Saturday, 7th February, 2026

I finally paid for 1 year of mailbox.org. Wanting to send an email with the address I moved to it was the final push it needed! Although I looked at how many emails I send and it’s been about 12 this year. I guess I mostly just receive email and so does it then matter what my domain is? (Because I’m still stuck on that). I should just find the cheapest “normal” tld and go with it. I like .net. Maybe I’ll look up some random words and see what I can find. I have my radio domain for when I want to email with my radio hat on. Which are most of my sent emails.

I miss my old iPad Air and Smart Keyboard. I still have them but they don’t work. iPad won’t turn on - perhaps some high current power supply could revive it but the screen is all smashed and the keyboard didn’t work last time I tried. Thought about buying another but second hand. But I really don’t want to buy more screens. Perhaps I should find a good Bluetooth keyboard to use with my phone? I want it for writing here and DayOne etc. I’ve got used to the screen keyboard but it can be tiring. I also like writing this on the sofa, and not on the computer. Feel more relaxed and there are less distractions.

The boys have been playing Roblox. Not sure if it’s a good idea or not. I mostly think it’s fine as I used to play computer games and know what it’s like to be really into a game. Plus they play with their friends at school. It always sucked if you were the kid who couldn’t join in. All the chat and social stuff is turned off and it can only be turned on with age verification…which even if they did, they wouldn’t be allowed it anyway. I’m sure things will get harder.

Neighbour got their new Range Rover on lease (I assume as they get a new one every 3 years). I don’t know how you could justify spending that much money on a car. But people can do what they like and who am I to say anything. No doubt they would balk if they knew how much my ham radio kit was. Or that I just bought some snow shoes for £230! 😅

Which will mean it’ll be mild and all the snow will melt.

I like this guy’s website.

Wednesday, 4th February, 2026

Work has gone all in on CoPilot. One of the most useful things so far is asking it to search for files. I can remember a slide deck or spreadsheet etc. and what it was about but not exactly where it was saved. Now CoPilot can tell me. It’s so integrated into every Microsoft app. Probably the best way to use it but at home I don’t want Windows whatsoever.

Fallen into a bad habit of sitting on my phone on reddit in the evening for 1-2 hours. Just scrolling waiting for something interesting to appear (it doesn’t). I need to stop that. Probably a combination of being tired and bored. Probably should watch the new The Night Manager, or Fallout or the latest Muppet Show.

I started the process to migrate away from Gmail. After a long time I picked mailbox.org for various reasons, and have one domain on it, but I’ve not paid and not sure I want to migrate now. I was using iCloud for mail hosting, which is part of my 200GB iCloud subscription, so why pay more? Mailbox has lots of nice features, but really the point was to move away from Gmail. Again, I think a new domain is better than using one of my website domains, but, again, I still can’t think of one, or want to pay for another one.

A friend has colitis, which sounds absolutely horrible. Here’s me complaining I’m bored and what email provider should I switch to (well I know that part but you know).

Sunday, 1st February, 2026

I found and installed onlyoffice today. Much nicer UI than libreOffice and better for migrating family off Microsoft Office as it basically looks the same! I’ve installed it on the main computer and set it as default app. Will see if anyone complains and then we’re one step closer to installing Linux on it. Also see onlyoffice can be web based and self hosted.

Everyone only uses a browser, file explorer and occasionally word and excel. Want done with Windows.

A friend has talked me into moving off of Gmail. I’ve wanted to do it but just never quite get round to it. He suggested getting a separate domain from my websites, which I like the idea of, and then use something like protonmail. The first problem is deciding what the domain should be. Short and name based or something random like running.horse or ruddy.duck and the ironic email.sucks. Not checked if any of these are available but anyway. Icelandic domain .is don’t charge more for short domains. So if a.is was available it would be the same price as anything-else.is. There are a few I quite like but the domain is more expensive than others.

This is probably why I never changed email before.

Saturday, 31st January, 2026

This sounds weird, but I never sit in our lounge. Of course I do sit in it but rarely do I sit, on my own, and just look around the room. I realise that it’s one of my favourite rooms. It’s quite small, has a sofa and three random arm chairs (two from granny’s on either side of the family) and one we found cheap somewhere. It has a bookcase with photo albums, my “technical” books and other books too big to go in the office, cookbooks, photography books, teacher books, and board games. Kids board games and ones we all play regularly. There’s a carved elephant side table that I got as a present when I was about 8. A big coffee table for playing board games on, currently has more board games and some sewing projects. There is a TV in here. And finally, about eight house plants, including some gigantic palm thing some friends gave us when they moved back to Canada. It’s so big it overhangs the sofa. All the plants are in here as the cats aren’t allowed in here - they always scratch the chairs - and they always want to dig in the soil in the pot.

