Recent content on Midnight Mountain
I go almost everywhere under my own power. I carry tons and tons of shit. These two things do not mix well together. I’m taking a lot right now at all of the stuff I carry with me most days, my “edc” to use the reddit term, and paring it down to the base essentials. I’m doing this hand in hand with a much more extensive paring down of all the other stuff I own, I think the…
Mood: YEOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Listening: Back to Sikness I’m making more and working less. Your boy got a 25% payrise and is fully checked out. Only working a mere 40 hours a week now too. I’m so fucking burnt out. I can’t do this shit anymore. I’m bored to death and under constant pressure from the neediest least self sufficient people on earth. But the money… Personal…
Standing leaden faced arms down listening to a crackhead bleat and scream about how I was terrible at my job and everything wrong with them was my fault and about all the fantastical ways they had of getting me fired and ruining my life, I thought, not for the first time, that I am in the wrong line of work. As I was standing there today, studying the rotting molars of the man on the other side of…
Preamble On the 30th May 2026 I ran the Run Comfy Numb 25km trail race in Whistler, BC, Canada. It was a good race, hard, technical, different from anything I’ve ran before. I thoroughly enjoyed myself even if I made a series of mistakes in my prep that had me coming in 20 minutes later than I should’ve been. Discovery & Sign Up Run Comfy Numb is a trail race, taking place over the…
I feel like a stick insect. I keep still, and quiet, and disguise myself as something harmless. I don’t really know what I am under the disguise, or rather, I feel like there are a hundred thousand different versions of me, and I don’t get to choose, and don’t often know, which version is at the levers at any given moment. I am capable of being kind, honest, loving,…
Someone once told me that Mars bars used to be called the garbage bar. Low quality chocolate wrapped around the cheapest filling the creators could find. Cheap and shit and tasty. I am eating a mars bar while writing this, my second in five minutes, eyes sliding between the stains on the carpet and the off white tacking on the wall where the pictures fell down. It’s 1am, I got home at 5pm,…
Mood: Hell Yeah Listening: Street Anthems I think everything on this site is edgy, dumb, and kind of pathetic. Ok you say, so what’s new? Things are going pretty well, I’ve got a job, I’m settling in, all the big horrible decisions have been made, all the obvious bottomless pits leapt over. I’m flourishing here. I cannot remember life ever being better, it genuinely never…
Mood: A little lost Listening: Glowing in the Darkest Night This is a real quick one because I feel enormous pressure to produce literally anything for my audience of at least 2 people. I’ve been in this place for two months now and yeah, everything’s going well, actually, no, not everything, I’m still unemployed, but I’m meeting people and settling in and having an…
Mood: Restless Listening: Anti Gravity Tournament 2025 It’s definitely a year. All of the business keeping me in Ireland is finally wrapped up, I have two whole weeks of gainful unemployment ahead of me before I move on. Not sure what to do with two entire weeks off, I have a few hills I want to climb, a few places to visit, a few people to see, but nothing like two weeks’ worth of…
The air in here is alive, vibrating, the omnipresent hiss of highflow 02 and whirring HVAC. Overlay onto this constant voices: muttered conversations, shouted orders and questions, bitching, complaining. Punctuate with phones ringing, monitors beeping, alarms sounding, crying, screaming, cursing. It smells of chlorine and alcohol, subtle notes of ozone and ammonia. It’s hot in here, hotter…
I fucking hate computers. I hate how much of my life revolves around staring at and tending to various fucking computers. I hate how much time I spend thinking about doing this or that to the computer, not doing meaningful stuff that happens to involve a computer, but just doing stuff on or to computers. In the room I’m writing this in there are 4 computers: A personal laptop, for writing…
Mood: Tired, but the good kind of tired Listening: Got to leave this house It’s the end of the year and like many I’m taking stock. This chapter of my life is just about over, and I’m not sure how well I’m going to weather the next one. It might be a very short intermission or it might last the rest of my life, time will tell. If I keep my head and try hard enough I think…
