I’m debating if I should combine this site with my main one, or merge them together somehow. I start thinking it’s a good idea but then get into details of how it would look or work and I start to doubt that idea.
I like this site, I like editing it with 1Writer on my phone. But perhaps I shouldn’t spoil it by making it something else. I should just stick to my original plan of redoing my main site. Although I’m tempted to copy the design from here.
Or I make the main site just a landing page. Also Tiddlywiki. 👀
2024 is nearly done. I’m sure I wrote something about what I should do. Or made a list or the usual. I found a list in Dynalist:
* Write a plan of how to achieve, measure and hold myself accountable.
* Sleep regularly
* Exercise - what and when?
* Writing
* Projects
* Some level of finance tracking and written plan with goals to achieve FI by 50
* Radio things
I’ve cut the subbullets out but those are the top topics I had. Tbh it’ll be the same next year.
However one thing I’d like to do, that Jack suggested, was to make a list of things I won’t do or things I’ll stop. That should help achieve the things I do want to do or at least make me feel better. Feel like I’ll have to be brutal with them though.
Since my iPad has basically been turned into my daughter’s, I’ve lost my “away from the computer, dedicated typing/thinking” computer.
I could buy another iPad but that’s not as fun as building that micro journal thing. Plus it’ll run Linux and basically do anything. Although it won’t do DayOne…well not without some song and dance. Of course I could just type on it and then use my phone to copy what I type later. As DayOne journaling has dramatically failed in recent months.
Well I’ll occupy myself this evening making a parts list and adding up how much it would be.
After spending ages looking at that micro journal thing…I don’t want it. I don’t like ortholinear keyboards and it ends up being quite expensive for a weird device.
I looked at the rpi 500 and pi monitor but as soon as I read reviews I was annoyed. Mostly how they didn’t add pci-e yet had space and tracks for it. (Someone modded it already but the mod is hard). So seems dumb.
What I really want is my iPad and the Smart Keyboard. I really liked that keyboard. Maybe I should get an iPad…not sure they make that keyboard anymore or which iPad uses it. Anyway bedtime now.
I really want to build one of these. It reminds me of something else that I’ve recently said I wanted to build, but I can’t remember what that other thing was. Perhaps I made a note of it on the wiki or somewhere…but probably I wouldn’t make it anyway so there’s that. The micro journal looks fun, I bet I could set it up for either journaling, writing on here, or other writing and have it commit to git repos etc.
I also want one of the new rpi 500 and matching monitors. “For the kids” but also for me. I’d have to get them java minecraft as they’re playing it a lot, but would also like them to explore and experiment with linux….vs. watching shit on youtube.
It’s amazing what you can get at home when someone else is entertaining the kids! Even started the 10 summits write up on my radio blog. Mostly just scaffolding of folders, files, metadata etc. the advantage of writing them up on the forums first is I can pretty much just copy the text. The only thing is sorting out the photos. I like to compress them first and then add to the folder. My routine is fine, perhaps not most optimal but it works.
As I take all the photos on my phone, I edit them on my phone - mostly just press auto - then upload them to Dropbox into a folder structure. I can use Dropbox to rename them all upon upload, and it also converts them to jpgs. On the computer I use compressor.io to optimise the images. Probably I could use some program but this is easy, just drag and drop. I then put the images into the folder that has the post. Probably Quarto has some sort of image optimisation add on or functionality but haven’t looked into it, plus this saves space on the git repo.
I have been wondering how I could incorporate the log file into posts. Ideally it would read the file and add details and maybe a map etc. I could also integrate the SOTA API, retrieving data from it to show. Haven’t really looked into that yet. I also like keeping a separate copy of all my info and not relying on their database.
My sister is here which means she entertains the kids and I can do some things around the house. Like tidy the office, put away random stuff and dismantle the telescopic pole that broke a couple of weeks back. Ordered replacement sections for it and dried off the others. I do need to clean down my bike as it’s quite muddy. It was bad after the trip on the 4th and then when I used it on Thursday, the gears were crunchy. Using it cleared it up but should clean it down and use some of the chain lube I have before it sits in the garage for a month or more.
