, although what I can say is he can surprise us by going…
Anthony Vincent, perhaps better known as Ten Second Songs , recently made a video where he tries to sing "Animals" by Architects by only listening to the instrumental track and reading the lyrics. It's super interesting to see how he approaches this song he's never heard before, and how close he got a few of the lines to the original. It's a great watch, and he also did one singing Bring Me The…
I thought it would be a fun challenge for myself to post a new guitar cover every day for 30 days during my uni break. It would be good way to get me practicing guitar and working on my transcribing, composition, and recording skills. I asked my friends on Instagram for song suggestions, which allowed me to discover and play music that I'm not so familiar with, as well as get others involved and…
If you haven't come across him yet, Brandon Shepherd makes excellent YouTube videos where he'll take famous brands/logos and remix the designs in some way. His work is really awesome and makes me wish I had half the drawing skills or even patience that he has. My favourite video of his is "I Overcomplicated Famous Brands". Check it out:
I have been loving the singles from Bilmuri , the solo project of Johnny Franck (formerly of Attack Attack!). His upcoming album "AMERICAN MOTOR SPORTS" comes out June 28. I would describe this album as country metal, a sound I wasn't sure if I'd be into at first. But the songs are super fun and catchy. Johnny is a really good songwriter and pulls off the mix of country and metal surprisingly…
Here are my reactions and thoughts about Apple's announcements at WWDC24: That intro was incredible. Phil flying the plane and using an old iPod, Mike wearing a Vision Pro. Craig's hair helmet was perfect. I cannot wait for Severance season 2. Vision Pro 2000 apps for Vision Pro, but no Netflix or YouTube. Turning 2D photos into 3D looks cool, interested to see how well this feature works. I…
Here's a quick non-comprehensive list of what I'd like to see at this year's WWDC: Make Shortcuts great again. Fix the editor and add more actions. Improve the alerts and dialogs on the Mac. I'd love to see a standalone Passwords app. Fix home screen widgets being unresponsive/not loading. Revamp the Music app on the Mac and get rid of its iTunes roots. Access to the full SF Symbols catalog in…
I have been on the free trial of music streaming service Tidal. Here are my thoughts so far as a usual Spotify user: This app feels like Spotify if the designers actually cared about music. No audiobooks, no podcast junk, just pure music and it's glorious. The Mac app is solid. Apple Music is stuck in its iTunes roots and Spotify is a poor use of screen space. The Tidal credits view is awesome. I…
I woke up this morning to a spam email sitting in my inbox. At first glance, I thought it was the typical App Store spam emails I get, usually someone promoting SEO services or offering to buy one of my apps. However, this email was different. What immediately jumped out to me was the fact it contained four overtly Christian lines. It seemed rather over top, and certainly rose my suspicions that…
As it happened at 2am here in New Zealand, I didn't get to watch Apple's "Let Loose" event live. Instead I watched the replay of the keynote before diving into the product pages and social media. Here are my reactions to the event, written while watching it: Nice artistic intro graphics of Apple Park. Is this the first event in HDR? Shot on iPhone again? Biggest day for iPad. About time! iPad Air…
Caleb Simpson 's latest video showcasing Jacob Collier's home studio is an absolute delight. Jacob is a massively successful musician, yet he chooses to keep the room he literally grew up in as his main base/studio. It's rather beautiful and profound. Some highlights from the video: Jacob's desk made from an old Ikea shelf (my family have the same shelf!) is testament that you don't need a fancy…
Apple have announced their next online event on 7 May at 7am PT, titled "Let Loose". The artwork for this event, if you haven't seen it already, is very artistic and features a hand holding an Apple Pencil. Like the rest of the internet, I'm hoping we get some major changes to the iPad line, especially for the iPad Pro. I'm currently holding onto a 10.5" model from 2017- if these new models are…
In the last two weeks or so we've seen the release of lots of new music in the modern metal/hard rock scene. There are too many good bands to list them all, so instead here are some my favourite new releases: Knocked Loose - Don't Reach For Me Their album "You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To" comes out on 10 May. I can't wait to hear what Knocked Loose and Poppy can come up with in the song…
Earlier this year, I wrote about the setting for a more balanced sound out of AirPods Pro . It works well for me and is what I use on my iOS devices, however this setting simply does not exist on the Mac. Lucky for me, macOS allows apps to control system audio so there is no need for the Headphones Accomodation setting. Instead, I have come up with a simple solution that gives maximum control and…
As a tall person, there are a bunch of questions people always ask me. Including but not limited to: "How tall are you?", "How tall are your parents?", "Are you the tallest in your family?", "Do you play basketball/volleyball?", "What did you eat growing up?", Or my personal favourite, "How are you so tall?" I thought I'd have some fun and make cards to hand out to people who ask any of these…
After watching this fascinating video by Veritasium yesterday (if you're not subscribed to him, what are you doing?) I started seeing the number 37 everywhere. A Spotify playlist I just made yesterday was 37 minutes long. I had 37 minutes tracked in Timery for the day. Today when filming some videos for YouTube one of my clips was shot at 11:37. Yes, my brain is now primed to look for the number,…
