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.
Dramatic skies on a Sunday evening in Melbourne, Australia.
Photo of a partly cloudy sky at sunset. The colours of the clouds range from white and grey to bright yellow and golden. The light blue of the sky peeks out from between the gaps in the puffy, many-layered clouds.
Wearing sunglasses and a rain parka, I was prepared for both rain and shine when I walked Maggie this morning. (Melbourne’s weather is more unpredictable than usual this time of year.)
Selfie of a man in a baseball cap, large sunglasses, and a rain parka walking a dog along a residential street.
I’m glad I was prepared. Because here we are, 20 minutes after that first photo, sheltering under a large tree during a blustery rain shower!
Selfie of a man in a baseball cap, large sunglasses, and a rain parka with its hood pulled over the man’s head. The man is walking a dog on a leash.
And ten minutes after that we were being toasted by the bright sunshine again.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Selfie of a man in a baseball cap, large sunglasses, and a rain parka as he walks a dog along a residential street. There is bright sunshine on the pair.
Don’t get me wrong though: I love Melbourne and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. You just have to be prepared for all that this city has to throw at you :)
Thinking tomato-ey thoughts and planning her plant potting process is Nadia.
A woman, with her back to the photographer, is standing in front of several medium and large sized potted plants in a residential garden. One of her hands is on her hips, the other is holding a large plastic watering can.
The joys of working from home: Monday lunch-break rock buns :)
A plate piled with about a dozen baked rock buns. These look like small, biscuit-textured buns with dried fruit in them.
Mmm. Rock buns. Both delicious and super easy to make. Highly recommended.
(These ones are also gluten free and contain currants, raisins, and cranberries.)
Close up photo of a plate of rock buns. You can see their half-cake, half-bun texture and you can recognise dried fruits like raisins, currants, and cranberries baked into them.
What better way to return to the cinemas in post-lockdown Melbourne than by watching TENET at IMAX Melbourne in the original 1570 film version?! That was so worth it.
Selfie of a man standing in front of the IMAX cinema building in Melbourne, Australia.
I must watch that film again soon too. TENET is one of those juicy, complex, adult science fiction storylines that genuinely warrants a re-watch (plus a Blu-ray purchase).
There’s so much happening both story- and film-making wise throughout that you don’t want to miss anything. Overall a superb filmmaking achievement!
Guess who’s the power lifter in the family?
A woman smiles at the camera as she shows off her arms, on which the muscle definition is very clear. She is wearing a sleeveless tank top and has her arms raised by her side as she flexes her biceps.
Sometimes, after a couple of hours neck deep in Excel and Tableau, it’s best to go crash on the sofa for a bit. (One of the perks and joys of working from home!)
A man is lying on a sofa with his eyes closed. The blanket he is covered in has the Microsoft Windows ‘blue screen of death’ printed on it. This used to be the screen that appeared when a computer running the Windows operating system crashed. (Windows 10 onwards we have a different blue screen of death.)
A hopefully look and a little tail wag. I call this Maggie’s “expecto treatonum” pose :)
And, yes, Nadia was in the process of giving Maggie a treat. So everything worked out for the best.
A red dog is standing inside a house. She is intensely focused on someone off-camera: ears pricked, ready to bound forward. The dog’s tail is a little blurry in the photo, since it’s mid-mini-wag.
Head scritches requested…
A red dog has put her face between the legs of the photographer, who is wearing shorts and is sitting in a chair on an outdoor deck. The dog is looking up at the photographer expectantly.
Head scritches received.
A red dog, who in the previous photo had put her face between the legs of the photographer (who himself is sitting in a chair on an outdoor deck) is now having her head scratched by the photographer.
Australian cattle dogs gonna Australian cattle dog.
In this case that means Maggie will happily doze in the searing hot sun on a bright, 33-degree afternoon in Melbourne.
A red dog, of Australian cattle dog breed, lies on her side on the grass of a residential lawn on a bright, sunny day.
She’ll do that for just fifteen minutes though.
Once she's soaked up enough heat she'll rub her back on the grass, shake herself off, and head back inside.
A red dog is upside-down, legs in the air, on the grass of a residential backyard. This photo of the dog has caught her in the middle of rubbing its back on the grass.
Stage three is a cool down.
A red dog lies on her side on a cool floor inside a house.
All in all, an afternoon well spent.
Ah, that's the spot. Head scritches are the best.
A dog rests its chin on the leg of a seated man. The man is scratching the dog’s head and the dog, with its eyes half closes, looks calm and relaxed.
Friday afternoon and it's time for blueberry tea.
Selfie of a man standing in a residential garden on a sunny, partly cloudy day holding a large clear glass mug that contains a reddit coloured liquid. The mug looks like a beaker used by chemists in the laboratory.
I’ve been tracking the NBN speeds we’ve been getting in the last four houses we’ve lived in. (NBN is Australia’s National Broadband Network, by the way.)
