At the department offsite

This set of Brisbane photos is from the department offsite that was held on the 26th floor of an office building in the CBD. (Not our office building, by the way. That’s on the other side of the CBD.)

Looking down at Kangaroo Point Bridge that spans Brisbane River

Photo looking down from a tall building at a white, single-mast, cable bridge that spans an urban river. This pedestrian and cyclist bridge is in its very final stages of construction, with workers on it finishing up some last-minute electrical fit-outs.

Looking down at Story Bridge that spans Brisbane River

Photo looking down from a tall building (and from between two neighbouring tall buildings) at a large, grey, cantilever bridge that spans an urban river.

Across the road from Level 26 of Admiralty Towers

Photo of the 24th–27th floors of a skyscraper taken from the 26th floor of a neighbouring skyscraper. The photo shows the windows in the walkway between apartments, as well as the balconies of the some of the apartments on these floors.

Ferries around Riverside Ferry Terminal

Photo looking down from a tall building at an urban river. Along one bank of the river is a ferry terminal. One large ferry is departing from this terminal, while another smaller one is approaching.

Keeping us hydrated at our all-day team offsite

Photo of a metal cold water canister with a tap and two very large metal bowls filled with ice and several glass bottles of fruit juice. Both the canister and bowls have a lot of condensation on the outside.

Cold fruit juice for our all-day team offsite

Close-up photo of two very large metal bowls filled with ice and several glass bottles of fruit juice.

Sugar and hydration from our all-day team offsite

Close-up photo of two very large metal bowls filled with ice and several glass bottles of fruit juice.

Underneath the Story Bridge in Brisbane

This third set of Brisbane photos is from our department’s Christmas party, which was held at a bar that’s underneath the Story Bridge.

We didn’t get “Sunny Queensland” while we were up in Brisbane. Instead, in rained almost the entire time we were there. Oh, and the temperature was 30 degrees C in the afternoon. *sigh*

Rainy day along the Brisbane River

Photo of a couple of restaurants built on a pier along an urban river. The restaurants are open to the outdoors and appear to be half full. Outside it is raining.

Rainwater falling from drainage pipes below the Story Bridge

Photo looking up at the underside of a large cantilever bridge. There are streams of rainwater pouring down from drainage pipes set at intervals along the span of the bridge.

Rainwater drainage underneath the Story Bridge

Photo looking up at the underside of a large cantilever bridge. There are streams of rainwater pouring down from drainage pipes set at intervals along the span of the bridge.

Rainy day in Brisbane underneath the Story Bridge

Photo looking up at the underside of a large cantilever bridge that spans an urban river. Visible against the dark underside of the bridge is the heavy rain that is falling.

Rainwater drainage pipe under the Story Bridge

Photo looking up at the underside of a large cantilever bridge. A stream of rainwater is pouring out of a drainage pipe set into one side of the bridge.

Rainy day to be ferrying up and down the Brisbane River

Photo of two ferries traveling up and down an urban river on a rainy day.

Lots of rain, even under the Story Bridge

Photo looking up at the underside of a large cantilever bridge that spans an urban river. Visible against the dark underside of the bridge is the heavy rain that is falling.

Ferries on the Brisbane River on a rainy day

Photo of two ferries traveling up and down an urban river on a rainy day.

Party boat on the Brisbane River on a rainy day

Photo of a party boat lit up with bright lights traveling down an urban river on a rainy day.

[Photo walk] Brisbane River

This second set of Brisbane photos is from when I walked along the banks of the Brisbane River.

The Prawnster and Princess Prawnster at the City Botanic Gardens RiverHub

Photo of two trawler boats moored next to each other at a pier on an urban river. The boats have been converted into seafood restaurants.

Kangaroo Point Bridge spanning the Brisbane River, a week before its official opening

Photo of a tall, white, single-mast, cable bridge for pedestrians and cyclists that spans an urban river.

Brisbane’s newest Bridge (Kangaroo Point Bridge) and one of its oldest (Story Bridge)

Wide-angle photo showing two bridges that span an urban river. The white, single-mast, cable bridge closer to the photographer is a pedestrian and cyclist bridge that will open a week after this photo was taken. A massive, grey, cantilever bridge can be seen in the background, below the deck of the nearer bridge.

Jetski training

Photo of a several jetskis on floating plastic parking pads that are attached to a pier on an urban river. An instructor standing on the pier is talking to his three students who are sitting on two of the jetskis.

Final touches on the Kangaroo Point Bridge before it opens next week

Photo of a worker in safety gear (white hard hat and bright orange high-visibility clothing) standing on a scissor lift on top of a white bridge that spans an urban river.

