Wednesday, 29th April, 2026

Fitted new brake pads to my bike - wow what a difference! Although the previous pair came with the bike…that I bought 5 years ago 🫣 Anyway, nice to sort it out. I sort of want to build my own bike from select parts, to make it unique (because it’ll cost more “I built my own $3,000 bike for only $5,000”) and to then reallly understand how all the pieces fit together. Just not sure what type of bike. Had thought about a mountain bike, as I don’t really like mine, but I rarely use it - I think because I rarely use it and “don’t know how to ride a mountain bike” that I don’t like it. It feels unstable, hard to control, slips easily - which I think is because it has 29” wheels and a long wheelbase and wider wheel fork angles. But the internet tells me all these things makes it better to ride, and how it’s made for stability. Maybe it is better than a regular bike and I just don’t know how to ride downhill on mud and stones.

Or I make myself a new commuter bike - which I use everyday. Probably the better choice. But then I’ll look at prices and think it’s better just to buy a new one but that wasn’t the point - and so I’ll do nothing.

Tuesday, 28th April, 2026

We’ve gone full lockdown on devices with the kids. Turned all the screen time apps to max! (Max restrictions obv).

I lose interest in computer things quickly. Sometimes before I even start whatever I’ve been thinking about.

Simultaneously, I looked at M1 Mac minis, thinking they’d be cheap. Not as cheap as I thought they should be.

Friday, 24th April, 2026

During the day I think of these things I want to do on the computer. Then by the evening when I have time to do it, I’m not interested. Mostly just being a bit tired but also it seems like a chore.

I wanted to finish my time book - Splitting the Second. It’s both very interesting and boring at the same time. Some sections go into more detail than I really want but there are plenty of sections that are interesting. It’s a comprehensive book on time and how it’s measured and how that’s changed over human life, plus the application of very accurate time keeping.

Now we have very accurate time, it gets impacted by Einstein’s special relativity where “moving clocks go slow”. It’s somewhat of a hard concept to grasp 🤓 but is it time being affected or the mechanism that is used to keep time? If I could somehow build a nanosecond accurate quartz clock would that also go slow. They did experiments with radio signals coming back from the Viking landers on Mars and when Mars was behind the sun the radio waves slowed down going around the sun, and they travel at the same speed…or something like that.

Relativity was in Artemis book about how the other species didn’t know about relativity.

Glorious sun today and off out into the hills with my hiking buddy. We haven’t actually been out together for a couple of months now, for various reasons. Be doing a local hill, which will remind me they’re still interesting even though I’m not chasing points and I’ve done it twice before.

Thursday, 23rd April, 2026

Last night’s “lying in bed thinking about websites” thought was that I should use tiddlywiki for my main site. It is appealing. Single html file but fully functional. Plus I always feel like my natural state is wiki.

I have one already but obviously I’d need to start again. (And rebuild the same thing).

Was talking to Claude about setting up a new tiddlywiki. Was good to explore ideas for structure and if gives me the wikitext to do some of the filters and lists etc. probably they’re simple but I just never can learn them.

Sometimes I like the basic tiddlywiki theme and layout but then other times I want it to be different. There’s a notebook theme I always look at and do like, except that sidebar. I don’t like that but maybe Claude can fix it for me.

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.

Set this site up to build and be pushed to neocities. Maybe when the domain expires I won’t renew it, main site to landing page and be done. Or maybe it’ll be home to a new blog or maybe nothing. I just really like nothing. I remembered I made some goals a while back. There still here. I like how the numbered bullets don’t work so they’re all #1.

Tuesday, 21st April, 2026

So thinking of using micro.blog for my main site…last time I replaced this site with it but it didn’t last. Micro.blog has some shortcomings but overall it’s pretty good. I’m not interested in the new inkwell RSS reader (good job as I’m on the micro.one version and so don’t get it) and maybe other things being made but for a hosted blog it’s pretty good. Adding images is a bit of a method (pika is so easy) but it’s not that bad.

I think replacing this site was the mistake. This is my daily waffle, navel gazing, complaining, therapy session, idle thoughts noone is really interested in. Whereas the other site is more for stuff I’ve actually done. Plus I have more attachment to this site as I built it from scratch. It’s not a theme and a SSG and away I went, and I kept missing it and the “maybe I’ll add more to it”.

I’ve not changed DNS yet but I was thinking about it last night whilst using micro.blog and remembering all the things. I’ll think about it today but it feels like a low hurdle to overcome: a site that I’ll actually write stuff in vs. one I don’t.

A reason I took away the archive and only keep x number of posts on the page here is often I don’t want to remember what I wrote. It got written that day to be said. Micro.blog doesn’t need that. Maybe this stuff should be private anyway. 🤫

The only thing that will nag at me is “it’s not self hosted, what about backups, I could make the site, why am I paying for this (luckily it’s $10 per year so that shouldn’t come into it).” If pika was $10/year I’d be using it immediately. Anyway, it doesn’t matter a jot if I change my mind again. Just have to install all the apps on my phone again.

(Also if I had a Neo I could use the micro.blog client or mars writer (w/e) to add content).

Work doesn’t like git, so that decides the obsidian thing and sync etc. I’d still like to access my work notes outside of my work laptop, and so probably just going to use OneNote. It’s not cool, if note taking is ever considered cool, it’s just a blank page for me to write notes and then find them later. And really, I should apply the same approach to my personal notes.

Now it’s evening and I’m not 100% sure about micro.blog. (There’s a surprise).

I found some notes from 2021 where I’m trying to make the same decision about micro.blog. Five years ago and I still have the same issues.

Pika has added search, which is nice, although not something I’d noticed was missing. I find it funny how I get so worked up over £4.50 a month - and agonise over subscribing to pika because of it. I think it’s also as I look at the $60 number. I go to the supermarket and spend more than £4.50 on snacks. There’s also me not controlling everything - even though if I dig deep enough then I don’t control everything on most of my sites. I don’t host it at home, it’s still some vps or cdn or whatever. It just doesn’t cost anything. It’s also the principle of paying for it. But, these days I don’t want to bother hosting things or looking after stuff.

Still consider binning it all. Just don’t bother and then I don’t have to worry. Just keep my radio blog, but maybe add a few non radio posts for stuff.

Made a list of my web apps I use / need. Not actually that many and so thinking of consolidating onto a small VPS or maybe even just a pi at home. Whilst doing this, I thought about photos backup. This uses about 800GB. I wonder if I can cut that back by culling a bunch of photos I don’t need. Quite the job to do it.

Monday, 20th April, 2026

I’m not sure work and personal stuff should live in the same obsidian vault. Mostly as I don’t want personal stuff sync’d onto my work computer.

I’m still not sure about obsidian either. I’m fine with it for work, although I did wonder if I should just use onenote. Particularly as I often screenshot stuff to save for later. Onenote would mean it’s all online and sync’d, could access from anywhere and copilot can digest it all. Maybe I’ll paste my pages into it and try it for a while.

Part of the problem is that I opened dynalist recently and I remembered how much I like it. It’s also so easy, has a phone app and an outliner by default.

Obsidian is nice, much nicer than a few years ago when I first tried it.

Part of my problem is that I’m not in the habit of making notes about stuff, and so I’m not thinking about writing things and so it doesn’t happen.

Went for a walk at lunchtime and wondered what I’d do if our house burnt down. I mean, like step by step. I don’t have much confidence in insurance providers to act with speed. Probably thinking this as our home insurance is due for renewal.

The (c)2021 at the bottom of dynalist makes me sad.