Sunday, 18th May, 2025

Trying to migrate my other blog to BSSG. It’s hard to resist wanting to fiddle with things. It’s also hard to fiddle things as it’s quite baked into the scripts. I should just take it as it comes and actually write stuff vs. fiddling with structure.

This turned into errors and issues which have mostly put me off BSSG for now. I did raise an issue, so I’ll see if that comes back to me. However, this all led me down the well visited path of “what static site gen should I use?”, looking at classic like jekyll (what this site uses), Hugo (great but stuff seems to break everytime I update it), 11ty (I want to use it but also don’t want to spend a week figuring out how), then a myraid of little custom SSGs, like BSSG, that people have made and ultimately doing nothing but wasting the whole evening. Then I think maybe I should just use Tiddlywiki to make a site.

Should’ve just played some more GTA V…or caught up with the radio SOTA activations, or planned some more routes…🙄

Bid on a typewriter….then later retracted the bid. I have two, I don’t use them, I don’t need more.

I also remembered about ikiwiki…I wonder if my install is still somewhere…

Saturday, 17th May, 2025

Well the Atari went down very well, which is great. The boy spent ages playing with all the software and set it up and is very excited. I’m glad someone is using it.

I’m trying to get into BSSG to rebuild my other site. Just figuring it out and then I need to migrate my old content.

I want to buy more typewriters.

Friday, 16th May, 2025

Had an email yesterday saying ISP was going to do maintenance. Last time this happened we didn’t have internet for three days whilst I tried to get our case escalated, for them to fix it in one second. Surprise surprise, we wake up to the same thing this morning. So now I’ll have to go through the same song and dance again. I’m hoping I can point them to my last case and get them to escalate quicker. Still will have to do the “turn it off and on” etc. first though.

I was out walking on Wednesday and on my way back to the car I saw a spot by an old lady hill walker/radio operator. She only does VHF, which id struggled with in the day. However I didn’t take my radio out my bag because (a) I was late getting back to the car and wanted to press on and (b) I had no idea where her hill was and assumed it was miles away. Turns out she didn’t get any contacts on the hill, and maybe I could’ve been one. I feel bad I didn’t take 30 seconds to get the radio out and listen whilst walking.

I’m giving the Atari 1040STE to a friend at work for his son who’s very much into retro computing. I’ve done nothing with it for the last 9 months and it’s just clutter. It’s better as nostalgia in my mind than actually using. The boy has recently installed all versions of windows from 3.11 up in virtual machines as he’s interested in old OSs. Plus the hackerspace has about 5 Ataris should I suddenly have the need for one.

Thursday, 15th May, 2025

I came to update actual budget by syncing my accounts but that didn’t work. That’s okay as the authentication usually expires after 3 months and you renew it. However it still didn’t work. I think that happened last time but I don’t remember what I did to fix it. So I thought I’d restart the service. Well docker was complaining about services. Maybe people removed the latest tag on containers? This was whilst at work and then I had to do some work, so I never finished it. I should finish it. Also thought about migrating all the docker containers to lxc using the proxmox scripts but then Id just be replacing one system that I only partially know with another one. Really I should minimise things I use.

Keep thinking about sorting out all my servers and VPSs and just consolidating them. Perhaps to my home server? My websites are static on GitHub or somewhere so I don’t need to host them, everything hosted is just for my use.

So many chores though. So I’ll just leave it and do nothing.

Sometimes I go a long time between writing stuff on this site and actually reading it. I often write on 1Writer on my phone when I’m somewhere and have downtime. I think git push it (using a Shortcut) and Github does the rest. Then one day I randomly browse to my site and enjoy reading what I’ve written, plus I like the look of it. There are still things I’d like to tweak…such as some minimum nav bar to visit the other pages as I don’t remember them without looking at the repo for what files I have. But I sort of like that too. Seems like this month I wrote my longest post to date. Thanks stats page.

Monday, 12th May, 2025

I’ve not started but I think I’m done with rock tumbling. Maybe I’m over thinking it. Maybe I don’t need to build my own tumbler and should just buy the £30 used national geographic one from eBay. I’d like to know stuff about rocks, and when we go to a beach people ask me what things are and I go “oh that’s a gherfledoohabah” and they coo.

The other day I asked ChatGPT for hobby suggestions. I don’t really need more things to fill my time but I was just curious. It didn’t suggest anything interesting. So I opened up eBay and looked at typewriters and now eBay sellers are offering my discounts on endless typewriters.

Maybe I should just do normal things. Like read a book, or develop black and white film. Probably using a radio on a hill is random enough for one person.

Enjoying GTA V. I’ve mostly forgotten the story, so it’s like watching a movie but you play. Like how computer games have been forever. Also stops me mindless browsing the internet looking for solutions to problems that don’t exist.

Oh I guess I could learn morse code.

Then Jack shared this post about emacs. Which is me before using emacs. However, I’ve looked this way before and always chosen not to go down this route. In the past I’ve maybe walked 100m down the road but then turned around and gone back. I’ve install Doom and various other starter kits, I’ve read a few pages of the manual and done some tutorials. I’ve acquired books and not read them. Articles like this mean I pass by the start of that road occasionally, I think of grand journeys and wild adventures and all the things that road could lead to. Then I look at my watch and think “it’s not time” and move on. I have a reasonable system setup - mostly around VS Code. I don’t really write much, and I don’t use text editors at work (except logseq for notes). So whilst there is some capacity to use emacs, I’m not really sure what for, other than to learn and “enjoy” emacs itself. Oh and to use some of the greatest software ever written that’s older than me, but I don’t need it.

Sunday, 11th May, 2025

I eventually stopped faffing about with websites, installed GTA V, and started playing. Except then it was 10:30pm and I went to bed late! 😴 Somewhat recently they released an enhanced edition, so I installed that. Not quite sure if I can tell the difference, or maybe it’s becoming old enough that your memory of it is much better resolution than what it actually was. I should look it up, maybe need settings adjustments.

I bought it when it first came out but never finished the story. The first time round I somehow ended up in the situation where no more missions appeared and I couldn’t progress. Or perhaps I did something wrong. Next time round I stopped for some reason…can’t remember why, maybe distracted by something else then it was too long to come back to. I do remember getting annoyed at remembering all the missions again and finding them boring. I’ve only done a couple so far and I only vaguely remembered them so it’s not too bad. Until I think of something productive to do, I like playing the game as it’s engaging. We will see how long it lasts.

The weather has been lovely and I’m missing going hill walking. I’m scheduled Wednesday off to go out and I still have my Friday off. Friday’s have turned into poor days to go out as I have to be back for school pick up or at best (for me) about 4:30pm, but this is rare as depends if my wife can pick up. As I’ve nearly done everything close to my house it’s soon getting difficult to go out and be back in time. So I’ve been thinking about swapping the day to another when I can get back at 5pm. Probably no one at work cares if I still get everything done and so I’d like to swap to Tuesday this week but as I’m also having Wednesday off I worry it’ll somehow be frowned upon. But the weather is meant to be lovely…and I have the vets on Friday morning.

GTA V also reminds me of when we lived in California, as it was basically the same area, Bakersfield, LA, and the coast there.

Saturday, 10th May, 2025

I’ve listed that 2m amp I fixed. Admittedly for a stupid price but that’s as I can’t decide if I want to sell it or not.

Also can’t decide if I should by a tumbler or make one. Making one is becoming more expensive! Although I think I have to make a 3 barrel one to make it cost effective.

This evening has been a disappointment. Looked at tiddlywiki things for a while…thinking I could use it as a single site, but then looking at it again and remembering why I haven’t done that before. Then mindlessly looking at static site generators. I don’t really want to make more websites, I want to make fewer. Should’ve written up the SOTA activations instead. Maybe I should just add non-radio blog posts to my radio blog. There’s not going to be that many tbh.

Didn’t order any tumbler parts…keep thinking a reasonably priced used one is going to show up and then get it, or also that I’ll have to spend a fortune on grit and various things, only to then be bored of it immediately. “Cool shiny rocks. Now what?”.

Friday, 9th May, 2025

I’d like this blog to be my main one… but I worry I’ll ruin it somehow by doing that. I don’t really want to waste time looking at other static generators and themes etc. to then not like any of them. I suppose I could just move back the quarto blog I had. Ugh I don’t know. I’d also like the radio posts to be part of it. Although that site has established itself as a standalone blog and I think I should leave it that way.

I also thought about importing everything into tiddlywiki and seeing how that looked.

Time for another cup of tea. ☕️

Thursday, 8th May, 2025

I got distracted the other night (haha) and made a little web app for finding unactivated POTA (parks on the air) sites. Other people have made these and better ones but I also found out some had data errors and ended up scripting a search across 10,000s sites worldwide to make a list and report it to the organisers.

What was I doing?

This guy has some really interesting projects, and very well documented online. A guy a work is building the 5600 synth, and this led me to the site.

Think I’ve decided on the tumbling barrels - using 110mm soil pipe and end caps. Although the same guy at work has a national geographic tumbler and said just buy that. But that’s no fun. I should order the parts so I can make it this weekend.

I was reading the thread on Forever Notes system on mpu, and it makes me want to get a Mac. It’s because it reminds me of how useful a Mac is out of the box for people. Windows may have gotten slightly better but it was really only an OS and not an ecosystem. Perhaps it used to be better with MS Works that often came with computers but it’s not useful as is. You can pretty much go everything with the stock apps. Now you probably don’t want to but I think that fact sets the bar high for 3rd party apps and why they’re often so good.

I want a Mac because I want my computer to be useful and not a collection of random shit that is sort of fine. The problem always comes back to that I don’t have “my” computer. It’s mine but everyone uses it, and I don’t think they care or want to use a Mac. So then I go down the rabbit hole of laptop or Mac mini and KVMs or VNC or etc. and then things just start to fall apart. I could try out just using an iPad. My iPad has been acquired by my daughter and has basically been destroyed after it fell on the garage floor but even before then it was sticky and yuk. Now I’ve abandoned it. In fact I should probably reset it and set it up on her account…then at least she can’t authorise things for herself and still be constrained by screen time. So she’ll love that.

Of course the real issue is that I don’t really need it. Or use half the stuff. I also want to spend less time on a computer. I’m not sure I really have that many notes for a system. I usually just add a new note and have one big list.

Tuesday, 6th May, 2025

Off with the kids today as it’s in service day. Lovely weather and slightly annoyingly were over subscribed with friends and activities and the boys want to play at the skate park all day but we have to leave. Oh well better than everyone fighting at home.

Cats got neutered yesterday, all fine but the body suit for the girl lasted 10 minutes and so now she has nothing. They want to go outside but can’t and so are going crazy. Managed to give her the medicine this morning, probably need to order more Dreamies treats for further medicine!

Up late looking at rock tumblers. A couple of old looking ones on eBay, that I might get, mostly for the rubber tumblers. I’ve not priced up the grit to see how much I’m going to be spending. Pricing up my home build one doesn’t actually seem to be cheaper than a bought one, and I mean a quality one from the US not a crappy knock off. So now I’m torn. Mostly the cost is that tumbler containers aren’t cheap and I can’t find any used ones.

