Archive

Someone emailed me today to thank me for my blog post on my radio site about getting a custom amateur radio licence in the UK. It was nice to recieve it, and the guy wanted to get his late wife’s name in his callsign, so it made it feel extra good that I had helped him achieve that. Even …

Office is back together, and whilst mostly the same, it is slightly different. It’s so neat and tidy, I really don’t want to move all the boxes of things back in. Maybe they can live in the garage? I’ll have to look at what’s in the boxes. There was all sorts of random things …

Morrone summit: Sister is visiting and we went out to this nice hill which overlooks Braemar. Meant we could have tea and cake afterwards. Plus she wanted to look at the Highland tea towels and other tourist tat. Was pretty windy at the top!

The office is finished but yet to put the furniture back in it. I can tell you that I do not like using a laptop as my only computer, specifically using a laptop as it is - no keyboard, no monitor (I did use a mouse). I like a big monitor. Using the laptop every so often on the sofa or in the …

All those Trixbrix pieces just add more combinations and permutations that make it even harder to figure out what to do. The Horizon Express sets arrived. After being annoyed about import duties, I was surprised to find a 9V train motor in one of them. That’s a £50 piece on its own. So that …

I found Mattzo Brick’s website, and realised the huge number of options if I get into 3rd party tracks, specifically from Trixbrix. I like that they’ve added all the custom tracks to Bluebrick but now I have no idea what to make. I did start collecting images from online of various …

Poker II Keyboard - The one that started it all: Up until this point, I’d been using random keyboards from Amazon or I don’t know where. Somehow I ended up on /r/mechanicalkeyboards and decided I needed one. It dread to think how many hours I spent reading, researching and determining what I should buy. In the end I asked for this for …

It’s time to paint the office! 🎨 Which means dismantling all the computers and radios, and pulling everything out. There are so many cables. Seems like the opportune time to sort it out™️. That does mean deciding what it’s being sorted out to. In the interim, I’ve setup the …

Came across this guy’s website which is thousands of photos of UK trains from mid-70s to today. I don’t take trains much these days, but used to take them fairly often growing up, so the 90s ones bring back memories. I’ve thought about making some of these trains in lego, which …

Derry Cairngorm, Ben Macdui and Carn a'Mhaim SOTA and munro outing: A lovely day out in the mountains. I’ve done these two before - Ben Macdui (UK’s second highest mountain) and Carn a’Mhaim, but I wanted to do the walk via Derry Cairngorm - another munro but not SOTA summit. The weather was lovely, but it was incredibly windy, and at some points …

kb45p - 45% Alps keyboard: This one is from 2016. Think I found it whilst browsing deskthority and the guy was selling PCBs for $30 or something cheap, so of course I bought it. I liked the idea of trying out alps switches, vs. the usual cherry mx ones I had been using. Alps were common on older Apple keyboards, and I’d …

This VS Code plugin for micro.blog looks very interesting. It would mean there’s finally an app for Windows, and the ability to manage files locally as well as online, and with the apps. Admittedly, I don’t really mind using the web app or the iOS ones to add content. Using the web app …

I’m back in deep with Lego trains again. I blame myself. Last time I left it, I’d decided I’d spent enough on them and to leave it be. Well now that it’s been a while, it seems okay to start spending again. This time it’s two discontinued sets plus another 1,300 pieces …

Apple Wireless Keyboard (A1314): Let’s continue with the Apple keyboards for now. This one is most ubiquitous and there are probably absolutely thousands of them about. This is the one I bought to use with the mac mini, instead of the older A1048. It and the trackpad were pretty cheap off ebay. I actually really like this …

Apple A1048 Keyboard: Over the years I’ve bought and sold Mac computers. I do enjoy using macOS and the Apple hardware is alway very nice. However, I struggle to justify new models, and so go with older ones, only to get annoyed with their performance or lack of latest OS. Plus I have too many computers already, so …

After having found a cd wallet of my wife’s CDs in the cupboard, I’ve been enjoying Eyes Open album by Snow Patrol again. No wonder it was the UK’s best selling album of 2006.

I’m pleased Apple’s EDU store promo up’d the Airpod Pros to the new version. Technically getting the black keyboard is the best value, as it’s the most expensive free item at £199, but the air pods would be more useful. Although not sure how comfortable I’d be wearing …

Lego Trains: Quite possibly the best two words you can put together. We went on a family holiday to LegoLand Denmark for the boys birthday in 2024. Such a great place and needless to say everyone got the Lego bug when we got home, but it was me who really wanted the lego trains. Unsurprisingly, there are whole …

Keyboard collection: Iris: This one was circa February 2019. I do like the idea and style of split keyboards, this wasn’t my first split but maybe my first built split. I enjoyed building it, but with a split board that was also ortholinear, and thumbs keys, I didn’t really enjoy using it. Unless I’m using …

I don’t have lots of clothes, but many of them are old and bought when money was tighter. As such I think they’re a little bit tired and maybe could look a little smarter. I like the idea of looking good, in a male fashion sense, but I don’t really have any interest in going out …

