Saturday, 31st December, 2022

Everyone’s ill! Who knows what our plans are now. Not that I’d mind too much if we end up going home earlier. Although so much tidying and sorting out of stuff to do at home. Plus I have four rolls of B&W to develop.

I remembered I made a Shortcuts shortcut to sync and push this blog to GitHub for it to build. I added the button to the notification screen and so now (again) it’s very easy to write in it and I don’t even have to open Working Copy anymore.

Happy New Year! That arbitrary resetting of the calendar which makes you think you’re going to change your ways and make yourself a better person. I’ll have to make two new folders tomorrow for this site.

Friday, 30th December, 2022

All sorts of interesting things to poke about with on Tiddlyhost

Like this very well done Trello clone with TW. Not sure I need/would use it but I admire it.

By the time I write in DayOne and here I’m just about done with writing anything. In fact, if it’s been a busy day I’m done just thinking about writing in DayOne.

This sort of software is why I want a mac. You just don’t get unique and powerful tools elsewhere. Well maybe Linux but it can be hit and miss. This sale also marks the one year anniversary of me buying Tinderbox. I had a mac back then, but I stopped using it and sold it as I didn’t want another computer to use, plus it got a bit slow with all my photos in Photos.app. I did manage to sell it for more than I bought it for, so that was nice. However, one year one and I’m once again thinking about a mac. It’s a M1 mini in my head, and I’d have it sat on my desktop for alternative usage. Why though? I probably shouldn’t buy it.

Thursday, 29th December, 2022

I’ve setup my own private tiddlywiki on my server via node.js. I’m thinking of this being the centre of everything, even having these blog posts archived on it as well. It might be more than I can manage but I think it’s the best tool, the best interface, and one that can work for everything.

Not sure what I’ll do about my public wiki. Ideally it’ll become a subset of the main one either automatically or just manual drag and dropping of tiddlers. Alternatively, I’ll just scrap/freeze the wiki and write more here or in my other blog about things I find.

I chose node.js version as it means all the tiddlers are individual files, which means I could have some automation running on my computer to do stuff. Like make weekly tiddlers for me to fill in or add weather information or add these blog posts - pretty much anything. That’s for another day as I’m still figuring out how things should be structured in the wiki.

I also plan to have work things in it. That does mean I should probably move my logseq stuff into it. At least the important things. It made me realise that I don’t like putting notes in the daily page and linking to a topic as then when I look at that topic it’s just a bunch of dates. Going to follow along with GrokTiddlywiki, which conveniently is a basic work notebook.

Wednesday, 28th December, 2022

This post and all the links from it make very interesting reading. I’m in a “where are my notes going and I want them to be forever available, accessible, searchable” mood. Which also includes Journal notes. I’m jumping between tiddlywiki, Apple Notes, plain text files on various platforms and I just don’t know.

I want just a folder with a couple of files that I add to, it’s one big file but it’s all there and easy to browse. I also want an organised tiddlywiki with tags and magic to pull it all together (for some undefined purpose).

I have my public wiki which I add bits and bobs too, although tagging is a bit hit and miss, and my current way of reviewing things is hitting the random button or remembering about something and searching for it.

I have a note in Apple Notes from 2012. Not sure I’d still be able to find it, 10 years later, if it wasn’t in Apple notes. It’s always there, built-in and can do quite a lot. Obviously mac/iOS only. Maybe it’s better at remembering than me thinking I can backup plain text files /somewhere/ and then finding them later. I feel tiddlywiki can have similar longevity now, as I host it online and it sits on github and gets served from there.

Plus there’s a physical notebook, but I don’t think I can keep one for a long time and find stuff.

Tuesday, 27th December, 2022

I’ve been up since 6:30 am and all I’ve done are chores. Tidying, washing, clearing, cleaning. 😮‍💨

Reading through book one of Ansel Adams photography series. It’s mostly practical staff about cameras and lenses. I think I know about 80% already (except large format stuff) so I’m debating do I read it all for the final 20% or jump to book two. I should read it all as why not? There’s also no rush.