Unrelatedly but also relatedly (in my head) is that I should restart my old blog. So then I can post about rock tumbling. Except I won’t. I think building my own will be more rewarding.

I should do something…maybe I’ll order the parts tonight. I don’t even have any rocks.

We went to the beach this afternoon and we collected some rocks. I can guarantee you, I have no idea what I’m looking for. So we’ll see.

Monday, 5th May, 2025

Think I might make my own rock tumbler. The ones sold in the UK are a bit rubbish or extremely expensive. The most recommended ones are sold in the US and whilst they are a reasonable price, with shipping I bet they’re not at all. Plus building one wil be fun. It’s just a motor and rods with a frame. A friend suggested I could control it with a rpi or ardunio, but given it just turns on for a week at a time that seems excessive and extra scope I’ll never make! I can tell myself I’ll add it later - and won’t but that won’t matter, probably I’ll have got bored by then anyway.

Saturday, 3rd May, 2025

The garage/radio shack area really needs a good sorting out and tidying. It’s so inefficiently packed that I bet I could store all the stuff in half the space. I really want to free up some more desk top space to actually build stuff there. Or have one area for a project in progress and another area clear for quick things. Like I’m soldering this NinoTNC for packet radio, and that’s been on my desk in the office for months making a huge mess. Also tempting fate for items to get lost. Be nice to have a space for that to sit whilst I chip away at it and then work on other stuff. Perhaps even soldering one side and other work the other side. I’d also like a pillar drill but not sure there’s space for that. There is one at the hackerspace but that’s a 25 minute drive and not always in the mood to drive for nearly an hour to drill a hole.

If I am going to get into tumbling, I’ll need space for all that stuff too and it would be nice to have space ready for the containers etc. I think a few stacking boxes for the shelves will help with that.

Possibly even tidy away the film developer stock I have 👀.

Perhaps I’ll ask ChatGPT a good sorting method for amateur radio detritus and see what it suggests…adapters, components, wire, built stuff, portable, cables…so many cables…

Then I can clear up the office, which I want to get more shelves for to put books or lego or whatever up high.

Took the new/old radio out yesterday with the notion of doing lots of 2m but I’m not sure I had it setup correctly and I had to use my handheld…which made bringing the radio and battery etc annoying. Usually it’s just is it wide or narrow FM and I’m sure I checked that several times. But when you’re on a summit, sometimes you don’t think clearly. I should probably plug it in at home and listen in to the lunchtime net to make sure it does work. Or maybe enlist the kids to transmit (quietly) from the garden.

So many things to do. 📋

This afternoon and evening I sorted out the garage and radio shack. Well most of it, the workbench and drawers at least. The shelves haven’t been touched but they’re fine for just now. So I now have two spaces on the work top, one is where the soldering will sit, as I talked about this morning, and the other is just a general work area. The radios are in a drawer, antenna too, all sorted out. I threw away a few things but not much, mostly it was just packing it away more efficiently to use the space better. It would be handy to have a computer in here. I started thinking about setting something up, or wondering about having a laptop and then plugging into a monitor - that would probably be a good option. However, I do have the server in here right now. I could just connect a monitor to it. I’d probably want to reinstall and not run proxmox, although probably I could run a VM and then connect the monitor to it or something. It could be my Linux workstation for doing stuff, and then when I’m elsewhere I can just remote into it, either VNC at home or SSH when away and everything would be there. I’d probably want to move all the services elsewhere, perhaps on to the wyse box I bought. Notionally that was for the radio but I feel like I’ll never use it for the radio. Plus I’d be better off going down the rpi route as that could then mean I would use the touchscreen setup I have and actually do something useful with it. Assuming I do anything at all. I like the idea of having the server stuff on it, and that can sit under the stairs with the main house switch. The only thing to think about is streaming media, as that’s all on the current server, but I’m sure mounting a share would be fine.

Not sure when I’m going to do all this computer admin. The alternative is to not bother and just bring a laptop into the garage when I want to do something. Simple. I would like a consistent place to SSH into for doing stuff - like the little streamlit apps or other random things I do. I have too many computers. There are two in the garage just doing nothing.

Speaking of too many computers, my desire for a Mac Mini M4 has waned somewhat. MacOS is a bit …controlling? Unique in style? I don’t know, maybe all the different keyboard shortcuts would be annoying. The photos thing is the main reason to get one but even then, I’m not sure I’d bother.

I’ll leave the computer stuff for now. I’m pleased with tidying up and will see what I feel like doing next. Perhaps if I can find a cheap monitor, I’ll mount it to the wall and then use it for whatever…would work either way, laptop, server, etc. I thought about a rpi 500 but that’s just another computer and I don’t need more. Maybe I should sell something…

Still got the fuji lenses to sell. Thought about selling the G90 radio too, but it has a convenient tuner in it, so not sure I should. I had wondered about a ft891, as a 100W HF radio but it’s not as light as I thought, and I already have the ft857. I mostly just like going up the hills, making a few contacts and chasing the points. I wonder what I’ll do once I have the 1,000 points. Suspect I’ll go out but just not obsessively every moment I can find 😅 But instead pick my favourite places, or try for new ones and test out different antenna. At the start of the week was my holiday with mates down in the Lake District and we climbed lots of hills - well I did, they skipped some as too much for them! We had a lovely day out together on the Tuesday up one hill. We spent ages at the top and I had two masts, even the flag on top!, and mostly spent it chasing other summits across the bands. It was just with the KX2, which is still my favourite radio for SOTA. By the end we could hear Argentina blasting through but they couldn’t hear us. I did wonder if they would if I had 100W but I suspect not. Going from 10-100W is 10 dB but that’s only 1-2 S point. So the difference between 57 and 59 reports. Maybe the difference between 50 and 52 but I suspect not. Some people have 40-50W amps they bring with the KX2 to get a little more oomph. That’s fine if you have a resonant antenna but the convenience of a random wire and the KX is too hard to miss.

The challenge is going to be finding suitable times to get out to the big hills now. They need long days to get there and back and my usual Friday off just doesn’t cut it, even if my wife begrudgingly picks up the kids. So hoping for some swapping to Tuesdays or Wednesdays so I can leave early and then get back later. Once it becomes the summer holidays, I’m not sure what I’ll be doing. We’re away a bit but then when I’m back at work and everyone is at home, will it be acceptable to go away on my Friday off? I suspect not…perhaps once to do something. I’ve started a calendar to work out what I should do when. I should look at the summer and see how many days I’ll actually get. It’s probably only 3, as 6 weeks off and I think 3 weeks over the time we’re away.

Friday, 2nd May, 2025

Seems like I only wrote four days in April. Just didn’t feel like it, or want to. I did think about a reboot of my main site blog with some other new SSG, maybe that bash one but I didn’t do anything

I’ve been watching a lot of videos on rock tumbling…I really want a rock tumbler now. I keep thinking that I’d like to collect some rocks from my walks and then polish them up in the tumbler. The process reminds me of film development, except it’s weeks/months vs. minutes. I think the kids would like it, although the 7 days of tumbling per stage might be less interesting for them. Anyway, there’s a disappointingly few good tumblers available in the UK, and the decent stuff is in the US. Or maybe it’s a more popular hobby in the US and everyone online is US based. I’m sure there must be some in Europe - although thanks to brexit that won’t help that much - so I’m waiting for a quote on one of these setup for 240V.

Today’s walk had a lot of lovely looking red rocks - I don’t know what they are but I’m sure I could’ve found out. I didn’t take them home but next time I’d like to.

Tuesday, 22nd April, 2025

My trip away with my friends is coming up this weekend. Hoping to do lots of radio summits in the English Lake District. The only issue is that it’s prone to rain, so I just hope it stays dry.

Nothing like a deadline to get me to finish various antenna and radio projects. Although most likely I’ll not use half the stuff.

A guy in New Zealand wants to try and arrange a summit to summit contact. Which would be amazing but I think it’ll mean I’ll have to be on a summit at 5:30am! Need a spreadsheet to figure out the times and make sure we actually arrive the same time and talking about the same day 😅

Feels like I’ve not really had anything to do at work for a while. But in that because I’m not reacting to something that’s happened and I get to choose my own story, but you get so used to working in a reactive way, it’s hard to change to proactive. There is plenty to do but deadlines are ages away…

Monday, 14th April, 2025

My broken monitor is a work one and I asked what they wanted me to do with it. “Bring it in and we’ll give you a new one” was the answer. So that’s nice. I was looking at a 27” 4K monitor, but a free 24” 1080p one will be just fine.

My radio blog has one post per hill but some days I do more than one. I keep thinking about changing the structure so it fits better with one post per day, regardless of number of hills, but then would I have to change the old posts to fit? All it means is that instead of writing up my trips I fiddle faddle about with a test site and make no decisions or progress. Even if I just posted the photos I took and no text that would be better than nothing. In fact, I might just do that. Plus a screenshot of my route and contacts I made.

Can always come back later and write stuff if I want. Or lunch time at work etc. it’s my website, I can do tf I want with it 😅

Last week I tried to be more proactive about taking my camera and actually taking photos. We had a trip away and I took it with me. Didn’t take that many photos, as I often didn’t take it out the house, but did take some. Myself, my wife and our friends all took photos with our iPhones (various models, mine is probably the newest with iPhone 13). I liked all the iPhone photos better. A few of mine were nice but mostly I didn’t like them. Maybe I need some new colour profiles on the camera, or I could edit them in lightroom etc. but I’ve lost interest in all that. I like taking a photo on my phone, maybe editing it and hitting auto, or quickly adjusting something (but mostly don’t need to) and it looks good. Phone to desktop isn’t the greatest, unless I get a mac though. Am I going to sell my camera and buy an iPhone 17 in September? The camera can take good photos, it’s me I know, but not sure I’m going to do anything. I never did sell the lense either. I did think about a X100VI as I often just pick the 23mm, but meh… I don’t want to be another person with an iPhone taking photos but then again, what does it matter.

Remember when I was quite into stoicism. Now I can’t even spell it. Four years ago I made a tiddlywiki with all of Marcus A. Meditations as tiddlers. Was mostly fun to process the text files, as I never read it.

I should just take film photos but film is too expensive in my opinion, however, I do like the photos so there’s that again. Other thoughts include a Ricoh GRIII for taking with me up hills to capture the scenery better than my phone but is it really better?

Blahblah blah time for bed…

The cats keep escaping at night and waking everyone up, we might need to put child locks on the kitchen door 😅

Saturday, 12th April, 2025

Coming up two weeks since I last wrote anything. Was feeling like it was a chore, so didn’t bother. Plus it’s been school holidays and we’ve been away.

Thinking of resurrecting my old blog with a new SSG system. Sometimes I want a blog that’s not radio focused and not journal-y but just a regular one for regular sort of posts. Probably I’ll never use it.

