January 2026

Thursday, 1st January, 2026

I accidentally made a folder called 2036 today. I like the idea of a single place for the next 10 years.

Did another 5 minutes on the erg for 1,200 m. I have got a cold and slept poorly from it but those 5 minutes seemed very tiring! Lots of muscles not used in a long time, as all I’ve been doing is hill walking. But I’m fine with doing a little each day.

Gone down the mental rabbit hole of getting an iMac. I’m sure when I look at prices I’ll change my mind but it does have some nice software. I’m also still trying to get rid of things vs. buying more.

I did look at prices - circa £2k for an iMac with what I’d pick. 😮‍💨 Seems a lot to use some software!

I’ve been poking around in my tiddlywiki, enjoying “on this day” and various notes I’ve made. Makes me think I should use that as my daily and wiki and then just some normal site on my main domain….or possibly just a landing page. Then I’d just have TW and the radio blog.

I might keep this just for me to rant into occasionally and have it built somewhere random on the internet.

But tonight I’ll watch the last Stranger Things.

Monday, 5th January, 2026

Back to work and school. Except we’re snowed in and everywhere is shut.

Tuesday, 6th January, 2026

It can’t believe it’s just Tuesday this week. Feels like forever. Snow continues to fall and school is closed and we’re working from home. Now the school is setting work, so it’s like lockdown again, only now everyone’s 5 years older and Tesco can’t deliver food.

Daughter had to take a landscape photo for her art work today. So we went out with the camera and took a bunch of snowy trees and icicles etc. I had my favourite but I let her pick hers for the work.

If I cared about my blog I’d have put the photo or some of them here. But we used the camera and the photo is on the computer and I’m sat on the sofa with my phone writing this in 1Writer, and I’ll forget later.

Still trying to find what I want for this site and others. Tiddlywiki could be the answer but also maybe not. Tinderbox - but I’d need to buy a mac which I’m not totally against. Long term I’d like to be all Linux but really I’d like to not be Windows and the next easiest thing is macOS. I like becoming proficient with software and Tinderbox could be the Excel for writing. Tinderbox and Tiddlywiki have overlaps in my mind and could both be put to a similar purpose, and so I think I should go all in with Tiddlywiki as it’s web based, all OS, free tool.

Buti like writing here - as in this software but also just on my phone on the sofa, hidden away from everyone with a cup of tea before some chaos breaks out again. Or on a chair by the window at work taking a break. But I could still do that and then just integrate the writing again later somehow.

Many of my notes or journals are written not to look at again but to just write out for the feeing of being done with it. I like that this site has years of archives but at the same time I don’t really care about them. In fact the only time I’ve looked at them are the entries I imported into tiddlywiki and that show up on the “on this day” tiddler. I keep thinking that when I start the new site, it’ll be blank and I won’t bother with historical stuff.

Plus then I wouldn’t have to look at several years of having the same conversation with myself.

Tried making a blog site or a theme using AI and whilst it did everything I asked and it worked, I didn’t like the results. I don’t know what I want. I still quite like the design of this site. So maybe I should get AI to tidy it up, add more of a nav bar somewhere and just use it.

Or I keep this going and combine my main site and wiki into one. Which I’m very confident I said just a few days ago. Really the wiki part is the most useful to me, and my idle chatter is irrelevant. And so maybe I just change domains and be done with it.

But buying a new computer would be fun 🫣

Well I successfully wasted this evening looking at a whole bunch of web software and decided I don’t care and don’t want to spend any more time on it. I thought about removing this site and just using a single text file for myself. I looked at various tiddlywiki configurations but decided I didn’t want to go down that route - TW just isn’t a normal website…which I like but also don’t. Even tempted to do a Jack and delete stuff.

Wednesday, 7th January, 2026

Decided to tidy up this site. Got rid of things I never used which were built with good intentions and culled all the old posts. I did think about getting rid of it altogether and going back to my journal.txt file. I might still do that. Also thought I should just use my micro.blog for my main domain rather than complaining about it. It’s still less effort than a SSG. Although wish there was a windows client just to make things tiny bit easier.

