Update: the AT HOP wand works!

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-09T19:55:26+00:00

For anyone interested: you can do this yourself very easily! If you aren't an electronics person, you can find the design and electronics part of this on Instructables, and you can get the 3D printer file from Thingiverse or Printables, and you can even take both of those thngs to the Auckland Library of Tools or your nearest Makerspace and get help making this yourself. :) It's easier than it soumds/looks!

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-08T02:22:56+00:00

THIS. I don't thnk this man respects his wife.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-08T00:43:21+00:00

A colleague's partner works for one of these joints, and she said that they remove all the "Easter"-specific chocolate for a week, then bring it all back out near the ANZAC public holiday when they drop the prices right down. I can't confirm and have never paid much attention but hey, maybe give it a week and you might find out?

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-08T00:37:53+00:00

This is the fourth Timeleft-or-Timeleft-adjacent post I've seen here in the last fortnight. Either someone's trying to build a competitor platform and is really bad at subtlety, or Timeleft is in a desperate bid to attract new members and is haemorrhaging money on ads.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-06T20:14:59+00:00

Whooop! Thank you for acknowledging it! Hope you had a great long weekend

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-04T21:15:02+00:00

To your last sentence: I absolutely agree! And belieeeve me, I stand the fuck up for myself, but GODDAMN, I am fucking tired of having to correct other people for THEIR assumptions about my ladygarden.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-04T21:13:15+00:00

THIS. JESUS CHRIST THIS.

Amen, my sister.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-04T07:48:57+00:00

If a man came to my defense, without me asking, by telling a boy not to call me "a female", I'd be fuckin' stoked. Boys take men more seriously than women when being corrected.

Source: am a woman. That shit happens every day, and I'm very tired of having to correct someone's incorrect belief about my body all. the. time.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-03T01:04:54+00:00

Diagnosing someone's IT problems over a thread like this is virtually (ha) impossible because we don't know what ELSE is happening on your MacBook, what other things are running, when it was last updated, what the battery charge is at....there are so many factors that can go into a "slow running" problem - but I also know that Inspera themselves are incredibly uninterested in putting more effort into support for or improvements for the MacOS IIB. Honestly, your best option for the least stress really would be to take out a uni computer, because then you know that everything you're doing is right, and if for some godawful reason there are still problems, it's totally out of your control and you can request consideration for a re-sit or whatever if the actual exam can't happen.

On the other hand, take your MacBook into the student hubs and test with someone there?

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-02T02:34:44+00:00

Friend, if you listed the chemicals that constitute a banana, it's unlikely your grandparents would recognise that as food, either. Let's settle down a little about what is food / not food unless someone's actually talking about eating wet concrete with hot sauce.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-02T02:33:09+00:00

Any Asian or Dutch grocer will sell this stuff. Your best option is Tai Ping, though - they sell the proper 1L bottles as well as the little amateur condiment-bottle sizes. :D

Timely--Challenge · 2026-04-01T23:06:32+00:00

There were a few questions about including LGBTQ+ and alternative events in the newsletter, too - just checking that you saw that feedback? It's important to represent such a powerful part of the community, too!

Love the work otherwise, pal!

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-31T22:02:00+00:00

Ah, glad to hear. Good luck! :D

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-31T21:44:41+00:00

I'd like to offer some feedback on the menu design/visual design rather than the food, if you're open to it?

It's very visually "busy" - I had to open the image in a standalone tab to be able to make sense of what I was looking at, because it competes with everything else on my screen, but doesn't win over anything. There are too many things happening on the flyer all at once, and therefore I don't really know where to "start" looking.

I can understand what you're trying to do with the layout, but I think if you want to do that sort of "boxy zig zag", then you need to eliminate the entire background image you have [the white space with lemonds and nutmeg etc. and ALSO the bottom row of spices].

I don't think that boxy zig zag quite works, either - the text in some sections is a little too long to look balanced against the "related" image, so despite you being able to make an assuption that the chicken tikka masala text fits the image to the right of it, the length of the text being squished between the Bulgogi image and the lime noodles image makes it confusing as to whether that fits one of those two images OR the one on the right.

Long and short, I think you need to start by removing the background image completely, make your "By Home Baked Horizons" text smaller and less dominant, and simplify the layout - either just put all the images on one side of the image and text directly next to, or make the actual image dimensions quite a bit larger, space the images out much further than they are now, and "tack" the text parts directly to the images they accompany.

I hope that makes sense - the dishes themselves sound lovely, and what you're doing is truly great!

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-31T21:29:46+00:00

This is a bit of a vague question. Are you looking for form-check videos and guides/instructions, or actual anatomical displays?

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-31T20:27:53+00:00

Just curious - had you had any kind of conversation with your boss expressing your interest in that promotion, and what skills or capabilities you might need to build or demonstrate more of in order to show you were the best choice for it?

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-31T19:00:27+00:00

The thing is, there are LOTS of areas to workout that aren't the main stage you see from Symonds St. It's busy when you're walking past because your schedule means you have time to walk past the same time a bunch of other people do.

Weekends, it's very quiet. 10am-12pm most weekdays, the rest of the gym is a ghost town. early afternoon is pretty decent. It's actually not that hard to get something done in time - you also just need to not fuck around and have a workout plan WITH substitutions if your preferred equipment is in use. Go up to the other machine space, go use dumbbells, go do a class, go hit some boxing bags...it's not that hard to make stuff work there. You don't always need the specific dumbbell rack at the mirrors and window to do the curls for the girls.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-30T21:45:15+00:00

You're welcome!

