Saturday, 2nd May, 2026

I’m getting closer and closer to signing up to Pika and using that as my main site - replacing it and probably the radio blog, but I’m not sure. As I plan on backup weekly, and downloading the markdown and images, I might just make a static gen that utilises those and (somehow) only builds posts with the radio tag. There’s never any time criticality to my radio blog posts so weekly is fine. I do want to migrate all my historical posts from everywhere into pika. That might take a while and not sure of the best way to do that. I do see they let you use other apps to post via micropub but not sure that really helps me. They do offer to help if you contact them, but not sure about that. Be nice to consolidate. Even paying monthly, it’s only ~£4.50 a month. If it means I finally write about the things I think about writing, then it’s worthwhile.

I am still going to keep this site as a journal. I don’t think this content mixes well elsewhere, plus it’s embarrassing how often I talk about the same thing and change nothing! The main blog are like my final photos that I want to look at, and this is the whole roll before I’ve sorted them, tweaked them and culled the cruff. Also I like my little writing setup using the Apple keyboard and tiny phone stand.

I installed Claude code on my computer but have yet to sign up to a pro subscription. I’d like to use it to tidy up my websites, and maybe make some of the streamlit radio apps into a dedicated site that I host (or ideally static and just JavaScript). But after that…I’m not sure if I really need a pro subscription? Obviously I can just cancel and then if there are other things re subscribe. Maybe if I see the answers it gives back to general questions then I’ll want to keep it more, but most of the time the free one seems good enough.

I’ve also been spending less time on the computer and generally enjoying that more. It’s interesting, I use my phone just as much as I have always done, and in fact I really like writing on it (with or without the keyboard), but using the computer never seems to end well. I feel like I only ever waste time on it and never do anything useful. I don’t even write here, I just look at reddit or YouTube or look at maps of summits. There’s a lot of history and decades of habit when I sit down in front of The Computer. Where as when I’m somewhere else, that doesn’t exist. I have two monitors and I think that just compounds the issues - more screen for more wasting time. Whereas on my phone I can only do one thing at a time as the screen is too small for anything else, plus the whole OS is mostly setup to just do one thing at a time. I always liked writing on my iPad as it was a one app at a time device. On the computer I just flit between stuff or have 4 things open at once and do nothing in anything of them.

I have been thinking about installing Linux on the ThinkPad and then trying to use that. See if that helps. But what am I trying to help? Do I actually have anything useful to be doing on the computer? That’s maybe the real problem to solve.

I’m sat in another seat in the office, under the wall shelves, and I can see about 13 books I’ve never read. Some of these I’ve had for over 20 years and I’ve never read them. From novels to non-fiction. Probably I should try and read one at least.

Anyway…time away from the computer seems like a good idea in general. I just need to find somewhere else to sit in the evening.

Youngest wanted her room rearranged so she could see a 4’ wall sticker she’s had for ages but behind the dolls house. As everyone but her and I were out, we set to it this afternoon. Took a while, and involved screwing her bed back together and cleaning lots of behind places, but now we’ve done it. Looks and feels better, more spacious and a little more junk thrown away. I felt a strong desire to sort out or tidy up somewhere else, just not sure where. The office or garage are the only places that could do with decluttering. Maybe I’ll do the office as it’s just a few bits and bobs about that need sorting out and I think the effect would be great. The garage, on the other hand, requires a lot to make it look better, and probably most of the tidying just results in neater drawers.

I installed iA Writer demo on my computer, as I see you can write to pika using micropub. Seems the windows version doesn’t do any of that, looking at the ia website, it seems the windows version doesn’t do half the things. I’m not surprised. At least it was just a free trial.

Friday, 1st May, 2026

I still think about making a single blog for everything, and even having AI build the whole thing for me. However, I just don’t know what I really want. Someone was talking about not wanting people to know they have a blog, and I’m quite like that. In fact, it’s a reason why I don’t want to have a single blog. If I email people with a domain, and they look it up and see my site. Particularly, with ham radio, when I make a contact with someone, they’ll often look me up on qrz.com and I have my site linked there, or similarly if I email them. What’s the big deal? I dunno. I guess I worry about what they think - when I know fine well I shouldn’t care what they think. I also like to keep things separate. Maybe what I should do is not narrate my idle thoughts on here…I think combining posts about radio outings, books I’ve read, or whatever else goes well together. The journal stuff is a bit different.

Another factor is that it’s a some work to create a new site. I could use blot or pika or some other hosted, predone thing, but I know I’ll not like it and think that I should have my own site. I think I’m going to do it, but then I sit down on the computer and don’t - always finding excuses not to start or just feeling like it’s too much hassle for what it’s worth. That’s sort of why i started making a new tiddlywiki, mostly as it does everything for me. Although I still don’t like that idea for some vague reason. Maybe I should just pay for pika, and start using it. Then when I get upset about £5/month, that’ll motivate me to do something. But if it doesn’t, then I have a nice site. There’s a little bit of the hassle of migrating all the old stuff but, again, I should use AI for it.

I think I still like the idea of a landing page on main domain, blog here, and then journal can live on neocities or something random I find. Although that doesn’t work for the radio domain. I had thought if I made a new static site I could just have multiple domains pointing to the same site. Not sure if that works for pika.

I was reading a post on some German ham’s site, and he was using Ghost. The theme was nice, and the overwhelming “subscribe here” wasn’t present, so not sure what the theme was or if he did some manual edits. So of course I wondered about using that.

How long has this debate gone on for?