Need to rejig my radio summit write ups, one post per summit can be tiring when I do several in a day. It also doesn’t read as well as a trip report. Plus I can make use of the API to load my points and list automatically vs. me maintaining a separate list. Although this does have its advantages.

So much admin to do…and for what? Tidying pixels online…

Then there’s the SINGLE BLOG to rule them all. 💍 where I have everything all together. Also not going to happen.

My iPhone 13 (I think) keeps going flat during the day. It never used to. Can’t believe the battery degraded that much. Looking at the app info on the battery settings page, I think WhatsApp is to blame.

Tuesday, 1st April, 2025

Oh it’s April. Have to make a new folder for this post.

The shelf on the wall that has the camera plus other stuff started to lean and looked like it was going to fall off. I fixed it but it meant I took everything off. Made me debate about selling all the Fuji gear and getting a fixed lens camera. Like a X100XYZ. I should at least sell some lenses I never use. I just don’t have any interest in taking a camera and taking photos. I’ll bring my phone and snap one or two but that’s it.

I do feel bad about it. My wife has started in the next photo album, of last year, and there’s enough but it’s getting less and less each year. I’m a bit obsessed with radio at the moment but it’s not like I take that everywhere so it’s not really displacing a camera. I still bring it out for birthdays and Christmas etc. better make sure it’s charged for this week’s birthday.

The photos never look that great either. The colour settings on the camera aren’t great - some profile I set ages ago but no longer like, and I really don’t want to edit them afterwards.

Grumble grumble grumble.

Wednesday, 26th March, 2025

Falling behind on my summit write ups. Makes me think should I not bother…but I do like it, so I should, but I just get distracted. I also think I have to do them all at once and actually I could do one a day and achieve something.

Monday, 24th March, 2025

Parents were staying this weekend. Always feels like hard work 😓. Got a lot of computer time to catch up on!

Got a lot of computer time to catch up on!

Sunday, 23rd March, 2025

Bought a new radio…well used one, the one I wanted from before. Found a good deal - and assuming it’s real! - it should show up this week. Need a make a new yagi and antenna for it but then good to go! That seemed to open the flood gates and I bought a bunch of other things. Things I’ve thought about getting but now finally have. Maybe that’ll stop me spending so long debating them.

Thursday, 20th March, 2025

Woke up tired this morning. Makes everyone especially annoying.

I keep seeing stuff about the radio I sold and thinking that maybe I shouldn’t have sold it. Even though I never used it. Although I think the older, high power version is more what I want. There is an older lower power version that does everything mine did, just without the nice waterfall and touchscreen. It is about 1/3 of the price. Although would I rather have the fancy one…probably…

I should do something constructive rather than looking at radios online again.

Wednesday, 19th March, 2025

I missed out on a prime skiving opportunity yesterday…everyone at work was busy out the office all day at various things. Anyway, probably not best practice to be thinking about these things 😅

Had a cold/cough for ages now. It’s not terribly bad just a constant niggle.

Still not finished soldering this TNC kit, I moved it into the office to do in the evenings, as it’s cold in the garage still, but all that’s happened is it has made a big mess on the desk. It risks losing parts as the kids mess about with it too. I should just get on with it. Usually fall into the habit of “I’m too tired to do it, I’ll just look at rubbish online”.

I’ve fallen into “do absolutely nothing online in the evening until 10pm, then suddenly start writing blog posts”. Except I did the 6:30 swimming drop off and I’m tired.

I liked this from Jack’s blog:

It is difficult for amateur photographers to accept that, on any given trip, they will not likely take unique photos of staggering social significance or prize-winning landscapitude. The reality is that the photos most likely to survive generationally will be the ones with family members in them. The rest stand a good chance of being binned. – Dante Stella, Mutiny! Travels with a camera | The Machine Planet

It’s why I only take pictures of family.

Sunday, 16th March, 2025

Just when I think I’m getting ahead of my todo list I remember more stuff. I could write it down but then I fear I’ll get sucked into “where to write it” or “let’s create the perfect todo system” and really just add more todos but not do any of them.

So I just keep remembering and if I have time when I remember it, I’ll do it. Not really the greatest but it’s only my hobby stuff so doesn’t really matter. I should decide what I’m going to do today, as I’ll have about 2 hours to myself when everyone has gone out.

Thursday, 13th March, 2025

We finally went in our big outing today. 15 miles, bike and hike to two summits. Feeling tired now. Bike skidded on some rocks on the way down and I took a fall. Remarkably fine, but if a scratch on my hand and knee but the clothing was worse off. My nice hiking trousers! Although I think the company repairs stuff, so I’ll contact them to see.

Going out again tomorrow, but will just do some smaller walks to tick off some summits I’ve not done.

Think I’m going to make my SOTA tools app in streamlit and then eventually self-host it. Not sure when I’m starting that.

Monday, 10th March, 2025

A ham friend wrote a nice blog post which got to the second page of hacker news. Said he ended up with about 7k visitors over 24 hours. Not much in the grand scheme of the internet but compared to the average of 100 a week, it’s quite the jump. It is a very interesting blog post though.

After lovely weather this weekend, today was terrible. Annoying as I wanted to go out with a friend on a hill walk and radio activation. We’ll probably go Thursday now but I’m more time constrained then.

Not listed that 27mm lens yet. Although I was thinking maybe I need a whole system refresh to trigger my interest in photography .. or to kick start it back up again. Just don’t have an interest now. Like the DayOne journal…that died a while back…

Oh I remembered this morning that I should check in on those friends who were thinking of Apple Mac minis….

Saturday, 8th March, 2025

I want to find a book or online resource that explains microwave rf design stuff to me. So many times I look at articles or blog posts where hams have made various microwave things and I have no idea why they’re doing something. Horns, pot caps, sun noise, wtf are they talking about.

Admittedly, I don’t have deep knowledge of regular radio and it’s more just use stuff and make contacts. I do make antenna but that’s mostly following instructions online but I do have an idea of why.

I could just buy various microwave things and join them together and try and make contacts but everything is expensive so I’m hesitant.

But I also don’t have time for that. Just like going up hills. Another thing with microwave is you often need a radio to drive the start of it. The radio I just sold, the IC-705, is pretty much the favourite everyone uses. So that’s slightly annoying. However, when I bought the 705 I told myself it would be useful for microwave stuff but I’ve not done any and I think it’ll be years before I do. By which time something new will be out anyway. Or, what usually happens, is everyone still says the 705 is the best and newer models aren’t as good and so used prices stay sky high. There is a new yaesu coming out that’s similar to the 705, and I do wonder if people will sell their 705 for it…but this depends on if the new yaesu is actually any good.

I don’t need more radios. I need to finish the projects I have and make some more antenna and the packet radio thing.

Friday, 7th March, 2025

Managed to get 1Writer and Working Copy working on my phone again. I turned it off and on again…but it is telling that I often write on here via my phone.

Wednesday, 5th March, 2025

I like this site, both the design and this blog content.

Tuesday, 4th March, 2025

For some reason Working Copy folders aren’t working on iOS files or any apps that use them. Like 1Writer that I use to write these entries. It’s annoying, and I can’t find out why it’s doing it.

Work wasn’t the greatest today. I blame other people but probably it was me being stupid, and I’m embarrassed by that fact. Makes me seem incompetent. Stupid work.

Wish I could go out into the hills and play radio.

Had a sore throat for several days now, it’s always worst in the evenings, especially when reading stories to the kids. Feeling tired too.

Haven’t worked on my radio apps in a while. I want to make a centralised place for them all but I’m not sure what framework or system to use. Perhaps flask or fastAPI? I don’t know. Maybe I just make a big single streamlit app or host streamlit myself? I want the vanity of a custom url but equally I don’t want more things to look after.

Looking at photos of the kittens from 6 weeks ago and they’ve grown so much since then!

Sunday, 2nd March, 2025

Finally got started on soldering the TNC for packet radio. Had this about 18 months and only now making it. Only managed about 6 components then had to go. I’ll keep going this evening, as long as the computer doesn’t suck me in.

I think the Fuji 27mm is next on the ebay chopping block. I never use it, and the amount of dust on it reflects that. I’ll clean it up and list it.

Saturday, 1st March, 2025

Watched a Jeff Geerling video on replace Mac mini M4 storage with 3rd piece. In the scheme of Mac replacements, it didn’t look that hard. The only problem is you need another Mac to restore the software. Seems no longer possible to boot from a usb and install it, or do recovery from the internet. The 2TB upgrade he showed was $250 or something, vs. the $800 Apple charges for it. People were saying it’s cheaper to buy two macs, and two upgrades and do them each using each other to activate the Mac after install, then sell it and get a free Mac mini!

I had wondered about going into the Apple Store to do the DFU recovery stuff. Either just plain up using the macs on show - although probably needs a password at some stage? Or the Genius Bar. It does risk having questions asked, but it just shows up as an Apple device as the controller is in the M4 chip. If I don’t want to do that then I think back to 2015 Intel Macs will do it, so maybe some old mini will suffice, or find someone at the hack space who has a Mac.

Anyway, I’ve not looked at U.K. prices for memory chips, so I’ll see. But it makes the cheap 256GB model appealing. Hmm. 🤔

I noticed our car has a CD player. I should find a CD to use. When I drive back at ~2pm ish there’s nothing good on the radio. Admittedly I only have a couple of stations programmed but it’s always the annoying debate part where average joes call in with whatever nonsense they’re all arguing about and you have to listen to tales of people’s lives. All very noble but I just want to listen to music.

Friday, 28th February, 2025

So many good git things. Why isn’t histogram the default!

I’m going out hill walking today but I’ve still not decided which one. Said I’d be back for school pick up so that limits me, but do I pick one which means I’m only just back for school pick up? Often I’m quicker than my schedule but even still…

Well I went on one, which was very much a just in time summit! Quite fast driving, running in places and I managed to get back with 5 minutes to get changed, eat a biscuit and go to school pick up!

My garmin watch has a body battery and right now it tells me I’m at 5%. It’s not wrong, I do feel tired! In fact, some of the stats are very true to me. I’m still interested in them, whereas when I had a step counter Fitbit I got bored of that after about 2 weeks. This is more in depth I suppose.

It’s noticeably lighter now and today was lovely weather. Could just do with a few more degrees temperature. Although clocks changing next month will make it darker again in the morning. Pointless activity, changing the clocks.

Wednesday, 26th February, 2025

OH…I want one of these trackballs!

Tuesday, 25th February, 2025

Deleted reddit app from my phone, plus a bunch of junk apps I never use. Was good.

Saturday, 22nd February, 2025

I’m deep in Apple Notes productivity websites. Like this extension, Pronotes. I’m not helping myself.

Swapped the coax on the 2m antenna and started pulling it around the house. It’s into the garage now, so I could finish it this evening, but most likely I’ll sit on the computer and look at apps for an operating system I don’t have. Annoyingly the mast is not straight, so I’ll have to fix that another day too.

