I haven’t personally done it, but I was working nights in HMV on the restocking crew when Skyrim launched. We had a midnight opening and laid on a bunch of extra staff to cover the heaving masses desperate to lay their hands on Bethesda’s latest masterpiece.

Six people turned up.

Trouble is, we have a long and complicated relationship with the rest of Europe. To some extent it doesn’t really matter what we send, because most people in mainland Europe don’t think all that highly of us. And much of that is justified in my opinion.

Our people get drunk and lairy in their holiday resorts, we very publically opted to sever ties with the EU, and historically we’ve always been quite cunty.

I’m 45, and have only ever really known our national press to mostly shit on Eurovision. They treat it like a joke, so regardless of what we send, it’s mostly seen as a joke by Europeans.

I felt terrible for our last few entrants, particularly Sam, and Olly a couple of years back. Last year’s entry was dog shit, but they still didn’t deserve no points at all. This year Sam made a genuine attempt at a song that showed a love for other European nations, and one which was a banger too, but ultimately he’s fighting against 30 years of the UK’s role in the EU sliding further and further into insignificance. And it’s a shame.

Maicyn? Pronounced “Mason”, I assume?

Only buy in bulk what you can

This is the Sam Vimes boots theory in action.

Not criticising you, and you’re not wrong. However, buying in bulk suggests a) having the money to do, and b) having somewhere to store the bulk items.

Oh aye, he’s a monumental prick.

Here in the UK we do something similar, though not until we see the flashing lights. We pull across as far as we can in order to allow as much space as possible.

It’s a crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy dashboard.

I use Soulseek to the exclusion of any other music acquisition services. Between it and Lidarr my Navidrome server is GLORIOUS these days.

After ten years of being able to only carry my iPhone, it felt like quite a regression going back to carrying my wallet after I got a Pixel and put Graphene on it. That and not having face unlock any more made me feel like maybe I’d made a mistake. But I got over it soon enough.

Be aware that if you fail the ID check for Curve (which I somehow managed to do) they’ll essentially just ghost you without offering the opportunity to try again. I’ve tried a few times to get someone from their customer service to help me sort it out, but it always fizzles out after a couple of messages.

As an alternative, I use Monzo with a Garmin watch. It’s not perfect because I have to transfer any money I want available from my bank to Monzo, but once I’ve done that it’s easy enough to access on my watch. All in all, I mostly carry my bank card in a magsafe wallet, but it’s handy to have payments on my watch in a pinch.

It does not exist because it does not exist.

Hope that helps.

I made the mistake of updating to Kubuntu 26.05, and that was that. Dunno how, dunno why, but I could not load into a desktop. Tried uninstalling the nvidia drivers and reinstalling, but nope.

Ended up wiping it and starting again with Arch, and even that wasn’t particularly plain sailing. Had to roll back to an earlier driver.

I’m happy to accept that it’s probably user error, but man, they don’t make it easy.

I mean, yeah, both are based on AOSP, but one of them is more secure than the other. And that one isn’t the one that works with the UK govt ID app.

sad British noises

Last week I had to jump through a bunch of hoops because my phone runs Graphene, and I needed to use the government’s new One ID app to prove who I am in order to renew my driving licence. Obviously the app doesn’t work in Graphene, because it relies on Google Play Services, which I have installed and sandboxed, but it ain’t good enough.

So I ended up having to download a pdf letter from .gov.uk to take to the Post Office so I could queue for half an hour so a guy there could say that yes, I do appear to be who I am.

I really, really don’t like that I’m made to feel like a second class citizen because I choose to use a mobile OS that isn’t Google or Apple.

And all of this isn’t to mention that I can’t use my banking app on my phone either.

Yep, my own government (UK), have rolled out a digital ID app that only works with Play Services intact, so I had to jump through hoops to prove my ID so I could renew my driving licence. It’s bullshit.

I’ve had a bastard of a time with Nvidia drivers in the past few weeks, though I’m honest enough to accept that a big chunk of that could well be a combination of user error, and that I have a fairly old 1060 GPU.

Yep, I use it on my Mac. I also use Konsole instead of Terminal. I wish Dolphin was available, but sadly it’s not.

Also mid-40s, also on Elvanse, also exhausted all the time.

In my case though I don’t necessarily think it directly connected to my medication. I’m somewhat overweight, kind of out of my element at work, and live in this world. Also, I have sleep apnoea, which is treated with CPAP, but who knows how well it works.

As for overtime: nah, I do the hours I’m paid, and not a minute longer. If I haven’t finished a task, well, It’ll still be there tomorrow.

Either my Kobo or my 55" LG OLED.

I’ve owned a bunch of TVs over the years, starting with a 12" Panasonic “portable” CRT that just about fit on a shelf in my bedroom. But none of them can hold a candle in just how impressive they look to that LG. Even my first LCD, a 32" Sony (which I still have) impressed me to begin with, but ultimately it just became a TV to look at. But I’ve had this LG for a year and it still blows me away when I watch something that’s letterboxed and the black bars are so black that you can’t tell where they end and the (extremely thin) bezel begins. And it only cost me £800.

The software updates piss me off though, so I’ve revoked its internet privileges.

But I don’t think a bit of tech has brought me quite as much joy as my Kobo Clara HD still does, some six years after I bought it.

A had a Kindle for a year before, and while it was fine, it annoyed me how much I felt I owed to Amazon with it. Loading books from not-Amazon was a pain in the arse. Calibre could do it, but only certain formats were allowed to have cover art. Then it went tits up, so I replaced it with my Kobo and it was like breathing clean air for the first time in my life.

The Kobo couldn’t give a shit where the books came from, it treats them all equally. The battery still lasts for weeks, even after six years, and just a couple of weeks ago I worked out how to sync it with Grimmory, running on my home server, so I don’t even need to plug it in to copy books to it anymore. Just upload them to Grimmory, which automatically puts them onto the Kobo shelf, so when it syncs overnight it downloads them. And it has Instapaper built in now, so I can save articles to read on that nice, clear screen.

And all in something that cost me about £90.

Yeah, if you enjoy reading and are on the fence about an e-reader, get a Kobo. The old Clara HD is perfectly good, and probably quite cheap now.

Yeah, she’s in the process of doing that now, but it’s a whole massive arsehole that they baked into the process from the start; either intentionally or not.

And that doesn’t get around the fact that if you use the default camera app, which most people will, there’s no way to save the photos to anywhere other than the camera roll. And you can’t integrate the way photos work with iCloud into something like Immich. As far as I’m aware.