Wednesday, 7 October 2026

It’s been a pretty scorching Summer in the UK. And as someone who doesn’t like heat, I’ve been looking forward to Autumn and Winter. And those were now in Autumn (and close to my birthday!).#

But I feel I was so focused on the downsides of Summer I ignored the positives.#

Such as those early sunrises. I forgot how miserable it can be waking up to darkness – which I am this morning.#

I now cycle from the train station to the office. When the clocks go back an hour on October 24th I’m probably going to have to stop cycling the way back, from office to the station. As it will be dark. And cycling around London is dangerous enough in beaming sunshine.#

I still love Autumn and Winter11 Though as I’ve gotten older I’ve grown less attached to the tail end of Winter, in January and February. By then Christmas is over and I just want Spring to begin. But next Summer, even if it’s super hot again, I’m going to try and appreciate it more.#

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I always enjoy seeing a bug out in the wild.#

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I always love finding instances in history books of people moaning and worrying about new technologies or the decline of the next generation.#

Here’s one of a man moaning that the steel nibbed pen isn’t as good as the quill and that it’s worsening children’s handwriting:#

But not everyone approved [of steel nibs being used to write over the quill], no matter its quality or place of origin. In 1862, an unnamed correspondent for Scientific American found that all pens with a steel tip were barbaric, and all who used them hoodwinked. The greatest casualty was handwriting. 'Do not ninety-nine persons in a hundred use steel pens,' the magazine writer complained, 'and has more than one out of the ninety-nine the effrontery to say he can write with them? Lord Palmerston was quite right: the handwriting of this generation is abominable; and as new improvements in steel pens go that of the next will be worse. There is neither grace nor legibility in the angular scrawl that prevails now.' (p49)#

A fountain pen is called that because you no longer had to dip your nib into the ink. Instead there was a reservoir for holding several days worth of ink. The ink just kept on flowing out – like a fountain.#

Last year I finally got a 4K monitor. I still have two 13-year-old 27" Apple Thunderbolt displays to the left and right. But my main monitor is a 32" Samsung 4K monitor11 SAMSUNG ViewFinity S7 LS32D700EAUXXU 4K Ultra HD 32" VA LED Monitor - Black. So when I'm building/designing things like this blog I'm looking at a 4K monitor. And the first thing I realised when I started using 4K is just how tiny things like text look. But plenty of people are still on HD monitors. So it's always a bit of a shock how big this blog looks when I view it on my office’s HD monitor. It's tough – what do you design for? The new (4K)? Or the old (HD)?#

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Feeling rough today for some reason. Good nights sleep and no sugar last night. I woke up a little groggy as always, but felt fine. But now? Pretty rough. Oh well.#

I'm writing this with that little fancy German pen with BulletJournal branding. I still don't get the hype. £28 and the ink is cutting out as I write! Let's switch to my £3-5 Uni-ball Jetstream 101. See, this is so much nicer. Sure, the ink isn't as thick or as black and sharp. But the ink doesn't cut out. And it's so much more comfortable to write with.#

I've put a cheap £25 fountain pen on my birthday list (and some cheap ink). I'm very curious what it's going to be like. I'm sure it will take some getting used to. But hopefully it will improve the look of my writing in my notebooks. I'm slightly concerned about comfort and ink smudging (with me being left handed). But hopeful it will [be] better than my beloved Uni-ball Jetstream 101, which is proving harder than you might think.#

Sometimes I count myself a very lucky beneficiary of the factory age.#

Just exploring a random blog I stumbled upon an obituary for this Dad. And there's this rather nice bit:#

He chose Pearl Harbor Day in 1963 to propose to my mom so he could remember the date, and he did it at Washington Rock to remember the place.#

I think that's sweet and a good way to remember an anniversary.#

I'm trying to think what public holiday I'd choose, as outside of Christmas I tend to forget them. Guy Fawkes Night I reckon. I'll always remember the 5th of November.#

Walden.blog now gets a 100 PageSpeed Insights score.#

I found it interesting that Google (who runs the tool) punishes you for lazy loading images where in the past it used to punish you for not doing it. I wonder why. For A.I. crawlers perhaps?#