Hi, I’m Farai—Just Some Random Guy on The Internet
Welcome to my corner of the internet where I share whatever’s on my mind.
What’s really worth looking at on my site, you ask? Well, there’s:
- Now which shows what I’m doing at this very moment.
- The Conspicuous Consumer (Full RSS Feed) where I try review food and drinks although I plan to review other things in the future.
- My Plea to Terrible Zimbabwean Drivers who are so bad at it that I write about them many times over.
- My Laptop’s Software
- The Podcasts I Listen To
- Formative Posts which have had a big impression on how I think.
- The Bikeshed if you want to see me overthink how I’ve made this site.
- The Colophon if you just want a summary.
- My Resume [PDF: 147KB] since I’m looking for a new job 🙃. Interested, hit me up at [email protected]
- How to support my work
- Bemoaning the death of social media? Try blogging, I have.
Recent Posts
These are the 10 most recent posts on this site. See blog for most of my writing, micro for my writing with less thought put into it and links where I share my thoughts on linkes from around the web. You can also follow this site via RSS
- I’ve Finished Moving In All of My Old Blog Posts (Most of Them Anyway)
I’m moving in so much content OMG😲. Interestingly, I found a whole bunch of posts from late 2020 and I doubt they were actually published as they were just a collection of links.
Improving the Images on My Site Will Be Harder Than I Thought
So, I’ve wanted to improve how my site images were handled for a while now and I decided to get to it by attempting to implement the free fixes of transcoding photographic JPEG images to JXL (which it compresses losslessly) and . Turns out it’s a lot more work than I expected it to be.
I thought I’d be able to get away with a few command line scripts but I ended up with a lot of scripting node and I even begrugingly learned Power Query which I heard about from a YouTube video for data analysts. It’s very powerful but also frustrating.
Anyways, JXL reduced photographic and non-photographic images by about 20% and WebP reduced non photographic images by 13%. Not bad for a “quick fix”. I tried JPEG 2000 which has a lossless mode and it made non-photographic images 6× bigger than the source. I would do AVIF but the lossless mode is useless and I’m still figuring out HEVC (which along with technical issues has licensing issues).
Check the repo to follow my progress but be warned that the code is totally trash.
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The Longest Trips I’ve Taken (By Transport Mode)
- 🚗 Car
- With A Stop: Harare, Zimbabwe to Cape Town, South Africa (2,530km/1,752mi) leaving my mom’s car in Cape Town with my brother (RIP).
- Nonstop: Johannesbug, South Africa to Cape Town, South Africa (1,398km/868mi) as part of the previous trip.
- With Me Driving: Cedar Falls, Iowa USA to Gobles, Michigan USA (692km/429mi) to move from college to my aunt’s place.
- ✈️ Plane
- International: Cape Town, South Africa to Newark, New Jersey USA (16h 5mins over 12,571km/7,811mi) to start my trip to the US in 2022
- Domestic: Boise, Idaho USA to Atlanta, Georgia USA (3h 53min over 2,958km/1,838mi) coming back from dropping off my sibling at university
- 🚆 Train—Edingburg, Scotland UK to London, England UK (7 hours over 645km/401mi) on the sleeper train The Caledonian Sleeper when I went on a college trip to the UK.
- 🚌 Bus—Harare, Zimbabwe to Louis Trichardt, South Africa (707km/439mi) to see my mom who was working in Thohoyandou in Venda at the time.
- 🛳️ Cruise Ship—Miami, Florida USA to Nassau, Bahamas (289km/180mi) on holiday
What are yours?
Published:
- 🚗 Car
I got some mail from my bank and it turns out that they made an error in my favor worth…
7¢!
It probably cost more to send this check than it did correcting the error. At least the bank is honest although it wouldn’t let me cash the cheque in Zimbabwe. Also, it’s less generous than the $3 refund I got from a vending machine.
- How To Support My Work
Can I Fix This Wifi/Bluetooth Interference With Software Only?
One thing that has annoyed me about my new laptop is that my otherwise lovley MX Master is very choppy when I use Bluetooth—something that was never a problem on my old laptop. This means that I have to use the receiver, which I’ve lost although it was dying anyway.
It wasn’t until I reconfigured my laptop that noticed that the mouse works perfectly fine with bluetooth and the issue is that the network chip is causing the Bluetooth/WiFi interference which made the mouse choppy. The whole “turn off the battery saving” setting doesn’t work.
If anyone’s reading this, is there a way to fix this with software only? I’m not in a position to replace the network card right now.
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Thanks For Saving My Ass Apple!
As frustrated as I am with tech these days, Apple frequently does things that amaze me. On my way back from Philly, I had to take an early bus in order to catch my flight from JFK. I thought I had ample time to reach the bus with public transport, but I underestimated just how reliable Septa was which resulted in me waiting an hour for a train.
As I got on the train, I thought I was heading to the “bus station” but I suddenly got a notification on my iPhone saying “nearby” referring to where the “station” was. It was at this point I realized I was heading to the wrong place which was two dozen blocks away.
I frantically jumped out and turned back with my heavy ass suitcase just in time to get some Dunkin’ coffee before taking the bus to NYC. This would have been a very expensive mistake were it not for iOS.
Thanks Apple!
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Tomaž Zaman is Trying to Make a Router That’s Actually Good
Making of a router by Tomaž Zaman on youtube.com/@tomazzaman
I came across his channel and I’ve got to say that this seems like a good way to learn about how to build a startup—a practical MBA of sorts. Though English is his second language as he’s from Slovenia, he does a great job showing how to build a good hardware product, from finding funding to finding suppliers. Most interesting one was where he discussed the Van Westendorp model to price his product, a Wifi router that’s actually good. It’s lower than the bill of materials, but he hopes to increase the perceived value of the product by making the videos.
Well played, I’ll be rooting for you Tomaž!
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Do The Microsoft Wallpapers Have To Go So Hard?
Do The Microsoft Wallpapers Have To Go So Hard? on wallpapers.microsoft.design
I was writing about the software I have on my laptop and I stumbed upon Microsoft Design’s Wallpapers and they’re amazing, especially the Pride ones.
I don’t have the license to share these here so you’ll have to look at them yourself but they have me like 🥵.
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