Tuesday, 22nd April, 2025

My trip away with my friends is coming up this weekend. Hoping to do lots of radio summits in the English Lake District. The only issue is that it’s prone to rain, so I just hope it stays dry.

Nothing like a deadline to get me to finish various antenna and radio projects. Although most likely I’ll not use half the stuff.

A guy in New Zealand wants to try and arrange a summit to summit contact. Which would be amazing but I think it’ll mean I’ll have to be on a summit at 5:30am! Need a spreadsheet to figure out the times and make sure we actually arrive the same time and talking about the same day 😅

Feels like I’ve not really had anything to do at work for a while. But in that because I’m not reacting to something that’s happened and I get to choose my own story, but you get so used to working in a reactive way, it’s hard to change to proactive. There is plenty to do but deadlines are ages away…

Monday, 14th April, 2025

My broken monitor is a work one and I asked what they wanted me to do with it. “Bring it in and we’ll give you a new one” was the answer. So that’s nice. I was looking at a 27” 4K monitor, but a free 24” 1080p one will be just fine.

My radio blog has one post per hill but some days I do more than one. I keep thinking about changing the structure so it fits better with one post per day, regardless of number of hills, but then would I have to change the old posts to fit? All it means is that instead of writing up my trips I fiddle faddle about with a test site and make no decisions or progress. Even if I just posted the photos I took and no text that would be better than nothing. In fact, I might just do that. Plus a screenshot of my route and contacts I made.

Can always come back later and write stuff if I want. Or lunch time at work etc. it’s my website, I can do tf I want with it 😅

Last week I tried to be more proactive about taking my camera and actually taking photos. We had a trip away and I took it with me. Didn’t take that many photos, as I often didn’t take it out the house, but did take some. Myself, my wife and our friends all took photos with our iPhones (various models, mine is probably the newest with iPhone 13). I liked all the iPhone photos better. A few of mine were nice but mostly I didn’t like them. Maybe I need some new colour profiles on the camera, or I could edit them in lightroom etc. but I’ve lost interest in all that. I like taking a photo on my phone, maybe editing it and hitting auto, or quickly adjusting something (but mostly don’t need to) and it looks good. Phone to desktop isn’t the greatest, unless I get a mac though. Am I going to sell my camera and buy an iPhone 17 in September? The camera can take good photos, it’s me I know, but not sure I’m going to do anything. I never did sell the lense either. I did think about a X100VI as I often just pick the 23mm, but meh… I don’t want to be another person with an iPhone taking photos but then again, what does it matter.

Remember when I was quite into stoicism. Now I can’t even spell it. Four years ago I made a tiddlywiki with all of Marcus A. Meditations as tiddlers. Was mostly fun to process the text files, as I never read it.

I should just take film photos but film is too expensive in my opinion, however, I do like the photos so there’s that again. Other thoughts include a Ricoh GRIII for taking with me up hills to capture the scenery better than my phone but is it really better?

Blahblah blah time for bed…

The cats keep escaping at night and waking everyone up, we might need to put child locks on the kitchen door 😅

Saturday, 12th April, 2025

Coming up two weeks since I last wrote anything. Was feeling like it was a chore, so didn’t bother. Plus it’s been school holidays and we’ve been away.

Thinking of resurrecting my old blog with a new SSG system. Sometimes I want a blog that’s not radio focused and not journal-y but just a regular one for regular sort of posts. Probably I’ll never use it.

Need to rejig my radio summit write ups, one post per summit can be tiring when I do several in a day. It also doesn’t read as well as a trip report. Plus I can make use of the API to load my points and list automatically vs. me maintaining a separate list. Although this does have its advantages.

So much admin to do…and for what? Tidying pixels online…

Then there’s the SINGLE BLOG to rule them all. 💍 where I have everything all together. Also not going to happen.

My iPhone 13 (I think) keeps going flat during the day. It never used to. Can’t believe the battery degraded that much. Looking at the app info on the battery settings page, I think WhatsApp is to blame.

Tuesday, 1st April, 2025

Oh it’s April. Have to make a new folder for this post.

The shelf on the wall that has the camera plus other stuff started to lean and looked like it was going to fall off. I fixed it but it meant I took everything off. Made me debate about selling all the Fuji gear and getting a fixed lens camera. Like a X100XYZ. I should at least sell some lenses I never use. I just don’t have any interest in taking a camera and taking photos. I’ll bring my phone and snap one or two but that’s it.

I do feel bad about it. My wife has started in the next photo album, of last year, and there’s enough but it’s getting less and less each year. I’m a bit obsessed with radio at the moment but it’s not like I take that everywhere so it’s not really displacing a camera. I still bring it out for birthdays and Christmas etc. better make sure it’s charged for this week’s birthday.

The photos never look that great either. The colour settings on the camera aren’t great - some profile I set ages ago but no longer like, and I really don’t want to edit them afterwards.

Grumble grumble grumble.

Wednesday, 26th March, 2025

Falling behind on my summit write ups. Makes me think should I not bother…but I do like it, so I should, but I just get distracted. I also think I have to do them all at once and actually I could do one a day and achieve something.