Since 2015, when we swapped our ADSL connection for the NBN, every time we’ve moved house our speeds have been gotten better. That’s mainly because, when picking a place to rent, we’ve only looked at houses with Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) connections. (Also because the NBN network itself has been getting incrementally better.)
This time, because we wanted a specific type of house within our price range, we decided to compromise a little and go for a place with a Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) connection. The performance of FTTC connections depends very much on how far your house is from the fibre-optic distribution point on your street. We lucked out and found a house we wanted to rent that is directly across the street from one of these points.
Compared to the house we just moved from, our download have dropped only 12.7% to 91.9Mbps, which I’m super happy about.
Unfortunately our upload speeds dropped by 51.2% to 18.5Mbps, which isn’t ideal.
Given how much time Nadia and I spend on video conference calls for work, this drop in upload speeds might be an issue if we’re both on a video call at the same time. I guess we’ll wait and see how the connection performs when that situation arises in the next few weeks.
There are two other differences compared to our previous NBN connection.
First, our connection latency has increased 78% from 3ms to 5ms. You don’t notice that too much day-to-day, though, so this hasn’t been an issue so far.
Second, given the technology change from FTTP to FTTC, we had to change modems because the fantastic Synology RT2600ac we were using doesn’t support VLANs (virtual local area networks).
UPDATE (24 Aug 2022): With a firmware upgrade to SRM 1.3, the Synology RT2600ac router does now support VLANs (announcement; feature support; configuration info). A big thank-you to to Craig in the comments for letting me know about this update!
FTTC is more of a shared connection than FTTP, so you need to use a VLAN-capable modem to connect to the internet. But all is well because I quickly bought a Netgear Nighthawk AX8, which is an equally fantastic modem that does support VLANs (and, specifically, 802.1Q VLAN tagging).
(If any of you are wanting to connect your Netgear Nighthawk AX8 to an FTTC connection, by the way, follow the configuration that rhys375 figured out you need to get this working.)
Overall I’m comfortable with our new speeds. I might think differently if we have issues with simultaneous video conferencing, but I don’t expect this to be a major issue.
So, onwards and only slightly downwards! And let’s hope the NBN network keeps getting better and better as time goes by.
Last week we moved house. If that sounds like a stressful thing to do during a global pandemic, let you tell you: it is. But, we made it. And we’re now all settled in the suburb of Newport – about a fifteen minute drive from where we used to live in Kingsville.
One of the best things about our new place is the large garden at the back. Maggie took a couple of days to settle in and thoroughly mark her new territory, but even on moving day she found herself a nice spot to roll in.
A red heeler dog rolls around on her back in a patch of grass in a residential lawn. In the background you can see a garden shed and a swing.
Which she was immensely pleased about.
A red dog lies comfortably on her side in a residential lawn. In the background you can see part of a garden shed and a fence.
I guess dogs donna dog, and Maggie is making the most of it :)
Garth Nix is one of my favourite authors and his latest book, The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, is fantastic.
I spend a sunny weekend in Melbourne being transported to 1980s London while reading this book – and I loved every minute of it!
10/10 would recommend.
Photo of a man holding an e-reader that shows the cover of a book called ‘The Left-Handed Booksellers of London’ by author Garth Nix. The tagline above the book title reads ‘Authorised to kill…and sell books’. The photo is taken in a garden, with grass and flora in the background.
Making the most of the sun on a chilly morning in Melbourne. #LazySunday
A man wearing a hoodie and a Panama hat sits at a plastic table in a residential lawn. There is a mug of tea on the table and he is holding a Kindle e-reader. There is a dog sitting on the grass in the background.
Poet at work, with dog.
In a suburban garden a woman sits on cane chair with her feet are up on a plastic table in front of her. A bottle of water and phone are also on the table. The woman has a notebook in her lap. A red dog sits in the lawn next to the table, its attention on the front gate of the property. The grass in the lawn is thick and green and there if a flower acacia (with bright yellow flowers) in the background.
Hello. I am 44 years old today. Importantly, Nadia got us Oodies for my birthday!
Selfie of a man and a woman each wearing an oodie, which is an oversized blanked hoodie.
Sadly I haven’t gotten around to wearing mine for too long because this has been a lovely, sunny week in Melbourne.
Selfie of a man and a woman on a sunny day. The man is bald, with a salt and pepper beard, and is wearing glasses. The woman has long hair and has put her head on the man's should from behind him. They both have big goofy grins on their faces.
Maggie us making the most of a sunny Friday morning in Melbourne.
A red dog sits comfortably on the grass in a residential lawn on a bright, sunny day. The dog looks very relaxed, with eyes closed as she soaks up the sun.
A red dog is fast asleep on her side in a residential garden on a bright, sunny day.
Yay for a shiny new toaster toaster from KitchenAid! This one even has a crumpet setting :)
A shiny, 4-slot toaster from KitchenAid lying on a kitchen counter top.
(This is a ‘4 Slice Artisan Automatic Toaster’ in pistachio colour, if you’re interested. Model 5AKMT423PT.)
This is personal website of Nadia Niaz and Ameel Zia Khan. Here we document our lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia