Random tangent (blog)
Ameel Khan's personal blog. This is a blog about life, technology, photography, typography, the internet, science, feminism, books, film, music, and whatever other random stuff I come across or happen to be interested in today.
Ah yes. The folks at my website hosting provider Squarespace are reaching out to me via *checks notes* the contact form on my website.
😆
Last month it was Julia from the “Square Space Security Team”.
And this week we have “Collins” reaching out from the “Squarespace Security Team” so at least they got the name of the company right. “Collins” was even helpful enough to leave the quotation marks around his name. Good on you “Collins”.
“Passengers on the platform are reminded to stand behind the yellow line until the train comes to a complete stop”
— Repeated pre-recorded announcement made over the public address sytem at all train stations in Melbourne.
I can imagine the discussion the pre-teen and their mother had on platform 10 at Southern Cross railway station just before I took this photo. That’s because, the second the mother looked away, the pre-teen quietly stretched one leg and tapped the forbidden side of the yellow line with their toe before quickly pulling their leg back 😛🙄
Photo of the train tracks and platform at a large suburban railway station, with a train visible on the platform across from the photographer. A “mind the gap” warning is written in yellow ink on the other side of the yellow safety line at the edge of the platform.
If you’re a U2 fan but you’ve been less than whelmed by some of the band’s newer music (eg the “Songs of…” trilogy) you must check out their two new EPs.
Days or Ash is good, but Easter Lily is excellent. And both are a true return to form.
In fact, I think maybe 80% of the music I’ve listened to since Easter Lily was released on 2 April has been this EP played from start to finish!
Hats off to author Kelly Link over on Bluesky for playing off the original William Carlos Williams poem of the same name:
The post from 21 April 2026 reads:
I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update
and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize
Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying
I’m loving my new 27mm (full-frame equivalent) prime lens!
I took only a handful of photos with it on today’s short walk though. I was having more fun talking with Nadia that I was with taking photos :)
Photo looking up through a gap in a tree to a wooden electricity pole holding up multiple wires.
Photo taken through a wrought iron gate of a statue in a residential garden. The statue is of a woman in traditional European dress carrying a water jug.
Photo of a colourful, decorative windmill affixed to a residential fence with a sturdy wooden stick. The windmill has wide, rounded sails made out of multi-coloured, translucent plastic in shades of blue, pink, and purple.
In 2022 we bought a house in the northern suburbs of Melbourne and this year (2026) we finally had enough money saved up to get solar panels installed on our roof.
Photo looking up from the ground floor at the roof of a double-storey house. The house has a multi-level roof covered in pink concrete tiles. Various roof segments are oriented and angled towards different directions. Three of these segments have single solar panels installed on them. Text call-outs on the image point to each of these solar panels.
Buying solar panels in Australia is surprisingly straightforward these days. Here’s how I went about getting them.
These were some of the resources I used:
Introductory webinars from Solar Savers, organised in association with several local councils across Melbourne. If you want to want to watch one of these, here’s the August 2025 webinar on ‘Solar, Batteries, and EV Chargers’ on the Zero Carbon Merri-bek website.
Solar Hub from Solar Victoria, a program from the Victorian Government.
Solar 101 from SolarQuotes or, really, their whole YouTube channel.
In our case this was:
Short term: install as many solar panels as possible.
Medium term: replace our gas stove with an induction one and our instantaneous gas hot water system with an electric one (either storage or heat pump).
Long term: add a home battery and, once we buy an electric vehicle (EV), add an EV charger to our solar system.
This meant we didn’t want to get a basic solar system that would serve just our current needs. We wanted to get a system that would support our future electrification plans.
Finding good solar system installers can be a challenge but, fortunately, these two services got me free quotes from qualified and vetted installers:
SolarQuotes, which is the service recommended by CHOICE. I’ve been a member of CHOICE since 2011 and those folks have never once steered me wrong.
Solar Savers, which is a joint local government initiative that helps residents make the switch to solar power.
I ended up requesting two quotes from each service.
I also got a recommendation from a friend who’d had their solar system installed last year.
Graphic showing a collage of two website screenshots, one for SolarQuotes and one for Solar Savers.
Most of the installers got in touch with me pretty quickly and I had good chats with all of them.
Three of the installers submitted formal quotes and we ended up picking the one that recommended the most appropriate system for our house and also had the best customer service.
This wasn’t the cheapest option presented to us, but it was the one that would give us the most bang-for-buck for our type of roof, because it turns out we have a “complex roof”.
Photo showing the green-and-gold, multi-layered, tall, pointy domes of Saint Sophia'‘s Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Source: Jonathan Khoo on Flickr)
We have a concrete tile roof but, as you will have seen in the photo at the top of the post, instead of two large, flat surfaces that run the length of the house above the first floor, our roof has lots of smaller segments that are oriented (and, therefore, angled) towards different compass directions. Also, we have roof segments on both the ground and first floor.
Designing and installing a solar system around this type of segmented, multi-level roof takes time, effort, and money, which is something many (if not all) large solar installers don’t want to do. I learned this from the first installer who contacted me about providing a quote.
He was from a large company that (I learned) only does standard installs, which is probably why that company’s pricing is so competitive. After looking at our roof using his web mapping tool, he said he wouldn’t be submitting a quote. He then recommended I find a local, more specialised installer who would take the time to build a personalised and optimised system for us. This would cost us more, he said, but it would get us the best system.
The installer we ended up going with was Specialized Solar & Electrical (aka Spec Solar). Their system designer built us a customised system that, while more expensive than a similar design from another installer, was still within our budget.
Here’s a depiction of the physical layout of our final install, as shown in the SolarEdge smartphone app.
Screenshot of the Solar Edge smartphone app showing graphics of twelve solar panels and how they are physical laid out on the roof of a house. The solar panel elements of this graphic are shaded based on how much energy each panel is currently generating.
The Spec Solar designer managed to squeeze twelve solar panels onto our complex roof, but:
only six of these panels are oriented north (ie facing the sun all the time);
seven had to be installed as single panels on their own little roof segment; and
four had to be installed on ground-floor roof segments because there wasn’t enough space on our first-floor roof segments.
Given the way we had to spread the solar panels out across different roof levels and orientations, as well as our plan to add a home battery in the future, our best option was to go with an optimised inverter system from SolarEdge. (The second-best option was a microinverter system from Enphase.)
The benefits of the optimised inverter approach are:
Optimised power: With a power optimiser sitting under each solar panel, our system can maintain the highest overall power output regardless of the output of each individual solar panel. Meaning the system’s overall output isn’t limited by panels that are producing the least amount of power at the time (because they’re in the shade or because they’re facing east or west) which is what would happen with a conventional string inverter system.
Battery ready: All SolarEdge inverters are hybrid inverters, which is the type of inverter you need if you want to add a home battery to your system. Had we gone with one of the cheaper quotes, we would have had to upgrade to a hybrid inverter once we were ready to install a battery. (And if we’d swapped to a hybrid inverter in that cheaper quote, its updated price would have been close to the quote we did end up going with.)
Future proofing: Even though our solar panels can produce a maximum of 5.7kW from the sun, we went with a 10kW inverter to convert all this DC current in to useable AC current. We wanted that extra capacity so that our future battery wouldn’t be constrained by the limits of our solar panels. EV chargers, for example, run at 7kW minimum. So to be able to use our (future) battery to charge our (future) EV, or to power the whole house at night off the battery, we’d need an inverter that could handle this higher load.