Good ideas start with great coffee!

Photo of an outdoor flight of stairs leading up to a cafe. Painted on the riser between the third and fourth step is a painted, bright red sign with white, all-capitals text that reads, “Be amazing today! But first, coffee!”. And painted on the riser below the 12th and 13th step is a painted black sign with white text that reads, “Good ideas start with great coffee!”

Be amazing today! But first, coffee!

Close-up photo of an outdoor flight of stairs. Painted on the riser between the third and fourth step is a painted, bright red sign with white, all-capitals text that reads, “Be amazing today! But first, coffee!”.

Construction crew on the river

Photo of two construction crew members in white hard hats and bright orange high-visibility gear on a small motorboat making their way around a large transport boat from which items are being lifted via a tall, overhead crane.

Brisbane River from my hotel room window at 7pm

Photo looking down from a tall building at an urban river on an overcast night. Across the street is the large Queensland Performing Arts Centre building complex, the outside of which is bathed in red and green lights. Two bridges cross the river, one of which has its underside bathed in green and blue lights. There are a few boats making their way along the river.

Brisbane River from my hotel room window at 6am

Photo looking down from a tall building at an urban river on a rainy, overcast early morning. Across the street is the large Queensland Performing Arts Centre building complex. Two bridges span the river and there are some boats parked along the riverbank. An elevated motorway runs along the near side of the river with light traffic on it.

[Photo walk] Brisbane CBD

At work this year’s annual department offsite and Christmas party was held in Brisbane. I flew up early on the day so I could walk around and take some photos.

This first set is from the Brisbane central business district (CBD) where our office is.

Big sign on a very thick pole on George Street

Photo of an overhead directional road sign in a city centre with several tall buildings and moderate traffic. The sign shows lane markings and directional arrows for Toowong (via Coronation Drive), Gold Coast (via Riverside Expressway), and Roma Street.

Bank of New South Wales building (now the Westpac Bank Building)

Photo of a six-storey, neo-classical, commercial building completed in 1930. The facade is constructed from brown coloured stone. The front has four giant Ionic columns above which is written, in all capital letters, ‘Bank of New South Wales’.

Carindale Express bus exits the underground busway at William Street

Photo looking downwards at a blue-and-yellow bus exiting a bus-only tunnel that runs below the Brisbane central business district. A digital sign on the front of the bus reads, “Carindale Express via Cannon Hill” and the 215 bus number.

Layers of transport options along the Brisbane River near North Quay

Photo showing multiple layers of roads and pedestrian walkways running along an urban river, including a motorway, elevated expressway, bikeway, and walkway.

Nice and peaceful in the City Botanic Gardens

Photo looking over a wooden bench facing a large public garden with several massive trees around it. The bench itself has been set under the shade of several large trees.

No need to run the sprinkler at the City Botanic Gardens when its been raining

Close-up photo of a plant irrigation sprinkler mounted on a pole that has several small cobwebs all around it.

Bush stone-curlews chilling at the City Botanic Gardens

Close-up photo showing two bush stone-curlew birds sitting on some brown mulch in a public garden.

Weeping Fig Avenue at the City Botanic Gardens

Photo of a long, wooden walkway with long wooden benches running along its entire length. On either side of the walkway are very tall weeping fig trees.

Selfie on Weeping Fig Avenue at the City Botanic Gardens

Selfie of a man standing a long, wooden walkway with long wooden benches running along its entire length. On either side of the walkway are very tall weeping fig trees. The man is bald and has a short, mostly-white beard. He is wearing glasses, a black t-shirt, and a backpack.

Selfie among the weeping figs at the City Botanic Gardens

Selfie of a man looking down at his phone. Above him is the canopy of several tall weeping fig trees. The man is bald and has a short, mostly-white beard. He is wearing glasses, a black Pac-Man t-shirt, and a backpack.

Gold Tower (originally AMP Centre) in the Brisbane central business district

Photo of a skyscraper with gold-tinted, floor-to-ceiling windows along the outside.

On and off ramps at the end of Ann Street in Brisbane

Photo of three three vehicle on and off ramps in an urban city center. One of the elevated ramps curves so that it emerges from and disappears into the right side of the photo.

Free bike parking under the Pacific Motorway on-ramp in Brisbane

Photo of several motorcyles parked underneath an on-ramp in a city centre.

Waiting in line for his coffee at Brisbane Quarter

Photo of a man wearing business casual clothes waiting in line at a cafe in a shopping centre. The photo is through a large cut-out of a higher floor.

