“Tea teaches letting go. Infuse your life with positivity as leaves release theirs into hot water” —ChatGPT
I installed ikiwiki. Was a bit of a pain at times but then I was all just permissions.
There’s a lot of parts to it, to figure out. I’m between:
With something else being dokuwiki…? Maybe.
Spoke to my friend on the phone this evening for…nearly 2 hours. Not sure the last time I spoke on the phone for so long!
I thought about plotting distance vs time for our journey home. Lots of horizontals as we wait around.
Not sure the book I’m reading converter properly from epub to kindle. It’s mostly fine but then there are paragraphs that start in the middle and clearly something has happened in the story but there are no words. Guess I should stop reading it.
The last day of the holiday approaches and what were all those things I said I’d do when I got home?
Then it was something about a blog…
Should keep me going.
At the beginning of the holiday I thought about making (copying) a Fuji preset. There are a few nice summer ones which work great with lots of light. It’s now almost the end of the holiday and I’ve still not done it 😅 of course I can still make one and apply it to photos (although one at a time 😴🥱.
My daughter knows the passcodes to the iPads, so when she wants more screen time in her phone, she logs into the iPads to approve it…so I’ve learnt to give her 15 minutes more when the request comes through because you can’t ask more than once or change the amount once approved. I think…
I tried changing the passcodes, except the iPad allows you to use the old one for 48 hours in case you forget. Probably there’s a setting somewhere for that. However last time it was useful as I did forget.
The warfare continues. ♟️
I have so many bookstore.org emails saved as they have book lists and recommendations that I want to get for myself or others. Need to decant that information into a list somewhere as every week more and more emails come with good books.
I bought that radio, now to figure out what I’m doing with it. 😅
All this time and all I’ve had is my phone. It is more annoying than using a computer but I’ve not missed using a computer. I’ll use my phone for a while but the annoyingness of it makes me put it down…eventually. Then I pick up my book or I sit outside and watch the trees in the wind or the bees on the flowers. Helps its lovely weather and view, and comfy outdoor chairs. I could buy chairs for home but the weather and view are lacking. If we didn’t have work or school, and didn’t in general need to go anywhere, living in the countryside would be nice. However I love the convenience of life where we do live. Even if the view and weather isn’t great. Also this is a holiday and not representative.
Returns me to the age old (for me) question of: do I need a computer at home? The answer is yes because it’s annoying otherwise but could I use it less? Absolutely. I just need to find somewhere else to sit. There always feels like there are a hundred things I need to do on the computer…every day. But is using a computer bad? No, but depends what I do. “It’ll be different this time” I say, but probably not.
I accuse (silently in my head of course) other people at work for wanting too much money. Am I just the same though? When I go back to work I’m supposed to decide if part time should be permanent for me (although I can change it later so it’s never really permanent), and I want to say yes but there’s a bug in my ear calculating to the nearest penny what I’m losing out on. I guess I gave the bug access to my spreadsheet so I’m to blame. But not just pay today but also pension tomorrow. I do try to tell myself time and life are both short so make the most of it. We’re not going to bankrupt ourselves because of this so why not do it. When I look at the U.K. income stats they’re painful and I serve myself another dose of “<10%” world problems.
I also feel “cheated” that because I work part time I don’t get the benefit of one flex day off a month. The facts are, I do get the benefit, I just choose not to take it. Mostly as I don’t accrue enough hours to take one, but don’t tell anyone that I also didn’t accrue enough hours when working full time to take one either! The rules of the policy are so vague that it makes it hard to justify or legitimately claim when not working full time, because that’s who it was written for. Work also doesn’t want people eating their time tracking an extra 22.5 minutes a day so I know why it’s deliberately vague. I e thought about doing a 0.9 schedule with the logic I could accumulate the extra time and have 3 days off a month but only pay for 2 vs my 4 that I pay all of. Of course, I don’t want fewer days off…
For a long time I’ve been thinking about FIRE and mostly trying to go towards it. This part time is maybe the first stepping stone but also shows me how hard it is to stop working even if you “had enough money”. The temptation to just keep working as it’s probably easier, you’ve been doing it for decades and the “just in case” factor.
Work is doing some big deal and the end result is always a reorg. Many folks in their late 50s are hoping for a payoff. We last had a payoff during COVID. I did think about it for a few minutes back then…but we’d literally just bought a house after moving back from America, and with a newborn, so another spanner was not wanted. If they offered it again, would I take it? I could change career and “follow my dreams”. But…what are my dreams and to what career? I like the people I work with and I get to work part time and still do well. Unless I’m starting my own business or some unique opportunity comes up…why leave? I don’t have a plan if I jumped.
Back before we talked about living somewhere else to be closer to others. That would still be nice now but we’d have to move house and city and both get new jobs and new schools for everyone. It could still be done but not sure it’s really worth it. Plus I like being close to the mountains for radio 😅
I’m not sure what is going to satisfy me.
