The internet has ruined me.

added some hot sauce to my dinner (a rice, spinach & cheese pie which is a household favourite). Tried a new kind of Li’l Becky’s hot sauce, because I really like their Apple & Habanero one. Put similar lashings of the new one (“Purrfect Pomegranate”) on my pie this evening.

Took a bite.

Then looked at the label (through watering eyes)… the only indication this might be meaningfully different to the other one I’d had before is on the back, in the ingredients lists. First ingredient: “super hot” chilli peppers.

I have regrets. And clear sinuses.

I was reflecting this evening - as I walked past a local cafe that I haven’t been to in many months (and part of why will become evident shortly) - that recognising AI use has become a simple heuristic for “this doesn’t get any of my discretionary time”.

There’s so much of everything, all the time, now. There’s more stuff to read than I’ll ever have time to read, there are more great cafes and restaurants around than I have the excess time or money to visit them all, there are more people that want my time or attention in various roles than I’ll necessarily have sufficient time (within those roles) to devote that time or attention. So as a first-layer filter, if you present me something AI-generated, it goes to the bottom of a pile that will never be exhumed.

The cafe - although we went there a couple of times since it opened under yet another new name and ownership - now has AI-generated art in the window (and tonight I noticed an AI-generated poster in the door). I just won’t go to that cafe any more - because there are plenty of places that *don’t* have AI-generated art in their windows.

I was looking on Google Maps for restaurants in Canberra, and …

You know how lots of Thai restaurants (at least Thai restaurants in Australia) do puns and wordplay in their names based on the “Thai”/“tie” homophone? This one gets some credit for originality: “Senn Noods”.

I went and looked at their menu.

And their website.

It’s intentional. Very much so. Full credit for their absolute commitment to the bit.

The room we’re staying in in Adelaide has a cooktop for all you Spinal Tap fans.

But where do *I* sleep?

Whoever named that waypoint was not sufficiently online around the turn of the millennium.

Here's a random question for my online nerds: is there a reason why Windows 11 timekeeping sucks so badly, and is there a way to fix it? Having used Macs and Apple devices for pretty much everything for years, I’m used to my devices keeping themselves within a second of accurate so consistently that I just don’t think about it. However, I recently built a Windows/Linux box for gaming (running Windows predominantly for the games we play most), and one of the games has events that happen at specific times… and I’ll notice regularly that the in-game countdown (which is accurate) is a significant fraction of a minute out from my local computer clock.

The computer is always connected to (wired) internet, it is configured to use ntp.org servers to synchronise automatically, and whenever I manually tell it to synchronise the time it seems to do so accurately. Does Windows just not give a shit about keeping itself in sync, despite how it’s configured? Cos this timekeeping is on par with an old school car stereo, not a 21st century internet-connected device.

Just casually went to look up pricing for the next time I swap a 16TB drive into my NAS. A year ago it was $595. Today the exact same drive is $1099.

The AI crash can’t come soon enough.

So the problem with quarterly water bills is it’s tricky to spot “this is an explainable short-term anomaly” vs “this is an ongoing trend that should not be happening”. In other news, yes January was one of the driest months on record in Melbourne, but also I think we have a water leak.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Viss/116479433054490839

This article is great, and the list of "read more" articles underneath it is even better.

The sooner the crash comes, the better off we’re all going to be.

However, in Australia, tipping in food service (or really most situations) is generally not a thing. It’s not *offensive* to tip like it is in Japan, but it’s not really done either. Even if it is, you might chuck a couple of bucks of change in the jar on the counter: not tips of double-digit percentages of the price of the meal. Unlike in the US, there is no separate “service wage” which is far below a normal wage and assumes a significant portion of income will be derived from tips.

Putting a blocking step in the payment process, where I either have to push a button labelled “no tip” in front of the person who both served us and is waiting for my selection, or push a button to choose a rate of tip to add to the cost of the meal (which, as I’ve mentioned above, isn’t normal practice in Australia and therefore should not be implicitly expected), effectively guarantees that my last experience before leaving the establishment will be one of low level awkwardness and/or resentment.

It’s an active decision made by whoever configures the payment terminals and/or trains the front-line staff: like I say, exactly the same brands of payment terminals are used at lots of other establishments, and I just get to pay without first playing “tip-or-no-tip”.

Perhaps it’s just how my brain works, but the effect is sufficiently unpleasant that I have a very small but gradually accumulating mental list of places where that has happened to me… and I have not been back to any of them since. I’m not actively boycotting them, but my emotional response to the idea of visiting any of them again is now just a bit “off”, and with so many excellent options around… well, I’m probably just going to keep choosing other places.

So here's a thing that feels like perhaps it bothers me disproportionately, but I'm curious to know how other people experience it.

After dining in at a commercial eating establishment, I go to pay the bill. Once in a while (usually at a middle-to-higher-end eatery - never a basic cafe or burger joint/pub/etc), the person taking payment - almost always the person who actually delivered our meals, poured the wine, etc - will enter the cost of the meal, then proffer the electronic payment device – not ready to accept payment, but displaying a screen with buttons to add a tip (usually a few buttons with various pre-calculated percentages). In order to pay, I first either have to choose one of the suggested tip rates, or the button that says “no tip”. Only then am I able to tap my card and pay.

To Americans, I’m sure this seems entirely normal - it is the done thing to tip at the end of the meal (somewhere in the range of 15-20% of the value of the meal, provided the service received was decent): either you leave cash on the table, or you do it by writing the tip amount onto the credit card receipt before signing it. I expect now it’s done with buttons on a screen like I’ve described.

Last year, the Worst Neighbour (at the time, the arsehole landlord of a neighbouring property) put in a planning permit application to demolish the house on that property, and build a “use every legally-permitted square cm” two storey duplex of 3-bedroom townhouses on the site. OK, urban infill happens, but this particular person is known to all surrounding neighbours for being dodgy as fuck. Sadly, “everyone says this guy is dodgy as fuck” doesn’t count for anything in planning permit approvals, so they duly issued a permit pending a number of conditions, including the requirement for a “tree protection management plan”, associated with a massive lemon-scented gum just on our side of the boundary fence. That plan was completed, and published on the website along with the permit approval. The existing house was demolished late last year.

Two days ago they started preliminary construction work… and evidently decided “fuck the tree protection management plan, we’ll just take our chances” - one worker lopped off an entire lower branch of the tree (the TPMP said “no pruning”), and then they used a boring machine to drill deep holes for foundation piles, about ten of which lie clearly within the supposed “tree protection zone” (that is meant to be entirely protected at all times, and only minimal excavation done by hand under the supervision of an arborist).

I’m hoping council’s enforcement arm absolutely throw the book at those arseholes.

over the next three days, I will be getting up for work at: 0400, 0330 and 0330.

I am not a morning person.

Who’s got two thumbs and a brand new BD500 (Airbus A220) type rating? 👍👍

Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison finally got their Apple account back. It seems the lesson is: don’t buy Apple gift cards. https://hey.paris/posts/appleid/

(Recipes are at nerdvittles.substack.com for anyone that might not have known about that blog)

Getting into the Christmas spirit by making not one but two @geordie recipes this week. Miss that guy.