Reflections of a photographer in a massive Christmas bauble at Brisbane Quarter

Photo of a large, golden Christmas bauble hung from the ceiling in the foyer of an office building. The photographer is standing on the street outside the building and you can see his dull reflection in the bauble.

Blurry text after installing latest Windows 11 release (24H2)

tl;dr If you have an NVIDIA graphics card and you have your graphics scaled to 100% in Windows, go to the NVIDIA Control Panel and change the ‘Display > Adjust Desktop Side and Position > Apply the following settings: > Scaling’ setting to ‘No scaling’. This fixed the blurry text/screen issue for me.

UPDATE: This fix doesn’t work 100% of the time. Occasionally the screen will get blurry again, but only when I’ve been away from my computer for a while and so the screen has turned itself off. When that happens, I have to go back to the scaling settings and toggle between ‘Aspect ratio’ and ‘No scaling’. Doing that resets the screen and fixes the blurry text issue. Hopefully the next Windows or NVIDIA driver update fixes this problem once and for all!

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll have gathered that I am a typography enthusiast. So you can understand how pissed-off I was when I installed the latest Windows 11 release (24H2) on my gaming PC [1] and suddenly all the text on my screen got slightly blurry.

Blurry photo of what appears to be a large screen on a table, with a large desk lamp placed next to it. (Source: Matthias Oberholzer on Unsplash)

At first I thought this was a browser issue because that’s where I first noticed the problem. But then I realised text was blurry everywhere, including in Microsoft Word and even in Windows menus and panels. And then I noticed that the sharp edges of graphics and images were blurry too. In fact, everything looked a little less sharp! That mean this was a graphics/display issue, not a font rendering issue.

The obvious first step was to update all my Intel and NVIDIA drivers, which I did. But that didn’t fix anything.

Then I did a bunch of extensive online searches, but no luck there either. No one had this specific issue after updating their Windows installs and all the troubleshooting steps that folks recommended didn’t fix my problem.

So then I did what any proper tech geek would do: I started changing and resetting all my graphics settings :)

Screenshot from the TV show The IT Crowd in which actor Chris O’Dowd has picked up the phone and has immediately said, “Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?”.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

If you’ve been using software as complicated as Windows for long enough, you’ll know that things get missed or overwritten without warning – especially when hardware or software is being upgraded. So I figured either one of my settings got overwritten during the upgrade or the folks at Microsoft changed something in Windows that meant my current setting was no longer the correct one.

After toggling a bunch of display settings in Windows (scaling, resolution, etc), I moved onto the NVIDIA Control Panel and there’s where I found the answer.

In the ‘Display > Adjust Desktop Size and Position’ section you have the ability to scale and size your desktop.

The default setting for this is ‘Aspect ratio’.

But if your screen is scaled to 100% and you want every software-generated pixel to map to its corresponding hardware pixel on your monitor, you’re better off turning all scaling off. So that’s what I did.

I switched to ‘No scaling’ and my screen is now perfectly sharp, and all is right with the world :)

Screenshot from the NVIDIA Control Panel app on Windows. Two sections are highlighted. The first is a radio button that reads, “No scaling”. The second describes the typical usage scenario in which you apply this setting: “Your desktop appears blurry when scaled”.

Hope this helps you if you’re having the same problem I was!

[1] Intel 13th Gen CPU, NVIDIA RTX 4080 GPU, Windows 11 Pro

[Photo walk] Along Flinders Street #3

I took these photos on a quick walk along Flinders Lane and Flinders Street.

Clean your damn shoes

Photo of a glass-fronted store that’s named Sneaker Laundry. A neon sign on the window reads, in all capital letters, “clean your damn shoes”. A bright yellow sandwich board on the pavement outside the store reads, also in all capital letters, “slow down” and “clean your sneakers here”. A shop attendant on a laptop is visible through the storefront windows.

Be there in a Jiff

Photo of flat-bottom cargo skiff (a type of boat) named ‘Jiff’ being piloted along an urban river by a man with a neat beard and ponytail who is wearing a white t-shirt and sunglasses.

Chatting in the shade

Photo of a pedestrian bridge across an urban river. A walkway with a metal railing runs along the river and underneath this bridge. Directly underneath the bridge you can see the silhouette of a man leaning on the railing as he holds a phone up to his ear.

Boycott, Divest & Sanction, mate

Photo of a white sticker affixed to the top a dark green stairway banister. The reads, in large, all-caps text, “BSDM”. Below this is regular-sized text that reads, “Boycott, Divest & Sanction, mate” and the hashtag “free Palestine”.

Tower 2 at Collins Square, Melbourne

My office is in Tower 5 at Collins Square in Docklands, Melbourne.