It’s funny when you go to make an account on some website to then find you already have one. Log in and there’s a bunch of stuff from 2/3/4/5 years ago where you tried the app for a few days and then gave up.

I know I’m small potatoes, but creeping authoritarianism is making me question whether having a public wiki like this is a good idea right now. Phil

Recently been thinking about removing things from online. Probably reactionary, or unnecessary. Although a ham friend did this, but then did put his blog back up under another domain but with almost no reference to himself.

Friday, 21st February, 2025

I’ve been in a writing paralysis situation. This whole week I’ve wanted to write all sorts of things here but I got sucked into “how am I writing” it. Including what keyboard. Why? I have no idea. I just got stuck. So whilst I “decide” I’ll just use my phone now…look it works just fine…

Did a hill today. Weather was wet and windy. I picked a summit with trees at the top so sheltered in them. Was exhilarating going for a walk in the wild weather. I was well waterproofed up so didn’t get wet. Meant I got home earlier than my usual 5 minutes before its time for school pick up. Tried to do some jobs but was too easy to faff about on the computer doing nothing. Plus the cats wanted to see me so I had to sit with them for a while.

Feel close to buying a Mac mini M4. A ham YouTube guy I like recently got a Mac mini and has been trying out radio software with it. He was 100% Linux up until then. Not that this was a big factor but it made me think about it again and how it would be nice to have it. I like the idea of having access to multiple operating systems to pick the best one for the task.

The ironic thing is, I’ve forgotten all the things I wanted to write about and now I don’t know what they are.

I’ve been messing about either my radio blog, setting up a process to make a nice map for contacts for each summit activation. Mostly involves wrangling ObservableJS, which is JS but also slightly different. I figured out that things need to be in blocks, ie curly braces, else it doesn’t like certain keywords. Why? Who knows. But now it meant I got it working. I might return to some of the other things I wanted to do that I ended up doing in streamlit.

Friend I met va SOTA who’s very active, Fraser, just retired today after 36 years at Tesco (supermarket chain). He’s 53. He has a lovely wee cottage on the edge of the Cairngorms. Think he might do personalised mountain tours once he’s had enough of doing absolutely nothing/anything he wants to do I’m sure he’ll come out with me on hill walks or at the same time now that he’s not working.

Eldest’s birthday tomorrow and I’ve bought her the Lego Hogwart’s Express. Not sure if it’s really for me or her 😅. My logic is that we can build a new town with everyone having their own part and trains between them. Probably in the Easter holidays. The boys really want a big box of just 2x4 bricks. So think I’ll order a load from bricklink for their birthday. It was a lot of fun at the Lego House in the “just yellow 2x4 bricks” area. People made amazing things with just a single coloured brick.

Still looking for more things to sell on eBay…

When nvultra?

I’ve been thinking of retiring Tiddlywiki and moving all my notes into Apple Notes, maybe using the Forever notes method. I do still react violently to the idea of putting all my stuff into this closed source, walled, system of Apple’s. What got me, was when I wanted to add a note about something from my phone, and it was a pain to open the browser, go to my wiki, log in, make a new note, etc. plus the mobile browser version of TW is fine when reading but not great when you’re editing. It’s almost to the extent that I just think “ah nevermind” and don’t bother. I’d probably leave my wiki online, as it costs nothing to do so, but I’d use Apple notes instead. I do have a few things that I’d like to write about which I don’t want on here, but I’ve never found anywhere useful for them. I think this Apple Notes thing is also coinciding with my thoughts on the mac mini. I almost bought one just now, but then I couldn’t remember which service I need to log into for the educational discount my wife can get and it’s probably best not to do it at night.

There’s nothing stopping me from trying the forever note, it is free, and I could always use it just for certain stuff. Probably the system will collapse quickly and I’ll not bother.

Been thinking about giving up my photos domain. It’s a nice domain but I don’t use it and it seems like something else to think about. I’m sure it’ll be immediately snapped up by someone and replaced with ads. Maybe when the renewal comes around I’ll decide.

Tuesday, 18th February, 2025

I was debating working from home this morning, well we accidentally scheduled the grocery delivery to be today instead of tomorrow, so that decides it!

More snow this morning. Supposed to be 11°C on Friday which is hard to believe.

Wife came into the office last night and looked at the RPi touchscreen: “why do you have a tiny screen when you have a huge one?”. I admit, I didn’t have a good answer. Perhaps this is also for eBay.

Monday, 17th February, 2025

I watched a ft857d auction come and go last night. I did place one bid but I knew it wouldn’t win. Not sure I actually want to get the radio now. It’s for such a specific use case. I did search to see if there was something better but there isn’t really anything. I’ll probably get it eventually but just not right now.

I’ve been thinking about a Dell Wyse 5070 as a small Linux machine for the office for the radio and general tinkering. I’m not sure why though. Well I am, because I want to buy it/something and it is good value, about £40 for a very capable machine. However, I have a better one just sat in the garage doing nothing. My problem is I’m still debating the server arrangement. I think if I could get rid of the need to store lots of things that would be good. Maybe I should get a nas device and use that and then the small computer (again). Ugh I don’t know.

I setup the RPi with the 7” touchscreen with the lofty goals of making this ham radio spotting, logging thing. Let me be the first to say…that is never going to happen. What I did think about is using it as a small notebook, or blogging device. I think the RPi has Bluetooth and so I could connect my new favourite keyboard up to it, sit somewhere else, and type. It’s not quite iPad freedom but it is Linux and I own it. Maybe I’ll connect the keyboard and find a nice text editor…although vs code is decent and I have my shortcut setup for the date in it. I could use vim but I don’t actually know how to do much in vim. I like have git and stuff built in…I think geary is an app I used before. Of course everything can be scripted so easily.

I just thought about Tinderbox. Maybe a Mac laptop would be more useful than a mini. I could sit elsewhere and waste time. Or the Mac mini and I remote into it from wherever I am.

My boss is on holiday this week. He didn’t even tell me, I saw from someone else’s calendar. I think that is plenty of authorisation to skive. I need to run the new coax to the 2m antenna and the office.

I’ve install VS Codium on the rpi, have linked the keyboard, although via a cable as it’s impossible to figure out how to pair it via bluetooth when not in windows (you plug it in with a cable and then it eventually appears on the bluetooth list ??) and a bluetooth mouse that was just sat on the shelf. VS Codium is way too bloated for this tiny pi. Probably Vim is the way to go… maybe skip the desktop altogether? The annoying thing with the touchscreen is that its default orientation is rotated by 180 degrees. The wiki says to use the deskopt manager’s settings to rotate it which is fine but if I skip the desktop then there’s various kernel parameters that need to be done but then the wiki also says they don’t work well with a desktop. seems a pain.

Well that was anther evening wasted doing nothing whatsoever. I should just go to bed and read my book.

Saturday, 15th February, 2025

Finally sold my radio. Ended up being to a local guy who I have met at the club before. He messaged me on eBay and I was a little skeptical, thinking it was some scam, but once I got his callsign we exchanged emails and phone calls and he was legit. We had a nice chat too about radios and setups. He paid in cash…not sure I’ve held this much cash in a long long time! Hoping I can pay it into my account via the post office as not sure if there’s even a branch in town anymore.

So now what can I buy! 🤣

Seeing the cash makes it more real - “wow I had this just sat about doing nothing”. Anyway, I like mountain radio activity and I should get the ft857 for that. Although I’m in no rush.

He was complaining of how quiet the repeaters are here, compared to other Scottish ones.

Friday, 14th February, 2025

Completely forgot it was Valentines 💝…but neither of us care so it doesn’t matter.

Did two hills today. They were a bit of rush as I wanted to do two and also get home to do school pick up so my wife doesn’t have to rush. I’ve done the 50 mile drive to Braemar many times now!

Friend got his computer I sent for his birthday. Was surprised which was nice. Makes me debate my home server setup. Whilst I’m debating that I also setup a raspberry pi 3 with the 7” touchscreen that’s been in the cupboard for years. It’s nice, makes me want to get a rpi 5 and use it as my main desktop. The idea is that I’m going to make a SOTA chaser dashboard thing where I can press a spot of someone and then it changes to radio to their frequency and I can enter their signal report and log it to the SOTA site and my log.

The hardware part was easy. The software is going to take a while. Thinking of using node red to do it.

Wednesday, 12th February, 2025

Was off work today as it’s half term and wife was at work. No idea what day it is. Keep thinking it’s Saturday and when I came to make this post I wondered how the week had disappeared and I hadn’t written anything since Tuesday. Which is in fact, yesterday.

Jack bought a Nikon Zf. Obviously I’ve not been thinking about selling all my Fuji stuff and getting one…anyway I’m getting a new iPhone for all my photography…right? The fun part is selling and buying stuff, probably tomorrow I’ll see how much short I’d be if I did do that! But I rarely use a camera and I’m sure it’ll be bigger and heavier than my APS-C Fuji setup. I’m too busy with radio stuff…I’ll come back to photography and cameras later.

Another ham contributed code towards my little streamlit app. That was nice.

Tuesday, 11th February, 2025

A local ham made this history video about his experience with ham radio, radio in general and what things were like back in the 60s, and 70s. It’s quite long but very interesting.

Monday, 10th February, 2025

This book looks interesting. And that “The pages in this volume are ordered according to the Japanese system. Please turn to the back of the book to begin reading.” I probably won’t buy it though.

I’ve got so many SOTA related scripts and tools in the works that need finishing and publishing somehow. Made me wonder about a dedicated website for them but then what’s the infrastructure for them? Streamlit is easy for the dynamic ones, and perhaps the others can be on a Quarto static site and just have a daily script compute all the info and I use Observable to show it. Would be nice to integrate them into a site though, vs. a bit scattered. I could make a flask webapp…I’ve not made one before but maybe now’s the time…although probably still need to figure out all the javascript? Or I host my own streamlit server and just make everything on that, plus then as a backup it can run on streamlit servers? Or do I did into 11ty and go all javascript…probably take me forever/I’ll never do it if that’s the way.

Maybe I’ll make a list of all the things I want to put together first, then try and finish them in whatever my current, easiest way is and go from there.

There’s a 2012 mac mini i7 on ebay that ends in ~3 hours which I’m watching. Needs RAM and a SSD, I wonder what it’ll sell for as it’s a bit janky and the auction ends at 3pm during the day. I don’t really want it but it might be cheap…sounds like a terrible way to decide to buy things. It’s 13 years old…I don’t need it. I’m meant to be selling junk to get a M4.

Sunday, 9th February, 2025

I’ve finally routed the coax into the office and today I did my first SOTA chase from the warm office. The antenna is still terrible but it worked. Not sure what I’m doing with VHF though. I’ve put up the antenna and attached some random coax I have, which is 19m long. So long but not long enough to be useful. It’s also super thick coax, so low loss but terrible turning circle. However, HF chasing will be much more useful. I mostly want VHF setup inside so I can use it and also play about with packet radio or ASL or APRS etc.