Graphic showing the working of an optimised solar inverter system. (Source: SolarQuotes)
There is one downside to picking the optimised inverter system we did, and that is being locked into the SolarEdge ecosystem. I’m okay with that though. SolarEdge is more expensive than its (relatively new) optimised-inverter competition, but its current line of products are reliable and they come with a good warranty.
In case you’re interested in the details, these are the components we got installed:
a SolarEdge SE10000H single-phase hybrid inverter and
twelve AIKO NEOSTAR 3S+54 dual-glass 480W solar panels (with SolarEdge optimisers under each one).
SpecSolar had actually quoted us for AIKO’s 475kW solar panels but those were out of stock at the time of installation, so they upgraded us to the 480kW panels without an extra charge.
Screenshot from a solar system quote showing system details for solar panels and and inverter, as well as a bar chart monthly energy production estimates.
Once we agreed to proceed with SpecSolar, everything moved pretty quickly.
On 2 February the solar system designer came over to do a site inspection, after which he tweaked the design and sent us a final quote. We signed the quote that same day.
On 10 February the team from SpecSolar came over and did the installation. That took several hours, from 7am to around 3pm.
Photo taken from inside a residential garage with its roller door opened. On the floor of the garage are several large toolboxes, some of which are open. Other construction tools and equipment are also lying on the floor. Parked in the driveway, directly outside the garage, is a trailer filled half-way with uninstalled solar panels.
They don’t switch on your solar system the day they install it, by the way. The electrical part of this installation (the bit installed in our garage) needs to be inspected and signed-off by a licenced electrical inspector first. That happened on 19 February.
So 44 days after I first requested quotes, our solar system was switched on and connected to our house.
The final (and technically optional) step in this process was getting our electricity retailer and electricity provider – Momentum Energy and Jemena, respectively – to receive the excess solar power we were generating from our panels.
That whole process took over a month but, happily, SpecSolar managed it all on our behalf.
Our solar feed-in was switched on on 25 March. That means our excess power is now going back into the electricity grid, for which we are being paid a tiny amount ($1.18 for the six days in March that this was active, for example).
So how is everything going? It’s going pretty great, actually!
March is the first full month we’ve had these solar panels and, over the course of that month, they produced 125kWh of power. We, however, used only 24% of this power.
Screenshot from the SolarEdge smartphone app showing the energy balance from a solar system installation for the month of March 2026. The bar charts and text tell us that 125kWh of energy was produced, 76% of which went to the grid and 24% went to the home. Of the total energy consumed by the home, 52% of that came from the grid and 48% came from the sun.
It didn’t come as a surprise that we used less than a quarter of the power generated. In fact, that was part of the plan.
This solar system wasn’t provisioned for use in just the sunniest days of summer, it was provisioned to provide us with sufficient power even on the gloomiest days of winter.
The proportion of solar power we use in winter will be much higher!
March 2026 was actually a pretty cloudy month. Here is a table showing the month’s daily weather observations from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Screenshot showing a table titled, “Melbourne, Victoria March 2026 Daily Weather Observations”. The table shows daily minimum and maximum temperatures, as well as readings for rain and wind. It also shows a snapshot of these readings at 9am and 3pm on each day. (Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology)
The “Cld” (ie cloud cover) column under the 9am and 3pm sections shows the fraction of sky covered by cloud. This is measured in eights, meaning a score of 4 tells us that four-eighths (ie half) of the sky was covered by cloud.
This table tells us that, on 16 of the 31 days of March, we had cloud cover of 4 or above at both 9am and 3pm. And if you count-up the days in which we had cloud cover of 4 or above at either 9am or 3pm, there were 23 of those days in March.
What does this mean? It means we managed to use only 24% of the power generated by our solar panels during a month in which half the sky was covered in cloud for more than half the time :)
Basically, it means I’m confident that our system is provisioned suitably for whatever winter will throw at us.
What about the other side of the equation? How did generating solar power affect the amount of electricity we pulled from the grid?
According to our electricity bills:
In March 2025, we drew 291.9kWh of electricity from the grid.
In March 2026, we drew 157.1kWH of electricity from the grid – which is 54% of what we used this same time last year :)
That result is pretty much exactly what the Spec Solar predicted for us, by the way: an approximate halving of our electricity bill.
Screenshot of a smartphone notification from the Powerpal app with the title, “Your weekly report is ready!”. The notification reads, “You spent $28.46 – 46% less than last week. Check your report for more ways to save!”
Getting a solar system installed on our roof isn’t the only energy upgrade we did to our house this year. We also upgraded the insulation in our roof.
The roof above our house already had some insulation (likely around R4) but there were large gaps in the batts where there was no insulation at all. Also, the roof above our garage had zero insulation.
‘R’ is a measure of thermal resistance, by the way, and the level recommended for roofs in Melbourne is between R6.0 and R7.0.
We got R4.1 insulation added to our garage and to the gaps in the rest of our roof. And then we got R2.5 spray insulation added on top this R4.1 insulation.
This means our garage now has R4.1 insulation and our house has about R6.5 insulation :)
Photo of a roof cavity above a house showing the wooden pillars that support the tiles installed on top the roof. A thick layer of white spray insulation has been added to the the existing insulation.
Because of the reduced heat transfer from inside to outside, it will now cost us less to cool our house in summer and to heat our house in winter. In fact, as the weather in Melbourne has cooled, we’re already noticing that the temperature in the upstairs rooms doesn’t drop as quickly at night as it used to.
(We used Solar Savers to get quotes for this insulation installation too, by the way.)
Those are the only energy upgrades we had planned for this year.
With an approximate halving of our electricity bill, it should take us roughly seven to eight years to pay off our solar system investment. This includes the cost of regular cleaning and maintenance of the equipment we’ve just had installed.
If we drove our car a lot, upgrading that to an EV and getting an EV charger installed would be next on our list.
But we drive so little that we only fill-up on petrol every six to seven weeks, so upgrading to an EV is not worth the investment. (And EVs sure are expensive, especially first-hand ones!)
We’ll probably look into upgrading our stove and hot water system next, since both of those currently run on natural gas.
I don’t think that’ll happen for at least another four or five years though.
Depending on how well our solar panels perform in winter, though, we might consider getting a home battery installed sooner rather than later.
The largest chunk of our annual electricity expenditure goes towards heating our house in winter, especially at night. If we find that our solar panels are generating enough excess energy during the day in winter – energy that’s enough to cover most or all of our nighttime heating – then it makes financial sense to store that excess in a home battery to use at night.
This will increase our payback time on the whole system, of course. The payback time on a home battery is about as the same as it is on solar panels: seven to eight years. But if the winter daytime excess energy numbers are good, then the total payback time of the combined systems might increase to only ten years instead of doubling to fourteen or fifteen years.
I’ll keep an eye on the stats over winter and we’ll make a determination either way in summer next year.
For now, though, we’re just going to enjoy having the sun power about half of our lives.
Sometimes there isn’t even much for the sun to power. A couple of weeks ago, for example, Nadia was teaching at uni and I was working from home. Even though it was a cloudy day with intermittent drizzles, our solar panels still managed to generate enough energy to export most of it to the grid!