At certain times of day, when the light is just right, the west-facing side of Tower 2 is really photogenic. (I’ve posted a photo of this before too.)

West side of Tower 2 at Collins Square

Photo looking down along the side of a tall office building with floor-to-ceiling windows. Visible through some of the windows are open office seating spaces and meeting rooms. The rest of the floors are obscured by reflections of the building opposite, which is out of frame of the photograph.

Collins Square Tower 2 on a bright, but overcast day in Melbourne

Photo looking down along the side of a tall office building with floor-to-ceiling windows. Visible through some of the windows are open office seating spaces and meeting rooms. The rest of the floors are obscured by reflections of the building opposite, which is out of frame of the photograph.

Maggie turns 11!

Maggie is a rescue dog, so we guesstimated her birthday to be 5 December 2013. That means today she turns eleven :)

Here are some recent photos.

Curled up and asleep in her bed

Close-up photo of a red/brown dog curled up and asleep along the side of a grey dog bed. The dog has one of its paws over its snout and pushed up against one of the bed walls.

Asleep in her corner of the bedroom

Photo of a red/brown dog asleep in a grey dog bed. The dog has its head and one paw resting on the wall of the bed that's against the wall of the room.

Asleep in her downstairs bed

Photo of a red/brown dog asleep, with one paw over its face, in a dog bed that's lying in a living room.

Asleep with her rope toy

Photo of a red/brown dog asleep on the carpet in a living room. The dog is snuggling its red-and-black rope toy.

All ears while we wait outside the vet

Wide angle photo of a red/brown dog standing outside a vet surgery. The photographer is sitting on the ground and is leaning forward to scratch the dog on its neck. The wide-angle view of the photo have made the dog's ears look extra large.

Keeping a nose on the neighbourhood

Photo of a red/brown dog being walked on a red leash. The dog has stopped on a nature strip along the side of a road and is sniffing the base of a tree.

Stopping to smell the flowers

Photo of a red/brown dog being walked on a red leash sniffing at the base of a patch of purple flowers.

Sadly, we won’t have Maggie with us for too much longer. She has chronic kidney disease and likely just has a few months left to live.

She is living a good life though, with lots of love and cuddles and walks around the neighbourhood.

And while she might be a little slow these days, she is happy and is still very much up for a game of tug, like she was when I got home from work today :)

[Photo walk] Along Harbour Esplanade, Docklands #4

Since May this year, pretty much all the photos I’ve taken have been with the TTArtisan AF 27mm F2.8 (40mm full-frame equivalent) lens. And while this isn’t the a super high-quality lens, I’ve really enjoyed using it.

So when the TTArtisan AF 56mm F1.8 (85mm full-frame equivalent) lens went on sale a couple of weeks ago, I went ahead and bought it :)

Photo of a black camera lens. (Source)

Here are some of the photos I took during the only photo walk I’ve managed to take since buying this lens.

A bunch of these are repeats from earlier photo walks, but that’s fine because the main point of this walk was to practice using the new lens and composing all my shots at a fixed, 85mm focal length.

Good choice of corner furniture on the top floor

Black-and-white photo of a multi-storey office building with a sharp corner at one end. On the very top floor there is a small drinks table/trolley placed in the very corner of the building.

Five layers of buildings across three streets in one photo

A photo showing the gap between two tall-ish buildings. Behind the building on the left are four other building, each one getting successively taller.

Lovely meeting rooms in the NAB Building at 800 Bourke Street

Photo of a section of a colourful office building that’s jutting out from the main building. This multi-storey section, which itself is two storeys above ground level, has floor-to-ceiling windows on all three sides. Through the windows you can make out office tables and chairs arranged inside the rooms.

Cow Up a Tree — John Kelly (2000)

Photo looking up at a large bronze sculpture of a black-and-white square-ish cow with a tiny head that is stuck, upside-down, on top of a bare tree.

Reflections of a photographer on Harbour Esplanade

Photo of a large, convex, traffic safety mirror installed on a pole next to a construction site along a wide esplanade. The photographer has captured his own distorted reflection in this mirror.

Photographer in a convex traffic safety mirror on Harbour Esplanade

Close-up photo of a large, convex, traffic safety mirror installed on a pole next to a construction site along a wide esplanade. The photographer has captured his own distorted reflection in this mirror.

Top-floor mini balcony at the Federal Court of Australia building in Melbourne

Photo looking up at the top of a tall, light-brown and slate-grey building. A small balcony is jutting out from the top floor. The building is otherwise completely flat on this side.

A drastically different way of looking

40mm is my favourite focal length, so switching suddenly to 85mm was quite the challenge!