The best solution would be to run coax into the loft and then down into the office. However, that’s going to be difficult. I could just buy more and run another route…the HF one is 30m. Or I get another antenna on the chimney or somewhere else but that’s a hassle too.

Another option is getting a radio that has a remote head (like what you’d put in a car) and then run the cable to the office. Some seem to be able to work with a long cable. Probably the ultimate is then this setup with the base in the attic, and a short run of coax and then a long cable to the office. But there’s no power in the loft.

So for now…nothing…and I run outside to use it with the radio and battery.

I did go through a big journey of buying some other radio which may still be an option but I thought it would be better to use what I have… there is a nice icom radio IC-7100, that can do HF and VHF and has a remote head. So I could run both antenna back to garage then a long cable to the office. It would be a nice head on the desk too. However, the radio I have is a better performer. Anyway still waiting for the other one to sell.

Saturday, 8th February, 2025

Had a glorious day yesterday in the hills with multiple other radio operators. The weather was spectacular. We then met up for tea and sandwiches and a chat in a local cafe afterwards. Got five summits to catch up on writing about.

The lens sold yesterday as well, which is nice. I did think it’s 2/5ths of a Mac mini M4…given this lens has just been sat in a drawer it would be much more useful to have the Mac. Perhaps I can find other things to sell to pay for it all, then there’s nothing to regret or feel bad about spending.

Thursday, 6th February, 2025

I listed the mini pc I bought about a year ago (for a router which never happened) and it sold in about 6 hours. At a decent price too. Lens and radio still linger on.

I’ll have enough now to get a 1.8-525MHz power and SWR meter so I can measure the 2m stuff.

Today I snuck off early to go climb a summit and play radio with a new antenna. The weather was glorious. I was only going to be sat at my desk making a slide deck for a meeting next week, it doesn’t matter where or when I make it. So I told myself I’ll do it this evening. Well it’s now this evening, in fact it’s quite late this evening. I got distracted with packaging up the mini pc (and of course the printer wouldn’t print the label), installing Debian on the computer/server I’m gifting, writing a python script to look up which days has the most activations in Scotland - as tomorrow there are 15 summits planned (with 12 people) and is this going to be a new record? To which the answer is, yes it could be as the most was in August 2012 with 14 unique summits. Several cups of tea, the kittens escaping the kitchen, and browsing public wikis.

Oh right, I said I’d email the slides to my boss for him to review tomorrow. Okay…I’m opening PowerPoint now…

Tuesday, 4th February, 2025

Money can’t buy happiness. But it can buy you a boat.

Everyone in the house seems to be getting ill. I’m secretly, and selfishly, worried someone will be off school on Friday when we’ve organised 7 or 8 ham to go out into the hills nearby, and I’ll miss it.

Well I’ve been sucked into OSM editing. This is a delightful rabbit hole. The problem of working at home with sick kids is there doesn’t always end up being much working 🤣

I noticed my wife ordered a new hat stand. I worry it’ll still not be sturdy but I also did nothing, so it’s my own fault.

Monday, 3rd February, 2025

I found the camera classifieds, not sure how I missed it but was looking in my phone. No biters yet though.

Big decision circles on radios, but now have the IC-705 listed on a ham marketplace. Probably put it on eBay tonight to hope to get it shifted sooner. Started investigating getting coax into the office. Well thinking about it and watching YouTube videos on fishing cables. Should I just pay someone to do it…then it’ll be done…

I did start wondering how effective an antenna in the loft would be. Firstly, it would be infinitely better than my current situation of none, so maybe I should just try it. Would help with the visual impact side. I admit antenna look ugly, sometimes okay and interesting but often not.

IC705 is on ebay, sold some random RAM I had. Trying to sell enough bits to pay for a power and SWR meter, so I can finally test/fix and then sell the 2m Amp I have, and maybe one of the FM radios. I’m impatient now and want everything to sell immediately. Like the lens. It’s got me looking around for more things to sell. It’s surprising how much you can get from just a bunch of random stuff that’s sitting about. I kinda of want to get rid of everything.

5 minutes later…I’m looking at Mac Mini (2018) models. It started with 2012 models, which are cheap but oh so old now. 2018 lets you replace the ram. They’re not super cheap, maybe £250 for a decent one, but potentially could get one when the lens sells (at least there’s no net gain in junk). However, will I just find it annoying and instead get a M4. I have a N100 mini PC that I’ve booted up and letting Windows do 100s of updates. I thought about using it as a “shack” PC, to be plugged into the radio for stuff and then just VNC into it. It’s a bit noisy and slow, although perfectly fine for general desktop usage. I was going to install linux on it, but it comes with Windows 11 Pro and maybe I’m better off selling it. I do have another computer…in fact if you include rpis then maybe 3 which I could use as the shack computer. Anyway, the mac mini could also be that computer. So I could use Photos.app and Tinderbox…well install it and then never use it.

If I could stop buying things. Although I would like some headphones for cycling to work. I’ve not listened to a podcast in ages.

I do really want a big clear out. Takes time, and it’s hard to decide. I should just go to bed. Still not written up the 3 summits I did last week. That’s what I should really do in the evening.

Sunday, 2nd February, 2025

Trimmed, well severely cut, the willow igloo yesterday. Lovely physical activity which gave me motivation to do a bunch of other things. But then it was dinner time, kids bed routine and then I sat down on the computer and didn’t do anything.

Then at 10:30pm I decided to start working on my own logging software. That makes it sound grand. I use wavelog which is very capable but it annoys me having to make a new station location for each summit to capture my SOTA reference, such that I’ve not updated it in ages. I thought about putting them all into a single /P location but then I lose some information, although I gain the auto syncing with various services.

So I’m making my own processor for log files, specifically for SOTA, to create … something. A static site? In the first instance a big json (probably) file of all my activations and contacts. So far I’ve got a script that reads them and then makes a markdown table and html page with a map. That needs refactoring into processing then some page to display all the data. I’ll probably export a subset of the data to each page of my blog and have it make a nice map using observableJS in Quarto, as that’s easier to embed. Hopefully I can make a template which will automatically add that to the end of each post.

I also thought about making it a web app with flask, or maybe even Streamlit. But one step at a time.

Listed the Fuji 18mm f2 for sale. I never use this lens. Quite a few for sale though, so might take a while to sell. Hoping my “best offer” acceptance or using eBay global store will help shift it.

Been debating about the radios and chatting with another ham about it. Think I’ve concluded that I should sell both. Now just the matter of taking photos and listing them. I will put them on the radio used marketplaces so no eBay faff, but if they don’t go then I’ll resort to it. Seems the U.K. photo forums have stopped classifieds?

Saturday, 1st February, 2025

This would be nice. I do the 4 days but I also took a pay cut.

Did three hills yesterday, was a lovely day, cold but no wind and sunny. Was breaking in some new walking boots and can feel that now.

I need to tidy the garage, sort out the stuff I want to sell and get it listed. Although not sure I have sufficient packaging to post it all. Ideally I’d get rid of it all and then get the ft857d and have a simpler solution, although still can’t decide about the 705. Guess I’ll keep it for now.

Need to do a bunch of other chores too. 💤

Thursday, 30th January, 2025

I naively hoped the internet would have been fixed overnight. Obviously it wasn’t.

I wanted to setup the server for my friend but I need the internet…also it doesn’t like nvme drives, so I need to get a sata m.2, and the free ram from the hackerspace turned out to be DDR3, where this takes DDR4, so good thing I did order some. It won’t be ready for his birthday but never mind.

The afternoon came, and the first internet support escalation time was up, so I called and it was escalated again…however, 30 minutes later it was fixed. Great, although shouldn’t have taken all that effort. There were a few annoying things without internet, but it was quite refreshing. The kids complained but then 10 seconds later just went and found other things to do. Perhaps a day without internet would be nice, or do I just sound like some annoying parent. I liked it. Someone asked what I did. Don’t really remember what I did.

This Casio watch is a really nice upgrade. Includes a step tracker 🥰 some nice features and the screen seems sharper. Can link to your phone, not sure what happens with it then - other than time sync.

Tomorrow should be a three summit day, and it’s supposed to be still weather and sunny. I always think if I should be doing some other summit when it’s a nice day, although I don’t know which one. All these three are new ones for me, so that’s good. Plus during winter bonus it’s best to do as many as possible that get the bonus, so even though I could get more points tomorrow, over the whole year I’ll get more by doing 3 smaller ones tomorrow. I think there’s still snow on the higher ground anyway, and that slows you down.

I caught up with transactions in Actual Budget the other day and then read the manual. I like the regular budgeting (vs. envelope) as I’m not really budgeting but just comparing in vs out and this is perfect for that. I also like the customisable dashboard. Still not got it to where I want it but it’s pretty good. Press a button, sync transactions, categorise a few that aren’t auto done and then look at the summary. Pretty much what I want.

Next thing to investigate are all these tools on this site and I do need to tidy up my master spreadsheet of everthing.

Wednesday, 29th January, 2025

Our fibre provider had emailed in the week saying there was going to be maintenance on Wednesday morning. I didn’t really pay attention to the email but this morning there was no internet. Sure enough maintenance was last night and I bet it started at 00:15 when the router last reported being accessible.

The fibre termination box has lots of green lights on it though. So not sure why it doesn’t work. I wonder if it’s the router somehow? I have had cabling issues between the fibre box and the router but that seems to be caused by dodgy connections and no one was going anything in the night. Plus it seems quite the coincidence.

I’ve raised a ticket, although probably I should call them. The problem is I’m at work so I can’t do anything physically.

It’s one of my friend’s 40th birthday this weekend and I’ve not been able to think of something to get him. This morning I realised the perfect gift…this Dell Wyse 5070 I’ve bought! He likes computers but he doesn’t have a server. Plus it’s nice and small and low powered. It also makes me feel better about not having yet another computer in the house when I already have a perfectly functional one (in fact several that aren’t in use). So I’ll build it and then post it down to him.

Borrowed a Mac mini M1 from the hacklab but turns out it’s under activation lock (and hence why it’s just sat on a shelf). Naive me thought I could just cmd + R and reinstall macos. Maybe there are work around but nothing simple. Back it goes I guess. Perhaps I should just buy my own M4…(wait didn’t I want to have fewer computers not more? Ah, says my brain, but this would be different as it would run Tinderbox).

Speaking of hacklab. I picked up some donations last night from this guy. Absolutely loads of computer parts - 20+ 2TB hard drives, GPUs, NICs, cables, cases, just loads of random things. He was starting to clear out his house after working as a self employed server builder and sysadmin. He also had a huge (absolutely) huge LEGO collection. Everything was a massive technic build and he had shelf’s all around his lounge, there must’ve been a minimum of 100 models. He hinted at more further back.

Internet has been down all day at home. I’ve been at work so not really impacted, but it’s annoying.

Tuesday, 28th January, 2025

This old blog post is terrible for making me want to buy ewaste…

I won a Dell Wyse 5070 on ebay…submitted an offer on some RAM for it…why was I buying this again?

