Pupdate

It’s been quite dry over the Christmas break, which has encouraged some longer than usual walks that the boys have enjoyed.

After a scan at the start of the month Milo has now almost completed the first cycle of his 4th modified ‘CHOP’ chemotherapy protocol. As before, low neutrophils mean we’re a little behind the ideal schedule; but also he’s never made it through the early cycles without some delay.

Gigs

Steve Hogarth

This was our third time in as many years seeing ‘h natural’ at Trading Boundaries, and he really seems to have settled into enjoying the venue. He treated us to another selection of covers, solo material and Marillion tracks; and there was even more audience participation than before, including a performance of Talking Heads ‘Once in a Lifetime’ that had about half a dozen people joining Steve at his keyboard.

Wakeman and Wilson

On a trip with the kids to look at the Roger Dean gallery $wife was persuaded to get some tickets for the Christmas event featuring Adam Wakeman and Damian Wilson. It was a lot of fun, and seems likely to become a regular feature for future festive seasons.

Hackers in the House

I was aware of the first Hackers in the House, last year, but only after the fact. So when it popped up in my Mastodon feed this year I applied to participate.

It was weird to do an event where I didn’t know anybody else; though I did get to meet a couple of folk I knew from the Internet :)

Was it worth a day to learn how the policy sausage is made (and hopefully make future policy better for practitioners)? I think yes – the folk from government seemed very receptive to the input from the room.

My one big takeaway (my own analysis). During Brexit we talked about Britain as a ‘rule taker’ or ‘rule maker’. My read on what’s now happening is that we’re a ‘rule fudger’. The EU is pushing ahead with some pretty big legislation in the cyber security space, such as the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Meanwhile the UK government is publishing voluntary codes of practice. For a lot of the areas we talked about it felt like it doesn’t really matter what UK policy is, because the CRA will be shaping what most suppliers actually do.

Health & Fitness

A year of monthly challenges

I’ve had a couple of years where I’ve completed 11 monthly challenges, with one where I frustratingly missed December; but this is my first time getting the complete set.

NHS Healthcheck

“You might think you’re healthy, but you really have no idea, as you’ve not seen a doctor since before Covid”, was becoming a frequent refrain from $wife. I was also a little concerned that I seem to be getting more colds than usual in the past few years. Some sort of deficiency? It was time to find out.

My doctor’s surgery online booking system offered an NHS Health Check, which seemed to be what I needed (and without bothering an actual doctor for an appointment). I had to book two appointments – one for blood to be taken for tests, and another a couple of weeks later to go over the results.

I knew ahead of the second appointment that my blood tests were all normal, as the results appeared in the NHS app on my phone. The consultation was spent going through a lifestyle questionnaire, and that didn’t reveal any surprises or demand any changes. Hurray :) Except I still don’t know why I’m getting so many colds? Aging, more stuff going around post Covid, population wide immune problems post Covid – they’re all in the mix, with no clear answers.

Shingrix

The evidence is mounting that the Shingles vaccine provides protection against dementia, and I don’t want to wait another decade to qualify for it on the NHS. So that was quite an expensive trip to my local pharmacy :0

The pharmacist warned me that it would likely kick my ass, and she wasn’t wrong. I went to bed with a sore arm, and aches all over, and woke a few hours later to shivers. But, by the morning I was feeling OK. Apparently the second dose (due in 2 months) isn’t usually so bad.

Washing machine repair

Our 13 year old Bosch washing machine started leaving puddles on the floor. As the door seal was disgusting, I ordered a replacement, which took a couple of days to arrive. I did that despite not finding any obvious damage that would allow water out.

The new seal took about an hour to fit, following this excellent guide. Running a test wash afterwards seemed fine, but then there was another puddle :(

Somehow I’d failed to spot that the hose for the fabric conditioner had come off. So the machine was getting to quite late in a wash cycle then squirting water.

Getting to the hose to reattach it meant repeating some steps from the seal replacement, but by then I knew what I was doing with my new hook pick and the other tools involved.

Although the replacement seal wasn’t strictly necessary, it’s nice that the machine is looking like new again :)

New IT bits

I didn’t really want a new printer and graphics card, but events forced my hand.

Printer

The Dell 1320CN that I got 15y ago started printing with coloured stripes that weren’t going away. Perhaps a victim of too little use now that $wife does most of her printing at work.

I considered not replacing it, but when a deal came up on a Brother HL-L3240CDW I went for it. It’s small, quiet, network connected, and does duplex colour printing; so everything I need. Consumables look reasonable, but only time will tell on that front…

Graphics card

I did a separate post on my Silent PC GPU upgrade, but it was a bunch of money and time just to avoid forced obsolescence because Nvidia doesn’t play nicely with Linux :(

Maybe one day I’ll do some gaming where I can marvel at how much smoother the pixels are :/

Solar diary

December is cold and dark, but this December was less dark than the past couple of years, with some bright sunny days.

VR

Last month I felt that practice in Clay Hunt VR was throwing off my real world clays game. This month, not so much.