Wednesday, 27th November, 2024

I was doing well with Christmas shopping but now I’ve ground to a halt, and I can’t be bothered. I only need a few people plus some more things for my wife’s birthday just after Christmas. I need to post things off too (and wrap them) but it’ll be December soon and time is slipping away. Maybe one evening I’ll kick into life.

I got a different boss back in October and that seemed to end my weekly summary emails I’d write. This also meant I stopped making the weekly summary notes for myself. Now I don’t know what I did.

Saturday, 23d November, 2024

Feel like I have a lot of things to do but no time and then when I have time I can’t be bothered doing anything.

I want to buy so many things but really, none are necessary. They vary from Harry Potter Hogwart’s Express lego train to Apple Watch Ultra 2, to a really fancy morse code keyer, oh and also bone headphone things for cycling - which is probably the most useful given I do that pretty much everyday to work.

Speaking of which, I’m all setup now to learn…just need to start…

Actually I did a little, and it’s nice using the Morserino away from the computer - it’s nice being away from the computer in general. My worry is that I’m learning it the “wrong” way. I know the key thing is keep the speed up so you’re recognising noises not counting .s and -s, which I’m doing. What I should do is get a pad of paper, and let the thing beep away and I try and copy it all. People also say to keep a log of what, when and how you did. Ideally to see progress but maybe to also see issues.

Well I’m organising my SOTA summits spreadsheet so I have an itinerary of every local summit from leaving the house to back home again. So I can type in my start time and know when I’ll be home. Once that’s done for all the summits (there are 87 in my region but more that are local), I can bucket them into categories like “can do on school day and be back for pick up” or needs “5am start and 12 hours of sun” (!), etc. I’ve also paired them with ones you’d typically do together, but also calculated the time if I were just to do one. There’s one big route I still have to do, and likely it won’t be until the spring at the earliest, and then I’ll have done all the big ones and have confidence in all the summits locally. Be nice to have a big reference, and then I think once I’ve done them all, I’ll publish a big list, e.g. the guide to GM/ES.

All but one have gone to the cinema to see Wicked. The one will be mad when she finds out but she did just go to a birthday party.

Thursday, 21st November, 2024

Was working at home today as one of the boys was unwell. Probably have to be home tomorrow too. Not to sound uncaring but I was really hoping I could go out hill climbing tomorrow. We’ve had a dump of snow, but tomorrow is meant to be sunny and still, which would be ideal. It’s also frustrating as last Friday the kids were off school as it was closed for teacher training and so I couldn’t go out then either…and the kids weren’t great so we couldn’t all go out together.

I’ve not got my Morserino, and had a little play with it. It’s a very clever and neat device. I guess I should be learning morse now…but instead I sit here and do nothing on the computer. Literally going “I don’t know what to do, there’s nothing in my youtube feed that I care about, and I have no interest in any websites.” Really I should move away from the computer and do something else. Maybe even just go to bed and read now.

Or I should read the Morserino manual so I can, presumably, sit elsewhere (without a computer) and learn it. Ideally with some headphones perhaps.

Maybe I should use tomorrow to setup my home station again. I was going to do something new but perhaps I just put back up what there was.

There’s a store that sells quite quirky home gifts - ideal for parents. However, after a few years of buying things there, there isn’t really anything new and I don’t like the things I’ve not bought, unsurprisingly. Perhaps that’s also what I should do tomorrow, go and do christmas shopping. This then puts me in a misery where I start thinking “why don’t I agree with my family not to buy any gifts for each other”. Then everyone will be happy. Except I know they won’t like that.

I reckon in about 3 months this site will have 1/4 million words written in it. This is assuming I get back int othe habit of writing most days, and since October I’ve been more erratic. But the good thing is this site is always here for me. It’s also pretty simply built. I have a folder per year, a folder per month and one page per day called the date. Everything else is automatically done for me by Github and Jekyll. The templates are also simple. It does use an add-on to make the archives but if that fails, it’s not the end of the world. Probably you can recreate that with pure jekyll, and perhaps a little bit of manual stuff. Anyway, it hasn’t broken - probably because most of the jekyll stuff is dead and never gets upgraded. So there aren’t new features to break old things (cough cough Hugo cough).

Monday, 18th November, 2024

Snowing today. First time here this winter. Weather is okay this week except for strong winds, so not sure if I’ll go out. I don’t mind cold but wind is just a pain. I’ll see how the forecast changes.

I should make use of the bad weather and go do my Christmas shopping. I’ll be annoyed with myself if there are lovely sunny, still days in December and I have to go shopping. But equally this could be the nicest weather and it just gets worse!

Started the shopping online. Hopefully I can finish soon enough. Although it’s the wife’s birthday in early Jan so have to make sure I have enough for that as well.

Started looking at morse courses online. There’s the CWops academy which do a two month course with meetings twice a week. Only problem with that is the times in the evening aren’t great for me. I want it to be 8-9 or 9-10 but they only do 7-8 or 10-11. Not sure why but perhaps depends on the advisors and what they want to do. Their course is Jan-Feb.

There’s another one run by the Long Island CW club, it’s more informal and you drop into sessions as a when, but they have lots of them. That is more convenient but I suspect less likely to get results than the intensive two month course.

Saturday, 16th November, 2024

Had to cancel my dad visiting today as most of the kids are ill. In some ways I’m relieved as it’s always hard work.

