My objective is to get Phil licensed for amateur radio 😅.
“There's always time for a cup of tea” —Every worker ever
Daughter has been watching Lord of the Rings for the first time. I have the extended +++ version on Plex but the audio was stuttering. There aren’t really many settings to play with and I couldn’t figure it out. So we got out the bluray version my wife has. Unsurprisingly, it works perfectly…
There must be lots of used dvd/blurays out there which are good value…or even new ones…I should try picking up favourites.
Which is funny as about 10-12 years ago I went through the effort of converting all our media onto the computer to play with plex.
Oh it’s November so stores have already started their early Black Friday promotions… the U.K. forgets it’s not celebrating Thanksgiving…but I suppose everyone likes cheap TVs…
Been on two good hikes, always feels good. Out in the open and with no one but the wilds.
Hoping to get out twice next week, the weather is decent and still quite mild, hoping to go up a big mountain but we’ll see how the weather turns out plus work schedule.
New Mac mini? Every generation I’ve said I’d get the next one as my Mac, and now the latest one it’s out. I’m not sure what I’d use it for…Apple photos but I dunno.
Every day the weather is nice and I’m stuck in work makes me mad that I can’t be out on a summit doing radio. Especially when the day I can go it’s going to be cloudy and maybe wet. Monday next week looks perfect for doing a big summit, but no, I have to present to the boss on some rubbish.
It makes me realise how much of the summer time I wasted on small hills, but equally I needed to go through the journey to figure stuff out.
We also have a lot of things in November which will limit me and it’s only getting darker and colder.
The clocks going back is also annoying as it means it’s lighter in the morning but darker in the evenings. This means I have to leave early to make the most of the light. Just another barrier.
Rant over. For now.
Sometimes I think about just deleting everything, and not bothering with any notes, or photos or logs, blogs, clogs, or eggnogs. I’m looking forward to eggnogs.
Nothing to maintain, nothing to feel guilty about doing or not doing. No decisions to make. I couldn’t delete everything, but maybe there’s lots I can delete.
Spent all evening last night looking at radio handhelds for sale. The usual, I don’t need it but I want it. In fact I want to collect them. Why? Who knows…bored probably. It seems all the good ones are long out of production and the used market is so limited.
Like the Canon f/1.4 LTM being one of the best Leica ranger finder lenses as good quality and good value - but then you look to buy one and there’s nothing but a really expensive one on eBay in the U.K. then a hundred from Japan with various excellent++++++++ rating (has some fungus).
I’d like a new battery for my old HT but nowhere in U.K. sells them. They’re only $40 in US but then $80 shipping 🙃
I bought a game a few weeks ago that was recommended by my friends, but I’ve not played it. Maybe I should just play that and stop looking for things to buy.
Family who invite themselves to stay are annoying.
I want to redo my main site but not sure what or how.
I’ve also been thinking about a new logging software that I’d like to make (but probably won’t), which is SOTA focused but also databaseless. Plain text logging. Another ham I chat to likes the idea and offered to do stuff but I suspect, like me, he has lots of good ideas but never quite does any of them! Although he makes lots of good antenna and radio things vs. me who just thinks about them.
Back to work tomorrow, I’m really not excited about that. I’m sure it’ll be fine and be niceto catch up with people but still. Feels like I’ve been off for ages.
Looks like I need to do a hard reset via the breakers…so willl have to try that when we get back and hope it fixes it. The classic turn off and on again.
One week until the new government announces the budget. Goodness knows that they’re going to come out with…but it’ll be more tax in some form or other. I just hope it’s not a main one for me.
Been planning out what summits I want to do until the end of the year. Which is all very well but the weather could be the blocker, I don’t mind cold but not rain. Will just have to see what it is.
I updated my book list on here and on my main site. I should do something with my main site, but still not sure what. Not really interested in writing much at the moment. The radio blog takes all my efforts.
The home battery has been sat at 100% since 8am and is refusing to power the house. Solar generation has been low today but maybe that’s just the weather. We’re not at home so I can’t tell. I emailed support and they said they made some adjustments and it should be fine now. It’s not.
What I’m actually worried about is that something got damaged last night as it was strong winds back home. If it’s just the battery/software being finnickerty that’s fine but I really want to see the roof to make sure it’s all okay. Having said that the voltage across the two strings looked normal, so probably just dark and miserable today. Or the inverter has failed and it can’t convert solar nor export power. But again I won’t know until we’re home.