Since I have no idea what to write about for this week, I thought I'd just share the music I'm into at the moment. Serving as a time capsule to capture what I am listening to at the end of March 2024. 1. Twenty One Pilots - Overcompensate Really solid first single from their upcoming Clancy- which I wrote about here . 2. Jacob Collier - Djesse Vol. 4 This album has been out for nearly a month and…
As the next evolution of my desk setup, I bought some stands to raise my studio monitors up to ear-level. I got the "Vondynote Set of 2 Studio Monitor Stands Desktop Clamp Speaker Stands Against the Wall" from Amazon, which was the only option I could find that clamps to your desk and can be setup up against a wall. Other options stick out quite a bit on the back edge of the desk which is not…
Twenty One Pilots are back with a new single "Overcompensate", with their new album Clancy out on May 17. This song goes back to the darker, edgy style like we heard on Trench. I wasn't really a fan of Scaled and Icy so I'm excited they are back to this sound. Josh Dun killing it on the drums as usual. I can't wait for the rest of this album. Last week they released a 4-minute video explaining the…
For the past several years, I have been fortunate enough to be able to update my Macs to the latest OS releases and not have any core apps in my workflows break. Granted, my workflows aren't the most complicated by any means. I usually don't update to major releases on day one, but I tend to update within a few weeks of them coming out and have been just fine. That is, until this week, when I was…
I have been playing guitar for about 10 years and studied music theory in high school (as well as on my own), so when the language-learning app Duolingo released a Music course I was curious to check it out. Duolingo should need no introduction... it's a gamified language learning app with millions of users worldwide and has become quite the meme . At least their social media manager is leaning…
If you're a tennis fan, you've probably seen the ATP Tour YouTube channel where they do interviews, fun games and trivia with the men's tennis players. They've been consistently putting out high quality, entertaining content for the past few years ranging from quizzing players on their careers , showcasing what foods different players like , tour trivia and guessing the silhouettes of players .…
Apple's Developer blog recently wrote a feature on Ryan McLeod's excellent puzzle game Blackbox , and how he is working on a version for visionOS. I'm a big fan of Blackbox on iOS. I love the creativity of the puzzles and out-of-the-box thinking it requires. For those lucky enough to get an Apple Vision Pro, Blackbox will definitely be a game to try out. I can't imagine the new possibilities for…
If you're looking for a brighter, more neutral sound on your AirPods Pro, I would recommend trying the Balanced Tone setting. This can be found in the Headphone Accommodations settings in Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual. I've been using this setting since November 2022 and haven't looked back since. This setting is not for everyone, I know. Most people like a punchy, bass-heavy sound and…
A day after revealing the tracklist for his album "Djesse Vol.4", Jacob Collier released the sixth single, "Mi Coraźon", featuring Camilo. I was not expecting another single, we've already heard seven of the sixteen tracks (five singles, two played live). I'm just slightly afraid we won't get enough "new" tracks on album release day itself. Anyway, I love this song. It's very Latin-pop with the…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idd9Yqk-vT8 Jacob Collier revealed the track list for his upcoming album "Djesse Vol. 4" and I couldn't be more excited. The five singles we've heard are all great, and with this tracklist and featured artists revealed, the album is shaping up to be a doozy. TRACK 1: 100,000 Voices This is the track sampling all the audience choirs throughout the Djesse World Tour.…
I bought the Caudabe Sheath case for iPhone 15 Pro as a Christmas gift to myself. Previously I was using the Incipio Duo case, which is a good MagSafe case but it has a cutout for the Action Button. So when I saw Caudabe had sales on their cases for Black Friday I thought I'd check it out and solve my Action Buttons woes once and for all. Here's my brief review: The Sheath case feels sturdy and…
I planned this setup for a few years, and after coming home to New Zealand earlier in the year I was able to put it all together. Here's what I'm using: Computer: MacBook Pro 16" (Space Grey, M2 Pro, 16GB RAM, 2TB SSD) I bought this in July 2023, six months after the M2 Pro MacBook Pros were launched. Had I known the M3 MBPs were coming out four months later, I might have waited. But oh well, it's…
Joining the default apps trend. My choices probably aren't that interesting, but anyway here we go: Automation : Keyboard Maestro , BetterTouchTool , Shortcuts Backups : Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner Books : Libby Browser : Safari Journal : custom Obsidian setup Launcher : Alfred Music production : Logic Pro Music practice : Anytune Mail : Mail.app Mastodon : Mona for Mastodon Music :…
Hi, hello, and welcome to my blog! I'm so glad you could make it :) This blog has been in the works for quite a while. I first had the idea to start this site at the beginning of 2023, with the resurgence of blogging and the whole idea of owning your own web presence. I didn't do much online writing before, but I thought it'd be a fun project for the new year. So I bought the domain, made a few…