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Summer Time, Higham Oh look! It’s another one for the collection. I love em’ all.
Sea Snail, St Margarets at Cliffe Sea Snails Friends, St Margarets at Cliffe I had a feeling I’d find a fresh one at this spot in St Margaret’s at Cliffe. The last time I passed by it was during Easter Easter, St Margarets at Cliffe Loads more in the collection.
Tea and Cake, Shorne Village Cup of tea dear? Happy to find this one while out on my bike this morning. Another one for the collection.
Digital Dugnad Dump Big Tech Make the Switch Make the switch. The Digital Dugnad campaign highlights four actions you can take - Switch your browser. Switch your search engine. Move your email. Change where you store your files. I’d suggest a fifth - dump MS and/or Apple and switch to a Linux distribution. The campaign suggests that each one takes minutes. That’s very misleading. Releasing your emails and downloading files and pictures from big tech is a bloody nightmare. That’s by design but…
Your website but inhabited. The web is full of content but empty of people. TownSquare brings a little presence back. Visitors can see each other, say a few words, and share the same space. No accounts. No algorithms. Just the present. That’s the pitch on TownSquare, which is where I got the base code for the widget towards the bottom of this page. The widget was created by Cauê Napier who released it free of charge for all to use. Thank you Cauê. I liked it straight away. Closest I will ever…
Rishabh P. Sharma posed the AI blog question challenge. Rishabh writes about being an “AI Hater”. It seems strange to me to have such intense feelings about AI. I guess that makes me “neutral” by Rishabh’s measure. I think pragmatist is perhaps more accurate. How was your first experience with AI models? I was feeling bored during Christmas 2019 and started learning to code (Python). By December 2022 I was working on an app to automate a staff allocation task. This was an optimisation problem.…
We visited my sister at the weekend and left with her unwanted “Russell Hobbs Breadman Ultimate”. My sister got it from a friend of our mum. It’s pretty big for a kitchen counter top which is why my sister did not want it any more. We have the space for it on a table in our lean to so for the time being I am an artisan bread maker. Plain White Loaf Plain White Loaf Cheddar Cheese and Sunb Dried Tomato Loaf
Continuing with the effort to complete another series of RRtY, I was out yesterday riding the lanes, hills and valleys of Kent from Medway down to Folkstone and back again. Having ridden all those miles in Germany during May, a few things struck me on yesterday’s ride. We have a lot of hedgerows in Kent. The landscape is varied. Road surfaces are generally quite poor. The first two are worth celebrating. The third was a literal pain in the arse. I finished the ride feeling a bit more sore after…
Delighted to see that the yarnbomber who regularly adorned this postbox before its recent conversion to a “post box of the future” has rolled with it and moved with the times. Space: Higham Space: Higham Space: Higham If you like these check out this gallery for a load more.