Tomorrow there’s meant to be sun between 10-5pm, so I’m hoping for normal solar generation.
I do wish I didn’t have to work. Perhaps because my work is quite possibly pointless and not at all inspiring or motivating. Just a series of things that have to be done plus a whole dramatic performance to keep playing the game of office life. It pays well, so there’s that.
It’s also easy to just keep going. Don’t change, just go with the flow, go in everyday, do whatever, make sure you appear to be doing important things, and wait for time to pass.
I’m definitely glad I do 4 days a week, just got to work on it being 0 days a week. Although that makes things much harder. I have started wondering about 3 days a week. Maybe not immediately but I do wonder.
Went on a big hike this week. Debated about taking my radio to France but decided not to. We’re only going for a week and probably won’t have time. The hills will be there in the future.
Also thought about not taking my laptop but decided against that too. Just started playing with Observable js in Quarto, which can retrieve data from APIs and do stuff. I want to make a dashboard for our local SOTA group with data from the database. Some of the info is only available if you log in and some only available to you. You can brute force some of the data by making lots of API calls for various parts and build your own dataset. Think I’ll have to do that and store it as a csv for observable to read. That’ll have to run nightly as a script and be committed to the repo automatically. So hopefully I can work on some of that.
There’s a domain I’ve been watching that should be expiring today. I don’t really need another domain but I suspect I’ll buy it if it’s available. However, it may get snapped up and I’m not available when it’s supposed to come on the market. Maybe that’s a good thing.
I did end up being online when the domain renewal came up. I saw it be available but then when I clicked on reserve someone else had already got it. Just a domain parking company.
It was aj.is (Iceland) and interestingly they charge the same regardless of the domain. Usually two letter domains come at a premium. Thought it would be fun to have an email that was hi@aj.is. But most people wouldn’t care and I have enough email accounts as it is. I also don’t need new websites. I could’ve used it as a url shortener but also I wouldn’t even set that up.
They do still have a lot of other .is domains available. You could do stuff like surname.is/blogging and surname.is/wasting-money.
Last time I checked there were still some two letter domains available and a lot of one letter one number combos. But again, why?
I wrote in DayOne today, which is the first time in about a month. The previous time was also the first time in a month. In fact, I’ve not really written very much since last time we’re in France on holiday in the summer. I do debated whether or not writing the mundane everydays is worthwhile, but then I look back at the 2014 entries and enjoy them. Not sure I could remember more than about 3 things from 2014.
I’m probably not a very good host. I just want to sit by myself 😅
What’s been happening? Not sure really. Hoping to get out for a big hike next week as the weather is warming up a bit. Off on holiday then and debating if I should take my radio or not. There are a few summits that have never been activated, so I could be the first and get a little badge in the website. But also not sure about taking the stuff on the plane. Lots of people do it so I’m sure it’s fine.
Why am I not more organised and have the birthday presents ready for the visitors this weekend whose birthday it is next week.
I could go out at lunchtime today and get something but then I have to drive to work and I have the dentist first and there’s no where to park. Don’t even know what I’m getting. Ugh.
My mum is coming up this weekend. Today she was asking what are we going to do. This reminded me why I don’t want people visiting. It’s bad enough keeping the kids in check and planning things around them without adults needing to be planned for. The weekend is three days away, there are so many things to be done before that. It also looks like it’ll be showery and cold. Then there’s meals to organise. Can’t just have a ham roll and a banana for lunch.
I organise the entries on this site by year and month folders, it doesn’t matter for the actual website, just the raw markdown files. Turns out I’d forgotten to make one for October and the last entries were in September’s folder.
Last night my friend and I were planning our trip to the Lake District next year for our collective birthdays. It’s a packed hiking trip, which will be fine for one guy - he does lots of mountain biking and is a ham - the other guy…he’s a working from home 100% of the time software dev who plays computer games on weekends! He does some activity and is definitely not fat at all, but it might be quite a lot for him. My aim is to get 100 points on the trip, probably across about 12-15 summits over 4 days.
I’m excited for the trip but it’s ages away and I want to go out now. So I’m grumpy today, and the kids are annoying me.
I cleared out the old dokuwiki and now it’s my radio wiki. Found a paste image plugin and so now it’s easy mode. Mostly going to use it for researching things, which I could do with tiddlywiki but I want to use dokuwiki.