Thinking of clearing out all the journal entries in my wiki and just keeping it as a wiki. Still debating if I swap it out for dokuwiki - just as I can find things easier as I’m forced to organise it when I put it in. Also I like the ACL for a private section. Also I can use the one I have setup for amateur radio and then it’s one less site to look after.

Less is more.

Thursday, 8th January, 2026

I’m still not sure about micro.blog. Feels too much like this site in terms of usage. Leaning towards making the domain just my wiki, as that’s what I actually use. Or I could put it back to the zola blog I never use…

I also want to use DayOne more/again. The most I used it was with my Apple iPad Air (1st gen) and Smart Keyboard. But those seem both to be broken after the kids started using them and then it got dropped and now it won’t even turn on. So maybe I need a new iPad 😅 although I really want the same keyboard. Not sure I like the new ones (or their price). Or could get MacBook…my problem with the MacBook is it’s too distracting to do other stuff and just waste time. Whereas the iPad can be more deliberate in usage. It can do more these days but it’s still less.

I actually like pika…but I don’t want to pay for a blogging platform, even if it is very nice. Really would rather spend my time writing in DayOne as this ends up turning into something I look at again.

Friday, 9th January, 2026

More less is needed.

Up to 3 days streak on DayOne. Want to focus on that first.

With all this snow, I started looking at Land Rover Discoverys again, there’s even a nice one for sale nearby. A nice 2016 Disco 4 with all the trimmings. Expensive for a 10 year old car but knew it was probably a huge figure and I’m sure it’ll keep its value well. It’s probably not a good idea, expensive to tax, insure, and run. Very mixed views on reliability: either “they’re dire” or “with care they’ll last forever”.

Really I should think about the EV as its lease is ending this year. Not so sure another lease is a good idea. Benefit in kind tax on EVs is being increased each year. If one wants a new car every 3 years then it’s probably worth it. Just not sure that’s what I want. The market is flooded with used model 3s and they’re pretty competitively priced for what you get. Wasn’t keen on one but they have good range and all the whistles.

In reality it only snows here about two sets of one week periods each year. This year is a record one. Nothing is setup for snow so the world crashes to a halt anyway, so I’m working at home and the kids may or may not get to school. What we really need is a car with decent all season tyres. Like Michelin Cross Countries. To get down to the shops and back up the hill. It’s more likely to be icy more often than not and I’m not going off-road, through mud and rivers, so a real 4x4 is somewhat excessive. I’d like an old defender as a project but I don’t have time for that.

It’s just annoying the main car had four new tyres fitted in May - under a crunch of two punctures and needing to drive the next day so we had fitted whatever they had in our size that night. So I don’t really want to buy another four to replace them. I could buy them with wheels but then that’s more expensive (although can utilise them in the long run) and where am I keeping the other set? Leasing a car means it comes with new tyres, that I’m effectively paying for, and whilst they will replaced used ones, they won’t replace with what I want, so then I’m forking out myself.

I had a fancy car in the past and I really regretted buying it. I sold it and moved on but it felt like such a waste of money. I don’t want to relive that. Is a 10 year old Land Rover a bad choice? My fear is that every time it goes to the garage it’s £3+ grand to fix some whatsit.

I have wondered what I’d do if our family car did die. Some major failure that was £5k+ to fix. Buy a new car is the answer but what would it be. My hope is it lasts another 5-7 years with no major issues and then we won’t need a seven seater, and now the world is our used car clam. Although a 5k repair bill would be cheaper than a new car 😅

I’ve liked the lease as it means you don’t need to do anything and you’re not tied down to anything. Of course at the end you give it back and have nothing to show. Just a fee you paid to have access to the car.

Anyway. That completes the circular thoughts on this matter.

Sunday, 11th January, 2026

I had decided that I should just be done with the tyres and get the all seasons. It’s out main car, it’s more often than not cold and wet vs. hot and dry. Then when I had them in my basket I choked. Still get stuck on the fact it has perfectly good tyres…just cheap summer ones…Probably I’ll recover this evening.

