Friday, 5th June, 2026

The domain is only $10 a year so why not keep it? Because I want to have less things…I’m spending way too much thought on this decision.

Had a trip out this week which was good but also off today. I thought it was going to be raining but it’s not now. Maybe I should go out again or maybe I should do some jobs and have time at home. Both are quite appealing.

I’ve noticed the hedge has grown about 5 m through the tree and popped out the top. Probably taken it 3 years to do it but I’ve not noticed. I should sort that out, and I’m sure it’ll take a while.

I like having a day at home - just best to not sit down on the computer until later in the day…

Did do some jobs outside which was good. Took some of the old kids toys to the tip and cut down the huge branches on the hedge that had grown above the tree. Should’ve packed them into the car to take to the tip too. Oh well, I’ll spend this evening cutting them into tiny pieces to put in the garden waste bin. Did manage to enjoy some of the sunshine and lie on the sofa outside and read a little of Discworld on my X4. Until I noticed the weather app on my phone saying it was going to rain in an hour. It did but I’d cut the lawn by then.

So I sat on the computer until school pick up time and looked at writing decks and e-ink tablets. Instead of doing that I thought I’d get on my “writers deck”, aka the apple keyboard and phone, and 1Writer.

In a roundabout way, I ended up looking at iMacs. I always forget how nice they are, and they have a nice screen too. One Day I’ll get on and replace all the PC clutter with just that. Or go full Linux or do nothing.

Saw a tent in Aldi today that I thought about getting. It was a “4 person” Teepee style tent. I think it’s really a kids toy only suitable for gardens or maybe a sheltered, dry night somewhere. Was only £40 and could’ve been a fun play thing. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow with one of the kids and get it and we’ll play in that. But I also thought it was just more junk. So we’ll see.

I really enjoyed the TV series Banjo and Ro doing up a hotel on Ulva (that’s not the title but I forget it). It’s a BBC series, where these Aussie’s have taken on the rent of an old Manor House on the tiny island of Ulva, off the coast of a bigger island, Mull, on the west coast of Scotland. It’s completely run down and they do a room each episode in the hope of making it into a boutique hotel (eventually). It’s not open yet but I’m sure it’ll be very popular when it is, given the TV show. Living on an island, even a bigger one like Mull or Arran seems like hard work.

Tuesday, 2nd June, 2026

Hi June.

This domain expires in August. Thinking of not renewing. (Probably say that each year).

Saturday, 30th May, 2026

Spent ages washing the car…the car that will be returned this week. Was quite satisfying and made me think I should do it often and then it wouldn’t take so long. I didn’t use the snow foam as didn’t get out the pressure washer. When washing the car I wasn’t sure if I should wash the whole car then rinse it off, or rinse off a panel at a time. Felt like it would leave streaks if I left it. But maybe I didn’t have enough shampoo in the water. Will be a good rabbit hole to go down and see what the obsessives on the internet say. The spray on wax stuff was pretty good, and I used some scratch repair cream to try and hide/improve the scratches. I was impressed by it. Certainly made a good improvement.

Then it poured with rain. Which is good as there’s so much pollen in the air. I don’t suffer from hay fever but those that do aren’t enjoying it.

Thursday, 28th May, 2026

It’s been a very busy week at work. Everything landed in the same week, so no SOTA outings. Which is a shame, as the weather has been very nice.

All my car cleaning stuff arrived. Suppose I have to actually clean the car now 🧼. Watching videos and making lists about it, made it seem fun.

Got home assistant setup and running again. Controls the battery and stats about the solar and whatever. It is so powerful and I just barely scratch the surface with it.

A MacBook 12” I wa watching (but forgot about) sold for £52 yesterday. That is cheap. I don’t really need it though and I recently cleared out all the laptops and mini pcs and whatever else I could find as it’s just clutter.

I bought a radio a while back that I plan(ned?) on installing in the new car. Be a fun project but I suspect I’d use it….twice a year…. maybe more but pretty infrequently. Even if I did a long drive once a week, I bet I’d rarely use it. I don’t really want to chat on it whilst driving, it’s mostly to reply to those calling CQ from activation sites to give them a contact. And round here, that’s not very often.

I still might install it, although Fraser already bets I’ll sell it and not install it. He’s probably right. It falls into the same dream of a Land Rover defender all kitted out.

Another ham friend, who recently retired - although from one office job to about 10 volunteering or other jobs - said he has a Land Rover but it’s just an expense as he doesn’t have time, or wants to spend time himself, fixing it up and doing things. He wouldn’t recommend…even though he’s on his second. I think that’s the point - it’s an activity in itself rather than a mode of transport.