Content Warnings on Trial I think content warnings are over emphasised, over deployed and generally just treated with too much gravitas. I’m not convinced that they’re completely worthless, or that they’re insidious, evidence of any secret agenda, none of that culture war shit. I just think they’re usually a bit silly and the people that get zealous about them are generally…
Mood: Wiggly, possibly even Jiggly Listening: She Says Smiling I haven’t had a drink in 1 year, 2 months, 3 weeks, 3 days and 13 hours, not that I’m counting. I had to go down to the big boy building the other day to pick something up and on the way back through the site I passed by my old workplace and stopped to peek inside. It’s been transformed into a stockroom or IT…
Lainring is a decentralized webring created by the users of Lainchan , an anonymous image board. If you want to be added, go to the Lainchan thread and post your website there, together with a 240x60 button image. Lainchan itself is terrible and has been for years, some of the sites in here are quite cool though. If you’re in the ring but your site isn’t below email me and I’ll…
Part Two Last time I explained why I buy almost nothing new, this time I’m going to explain why even when buying used I try to buy as little as possible. You should read the first part first , or this won’t make any sense. Buying used is harm reduction, not harm elimination I previously gave a series of reasons why I don’t buy anything new if I can avoid it. I believe that doing…
Mood: Bored Listening: Disco Fetish It’s been about 6 months since I wrote Opt Out and its going pretty well, with the sole stumbling point being YouTube. Previously every time I’ve considered giving it up entirely I would end up coming up with a reason to just whittle my usage down a little. Well not this time, I’ve quit, and I’m not going back. No Freetube, no Grayjay, no…
I went out early this morning, as I’m wont to do, to visit the Little Wilderness. Go out from the town, out past the smoke stacks, and turn off the road, walk past the farm house, fjord the stream. Cross the dead ground and climb, climb up through the slime slick timber piles, worm up along the decaying caterpillar tracks, long colonised by lichen and gorse, climb up into the remains of the…
Mood: Yeah Listening: Futility Blah blah blah blah I’m sad, life isn’t what it’s supposed to be, I have to actually try, and sometimes when I’m in the shower a woodlouse falls to its death on the floor from the gap in the windowsill and I get overwhelmed with the meaningless of it all then I go and sit and eat plastic foods and stare at noise on the rectangle until…
Last night I went out to watch a comet pass the earth. The plan was simple, be on the trail an hour before sundown, walk in, wait for night, walk on, sea on my right, eyes on the sky, turn for home when I felt like it, nothing complicated. It was one of those bitter winter days when everything is exposed, sky the colour of tin, no feeling in the sun. The wind like searching fingers, invading every…
I’m one of those annoying people that’s constantly writing things down. Usually not useful things, like shopping lists or directions or other people’s pin numbers, just stuff, the raw thought sloughing off my little brain. I find that when I sit to think I can’t, and when I’m trying to do anything else I can’t do anything but think. Thought’s wily game; it…
This was written as part of September 2024’s IndieWeb Carnival, Power Underneath Despair , and was written at very short notice for the last call. I have been wanting a topic to write about at length and I guess this is one I know a lot about. I only posted something about the same topic a few days ago, so it was still on my mind anyway, and thinking about it seriously has definitely helped.…
Suicide is an odd condition. I don’t think you need a degree to take a look around my site and conclude that my mental health hasn’t always been the best. You also probably don’t need a degree to guess at the reasons why. I don’t really want to talk about either topic, how low I’ve got, or what brought me there, maybe another time. What I want to talk about is the odd…
I’m 11, a boy at school is hunched forward over a computer, trying to find a working port to plug a drive into. He succeeds, the video opens. A man is tied to a chair, his arms taped to the armrests. A hammer comes down, the man screams but there’s no sound. His mouth becomes a ragged hole, I quickly turn away. I’m 16, phones don’t have keyboards anymore, someone slides a…
Mood: Comfy Listening: 我别无选择（你也没有） There’s been a lot happening these past few days. This website is looking slightly less scuffed now, lots of learning and RTFM’ng has been done since my last blog update, terrible banners have been made, shortcodes have been stolen, columns have been erected. I’m in the zone right now, enjoying the technical bits, and I’m happy…
