Am thinking of moving the blog back to Hugo. Not exactly sure why. Probably a digital self-determination thing. And maybe a bit of boredom with my WordPress setup.
I’m going to have to remind myself of the pros and cons of both. I know I got a very good deal on 4 years hosting with WordPress. But I was just looking back through old posts on the WordPress app and it couldn’t display some due to some Jetpack compatibility issues. Which is just the sort of thing that pushes me in the direction of doing things myself.
It’s just come to me now what the trigger for thinking about a change was. I have cloud storage with pCloud. This includes a public folder, a nifty feature that amongst other things can serve static websites. Hence the Hugo.
Sometimes I see blog posts where the writer hasn’t posted for a while and they talk about the why’s and wherefore’s. I’m not going to do that.
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I have a Garmin Instinct 2. The feature set is fantastic but I’m well aware I don’t use some of them as much as I anticipated. I make use of the compass, altimeter, climb features and GPS tracking the most frequently. Stuff for hiking more than those features for running.
Recently, Garmin introduced Connect Plus. Extra features behind a paywall. Is this the beginning of enshittification? Will free features slowly disappear behind the wall? Fair enough on one level that Garmin starts to charge for what is a pretty good platform that up until now has been free. But what if my data starts to become less accessible? That is a problem.
Last year I bought a second-hand Garmin Etrex 30x. In light of the above I’ve been thinking that should I get to a point where I no longer want to, or can’t, rely on Garmin Connect, I have tracking data from the Etrex freely available to me, without it being mediated through someone else’s platform.
Just recently I’ve dusted of my Python gloves to see if I can extract data from the Etrex’s .gpx track files. Of course I can. There are a couple of modules available to manipulate gpx data. I’ve been using gpxpy and it’s pretty straightforward to extract all sorts of useful data. And because .gpx files are human readable anyway, at a push I could look through the file to find some of the data manually.
Which leads me onto the other thing I’ve noticed about Garmin. Some of their newer handheld units are now using .fit files. I have no experience of these but apparently they are encoded, if that’s the right term. Not human readable. I believe they can hold a lot more in terms of health data but is this just another step towards limiting user’s ready access to their own data?
I bought the original yellow Etrex nearly 25 years ago. It’s very basic but it still works just fine. The Etrex 30x has more features and allows me to move files between the unit and a computer, albeit with a cable. I hope in another 25 years both units will still work (assuming GPS will still be a functioning and freely available system) and my own data will still be freely accessible.
Pretty much bang on the first day of February I actually feel more positive and energetic than I have done in months.
Psychologically, February signals the back end of winter for me. The days are noticeably longer and light levels are that much higher. And if it transpires that it is drier, as February traditionally is, I’ll be all the happier for it.
The first post in months. As last year wore on, I found myself bumping more and more things off my list of priorities, including blogging. As a family, it felt like we all just stumbled to the end of the year, with little energy to spare beyond doing the basics.
I’ve had nearly two weeks off work and I think I’ve really needed it. I’ve shelved a couple of planned projects for the coming months in order to free up my mind and time somewhat.
While I’ve been surprised at how numb I feel in the aftermath of Mum’s death, I realised that I just hadn’t stopped. Maybe it was a coping mechanism, although I’m not sure ‘coped’ is the right word, given how frazzled I felt.
The plan for the coming months is to create a bit more mental space, sort out some stuff around the house, and be more available to my family.
What with all that the last few months have involved, we finally got around to taking a week off, postponed from the beginning of August, when we really didn’t feel up to it.
A few days camping, a chance to kick back, and I hope that I will be able to get back into a more normal routine with a bit more energy. I know grief as a process is not a straight line, and no doubt it will continue to be there in my mind, but I think taking time off has helped ease what felt like an ill-defined pressure, a constant weight.
It’s not like I did much thinking, but perhaps that was the point. Trying to work, take care of admin, looking after our home, has all felt like wading through treacle. Needing to think while the grieving process happens has been the problem. So it’s been good to have some time off from trying!
During Mum’s last week’s she talked with us about her coming death. I’m glad she was able to. It was a relief. To not do so, to make death into the elephant in the room, would have been a tremendous strain.
It’s been interesting to see the responses I’ve had from friends and acquaintances when telling them about Mum. Kindness and openness from unexpected quarters, a lack of openness from a few I didn’t expect.
We all have to go sometime. I think we should talk about death more.
It’s going to be hot over the next few days so this morning I got up extra early and walked the dog while it was still cool.
She’ll sleep for much of the day now, alternating between lying on the garden path in full sun and one of a number of spots in the shade.
Hoping I can maintain the routine for the week.
Nearly two months since I last posted here. Haven’t had the head space to think about blogging. Mum’s rapid decline and death. Feels a bit like a dream.
Rationally, I believe death is very much part of life, a necessary part of the cycle of renewal. Emotionally, it’s been a wave that I could see coming, couldn’t avoid or outrun, had to be faced.
Time now to pick up some things that I’d left off. Not a return to normal, but an adjustment to the new normal.
What a difference a few weeks make to my perspective on rain. The end of March and I was sick of the sight and sound of yet another Atlantic low blowing in yet another shed load of rain.
Two months on and I’m lying in bed with the window open, listening to the steady wash of what I think of as summer rain. No wind to speak of, unhurried, thermodynamics and gravity. My response is entirely different.
Mum has only a few months to live. It’s been confirmed. It’s a relief to know for certain. The priority now will be her comfort. To see her as much as is feasible.
There is an odd state of limbo that I find myself in. My mum’s health has taken a rapid turn for the worse and depending on whether the medics can do something or not, could mean she is close to the end. So I find myself on the one hand trying to get my head around the scenario of there really being not much time at all, while at the same time retaining the possibility that this might be a blip that she comes back from.
When one of a couple we were good friends with became ill some years ago, it has always stuck in my head, something they said: ‘We are getting used to this phase of life’. Accepting that they were on a journey, the end of which was the death of one of them, and all the uncertainty in between, was, and still is, very powerful to me.
Tim Ingold, anthropologist, has a lot to say that I find fascinating. I can’t recall how I came across him, but I think it was some months ago while I was reading about animism.
His idea of the ‘meshwork’, and his exploration and examination of perception and animistic world-views resonate a lot with me. I don’t pretend to understand everything he talks about, but nor is he so academic that it’s totally beyond my grasp.
I bought his book of essays The Perception of the Environment., which is waiting in my stack of books for me to get to.