This difference in focal lengths is large enough that you can’t just “take a few steps backwards” to successfully capture the 40mm-friendly composition that initially popped into your head.

A fact that my creative brain completely forgot when I saw a woman walking two adorable dogs on my photo walk and, without thinking, I asked if I could take their photo. The woman said “yes” the instant the rational part of my brain remembered that I was too close to get an even halfway-decent shot with the lens I had on. *sigh*

I took the photo anyway, of course, but I barely even managed to get one of the two dogs in frame :) Oh well. At least that’s not a lesson I’ll forget anytime soon!

Photo of two small dogs on a split-leash, with one dog out of focus and the dog that is in focus facing the dog walker so you can only see the back of its head.

It’ll take a few more photo walks before I get the hang of this focal length. Especially when it comes to taking photos of people and animals.

The 85mm focal length is particularly good for shooting portraits because you can (a) isolate your subject in the frame and (b) get a nice blurry background behind them if you use an open enough aperture. This lens is capable of taking great portrait shots, it’s just me that needs the practice :)

So here’s to more photo walks and many more opportunities to use this focal length in the coming weeks and months.

Maggie in bed

Maggie doesn’t like to have her photo taken, so the best time to take a photo is when she’s asleep :)

Maggie asleep in her orange, fuzzy bed

Photo of a red/brown dog asleep in an orange coloured, large, round, fuzzy dog bed that's lying on a carpeted floor. The dog’s head is resting on the soft wall of this bed.

Maggie is very cozy in her orange, fuzzy bed

Photo of a red/brown dog asleep in an orange coloured, large, round, fuzzy dog bed that's lying on a carpeted floor. The dog’s head is resting on the soft wall of this bed.

Maggie is having a comfy afternoon in her downstairs bed

Photo of a red/brown dog asleep in a grey dog bed that’s on the carpeted floor of a living room. The dog is leaning its head against the wall of the dog bed.

Maggie is unimpressed with me taking a photo of her

Photo of a red/brown dog lying in a grey dog bed that’s on the carpeted floor of a living room. The dog was leaning its head against the wall of the dog bed, but has now raised it to blearily stare up at the photographer.

Buildings and statues

I had to run an errand in the city so I took some photos on the way back.

Chimera outside the ‘Gothic Bank’ building on Collins Street

Photo of a chimera sitting on a pedestal fixed to a wide column that’s part of a building with a gothic facade. A chimera is a fantastical or mythical figure depicting a combination of multiple animals carved from stone and fixed to the walls or roof of a building. This one is a lion with wings that is holding a shield.

Prince Alfred’s Tower at the Melbourne Town Hall on a bright, sunny day

Photo looking up at a tall clock tower that is flying the Australian flag. The photo is partly washed-out because of the bright sun that’s just out of frame.

Pigeon on the Captain Matthew Flinders Statue on Swanston Street

Photo of a tall bronze statue mounted on a large granite slab located outside a cathedral. The statue depicts Matthew Flinders in his Commander’s uniform, standing on the prow of a boat, braced against the wind, brought ashore by two seamen. A pigeon is standing on the statue’s head.

AUS v PAK ODI at Melbourne Cricket Ground

The Pakistan men’s cricket team is touring Australia so I went to watch the first one-day international (ODI) match of this series at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

Naturally, I took some photos while I was there :)

Skycam at Melbourne Cricket Ground

Photo of a cable-suspended camera system above a large cricket stadium.

Behind the scenes at a cricket match

Photo showing Australian cricketer Mitchell Starc talking to one of his support team members at the boundary of a cricket stadium. Behind them in the photo are the water station and medical station. To their right is the kit station. In the foreground of the photo is a television camera operator.

Melbourne Cricket Club logo next to the MCC stand

Photo showing the stylised “MCC” logo of the Melbourne Cricket Club on a metal railing separating two stands at a stadium.

Pakistan cricket team supporters

Photo showing a crowd of spectators in the stands of a large cricket stadium. Several spectators are dressed in green team colours and uniforms, and several are waving large Pakistan flags.

Lights coming on for the day-night one-day match

Photo showing a tall light-tower behind the stands and massive LCD screen of a large stadium. The sun in starting to set behind the stadium so the lights have now been turned on.

Copilot’s integration in Microsoft Office is really shitting me

I pay an annual subscription fee for Microsoft Office – or what is now called ‘Microsoft 365’. That means I always get the latest versions of Microsoft’s Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Well, the latest versions of these apps all now have Microsoft Copilot integrated into them in the most irritating way possible.