(Things would have been different had I been running the air conditioner, dish washer, or washing machine, of course. But that’s not something we do every day in summer.)
Screenshot of the SolarEdge smartphone app showing the amount of energy currently being produced on a rainy, 22 degree Celsius day. 0.62kW of energy is being produced by the solar panels. 0.24kW of that is going to the home and 0.38kW of that is going to the grid.
For now we’re just happy with what we have. The rest we’ll figure out next year.
A couple of nice smartphone photos I took recently.
Photo of a large, transparent plexiglass display on top of a cafe counter. The shelves of this display are filled with doughnuts, croissants, and other pastries. Stacked on top of this display are take-away coffee cups of different sizes, three sizes for hot coffee and two sizes for cold coffee.
Black-and-white photo of three tall, wooden shelves stocked with a variety of wine bottles. These shelves are part of a wall-to-wall wine display at a wine bar.
Photo of three tall, wooden shelves stocked with a variety of wine bottles. These shelves are part of a wall-to-wall wine display at a wine bar.
The two focal lengths I love shooting at are 27mm and 40mm.
I already have the TTArtisan AF 27mm f2.8 prime lens (41mm full-frame equivalent on my APSC-sensor camera), which I shoot with all the time.
So when TTArtisan announced the TTArtisan AF 17mm f1.8 Air prime lens (26mm full-frame equivalent), I bought it 97 minutes after I got the email :)
And it took me that long to place my order only because I was in a work meeting when the announcement email came through!
With both my favourite focal lengths now covered with a prime lens each, I am a very happy man.
Sadly, I’ve been able to take my new lens out on a walk only once, but at least I got a couple of nice photos with it.
Close-up photo of a patch of garden with only dirt on it. A narrow, curved path has been drawn across this dirt patch using pink spray paint, and a shallow channel has been dug across the dirt in between these markings.
I’ve been trying to take a good photo of this tree/bush for several months now. Happily, this time I was using a lens with the exact right focal length at the exact right time of day on a very lovely day :)
Photo of an evergreen tree/bush planted in front of a house that has had its leaves at the top clipped into the shape of a three-dimensional rectangle (ie rectangular cuboid).
Photo of a long hedge running along the length of a low wall that marks the property boundary of a house. The top of this hedge has been cut so it is completely flat. However, because this type of trimming was not done regularly, the top surface of the hedge now consists of just brown twigs and no green leaves.
Photo of a small, reflective, yellow-orange "road ahead" sign installed alongside a bicycle path that warns cyclists this bike path is about to intersect with a road that's designed for motor vehicles. This photo has been taken late in the day so the sign and the top of the pole are brightly lit by the setting sun while the lower part of the pole and the residential wall next to it are in shadow.
I bought variable neutral-density (ND) filters for two of my camera lenses. Specifically, the Urth Variable ND2–400 Filter in two different sizes.
Sadly, I haven’t had the chance to try these out on a proper photo walk yet. All I’ve managed to do so far is test them on a short walk after work.
Still, aside from the tiny bit of vignetting at the highest density level, the results I got with them were great, and I managed to take two really nice, richly-coloured photos of objects on a bright, sunny day.
Hopefully I’ll get the chance to play around with these filters properly over the coming weeks.
Photo of a red, grey, and orange wheelbarrow leaning against the wall of a house. The photo is taken at sunset so the colours are rich and warm.
Close-up photo of a mailbox at the front of a residential garden. Stickers affixed to the front of the mailbox indicate that this is house 113. The upper, curved part of the mailbox is where mail carriers (affectionately called posties in Australia) will place newspapers, magazines, and other long or bulky packages. This section of the mailbox has not been used recently because there is a thick spiderweb strung across the back part of it.
A couple of photos of Nadia.
Photo of a a woman taken through the bars of a wrought iron gate outside a house. The woman is wearing black sneakers, blue jeans, a black t-shirt with a peachey-yellowey flower pattern on it, and black eyeglasses. The woman is holding open a small gate attached to the end of this fence.
Close-up photo of a woman with long, mostly-black hair tied in a pony tail who is standing in a driveway. The woman is wearing black glasses, red flower-shaped earrings, and a black t-shirt. She is looking off camera.
After being stuck in back-to-back meetings for almost the entire workday (while working from home), I decided to go for a photo walk around sunset.
Close-up photo of an old, faded, white-coloured, metal signboard that has been nailed into an electrical pole in front of a house. A notice printed on paper that was attached to this signboard has mostly been ripped off over the years. All that is visible of the sign is the phrase “normal inspection and”.
Photo of an old, faded, white-coloured, metal signboard that has been nailed into an electrical pole in front of a house. A notice printed on paper that was attached to this signboard has mostly been ripped off over the years. All that is visible of the sign is the phrase “normal inspection and”.
Photo of a thin, flexible-plastic sign installed in the middle of a cycling and walking path running along a residential street. The sign reads, in all capital letters, “keep left” and it is warning cyclists of the electrical pole that is in the middle of the path a couple of metres ahead. The photo is taken from an angle that shows the setting sun peeking out from around the sign.
Photo of a walking path onto which a while line has been painted using road line marking paint. Something heavy has landed on this sturdy, but brittle layer of paint because the paint from one section has shattered, with chips of paint spread around the painted-on line.
Photo of a tall hedge running along a low wall that marks the boundary of a house. It appears as if a big chunk of this hedge was simply scooped out of one end of the hedge because its outer leaves are missing and you can see right through the inside of the hedge. More likely there was another tall plant growing here and this hedge grew around it. That plant has recently been removed, which is why it looks like there is a hole in the hedge.
Since I’ve been asked several times what my favourite ebook typefaces are, I figured I should provide a more comprehensive answer instead of just replying to folks individually in the comments or on social media.
Like most people, I started reading ebooks on a Kindle ereader, though I have since moved on to a Kobo ereader.
Over time I have also compiled a fairly large collection of DRM-free ebooks.
Screenshot of a folder on a computer showing 29 subfolders of books and book series by author Cory Doctorow.
I read these downloaded ebooks in one of three ways:
Transfer them to my Kobo ereader.
Read them on my Linux computers using Foliate.
Read them on my Android devices using ReadEra.
ReadEra is great, by the way, and I even purchased ReadEra Premium (for one-time fee of $24) since that supports the developer financially and, relevant to today’s topic, also lets you add your own fonts to the app.
The typefaces I use to read almost all my ebooks are Bookerly (download) and Literata (download basic, download full family)
Graphic showing the opening paragraph from Naomi Novak’s book A Deadly Education set in the Bookerly and Literata typefaces.
Graphic showing the opening paragraph from Naomi Novak’s book A Deadly Education set in the Caecilia and Bitter typefaces.
Graphic showing the opening paragraph from Naomi Novak’s book A Deadly Education set in the Vollkorn and Merriweather typefaces.
Those are all great typefaces for reading books in my favourite genres of science fiction, fantasy, crime, mystery, and thriller. However, it just doesn’t feel right to read ebook versions of classic books or older books using a slab serif or otherwise modern typeface.
In an earlier post, I’d listed the four Latin-script typefaces that come to mind when you think of what older books, magazines, and other text-heavy material used to be printed in:
Bembo (released in 1496),
Garamond (1549),
Caslon (1725), and
Baskerville (1752).
When I want to read the classics, poetry, or just generally older books, these are the typefaces I turn to.
Of those typefaces, the ones I like to read ebooks in are Bembo and Caslon. The specific digital versions I use are ETbb (download) for Bembo and Willy Caslon (purchase) for Caslon.
Graphic showing the opening paragraph from Margaret Mitchell’s book Gone with the Wind set in the ETbb and Willy Caslon typefaces.
Another good Bembo version/alternative that I like is Spectral (download), though I don’t use this very often.
Much as I like Garamond and Baskerville, for reading ebooks they just don’t do it for me.
Graphic showing the opening paragraph from Margaret Mitchell’s book Gone with the Wind set in the Stempel Garamond and Libre Baskerville typefaces.
If Garamond and Baskerville do float your boat though, my recommended free(ish) versions of those typefaces are:
Garamond: Crimson Pro (download), which is a little on the small size, and Novela (pay what you like), which is a little on the large side
Baskerville: Libre Baskerville (download), Baskervville (download), and Begum (download)
The Conversation website is a great example of Libre Baskerville in action, fyi.
While I rarely read children’s books these days, I did go back and read some of the Enid Blyton books I first read when I was as a child. The typefaces I use when reading those ebooks were Besley* (download) and Century Schoolbook (download).
Graphic showing the opening paragraph from Enid Blyton’s book Circus of Adventure set in the Besley* and Century Schoolbook typefaces.
I know this is a post about the typefaces I do use, but I should also mention a couple of default and popular ereader typefaces that I actively don’t use.
For example, I almost never use a sans serif typeface unless the book – usually a textbook or non-fiction book – specifically calls for it.
And I don’t use any of the other serif typefaces available on most ereader devices and ebook reading software – typefaces like Palatino, Rakuten Serif, Noto Serif, Georgia, and Malabar (which you used to get on older Kobo ereaders).
Graphic showing the opening paragraph from Naomi Novak’s book A Deadly Education set in the Palatino and Rakuten Serif typefaces.
Rakuten Serif is the default serif typeface on Kobo ereaders, by the way. I did read a couple of books using this typeface when I first got my Kobo, but I never got comfortable with how the text looked. This typeface is too much like Baskerville for my liking (at least when it comes to reading ebooks).
Graphic showing the name “Quetzalcoatl” set in the Libre Baskerville, Rakuten Serif, and Novela typefaces.
The one ereader typeface I haven’t used, but would like to at some point, is Amasis, which is a typeface available on Nook ereaders.
It makes sense that the typefaces I’ve settled on were designed for reading on screens, and specifically for reading ebooks on ereader devices and through ereader apps. And I love that most of the typefaces I’ve mentioned above are easy to download and free to use.
What typefaces do you use for reading ebooks? I know from chatting with folks online that there’s a wide range of opinions out there. I’d love to hear about which typefaces you’ve tried and which ones you find yourself using more than others.
I don’t think it was ever common practice but, when I was a kid, I feel like more books used to mention what typeface they were printed in.
Here are a few examples of older and newer books in our collection that mention the typefaces they’re printed in, as shown on their copyright pages.
A graphic showing the scans of the copyright page of four books. The pages have been cropped so you see only the lines that tell you what typeface each book was printed in. Headings above each scanned section name the typefaces used, which are Dante, Bembo, Minion, and Sabon. Text below each page tells you which book each page was scanned from. These are The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper, Terra Nullius by Claire G Coleman, The Endsister by Penni Russon, and Bloody Hell! by Mona Eltahawy.
The typefaces used in those books are:
Dante in The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper from 1984
Bembo in Terra Nullius by Claire G Coleman from 2017
Minon in The Endsister by Penny Russon from 2018
Sabon in Bloody Hello! by Mona Eltahawy from 2025
These are all classified as Garalde or old-style typefaces, by the way, and I love all four of them.
(I haven’t written anything in Dante myself, but I do enjoy reading books set in it.)
Reading through the copyright page at the start of every book taught me so much about publishing and printing. In fact, that’s probably where I first came across the concept of typefaces.
Those pages also introduced me to things like copyright, ISBN, editions, prints, and the cities and countries in which book designers, typesetters, and printers were located.
I loved learning and nerding out about all this when I was younger and, to this day, I go through the entire copyright page of every book I read. [1]
Of course I get an extra thrill when I find a book that tells you what typeface it was set in.
It’s even cooler if it tells you the font size and line spacing used. Those are the numbers separated by a slash that are sometimes printed just before the typeface name, by the way. So, “10/12 pt Sabon” means 10 point Sabon with 12 point line spacing (or “leading”, as it was traditionally called).
It takes almost no effort to add this information to a copyright page and I wish more publishers would do it or more authors would insist upon it.
Oh well.
[1] This is one of the things I find incredibly annoying about Amazon Kindle ereaders. When you open a new book on those devices, they jump straight to the main text. That means every time I open a book, I have to manually make my way back to the cover so I can read all the front matter before starting the main text. Conversely, I love that Kobo ereaders open new books at the cover, so you get the chance to read through all the front matter every time. Having read books on Kindles for many years, reading books on Kobos now brings me a lot of joy :)
This post ended up being longer than planned, so…
Caslon is an underused typeface, and for good reason: it isn’t well know, its has some design quirks, and it has very few good/complete digital versions.
Latinotype has just released an excellent contemporary revision of Caslon with five weights (plus italics) named Willy Caslon, and it’s on sale at MyFonts right now (60% off!).
If you’ve always wanted a good digital interpretation of this style of typeface, now is your chance to pick one up.
There’s also nice write-up about Willy Caslon in WE AND THE COLOR.
Promotional graphic for the newly released Willy Caslon typeface from Latinotype. (Source: Latinotype)
When you think of classic, Latin-script typefaces used in books, magazines, and other text-heavy printed material, a handful to mind:
Bembo (released in 1496),
Garamond (1549),
Caslon (1725),
Baskerville (1752), and
maybe Bodoni (1790). [1]
Graphic showing the opening paragraph from The Rook by Daniel O’Malley set in four different typefaces: ET Bembo, Stempel Garamond, Adobe Caslon, and Baskerville URW.
Putting Bodoni aside for the moment (since that’s not as general-purpose as the others), if you want to use one of these classic typefaces in your work in 2026, you have several high quality digital options (both revivals and interpretations) to choose from.
Of those options, these are my favourites:
Bembo: Bembo Book (Monotype); Minion (Adobe); Spectral (Production Type; free)
Garamond: Adobe Garamond (Adobe); Garamond Premier (Adobe); Stempel Garamond (Stempel/Linotype); ITC Garamond (ITC); Garamond (URW); Sabon (Linotype); Sabon Next (Linotype); Minion (Adobe); EB Garamond (Georg Duffner, Octavio Pardo; free); Crimson Pro (Jacques Le Bailly; free)
Caslon: Adobe Caslon (Adobe); Caslon 540 + Caslon Bold (Paratype); Libre Caslon Text (Impallari Type/Arrowtype; free)
Baskerville: Baskerville (URW); ITC New Baskerville (ITC); Libre Baskerville (Impallari Type; free); Baskervville (ANRT; free)
Everyone has heard of Garamond and Baskerville, and some people may also have come across Bembo because it used be bundled with Microsoft Office, but I bet most people won’t have heard of Caslon. (Though if you’re a macOS user you’ve had a version of Big Caslon included since, I think, macOS Sonoma.)