Took some XP2 yesterday. I even like the style of the logo.

I remembered I wrote something down last year (well this year in January) about my wife’s birthday. Things I should do better or not to forget. I couldn’t remember what they were, or where I saved them. I was worried it was on one of the various tiddlywiki’s that I’ve had over the past two years and if it’s not in the most recent one then it’s “somewhere safe”. I always have backups, I just don’t know where they are.

I was in 1Writer and saw WebDAV and remembered I’d made a plain text journal over WebDAV this time last year (exactly as it turns out), and there it was. The journal.txt with my notes in it. Now I have my notes, I just need to action them…

I like WebDAV saved files but it’s a tiny bit annoying having to move locations in 1Writer between this blog and the WebDAV saves. I mostly just want one app does one thing. This i my blog app, this is my notes app, this is xyz app… it’s not very efficient, but it does help me remember where things are or what I’m supposed to be doing.

Wondering if I move those files to Simplenote, which has become my default plain text notes app for notes I want to keep private, and just use that. Seeing multiple notes in the menu bar is fine to move between, but navigating up and down folders is annoying. Perhaps 1Writer has some shortcuts or something that can help. I should look up auto backup of Simplenote to my server, then I’ll probably be fine with it. Or I could look for another WebDAV compatible editor.

It also makes me not want to deal with two blogs in 1Writer…and the Wordpress app is quite nice on iOS…😅

Monday, 26th December, 2022

Making a new post here is pretty easy with 1Writer and things setup to automatically do the boring parts for me. I’ve not done that with my main blog and so when I come to think about adding a post I feel a large inertia and can’t be bothered or put it off and then never do it. I prefer maintaining a static site and it seems better but if I never add to it then maybe it’s not a good idea.

I could do with deleting pointless emails I have in gmail. I’m not at my storage limit but it’s getting close. There must be thousands of useless emails, from Amazon, ebay, shipping notifications, newsletters, pretty much anything from 10 years ago, etc.

Sunday, 25th December, 2022

Merry Christmas! 🎄🎅🏻

Interested in this mastodon lite thing. I’m wondering if I want to use mastodon more, as a general chatter site? I’d actually like to skip my Blog and use mastodon and keep this site…is that possible? Maybe that’s a better option? I’ve managed to add to this site pretty much every day for ages, and I like the text only style of it as a sort of journal. Pretty much most things I think about, I’m fine with publishing, and those that I’m not I have a text file on simplenotes. I struggle much more with writing a joined up blog post about something. I still have it in my head that it needs to be a 3,000 word essay or it’s not worth posting.

I noticed I joined Fosstodon in July 2020, but my first post is today’s! I don’t check social media and maybe I shouldn’t start…

I just like somewhere which makes posting images easy.

On second thoughts, I don’t want to maintain my own mastodon related service. Or posting to Mastodon.

No one bought me a Hobonichi for Christmas, so I ordered one for myself. They were selling on Amazon from the Hobonichi store for not too much, and so it means it arrives on Tuesday. It’s very expensive for a notebook but I really like the style.

Saturday, 24th December, 2022

Over the past couple of months I’ve been polishing my 2023 goals.

I’m worried it’s too many things. It’s remarkably like a list I found titled “2017 goals” and yet a lot of these things I don’t do. Some I do, so it’s not all new, and it’s more about maintaining a good cadence.

There’s also stuff I think about like simplifying, minimising, reducing choice, etc. These are things which make me wonder if there are too many things to try and do, or whether the focus should be about how to simplify across different areas. However this leads to lofty goals that are hard to define. Compared to reading in bed each night is easy to track.

Some of them are complimentary so 3 things might be accomplished in a single go.

Also wondered about a schedule of all this as it won’t just happen by itself.

My wife made some remarks about the rowing machine I bought in August…and haven’t used since October…

Friday, 23rd December, 2022

Finished work for Christmas at lunch today. The office tradition is just a half day on the last working day. Makes for efficient holiday usage!

