Weeknotes #287

After the excitement of last week we stayed at home this past weekend, eager to avoid the sweltering heat.

I don’t know how this happened but I somehow forgot to write my annual list of the podcasts I’m listening to. Except I didn’t forget about it. I thought about it multiple times over the past few weeks but always in the context of something that I needed to get around to before the end of spring. It is, of course, well past the end of spring and yet every time I had this thought, I contented myself with the knowledge that it would all be fine so long as I wrote it before the end of spring. Suffice it to say, I did eventually write it. And I backdated it, like a cheat.

Speaking of podcasts, my new favourite is Geopolitical Cousins. The show is hosted by two geopolitical analysts, Jacob Shapiro and Marko Papic. They recently ranked the top 30 global leaders with the highest ‘trade value’ (borrowing a concept from Bill Simmons) and gave a relatively high ranking to Australia’s current prime minister, Anthony Albanese. Apparently this didn’t go down well with some of their audience which in turn prompted me to write to them both saying that I thought it was a completely justifiable selection (especially given the Australian Labor Party’s victory at the most recent election). Both Shapiro and Papic wrote back with some very kind words which left me feeling extremely chuffed.

I found myself wondering what Xbox Cloud Gaming was like now on the Steam Deck. You still have to do it by installing Microsoft Edge and then getting that to show up in Steam but, after a bit of fiddling, I had it in the right place and, much to my surprise, it was excellent. The last time I remember trying it was around 2020 and the experience back then was really quite poor but I guess five years (and a faster Internet connection) have really improved things. I have already put far too much time into Jedi: Survivor.

My Internet friend sogaiu directed me to this talk by security researcher, Christopher Domas, about running code at the most secure level of the x86-64. Domas performs the whole presentation like a cross between a magic trick and that scene in a heist movie where they explain the plan to you. I found it a lot of fun.

I’m burying the lede a bit but I bought the M2-based 13” iPad Air. Together with the Mac Mini, this completes the combo of Mac desktop and iPad quasi-laptop that I started thinking about a few months back. The idea back then was that I would be able to use the greater screen real estate of a 13” iPad Air (versus my trusty 11” iPad Pro) to stream my Mac desktop and work on iOS app development. Since then, I’ve decided I want to spend more time on my Japanese and yet, here I am.

Their upcoming album, Fall from the Light, isn’t out yet but I’ve been listening to a lot of ‘Laced Up’ by the Hilltop Hoods (Apple Music). I’ve been a constant fan of these Australian MCs since 2003’s ‘Nosebleed Section’ burst onto Triple J and ‘Laced Up’ is another solid entry in their catalogue of catchy hooks and clever wordplay.