Why is Caslon not more popular these days? There are two reasons for this.
Caslon, developed in London by William Caslon I, was hugely popular in the British Empire and British North America when it was released in 1725. American polymath Benjamin Franklin used nothing else, for example, and the US Declaration of Independence of 1776 was printed in Caslon.
But Caslon wasn’t popular elsewhere in the world (eg in Europe where a lot of other Latin-script typefaces were being being used and developed) and then it fell out of favour globally as transitional typefaces like Baskerville rose in popularity from the mid- to late-1700s.
Caslon did have a bit of a revival in late 1800s/early 1900s, but it was again eclipsed by both newer typefaces (like Plantin, Times New Roman, Sabon, and Palatino) and revivals of older typefaces (like Bembo, Garamond, and Baskerville).
Photograph of the book ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’ by Willa Cather published in 1927. The book’s text is set in Caslon. (Source: AbeBooks)
When the world moved to digital type, the classic typefaces that were popular at the time were the first ones digitised, sold, and bundled with operating systems and with design and desktop-publishing software. [2]
On the sans serif side, that meant we got typefaces like Helvetica, Arial, and Futura instead of Franklin Gothic, Univers, and DIN. And on the serif side, that meant we got typefaces like Garamond, Baskerville, and Times New Roman instead of Bembo, Caslon, and Sabon.
Operating systems and design software did sometimes bundle limited versions (only one or two weights) or lower quality versions (oversimplified) of less popular typefaces, but that was about it.
I haven’t had the opportunity to use Caslon in my own work very much, but I really like it. It looks great in the The New Yorker, for example, and that publication uses Adobe Caslon in both its print and digital editions. I also prefer Caslon (an “old style” typeface) to Times New Roman (a “transitional” typeface).
Screenshot from The New Yorker website showing two articles with the headings and text set in Adobe Caslon.
That said Caslon isn’t a go-to typeface for me, which is why I haven’t felt the need to purchase a copy of Adobe or Paratype’s Caslon yet.
The main reason I don’t reach for Caslon very often is because its digital revivals are, well, a little too accurate to the original design. [3] The original Caslon’s design has a few quirks that makes it less than ideal for the majority of my use cases.
One repeated complaint about Caslon’s design, for example, is that its uppercase characters are noticeably taller and darker than its lowercase characters. So when you’re reading a block of text, those uppercase characters jump out on the page a little, making the overall colour of the page uneven. Adobe Caslon faithfully replicates this quirk.
Graphic showing a paragraph of text set in both Adobe Caslon and Willy Caslon. Call-outs point to two capital letters in each paragraph. The call-out for Adobe Caslon reads, “Uppercase characters are taller and darker than lowercase, so they jump out at you in blocks of text”. The call-out for Willy Caslon reads, “Here they’re not as tall, and they’re also the same shade as lowercase, so they don’t jump out at you”.
What’s cool about the Latinotype interpretation of Caslon is that its designers removed the original design’s metal-type, print-era inconsistencies and added more precision and uniformity – all without neutralising the typeface’s essential character.
(Dirk Petzold’s article in WE AND THE COLOR goes into more detail about Willy Caslon’s design, if you want a deep dive.)
This is why the text set in Willy Caslon in the graphic below looks more uniform. And because it is slightly darker overall, this typeface works great on screen and in print.
Graphic showing the first two paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry for Caslon set in two different typefaces, Adobe Caslon and Willy Caslon.
(FYI, the design of Libre Caslon Text fixes the size and colour inconsistency between uppercase and lowercase characters, but leaves the rest of the design as is.)
There are many digital versions of Caslon available (see Fontspring, MyFonts, and Type Network), but very few are fully featured and useable in modern publishing contexts.
Most are available in just a single style (regular). A few include italics or bold; some include italics and bold; and very few include the basic set of regular, italic, bold, and bold-italic.
Some versions are distressed fonts, which make them more suited for graphic design than for body text applications.
And some, like Matthew Carter’s Big Caslon, are display fonts and not text fonts.
The handful that do include the basic font set (and sometimes more, like the semi-bold and black weights) are:
Adobe Caslon (Adobe)
Caslon 540 + Caslon Bold (Paratype)
William Caslon Text (William Berkson)
Caslon Pro (SoftMaker)
Caslon FS (FontSite)
Libre Caslon Text (Impallari Type/Arrowtype; free)
I don’t have first-hand experience with all these typefaces, but the problem with pretty much all of them is that they’re either too faithful to the original design or they simplify the design so much that some of the original Caslon character is lost.
Graphic showing the word, “Quetzalcoatl” in large text set in four different typefaces: Willy Caslon, Adobe Caslon, LTC Caslon Long, Libre Caslon Text.
Willy Caslon benefits from the recent trend of type designers releasing digital interpretations of classic typefaces that retain the character of the original but are now suited to the needs of modern digital and print publishing. [4]
Promotional graphic for the newly released Willy Caslon typeface from Latinotype. (Source: Latinotype)
I, for one, am thrilled that a really good, high-useable version of Caslon is now available, and I’m looking forward to using Willy Caslon wherever and whenever I can.
[1] If you keep going forward in time, you can add these to the list of popular editorial typefaces too: Plantin (1913), Goudy Old Style (1915), Times New Roman (1931), Janson (1937), Ehrhardt (1938, 1680s), Palatino (1949), Dante (1954), Sabon (1967), Palatino (1949), Minon (1990), Hoefler Text (1991), and Adobe Jenson (1996).
[2] Yes, yes, I know I’m greatly simplifying things here. A lot went into deciding which typefaces got digitised first, including considerations around licensing, availability, practicality, and personal preference.
[3] Another reason I don’t reach for Caslon very often because its free version, Libre Caslon Text, works best at 16pt and above, so that only works for web pages and not for documents.
[4] Kris Sowersby’s Martina Plantijn (Plantijn) and American Grotesk (Franklin Gothic) are prime examples of this trend.
It was a lovely day today so I decided to go for a short photo walk around Merlynston Creek in Melbourne’s north.
Photo looking up at the top of a tall, wooden fence on a residential street. A layer of chain link fence has been erected above the wooden fence using regularly spaced metal supports. And above that there are two stands of barbed wire strung along the very top of the metal support poles. A tall and large opuntia cactus plant (possible prickly pear?) that is growing behind this multi-layer fence is comfortably resting a segment of itself on top of the barbed wire and chain link fence, causing both of those to bend under its weight.
Photo of a green, metal park bench facing the greenery surrounding a creek that flows next to a residential neighbourhood. The spot is very quiet and peaceful on this sunny day.
Photo of a large, round, and currently-dry stormwater drainage culvert that crosses under a walking path. A pile of medium-sized boulders has been arranged in front of the opening so the flow of water is slowed as it exits the culvert. There is graffiti both outside and inside the culvert, including a large arrow pointing upwards that has been painted on the wall at the other side of the tunnel.