The revenge of Clippy

In Word, for example, Copilot muscles its way into your writing flow through an icon that appears at the start of every new paragraph on your page (highlighted by the red square in the screenshot below).  

Screenshot from Microsoft Word showing the first two paragraphs of this post being written. There is a Copilot icon in the left margin, just next to where the author is about to start typing the third paragraph. That icon has been highlighted in the screenshot by a red coloured, rounded square.

Infuriatingly, in PowerPoint this icon appears above each slide, forcing you to reduce the zoom on your slide if you want to be able to go from one slide to the next using the ‘Down’ arrow on your keyboard or the scroll wheel on your mouse with just a single keypress/scroll.

Screenshot from Microsoft PowerPoint showing a Copilot icon above the top-left corner of the slide. That icon has been highlighted in the screenshot by a red coloured, rounded square.

Tell Microsoft to stop it. Just stop it.

I’m not the only one who finds this incredibly irritating. Unfortunately, an online search on how to remove these icons gave me only questions and no answers:

I did, however, find two requests in the Microsoft Feedback Portal about these annoyances:

So if you’re someone who also uses Microsoft 365, could you please do me a favour? Sign into the Microsoft Feeback Portal to both vote for those issues and add a comment of support under each as well (since that counts for more than just your vote).

Thank you!

What does the fox say?

For the hell of it, I asked Copilot how I could remove that icon from PowerPoint and the answer it confidently gave me was completely wrong (though it all other situations in PowerPoint this answer would have been completely right).

Screenshot of a Microsoft Copilot window in which Copilot tells the user to right-click on the Copilot icon and select “Hide Icon” from the context menu.

I down-voted that answer and asked again. It gave me another wrong answer. (Though, again, if Microsoft had integrated Copilot in the usual way, this answer would have been right.)

Screenshot of a Microsoft Copilot window in which Copilot tells the user to go to File > Options > Add-ins and disable the Copilot Add-in to PowerPoint.

To its credit, when I told Copilot both answers were wrong it asked me reach out to Microsoft Support and to provide feedback on the Microsoft Q&A Community. It even offered to help me post my query and feedback. So at least that’s something.

Screenshot of a Microsoft Copilot window in which Copilot tells the user, “I understand how frustrating that can be. It seems like this is a common issue, and there isn't a straightforward way to remove the icon through the PowerPoint interface itself. I recommend reaching out to Microsoft Support for more specific assistance. They can provide guidance tailored to your version of PowerPoint and system setup. You can also post your concern on the Microsoft Q&A Community with the tags PowerPoint and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 Development. The experts there are proficient in handling such customization queries.”

The beatings will continue until morale improves

Microsoft will continue to shove Copilot down our throats until enough of us complain and maybe then they’ll give us the option to disable it. Or better yet, make its annoying icons opt-in instead of opt-out.

Though given how user-hostile and user-indifferent Microsoft has been over the last several years (aka how they’ve been on the path to enshittification), who knows if anything will change without governments fining them heavily and forcing them to change.

*sigh*

The POSSE approach to your online presence

In 2019 I explained how I was going to decentralise my online presence by cross-posting all my really interesting content to both social media and this blog. Since then I’ve posted all my content here first, and then shared snippets of that everywhere else.

This is not a new idea, of course, and I’ve been preaching variations of this owned-media-first approach for years at the places I’ve worked.

Screenshot of a flow chart from a slide deck. The flowchart shows stories pitched by Jetstar to the media with a wide arrow. A much narrower arrow goes from the media to the audience. Parallel to this is a wide, darker coloured arrow showing stories written on our own platforms. An identically-wide arrow goes from there to the audience, along with a smaller arrow showing stories on our own platforms being picked up by the media.

However this week, thanks to Molly White’s [citation needed] newsletter, I discovered that the phrase that’s been used to describe this approach since 2012 is POSSE, which stands for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

I thought I’d note that here and share a few interesting and relevant POSSE-related links:

  • The first item in the ‘Worth a read’ section of [citation needed] ‘Issue 69 – Nice’ (2 Nov 2024) is Molly White’s most recent mention of POSSE.

  • She talked about this approach in more detail in an earlier edition of her newsletter: ‘POSSE: Reclaiming social media in a fragmented world’ (27 Sep 2024).

  • Cory Doctorow is someone who follows the POSSE approach and in his most recent Pluralistic newsletter instalment, ‘Bluesky and enshittification’ (2 Nov 2024), he talks about why he isn’t joining Bluesky.

  • Here are the IndieWeb wiki articles on ‘POSSE’ and ‘PESOS’ (Publish Everywhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site.

  • Finally, David Pierce wrote a good article in The Verge about POSSE that is worth reading: ‘The poster’s guide to the internet of the future’ (24 Oct 2023).