Watches. Smart watches in particular. I really like my Garmin Epix when going on hikes for the maps and tracking my route. But I’d like to wear a normal watch most of the time, but feel bad about not wearing my Garmin. For a while I liked the sleep tracking stuff but tbh I don’t need it …

Swapped around DNS, so now micro.blog is my main blog on fondoftea.com. The tiddlywiki I was using is now on wiki.alexjj.com and the previous tiddlywiki (that wasn’t really updated) is idling on github somewhere. Plan is to use this site for all content, and try and make use of categories …

Wiv us on the Wyvii: Another SOTA activation, this time North of Inverness on the two Wyvis summits

I’ve still got about 9 months left on our EV hire, but today I started having a look at what cars are out there. The Renault 5 looks nice! 😎

Had a great time last week on a summits on the air (SOTA) activation with a good friend. We did Ben Wyvis and Little Wyvis - a Scottish Munro and Corbett respectively. 📻

Starting with geocaching: I’ve recently started geocaching. This is certainly not a new thing, the site is celebrating its 25th year! I do remember looking at it years ago but I think at the time I would’ve needed to buy a GPS device. Although that doesn’t seem quite right as my phone would’ve had …

Finishing the Realm of the Enderlings Series: Last night I finished the final book in the series…at about 2am! It’s a fantasy series set in a medieval style world with magic and dragons written by Robin Hobb (a pen name of Margaret Ogden). It consists of 16 books in five trilogies (one is a trilogy in four parts (tetralogy ?)), and …

Changes to the Scottish Tax Bands: Introduction Scotland’s government has decided that from next year (from a tax perspective) they’ll be adding another tax band to Scotland. A 45 per cent income tax band for earnings between £75,000 and £125,140. Plus fiddling with the ranges and percentages of the other bands. So from …

Where did 2023 go?: Here we are, the evening of the last day of the year (at least when I started writing this, took me a few more days to finish!) and I wonder what did happen? I also wonder what will come next year? This time last year I did make a list in dynalist of what I wanted to do in 2023, and I thought I …

One Typed Page: There’s a website, onetypedpage.com, which is just that. Each day people submit a photo of their typed page and it gets hosted on this blog. I’ve known about it for a long time but only recently started going back to it. There appears to be some comments about moderation and conflict, …

Subscriptions: Seen a few posts recently with people listing their subs. Thought I’d join in. I really don’t like subscriptions, and would much rather pay once and be done with it. Once you join and commit, they have you, it can be hard to leave. The upside is that if you don’t like it, …

A new writing nook: I have to admit my previous one has become overwhelmed with things that there is no longer anywhere to write. It is now home to radio books and magazines, a few other books I keep meaning to read, a Hobonichi I’ve yet to write in, and more. I keep meaning to tidy it up. We recently inherited a …

A new radio blog: I’ve decided to setup a dedicated blog for amateur radio. You can find it at gm5alx.uk. Hoping to actually write more on it…😅

Entering the world of Amateur Radio: Several years ago, when we were living in California, I started thinking about getting my amateur radio licence. I don’t remember why I started on this, but it seemed like something I’d enjoy and be interested in. I didn’t end up doing anything, as you had to sit exams at test …

Bookcases: Book cases, book shelves, whatever you call them, I am drawn towards them. It is always interesting to see what people put on theirs. Both the books and also the trinkets or sundries. It’s such a big collection of stories, both contained within the book but of the person that owns them. What …

First attempts with 4x5: I’ve been meaning to write this up for the last 14 months! I also took a lot more photos for this post but I don’t seem to be able to find any…🤷 A while back, in 2021, I was making a wiki note on large format cameras, specifically 4x5 cameras. Jack noticed this and asked me if I …

My 2022 Steam Replay: Annual recaps seem to be the trend in social media and apps. It’s quite interesting actually. Reddit did one, which told me the scary number of hours I’ve spent on the app. Including spending 25 hours on /r/leica 🤫 Steam now do one and shows me how much time I spend on games. I knew I …

Choosing between the Fuji 50mm f/2 and the 60mm f/2.4: This post sat as a draft for a long time when I was using blot. Whilst migrating my site to this new Hugo one I saw the pictures I took and thought I might as well write it up quickly. Background I ended up with both the 50mm f/2 and the 60mm f/2.4. The first as I wanted a longer lens for when out …

Print: Print out your photos. Please remind me to do this. It’s so fun to hold them in your hand and look at them. You really study them when they’re there and it’s not a queue of 200 images to get through. Doesn’t need to be a fancy printer, or perfectly colour matched. Just print …

Film scanning with my digital camera: A few weeks ago I managed my first successful attempt at film development. Whilst I was very excited that it worked, the next thing was actually seeing the images. I did take a tiny picture of several frames using my phone and the filmdev app. That was fun just to see that there was something. The …

Finding a camera for my dad: My dad likes photography, but he doesn’t really have a camera. He used to own one, think it was a Praktica SLR. He’s told me the story of dropping it in the sand at a beach and also of setting up a darkroom space in his bathroom, but then never getting a chance to use it before moving. …