Desaturated photo of a large, round, and currently-dry stormwater drainage culvert. A pile of medium-sized boulders has been arranged in front of the opening so the flow of water is slowed as it exits the culvert. There is graffiti both outside and inside the culvert, including a large arrow pointing upwards that has been painted on the wall at the other side of the tunnel.
Nadia was invited to speak at the ‘Poetry & Wine’ sessions at this year’s Footscray West Writers Fest, which is now in its second year of running.
Naturally, I brought my camera along and took a few photos while I was there :)
Graphic showing the Footscray West Writers Fest 2026 logo and a circular collage of black-and-white photos of the speakers at the ‘Poetry & Wine’ session.
Photo of poet Thuy On seated in an outdoor courtyard. She is speaking into a microphone that she is holding in her hand. Thuy is wearing a red-and-black dress with a bright-red flower fascinator in her hair.
Jaidyn Attart is a street poet and I actually posted a photo of one his poems back in 2024 :)
Photo of poet Jaidyn Attard standing in a wine-bar courtyard. He is reciting his poetry into a microphone that he is holding in his hand. Jaidyn is wearing a black t-shirt and brown overshirt. Jaidyn is also looking straight at the photographer taking this photo.
Photo of poet Nadia Niaz standing at a table in a wine-bar courtyard. Nadia is sorting through some papers on the table as she prepares to read her poetry to the audience.
Photo of poet Nadia Niaz standing in a wine-bar courtyard. Nadia is reciting her poetry into the microphone that is on a mic-stand in front of her. She is gesturing with her right hand while holding open her book, The Djinn Hunters, in her left hand. Nadia is wearing a black top and black jacket.
Photo of poet Thuy On standing in a wine-bar courtyard. Thuy is reciting her poetry into the microphone that is on a mic-stand in front of her. She is holding open one of her poetry books with her right hand. Thuy is wearing a red-and-black dress with a bright-red flower fascinator in her hair.
Photo of an LED light globe affixed to a string of outdoor lights in a wine-bar courtyard. There are cobwebs on the light fixture and, in the background of the photo, you can see an out-of-focus mural painted on the courtyard wall.
Photo of poet Lili Ward seated in a wine-bar courtyard. Lili is reciting her poetry into the microphone that is on a mic-stand in front of her. She is reading from her poetry book, Easily Enlightened. Lili is wearing a black t-shirt that reads, "Readers and writers against the genocide".
I like taking photos of photographers and videographers, the folks who are usually on the other side of the lens. I even have an album on Flickr with all such photos I’ve taken over the years :)
Photo of a young woman wearing grey jeans and an olive green event-branded t-shirt who is sitting on a walkway that connects at wine-bar courtyard to the main building. This photo is taken between rows of audience members seated at an outdoor poetry reading event. The woman is using a Canon DSLR camera to take a photo of the speaker who is currently reciting their poetry.
Photo of poet Magan Magan standing in a wine-bar courtyard, as seen above the heads of some audience members. Magan is reciting his poetry into the microphone that is on a mic-stand in front of him. Magain is wearing a black t-shirt and brown wool cap, and he is reading from the smartphone he is holding in his hands.
After attending the 8 March Linkin Park concert with Nadia, I attended the 10 March concert by myself. A lot of the folks around me had done exactly the same: attended the first show with their partner and were now attending this second show on their own :)
Since I’d already seen most of this show once – there was a six-song difference between day one and day two – I took more photos and videos during this show than I normally would. Here are some of them.
I only recorded small bits of some of the songs that Linkin Park played because I wanted to spend the rest of the time in the moment. I’m much happier listening to these songs being played live in front of me than focusing on what I’m capturing my phone’s comparatively tiny screen. Anyway, I’ve compiled those clips into a single video.
I’ve been a member of Linkin Park Underground (LPU), the Linkin Park fan club, since 2010, skipping only the 2022-23 year because that was when we bought a house and got a mortgage, and so I cancelled literally all my subscriptions. (Including my other long-term subscription to Feminist Frequency, which I’d had since 2012.)
One of the benefits of an LPU membership is that, if you have a General Admission (GA) ticket, you can apply for early entry to Linkin Park’s concerts. Only the first 100 LPU members with verified GA tickets who apply are selected and, because I was a little late in applying, I was #74 on the list.
Still, that meant I got to queue up with VIP ticket holders and other early-entry LPU members at 5pm on Tuesday. Doors opened for everyone else at 6:15pm, openers Polaris kicked things off at 7:30pm, and Linkin Park’s set started at 8:45pm.
Photo of a pull-up banner outside of an arena that reads, “LPU early entry”.
We were escorted into the empty Rod Laver Arena floor at 5:30pm, a full 45 minutes before gates opened to the general public at 6:15pm – which was super cool.
Photo of a large arena prepped for a concert that that is currently completely empty of attendees.
The Linkin Park team makes an effort to recognise its fan club members so, while we went about arranging ourselves along the barricade at the very front of the arena floor, our LPU avatars were being displayed on the big screen at the back of the stage.
Photo of a large screen at the back of a massive concert stage. Displayed on the screen is a logo, the text, “Welcome LPU”, and twenty stylised avatars of members of the Linkin Park fan club.
In case you’re wondering, mine is the blue one in the bottom-right corner of this photo :)
Photo of part of a large screen at the back of a concert stage. Displayed on the screen is a logo, the text, “Welcome LPU”, and ten stylised avatars of members of the Linkin Park fan club. In the bottom-right corner is a blue-skinned character with a beard and eyeglasses who is wearing a khaki-and-orange industrial-looking hoodie.
One of the coolest things about the latest evolution of Linkin Park is how their audience has evolved right along with them. When I attended their show the last time they were in Australia, which was in December 2010, I think around 40% of concert attendees were women. In this new era of Linkin Park, easily 50% of attendees were women or non-binary. That was true on the arena floor as well.
There was also a difference between the Sunday and Tuesday shows. When Mike Shinoda asked for a show of hands on Sunday, about one-third of the crowd indicated they’d attended a Linkin Park concert before, while two-thirds were attending their first one that night. He didn’t repeat this question on Tuesday, but it felt like those numbers were reversed and we had a greater proportion of long-term, die-hard fans in attendance. (Tuesday being a school night also meant there was fewer children there.)
The vibe was different enough on Tuesday that there was a good amount of crowd surfing going on. Even Emily Armstrong crowd surfed for a bit :) I hadn’t noticed any crowd surfing on Sunday, thought that might have just been me not paying enough attention.
Concert etiquette, behaviour, and security practices have come a long way since 2010 because, when Linkin Park performed in Melbourne back then (which was also at Rod Laver Arena), there were clear signs telling us that, “Moshing and Crowd Surfing is NOT PERMITTED”!
Photo of an area with seats rising up to the back wall. A sign attached to the barrier at the front of the seating area reads, “Moshing and Crowd Surfing is NOT PERMITTED”.
Fast forward to 2026 and concert security were constantly making sure folks on the arena floor stayed hydrated at all times – regularly passing down water in paper cups, for example – and they were super efficient at helping crowd surfers get down safely once those folks had made it all the way to the front.
Before the event kicked off, tour management also came by and talked to us about what to expect during the show – like the mosh pit that’s formed during Two Faced – and what to do if we weren’t feeling well.
All told, it was an excellent experience on the arena floor. But then – much like the members of the band itself – Linkin Park’s fans are, on average, more considerate and, frankly, nicer people. At least in my experience.
