Luke — Write.as

Bin raider

When I was little we were quite hard up. My whole school career I qualified for free dinners. My mum however was very resourceful and frugal and would often take things others had thrown out. She was forever diving into skips or getting me to carry some item home. Trips to the dump would end up with her bringing more home than we took in the first place. As a kid it would embarrass me immensely and I'd be going “please don't Mum”. Naturally she didn't listen a word I said.

Fast forward to my adulthood and I myself do this all the time. Started when I moved to Brighton 20 years ago as there is quite a neighbourly culture of leaving decent quality unwanted items outside with a “please take” note on. We had a hand-me-down sofa for out first flat and when we finally replaced it we put it outside. Over the next few years I saw that sofa left outside various properties on the surrounding streets at least twice.

Where we live now there are communal bins at the end of the road and they are a goldmine! There was a bag that caught my eye as it looked out of place in placed in a bin so I picked it up and it contained various bits and bobs. Looked like someone had moved out and left some stuff behind so someone had chucked it. Amongst the stuff were various designer bandanas/scarves, a digital camera and an ipod! The ipod was old and not working but I googled the model and it turned out there was an Apple recall for that exact model which was finishing that week. I sent it off and Apple sent me a brand new ipod in return. Result! That went straight onto eBay though usually I only get bits I can use myself and don't go looking for items to sell.

Another time I was passing some small business units and could see workmen chucking loads of stuff out. Seems a company had gone bust or not paid their rent so were being cleared out. That got me 3 laptops that were about a year old each.

There's at least a dozen things in our kitchen that I've squirrelled away (that's what my wife calls it, probably as it sounds more pleasant than bin raiding) and various others around the house. Got a beautiful late 60's/early 70's pottery plant pot on my window sill that I found. Whilst everyone is on lockdown they're all sorting out their cupboards and drawers so there is plenty to be found at the moment. This week alone I've got a hanging plant basket (needed one for some mint plants), some fake battery powered candles (bit odd but mrs Luke has some already and really likes them – which totally surprised me as I thought she'd think they were naff) and these beauties:

lovely pair

It's so easy to visualise the adverts for these in the back of the Sunday supplements. The one with the floating disembodied head is particularly surreal. (For reference I like them ironically, the naffness is the charm.)

100 Days to offload is a blogging challenge started by Kevin Quirk. Check out https://100daystooffload.com to see if you are tempted to join in yourself.

No candlestick makers

#100DaysToOffload – Day 10

When lockdown started and lots of people went panic buying there were lots of images of bare supermarket shelves in the media. I know from personal experience most supermarkets first sold out of lots of tins and dried goods then when those stocks were getting back to the shelves lots of fresh goods sold out. Still now there is no flour on supermarket shelves and if there is it all sells out straight away again.

However throughout this most of the cornershops/convenience stores have had stocks of everything that was sold out in the big stores and pretty much all of them were just selling at the regular price too. In the first week of lockdown I had a banging headache and needed some paracetamol. Sold out in all the big shops I went to, go to local corner shop and he had a full shelf! My son nearly lives on pasta with pesto. It's easily his favourite dish but all the supermarkets were stripped bare of pasta before lockdown was announced. No problem as the cornershop down the road had loads of stocks of 4 different types of pasta at bargain prices. You get the picture.

Since lockdown we've had the local grocer doing us a weekly delivery, the local butchers doing deliveries, the local fishmongers too and lastly the local bakery. Sadly we've not needed any candles so no candlestick makers as yet.

Coming out of this I'm determined to shop local a bit more and rely on supermarkets less.

100 Days to offload is a blogging challenge started by Kevin Quirk. Check out https://100daystooffload.com to see if you are tempted to join in yourself.

Yesterday's post today

#100DaysToOffload – Day 9 (and a half)

Oops! Not quite sure how it happened but I forgot to post yesterday. It wasn't I didn't have anything to say or it felt hard work, I just forgot. This brings me round to a Mastodon exchange I had with Basil: what percentage of posts early on in a blog are meta posts talking about the blog itself or posting on the blog? Got to be quite high! And now I've joined that percentage myself.