I still subscribe to /r/M43 on Reddit and someone posted a kit of the GX85 and lenses that they were thinking of getting. I remember looking at something similar..a few years ago. Even though the sensor is smaller, people create lovely photos from it. But then people create lovely photos from just about anything. It means the lenses are smaller. Although I’m not bothered about lenses at the moment. I’m not getting one or really interested in it, I just remembered about it.
Been slacking off DayOne (again). Struggle to find motivation to write in it/feels like a chore to do. Maybe I’ll add something just now.
Chatting to someone who’s selling a radio…the one I’ve been mooning over for ages. I’d buy it because it’s an all mode and all band radio, portable, modern, lots of wifi remote control options, great reviews, useful for doing so many different things. It’s a decent price used vs new and other similar used ads. Why wouldn’t I buy it? It’s £950 used. Other than 2m/70cm modes beyond simple FM, I already have everything it does in other radios. Radios aren’t my problem for improving things. It’s antennas.
I almost got sucked into buying this smart watch. It gets good reviews even though it’s cheap, but then I stopped and thought “why?”.
Woke up with a horrible headache, which was strange. Took some paracetamol but it’s still not really gone away.
Saw a great flock of Golden Orioles this morning. The advantage of buying things from Aliexpress whilst you’re on holiday is that you don’t have to worry about delivery whilst you’re away. Then in 3-4 weeks miscellaneous packages arrive and you have no idea what they are. Usually accompanied by “what have you ordered now?” “Nothing” I answer with an honest belief, because I have ordered nothing this week. I then open it and remember that evening watching YouTube videos or page 12 of some forum thread and then ordering said part(s).
I’ve noticed some eBay sellers say “ships from U.K.” usually for random electronics you might get from China. I suppose people want it sooner so pay more. Except you have to look carefully as unless it says it’ll be delivered in 2-3 days, it still doesn’t come from the U.K.
Finished my book. Was good. (I’m not a good reviewer). I’d recommend, although start with the first one. I think sci-fi is good when believable. Although not sure I’ve read any sci-fi that I didn’t think was believable. Often it’ll be some alien from far away whose technology is far beyond ours, or the same but they all died millennia ago. Or it’s a few thousand years time and humans can navigate the stars, either in a great way or because the Earth is dead. To me, all those scenarios seem possible. But with a universe as big as the universe that I can’t even fathom, I just have to accept anything is or will be possible.
However, the one thing that doesn’t seem possible is me deciding on my websites.
I want to go to EuroBSDCon.
Been sucked into my book today. Then I picked up my phone and an age went by. Putting it down now.
I think I’m working myself towards combining journal entries, like this, and posts into a single site. But it’s very pendulonic. I made that word up, meaning to be like a pendulum.
I also think about having various categories, like journal, projects, writings, etc. but I think that makes it harder. Maybe all in as just “posts” and then either categorises or tags to sort it. Then I’m back to the issue of a few posts “disappearing” in the noise of ideal chatter. Although if I tag stuff I can make a page of those tags etc. Feel like I’m going to recreate Jack’s Tinderbox site.
I’d recently thought about using Discourses for a blog. I like the interface. However, I found someone doing that and the site looked…barren. It’s meant to be a forum with people discoursing, so one person is a bit meh.
We went to a local lake today to go swimming. It’s fun but I’m always nervous about the water quality. Perhaps slightly hypochondriac…anyway today a couple of French guys gave me a child’s fishing net and asked if I’d mind fishing out the poo from the water. We’d seen it (swam by it) and joked about it and surely it can’t be but no. It was. 💩
I could’ve sworn there was a metronome emoji. I wanted to go signify the swinging of decisions. 🔙🕧🔁
When did this emoji appear! 📇 roller contacts list?
Maybe I should do something constructive and read a book. Just started the third book in the series (don’t know the series name) but it’s called Children of Memory. Sci-fi. Been reading quite a few fantasy books so want a change and I found the third one recently so seemed ideal.
I maintain a single page website for the online radio community I belong to. Right now it’s raw html I edit, but I keep thinking about moving it to a static generator. Probably just Jekyll so GitHub renders it. Should’ve done that already as they wanted it updating and I only have my phone. I did it, but it was painful.
Somehow I ended up browsing Reddit for an hour on bed last night. I never do this. The phone never comes to the bedroom at home, and charges downstairs with all the other devices. I got sucked into looking at sites in the 1MB and then 1kB clubs, which just led to more and more random websites. Then I thought I’d top it off with Reddit. Ugh. For the past two days I’ve had about 1.5 hours left of my book…but have I read any.
Whilst we’re away I’m looking at our electricity usage. It seems to go between 155W and 255W regularly, maybe every 30 minutes. I really want to know what that is. I have a few smart plugs recording the main rooms, like TV and boxes in lounge, computer in office, server, etc. but they don’t show anything. Trying to think what else could’ve been left on or doing this. The cycling nature is curious, it’s not like we left something on, it turns on and off. Makes me think of the thermostat turning on and off to maintain a temperature. However that uses 1kW+, so it’s not that.