Speaking of how things have changed from 2010 to 2026, I made a video to show some of the differences between the two live performance.
Aside from the permanent line-up changes – with lead vocalist Emily Armstrong replacing the late Chester Bennington and drummer Colin Brittain replacing Rob Bourdon – their songs are now played in a different key to suit Emily’s vocal range and Alex Feder is their touring lead guitarist because Brad Delson prefers not to go on tour.
Just like the band’s concert technology, my filming technology has also received a massive upgrade. Back in 2010, I was recording video in 720p resolution on a 2000s-era Canon IXUS 120 digital camera. In 2026, I’m recording in 1080p using my Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone.
The 2010 audio from my Canon camera was completely unusable, by the way. Its tiny microphone could not handle the concert volume and absolutely could not handle the bass! Fortunately, back in the day, LPU members who could show evidence they’d attended a particular concert were able to purchase an audio recording of that show. This was audio recorded straight off the mixing console. This approach obviated the need for any bootlegging recordings and also made the band a bit of additional revenue. I’d bought this recording for the show I attended in 2010, and so I was able to used this in my video instead of the crappy in-camera audio :)
Here, finally, are some of my photos from Linkin Park’s performance.
Photo of musician Mike Shinoda on stage with a guitar slung across his back while he sings into the microphone that he is holding.
Photo of two massive rectangular lighting rigs attached to the roof of an arena. Along the side of these lighting rigs are massive video screens that are showing members of the band that is performing on the stage below.
Photo of an arena showing a wall of pink and purple confetti that has just been blown out of confetti canons arranged in front of a massive stage.
Photo of an arena showing a wall of pink and purple confetti that has been blown out of confetti canons arranged in front of a massive stage. The confetti is floating above the thousands of people standing on the arena floor.
Photo of musicians Emily Armstrong and Mike Shinoda standing on platforms built on top of a stage at an arena concert. Emily is singing into the microphone she is holding while Mike is pointing his microphone at the crowd in front of him, encouraging them to sign along.
Photo of musician Joe Hahn taking photos of the crowd while his fellow band members perform on stage at a arena concert.
I only took a couple of selfies at the show but neither turned out very well. Happily, you can see me (wearing the black face mask) in the top-left corner of this photo that Joe Hahn took and then posted on his Instagram account.
Photo of a woman screaming in delight while wearing a Linkin Park hat. The woman is standing at the barricade at the very front of an arena floor. Directly behind this woman is a bald man wearing glasses and a black face mask who is looking up at musician Mike Shinoda as he raps into his microphone.
The main focus of Joe’s photo is Irene, the LPU member who was gifted a Linkin Park hat signed by the entire band. I was right behind her when this happened and took a video of it, which I later sent to her and she posted on her Instagram :)
Mike is the one who presents this gift to a fan every night, and here’s the photo I took of him rapping to start the next song. Yes, he is standing on top of the barricade that’s directly in front of us.
Photo of musician Mike Shinoda rapping while standing on top of the barricade at the front of an arena floor.
Photo of musicians Mike Shinda, Emily Armstrong, Dave Farrell, Joe Hahn, Alex Feder, and Colin Brittain performing on stage at an arena.
Photo of a three-dimensional laser and large-screen light show around the stage at an arena concert.
Photo of musician Dave Farrell playing his bass guitar on stage at an arena.
Photo of musician Emily Armstrong singing as she looks down into members of the audience from an arena concert stage.
Photo of musicians Dave Farrell, Mike Shinoda, and Alex Feder – bass, rhythm, and lead guitarists, respectively – performing at the front of an arena stage.
Photo of musician Emily Armstrong pointing at a fan as she walks towards her during an arena concert.
Photo of a massive arena stage with all its white lights turned on. The concert has ended and all the musicians have left the stage.
Photo of thousands of people standing on an arena floor at the end of a concert, with several thousand more seated in chairs all around the arena. Rod Laver Arena can hold over fifteen thousand attendees during concerts.
Photo looking down at an arena floor that has no people on it, but is full of pink and purple coloured confetti. The photographers shoes, legs, and shorts are visible in the bottom of the photo frame.
So that’s that.
I’ve been in GA crowds several time over the years, but this was probably the most fun that I’ve had in one. It helped that all of us early-entry people were avid, even nerdy, Linkin Park fans and we quickly made friends with the folks around us. When you’re jumping up and down, squeezed between your neighbours, with the bass pounding and confetti flying, it’s good to know the names of the folks around you and that you’ll all look out for each other over the course of the night :)
Like I’ve mentioned before, I don’t take many photos and videos at events like concerts, talks, and comedy shows because I prefer being present in the moment.
That said, I do like to take at least a couple of photos for posterity. So here are some of the event photos and videos I’ve taken over the last few months.
I’m going to skip over one event I attended because this was a rare exception to my take-very-few-photos rule. I’ll cover that in the next post.
12 Dec 2025. Garbage is one of my all-time favourite bands. I had to travel for work when these folks toured Australia in 2016, but this time I made sure I was there. Nadia and I attended the concert (and went out for dinner before that) with a whole bunch of friends and we had a fantastic time.
Photo of alternative rock band Garbage performing on stage.
14 Jan 2026. Elderbrook is one of my favourite electronic musicians/DJ. He toured Australia as part of the summer music festival circuit and we got to watch him at the Australian Open concert series. (Yes, the AusOpen tennis tournament is about a lot more than just world class tennis.)
Photo of electronic musician and DJ Elderbrook performing at a medium-sized outdoor festival-like stage. Elderbrook is drumming on some electronic drum pads set up on the stage next to his DJ rig. The super wide, wrap-around video screens behind him are displaying a fiery orange pattern.
Here’s a super short video from this concert too.
24 Jan 2026. Gianmarco Soresi’s stand-up material ranges from very personal to very political. Your face won’t hurt at the end of his show because you laughed too much – his shows aren’t like that – but your brain will be full of zingy thoughts and unhinged imagery that you were absolutely not expecting.
Photo of the a large theatre with a layered, three-dimensional, rectangular roof with hidden white, blue, and purple lighting.
10 Feb 2026. I’m not hugely into post-punk revival, but I do love Wet Leg. We didn’t have the best spot from which to watch this show, but it was a fun concert nonetheless.
Photo of indie rock band Wet Leg performing on stage.
11 Feb 2026. Since this is probably the first time you’re hearing about this: Nerd Nite is “evidence-based entertainment” – a series of informal talks given at a pub by nerds, for nerds. Started in Boston, USA in 2003, the concept spread all over the world, though I believe Melbourne Nerd Nite is the last chapter still running in Australia.
I’ve watched a lot of these talks online, but this was the first time I attended in person. It is so energising being around that many nerds! Nadia and I will try to attend all these talks going forward.
Photo of a stage with a cinema-sized projector screen at the back. The screen shows a graphic of a stylised Melbourne tram with ‘Nerd Nite 2026’ written in graffiti on it.
8, 10 Mar 2026. Linkin Park is one of my all-time favourite bands and the group were performing two shows in Melbourne. Nadia and I attended the first of those concerts together.
Selfie of a man and woman wearing glasses and black face masks sitting in the crowd at a concert.