After everyone in the family being ill in some form or another since about mid-November, it seems it’s my turn now. Have a general tiredness, feeling cold and achy. Was okay this morning but now I need a lemsip and hopefully that’ll perk me up. Or maybe I’ll lie down.
The lemsip and lie down did help, although the fatigue came back this evening. Hoping it passes as I want to go out mid week with a local hill climber, plus also it’s about to be the holidays.
Had a meeting that went poorly yesterday. Probably could’ve been avoided but easy to look back in hindsight. It’s just annoying. I’m mostly annoyed because I think it makes me look like an idiot. This is the one of the few times I interact with these people and this is what they see! I suspect I’m exaggerating the situation and as soon as the meeting ended they forgot about it and didn’t think a second longer on it.
Have swapped my day off so going out hill walking today. Hopefully that’ll distract me and then I’ll get over it.
Next week is last week of work and school before the holidays! It’s crept up quickly. 🎅🏻
Had a glorious day out today. Was cold, circa freezing, but still and bright sunshine. Was a reasonable amount of snow on top of the hill. I took a shortcut/tried to join the river too soon and ended up trying to get down an almost vertical face. Holding onto grass a whilst edging along the face of the hill/cliff. I did stop and think of my wife saying “don’t do anything stupid”. There was only one bit were if I fell it would be a 5m drop and I might break something, but I got down okay 😅
Met another cyclist on the way back and had a nice chat with him about the hills and routes.
Had a long conversation with a German friend I’ve made via ham radio, do we speak over radio but predominantly via Signal, about what we’d do with our lives if we didn’t have to work to live. Like running a table top games store, or learning to be a mechanic for a NGO, or (and this was his suggestion) Or I give sex workers a ride to their work and help them storing their money at a safe place. It was quite a detailed conversation. But for now it’s stupid meetings, PowerPoint slides and spreadsheets.
I need to tidy the office. It’s a mess and making me feel flustered. Still want to purge stuff. Not sure what though. Need more books and pens and writing pads and not computers. <10seconds later> maybe I need to buy another used T490 as the T460 is getting a bit tired. Also there are two computers in the garage literally doing nothing.
It’s like my home radio setup. I go between wanting a tower and all the things to, have nothing, because I’d rather go out and use the radio in nature.
I’m building up to changing my main blog. Maybe tonight I’ll do something. But I have a big backlog of radio summit activations to write up too. And pointless YouTube videos to watch.
I do make work for myself. On my radio blog I wanted to write up every summit I visit, but boy that’s work. Especially as now I’m 10 behind. I have written up reports on the SOTA forums, so I guess I can just copy that but it still takes time with all the pictures.
It would be amazing to do this. Although the amount of tools, space and knowledge you need is overwhelming.
I’ve not written on here in a while…he says again… Felt like I had so many things to write down but now it’s 10:30pm and I’ve written nothing and feeling tired and know I should go to bed.
I want to redo my main site but still don’t know what.
I want to make one of these for the kids. We bought a yoto player for the little one and everyone loves it, but I don’t want to pay for more of them (although would be a good solution) and so I’ll build one. Except the reality is, I’ll never get round to it, and probably it’ll end up being more expensive. I actually don’t want to make it exactly like these ones as I’d rather just have a small screen they can pick things from to listen to. Really all I need is a rpi, some speakers and a small touch screen. I have most of those lying around, just not the screen.
Another morse key arrived in the post - a cheap, tiny one from the US. It shamed me into how I’ve already stopped learning.
I’ve got a backlog of SOTA summits to write up - maybe 7 or 8 over the past week. It’s quite a slog to get through them but really I should do one a night and I’ll chip away at them. It’s only as I was off most of last week that I did quite a few. I maintain all these sites but then they just become chores to do. If I had nothing then life would be simplier? Recently I’ve bought various radio things off eBay, and then they arrive and I realise I didn’t really want them, I just liked the idea of them. So now they clutter the garage for projects that I’ll never get to. I should fix them up and sell them on, except I have to fix them up first. It’s just a chore that I don’t want to spend time on. There are so many things about that are like that - things I’ve bought with some idea in mind but then I never do it. The office is also a tip and really needs sorting out. So many chores.