It’s currently raining, everyone else is busy and I’m just sat here with a cup of tea looking out the window and enjoying the quiet.

I’m trying not to take my phone out my pocket but here we are. I should go and get my kindle but fear if I’m seen, then I’ll be required to do something.

It’s hard not to go on the internet and look up things. Like lipo/lifepo4 battery chargers - which is best, which can also do NiCd or random other chemistries. What connector does it have, does it do balanced. Could I replace all the other chargers I have with it. Right now each battery I have has its own charger and I fear using another with it. Then I find a good one but it’s USA specific, so time to start again.

Maybe if I had a remarkable or similar, I could sit here and read and write. (What would I be writing? I don’t know…)

Should I sell that HT I bought just to get a SOTA badge via a digital voice QSO. (And other radio gibberish).

I should buy a Mac; I should install Linux; I should use the computer less; I should sell it all; I should buy it all; I should delete it all. I should play Stardew Valley on the switch, I should play any of the Pokemon games I’ve bought in the last 10 years (and never played).

This lady makes nice art work.

Less is more. Less does so much more than I realised. Plus that one guy has been maintaining it for over 40 years.

Friday, 30th January, 2026

Like a celestial body orbiting a sun, I return to the same decision over and over and over.

I don’t write blog posts so why do I have a blog. I often think I’d be better with a daily journal and a wiki. My blog posts are kinda like a wiki anyway. Although mostly I can’t be bothered to change things. Just ennui.

Perhaps it’s January. Back to work, miserable weather, no sunlight. Work is boring and meaningless.

I saw a job for estate manager for one of the Cairngorms estates. Basically look after everything - fences, roads, staff, tourists, deer, guests, anything and everything. Plus endless outdoors. Had a wee fantasy about doing it. No doubt it’s long hours, considerably worse pay, and relentless complaints and difficult choices.

Moan moan.

Started a new fantasy series, Bone Ships, or something like it. Didn’t enjoy it and stopped reading. Reminded me of the Live Ships trilogy as part of Realm of the Enderlings and those were my least favourite. Sailors on ships and some magic aspect to the boat is not interesting. So I continued on my Star Wars books, from someone’s top 5 SW list. This one is Ben Kenobi and about his time on Tatooine when he’s keeping a remote eye on Luke as he grows up. It’s easy reading and enjoyable. I should go to bed early and keep reading it, not staying up on the computer looking at nothing until 11pm.

Wednesday, 28th January, 2026

I still want to make a new blog, just a regular, normal one. Where I can write things and then find them later. Here is easy to write but hard to find, especially as I seem to have adopted culling old journal entries - because I never looked at them and I felt the burden of them (perhaps scared of what they showed).

But I can’t seem to make one. Maybe I should use pika (I don’t like paying for stuff I can easily do myself) or use the zola one that’s already setup, or use something else. Probably I don’t want to write anything anyway, and just think I do.

And then I think about a single website.

I’m writing this in VS Code on the computer - not often I do that, usually 1Writer on my phone - but recently VS Code added auto complete for your whole line. I’ve had to turn it off at work for my notes as it suggests a whole load of stuff and if I want to indent the line, then it thinks I want the whole load of text it’s suggesting. Now I need to turn it off here…mostly as it’s alarmingly accurate and would more easily let me to blabber on and on and on (about the same things as always) by just pressing tab. (It completed a lot of this paragraph for me)

Tuesday, 27th January, 2026

We hosted a big birthday family ceilidh this weekend and had a lot of fun. I took the X-E4 and 23mm f/1.4 and overwhelmingly all the black and white photos I took (well colour profile I chose) are everyone’s (and my) favourite. The dark, indoor setting made it hard to do colour without huge ISO or slow shutter speed. Whereas for my B&W profile I let the camera go to a much higher ISO and it doesn’t matter. I culled my photos to 53 and my wife picked 21 to share with family, 4 were colour.

Probably it’s just a reflection on me and not knowing / having a suitable colour profile for the darker evening indoors settings. These are all straight out of camera jpgs as I don’t have time to edit them.

I did add all these photos to Apple Photos.app album and that made it very convenient to share. No doubt other software has very easy to share albums too.

Think I have a Lego hoarding habit…it manifests itself via designing/building new trains or associated items but really all that happens is it gets built and stored in boxes in the garage. Where I’m now standing looking at it thinking “I should get some more 9V track”. I the start thinking about how nice it would be to have it all organised into various trays and drawers etc.

I don’t think I’m going to hit 1,000 points in SOTA before our day out. The weather has been dire so it’s hard to do higher point places. Think I’m fine with it though; but also would like it out the way.