Monday, 24th March, 2025

Parents were staying this weekend. Always feels like hard work 😓. Got a lot of computer time to catch up on!

Got a lot of computer time to catch up on!

Sunday, 23rd March, 2025

Bought a new radio…well used one, the one I wanted from before. Found a good deal - and assuming it’s real! - it should show up this week. Need a make a new yagi and antenna for it but then good to go! That seemed to open the flood gates and I bought a bunch of other things. Things I’ve thought about getting but now finally have. Maybe that’ll stop me spending so long debating them.

Thursday, 20th March, 2025

Woke up tired this morning. Makes everyone especially annoying.

I keep seeing stuff about the radio I sold and thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have sold it. Even though I never used it. Although I think the older, high power version is more what I want. There is an older lower power version that does everything mine did, just without the nice waterfall and touchscreen. It is about 1/3 of the price. Although would I rather have the fancy one…probably…

I should do something constructive rather than looking at radios online again.

Wednesday, 19th March, 2025

I missed out on a prime skiving opportunity yesterday…everyone at work was busy out the office all day at various things. Anyway, probably not best practice to be thinking about these things 😅

Had a cold/cough for ages now. It’s not terribly bad just a constant niggle.

Still not finished soldering this TNC kit, I moved it into the office to do in the evenings, as it’s cold in the garage still, but all that’s happened is it has made a big mess on the desk. It risks losing parts as the kids mess about with it too. I should just get on with it. Usually fall into the habit of “I’m too tired to do it, I’ll just look at rubbish online”.

I’ve fallen into “do absolutely nothing online in the evening until 10pm, then suddenly start writing blog posts”. Except I did the 6:30 swimming drop off and I’m tired.

I liked this from Jack’s blog:

It is difficult for amateur photographers to accept that, on any given trip, they will not likely take unique photos of staggering social significance or prize-winning landscapitude. The reality is that the photos most likely to survive generationally will be the ones with family members in them. The rest stand a good chance of being binned. – Dante Stella, Mutiny! Travels with a camera | The Machine Planet

It’s why I only take pictures of family.

Sunday, 16th March, 2025

Just when I think I’m getting ahead of my todo list I remember more stuff. I could write it down but then I fear I’ll get sucked into “where to write it” or “let’s create the perfect todo system” and really just add more todos but not do any of them.

So I just keep remembering and if I have time when I remember it, I’ll do it. Not really the greatest but it’s only my hobby stuff so doesn’t really matter. I should decide what I’m going to do today, as I’ll have about 2 hours to myself when everyone has gone out.

Thursday, 13th March, 2025

We finally went in our big outing today. 15 miles, bike and hike to two summits. Feeling tired now. Bike skidded on some rocks on the way down and I took a fall. Remarkably fine, but if a scratch on my hand and knee but the clothing was worse off. My nice hiking trousers! Although I think the company repairs stuff, so I’ll contact them to see.

Going out again tomorrow, but will just do some smaller walks to tick off some summits I’ve not done.

Think I’m going to make my SOTA tools app in streamlit and then eventually self-host it. Not sure when I’m starting that.

Monday, 10th March, 2025

A ham friend wrote a nice blog post which got to the second page of hacker news. Said he ended up with about 7k visitors over 24 hours. Not much in the grand scheme of the internet but compared to the average of 100 a week, it’s quite the jump. It is a very interesting blog post though.

After lovely weather this weekend, today was terrible. Annoying as I wanted to go out with a friend on a hill walk and radio activation. We’ll probably go Thursday now but I’m more time constrained then.

Not listed that 27mm lens yet. Although I was thinking maybe I need a whole system refresh to trigger my interest in photography .. or to kick start it back up again. Just don’t have an interest now. Like the DayOne journal…that died a while back…

Oh I remembered this morning that I should check in on those friends who were thinking of Apple Mac minis….

Saturday, 8th March, 2025

I want to find a book or online resource that explains microwave rf design stuff to me. So many times I look at articles or blog posts where hams have made various microwave things and I have no idea why they’re doing something. Horns, pot caps, sun noise, wtf are they talking about.

Admittedly, I don’t have deep knowledge of regular radio and it’s more just use stuff and make contacts. I do make antenna but that’s mostly following instructions online but I do have an idea of why.

I could just buy various microwave things and join them together and try and make contacts but everything is expensive so I’m hesitant.

But I also don’t have time for that. Just like going up hills. Another thing with microwave is you often need a radio to drive the start of it. The radio I just sold, the IC-705, is pretty much the favourite everyone uses. So that’s slightly annoying. However, when I bought the 705 I told myself it would be useful for microwave stuff but I’ve not done any and I think it’ll be years before I do. By which time something new will be out anyway. Or, what usually happens, is everyone still says the 705 is the best and newer models aren’t as good and so used prices stay sky high. There is a new yaesu coming out that’s similar to the 705, and I do wonder if people will sell their 705 for it…but this depends on if the new yaesu is actually any good.

I don’t need more radios. I need to finish the projects I have and make some more antenna and the packet radio thing.

Friday, 7th March, 2025

Managed to get 1Writer and Working Copy working on my phone again. I turned it off and on again…but it is telling that I often write on here via my phone.