I’m so pleased the film photos came out. The leaf shutter seemed slow on the TLR when out and I was worried it wasn’t going to work properly, but seems to have been fine. Has made me think about film again. Although probably just taking the X-E4 would be good. Started watching a YouTube video Jack shared about this lady doing the ...Appalachian, that's it, and making a documentary whilst also shooting black and white with a Fuji TX-1 (the wide landscape camera, like the Hassy XPan). Got interrupted whilst watching it, so need to come back to it later. I heard her on the joy of the outdoors. I love going out. It started as chasing points and ticking off lists - which I still do and makes me go to new places - but being out is a great feeling. Even when it's miserable weather. I do feel like I want to capture it more, with photos or words or video or something. I shared my TLR photos on the SOTA forums, and when I look back at the iPhone photos of the trip, they just look so bland. The scenery is still stunning and it captures what we did and everything around but there's no character. Probably I could edit the iPhone photos with grain and filters etc. to improve it. Anyway, many times I don't stop and savour the moment, I'm always on a schedule to get to the top, do radio, get back to the car and get home in time for xyz family stuff. It was also unique last week as we were on the air for quite a while and when we got back to the bottom of the hill, we just sat by the stream, had a drink from it, and enjoyed the moment. It helped it was warm, but we had plenty of time.

I’m still on the pursuit of new hills that are far away to complete lists but I shouldn’t forget the ones closer to home that still offer a nice day out. In fact there’s another hill scheme that focuses on hills with prominence of 100 to 150m (vs. SOTA which is 150m or more) and there are loads of these other hills about in places I’ve never been. Perhaps I should try one.

Back to the camera front, I did start down a small rabbit hole for micro 4/3s cameras for hiking. Mostly as they’re smaller than APS-C, offer IBIS, weather sealing and seems like plenty of good quality but lightweight lenses. I’ve looked at these before for big telephotos for birds etc. (not that I ever take photos of birds). I had to go out and then when I came back I’d forgotten about it - probably for the best. Unless I’m selling the Fuji, I don’t think getting a 4/3s system is a good idea.

Thursday, 30th April, 2026

Talking to a bike friend, he suggests just buying one. Probably sensible. I like the Alpkit sonder bikes, except they have so many options I have no idea what to get. Obviously going into a store would be best but the nearest is 2.5/3 hours away. Maybe I’ll ask AI what I should get and see if it can explain the differences between the various seats, pedals and particularly stem post connectors…

M4 Mac minis are just gone. No store has any. Probably for the best. I’ve been saying I’ll get a Mac mini since the M2 (never get 1st gen apple products, and in fact best to get the 3rd gen) but always put it off and then a newer model is coming. When you don’t need it immediately it’s easy to keep putting it off until the next model comes out.

Wednesday, 29th April, 2026

Fitted new brake pads to my bike - wow what a difference! Although the previous pair came with the bike…that I bought 5 years ago 🫣 Anyway, nice to sort it out. I sort of want to build my own bike from select parts, to make it unique (because it’ll cost more “I built my own $3,000 bike for only $5,000”) and to then reallly understand how all the pieces fit together. Just not sure what type of bike. Had thought about a mountain bike, as I don’t really like mine, but I rarely use it - I think because I rarely use it and “don’t know how to ride a mountain bike” that I don’t like it. It feels unstable, hard to control, slips easily - which I think is because it has 29” wheels and a long wheelbase and wider wheel fork angles. But the internet tells me all these things makes it better to ride, and how it’s made for stability. Maybe it is better than a regular bike and I just don’t know how to ride downhill on mud and stones.

Or I make myself a new commuter bike - which I use everyday. Probably the better choice. But then I’ll look at prices and think it’s better just to buy a new one but that wasn’t the point - and so I’ll do nothing.

Tuesday, 28th April, 2026

We’ve gone full lockdown on devices with the kids. Turned all the screen time apps to max! (Max restrictions obv).

I lose interest in computer things quickly. Sometimes before I even start whatever I’ve been thinking about.

Simultaneously, I looked at M1 Mac minis, thinking they’d be cheap. Not as cheap as I thought they should be.

Friday, 24th April, 2026

During the day I think of these things I want to do on the computer. Then by the evening when I have time to do it, I’m not interested. Mostly just being a bit tired but also it seems like a chore.

I wanted to finish my time book - Splitting the Second. It’s both very interesting and boring at the same time. Some sections go into more detail than I really want but there are plenty of sections that are interesting. It’s a comprehensive book on time and how it’s measured and how that’s changed over human life, plus the application of very accurate time keeping.

Now we have very accurate time, it gets impacted by Einstein’s special relativity where “moving clocks go slow”. It’s somewhat of a hard concept to grasp 🤓 but is it time being affected or the mechanism that is used to keep time? If I could somehow build a nanosecond accurate quartz clock would that also go slow. They did experiments with radio signals coming back from the Viking landers on Mars and when Mars was behind the sun the radio waves slowed down going around the sun, and they travel at the same speed…or something like that.

Relativity was in Artemis book about how the other species didn’t know about relativity.

Glorious sun today and off out into the hills with my hiking buddy. We haven’t actually been out together for a couple of months now, for various reasons. Be doing a local hill, which will remind me they’re still interesting even though I’m not chasing points and I’ve done it twice before.

Thursday, 23rd April, 2026

Last night’s “lying in bed thinking about websites” thought was that I should use tiddlywiki for my main site. It is appealing. Single html file but fully functional. Plus I always feel like my natural state is wiki.

I have one already but obviously I’d need to start again. (And rebuild the same thing).

Was talking to Claude about setting up a new tiddlywiki. Was good to explore ideas for structure and if gives me the wikitext to do some of the filters and lists etc. probably they’re simple but I just never can learn them.

Sometimes I like the basic tiddlywiki theme and layout but then other times I want it to be different. There’s a notebook theme I always look at and do like, except that sidebar. I don’t like that but maybe Claude can fix it for me.