Last year I wanted to setup multiple tables to make Lego train layouts. But now the Christmas tree has gone and the room is less full, I quite like it this way and don’t want more stuff in it. I guess I mostly like just designing and building the trains rather than setting up layouts.

We finally had a delivery. It has made me not buy anything as I didn’t know when it might arrive, but now they’re resumed I guess the flood gates can open.

Monday, 12th January, 2026

I’m on a six day streak with DayOne. I could probably go back a few days into the holidays and write a few short notes or add some photos from my phone. I like how it asks to update the entry’s metadata to the photo I add. Can look back at photos where I remember stuff that happened but don’t remember the day exactly and add it. I can always look at the photo myself but it just saves time and means I’m more likely to do it.

I also ordered the all season tyres. Went for Continental AllSeason 2s. Was a lot of comparisons between the Michelin CrossCountries and these but the new version of the CCs only seemed to be good if you got the CC3 Sports and I couldn’t tell which were sports and which weren’t. Perhaps it depends on tyre size as well. Several UK people liked the Continentals and said they were better in wet weather - which is more suitable here - vs. the best snow grip…not that the Continentals are bad just a few % points less in various tests and no doubt a million times better than our cheap summer ones.

Still feel a bit wasteful over the summer tyres and maybe I could ask to keep them and then buy rims and have them fitted…then keep them and swap out. Or I could just sell them.

Wednesday, 14th January, 2026

Looks nice. But why do I need another SSG?

My unprinted DayOne entries start January 2024. I’m wondering when I have the next book made. I was trying to do one per year but I’ve only got about 150 entries for the past two years. However it’s hard to not just stick to calendar years, and in which case I should print 24-25, and then see if I can write more in 2026.

Thursday, 15th January, 2026

I’m kinda bored in the evenings now.

Felt like I’ve always had stuff to do, sort out, figure out, etc. and so evenings have been busy. But now…I dunno.

Saturday, 17th January, 2026

Built a 14’ circular trampoline today. Getting a contractor to come dig a hole in the garden for it to go into. If I was organised, I would’ve got them to dig some channels for coax cable for future ham radio antenna. But I’m not.

One of the cats likes it. Or is curious about it. She’s been in and out a few times and has sat on it after exploring all around it. She came in and started meowing at me. Thought she was hungry but she has kibbles, so I think she’s trying to tell me about the trampoline!

Speaking of tea…work has installed new coffee machines. Some nespresso huge thing. It does hot water and they brought in some tea bags but it tastes gross. I took a tea bag home to see if it was them - they look fancy but it wasn’t that great. Better than at work but still not great. So it’s a combination of the 85°C water and the cheapo tea bags. So now I’ve brought in some mint and rooibos tea to use instead. I could complain and make a noise but I can’t be bothered. Maybe it’ll be better for me to drink less caffeine at work.

Started playing Path of Exile 2 last night. Diablo-like game which just had a new update with another character available. So I started with the new Druid. I’ve not actually finished the story so it’ll be new once I catch up to where I was. I do like playing games, just beforehand I think of them as a waste of time. Then proceeds to look at shit on Reddit/ youtube/ etc. because that’s not a waste of time…

Monday, 19th January, 2026

One of the boys spent their Christmas money on a remote control (rc) car. It was okay, something cheap from China no doubt that was “on sale”. But they enjoyed it. We need to build a ramp for it. They asked me to print one but that was going to take 18 hrs, and sometimes whilst you can print something, don’t mean you should. Gonna make it from some bits of wood I have lying around.

However, this sent me down the rabbit hole of real rc cars….

Tuesday, 20th January, 2026

We have a planned radio activation day at the start of Feb. Think about 14 of us will be out on the hills and then meet at a cafe for “tea and medals”. I’ve got it in my head that I want that day to be my 1,000 point activation - an award called Mountain Goat. Which is nice but I started the year on 901 and so need to make short work of the difference. So far I’m managed to do the hills in my plan but today was a huge geomagnetic storm (lots of aurora) and that destroys radio. There’s also still snow on the hills but wet snow and it’s a slog.