Got a license for Microsoft Project on the web (the name is terrible but otherwise it gets confused with Microsoft Project the desktop app). It’s useful for what I need, and works nicely on the web and with Teams. It can do some basic maths with custom columns, although you have to do things the way it wants as there’s not much flexibility. Still doesn’t do exactly what I want, which I could do in a custom solution, but good enough for now.

Thursday, 22nd December, 2022

Almost the holidays now. Been looking for some software at work to track and manage everything. I want to try Microsoft Project web version, given we’re all Office 365 it makes sense to use a microsoft product. Even though I’d rather use something like Tinderbox, or Notion (but not Notion) or even a custom django setup, but no-one else will use it and I’d have to export to excel or some such.

I really want a columnar pad now.

You just need to have the courage to eliminate everything that doesn’t directly feed what you really want.

• James Clear

Happiness is simply the absence of desire

• James Clear

Guess what newsletter just arrived.

I feel Tim’s blog has become one of the greatest, unfortunately I think partially because of his terminal illness.

Wednesday, 21st December, 2022

absolutely no one but forums nerds give a rats ass about blown highlights or shadow details — Jack Baty

Using this crazy website, we saw the International Space Station fly over this morning at 7am. I was trying to listen to it but the frequency changes quite quickly when it passes over, due to doppler shift or whatever, so I was always one step behind. Seeing it was fun though. The boys liked it, although I think they were expecting a rocket ship, and not a bright dot in the sky move by.

Fortran is a relatively small language that is surprisingly easy to learn and use. Expressing most mathematical and arithmetic operations over large arrays is as simple as writing them as equations on a whiteboard. Fortran website

Sounds great!

Tuesday, 20th December, 2022

This looks like a really fun python project to follow along with. Render asteroids and calculate trajectories and all sorts. Add that to my list of things I’ll never do.

Monday, 19th December, 2022

Flipped the switch to the new Hugo blog after I copied over the old content. Turns out Hugo doesn’t like webp images (from my Wordpress days) but a quick Linux one liner with find and mogrify and they were all converted to jpegs. However, some images are rotated and my last post just will not appear. Have to look at that later.

These look fun

For a site that pronounces doting of tea, there is quite a lack of it around here. Been thinking about something like a random tea related quote at the top of the page. Like the little random Pokémon gifs (random on build, which is quite often as I commit a sentence here and there during the day). It does require collection them though.

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world

• Tien Yiheng

Sunday, 18th December, 2022

Writing this via a vscode.dev tunnel to my server at home. Was very easy to setup, install vs code, run code tunnel, authenticate, and then go. For me writing in static blogs it’s overkill, especially as I can just connect to the github repos in vscode.dev by pressing . when viewing the repo. However, if I was doing something more interesting and needed virtual environments or other things installed this is useful. Or if I want to edit files on my machine that I don’t want saved online and I don’t want to use vim over SSH, for example, then this is a nice way.

Given there’s all the plugins and so on I’m sure there’s a lot more I could do.

Went through a roll of HP5 at 800 ISO today whilst we were sledging. Was an overcast day, so felt appropriate. Just wonder if all the bright snow was too much for 800. It did mean that I could shoot f/8 at 250 and pretty much just point and shoot.

Saturday, 17th December, 2022

Christmas panto today. Always a little bit boring in the middle but the songs are fun. I have no idea what they’re saying when speaking Doric.

Finally setup my main blog with Hugo static site. It’s what I’ve actually been wanting to do for a long time, but just never got round to it. I’ve taken a detour through wordpress, ghost, tiddlywiki, blot, even micro.blog, but now it’s back as a static site. I do need to migrate old content over to it. It handles images much nicer than anything else I’ve had with static sites, so that’s good. Will it mean I write more on it? Probably not, but then Wordpress and Ghost didn’t make me write more and they’re the easiest ever.

Probably I only have enough time/effort to write in one place, and this usually takes it. It’s also a lot easier to write in. I just make a new page and type. No title, or tags, or summary or making a joined up post that makes sense. Here it’s just a new paragraph and that’s a new thought or item. Probably I should just migrate that blog HERE and be done with it. I worry about finding things again or other people’s impressions or thoughts about it. Why? No idea. But I do. I know it’s dumb, as no-one has bad thoughts about this site as no-one reads it 😅 I actually like regular blogs with categories and things for me to go back and look. But maybe that’s what the wiki should be for? Anyway the new ones is static, and that’s all that matters.