My wife said I need to find another hobby when I retire as she doesn’t want to come climbing hills with me. She likes walking but not up. Even if she did get into hill walking, no-one wants to be standing at the top of a hill for 30 minutes (or more) whilst I shout a series of random letters and numbers into a radio in exchange for another set of random letters and numbers. This will be for when she’s at work and I’m not - mostly as she loves her job and mine is fine but no longer than necessary. I did start wondering what might be those other hobbies. There’s film photography, which combines well with outdoors, Land Rover maintenance…possibly although I don’t know anything about it, and likely we’d need to be living somewhere that I can keep it and it doesn’t get in the way and annoy everyone! Setting up more radio stuff at home, but that also needs space not to annoy everyone at home! Potentially car cleaning, should that take off. Model trains has been kicking around in my mind for a while…also needs space not to be in the way and annoy everyone… seems to be a theme here! Visiting Scottish Islands would be nice to do. I’d, of course, want to do some hills but I’m sure we can work out a balance.

What else? Minimising time on the computer currently seems sensible as it can get to me. I have plenty of books to read, and music to enjoy. Could always start that rock tumbling I thought of a year ago. There’s probably not going to be a shortage of things I try out, just are they all solo activities?

The busy work also involved important (as far as importance goes in a work context) stuff that had to be done/needs to be finished and has all be squashed into a short time frame. Inevitably, typos and mistakes have accumulated and I was worried it would all come crashing down. Remarkably, it didn’t but I feel like I lucked my way through it at times. A few people - long term friends of 30+ years - have commented that I often seem quite lucky. I do tend to agree with them. It’s a funny characteristic, heavily used in computer games and RPGs, and not a real thing (? Right ? I’d say? Maybe?). Or is it some subconscious action? Weirdly I have guessed lottery style games correctly a few times - now probably that’s my bias in only remembering the times I got it right vs. the times I got it wrong. But this week I feel lucky in some of the answers I gave - which turned out to be correct but we’d not done the work - and how, what I’d describe, as a bit of a shambles all fell into the right place at the end.

I have made mistakes that weren’t too far from “that’s the opposite of what I told you” but they worked out okay in the end. Maybe everyone is accepting and the general strive to to the right thing eventually forces everything in the right direction, even if you step out of line for a bit.

Jack’s blog reminds me that I want a Nikon F100. His blog reminds me I want lots of things. Probably should stop looking at it…but don’t tell him that.

We still have some ancient - 8? years old - kindle tablets, the 7” ones. When I bought them, they were refurbs for $20 or something crazy from Amazon. The kids still use them a little although they’re pretty slow, and struggle to download software. Not sure if the OS is too old or the SD card is dead or what but it’s painful. Streaming on them works just fine once you’re in the app. For long car journeys or flights, it means everyone has a screen to be entertained. However, they do seem like they’re getting just that little bit worst - downloading Netflix items for offline use seems to be slower and slower and harder and harder now. At some stage it’ll stop functioning. I don’t want to but I feel obliged to get some new devices so that everyone still has something. It conflicts with my desire not to have so many devices in the house, but the issue is then just one person goes without and that’s not really fair. Probably I should buy an iPad, often the base models are pretty cheap (well for iPads) and then everything will work nicely. I used to buy my wife a new one and then the old one would go down the pecking order. I suppose that’s an option, but hers is fine. I thought about getting one but then I don’t want to kids messing it up and I don’t need one.

So probably I’ll just wait for it to die and then immediately buy something.

Wednesday, 27th May, 2026

Yesterday the little one’s first tooth fell out. This morning she comes through at 5:30 am and says, in a tiny voice, “the tooth fairy didn’t come”.

Ah ffffffff. 🧚

Monday, 25th May, 2026

I finally finished a blog post about my past 4-6 weeks worth of SOTA activations. TBH it felt like a chore to do it, and I only half heartedly did it. A bunch of photos and a few sentences. The photos are the best part anyway, so probably could’ve just dumped them in and left it at that. I wrote up the interesting ones of the sota forums already and just linked to them. Writing a blog post for your own site shouldn’t feel like a chore.

This whole thing of it should be on my server/terms/site is all well and good but strictly speaking, it never really is - unless I’m hosting from home. I do have the raw data. I don’t know what my point is, other than I’m not sure I can be bothered with a blog. I have several other drafts of posts I think I should write (do I want to write them?) but again, feels like a big todo list to finish them off. Maybe other people also feel the same way. They want to write things but the effort to do it is great, and so they don’t bother. I like my other blog but this one is still easy to just write in. Probably as I don’t care what it looks like or how it’s written, so just rattle off stuff. Also no pictures. Even though pika makes pictures easy, there are still steps to get them off my phone, into pika, sort out the order, write captions, etc. Way easier than a SSG but still stuff to do. The SOTA forums isn’t much better, least pika lets me upload a lot of photos at once. However, I know the SOTA forums has a captive audience and usually the hills I write up are somewhat novel or different in some way. Do wonder if I should just not bother with a blog, and write up my interesting hills on the forums. For me, I did think about using DayOne to write them up…or just dump in the photos with the where and when. I have a Garmin connect account where it tracks my activity, and when I do a hike I add 3-5 photos to it. That’s probably my favourite record of things I’ve done - has the route, map, distance, time, (and therefore difficulty) and then a few key photos. There are things to download your Connect data but I wonder if I can use that to save the interesting things. Although why? I had a nice time and that’s that.