So how did I miss posting? Did work though not much was happening I was present and online most of the day ready for it. Usually my prescriptions are taken care of through an online pharmacy service that requests the repeat prescription from the Dr's surgery electronically and posts me the medication. Every now and then the Dr's want to check if I still need it and this was one of those times. So how is a Dr's consultation done during lockdown? I called to book an appointment and was told I'd get a call back. Which I did half an hour later. Had a brief chat with the Dr and was told the repeat prescription was fine. But the Dr was worried if it went to the online service I wouldn't get it until middle of next week as it is a bank holiday today so instead sent it electronically to my nearest pharmacy (which they even identified from my postcode). After waiting a couple of hours I stroll along in the sun to collect it and on the way bump into a neighbour so stop and have a 10 minute chat. The pharmacy is only a 5 minute walk away but round the corner there is an acquaintance I know from football (they are a fellow BHAFC season ticket holder) so I end up having a 10 minute chat about the Premier League plans to resume the season (never going to happen!). Finally get to my destination to find it shut for lunch 5 minutes earlier!

100 Days to offload is a blogging challenge started by Kevin Quirk. Check out https://100daystooffload.com to see if you are tempted to join in yourself. No-one even reads this bit apart from AndyC so hi Andy

Lockdown Panic Buys

#100DaysToOffload – Day 8

Towards the end of March when it was obvious lockdown was going to be imposed on the nation Mrs Luke got in a fluster and made some panic purchases. It wasn't toilet roll or pasta but instead it was a ton of sand and 4m x 4m of fake grass. (You weren't expecting that were you??)

Reason being our son is sporty, so sporty that he is a goalkeeper at the local Premier League team academy, but we have a tiny backyard. It is small and north facing and quite depressing really. As it hadn't had any direct sunlight since about the end of September last year it was looking pretty neglected. Here it is:

grotty yard in all its glory

So how were we going to keep him active and training in that? We've also got a daughter but she'd not as active or as sporty as him but obviously would be good for her to keep moving too.

Thing is my mrs didn't actually tell me about this until they arrived. I'm thinking “bloody hell how are going to shift a ton of sand from the front garden to the back?” when it all arrives.

here's what a ton of sand looks like

This was during the first week of lockdown. We make a plan and work out who will do what when. The mrs Luke gets poorly and has coronavirus symptoms. Persistent dry cough and feels like crap. Has a high temperature for a few days but thankfully no fever. As I'm asthmatic she self-isolates in the bedroom for a week and I sleep downstairs. While she is ill I just get on with it. First off there was something like 75 small paving slabs to lift up and stack up in the front garden. That took 3 days of bursts here and there after work or at lunchtime. (I then took them all up to my folks' allotment, was a great bit of exercise that!)

Once cleared and weeded it was a case of shifting the sand a trug full at a time. That took 2 days or bursts here and there.

ton of sand spread over the backyard

By this time Mrs Luke is back in action and helps with the spreading out of the sand and the laying of the fake grass.

Then voila! It was all done:

completed yard

This was a project I was wasn't keen for especially as it was a surprise and I was going to have to do the bulk of the humping and shifting but I'm really pleased with how it has gone. We've been out there pretty much every day it has been sunny, partly as from the end of April it actually gets direct sunlight, and have eaten outside a few times. Must importantly our son has been able to carry on with his goalie training by facetime.

Connected

#100DaysToOffload – Day 7

Pretty sure this will be a common feature of blogs from people doing the 100 days to offload that aren't regular bloggers but I'm amazed I've done a week of it. Huzzah! Surprised myself I've stuck with it.

Whilst lockdown is on everyone has been at pains to ensure we're all staying in touch. Houseparty, WhatsApp groups or video calls, Facetime, Zoom, etc etc. It's wearing me out! I'm not anti-social by any means but I'm also not out 3 nights a week seeing friends. Maybe 3 or 4 times a month. Usually I only speak to my cousins at birthdays, Christmas, weddings, funerals, or christenings. Now we're all chatting away in a massive group chat. Ended up doing a weekly Zoom with my wife's family and also a Friday night quiz with a massive extended group of my family. My step-dad's nephew's daughter's boyfriend participates as well as my cousin's – from the other side of my family- girlfriend's brother's girlfriend just to give you an idea of just how extended it is. Obviously it is all good and making bonds and all that but goodness me is it tiring sometimes. Occasionally all I want is to just sit on the sofa and read a book.