I won the RAM. Still why? This feels against what I’m trying to do. I want fewer computers not more! 🤪 I do like that it only uses about 3W of power. But I already have a faster, low powered computer that I’m not using…

I know. I just like buying things.

Monday, 27th January, 2025

All this faffing with summits and distance calculations has got me thinking about my computer arrangements.

The server is running proxmox, so that I can run home assistance in a VM easily. Which it is easy. Everything else is difficult. I don’t really know how Proxmox works and using the webUI isn’t always obvious. I think that I’m expecting to do everything on proxmox, when in fact it just looks after VMs and storage (sort of?) and everything else I do on the computer as normal. I don’t like this. I think I just need a regular linux server where I run what I want and that’s that. The only thing is home assitant is better when installed on bare metal or in a vm, and isn’t great when in a container. However…I don’t actually use home assitant for anything. I just collect data but do nothing with it. I don’t have any automations. Since we moved to the EV tariff, our “automations” are fixed on a schedule which I program via an app.

I do wonder if something simplier is what I need? Although HA is simple to use…I sort of what to use NodeRed to do things, as I think it would be useful to learn. Home assistant has a nice phone app though. All I do is look at historical data every so often. I dunno…don’t want to give it up but at the same time seems unnecessary.

I’ve actually considered getting rid of the server altogether, but then plex is nice, and recently the audio book server is handy. Plus I run my private tiddlywiki server from it too.

Mostly I want to build a server with large amounts of RAM (like 512+GB) for this summit computation I’ve been doing in order to avoid chunking it. Then I wanted to run it on NVME so it’s fast but the NVMEs are buried behind proxmox stuff, but I have found the 4TB SSDs I have are in the server, but just not mounted.

Now I’m looking at Dell Wyse 5070 to run proxmox and home assistant on.

Sunday, 26th January, 2025

Weekend has flown by. No time to do anything. Did catch up on my radio blog. Oh and I’ve been computing distances between summits around the world - left the server calculating 12.8 billion combinations…but since updated my formula to account for the non perfect sphere that the Earth is.

I want to make a Lego kit for a friend who’s retiring. I’ve taken an existing model and adjusted it but I only thought of this plan after I ordered all the parts and now I want to change it.

We have one plant in the kitchen and the kittens absolutely destroy it and fight in the plant pot so soil goes everywhere. 😅 I don’t even know how they manage to do it.

My friend who has been playing factorio for about 8 weeks straight has made a new map that we’re joining in with. Including buying a £30 DLC. Except I don’t really like it. He’s so far ahead he just rushes all of it and I have no idea what’s going on. I can’t be bothered to figure out what to do. So I don’t really want to play.

I was thinking about converting the server to another gaming computer. As it just needs a GPU then it would be ready. Then use the previous server as the server again. Although not sure we need another gaming computer. The laptop is fine…not the greatest but Minecraft still works on it. Maybe for the occasional time I want to play something and someone is using the main computer. But when do I ever play games…

Friday, 24th January, 2025

The wind / storm has shut all the schools, so everyone is home today. It certainly is whistling and howling outside.

Makes me think that if I did have any antenna up in the garden, I’d need to be able to take it down on occasions. Which when I was thinking about poles mounted to the side of the house, that’s not always practical.

Whilst we’re all at home today, my wife wanted to do some lesson prep that she would’ve normally done at school on a Friday, and so she was using the main computer. I was on the other computer - the laptop with monitor etc. that I quite like in the corner and with the new/old surface keyboard. Anyway, it didn’t have logseq on it to look at my work notes and so I installed it. However, as I had to visit the logseq site I got sucked into “I wonder what new features or guides they have” and now I’m into “The Power of keeping a learning log” and spaced repetition and YouTube productivity top hits. I just need to write notes in a file that I can find later. I should close all these tabs.

Also Logseq to Hugo to HTML…

Thursday, 23rd January, 2025

Had a nice hike yesterday with Fraser. Worked a half day, and will work the other half tomorrow. Given there’s a storm coming I’ll be fine staying in. Interesting, as there was zero wind on the summit for us.

De-risk when you have enough. You will give up return, but you will sleep easier. –Ermine

I often wonder about overpaying the mortgage and paying it off sooner vs. not. The spreadsheet says it’s financially better to not pay it off sooner, but there’s a big emotional benefit and sense of security from paying it off. Perhaps we should…

I should make the GM/ES club site and finish off those two little web apps I made. I’ve debated about trying to migrate them to javascript or maybe running my own server of sorts to make them run but I don’t think anyone cares if I left them as streamlit apps and embed them in an iframe. Perhaps once they’re done I can look to redo them (but I won’t) with something else. Like vue.js … 🤢 Yeah, never going to happen…too many other things to think about and not do.

I should install Linux on the laptop that only I use. The fan is spinning so loudly on it and it’s cooking my leg, why? Because windows file indexer is running. Whereas I know updatedb on linux takes about 10 seconds max.

After the hike, Fraser invited me back to his house for lunch. He lives in this lovely wee cottage in a village in the sticks. The house is small, nothing wrong with it, but I just noticed it. However, there is only two of them and the cat, so it’s perfectly sized. We had a lovely lunch and then came into the lounge, where the log burner was on and the cat was all sleepy. I became sleepy too. Things I noticed included: no TV, only a record player with a big shelf of records, nice art work of the cairngorms, a shelf of whisky, a kettle on the burner, loads of books. It was lovely. He also has about 5 land rovers of various types in the drive. They do have a TV, it’s just in a little bothy in the garden in a cosy room. I also think his only computer is a raspberry pi which he sometimes uses for digital modes on the radio. Maybe he has a tablet or laptop somewhere but possibly not, and just uses his phone.

I wanted to take some photos but that would’ve been a bit weird. I really want to clear out some of the radio junk I’ve accumulated, but it involves doing stuff before selling it and I haven’t managed to motivate myself to do that. Also because I should really buy a 2m power meter to check the stuff is working before selling it. a) I’ll get more for it and b) it feels wrong to sell it otherwise (even though I bought it without knowing if it works). Perhaps I should do some of the easy things first, like sell the regular radio…although is that a good idea? I suppose listing it can’t hurt and if no-one buys it then so what.

Unsurprisingly, I already have a list of things I want to get once I sell those. Mostly for SOTA radioing so they’ll get used. Also the other portable radio I want to get would work as a home station radio up to 100W. Maybe not as good as the one I have but I won’t notice (as I never use it anyway) but also not sure what I’d really be doing at home other than chasing locals on 40m. I do also think I’d rather have a remotely operated station but no interest in it now, however, having a 100W radio is handy. Oh yes, so many reasons why I need to buy another radio…

Trying to decide what to do on my half day off tomorrow…I should do some antenna work or junk clear up etc.

Tuesday, 21st January, 2025

My friend must’ve played about 400 hours of Factorio since v2.0 came out at the start of December, and he’s still playing the same map. Tempted to play it…

I’m not sure on the camera thing but I do think I could sell some lenses that I never, ever use. Like the 18mm f/2. Quoted as “the hidden gem”. Yeh, hidden in a box and never used. I’m not sure. I just don’t use the camera or find it interesting, maybe it’s time for a change. Like how I went from the X100F to XT2 to XE4…now back to X100VI? GR3x? iPhone… Film (no, too much like hard work). Or just do nothing and leave the camera and lenses as is.

Yesterday two people messaged me within about 30 minutes of each other saying they’re thinking about a Mac mini M4. Now I’m thinking about one. If I went all in with iPhone only digital, I think I’d want iPhotos on the desktop to manage the photos - or at least export copies to jpg folders etc. I can probably do that on the phone too.

That is something I’m not sure about, managing photos all just in iPhotos as one big stream, but I suppose that’s just as I’m used to saving in folders. Of course there’s making albums etc. to organise.

Mortgage will be due for renewal this year, it’s funny to think that the last time we did it was pre COVID. Also last time interest rates were much lower. Not sure what we should do, keep the term the same and pay more, push it out to pay the same each month (but pay more overall). Technically pushing out the mortgage for as long as possible is the best thing to do. Howevr, I feel like there’s a lot of uncertainity these days (although probably there always was?) and paying it sooner is better.

I should pack my stuff ready for a hill tomorrow. Have to do swimming drop off then go, it’s a bike and hike, which I like but it does mean more faff with stuff, vs. just rocking up and walking. The guy I’m going with will be retiring in about a month. He’s early 50s. Good work I say, that’s my target - although that’ll peak university years for the kids and so maybe it makes sense for me to keep working and pay their fees etc. as it’s easy for me to do that and why burden them unnecessarily. I’ve changed role at my company about once every 2-3 years but I feel like I’m getting into the “this is your job for the next 10” phase. Which in someways I don’t mind. The team is nice, and there’s no drama, it should be a reasonably secure role. There are older guys in the team who have been doing it 10+ years. I just wonder if I’d get bored though. Anyway, worry about that later.

The kitties are so tiny, crazy and cuddly. 🐾

Monday, 20th January, 2025

I did sit and play DS last night with the kittens. They slept on me for about 2 hours so I couldn’t move anyway 😅.

The wedding photos from a family member taken on their iPhone have been haunting me. They’re like the ideal memories of the day: they look great, no lighting issues, no noticeable noise, nice colours, plus everyone is looking and smiling, good groups, and there are only about 10.

Now my photos I took on the XE4 with the 23mm f/1.4…I’ve deleted the obvious junk but it’s still 100 or something, lots of groups but no one is looking (which I do like, not always a big fan of the staged group smiling ones but equally I like them too or want them for “Granny”.) I mostly ended up with B&W as I don’t like my colour profiles on the camera. More suited to outdoors or bright light. Also helped avoid high iso noise on colour. They’re now on the computer and everyone is asking if I can share them. Do I edited them all in Lightroom, do I send them the files, do I add to iCloud family sharing group we have, do I make a website,….

This is also aside from the fact I had to carry it around, pay attention to where I left it, pack another bag with two lenses (could’ve taken more but decided against it). Remembering to charge it. Etc.

So I’ve started wondering, what if I sold my cameras and just used an iPhone for digital photos? I’d keep my Leica M2 for film and manual photography.

It feels wrong but offers a lot of convenience

Sunday, 19th January, 2025

I wanted to play the Pokemon rom hack on my DS. Spent ages and it won’t work. Tried DSi and same thing. Found there’s a newer version of an emulator that might run on the hardware. Downloaded the build tool chain, setup a whole load of stuff, but it didn’t build because versions of blah blah blah. So I tried on my 3DS. Worked straight away after installing the software. Runs natively and works great. Just doesn’t have the nostalgia of my original DS. It’s all because it’s based upon Emerald, which is a bigger game and causes all sorts of issues.

I don’t know why I bother. I’ll probably quit it after 10 mins.

I was looking in the game cartridge holder and saw how many Pokemon games I have for 3DS and Switch that I’ve never played. Don’t think I’ve played one since the DS back in 2013 but bought every game since. Perhaps I should play one…also not going to happen. I did see Pokemon Z-A Legends is due this year. Probably buy it. Switch 2 also.

