Thursday, 7th December, 2023

Wrote a blog post about my first year in amateur radio. Starting it at 10:30 at night probably wasn’t a good idea. I tried to capture a bit about what I want to do in year 2 and the general theme was trying to pace myself and make time for other things.

Try not to get carried away and want to buy loads of stuff, use what I have, make things from scratch - which will take longer but be part of the fun too.

Be nice to get back to some other things, like film photography, or even just more digital.

Daughter’s homework was using the micro.bit and making a program. Conveniently, I have a microbit in my box of random SBC and so she could load her program on it! I left her to it when kids took the boys to football, so hopefully she got it all working. They have a good website where you can write the programs in a scratch like interface, it generates a hex file and you just drop it on the folder that pops up when you plug it into the computer. It even has Bluetooth and tablet apps which makes it very accessible.

Perhaps I should print a box for the bit!

I’m keen to do some electronics projects. I did buy a strip of LEDs that you can program with WLED. They arrived today from Aliexpress. Not sure what I’m going to do, but I’ll play about with it for fun and maybe one of the kids will like it and want it in their room or something. There’s always Christmas related lighting. I think it can react to audio, but not sure exactly how that works.

Also want to print a frame for my eink display and finally set something up on that…after owning it for 2 or 3 years…!

Last night I watched a documentary on the making of Eve Online. A space MMO that I used to play 10+ years ago. It’s an incredible game, not because of the game itself but because of the community who play it. Thought about writing a blog post on my memories of playing it. The documentary talked about how there are so many stories that will never be told from the game and it made me think that I should tell mine. Or at least the parts I can remember. I first started playing it in 2004, just a few months after it was released. I’ve not played it in 10+ years now and probably will never play it again but I’ll remember the experience forever.

Would I like to relive it? Maybe, but it was also my life at the time and I’ve changed and so I don’t think it would be the same.

This was when I was meant to be deciding on Christmas presents for my family and maybe/hopefully ordering some things online. However, I did nothing. I really should do it this weekend at the latest. 😬

I like buying people gifts but I don’t like the time pressure of Christmas.

At the boys football. It’s about 25 6 year old boys, and a couple of girls, and 5 dads coaching. It’s bordering on absolute chaos. But they like it.