On my last trip to a supermarket I bought 24 2nd class stamps which I've been using to send notes and cards to friends and family. My own way of staying connected but without the need to be present.

100 Days to offload is a blogging challenge started by Kevin Quirk. Check out https://100daystooffload.com and see if you're tempted to join the Scientologists yourself. No-one even reads this bit I bet.

My Favourite Tiling Window Manager

#100DaysToOffload – Day 6

Sorry the title is totally misleading and referencing a conversation I had on Mastodon. I've never used a tiling window manager in my life so if you came here to read about my preference of them leave now!

This post is a bit about technology though. I've had a mini DV camcorder since they first became “affordable” last century. Pretty sure I paid just under £1000 for a Sony one in Dixons in 1999. I used to carry it everywhere and just filmed all sorts of random crap I saw. Also would film with friends and family gatherings. Nothing special or formal, just the everyday stuff. I must have a shoebox full of tapes I've accumulated. However I've literally never done them, never copied them, edited them produced anything with them. Just the recording of them seemed more fun than the laborious process of making something with them.

One upshot of lockdown in this household is we've been doing various chores we'd had near the bottom of the to-do list for a long time. One of them was sorting out a cupboard full of crap. In that cupboard was lots of tech stuff which I've pretty much just binned but in there was the camcorder and the tapes. So I decided to import the tapes onto my Mac mini and have a go at editing them. This turned out to be a lot less straightforward than I imagined. The output on the camcorder is a DV port (also known as an IEEE-1394) and I had a DV – firewire 400 cable. Which is pretty useless on a modern Mac. So after much searching online I ended up buying a firewire400 to firewire 800 dongle, then a firewire 800 – to thunderbolt dongle. It all arrived so I daisy-chained the cable and dongles from camcorder to Mac and turned it all on. And nothing happened. After checking and double checking and going through all the menus and options I could find it still didn't work. Not only was I crestfallen but I was out of pocket too as the dongles weren't cheap. In desperation I checked through the camcorder box for other cables and remembered that my original camcorder had broken in the last week of warranty so had claimed on the warranty. Due to some sort of mix up with couriers I ended up with a brand new camcorder and still had the broken one. Which had lost the functionality on the touch screen so couldn't set the menus or do any playback on it. Thinking I had nothing to lose I plugged that into my cable/dongle/dongle combo and it worked! Hallelujah! That feeling of making some tech work is brilliant. So I've been transferring hours of footage to my computer. Now I just need to do something with it. Which should keep me busy for the rest of lockdown and beyond.

100 Days to offload is a blogging challenge started by Kevin Quirk. Check out https://100daystooffload.com and see if you're tempted to join in yourself.

Outrage and RSS

#100DaysToOffload – Day 5

Brief today as my son is hassling me to play MarioKart with him and is impatiently waiting as I type.

Our over the road neighbours had people round yesterday ( which I posted about on social media) but I am still surprised at just how much it pissed me off. I was properly off kilter for the rest of the day. Not sure if it was anger, annoyance or frustration. Also not proud of myself for feeling it. So odd. Do remember hearing that all emotions are valid it is just what one does with them that counts. After I posted online had various replies along the lines of other people's neighbours were doing the same. FFS people do some social distancing.

A side effect of participating in 100 Days To Offload is that I'v logged into my RSS reader for the first time in months. Just been busy adding the blogs of people I enjoy seeing on social media and also the 100 Days blogroll RSS feed so I can see what everyone else is up to. Fingers crossed it won't all be technical posts about folk's Linux set ups.

Got to go; MarioKart awaits.