The first time as tragedy, The second time as farce So here we are again. When I was 19 I left Ireland to go abroad and see the world a little. I was sick of my dumpy town where nothing good happened, I was sick of hearing the same voices, the same people, living with the same ghosts. I was young and clever and confident and I went away for a few years and I completely fucked it up. I fucked it up…
I love distance running. It is often painful, it’s rarely actually that fun , but it’s addictive. Like all addictions, it takes more than it gives, distance running is unashamedly, unapologetically selfish, it demands time, blood, pain, sweat, concentration. Hours spent in the rain, in the cold, in blistering heat, days spent stiff at the hips and knees, odd cuts where none should be,…
Mood: Pretty Good Listening: Grayshadow Ruins So, after a year of picking this site up and down, futzing with baby’s first HTML and CSS, getting frustrated at trivial issues but REFUSING to read documentation that would explain how to avoid them, learning how to use Hugo, going through three hosting providers, learning how to configure an email server only to realise I wouldn’t need…
I suppose making one of these pages is a right of passage. In general I find that older, simpler stuff tends to be more usable in practice than newer “better” kit. I’ve written way more than you could possible want to read about this topic. I buy almost everything used , and have explicitly marked things I bought new. When I say way more, I mean it, you have been warned. Analogue…
My Contact Details Email: rambler@midnightmountain.xyz I am happy to receive encrypted and unencrypted mail. My PGP key is publicly discoverable, or you can get it by clicking: PGP KEY PGP Fingerprint: F31F 45E9 7876 3095 B45D 06B8 2E84 8558 5348 326C Places where I’m active: Basement community A cozy little basement for internet night owls 32 Bit Cafe A comfy forum celebrating small…
Mood: Anxious Listening: Abnormal So, I’m at a little bit of a fork in the road right now. As you may have read in my recent article about my job , I’m probably not staying where I’m at much longer. I’ve asked for a meeting to discuss my concerns and its in the works but ultimately I don’t think anyone I’m going to get speaking with is going to be able to…
I am at an impasse. I don’t think I can continue my current career, but at the same time I don’t know how or when to get off. Suffice to say, I help administer a component of government. Over the course of the last year, doubts have developed in my mind over the morality of the work we are doing. I have become increasingly convinced that the service I and my colleagues provide is not…
May, 2026 I work a lot. Between school and work work I work probably about 65 hours a week. I want to work less. My great goal in life is to work less and make more money. That’s it really. I’m doing alright, just more of the same, time slowly marching forward, that clock without hands tick tocking away. I feel restless. School is nearly done for the year and then I am relatively free.…
I think I’m done entirely with mainstream internet “content” I’m getting more and more frustrated with the internet as time goes on, I feel I am getting less value for the emotional energy and time I am putting in than ever before. Everything online is designed to waste your time now, everything is designed to suck you in, make you spend 10 minutes looking for 30 seconds…
Things in my life are actually going fairly well at the moment, despite how hyperbolic I can be about ongoing problems I think I’m on a fairly steady upward trajectory. In the past 12 months I’ve: Stopped drinking entirely, coming up on 9 months continuous sobriety, with a previous 3 months of drinking once in the month. Lost a ton of weight, mostly as a result of not drinking Went on…
Stop buying stuff Yeah that’s really it, you can stop reading now if you want OK, but seriously: This article is part one of two on my thoughts on why I believe the best approach to consumption is simply to buy as little as possible, buying almost nothing new, and thinking hard before buying anything used, considering the necessity, potential downsides and actual joy utility of any purchase…
The below is a selection of bits and pieces I wrote down in my notebook at some point in time, I’m transcribing them mostly because I found myself going over them recently and I’m trying to find anything I can try that will get me writing properly again. Nothing below was ever meant to be read by anyone else and some of it probably makes no sense without context but maybe you’ll…
Mood: Stodgy Listening: Playful Spirits Not much going on the past few weeks, I went on a couple of dates, which was good, haven’t been writing as much as I wanted to, which is bad, but I did do a little, and went out to do some more photography. Weather is schizophrenic, as usual, but I’ve got out a few times for longer runs, I don’t seem to have lost much endurance being…