Close-up photo showing a person typing on a laptop. (@Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash)

Syndicate or post natively?

The one aspect of POSSE I don’t do is the automatic syndication my content to other channels.

While I love using RSS to read content from lots of different sources, I don’t like doing the opposite: using a tool to automatically write content to lots of different sources.

I did use IFFT back in the day to automatically post my Flickr photos to Instagram and Twitter, but I don’t do that anymore.

I enjoy posting natively on the channels I use and, in turn, seeing what everyone else is posting there.

The only automation that comes in handy is Buffer, and that’s to schedule photo posts to Mastodon and Bluesky in the middle of the day when my desktop computer (where all my mirrorless camera photos are saved) is turned off.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it

If you’re someone who wants more ownership of the content you’re putting into various social media walled gardens, I recommend you check out the POSSE approach and join us in a more decentralised web.

Giving up on Outlook (new) at work

I like the theory of Microsoft Outlook: an all-in-one personal information manager that handles your email, calendaring, task management, contact management, and RSS news aggregation.

Outlook for Windows promo graphic showing a screenshot of Outlook (new) on a computer and smartphone screen. (Source)

In practice, however, Outlook is a pain. It doesn’t fully comply with internet standards, for example, and its Windows app takes up a lot of computing resources.

Importantly, its latest version, Outlook for Windows – aka ‘Outlook (new)’ – is terrible. And after trying it for several months at work, this week I finally switched back to ‘Outlook (classic)’.

Outlook for business promo graphic showing a screenshot of Outlook (classic) on a computer and smartphone screen. (Source)

Let me list the reasons why

Now I’m someone who loves to use bleeding-edge software. I regularly try out alpha and beta releases of various apps and, as a Linux user, I’m comfortable with apps that have a little less polish (or sometimes a lot less polish) than commercial versions of the same thing.

But there were a bunch of things in ‘Outlook (new)’ that I just couldn’t deal with anymore. I even made a list.

Some functionality was missing or severely degraded compared to the older ‘Outlook (classic)’:

  • You can’t open shared mailboxes

  • Auto-replace text is not fully functional

  • Filtering/sorting of emails is much more difficult

  • Spell-check functionality is inconsistent: sometimes it only works half-way through an email and sometimes the red squiggly lines that are supposed to appear under the misspelled word don’t align with the text (the line appears in the middle of the word or it appears a line or two above the word)

The lack of compliance with internet standards is really irritating too. Especially when it comes to paragraph spacing around bullet points because that is rendered in an inconsistent manner:

  • sometimes the paragraph space before/after your bullet points remains and

  • sometimes it disappears when the email is read or replied-to.

The most annoying annoyances

What annoys me the most, I think, is how you keep losing focus every time you perform a basic action:

  • When you press the ‘delete’ key to delete an email, focus doesn’t immediately move to the next email in the inbox. So if you press ‘delete’ again, nothing happens because no email is selected. Yes, it shows you the next email, it’s just that this email is not selected in the inbox.

  • The same happens when you (click-and-drag) move an email to another folder: it shows you the next email in your original folder, but that email isn’t selected (ie in focus).

  • When you unpin an email from the top of your inbox (which is the one piece of functionally I loved in the new Outlook), you lose focus on that now-unpinned email. So if you were thinking of moving this email to a folder (now that you’re done with it), you can’t do that easily. You have to scroll down through your inbox to find the email again. And because it’s no longer selected in your inbox, it’s not shaded in a different colour and so it doesn’t stand out.

These lost-focus annoyances all stem from the fact that ‘Outlook for Windows’ is basically a web app in installable-software wrapping. Meaning the kind of intuitive focus-shifting that you used to get in ‘Outlook (classic)’ you can’t replicate in the web version of the same thing. Or maybe you can and they just haven’t gotten around to it yet? Either way, this focus loss was really starting to shit me.

Happy days are here again

The upshot of all this is that I’m back to using ‘Office (classic)’ – which is basically the latest version of ‘Outlook for business’ from Office 2019 – and I haven’t been happier!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering. For my personal email, calendaring, etc on my Windows and Linux computers, I use the fantastic Mozilla Thunderbird (10/10 would recommend).

Thunderbird promo graphic showing a screenshot of Thunderbird on a computer screen. (Source)

[Photo walk] Collins Street, Melbourne #4

It’s been almost ten months since I last walked down Collins Street to take some photos!

Blue-on-blue of the sky and the building at 567 Collins Street

Photo looking up along a tall office tower with reflective, blue-tinted windows that are reflecting a clear, light blue sky. The photo is taken from under some trees, so the green canopy of these trees frame this scene.