Saturday, 18th January, 2025

After my big hike on Wednesday I’ve kept meaning to adjust the data screens in my watch. Finally got round to it just now and I found I can edit them on my phone - which is 100x easier than doing it on the watch. People make their own ones and upload to the store. One I looked at used python to do stuff. I wondered about making one although not sure what I want.

Trying to find a way to add the streamlit apps to my radio blog. I can embed them with an iframe but the streamlit apps go to sleep and seems you have to visit the site to wake them properly. There is some implementation of python in WASM (web assembly something or other) but so far not got that to work. Admittedly haven’t spent very long on it.

The actual answer is convert it to JavaScript but I really don’t want to.

Sometime later… asked chatgpt to convert the python script to javascript and tried to integrate it into the quarto site…still doesn’t work and I don’t know why. Probably trying to do too many things at once. Like I’m not even sure exactly how to add javascript and html to quarto. I should just be entering html and pandoc (which builds the site behind the scenes) will see it and just integrate it regardless. Also not sure the JS works either.

Friday, 17th January, 2025

We got two kittens today! 🐈🐈‍⬛ They are tiny and crazy! No one can agree on names, so we’ll have to see how it goes. I picked them up this afternoon and was at home with them before everyone else got home. They fell asleep on me and then I started to nod off.

Went back to a hill today for radio that was the first one I did last year. Was a nice day, and much better visibility than last time! It was my 60th activation.

New Nintendo Switch teasers today. Looks nice.

I have a couple of custom Pokemon games that people have made. Supposedly making the story better and adding new mechanics and all sorts. Quite a community around it once you look into it. Would be good to replay some of the classics but revamped. When I’m going to be doing this I don’t know. Maybe I should set it up on the DS and then I can sit in the kitchen playing it with the kittens this evening.

One is asleep on me and the other has climbed into a drawer of tea towels by going under the chest of drawers and climbing up on the inside!

I bought the Garmin watch for the mapping but I’m now getting interested in what it tells me about everyday health. It picked up when I dozed off on the couch whilst the kittens were sleeping on me and it said I was stressed between 8:00 and 8:52 - ie when I was getting the kids ready for school and making sure I was ready for radio trip and picking up cats. I was rushing about the house packing things and looking for stuff. I’m sure the Apple Watch would do the same. It says I need more sleep and it’s right. Let’s see if I actually go to bed earlier tonight.

I remembered Apple now let emulators on iOS, so I installed retroarch and started the custom Pokémon game. It’s fine…early Pokemon is a chore but maybe all Pokemon is a chore. I should look up what this version has so I know why I’m playing it. Else I might as well just read a book. I have some physical ones I’ve not read, as I generally read in bed with the kindle, so maybe I should crack those out.

Wednesday, 15th January, 2025

Took daughter to 6:30am swim training then went out for SOTA summits. Did four today…feel a bit tired now. 😅

Just started looking at Garmin badges, points and challenges…obviously I now want to level up and started looking at what needs to be done. Like 10k steps per day and walking and so on, but mostly I have to record activities on my watch. Unfortunately, it’s mostly geared towards running and cycling. I do cycle to work but nothing significant, but I don’t do running. There aren’t many things for hiking though.

I messed about with my watch yesterday so it was ready for today and I told myself I’d catch up on work things this evening…yeh well that’s not going to happen…well easy stuff I’ve done but the boring part I keep putting off…

I’ve successfully linked our main credit card to actualbudget. Now I need to setup categories but then I should be laughing…

Tuesday, 14th January, 2025

Turns out there was almost no coolant in the expansion pot, and it was well below minimum. So picked up some more from the dealer and now we’ll see what happens. Hopefully it’s all good and we just ignore how it disappeared, but if it does leak then I’ll know there’s an issue to sort out and book it into the garage. Glad I checked myself and didn’t just take it into the garage - take all that time just for them to top it up. The coolant was only £8. I bought two in case there is a leak and I need to top up. I also took a photo of the level to compare.

It’s bright pink, so I’d have thought if it was leaking I’d see it. Especially with all the snow, but maybe it’s been gone a while? or it’s a slow leak somewhere.

The snow has now all gone, just a few patches of deadly ice about, particularly on pavements.

Wrote up my week’s summary of last week’s work. Was one line. It is meant to be highlights, and when I roll up the year, the less I’ve written the easier it is.

I look around at things in the house and some of them are quick/cheap solutions at the time and we just live with them. I wonder if it would be better to spend some money to “do it properly” otherwise it’ll be like this for 10 years. Like some of the shelves in the garage, or the hat stand.

The problem with working at home is that all the home todos seem much more important and interesting to do!

Finally spent some time sorting out my Garmin watch and the various Garmin apps. It’s not that complex but it’s not always obvious. Luckily I have a friend who has one and has told me the best practices.

The downside of Garmin vs. Apple is that there’s not a unified way of doing stuff…even though Garmin control everything, like Apple, they seem to have different departments solving the same problem differently. Right now I’m trying to figure out the best way to manage all my GPX files of routes. Ideally I want them in one place, organised, somehow, to make them easier to find, and then they can sync to my watch and my Inreach device for when I go on a trip. Watch will be my main navigational aid but the inreach as a back up, and broadcasting my location when I’m in a very remote place. There seems to be two options explore.garmin.com and connect.garmin.com. Explore comes from the GPS device world and Connect from the fitness/trainer side, but they overlap. I think I’ll have to keep everything in Explore so that it shows up on the inreach but it’s not clear. Also the explore.garmin.com website is slow as anything. If it comes to it, I’ll maintain the routes in both places but I worry that’ll cause chaos.

Got a 40 minute video to watch on this which I hope will explain things…or at least point me in the right direction.

The custom maps I’ve bought (for £13) are awesome though. 🗺️

Monday, 13th January, 2025

I used ChatGPT to make a new Streamlit app which calculates how long until a SOTA activator reaches Mountain Goat (1,000 points). Either by entering what you do on average each week or conversly by entering a date you want to achieve it by. I quite like it and it hardly took any time at all! I did need to correct things either myself or telling ChatGPT to do so, but it was great fun.

You can see the app here. Try a random activator, like HB9GFQ, and see how it works.

I enjoy this combination of streamlit, python and ChatGPT. I can understand what gets written in python, it saves me so much time, and it’s super easy to deploy and not worry about. I need to go back and finish that other one I made last week but keep getting hung up about how I’m going to integrate it into the club website. Which means I just sit and think about it but achieve nothing. Given about 3 people are interested in it, including me, it probably doesn’t matter if I just embed the app on the website. Which is a perfectly allowable thing to do, and they tell you how to format the html etc. I should just get on with it and be done, else it’ll never happen.

Been on the second workstation in the office this evening, as wife was on the main computer. I do enjoy this setup. The “new” surfae keyboard, the Dell 27” monitor and the laptop to one side. I do think it’s the cosiness of it, where I’m against the wall, there’s shevling above the monitor with books, and trinkets and random stuff on them. A nice area. and I’m not even bothered that it’s on the computer! Makes me wonder if this should be the mac station. Although Linux would be superior 🥸, however, Windows works fine and I can do what I need, so whatever 🤷

A warning light on the car keeps coming on, the internet says it might just be the probes in the coolant. I did think it was the cold weather causing issues and when the car warmed up, I’d “turn it off and on” and that would fix the issue. But it did it today and it wasn’t as cold. I don’t really have time this week to take it into the garage and I’d like to use it to go out on Wednesday, and pick up the cats on Friday. So hopefully it is nothing much, certainly on our 2-3 hour drive yesterday it didn’t go above 90 degC, which is the target, so all good? Perhaps I’ll call and get it booked in on a day…Monday? If I knew it could be ready by say 2 pm then it would be find to do most days but if it’s not ready until 4pm then it’s a hassle to go and get it once the kids are out of school and whatever everyone has to do. I’ll check the level tomorrow morning when it’s light and maybe I’ll see if the probes have corrosion? I don’t really want to dismantle too many things as I don’t know what I’m doing.

There’s a subreddit about smart ChatGPT prompts. I can’t remember the exactly subreddit name, it keeps getting suggested to me, and I’ve opened a few posts now so I guess I’ll keep seeing it. But it’s all about how people craft prompts to get the most out of it. Things like making ChatGPT a personal trainer, or a therapist, or how to learn new things, just all sorts. People write very detailed instructions on how they use it, plus keep conversation histories or building stuff up over time. Even writing their daily journal into it and then asking for feedback or whatever. It’s like they’re making their own apps using it. I find it interesting.

Of course, it could all be AI generated posts in that subreddit to make you use ChatGPT more and try and get you to sign up to the Pro version.

People have even made ChatGPT helper views(?) to ask it about finding prompts. If you need more meta.

Sunday, 12th January, 2025

Back from the wedding. It’s fun but always a lot of hanging around, and the kids get restless. I get restless. The best part is the ceilidh dancing but you have to wait ages. All good and the kids managed mostly to the end of the night.

Called in on some friends who lived nearby. They live in a flat in an old house. It’s quite a crazy building but that suits them. He’s a wild bird tour guide in Kyrgyzstan…of all things. I’m not sure what people pay for this but he said when he has a client he’ll fly back out there for the tour. They had a lot of bird books.

They also had a book on Russian tattoos, which the little one managed to pick off the shelf of loads of books and started flicking through. It’s lots of pictures of people and their tattoos and the photos have progressively fewer clothes. Much amusement was had, although I was then warned it got worse, so the book was hid again.

They also didn’t have a TV. Maybe that’s why they seem to know about everything and can talk about it. She was setting up a mesh network in Inverness but also in Iran. Think they met when they were both doing a cycling “holiday” across Kyrgyzstan. After the wedding of lots of people, some I knew forever and some I’ve never met, I talked to this couple more in the hour we were visiting than the whole day event.

Went to see kittens. They’re so tiny. We’re going to get two! 🐈🐈‍⬛

I found that actual budget can sync with my bank, or one at least, and so then I can keep categorised transactions with less fuss? Need to get the credit card on it, else they’ll still be work. I’m guessing once I’ve categorised a few then it’ll know what things are going forward.

I can’t decide about DayOne. I should do it, and I’m sure 10+ years future me will appreciate it, but is it something I should skip? I take photos still at events, which act as a memory. Although fewer than I used to.

Well I did this weekend. Just short and maybe a picture. Didn’t take that long, as it never does. I think anything I add is better than nothing so I should just try.

Thursday, 9th January, 2025

Gave up on anything involving JavaScript, and just used Streamlit which lets you do everything in python. I did the whole site in a couple of hours in the evening. There is one mistake I need to investigate but that’s it. So easy. Downside is it needs a server to run, or streamlit’s service. You can embed it on a site so I’ll probably do that. Tbh it has such a tiny user base who’s interested I don’t really care that it’s not the perfect thing.