A new Fujifilm lens: This, the 35mm f/1.4, just arrived today from eBay. I fitted it to my X-E4 and took a selfie in front of the mirror. It’s night time so it’s dark and I decided just to focus on the camera not my tired eyes. I can’t believe how light this lens is, even with the hood on. It’s …

The trade offs of a prebuilt: I’m referring to used prebuilt computers, and not laptops…all of those are prebuilt. Things like HP or Dell or Lenovo desktop or server machines. I do quite like them. They offer good performance at a good price, and generally there are loads of them available. They’re typically …

My first successful 35 mm development: After the previous attempt, where I concluded the developer had expired, I was determined to continue. First I had to purchase some new developer. I decided to go for Kodak HC-110. This appears to be a classic developer from the beginning of time and it’s high dilution ratio and long shelf …

First attempt at 35mm development: This isn’t my first attempt at film development, that was at the beginning of this year with trying out the 4x5 camera. I’ve been meaning to write about that for 9 months, maybe I’ll get to it soon… This was my first attempt at 35mm film though (black and white, obviously). …

Visiting the London Leica Store: A few weeks ago I was passing through London and thought I’d take the opportunity to visit the flagship Leica store of the UK - London Mayfair. If you’ve played Monopoly, you’ll know this is the expensive part of town! It was quite the store. Display cabinets with all the cameras …

Seeing the Queen's cortège: The Queen is travelling from Balmoral Castle to Edinburgh, and goes along the main road that’s a 10 minute walk from our house. Couldn’t really be easier to go. There were, unsurprisingly, a lot of people. There were also a lot of police stationed every 100 metres or so just to keep …

Kosmos Foto Mono Film Stock thoughts: I was going to call this a review but it’s not that official. Kosmo Foto Mono is a 100-ISO panchromatic black-and-white film. I think I bought it as I liked the box design more than any meticulous research that I undertook. I think it’s made by Fomapan, but I think it’s quite …

Happy 60th Birthday! 🎂📷: My Leica M2 was made in 1962, according to the serial number, and it works just as well today as it did when it was first made. It’s my most favourite camera. I love the rangefinder focusing, and the feel and quality of it are outstanding. With a little care and maintenance this camera will …

Big Orange 🍊: I like big oranges. Navel or winter or Jaffa or whatever they’re called at various points of the year. They’re always big. Bigger than clementines or satsumas (what is the difference?) or other citrus fruit of that colour but which are smaller. They’re satisfying to eat, they fill …

Hobonichi - for those that want to be told what to do: I’ve looked at them a few times over the years but never bought one. They are pretty expensive - I guess from import duties etc. from Japan - and, you know, it’s just a notebook. However, I saw that the 2H 2022 ones were up for pre-order at a local online store and so I went for it. …

Compact Cameras: Whilst I’d love to get a Leica Q2 or even a GRIII, they’re quite expensive (quite being the understatement on the Q2). I’m interested in getting a compact camera to just take anywhere without it being a big deal. My Fuji isn’t huge but it’s not something that fits in …

Making a nice place to write: As much as I love computers, it does turn out that you can have too many. A while back I decided that we needed another computer in the office for when two people wanted to use a computer at the same time. Sounds logically right? I managed to pick up a good deal on a Mac Mini. It was a 2012 model …

A new keyboard🧹🦀: It’s been a long time since I last built a new keyboard. I think it was Christmas time 2018 when I bought the Iris keyboard as the store had a sale on. Funnily enough that was a split keyboard. I keep meaning to write up a post about all my mechanical keyboards (there’s been quite a few over the …

I have a photo in an actual gallery 🌌: If you visit the Fujifilm House of Photography in London, somewhere on the walls you’ll find a photograph that I took. Afraid it’s been taken down now, and lives at home with me! I had some friends who were keen to go astrophotography shooting and invited me along one evening. We drove out to …

Upgrading my T490 to 1080p: A while back I decided I needed (yes, needed) another laptop. I do have a Thinkpad T450s already but my daughter has pretty much taken it completely and uses it for school work. So I went on the hunt for a new one. I wanted it to have USB-C so that I could use my existing dock and setup at home that …

Generating lots of tiddlers: For my Meditations Tiddlywiki, I wanted to make each statement an individual tiddler. Whilst it doesn’t add a great deal to the site right now (beyond just viewing the minimum amount, the random tiddler button, and following the tiddlywiki mantra), I think it’ll be useful later on. Over …

Monte Carlo Simulation in Excel with Python: There are quite a few blogs that show you how to do Monte Carlo simulations using python. A very accessible one is from Practical Business Python. Always a great site for python in the workplace for non-devs. However, I couldn’t find one that did just what I wanted, namely, take a model …

My favourite teapot 🫖: Yes, I'm very fond of tea. Like all favourites the real favourite always depends. It depends on the intent, at least for me. I suppose you could do a “of all time” or “best overall” style favourite. I think a common distinction is form over function. There are a lot of things …

Explaining my setup with beancount, fava, and pythonanywhere: ⚠️ This guide is considerably old. However, the concept will still work but likely the configuration is now different. ::: My version of getting started with beancount. Introduction The aim of this post is to walk you through my setup of how I manage my personal finances. I’ve read similar …

Where passing fancies get written down: A blog by Alex Johnstone.