A late September life update

When I announced ROOPHLOCH 2024 earlier this month I very nearly declared right off the bat in the same post that I wouldn't participate this year, on the grounds that I was (and am) really pleased with my 2023 post and wanted to aim even higher, which I knew full well I wouldn't have time to do this year, as I had a very full calendar for the month. But I didn't do that, because I figured that any kind of participation was better than none at all. So here I am at not quite the last minute, posting in a very uninspired way (Thinkpad X220 connected to WiFi hotspot on my phone), but at least I'm in a local forest, about as far, I think as it's possible to get from any clear walking paths in any direction. I've made pour over coffee with water from a thermos which I boiled at home before leaving (I've not had any fuel for my Trangia stove in I don't know how long), using lots of my old Finnish kit from when I did this all the time. It's nice, and has been way too long! It's raining slightly, which I didn't expect, although the trees are providing enough cover that I can leave the laptop open without things being too dicey...

All the way back August, my wife and I made a midnight pilgrimage to the thing nearest up which might conceivably pass for a mountain (it's more of large hill at best, I'm pretty sure it's even constructed on the site of an old landfill, it's not exactly a place of natural beauty) in the hopes of getting a decent view of the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. This involved walking a route we have both walked (or that I've ridden) together many times before, both together and alone, but doing it in pitch darkness by headlamp light with nobody else around made it a very different experience. I was worried that other people would have the same idea, but we encountered two young women coming down the mountain on the way up, slowly walking a bicycle with a front basket full-to-clattering with empty glass bottles, and nobody else. Having the "mountain"top all to ourselves under the stars wasn't quite as romantic as it might sound, as my wife was set upon by mosquitoes the entire time (I would have been, too, if I was up there alone, but my blood is obviously a lot less tasty than hers so I am always spared). And the shower was pretty disappointing, too, we did see some meteors but they were few and far between. One came right toward us, though, so that it didn't seem to move across the sky leaving a trail, but rather just blazed into existence and then faded out in what looked like the same point location, and that was kinda neat. I might try going up with binoculars some night just for regular stargazing.

A pair of fat little robins, surprisingly unconcerned by my tapping away here, are frolicking around me...

It's hard to believe the year is already three quarters over. It's pretty apparent, I think, that I'm not going to hit every single one of my "Project Blazing Star" goals, but I have already achieved enough that I consider it a success, and there are a few more things I'm certain I'll still manage. Another VPS is just about ready for decommissioning now. GitHub have started hassling me that my Solderpunk account (created to share VF-1 back in the day) will be forced to enable 2FA by some deadline in November, so that's a nice

motivation to get all VF-1 issues closed and move the repo to Sourcehut before then, then I can close that account, too.

I am making slow but steady progress on the model gliding and homebrew QRP fronts, and am also very close to completely replacing the Franken-Pugeot's cockpit outright, Nitto stem with albatross bars, Dia-Compe levers, the full-Riv package. Let's be honest, there's very little "Franken" about the bike anymore. The frame and wheels are still the co-op originals, but just about everything else has been replaced with carefully considered and "fashion conscious" choices. I'm alright with it.

I am very much enjoying cultivating a set of technical, hands-on hobbies where I can learn skills, be challenged and be creative, scratch the same kind of itches that I scratch with computing projects, but in domains which are not anywhere near as threatened with manufactured obsolescence, "bit rot", arbitrary toolchain changes, or any similar modern nonsense, stuff which I can put down for months or years if I feel the need to and then come back to it secure in the knowledge that everything will still work the way it did before and nothing I previously knew to be true would not be anymore.

I feel like setting personal goals on the timespan of a single year might be something which works well for me, and I look forward to repeating the process next year. A very long term goal which I think I'm realistically still several years away from being able to responsibly achieve is for annual participation in OFFLFIRSOCH and ROOPHLOCH - really serious participation, not phoning something in - represents the majority of my public computing activity. Maybe one phlog/gemlog post per month on average. Otherwise it would just be email with friends, Circumlunar BBSing, and an awful lot of offline reading of stuff. Sounds great.