My half-sister will be 21 in January. Thought about trying to write some “life advice” that I wish someone told me when I was 21. But I worry I’ll be too boring.

I don’t do well reading non-fiction books. I’m on page 14 of my latest one that I bought a week ago. I keep having “so many other things to do”. Which is really just me making those things more important and reading it less important. I’m trying to read some more of it today by writing this on my ipad then PUTTING THE IPAD DOWN AND READING THE BOOK. 🙄

We’ll see how that ends out. Especially as I’ve had the thought about that letter and now I want to write out some notes for it, and then I wanted to watch the rest of that Russia documentary on BBC and then…………………

Friday, 16th December, 2022

A nice day working at home. Means I can have the radio on in the background, and proper cups of tea.

Having not worked at home in a while I don’t have an established setup. I tried using ticktick to make a list of things I should do today. Reminded me how I was all excited to use it, then never did. I ask myself “why can’t I be better at organising and managing work?”. But maybe that’s the wrong question. I feel like I’ve read something along those lines but now I don’t remember what a better question was. Maybe something like “what small action can I do that will help achieve this goal”.

Ticktick was easy to add stuff, and then if I don’t do it I can move it to later in the week or whenever. I just like seeing stuff in front of me on paper. But I can have a widget on my phone or tab open and then when I’m not in the office it doesn’t matter. I guess I should try harder…plus it’s almost the christmas holidays so why bother starting now :D

I did feel like trying to make a 2023 plan for work, but I like doing it with the team not just on my own.

Thursday, 15th December, 2022

Putting everything back into our kitchen makes me see how much stuff we have.

I had an inclining to setup a static blog for my main site. I then remember how much faff it actually is. In fact, doing anything with websites is a faff (except Tiddlywiki). So I’m just going to use this one as is and that’ll do for today. I still think I want a wordpress site, I just have to muster the energy to install it and then setup the theme and etc. Installing is probably the easy part.

I would like to use Tinderbox…but I don’t have a mac…

I’m thinking of doing a one month or maybe three months of “don’t buy anything” from January. Originally it was financially based but actually I think it’s material clutter. I also have a lot of things I’ve bought but not got round to doing whatever it is I was planning with it. Use what you have, or something like that.

I like the random tiddler button plugin. It’s like picking up a book and randomly flicking to a page. Sometimes you move on, other times you stop and read a bit and follow a trail. I sometimes miss having everything in tiddlywiki.

Our dryer broke last weekend and the repair man said he’s not a certified Beko repair engineer and therefore they won’t let him buy parts. So we have to get another to come out (who won’t take the other guy’s word for what’s wrong) and then they’ll order parts. Not hopeful that it’ll be working before christmas. Also how it is legal that only certified repairers can buy parts? No wonder people just buy new as it’s a hassle to get things repaired. Also it’s the control panel that’s broken, somehow it now automatically turns on the child lock when you turn it on so that nothing functions and the lock can’t be disabled. I did open it up and look but it’s just a chip and capacitors so not much to do. If only it ran linux.

I do really want to get rid of a lot of things. However, struggles include:

• it might come in handy later
• it’s perfectly functional so what am I going to do with it?
• not remembering why I bought it in the first place

I have this pinned on my wiki

Stop buying the unnecessary. Toss half your stuff, learn contentedness. Reduce half again. List 4 essential things in your life, do these first, stop doing the non-essential. Clear distractions, focus on each moment. Let go of attachment to doing, having more. Fall in love with less.

Wednesday, 14th December, 2022

Another snow day and this time I worked at home. Finally got some things done that have been lingering for a while. However, it amazes me how many people suddenly have things that need to be done this week ahead of Christmas. I can’t read and comment and do whatever on multiple 50 page documents…😅

Was lovely light this morning. One of those hipster views of a blue sky, with two house roofs covered in snow but one panel has sunlight and one panel is in the shade. I thought about taking a photo of it but I just enjoyed the view and then continued on my way.