I used to do a lot of computer admin at work but since going to 4 days a week, I don’t really have much downtime to do my own thing. Probably good but now I spend it going out if I can and then it’s just the evenings. I don’t know what I’m complaining about and it’s more just an observation.
I’ve been looking at Land Rover Defenders…the older style and the short wheelbase 90.
Would be so fun as an adventure car for the hills. I also like how it has two bench seats in the back and so the kids could actually come with me, and it would be a fun trip. I’m hesistant to do anything about this whim, and perhaps it’s just that and it’s more expensive than some random radio part or a new camera etc. It’s a car which drains money. Plus they’re not cheap, even the old ones, but I guess they’re in high demand and perhaps if nothing else it would retain its value. We don’t have much space on the drive and I can see my wife getting annoyed with it. We really don’t need it…I’m not going offroad, most places might be some end of path track that in the winter could be snowy or icy but probably much of the year it’ll be fine. Now it would be useful for going on longer trips where the electric car just doesn’t have the range, and where I might want to sleep overnight in it. Although everyone says it’s a terrible choice for overnighting. It would be a bottomless money pit…but no-one ever buys a car for good financial reasons.
A friend asked me who I use for domains. Then where I host my sites and then what VPS provider I use. Perhaps I should said “what do you want to do?” first.
I’ve done seven hills this week! Including waiting for the snow gates to be opened and following the gritter/plough over the mountain pass, mountain biking across ice, climbing four hills in one day, breaking a mast, forgetting guy ropes, and using my friend as a guy - he’s a good guy 😅
I’ve been writing them up on my radio blog but now I have seven in the backlog and not sure I can face it. I suppose one bite at a time. Probably not going out for a week or maybe longer now, so no rush. And I need to wrap my family presents to then post them off…hmm maybe later.
Work Christmas lunch tomorrow. It’ll be nice but I always want to bail out and skip it beforehand. It’ll be nice as just the team, the big event with everyone is afterwards and that I’ll definitely skip.
I was doing well with Christmas shopping but now I’ve ground to a halt, and I can’t be bothered. I only need a few people plus some more things for my wife’s birthday just after Christmas. I need to post things off too (and wrap them) but it’ll be December soon and time is slipping away. Maybe one evening I’ll kick into life.
I got a different boss back in October and that seemed to end my weekly summary emails I’d write. This also meant I stopped making the weekly summary notes for myself. Now I don’t know what I did.
Feel like I have a lot of things to do but no time and then when I have time I can’t be bothered doing anything.
I want to buy so many things but really, none are necessary. They vary from Harry Potter Hogwart’s Express lego train to Apple Watch Ultra 2, to a really fancy morse code keyer, oh and also bone headphone things for cycling - which is probably the most useful given I do that pretty much everyday to work.
Speaking of which, I’m all setup now to learn…just need to start…
Actually I did a little, and it’s nice using the Morserino away from the computer - it’s nice being away from the computer in general. My worry is that I’m learning it the “wrong” way. I know the key thing is keep the speed up so you’re recognising noises not counting .s and -s, which I’m doing. What I should do is get a pad of paper, and let the thing beep away and I try and copy it all. People also say to keep a log of what, when and how you did. Ideally to see progress but maybe to also see issues.
Well I’m organising my SOTA summits spreadsheet so I have an itinerary of every local summit from leaving the house to back home again. So I can type in my start time and know when I’ll be home. Once that’s done for all the summits (there are 87 in my region but more that are local), I can bucket them into categories like “can do on school day and be back for pick up” or needs “5am start and 12 hours of sun” (!), etc. I’ve also paired them with ones you’d typically do together, but also calculated the time if I were just to do one. There’s one big route I still have to do, and likely it won’t be until the spring at the earliest, and then I’ll have done all the big ones and have confidence in all the summits locally. Be nice to have a big reference, and then I think once I’ve done them all, I’ll publish a big list, e.g. the guide to GM/ES.