Dunkirk to Berlin via Belgium and the Netherlands. Different route there and back. I remember big open fields of crops; long straight roads; avenues of trees; canal/riverside cycle paths; woodlands; small villages with an intro and outro of frame rattling, bone shaking cobble stones. Great provision pretty much most of the way for cyclists. That’s the infrastructure and the way other road users notice and treat cyclists. It felt to me that cycling was welcomed and encouraged as a legitimate…
In a few hours time I’ll be setting off on my fully loaded bike (it weighs a ton) down to Dover. I have booked a ferry over to Dunkirk sailing at 6.00 am. When I booked the ferry I was focused on wringing out the most time possible I have off work before coming back on the 30th May. Now I’m thinking a few hours here and there wouldn’t make much difference and only a crazy fool sets off on a two week bike ride at midnight. Ahh well - I shall look back on the decision and laugh about it some time…
Every fifteen minutes or so, I have my desktop wallpaper changing to a fresh satellite image of Earth. Sometimes it shows Africa and Europe from the Meteosat satellite. Sometimes it shifts to the Pacific and Australasia, seen from Japan’s Himawari-9. Both are near real-time images from geostationary satellites orbiting above the equator. Here is how to cook it up on Debian 13 (Trixie) with KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland. Ingrediants Debian 13 (Trixie) with KDE Plasma 6, running a Wayland session…
Folkstone 200 (Friday) Folkstone 200 (Monday) Book-ended the weekend with a 200 k ride on Friday and Monday. I wanted to get these in early for the two concurrent RRtY series I’m completing. This weekend coming is busy. The following week I’m off cycle touring in Europe till the end of the month. It’s possible I could complete a qualifying ride over there. I may still do. Both of the 200s followed nearly the exact same roads. I tweaked it a bit for Mondays ride to avoid a closed road in…
On the 27th December 2015 I ditched Windows for Linux - Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (“Trusty Tahr”). I acted on impulse. I wrote a short post at the time to mark the occasion - Smashing Windows. The release of each new LTS is a natural opportunity to take stock and consider whether Ubuntu is still for me. It’s been a great introduction to Linux. I have learned a lot. Certainly not an expert, but my knowledge and understanding has grown over time. So the availability of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon)…
The NASA/USGS Landsat program provides the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. Landsat data are essential for making informed decisions about our planet’s resources and environment. Given the myriad of possibilities the project affords, after much thought and deliberation I put it to the best use I could think of - spelling out the name of this blog using the free Your Name in Landsat tool. I am happy to contribute to the advancement of human knowledge in this…
I volunteered to route check and help out at one of the controls on this years Oasts and Coasts 300km audax and so it came to be I completed the helpers ride last weekend. Oasts and Coasts 300 km There’s about 3200m of climbing overall and close enough to 1900m of that is in the first 120km. Regardless it’s the flatter sections of this event I always find more of a challenge. The 40 km from Rye to Hythe via Romney Marsh is for me always something to endure and get over with. Typically you’re…
replacedbyclawd What Leaked I ride absurd distances for fun and then write about them in a tone suggesting this is all perfectly normal, which is obviously a minor character defect. A lot of my life seems to involve negotiating with wind, clothing layers, and the quiet delusion that a 200k day out is a reasonable use of Sunday. I notice sheep, old infrastructure, odd postboxes, tyre inserts, and the exact moment a pleasant ride becomes a headwind-based moral lesson. Enough is plenty, which is…
Easter Sunday. Out for the first of this months RRtY 200k DiY brevets. My friend Dave planned the route. He was off out to ride it today. Birthday celebrations for two of our boys precluded me from joining him hence why I went the day before. The weather was decent. I sometimes choose the wrong clothes in spring. Either too hot or too cold. Got it right for this ride. Sunny most of the day. But windy. That was okay as for much of the time I was either protected from it by hills and hedgerows ...
Another postbox wrapped up in black plastic soon to be converted to the solar powered Post Box of the Future variety. Rainbows End, Shorne Village
Two more rides this month for the RRtY award. That’s six months done of this round of the series. The first was a modified version of an Audax UK calendar event I completed back in May 2013, the Hop Garden 200. Hop Garden 200k May 2013 Calendar Event Pruned Hop Garden 200k March 2026 DIY Not sure why but the original ride is logged in my RWGPS account as having been completed in April 2012. That does not match my ride history on the Audax UK website or my memory of it.
Inspired by Jedda here’s a rolling list of blogs, blog posts or links I’ve enjoyed. It serves no practical function for me since I can save any such posts in my feed reader. I’m doing this is to hat tip and give thanks to people who took the time to write and publish what they did. I understand it’s considered good form to contribute back in this way to the IndieWeb. I think it’s also possible to learn something about a person by what they like to read so think there’s an element of ‘getting ...
In November last year either the front or rear tyre on my bike got a puncture on just about every ride. The tyres (Schwalbe Evolution Marathon Supremes 700 x 40mm) were fairly new. Lots of rain, shards of Kentish flint, thorns and broken glass all conspired against me getting home without having to stop at least once to patch a tube and fit the spare. I was getting a bit fed up with it.