Our kitchen is finally done. Well a couple of tiny things still outstanding but we can move everything back in now. It’s only been a month…

Sort of want a Sigma DP2, not the Merrill or Quattro one, just the regular one. Looks like a nice compact camera but with the unique Foveon sensor. Can’t find any available in the UK though so that’s that. Probably for the best.

Lots of school concerts at the moment. I feel my videoing kit is not adequate. A micro four thirds camera with the 75mm f/1.8 or the 35-100mm would be perfect about now…

Tuesday, 13th December, 2022

This is a cool TW site.

Monday, 12th December, 2022

As I was cycling to work this morning I decided how I wanted to manage the various blogs I have. I concluded something and was very happy with that choice. Now I don’t remember exactly what it was. I think I did conclude I should install Wordpress as a nice looking, easy to use, “traditional” blog. This site stays as a “chat with a cup of tea” style blog. However, this doesn’t seem like the epiphany that it felt like this morning, but maybe as that was due to the cold weather.

I remembered my private tiddlywiki that’s running on node, and went and looked in it. Seems like I set it up about this time last year. I was using it for work mostly. I was reading some of the original journal entries I made. Nice to see what I was thinking back then, I’m not sure what use it is but I liked that I did it. It is making me rethink dokuwiki vs. tiddlywiki for private stuff. Ideally I’d write each day’s thoughts then summarise it at the end of the week in a single tiddler, then a monthly summary, etc. In theory this should be easier to do on tiddlywiki with transclusion and filters etc. It would also be good for me to solely use tiddlywiki in public and private as then I only have to learn one software, plus I can even drag and drop tiddlers between the two.

Am tempted to start from a blank TW for ~2023, with maybe a few mods…

Dynalist is so quick to add some thing to. I have a few core lists and there are so few steps to adding to it, regardless of where I am - phone, computer, ipad. I’m now wondering about if it should be the place for keeping information. One example of this is books I’d like to read. Everywhere else it’s multiple clicks, or searches and editing files. Dynalist, I just open it, click on the note, click the end, hit enter and paste or type. Maybe that sounds a lot but tiddlywiki it’s: open the browser, go to the tab, or enter the URL (wait for it to load), either click add a new tiddler, write/paste in the details, add a tag and accept. OR search for a book list, click the arrow and then edit, go to the end, enter, paste, accept. I could make an easier entry system for it in tiddlywiki but that’s just one item/type of item. I’m not really going to make multiple custom ones. If I’m doing TW properly I should have a tiddler with fields that I populate info in, which then isn’t a straight cut and paste. Anyway. Dynalist. Think about it.

Sunday, 11th December, 2022

Started playing in dokuwiki again. It’s so straight forward. I also like having big single pages on topics vs. lots of little pages. Lots of little ones are handy to drop stuff into, like tiddlywiki when I add a random site or bit of information, however, I’m not very good at making a system so I then see this information. It’s not the fault of the software but of mine. So single pages make me see stuff more often. I also think it forces me to organise information as I go. The only downside with this is then the hesistation I have with deciding the structure of the wiki or if something should go here or there. In theory I should put it in the first place I think of, as later it’ll be in the first place I think of.

Not sure about making it my blog though. Maybe just leave it as a random place for me, perhaps the wiki will migrate to it.

We went out to a nice castle grounds this morning. I should’ve taken my camera as it was brilliant sunshine and the snow on the grounds made everything sparkle. However, I was grumpy and didn’t take anything - then regretted it. After my rush of black and white home developing I’ve only finished a single roll in about 2 months. I should develop it and that might encourage me to use some more.

It appears on every leadership book recommendation, so I’ve started reading “Turn the Ship Around!” By L. David Marquet, former nuclear submarine commander. I sat on the sofa in the kitchen reading it but only read about 5 pages as everyone kept coming and talking to me. When I sit in the office on the computer (wasting my life away) no-one bothers me as I’m out of the way. I can’t read in the office as the computer calls to me like a siren luring sailors to destruction by the sweetness of her song.