Mood: I am a stinky fucking goblin Listening: Peace Finally done with being sick, just tired now. I went for a walk today and I felt like I was getting less crazy with every step I took. Being inside for days on end is fucking horrible. I still don’t feel great, but I feel a whole lot better. This week has absolutely been goblin mode, even if I was sick, I’m not happy about it. Too…
Me M 32 Irish, currently in Canada My Interests Running Cycling Hiking and Camping Cooking Computers, in as much as they enable other Interests Education Other Pages about Me The stuff I use This site Technical This site is running on a Debian 12 VPS, using Nginx for the website, with my email server on the same VPS not worth the hassle, dumped the email server and went with mailbox.org instead.…
Things I need to do/checks I need to perform to make sure this site more or less works for everyone: Check that the site is easy to navigate with: A Trackpad Yep Carat browsing Yep Touch input Doable but not great, need to increase size of touch targets for tags, direct links, etc. That its easy to navigate on: A mobile phone Yep, Navbar needs work, as do previously mentioned touch targets Grey…
Mood: Huh Listening: SYSTEMS OF TERROR Still sick, not as sick, but still more goo than man. I’ve almost bought a house, I guess I’m staying in this town a little longer. Getting out just isn’t working and I’m sick of living like I’m going anywhere anytime soon, I’m not. Time to get comfy! I don’t make enough to live anywhere I want to live with any…
Mood: Been Better Listening: Rave Shit IV I am sick again, somehow. I think its the Flu, I hope its just the Flu. I’ve had a cough for 2 months, can’t see the doctor. My brain has turned to soup, I can’t do anything, struggling at work, struggling socially, not doing any studying or progressing my hobbies really. Can’t really think of much positive to say about 2024 so far…
Lost in a maze My mind barely works for half an hour at a time these days. I can’t think, can’t concentrate, can’t articulate, cannot be. I lose my train of thought almost instantly, almost everything a distraction, the way my skin feels, the taste in my mouth, dust floating in sunlight, caps gurgling in a computer, birds chirping, cars passing. I get upset, irrationally angry,…
My Cousin went into the river last night. I could hear the helicopter late in the night, looking for him, none of us knew who it was for. Today there are entire launches looking, gangs of men in motorboats and kayaks out combing the water. Yesterday nobody cared, or at least he must have thought so. It is a strange feeling. I cannot bring myself to be sad, because I have barely seen the man in a…
Mood: Done Listening: Confessions Of A Mask Hacking up grey-green sputum so dense and thick it feels like caulk in my mouth. Can’t sleep, chest hurts, feels hollow, mouth tastes like blood, cuts on the roof of my mouth seemingly from nowhere, couldn’t be from food or teeth. Running a mild fever the last 4 days, shaking yesterday, settling now. 3rd chest infection in 12 months.…
He is watching television with infantile comprehension & absentmindedly automatically crumbling a biscuit into long cold tea. He is more than 3 times my age, physically powerful, mentally enfeebled, and he is sick, long, deep, pained coughs & wheezes dredging up phlegm shot through with blood that falls onto his pyjamas and congeals on his chin in his sleep. He has dreams, when he was well they…
Mood: Funky, almost relaxed Listening: Other Desert Cities Been a while, bunch of shit’s happened, some of it even good. World is obviously still on fire, but what can you do? I’ve been working my ass off on coursework since I last wrote anything and have finally built up enough of a lead to feel comfortable leaving it for a while. Going to try and concentrate on other things, give the…
Blood Meridian (Reread) Audiobook this time, the narrator spoke much slower than I normally read, which really helped make some of the more cumbersome parts easier to parse, though I found it much easier to lose attention when listening compared to reading. One of the greats, one of the few books that pop into my mind regularly, like an intrusive thought. This was my 4th reading and I noted a few…
Mood: Dumb Listening: Megatech Body Corporation Almost dumpstered the only good relationship I’ve had in 5 years via poor communication. Dipshit I think I’ve more or less fixed things, I think, still feel like a fucking idiot. Incredibly stressful few days entirely caused by my own stupidity. Other than that, working, reading, eating, going to take a break from computer games etc. next…