Pupdate

Autumn is definitely here, and it’s been wet enough that the boys have needed their coats some days.

The good news at the start of the month is that Milo’s treatment is working, and he’s back in remission :)

Travel

The end of the month has been quite busy for travel.

NYC

One of my shortest trips to New York, with just a couple of days in the city to attend ONUG Fall. Thankfully the weather was beautiful for my walks over the 11th Ave for the event.

I got to do a pilgrimage to Barcade Chelsea :)

Not my best game of Mr. Do! ever – I’ll blame the tired joystick and fire button on the 80s vintage cabinet (and not the IPAs); though it’s always nice to play on the original kit rather than MAME.

Rathfinny

My son’s been working at Rathfinny vineyard/winery for the last couple of summers helping out with bottling, but I’d never tasted their product myself. Their ‘Harvest Escape’ package seemed like a good way to get a full immersion experience, with tour, tasting, dinner and a stay in the Flint Barn.

I think I’m now a fan of zero dosage wine, which might be a shame for Rathfinny for converting me, as they don’t sell any; but some other local producers do…

Bath

It’s weird to be in Bath and not visiting my daughter (who’s been at University here for the last couple of years). But my wife got back in touch with an old friend, and she wanted to meet in Bath, so here we are. It seems quieter than usual, which is nice, and also the sun is shining :)

Dinner at Raphael might not be very Halloween, but as it’s one of my all time favourite restaurants…

Flash frustrations

The month has brought a couple of frustrating experiences with flash memory:

Lenovo M920q

A colleague showed me VergeOS, which seemed cool enough for me to reconfigure some home lab gear around it. So I bought another Lenovo M920q, as I like the remote keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) capability that comes with it as part of Intel vPro. Except when I went to enable Advanced Management Technology (AMT) I couldn’t. It was stubbornly fixed on Intel Standard Management (ISM), which lacks the KVM capability.

The rabbit hole this took me down led to ‘the only way to reflash the BIOS is to remove the chips’, and that’s where I gave up.

OpenWrt One

The OpenWrt One is the first router to be developed in partnership with the OpenWrt project, and I was super pleased to get one of the first ones off the production line.

Unfortunately the documentation wasn’t quite where it needed to be (which is fixed now), so I ended up bricking it within a day of unboxing. Thankfully the community leaders stepped up, and quickly had me running again using the UART recovery mechanism. So I was able to take it to ONUG with me to show off our latest LuCI interface for NoPorts on OpenWrt.

Apple Stuff

It’s been a busy month in Apple land for me

Watch

I noticed my Apple Watch (an 18m old SE 2) was giving more haptic feedback when tapping it than usual – because the screen was coming away from the frame :0

I was able to fix it with some T-7000 glue (affiliate link), though not before I’d bought another to ensure fitness tracking continuity.

I’m starting to suspect that this is what led to my Series 5 drowning at Discovery Cove :( I’ll also note that there was no sign of battery swelling (apparently a common cause for screen separation).

iPad Mini 7

My iPad Mini 5 has been serving me fantastically for over 5y, and it’s probably the device I use most. It’s the first thing I reach for in the morning, the last thing I look at before switching out the lights at night, and my constant companion on trains, planes and automobiles (when someone else is driving).

5y on, and I have no complains about performance, storage space, or anything else. But… battery life is far from what it used to be, and it doesn’t last through a long haul flight any more, and sometimes struggles to get through a long day up in London.

So… I now have an iPad Mini 7.

I’m delighted that it still has touch login, and I’m quickly getting used to life without a home button.

Geekbench tells me that it’s twice as fast as the Mini 5, though that’s not noticeable in the way the performance was when I got the Mini 5. I guess (like big engines in cars) you reach a point where there’s diminishing returns on incremental gains.

There’s just one problem – it doesn’t have a SIM card slot, so I couldn’t just move over the Three SIM from my Mini 5 (on a contract that still has the glorious ‘feel at home’ international roaming).

In the depths of Three’s website I found a way to request the conversion of my SIM to an eSIM, which was partially successful – in that the old SIM got shut off. But I had to visit a Three store to get the QR code for the new eSIM.

Solar Diary

A LOT less sunny than last October, with 21% less generation.