Went down a bit of a rabbit hole with car cleaning, and ended up buying a whole bunch of cleaning products - buckets, mitts, clothes, foam, shampoo, wheel degreaser…perhaps I went overboard. Anyway, would like the ability to wash the cars properly. After watching a couple of videos, I realise I do it all wrong. Also the pressure washer foaming looked fun! Be nice to keep the new car in nice condition vs. the mess the other one is in. I wondered about getting rubber mats for it too. Especially come winter with muddy boots, wet school shoes and all sorts. Seems a shame to get rid of the soft carpets and the nice summer weather is fooling me into thinking I’ll keep them nice.

There’s also something satisfying about completing a physical task that has a clear result at the end. I make a little fun of our neighbours for constantly cleaning their cars - maybe 2-3 times a week. Probably they’re the smart ones as it’s just 15-20 minutes each time and their cars look nice.

I’ve wondered about not keeping a blog but doing videos instead. I don’t like the sound of my voice but maybe it’s easier…no it’s not…or maybe more interesting? Perhaps, but I’d mostly be doing it for myself as no-one will watch it. Also feel like I’m just copying Fraser.

It pains me to say this, but I don’t think everything needs to be documented to be remembered. Enjoying the time is what it’s about.

I could write about it here but this site is more of me complaining about things to myself. Also how would I find it? We’re doing business planning stuff at work and I have to sign off on numbers. I can’t tell the wood from the trees when I look at the numbers, I need a chart, and I look at a chart that I can find where the numbers started and they look fine. However, the numbers have gone through various spreadsheets and so I just have to assume what comes out the other end is right.

In my head, that’s like me writing up what happened on a hike on here but then it gets buried in nothingness.

I said this at the start, but the pictures are the most interesting part. They also jog my memory of what happened. Perhaps just the blog of the pictures is good enough. Route, pictures, maybe a map of contacts if I can be bothered or it was interesting, and not just the usual UK/EU. That’s what my reports on the reflector tend towards - just photos. I write some words but I find less is more and people can’t be bothered to read about all the minutiae of the outing. Some people do write up their reports going into every stone and bite of sandwich. I think some people read them as they like the details - there are several older guys who did SOTA 10+ years ago but are perhaps not fit enough to be able to do it now, and the details are reminders to them of their hill walking days. A stark reminder to us all. Whereas I just scroll to the bottom, look at a few photos and then heart the post.

This week isn’t working out well for an outing. Too many work things spread across every day, makes it hard to take a day off. Probably today would’ve been the best day but I wasn’t sure if I could really take it off. Perhaps Wednesday is now possible but not ideal… Could roll over my day into next week but then it just makes next week harder. As I’m not chasing 1,000 points anymore, I’m not that interested in rushing up a 4-pointer nearby in a morning then going to work in the afternoon. Also stuck in this obsession with doing the CNP summits. So I’ll drive 4 hours to walk for 3. Maybe that’s not too bad actually, especially as I can do it in the EV now and pay about £3 for the trip. I always think it’s a drag to drive there but I’m usually excited to go out, so the journey there passes quickly, and then on the way back I phone my mum/dad and speak to them so that passes the time. There are just a few hills which will take a lot of time and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to do it. I could do one at a time but they all involve cycling….seems a lot, but if it’s the only way then so be it.

Sunday, 24th May, 2026

The V850 situation reminds me of ham radios. Manufacturers make a great product that does what you want. Then it gets discontinued and people realise there isn’t really anything that compares, and so - in the case of ham radio - used prices skyrocket and people are trying to get these used products. This fine for a while but eventually they start to get really old and you wonder why you’re paying more for this 20 year old radio than a brand new one. Oh yes, that’s because the feature set is worst now than it was before. I don’t think V850 prices are going to go up, but they’re certainly not going to go down.

I think they still make the V600, which is probably perfectly usable for me, of course I keep thinking the V850 would be better. I did find a site selling a new

The funny thing is that two days ago I hadn’t thought about the scanner for years. It’s been a trip down memory lane, when I was doing scanning before, and looking at the limited selection back then. But now I want to get one and it’ll arrive and immediately go onto a shelf or the attic. Probably a macro lens option is best but that whole route is a faff. I can 3D print stuff now, so maybe that would help somehow. Really I should find my dark bag, get a 120 insert for the dark tank, buy some film and use it!

“This too shall pass.”