Wednesday, 22nd April, 2026

I went to bed thinking I should just pay for pika for a few months and use it. Their markdown and images export makes it super easy to migrate away if I don’t like it or stop using it. I woke up thinking I should just suck it up and spend the time to write stuff in my existing static blog that works just fine.

Last night I also used Claude to convert an old landing page - that I originally stole from someone’s tumblr - to more modern CSS and make it somewhat responsive. I was just using the web browser free version and it took a few goes but it go there in the end. This was with the idea I’d not bother with a blog on my main site and just have a landing page. I even started looking at domain names for the idea of starting a single, new blog that’s everything altogether but without the burden of the past. I gave up on that idea pretty quick as I couldn’t think of anything good and I don’t need another domain. Still sort of think making a new site will help me start a fresh, just where and how and what to decide…small details.

As usual, I don’t really know what I want and so I don’t go anywhere. Plus I’ve been dropping in and out of various sites and so any posts that I have made are scattered about.

Once it’s been a week since I last went hill walking, I get a bit antsy and think it’s about time I went out again! This week is super busy at work, and so my day off is Friday. It’s fine but I typically have less time on Friday’s due to the school runs. The forecast is good though, so hopefully that remains true.

Another thought I had was moving this site to neocities, and then using this domain for the blog. Why? Not sure, I just like neocities. Looked at bearblog too - easy to get sucked into the lifetime subscription but probably shouldn’t start with that. Also tiddlywiki’s in there somewhere.

Not read with the X4 much…

Thought about selling all the lego trains and building a real model railway. Just because it can be much smaller and fit in somewhere but still be interesting. I should investigate prices before I start thinking about it too much, probably even more expensive than Lego! Wondered about selling some of the boy’s lego too - or sell some sets and then buy some different ones. My wife is pretty good about keeping pieces together in the box once they’ve been built and then put away.

Also deleted about 160+GB of photos last night. Mostly raws from 5-10 years ago that I’ll never ever go back to. Was quick to do as at some stage I’d decided to make a raw and final folder in each albums folder to keep the files. Some events I also had my uncle’s photos but often those would be 50GB for one day. I have my own and don’t need his. The bigger task, which I may never do, is culling low quality shots per event. I started looking at some of the photos and had plenty of nostalgia and “oh don’t we look so young”. So that’ll mean it’ll take even longer. I like when Jack puts an older photo at the top of his daily posts, I’d like to do that such that I surface things I miss.

If I had macOS computer, would it simplify everything?

I have an iPhone and so the obvious integration between them is good. Photos from my phone would be easily accessible and manageable, I could pay for iCloud 2TB tier and just keep everything in it, and still get web access and sharing with others (like I have with nextcloud). Apps I like would be accessible, particularly DayOne that I’d like to make more use of. I could use the micro.blog app to manage my website (if I want that). It’s unix-y enough to do things easier than Windows. My email domains are taken care of by iCloud. I could do iCloud sync for obsidian. I could use Tinderbox. It would also just be my computer that no-one else uses, so I don’t have to cater to others’ needs. The new Framework Pro came out, looks nice but pricy (it is the pro model).

I now have a mac keyboard, a Bluetooth mouse and a usb c monitor already that I could hook it up to if I wanted.

But is this all just me trying to justify buying a Neo, that I don’t really need? Do I want everything in Apple world, do I want to be paying for iCloud? I could just use Apple passwords and not bother with vaultwarden anymore.

The ease of it is great, it just makes my “I should self host everything and only use open source software” idealism cry. That option just comes with more effort…maybe.

Oh well, another thing you me to write the same thing about every day and make no progress forward - but at least not backwards….I hope.