This post is due to my participation in a blogging challenge called #100DaysToOffload. Check out https://100daystooffload.com and see if you're tempted to join in yourself.

iPhone

#100DaysToOffload – Day 4

After about 3 years of faithful service my Moto G5plus is just too battered and too mangled to be useful as anything other than as a projectile or weapon. :) Give or take a few months I think I've had an Android phone for at least 8 years. My last iPhone was an iPhone3 so quite a while. The familiarity of the environment is great and I have it all configured in a way that just works for me. So naturally I decided to replace the G5 with an iPhone. Previously Apple products were evil and all about locking in users to their ecosystem or just very overpriced shiny things. However my main work machine has been an iMac for a few years now (the choice was that or a corporate set up Dell grey box running the highly restricted Windows image we produce). All my family have iPhones. I ended up buying a Mac mini for home as I really didn't want to have to be looking after a computer at home as that would be a busman's holiday. So it just seemed the logical thing to do to get an iPhone especially as I wanted a phone with a great camera, which is probably the only complaint I had about the Moto G5. Lastly these days I think I trust Apple with my data more than I trust Google. Never thought I'd say that but there it is.

Using it has been a nightmare so far, though obviously I'm not regretting it, as so many things such as gestures and keyboard are just muscle memory so I'm tapping and clicking in all the wrong places. Trying to remember the various accounts and logins for all the different apps and services has been quite a challenge so far.

So yeah my name is Luke, I'm an iPhone user and I hate freedom*.

(*Just a stupid joke from the excellent and far too infrequent Duffercast)

I am participating in a blogging challenge called #100DaysToOffload. Check out https://100daystooffload.com to see how awesome it is.

Books

#100DaysToOffload – Day 3

Reading is something that brings me a lot of pleasure and something I've always done. I'll read most types of books and am happy with non-fiction as well as fiction. Saying that I'm not sure I would read most types of books! Whilst not a book snob and definitely would read lowbrow as well as highbrow I would probably skip romance, fantasy and sci-fi. I'd say I read to be entertained, not challenged. Definitely prefer stuff that is easy to follow but not formulaic and also like books where I have no idea how it is going to end.

When I had an account on the pubnix host circumlunar.space my Gopher space was pretty much just used to keep a record of my reading progress. I liked that and should probably do similar again. Goodreads is a site I've used for ages, from before they got bought by Amazon. A friend once described it as being “like Strava but for clever people”. It's useful to see what friends are reading and track my own reading but goodness the users on there can be incredibly annoying. They seem to want to out do each other with hugely intellectual reviews of books that basically just show off how “clever” they are and are all very literary but with little of how much they enjoyed it or if they felt compelled to read it.

One upshot of lockdown is the libraries are shut. I'm an avid user of my local libraries and can be a bit evangelical about them. As they are now all shut I'm ploughing through my “to read pile” which actually isn't a pile at all but several shelves.

I am participating in a blogging challenge called #100DaysToOffload. This is my day 3/100. Check out https://100daystooffload.com for more info.

Platform B radio AKA Shazam FM

#100DaysToOffload – Day 2

I'm not even sure how we discovered Platform B radio. It's a local community radio station as I understand it and I think they got allocated the frequency of a different local radio station that went bust or got bought out by one of the big groups of broadcasters (like Capital). Anyhow it just appeared on our car radio and we started listening. The thing with Platform B is there is absolutely minimal talking, no adverts, no news, hardly any introductions to tracks etc. Just music. Most of the people involved are young; the “get involved” page asks for people between 16-25. The reason it got the nickname Shazam FM in my household is that 99.9% of the music they play you've never heard of before. This means you're constantly going “who's this?” and launching Shazam app on your phone to find out what the track is called. It's quite reminiscent of the French radio station FIP (which coincidentally had a pirate relay broadcast in my city for about 10 years).

If you're curious to listen they have a listen online page, make shows available through mixcloud afterwards and is even available through the Tune-In app which is great as I get to say “Alexa, play Platform B radio” and can get it on my Echo (because I hate freedom).

I am participating in a blogging challenge called #100DaysToOffload. Check out https://100daystooffload.com for more info.