I’m a Linkin Park Underground (ie fan club) member, so I get access to ticket sales really early. That meant we got excellent seats: right in the centre and just four rows back from the mixing desk :)
Wide-angle photo of a large sports arena with a currently empty stage. Thousands of attendees, especially the ones on the floor of the arena, have their smartphones out and are filming what is about to happen on the stage. In the foreground of the photo are production techs standing in front of dozens of screens and control boards that make up a modern concert sound and lighting control set-up.
I attended Linkin Park’s second show by myself (this time in General Admission) and I’ll show you the photos and videos I took there in my next post.
13 Mar 2026. Unlike Gianmarco Soresi, you do come out of Laura Ramoso’s stand-up shows with your face hurting from laughing so much. Laura did a fantastic job at transposing and translating her online skits and characters to the stage.
Photo of an empty stage with text projected on the curtain at the back of the stage. This text reads, “Laura Ramoso” and “Calm Down Tour”.
This has been a really fun summer, and though we have fewer events planned for the rest of the calendar year, I’m looking forward to all of those as well.
We upgraded our NBN connection from FTTC to FTTP, and because the switch to FTTP allowed us to upgrade to the Home Ultrafast speed tier, now our download speeds are ten times faster and our upload speeds are four times faster that before.
Screenshot of an internet speed test from OpenSpeedTest that shows a download speed of 958.61Mbps, jitter of 0.00ms, ping of 3.0ms, and upload speed of 73.41Mbps.
We got connected to Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) in December 2015.
Then, because we were renting, we moved house a few times. That meant both our connection speed and connection type changed every few years (which I documented along the way using the ‘NBN’ tag on this blog, in case you’re interested).
Screenshot from the NBN website showing the various types of fixed line connections available on the NBN: Fibre to the Premises; Fibre to the Building; Fibre to the Curb; Fibre to the Node; and Hybrid Fibre Coaxial. (Source)
All that stopped in 2022 when we bought a house in the northern suburbs of Melbourne that had a Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) NBN connection. That’s the connection type in which the fibre optic cable carrying the internet signal terminates at a distribution box on your street (ie the “curb”) and a standard copper cable goes from there to your house.
The speeds on this connection type were decent, but not great: 95Mbps down and 19Mbps up.
The upload speed, in particular, was irritating because it was half of what we’d had with a Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) connection in our previous places. Now it took me a lot longer to back-up my media to the cloud, for example, and I had to make sure I wasn’t doing any uploading when Nadia or I were on a video conference call for work (especially if Nadia was teaching a class). First world problems, I know, but irritating ones nonetheless.
Happily, in January 2025, NBN Co announced its ‘full fibre upgrade’ program. This would let 622,000 properties across Australia upgrade their existing, slower connection types to the fastest-possible Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) connection.
I immediately tried to sign up to this upgrade but found that we weren’t eligible yet. We live in a property with only three units and, at the time, NBN Co was prioritising upgrades for properties with four or more units.
*sigh*
Not too long after, in October 2025, all types of properties became eligible for the upgrade so I immediately signed us up.
Screenshot of an email with the heading, “We’ve received your request” and the text, “Hi Ameel Zia Khan, We appreciate your interest in the nbn Full Fibre Upgrade for Complex Multi-Dwelling Properties at” followed by an address that has been blacked out. An italicised sentence just below this paragraph reads, “Please note that this application applies to all units/premises within the building or complex, not individual units or lots.”
I didn’t hear anything till November 2025, when someone from the Fibre Upgrades team at NBN Co reached out to say our application was still under review.
Then, in January 2026, they reached out to say we could now formally proceed with the upgrade. We just needed to fill out a form and each unit on the property needed to pay $275 to cover the remainder of the government-subsidised installation cost.
Unfortunately, in the intervening months, things had changed at our end: one of the units on our property had been sold and, when I reached out to the new owners to say, “hey, we’re now all set to do the NBN upgrade” these folks said they didn’t want to do the upgrade.
So that was that. End of story. No upgrade for me.
(Obviously that’s not how the story ended.)
Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, at the end of February 2026, I got one final email from NBN Co that read:
Hi Ameel,
We’re writing to share an important update regarding the nbn® fibre upgrade at [YOUR ADDRESS].
Your premises/complex was previously progressing through the nbn Full Fibre Upgrade for Complex Multi‑Dwelling Properties program. Following a recent assessment, it has now been reclassified and is eligible to individually order an nbn® Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) service via a High-Speed Tier plan.
What this means
Instead of continuing through the Complex MDU upgrade pathway, individual premises within the complex/block can now request an order directly with their preferred retail service provider (RSP), provided they select an eligible high‑speed plan.
This meant our upgrade to FTTP was no longer an all-or-nothing deal for the whole property. Individual owners of each unit could now apply separately through their internet service providers (ISPs) to upgrade just their own NBN connections!
Woohoo!
From then on, things proceeded at pace.
Our ISP is iiNet – who we’ve been with since 2009! – so shortly after I received this email, I went to their ‘Fibre upgrade’ page and signed up for a free upgrade.
The very next day I got a message to say our upgrade-installation was booked for exactly one week later.
One week later, which was yesterday, the installer turned up and, within two hours, had:
laid the new fibre optic cable from the street to our unit,
installed two new connection boxes (outside box shown below), and
activated our new NBN FTTP connection.
Photo showing an large while box stamped NBN Co installed on a brick wall.
All I needed to do was log into our modem and uncheck the VLAN tagging checkbox that was needed for the old FTTC connection but was stopping our new FTTP connection from working.
And just like that, we were done.
So what speeds are we getting now?
Well, not only did we upgrade our connection type to FTTP, we also upgraded to the ‘Home Ultrafast’ speed tier that gives you download speeds of up to 1,000Mbps (ie one gigabit per second) and upload speeds of up to 100Mbps :)
And because we’d upgraded to the latest Synology router in 2024 – the WRX560, with its 2.5Gbps WAN port – I knew all our hardware (and the Ethernet cables in our walls) could handle the speed upgrade just fine.
Here, then, are our current download and upload speeds.
Graphic with two bar charts showing, respectively, download and upload speeds in megabits per second from 2009 to 2026. The bars are divided into groups by connection type. 2009 ADSL speeds are 6.9Mbps down, 0.9Mbps up. 2015 FTTB speeds are 46.7 down, 22.6 up. 2016 and 2018 FTTP speeds are 75.7 and 105.2 down, 36.5 and 37.2 up. 2020 and 2022 FTTC speeds are 91.9 and 94.7 down, 18.2 and 18.9 up. Finally, a differently coloured bar for 2026 Ultrafast FTTP shows speeds of 937.3 down, 89.0 up.
We’re currently getting speeds of 937Mbps up and 89Mbps down – which is a whopping ten times faster for downloads and four times faster for uploads!
So that’s it. The end of the road. Our final NBN upgrade is complete.
Yes, NBN Co has announced an Ultrafast II speed tier that gives you 2GBps download speeds, but that is absolutely not something we need at home so our upgrading days are very much over.
Now we just get to enjoy blazingly fast download and upload speeds, and the next time I need to upload a few terabytes of data to the cloud, I won’t have to leave my desktop switched on continuously for a few days in a row!
As someone whose work and personal life is inextricably intertwined with the internet, I am a very happy person right now :)
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