Next week will be the decider as I need to get quite a few hills in, not checked the weather yet - bit early anyway - just hoping not for snow storms or pouring with rain all day.

It doesn’t matter if I don’t do it, just would be nice. Plus I kinda want to get it out the way. Then I can just do whatever I want when I want it and not be thinking “oh but I could get more points if I do x”.

I’m on VS Code and a couple of markdown file at work now. Logseq is gone. But past couple of days I’ve noticed VS Code being annoying laggy. Seems some issue between the markdown plugin and git? I deleted the git stuff because I don’t need it at work. Also removed some extensions I never use. Did make me think if there’s some lighter weight markdown editor I could use as I don’t really need much. Notepad.txt …

I have a year file, which today I realised I have the top heading as 2026 then everything is a sub heading. If the file is just 2026 why do I need the heading? Going to fix that tomorrow. Unless I decide I want a log.md and all years go in it. I have three other markdown files that relate to my job but did start wondering if I should keep all the content in on log and use tags or something to link them but I didn’t like that with logseq and prefer just the few files. Also tile the log and the other file side by side and then everything is solved. Still want to see what other markdown editors there are.

Because I’m stingy and also because I know I won’t really use it that much…I’d wondered about using pika pages for writing then exporting it and configuring some SSG to use the export.

Sold a radio this week and now have £500 sat on my eBay account. I know I spent that to buy it originally but it feels like free money 😅 a Mac mini is £500…

Wednesday, 21st January, 2026

I started looking at Hugo themes…some I quite like. Not sure if I can motivate myself to setup a new site and migrate stuff over though.

Already bored of Path of Exile 2 😅 It’s just pointless…probably you can say that about everything but just seems more so.

Thursday, 22nd January, 2026

My one million metres isn’t going too well. Was fine the week we were snowed in, but not been on it since! Did do four hill walks this week, so it’s not for lack of doing anything. I’m annoyed with the winter weather though. I wanted to be off Monday and Tuesday next week to go out but it looks miserable. Wind and rain - the worst combo. Can’t decide between trying to go to a couple of hills with trees on the top for shelter - but lots of up and down and more exposure to the rain, or do a high hill for more points but likely blowing a gale, snowing, and freezing cold. If I’ve got any chance of keeping my plan then probably I need to do the big hills. Still a few days away yet to maybe things will improve.

Tuesday, 27th January, 2026

We hosted a big birthday family ceilidh this weekend and had a lot of fun. I took the X-E4 and 23mm f/1.4 and overwhelmingly all the black and white photos I took (well colour profile I chose) are everyone’s (and my) favourite. The dark, indoor setting made it hard to do colour without huge ISO or slow shutter speed. Whereas for my B&W profile I let the camera go to a much higher ISO and it doesn’t matter. I culled my photos to 53 and my wife picked 21 to share with family, 4 were colour.

Probably it’s just a reflection on me and not knowing / having a suitable colour profile for the darker evening indoors settings. These are all straight out of camera jpgs as I don’t have time to edit them.

I did add all these photos to Apple Photos.app album and that made it very convenient to share. No doubt other software has very easy to share albums too.

Think I have a Lego hoarding habit…it manifests itself via designing/building new trains or associated items but really all that happens is it gets built and stored in boxes in the garage. Where I’m now standing looking at it thinking “I should get some more 9V track”. I the start thinking about how nice it would be to have it all organised into various trays and drawers etc.

I don’t think I’m going to hit 1,000 points in SOTA before our day out. The weather has been dire so it’s hard to do higher point places. Think I’m fine with it though; but also would like it out the way.

Wednesday, 28th January, 2026

I still want to make a new blog, just a regular, normal one. Where I can write things and then find them later. Here is easy to write but hard to find, especially as I seem to have adopted culling old journal entries - because I never looked at them and I felt the burden of them (perhaps scared of what they showed).