Could it be the fridge or freezer? I’m sure I would’ve noticed this before. Since getting the new server I didn’t bother migrating my data as it was too much hassle and I didn’t really care but now I wonder.
Bought one year of Lightroom 1TB from Amazon for £60 in the prime day sale. I’ve bought it before and it’s good value. Each time it expires I convince myself I don’t need it, but don’t have something else. Probably there are several open source options I could look into. (But don’t).
Still want to get all my good photos into Apple Photos for the convenience of it, plus the resurfacing of them.
Maybe after this one year of Lightroom I’ll buy a M4 Mac Mini and 2TB of iCloud 🤪
I’m so pleased ikiwiki has a new maintainer. Jon has been an avid user for years. I emailed him way back when I used ikiwiki for my main site and asked him lots of questions. I’ve been thinking about moving my blog to something else and I think ikiwiki might be it.
I enjoy this semi-anonymous journal style blogging. I could write in a private journal which no one ever sees, but somehow the fact that someone might read it makes it more worthwhile, and gives me an incentive. Plus I like reviewing it myself and reading a website seems to be the only way I can read it.
The only thing is that as it’s not completely anonymous I can’t write everything in it. Maybe that’s a good thing and maybe I should never do that. But it would be good to talk about some things like money, or work. Perhaps those things would be better on some service, like bearblog, where I just make an account with some random email and just write in there.
I’ve seen some people publicly write these things on their full named blog. Exactly what they earn and spend money on. Not sure I’m ready for that yet. Probably because it’s embarrassing to see what I actually spend my money on!
I like this site’s style and am thinking of moving it to my main blog. Not sure if I’ll move journal posts there (this again). But I couldn’t sustain two journal like websites (if I make a new one). Now if I wrote more blog posts that might not be an issue if my journal “disappeared” but I seem only to be able to write 4,000 word blog posts or nothing.
I have decided I’m not combining my radio blog into my main one. Even though it would give it more content and activity, I think it’s an enough of a domain fo warrant its own site. Which I’m thinking ikiwiki is ideal for that site. Even found an ancient Wordpress to Ikiwiki converter on github! Although it’s just Wordpress to markdown.
I might retire the fondoftea domain as well. I’m torn but it’s probably redundant, or I’ll get something new anyway, one of these silly TLDs, like .fish, although there’s no .tea. Probably it’ll be tea related if I do find something.
🚨OR ☣️
I keep this domain and site and make it my main site with the other domain just as a landing page. And have posts and journals together. Or apart or not or shut up already.
I was on the SOTA forums and mentioned that I’d like to take more notes of my activations so I’m more prepared the next time. Someone described a spreadsheet they keep with lots of information in, as well as their points, which sounded exactly like what I wanted.
I could very easily setup a google sheets to do this, but I wonder about making it public via a website of some sorts. Although with GSheets you can use it as data input to a static site. Again, bringing up tiddlywiki as a potential tool to use. I then started thinking about dokuwiki and even ikiwiki as alternatives.
TW could let you do all sorts of fancy things with meta data and filters etc. but I think I’m fine with one page/note per summit where I write stuff down. Could go so granular with each contact as a tiddler but I don’t care and it’s not that much use.
Found (again) tilde.town last night and I think that uses ikiwiki for the content. Made me want to use it again. I’ll have to install it when I get home as I can’t get it out of my head. Don’t think I still have it running anywhere…
I can’t bring film on holiday. The airport security queue is bad enough just with normal things. You also hope your bag doesn’t get separated for further inspection as that line was even longer….and slower. So the idea is give them the films to hand check… best case is they’d give it to the person immediately, worst case is it gets put on the side and never has a place in the queue. Actually worst case is that they say no and put it through the machine anyway. No one has film anymore. I did read about ISO and X-ray machines and I forget which is worse…I think high iso.
I could have some posted here, then post them off to be developed. It used to be okay when we could fly to the local airport, as it was tiny and you could more easily ask for exceptions. Now we have to fly to a major airport and no one has time for any of that.
There’s some hardware thing I thought about today which for the life of me I cannot find any reference to. The problem is I can’t remember anything about it, other than I heard about it on a podcast (probably know which one but also not sure), sometime last summer, and they’re sold in the U.K. and you can get various add-ons. I can’t find it in the wiki, I may have written about it here, and I probably shared it with friends, but given I don’t remember anything about it, I can’t find it.
I’m sure I’ll eventually find it and then go “oh yeah that.” But not buy anything.
I searched for “https” across several chats and this blog looking for clues but found none. Did think it would be good to generate a list of urls I’ve posted on this site with a script, as I found (again) a few other interesting websites I’d linked to.