Framing a scene through the ‘567’ forecourt sculpture

Photo taken through the stainless steel bars of a 14 metre tall piece of artwork at the front of an office building. The photo shows a woman in a long dress sitting in a public bench while looking at the phone in her hands.

Layers of tyres at the motorcycle parking on Collins Street

Photo taken through the spokes of a rear motorcycle tyre that has a sporty, bright orange rim. Through these spokes you can see another rear motorcycle tyre behind this one, through which you can see yet another tyre behind that.

Motorcycle parking on Collins Street

Photo of several shiny sports bikes parked at an angle along a street that runs through the central business district of a metropolitan Australian city.

Bikes parked in a line along Collins Street

Photo taken from a low angle of several shiny motorbikes parked at an angle along a street that runs through the central business district of a metropolitan Australian city. There are cars driving down one side the street and two trams running down tracks in the centre of the street.

Flower Boutique on the corner of Collins and Williams Street

Photo of a footpath flower shop with several bouquets of flowers arranged along the front of the shop.

Photos from my desk

I was checking something on my camera while at my desk when I saw a couple of photo opportunities.

Afternoon scene from a window

Photo looking through a window from inside the house. The scene through the window shows the roof of a neighbouring house, the tops of some trees, and some power lines.

Maggie is snuggled up in her bed in the corner of the room

Photo of a red/brown dog sleeping in a round fuzzy bed with her face pressed up against the side of the bed.

[Video] Helvetica is boring, use Franklin Gothic instead

I think Franklin Gothic is cooler than Helvetica, so I made a video about why you should use it more often. And since the Franklin Gothic font you get with Windows and Office 365 isn’t particularly good, I recommend a few great free and paid alternatives.

I guess I make font explainer videos now

I had a lot of fun making the ‘Stop using Times New Roman’ video and so I’m back with a new one. Let me know what you think!

Video transcript

Links and references, in order of appearance

Font downloads and purchases

Photos and screenshots

Text and articles

Other

[Photo walk] Along the Yarra River #3

I think I’m finally back in the rhythm of walking through the city on Friday afternoons after work to take photos.

Blue Tongue bike rental next to Batman Park

Photo of several blue push bikes parked outside a yellow, single-storey building with a sign that reads, “blue tongue bikes”.

Old Melbourne Aquarium sign along the Yarra River

Photo of a large, blue neon sign in the shape of two stylised fish. The sign is mounted on two tall, white poles next to a large building.

GOBOAT renters arriving back at the dock on the Yarra River

Photo taken through a railing of four people in a small motorboat approaching a dock alongside an urban river. In the background a low, flat, tour boat passes under a bridge that spans an urban river.

Motorboating along the Yarra River

Photo taken through a railing of a figure wearing shorts, a hoodie, and thick puffer jacket sitting along in a motorboat that is crossing under a bridge that spans an urban river.

Eureka Tower as seen through the Sandridge Bridge across the Yarra River

Photo of a tall office and residential tower seen through the steel girders of a pedestrian bridge.

What’s on tap at AFLOAT, along the Yarra River

Photo of two windows set into a covered outdoor bar area. Visible through one window are several beer taps, while through the other window you can see wine bottles and other bar paraphernalia. In the background, looking through the windows, you can see a few tradies in orange and yellow high-visibility clothing sitting on outdoor furniture arrange around this bar.

Glasses and taps at AFLOAT, along the Yarra River

Photo of two windows set into a covered outdoor bar area. Visible through one window are several beer taps, while through the other window you can see spirit bottles and several rows of drink glasses. In the background, looking through the windows, you can see several patrons sitting on outdoor furniture arrange around this bar.

Traffic on the Yarra River outside Southgate shopping centre

Photo of a river running through the middle of a metropolitan city. In the background are several tall buildings and a pedestrian bridge that spans the river. On the river are a few boats moored along the banks, while one tour boat is making a U-turn in the middle of the river.

Sweep rowing training on the Yarra River

Photo four sweep rowers (in which each person holds only one oar with both hands) and their coxswain (who steers the boat) training on an urban river. They team has just passed under a stone bridge that spans the river. Their trainer is travelling behind them in a rowboat and is giving them instructions via megaphone.

Sweep rowers on the Yarra River

Photo of two sets of sweep rowers (in which each person holds only one oar with both hands) and their coxswain (who steers the boat) training on an urban river. Their training is following behind them in a small motorboat. In the background, and on the opposite side of the river from the photographer, are several large buildings. A few boats, include two tour boats, are moored alongside the far bank of the river.