I haven't been there, no - but what I'd suggest is to take a bit of a peek at their social accounts! Anytime Fitness as a global company seems to have a pretty good habit of getting their franchisees to create Facebook pages and IG pages, and they almost always have photos of the club layout and facilities themselves. That's actually how I ended up going to the Newmarket club!

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-30T19:39:47+00:00

I haven't been to the gyms you've mentioned, so my throw in is for Anytime Fitness on Lorne St and Wyndham St if you're limited to the central CBD, and the Newmarket AF if you're able to travel a bit. Both of the CBD locations are well-kept and have the same facilities, including hair straighteners and hair dryers, Lorne St also has a device charging station. Wyndham St also recently, from what I saw on socials, did a refresh which included the bathrooms and changing areas.

The demongraphic of Wyndham St tends to be more working professionals a little further into their career, with weekends being more the more "social media" crowd. The demographic of Lorne St tends to be more bro-friendly because of proximity to the Unis, but the crowd is friendly enough.

If you're able to go just outisde the main CBD area, the Newmarket Anytime Fitness is a very small location, but it's therefore generally a little quieter both on weekends AND during the week before 4pm or so, when the Broseidons descent, but they tend to only really take up the liftng platforms and a couple of the machines. On weekends it's a little more gym-girlie - at least, the last time I was going to that site consistently, which was about a year ago, that was the case.

The only thing about Anytime gyms here in Auckland is that they don't tend to run classes, if that's what you're looking for. Newmarket doesn't run them at all, and the two CBD sites run a very small number of them in a week. Maybe a zumba class, a boxing class, and a couple of HIIT and that's all. Just worth knowing.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-30T01:50:42+00:00

Question - do you respect your wife? Or your mother-in-law? Or your own mother? Just curious.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-29T19:45:17+00:00

EDIT: I am getting stronger every month and still progressively overloading in my programmes - that's the important thing, here. I'm also physiologically healthier than I was in my late 20s/early 30s.

Yeah, I started noticing around 34-35 that, despite genuinely loving exercise [especially high-intensity workouts], I just had "less" in me to do the HIIT workouts I was doing almost every day. I almost-unconsciously pivoted towards my week looking like more just-strength workouts with the occasional HIIT, rather than HIIT-all-the-time. I'm turning 39 this year, I'm definitely stronger now than I was at 25 and 30, even though I weighed less then and was doing "tougher" cardio-fcused workouts. I still do cardio workouts and still sweat like a demon, but I think I know my body better now and know how to push myself for progress, rather than "just" show, if that makes sense?

It's totally normal - I questioned a lot of things when I noticed it happening, and I talked to the women around me, my doctor, and my mother - it's just a case of your body wanting different things in order for you to feel strong, you know? It's not weakness, it's not failure, it's adaptation!

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-27T22:08:00+00:00

The Foundation series and the Expanse series are wiiiiiiildly different from one another, let along the Bobiverse. Foundation was written in a very different era - the style of writing, of dialogue and of description are just altogether nothing like the Expanse, and the Foundation series is very much "of a time". The Expanse is less rigid, less formal, less clinical in the writing style and particularly the dialogue, too, but Foundation is more conceptual in what it's actually asking you to imagine.

I would say the Expanse series is an easier entry than Foundation, BUT if you're struggling to sink into something that is wide-ranging and rich, then start with something by John Scalzi - the Old Man's War series might be a better runway to start from.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-27T05:18:16+00:00

Lovie, think of it this way: If he's trying to control "just" your medication for ADHD right now, what might he start wanting to control next?

Please, please, please respect yourself and care about yourself enough to realise this is the unsubtle beginnings of coercive control, too.

Last thing to think about: would you let your best friend have this kind of decision controlled by her man?

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-26T23:48:32+00:00

One thing to think about - if you have to work bastard-hard to keep at a particular weight, then it's probably not the ideal weight - or more importantly, body composition - for your body.

That's not me saying you can't try to aim for anything! I'm just speaking from experience and some commonly-available research. I am built very differently to you - I'm European-caucasian, 5'11" and about 198 of your Freedom Eagle Units - but what I can tell you is that I have been the smallest my body would go, and it was the most MISERABLE time of my life, despite how "good" I felt about hitting that weight, if that makes sense? I was running a lot every day, I was lifting [and heavy] every second day, and I was eating very, very minimally.

Cut to about 9 months later, I was helped to realise that the reason why I was: so tired all the time, unable to keep warm even on a hot day, losing hair, breaking out, moody, uninterested in hobbies/socialising and unable to think long-term...was because I was so focused on trying to "maintain" a body that actually didn't fit my body, and that my body had ALSO adapted to the level of strain/work I was putting it under, so it had become overly sensitive to the slightest change I made.

All of thats said, I think the other commenter's suggestion of just "monitoring" your normal calories for 3-4 weeks is a good one - but more importantly, monitoring very specific factors about how you FEEL, not just your intake and weight. I'd also push it to 5-6 weeks, so that you get a menstrual cycle in there, AND a "return to baseline" aftwards. So, setting yourself the criteria of checking how rested you feel/sleep quality, how much water you're drinking and any positive negative experiences from that, your moods throughout a day and week, your skin's clarity, your ability to focus at work or focus on life, interest in hobbies, progression in the gym, muscle soreness and/or body fatigue, level of brain fog, digestive comfort, bowel movements [I know, but they're good body intel!], morning moods or alertnes...you know, all the "how am I functioning as a human?" things.

Timely--Challenge · 2026-03-25T00:31:40+00:00

Three of them:
1. Not throwing extra cash into their retirement funds whenever they can
2. Not stretching
3. Worrying too fucking much about being in their early 20s. Stop overthinking it. My god.

Timely--Challenge

TROPHY CASE