Picked up a second hand Morserino now. Let’s see if I actually do anything with it or it just sits on the shelf like the other SBC based projects… 😅

Had to calibrate my radio yesterday as people reported I was off frequency. You can use a signal generator (don’t have one) or tune into some standard frequency broadcasts. There’s a time broadcast from the USA which is called WWV. They broadcast on 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 MHz and announce the time. I couldn’t hear any of them when I tried. I think later at night makes it possible to hear it on 5 or 10 MHz. I thought I could hear a carrier signal on 10 and so tried to use that to calibrate the radio - but this just ended up with me being wildly out of calibration!

A friend said as I have two radios I can just transmit into a dummy load and the radio next to it would still receive it. So now I could test easily myself and just adjusted the settings until I was close enough. Seems to work now.

Told another ham friend about it and he had the same issue with his.

Friday, 15th November, 2024

I’ve been looking at this Morserino kit thing that’s for learning CW (morse code). Really it’s just me wanting to buy this thing vs actually going to learn. I should learn as it would make SOTA much more interesting with small radios.

Thursday, 14th November, 2024

I should look up some best ideas for sore muscles, as I woke up in the night as my legs were aching and felt hot! Perhaps ice baths or something…

Wednesday, 13th November, 2024

Did my big hike, and chose the sensible option of the shorter (still about 20 miles!) which was good because it did take me longer than expected and the weather wasn’t that great in the morning. Very windy which made everything a hassle. By the time I was cycling back from the summits it was a lovely day with blue skies 😅 Tired though and my quads are burning!

Monday, 11th November, 2024

I’m off out again this Wednesday to the mountains. There’s been a patch of high pressure over the UK for ages now and it’s kept things much warmer and pleasant. I think that’s going to end this weekend, and with the ever darkening days I think this could be my last chance for a big trip out - ie. multiple summits.

I can’t decide where I should go though. There’s two options - one is two big 10 pointers, on quite a long route that even if I can get to the car park for first light, still only just gets me back to the car about 45 minutes before sunset. People are telling me it’s too much to do and better for a summer’s day (or spring even). The only option to overcome this is by staying in a bothy at the foot of the mountain, then I get an hour’s headstart. But I have to stay in a hut at the bottom of the mountain overnight…not sure about that one.

People telling me I can’t do it, is really making me want to do it, to prove them wrong. Which is dumb and probably dangerous…but I still want to. The only thing is that I always feel like I’m rushing when doing multiple summits, and don’t have time to enjoy it, and I’m just obsessed with the points. My big push is to see if I can get to 200 by the end of the year. I’m on 139 right now, it took me from May to October to get my first 100.

The other route has more flex in the time, still two decent sized summits, but 2 points less (lol I know). Although potentially I could squeeze in another 4 pointer and get 2 more! If I have enough time - although working out if I have enough time on the day isn’t always straight forward. I suppose I should have a “if it’s xx:xx or earlier then you can go for it”.

I could leave home earlier, or stay in the hostel in the village, but it doesn’t help as it’s dark until about 7am. That wouldn’t be too bad but the first part is cycling and that’s more risky than walking in the twilight.

However, as people tell me, the mountains will still be there, and I do enjoy going on the radio and not just doing the bare minimum. I tell myself I’ll race up the points, then next time I’ll enjoy it but in all likelihood I’ll just keep doing the same until I get to 1,000 then never bother again. That’s probably not true, I will keep going but doing interesting ones or alternative routes etc.

The weather is looking nice, and whilst not perfect on Wednesday, is good and I should make the most of it…which pushes me back to the big route again 😅

I did a big walk last wednesday then a single summit on Friday. Friday was enjoyable as I was on the radio for around an hour or so. More than I’d timetabled but I was quicker up than planned.

I did want to try and do all 10 pointers in the region before the end of the year but I just don’t have the time and I’ve left it too late, but, you know, what’s the rush?

Well I need to decide by tomorrow evening, so I know what I’m doing. I think the smaller route plus a 4 pointer might be straight forward too, but not as spectacular - although setting up three times can be tiresome too! haha….bed time I think.

Saturday, 9th November, 2024

Two of my radio mountain friends have been building / customising Land Rover Defenders. I won’t lie and say I don’t want one now.

Tuesday, 5th November, 2024

My objective is to get Phil licensed for amateur radio 😅.

Saturday, 2nd November, 2024

Daughter has been watching Lord of the Rings for the first time. I have the extended +++ version on Plex but the audio was stuttering. There aren’t really many settings to play with and I couldn’t figure it out. So we got out the bluray version my wife has. Unsurprisingly, it works perfectly…

There must be lots of used dvd/blurays out there which are good value…or even new ones…I should try picking up favourites.

Which is funny as about 10-12 years ago I went through the effort of converting all our media onto the computer to play with plex.

Oh it’s November so stores have already started their early Black Friday promotions… the U.K. forgets it’s not celebrating Thanksgiving…but I suppose everyone likes cheap TVs…

Friday, 1st November, 2024

Been on two good hikes, always feels good. Out in the open and with no one but the wilds.

Hoping to get out twice next week, the weather is decent and still quite mild, hoping to go up a big mountain but we’ll see how the weather turns out plus work schedule.

New Mac mini? Every generation I’ve said I’d get the next one as my Mac, and now the latest one it’s out. I’m not sure what I’d use it for…Apple photos but I dunno.