But I can’t seem to make one. Maybe I should use pika (I don’t like paying for stuff I can easily do myself) or use the zola one that’s already setup, or use something else. Probably I don’t want to write anything anyway, and just think I do.

And then I think about a single website.

I’m writing this in VS Code on the computer - not often I do that, usually 1Writer on my phone - but recently VS Code added auto complete for your whole line. I’ve had to turn it off at work for my notes as it suggests a whole load of stuff and if I want to indent the line, then it thinks I want the whole load of text it’s suggesting. Now I need to turn it off here…mostly as it’s alarmingly accurate and would more easily let me to blabber on and on and on (about the same things as always) by just pressing tab. (It completed a lot of this paragraph for me)

Friday, 30th January, 2026

Like a celestial body orbiting a sun, I return to the same decision over and over and over.

I don’t write blog posts so why do I have a blog. I often think I’d be better with a daily journal and a wiki. My blog posts are kinda like a wiki anyway. Although mostly I can’t be bothered to change things. Just ennui.

Perhaps it’s January. Back to work, miserable weather, no sunlight. Work is boring and meaningless.

I saw a job for estate manager for one of the Cairngorms estates. Basically look after everything - fences, roads, staff, tourists, deer, guests, anything and everything. Plus endless outdoors. Had a wee fantasy about doing it. No doubt it’s long hours, considerably worse pay, and relentless complaints and difficult choices.

Moan moan.

Started a new fantasy series, Bone Ships, or something like it. Didn’t enjoy it and stopped reading. Reminded me of the Live Ships trilogy as part of Realm of the Enderlings and those were my least favourite. Sailors on ships and some magic aspect to the boat is not interesting. So I continued on my Star Wars books, from someone’s top 5 SW list. This one is Ben Kenobi and about his time on Tatooine when he’s keeping a remote eye on Luke as he grows up. It’s easy reading and enjoyable. I should go to bed early and keep reading it, not staying up on the computer looking at nothing until 11pm.

Saturday, 31st January, 2026

This sounds weird, but I never sit in our lounge. Of course I do sit in it but rarely do I sit, on my own, and just look around the room. I realise that it’s one of my favourite rooms. It’s quite small, has a sofa and three random arm chairs (two from granny’s on either side of the family) and one we found cheap somewhere. It has a bookcase with photo albums, my “technical” books and other books too big to go in the office, cookbooks, photography books, teacher books, and board games. Kids board games and ones we all play regularly. There’s a carved elephant side table that I got as a present when I was about 8. A big coffee table for playing board games on, currently has more board games and some sewing projects. There is a TV in here. And finally, about eight house plants, including some gigantic palm thing some friends gave us when they moved back to Canada. It’s so big it overhangs the sofa. All the plants are in here as the cats aren’t allowed in here - they always scratch the chairs - and they always want to dig in the soil in the pot.

It’s currently raining, everyone else is busy and I’m just sat here with a cup of tea looking out the window and enjoying the quiet.

I’m trying not to take my phone out my pocket but here we are. I should go and get my kindle but fear if I’m seen, then I’ll be required to do something.

It’s hard not to go on the internet and look up things. Like lipo/lifepo4 battery chargers - which is best, which can also do NiCd or random other chemistries. What connector does it have, does it do balanced. Could I replace all the other chargers I have with it. Right now each battery I have has its own charger and I fear using another with it. Then I find a good one but it’s USA specific, so time to start again.

Maybe if I had a remarkable or similar, I could sit here and read and write. (What would I be writing? I don’t know…)

Should I sell that HT I bought just to get a SOTA badge via a digital voice QSO. (And other radio gibberish).

I should buy a Mac; I should install Linux; I should use the computer less; I should sell it all; I should buy it all; I should delete it all. I should play Stardew Valley on the switch, I should play any of the Pokemon games I’ve bought in the last 10 years (and never played).

This lady makes nice art work.

Less is more. Less does so much more than I realised. Plus that one guy has been maintaining it for over 40 years.