I still visit ikiwiki with fondness (and consider setting up another site with it). I liked some of the neat features - such as showing the site’s git history, as a built-in recent changes.

Saturday, 10th December, 2022

Still thinking about getting rid of Ghost. Still between Wordpress and static site. Still wondering about static book style sites. Still done nothing.

Also running around my head is having a private wiki/journal that’s also part of my main site so that I’m “just in one place”. I like reading web sites, even for my own content. Not sure what it means in terms of architecture though.

Friday, 9th December, 2022

There are so many interesting things in radio that people have done, that I can also do if I invest the time to figure it all out. This one on aircraft scatter is interesting - use airplanes flying overhead to extend your radio transmission! This also led me to looking at making your own aircraft radar using software defined radio and picking up ADS-B signals.

The problem is, there are just so many I have no idea where to start first. I read and read and read stuff then confuse myself even more or don’t have any time to actually do anything as I keep looking at more stuff!

Thursday, 8th December, 2022

I seem to be getting loads of spam coming through to my inbox with gmail. Seems like something has changed on the filtering. I keep marking them as spam but no change.

Snow here today. ☃️ Not a frequent occurrence so lots of excitement.

Still thinking about Wordpress, but not done anything about it. Also still thinking about binning the other blog. I had flashbacks to drummer and slight twangs of “if only I could just use that”. I suppose I could add pictures here if I wanted.

I’ve been watching a lot of Radio Society of Great Britain videos.

The new VS Code CLI tool allows you to setup a connection to your device to then access it anywhere, including vscode.dev. This seems like it could replace hosted stuff. I’m also wondering if it can be somehow useful for blogging/wiki management.

Wednesday, 7th December, 2022

Passed my foundation ham licence exam this morning! 📻 Wasn’t pleasant. I was hoping for a lot more maths and electronics questions but it was all rules and regs and craftily worded questions on them. Anyway, did it. Now to figure out what I’m actually going to do with it once it arrives.

My friend passed his a couple of months ago and has just bought a nice radio, power supply and antenna. I’ve made a note of what he has and will see how he gets on with it. I just have a little handheld radio for now, which does pick up the local repeater but not sure anyone would hear me with the tiny antenna it has.

I get to pick my foundation callsign, it’ll be MM7xxx where xxx is what I can chose. Lots are already taken but maybe there’s something relevant that I can think of.

Tuesday, 6th December, 2022

This site uses flexbox to control the elements on the page. I want to make some changes but I really don’t understand it. I’ve read some guides but still not entirely clear how I make it do what I want. Teaches me for making it too complex from the start, and then not writing down what I learnt back then.

Monday, 5th December, 2022

The camera store replied to me about the lens. Very unhelpful tbh. They might still turn out to be useful but they offer zero information, also they couldn’t possibly do anything until after Christmas.

As it’s a fixed hood the lens would need to go back either to Leica or a Leica specialist to get this sorted

All it makes me want to do is buy the part in America, screw the single screw in myself, and then sell it. I’ll see what they say as maybe they’ll cover some of the cost under the “warranty”. Given there are no published terms for this warranty I suspect the answer will be nothing whatsoever. Maybe they’d pay for the hood to be reattached, but a new one would be on me. That I wouldn’t mind.

Leica themselves said it would cost £250 if they did it with a new hood.

More ChatGPT fun.

Debating about Wordpress or not. 🧠💭😵 but then that makes me want to go off and find some obscure blog/site generator thing on Github that a random has built. Or some weird service like kinopio.

I did find this. A way to push github content to Neocities via actions. I’ve thought about keeping a random site on neocities, and this could help with deployment.

Even better is a tiddlywiki saver to neocities!

This rabbit trail has led to seeing a mkdocs theme that even caters for blogging…

Snuday, 4th December, 2022

M10 refund being processed. Now just to sort out the 50mm lux’s front hood part. Weirdly just fell off and the screw was nowhere to be seen, although an absolutely tiny one. Seems strange how it can come out though? Emailed the store I purchased it from to see if they can get a replacement. The problem now is that I don’t really want to use the lens as there’s nothing around the front element, it sticks out a little and I know it’s going to touch something. Also the lens cap is held on by the hood so without that I can’t cover it either. Guess it’s staying at home unless I’m posting it off somewhere to be fixed.