All but one have gone to the cinema to see Wicked. The one will be mad when she finds out but she did just go to a birthday party.
Was working at home today as one of the boys was unwell. Probably have to be home tomorrow too. Not to sound uncaring but I was really hoping I could go out hill climbing tomorrow. We’ve had a dump of snow, but tomorrow is meant to be sunny and still, which would be ideal. It’s also frustrating as last Friday the kids were off school as it was closed for teacher training and so I couldn’t go out then either…and the kids weren’t great so we couldn’t all go out together.
I’ve not got my Morserino, and had a little play with it. It’s a very clever and neat device. I guess I should be learning morse now…but instead I sit here and do nothing on the computer. Literally going “I don’t know what to do, there’s nothing in my youtube feed that I care about, and I have no interest in any websites.” Really I should move away from the computer and do something else. Maybe even just go to bed and read now.
Or I should read the Morserino manual so I can, presumably, sit elsewhere (without a computer) and learn it. Ideally with some headphones perhaps.
Maybe I should use tomorrow to setup my home station again. I was going to do something new but perhaps I just put back up what there was.
There’s a store that sells quite quirky home gifts - ideal for parents. However, after a few years of buying things there, there isn’t really anything new and I don’t like the things I’ve not bought, unsurprisingly. Perhaps that’s also what I should do tomorrow, go and do christmas shopping. This then puts me in a misery where I start thinking “why don’t I agree with my family not to buy any gifts for each other”. Then everyone will be happy. Except I know they won’t like that.
I reckon in about 3 months this site will have 1/4 million words written in it. This is assuming I get back int othe habit of writing most days, and since October I’ve been more erratic. But the good thing is this site is always here for me. It’s also pretty simply built. I have a folder per year, a folder per month and one page per day called the date. Everything else is automatically done for me by Github and Jekyll. The templates are also simple. It does use an add-on to make the archives but if that fails, it’s not the end of the world. Probably you can recreate that with pure jekyll, and perhaps a little bit of manual stuff. Anyway, it hasn’t broken - probably because most of the jekyll stuff is dead and never gets upgraded. So there aren’t new features to break old things (cough cough Hugo cough).
Snowing today. First time here this winter. Weather is okay this week except for strong winds, so not sure if I’ll go out. I don’t mind cold but wind is just a pain. I’ll see how the forecast changes.
I should make use of the bad weather and go do my Christmas shopping. I’ll be annoyed with myself if there are lovely sunny, still days in December and I have to go shopping. But equally this could be the nicest weather and it just gets worse!
Started the shopping online. Hopefully I can finish soon enough. Although it’s the wife’s birthday in early Jan so have to make sure I have enough for that as well.
Started looking at morse courses online. There’s the CWops academy which do a two month course with meetings twice a week. Only problem with that is the times in the evening aren’t great for me. I want it to be 8-9 or 9-10 but they only do 7-8 or 10-11. Not sure why but perhaps depends on the advisors and what they want to do. Their course is Jan-Feb.
There’s another one run by the Long Island CW club, it’s more informal and you drop into sessions as a when, but they have lots of them. That is more convenient but I suspect less likely to get results than the intensive two month course.
Had to cancel my dad visiting today as most of the kids are ill. In some ways I’m relieved as it’s always hard work.
Picked up a second hand Morserino now. Let’s see if I actually do anything with it or it just sits on the shelf like the other SBC based projects… 😅
Had to calibrate my radio yesterday as people reported I was off frequency. You can use a signal generator (don’t have one) or tune into some standard frequency broadcasts. There’s a time broadcast from the USA which is called WWV. They broadcast on 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 MHz and announce the time. I couldn’t hear any of them when I tried. I think later at night makes it possible to hear it on 5 or 10 MHz. I thought I could hear a carrier signal on 10 and so tried to use that to calibrate the radio - but this just ended up with me being wildly out of calibration!
A friend said as I have two radios I can just transmit into a dummy load and the radio next to it would still receive it. So now I could test easily myself and just adjusted the settings until I was close enough. Seems to work now.
Told another ham friend about it and he had the same issue with his.