It sort of makes me think that I should learn JavaScript as then there are lots of nice frameworks for making static sites but with lots of dynamic ability. I’ll put that on the todo list.

Pushed through and categorised the remaining few months of financial transactions so I could complete the year. Painful. Going to try a simpler method but I do quite like the detail it does offer me. Just high level like groceries and holidays etc. just to see where money went. I fall down the trap of plaintext accounting for a bit too but I don’t want that. I might dig out actual budget that I installed and try it again as it is January, then extract the results into my google sheets. It all still boils down to: “don’t buy crap”.

Today I bought a new pair of walking boots. But I went in store and got my feet measured. Bought the pair I’d mostly decided upon already. From a good company. They will need breaking in…

Going to look at some kittens tomorrow. Would like to go for a hike as it’ll be brilliant sunshine but also snow on the ground. Not sure I have time as I have to take in-laws to airport to pick up a hire car and then go see the kittens, plus we’re driving straight after school is out for wedding this weekend. Not been hiking in two weeks and I’m getting antsy!

Tuesday, 7th January, 2025

Watch arrived today. It’s good, not as big as I thought and the screen is lovely. Says 15 days battery and it’s 80%! So many menus and options and features though. Going to take a while to figure out. It’s not Apple intuitive but it’s not bad and mostly consistent.

Setup a club callsign for our local SOTA summit group. Also been making an awards scheme for activating in the Cairngorms. Trying to make stuff with Quarto and ObservableJS. The JS part is a nightmare and can’t get it to do what I want. ChatGPT generates code but it always throws errors. I think it’s because it’s ojs in Quarto and things maybe need to be in object literals or something. It doesn’t help I know nothing about JavaScript. I just know that the python script to download the data and process it worked first time.

Going to redo it all but with python. I’m worried it will only get me so far though and the interactivity won’t work unless I do it in JavaScript…which means back to JS.

Just added a book to my book list, and realised I’m now into my 10th year of tracking books I’ve read on the list. Seems quite a duration. I did fall off the wagon in 2019 but soon got back on.

Monday, 6th January, 2025

It was meant to snow or rain a lot overnight but I can’t tell if it did anything. Been talking to the kids about going back to school but I also have to go back to work this morning!

That radio guy who passed away used to look after the club website. I wonder if someone knows how to access it all and do things? Perhaps I should offer help, just on the admin side. It’s Wordpress, so can’t be too bad, although I think there are a lot of plugins and extras. Maybe I’m not the right person as I’ll want to make it a static site edited via git pull requests 😅 I did note in the annual meeting that I thought they spent quite a lot of hosting. I can never go to the meetings, as they clash with kids stuff, but also they’re a little boring. I just don’t have time to commit to it.

Sunday, 5th January, 2025

Today is the last day of the holidays, and the day to take down all the Christmas decorations. Feels a bit miserable, plus the idea of going to work is dull. Although it’ll mostly just be chatting with everyone about their holidays and not doing very much 😅. I should do some setup stuff like reset trackers and notes in prep for 2025.

I thought about tidying up logseq files. Stuff from 2022 and even 2023 probably aren’t relevant anymore. My job has changed a bit and where I had multiple pages for certain projects or scopes I’m now pretty much focused on one thing. So do I break that up into smaller pages? I like that it’s all on one page and I just expand sections. I find it quicker to find something that way as I don’t always know what to search for, but I usually know when I was.

So I’ll just leave it. That was easy.

Dusted off my web radio log book. Nginx had broken and it needed updating. It’s all back in order now. ChatGPT fixed nginx and urls which was nice. I use wavelog and for SOTA summits, you’re meant to make a new location entry for each one and then add the log to that. But it’s such a hassle to do that, plus you end up with so many stations, it’s a mess. So I think I’m going to consolidate down to two log locations - home and portable. It does mean that there’s nowhere convenient to capture my summit. Makes me want to make my own log book but never mind. I can use the official database to look at them, or the app on my phone, or the raw adi files. I think I’ll also move a copy to my blog to keep with the activation so it’s all together. Maybe in time I’ll figure out some system for the static blog generator to use the files and add a map or something to the end of the report.

I don’t want to but I might subscribe to QRZ’s xml API. This the lets you lookup peoples info in log books and automatically upload there. Would be nice to have my logbook get the right locators automatically. I’m just not sure I want to pay for this when it should be freely accessible, plus I feel like QRZ.com is a rip off but amateur radio people are stubborn, and won’t move to another platform.

But do I really care about others people’s locators and log books? I flip back and forth between not going to log to capture every minute detail and catalogue it perfectly.

Saturday, 4th January, 2025

Can’t believe the holidays are effectively over. Just this weekend then back to the school/work routine.

I said I wanted to get rid of things everyday, well yesterday was rubbish from eldest’s room. I’m not counting rubbish/recycling all the time as I seem to constantly have to empty the house bins. Although I have noticed that the black, for landfill, bin can last around 5 days before emptying, which is good. The recycling is never ending though. I just hope it all actually gets recycled, although perhaps it goes to the incinerator and at least some energy gets generated from it. Well, the eldest’s room needs a good sort out and clean out, and my wife did that. I was then left with removing the unwanted.

I’ve returned to thinking about selling my big radio. I think if and when I want a home station, I want it to be remote, so I can use it wherever - even from my phone at work. Although the antenna situation is always a pain. However, I’m not sure I’m going to use the radio. That part of the garage is prime for tidying. There are a couple of items that need investigating and probably selling as well.

The local radio club got an email saying a member had passed away. I didn’t think he was that old, and seemed one of the more active (physically) members, although I don’t know the situation. Anyway, this Thursday will be the first “junk sale” of the month and all his equipment has been donated. He has a few VHF radios and accessories that I would like. They are all mode and it would be good to take them up a hill to do some 2m SSB. Of course, I already have a radio that can do 2m SSB…and no doubt much better, being a modern rig, so why do I need it? I think one would be nice…? Normally I can’t go to the club meeting as it clashes with kids swim training, but relatives will be staying so I could go. I would like the 25W amp he has, although depends if it’s massive or not. A guy who was here in December that I met at the foot of a hill, was using a 25W amp and made a 2m SSB contact into Devon around 400 mile away!

It’s funny that before writing this I was considering seeing if I could win both the 2m radios, but now I’m wondering if I need any? They’d fetch a high price on ebay, and really if no-one in the club really wants it, or they get stupid offers like £20, then they should sell them on ebay, or at least the ham radio marketplaces online. Of course, I’d like to buy it for £20. His profile page lists a lot of radios he has. The older “boat anchours” as also appealing from a historical perspective. The good thing with his, is that he refurbished them himself and you know they’re in very good working order - with new capacitors and electrical sound.

The Kenwood TR-751E, does 25W out on all modes. That would be ideal, although it weighs 2.2 kg. That and the FT-290 would be the only ones I’d want. But maybe I just need the 25 W amp, and perhaps I should look for a modern one online….should such a thing exist…

I then remembered I was looking at a FT-857d. Which does 50W on 2m, 100W on HF, and does all modes and is also 2.1kg. This seems like a better option than an ancient radio that weighs the same/more. Just doesn’t have that retro look 😅

I realised that my post URL scheme doesn’t like two entries on the same day. Which only matters when I write “an article”, so for now I’m going to manually define the page URL. Probably better as that way I can make it fit.

Friday, 3rd January, 2025

Further snow in the night. Probably not going to go hill walking, which I’m a bit disappointed at but I got the impression it wasn’t the socially acceptable thing to be doing 😅 also access to the start of the walk will be tricky. There are only a few from main roads or towns, most are down some tiny track. Need that Land Rover!

I want to try and make a schedule of the year for hills. To see if I’m at risk of running out of local hills or not wanting to use up the nearby ones too quickly and to see what points total I might get this year.

Supposedly, and unsurprisingly, the default maps on the garmin watch aren’t that great. You can pay a fortune to garmin for better ones or you can download your own. This is of course a while world of custom maps. Everything is based off openstreetmap (OSM) but then people change colours or include or exclude information. I’ve found a couple that I think seem good. One is free and the other you pay for. I suspect the paid for one will be better. All this map tinkering has me excited for the watch. The only thing is I know it’s complicated to control and has many menus and options and so I’ll need to spend some time to figure it out.

Thursday, 2nd January, 2025

Woke up to a fair amount of snow today. Went sledging on the hill nearby with the kids. Was a moment of glorious sun but now it’s grey and snowing again.

The SOTA group chat has several people down in England having a lovely day up summits. It’s hard not to be jealous. I was hoping to go out tomorrow but think my wife is going to postpone her shopping trip from today to tomorrow. We’ll see.

I have to remind myself that the hill will still be there, there are other days and there’s no rush. In fact I don’t want to rush to 1,000 points as I suspect I’ll lose interest.

I’ve been wearing my Casio on the other wrist. Maybe I’ll wear two watches? Until the first person sees and asks wtf am I doing. It’s been interesting trying it at least. Feels very strange after wearing my watch in my left wrist forever.

My excuse will be that the Casio is two days slow.

Wednesday, 1st January, 2025

Vacuumed the upstairs and the office. Sorted out my wardrobe and got rid of a bin bag of stuff. Very satisfying. I also sold something on Vinted.

I like the articles thing but I don’t think yesterday’s article was really worth calling out. It would be better within the day. I might refine the page for later, just keep it concise to the aims of 2025 and not the thought process.

I’m not sure what to make of this, but I ordered a Garmin Epix Gen 2. Annoyingly I missed a 10% promo, but it was still a very good price. A SOTA radio friend told me a lot about his Garmin watch and how he uses it all the time and how it’s great for summits to follow the route with GPS. That’s what I wanted, and this one has the AMOLED screen but still a week’s battery with always on display or over two weeks with gesture, which is way more than I need but much better than an Apple Watch. Sometimes when I buy something at midnight, there’s a high probability of regret.

However, I think I’ll like this one more than the other that I returned, as it does have a nice screen and can do topographic maps. I don’t need to wear it everyday, but it will be nice for walks. Particularly as I do want to do some longer hikes this year, perhaps even camping overnight. So I’m torn between is it “buying crap?” or is it “enabling of goals”. You know what I should do? Not care how to categorise it, and think “I got that GPS watch I wanted at a great price, good job, now what’s next to do?”.

Also added Pagefind to the archives page. It’s built with Vercel automagically. It’s funny as I forgot I was using Vercel and started configuring it for Github actions, only to find out I don’t have any actions! Think I need to look up the how to not include the home page in the results as that’s not useful, or it’s just duplication.

2025 Plans

After some ramblings, I’ve condensed it into three areas:

1. Eliminate Distractions

Stop wasting time on pointless activities like aimlessly browsing YouTube or overthinking tools and platforms. Be intentional with computer usage.

2. Reduce and Simplify

Get rid of unused items — sell, donate, or discard them. Simplify my physical and digital spaces to focus on what truly matters.

3. Streamline Decisions

Avoid overcomplication. Question my motives, and focus on what makes me happy.