Quite liking jupyter book for a collection of markdown pages. Can do a little heriarchy in the side bar and then just have various files. It can do a lot more with actual notebooks but don’t really have a need. Maybe redundant with the wiki, but I can navigate quicker to these things, and keep all the random other stuff away from it. Even found out you can set it so you can run code on the page without leaving via some javascript.

I like the look of dokuwiki, but also changing it is not straight forward. It’s also one of these older pieces of software where probably everyone who uses it doesn’t care what it looks like and are very content with the default look. This means the available themes are pretty poor or not mobile friendly etc. the top rated one is essentially a stock bootstrap, fine but I’d rather have the default. Anyway all this means I’m not sure I want to use it for everything. It shouldn’t matter but I like having a little bit of an influence on the look of my main website.

I’m thinking about Wordpress instead of ghost for the main blog. Not exactly sure why I need to. Even considered Wordpress.com hosting.

Watching someone play through the new steam version of dwarf fortress, together with the creators. It’s funny watching them discover the excruciating detail that df goes into. I also really like the new UI. It makes it so much more approachable than the original. I like the original, although play it with the lazy newb pack for some sanity. I hope the keyboard bindings are the same as the original though as some of them are hard to unlearn. It’s very much a modal game, with sequence of keys to issue commands and organise your fort. I’m excited to play the new one, and to get back into the game. So much detail. It reminded me that a friend and I used to play a year each and email the save world to each other. Whilst the other person was playing we’d write up a little story of our year on a tumblr blog. I copied all the entries from it and made it into a static site - which still exists. Wow it was a long time ago that we played.

Saturday, 3rd December, 2022

I like this set of questions to ask when buying things. There’s a lot of good stuff on that forum. I need to extract it into a usable fashion. I could throw it in the wiki but TW doesn’t surface stuff naturally unless I program it to, and that never happens. Maybe a simple one page of links to key tiddlers might do it.

Seems the whole family has a terrible cough. Including me. 😷

Started looking at static blogs last night. I like the Congo theme Jack uses, so probably use that (if I do anything) and just change the colour scheme so it’s different 😅

Thursday, 2nd December, 2022

Work christmas do today. Was 12-4:30 which is surreal when you get outside. The entertainment was this guy dressed as santa who could absolutely belt out songs. He was incredible. He looked like you or I yet had an incredible voice.

Imagine if I spent £4,000 on books.

Really need to finish my family’s Christmas presents so I can post them. Not sure what I’m getting everyone and end up just getting stuff. Although edible things, so at least not adding to the clutter of this world.

I berate myself for playing computer games, as they’re “a waste of time”, and yet what do I end up doing? I tell you. Finding a never ending list of things that I could buy, then watching videos on them to justify to myself why I need to buy them.

The fuji 60mm lens is clearly not popular as mine has been for sale for ages. No-one even makes offers.

Thursday, 1st December, 2022

It’s gone. At the post office waiting for Royal Mail to come off strike and pick it up tomorrow. There’s a tiny nagging feeling that the camera store is going to somehow reject my return. They’re not Amazon who’ll basically take anything, but I packed it up exactly how it came, and it’s identical to as I received it.

I don’t feel sad or happy about it specifically, just the same. I guess I never had it for that long.

Onwards.

Off work today…what should I do…

I actually did quite a few chores and a little christmas prep. So now I get to sit on the computer and waste the rest of the afternoon until it’s my daughter’s birthday tea.

Maybe as it’s the 1st of December and 2023 is about here, and I’ve been thinking of New Year’s resolutions and etc. but I am wondering about this article.

I’ve long been a fan of dwarf fortress. Next week a new version is being released on Steam. I’ll probably buy it to support the developer who’s been working on this for years and years. I just installed the free version again, can’t remember anything but I so want to dive into this and emerge in about 3 months time.