Yeah, it’s been a while since I posted here – again – with the last post being the very start of this year, the last post before that being August 2025, and before that one in May 2025 in which I’d observed that my posting frequency had dropped… so nothing has changed.
Including the reason for the drop – I’m not just as busy with work matters as I was in May last year. If anything I’m busier.
The silver lining, of course, is “Kerching!” 🙂
Last May’s post included a bit of a round up of general things – so now that I have five minutes to blow the dust off the blog (it’ll probably soon build back up, don’t worry) I’ll do the same here. However, some of these might be worth writing full blog posts about (if I can find the time), so I’ll keep this fairly brief in the hope that I can find that time!
(And there are other things I’d like to write a paragraph or two twenty about that don’t really fall under the category of a round up, being my thoughts and opinions on various topics – so these won’t be mentioned below. Whether I can, though, again depends on time.)
Eurovision
I mentioned this in the May 2025 round up because that year’s contest was approaching. I said at the time my annual tradition of commenting on the contest while becoming increasing drunk would take place on my Bluesky account rather than my old Twitter account. It did – and it also did this year. This is likely to continue.
I did grab last year’s tweets, and began marking up the file ready to process into a blog post, but was only doing so in small batches, and never completed it. I was doing so in a way that would make the final stage a breeze using my software, WebChange, but that’s the easy part. The more time consuming part is to also re-visit the contest and take screen grabs etc so some of the tweets make sense, and in the end I just couldn’t find enough spare time without giving up time for other things I want to do.
This year I haven’t even bothered grabbing the tweets. If you want to see them, visit my Bluesky account and search for them – or better still keep an eye on the account while watching the next contest. They’ll make more sense then – or maybe they won’t, depending how drunk I am at any given time.
(I wonder if I can create a Bluesky feed on a page on this site? It used to be possible with Twitter until the facility was removed. Must look at that at some point!)
Drop Rock
This is largely in the same state of development as it was last year, but with at least one problem solved by revamping one set of graphics: I couldn’t get the player animation looking right, so I’ve now put him in a ‘pod’, which requires less animation – and also makes more sense in the context of the game, to be fair.
I obviously need to spend more time on this – it would be nice to have something more meaningful done by the next RISC OS Show (London, 24th October, 2026) but I’m not hopeful at the moment.
Jury duty
Something that hasn’t helped at all is that I had to do jury service earlier this year. In fact, my first summons for this was late last year, but the timing was terrible, so I was able to get it deferred and instead served in February of this year.
That amounts to time sitting in the court buildings (if not necessarily in an actual courtroom), not working. To be fair, you can work while waiting around if it’s practical, but the paperwork sent beforehand said you couldn’t be guaranteed a locker – so I wasn’t comfortable taking a laptop with me if I couldn’t be certain I’d be able to lock it away. (On top of which, while I use laptops for work, I prefer to have them on a desk, attached to a larger screen, and a proper keyboard and mouse.)
It’s possible to claim expenses for loss of earnings, but although my earnings dropped while I was on jury duty, I was coming home and doing as much as I could in the evenings – and although I’m more limited that way (unable to collect paperwork, so less to do) – I got a surprising amount done. I didn’t bother making a claim.
I always thought that if you were summoned for jury service, that was it; it was a one-time thing only, and once you’d performed your civic duty you’d never be asked again. It turns out that isn’t the case – there were people there who had done it several times, including one into the double figures.
Holidays (or rather short breaks) that have happened
I notice that in my May 2025 post I mentioned that I’d make a separate post about a holiday I’d managed to squeeze in back in March – but never did.
That holiday coincided with the 2025 RISC OS North show – I had a few days in the Lake District running up to it. I wasn’t able to do the same this year, and instead managed to head up to Warrington a day earlier than I normally would, and used the extra day for a trip to the Jodrell Bank Observatory.
And since then (a couple of weeks ago), I’ve also managed a very short (three night) break in Llanelli, near the Gower Peninsula.
I have photos from all three. Maybe if I find the time…
Holidays (short breaks) that might happen
A topic that has come up a few times in conversations over the first half of this year, becoming more frequent as summer approached, is camping – something I used to do occasionally. (I’ve stayed in proper sites, and I’ve camped wild – the latter taking more effort, but being very worthwhile). That’s why the subject has come up; people who know I’ve done it in the past seeking advice because they’re thinking of camping, largely to have a cheaper break with the ever increasing cost of living.
It got me to thinking that perhaps I should dig out my gear and take it up again – specifically wild camping.
Coincidentally, I found one of my tents quite by accident just after I started thinking about that, and another coincidence came when I commented on it, suggesting I’d need to pitch it somewhere convenient to make sure it’s okay after some 15 years since it was last used. The best place to pitch it for that would be my parents’ garden next time they go on holiday (I usually stay at their place to look after the dog) – and within minutes of me saying that, I had a call from them to say they’re thinking about a holiday soon.
The Universe might be trying to drop big hints as to what I should do there.
Broken – and fixed with a botch – camera
When I go on holiday (or go for a hike) I tend to take lots of (mostly rubbish) photos – and when I went for my walk on Christmas Day, I broke my camera. Specifically, the battery (and SD card) compartment broke, and won’t stay closed, meaning the battery doesn’t have a reliable (or in fact any) contact.
I had an idea for how to fix it as a temporary solution – by attaching the mounting plate from my tripod; I figured it might be wide enough to hold the compartment closed. (I had various suggestions from other people, involving tape or glue, none of which were actually practical.)
When I eventually found the mounting plate, my solution wasn’t quite good enough – the plate wasn’t wide enough. However, I found a very old key (not to a door I’ve had access to in many years) and inserting that between the mounting plate and camera base, on the battery compartment side, does the trick. I now have a working camera again.
That’s about all I can think of for now, so I’m going to post this, have some lunch, write something up for RISCOSitory that I can see in my inbox… and maybe write another blog post while I have the time!
