Personal small-web space with a focus on tech tinkering, running and gardening.
It's only been 20 months since I last set foot on my homeland, but it always takes me by surprise how much I feel like a tourist every time I return. I enjoy visiting as someone who doesn't live here. I have learnt to appreciate the place more and more, despite its pitfalls that come with any populated city in the world. The thing that jumps out at me the most is how leafy it is.…
Time? What is time? Is this a weeknote or monthnote? I don't even know anymore. It's a note spanning what my mind is willing. I've just read about shifting from operating in chronos time to kairos time, and it's sticking. Kinda hard when you're working. But I'm not, so I'm finding ways to apply it. Losing your weeknote mojo? Don't do it then, or do a…
Ok, I thought my weeknotes would get shorter if I posted more individual posts through the week. I was wrong. 🌱 Cooking and Gardening It's Plastic-free July so I thought I'd ramp up my sourdough baking again and forego buying plastic-wrapped bread. I keep undercooking it, though I've just found my old notes and now have a way forward. The next one should be better. Looks good but…
Escape Everything by Robert Wringham is becoming one of my most ear-tagged books ever. It is going on the annual re-read list for sure. Some of the topics are completely new concepts to me, and others are resurfacing feelings I can relate to and which the author communicates ever so eloquently (and humorously). This topic was new to me, and one I want to try and understand a little deeper here. It…
My niggles are slowly dissipating, which I contribute to no more donning of the work boot - climbing up and down ladders all day, or crawling into roof and floor spaces twisting and turning into weird contortions to screw and drill through nail ridden timber or reinforced concrete. I wake now when I want to wake, not at the call of the almighty Trap. My body is finally getting rest, and I ease my…
I was chatting to fam the other day about how odd it is that we drive in a car up to the coldest part of a mountain just to stand in queues and ski down hills. I actually enjoy doing this, but there's an element of "what the frig is wrong with us?" that creeps in regularly. It's expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and cold. On the other hand, it can be exhilirating, social and…
...a great thing about freedom: we can allow ourselves to be generalists and be content to be amateurs [...] Long live the cult of the amateur. Get into everything. I am reading Escape Everything by Robert Wringham, and there are so many words that are hitting home. It is explaining many of my struggles and anxiety of living in this weird ol world. The quote above though, I have never heard said…
Ok so the commentbox works pretty well. I saw 10-15!! comments before I went to bed (thanks Brennan, Chris, Steve, JP and all the other anonymous netizens - seriously I had no idea so many people were reading this thing). But, low and behold, some smart-Alec decided to delete the lot, either on purpose or by accident. I guess I kinda dangled the carrot, so I can't complain. Actually I…
It's a rainy day today so I got my geek on. I can now add a comment box at the bottom of my posts. Comment sections aren't for everyone, but either are like-buttons, flickering GIFs, or pineapple. I personally just ebb and flow out of how or if I respond to posts, be it an email, reply post, mastodon comment, BBS response, or carving words into a pig. ahem. My commentblock method doubles…
Content warning: meta I've been struggling a bit with weeknotes lately. They have felt like an immense task, and usually take a while because of the various things I like to put in. As a result, I tend to cut some topics short because I feel like I'll run out of puff and never complete the other topics. As I write them and scan my daily notes of the week past, my mind wanders, and other…
Yeah, I played golf. It actually wasn't that bad. I stunk, averaging around 7-9 off par 3s and 4s. We did 9 holes which is more than enough. Finally got my swing in towards the end... kind of. My right arm and shoulder is buggered, probably from bad form but also lugging a loaded golf bag around without a trolly. It was a good way to spend a day off. Socialising and sunshine. Naked poplars…
Pre-wire a house with Cat6A, fibre, KNX, coax, audio, HDMI, LAN and security cable. Pre-wire gates. Terminate into data jacks, RJ45, punch down and keystone patch panels, Phoenix connectors, f-types.. into touchscreens, keypads, lightswitches, pucks, gate motors and beams, smoke alarms, sirens, PIRs, cameras, speakers, subs, TVs, wall sockets. Extend or fix cut cables with connectors, gel crimps,…
Half a year down. Wow. We finally got a dumping of snow, but it's disappearing quickly with the sun beaming. White caps from around the block 🏢 Work I finished up at my previous job. Instant weight off my shoulders. I have a lot of things running through my head right now about all this. It is probably one of the biggest cross-roads of my life. Not just leaving a job, but my feelings towards…
Fresh dump of interesting and/or useful web links I've found recently. Full link stash here . This week: That's right, I changed the name of this dumping of links. "Link stash" lost its appeal. "Bukmarks" kept springing to mind, and as a user of the buku CLI tool to capture these links, and a fellow member of the BUKMARK.CLUB webring, it just kinda makes sense. So here we are. 355.…
A big part of what I enjoy about all my previous jobs is that I get to become familiar with a whole lot of big and small software packages that enable me to do my work. This is a brief history of what I've used, after my landscaping and farm-hand days, when I started work that involved a computer. A lot of these are quite hefty tools, and I always used just a fragment of their capabilities.…
Cows following farmer across paddock, bull in adjacent paddock having a belch Chip packet, now in pocket, never to be noticed again Morning mist rising off the fast flowing river A parted path of fallen leaves on the understory of deciduous woods Naked poplars Drops of dew on the lowpoints of branches, spider webs and 12-gauge farm fencing Coffee cup caught in bracken from when the river was high,…
TLDR - I'm back on the fediverse - @zkbro@pub.zkbro.com - using a self-hosted instance of snac . I came across Jeff Sikes' Installing Snac - A Minimalist ActivityPub Server post. I hadn't heard of snac before, but a minimalist , lightweight , small footprint and simple architecture piece of software sounded about how I wanted to return to the fediverse. Not only that, SNAC is an…
Haven't done one of these for a while because I've been pretty good at unloading into containers or the center console of the van before the end of the day (which is becoming a problem). The usual suspects. What a mess. I was looking for those sunnies for a week. It wasn't until I looked at the photo that I saw them!
🩸 Health My back recovered quickly. I was back at work this week with no major flair-ups. I am weening off the drugs, and upping my exercises. In a slightly related note, I decided to revamp my health folder to keep track of all my broken things: zkbro@laptop:~/02-Areas/health$ tree -d . ├── 2002-05-27-left-clavicle-fracture │ ├── 2002-05-27-x-ray-and-surgery │ ├── 2002-06-06-x-ray │…
I put out my back on Tuesday, so had the remainder of the week off, seeing docs and physios, lying down, light exercises and popping anti-inflams. My spondylolisthesis on the L5 S1 has given me grief since 2005 when I first put it out as a landscape gardener. I've been in maintenance mode ever since. I let the ball drop recently, and with my physical job, it is no wonder it tweaked again.…