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The hypocrisy of buying domain names for my family
One of my pet peeves is when I come up with an idea, go to purchase a suitable domain for the project, only to discover that it’s been taken and is being squatted upon. Domain squatting or cybersquatting is pretty rampant, and likely quite lucrative if you get the right domain at the right time, but it’s also highly annoying. Go search for almost any combination of real words ending in .com, .net or other highly desired domain ending and you’ll see what I mean. You can get pretty much anything ending in .fish, but.. you know… why? With this…
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Walk in the Howardian Hills
A few weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to walk more. Long walks through the magnificent countryside near where I live. However, I did not want to do loads of research into which walks I’d like, map out a route etc. Lucky for me that in the UK, there’s a thriving community of walkers already in place. It’s called Ramblers, and you can find their website at ramblers.org.uk. You sign up and just start to attend walks which have been planned out by current members who share a love of walking. You just turn up, walk, chat, take in…
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My son makes music, and it’s good
I never talk about my kids online. I’ve never posted images of them. Never mentioned their names. I figured that they needed to make their own way, to decide for themselves what they wanted to make available, when they were old enough to do so. Today, that changes for one of my kids. Meet Sam Wrigley and his music.
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Christmas gets earlier each year
When I was a child, back in the 1970s, Christmas was a thing that happened in December, and most frequently in late December. Fast forward to now, the year 2025, and we’ve allowed Christmas to slowly but surely push further back into the year.
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Pride
I know that pride, being one of the seven deadly sins (if you believe in any of that), is not always something we should aspire to, but I think that once in a while it’s okay. Yesterday, my daughter graduated from university. I went, and I was very proud. That’s all I have a say about that.
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We need more silliness on the web
When the internet began, nobody had the faintest idea what it was going to become. Nobody knew that we were going to be deluged by images of cats, that all the music from across the globe would be available in a heartbeat. Nobody knew that it would change politics, cause connection and isolation. Nobody knew what the internet would become. Looking back, one thing that saddens me somewhat is how the internet has become less silly. There’s far less silliness out there. It’s been replaced by so-much-seriousness. It’s become a serious place first and foremost. We’re doing banking online, file…
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Don’t just consume, create something too
We’re so used to consuming the content that other people create online, that we’ve forgotten the importance of creating things ourselves. Get creating for yourself.
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Nice weekend
Some weekends are better than others. I’m sure that you can agree. This one was exceptionally cool.
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Early morning
I wrote the other day about the fact that I cannot seem to stay asleep. Turns out that this has some wonderful consequences. One of the best parts of the day is the time in the house when there’s nobody else around. I don’t want to sound like some old curmudgeon, but I suspect you know what I mean. If you’ve got a family, then you’ll know all about the craving that you get to be left alone once in a while – just for a few minutes. Not being able to sleep means that I’m often up hours before…
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No sleep
Over the last 9 months or so, my body has decided that a life long experiment with more or less perfect sleep was a waste of time. It decided that instead of falling off to sleep easily, and then staying asleep reliably for 7-9 hours, what was needed was a new regimen of lying awake and repeated episodes of prolonged waking up. I have told my body that this experiment is just silly, and that the old way of executing sleep was much better. Thus far my body has failed to read the memo. My body appears to regard this…
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I had kids, now I have adults
I have kids, well, I did have kids. Now I have adults. One of the trickiest moments to navigate as a parent is when your kid, the one that you fed, picked up when they fell, soothed when they worried, no longer need you in that way. It’s a strange transition. It’s not unwelcome, in fact it’s what you want. You want them to be independent, to move freely in the world with confidence. But, you think fondly of all the ‘kid moments’, and perhaps even want those moment again, if only briefly. I’ve never had a conversation with anyone,…
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Morning sunshine
In the UK, we’re really quite far north. If you live in North America, take out a map and trace a line horizontally from London to your part of the world, you might be surprised just how far north we are. This means that in the summer we have long days and short nights. In the winter short days and long nights. There comes a point when you really want the long nights to become long days. A craving for the sun; a wish to be warm and to see without the aid of electrical lights. We move the clocks…
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Snowy break
We decided that we’d go away for a few days after the New Year. We went here, and were lucky enough to get some snow. I feel very lucky indeed.
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New Year 2025
Well, we’ve managed to reach 2025 years from 0, and there was quite a lot that happened prior to that, 13.8 billions years of things to be specific. It turns out that the date of the New Year (1st January) is quite an arbitrary thing, and depending upon when and where you live(d), it could have been a whole bunch of different dates. Anyway, for now I’m sticking to 1st January, and wish you a happy New Year on that basis.
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Little break in Wales
We’re lucky enough to be friends with the owners of a fine hotel in north Wales. Most years we get invited to stay there, and this year it’s fallen between Christmas and the New Year. It’s wonderful, and I’m in love with their place and where they live.
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I’m profoundly lucky
It’s the time of the year in which I find that I have more time to reflect upon life. Apart from the normal gratitude for my health, family, security and normality / predictability of my life, the thing that I’m most grateful for is WordPress. The ability for me to express my (mostly banal) thoughts and reach much of the world (should they wish to engage), is something precious and remarkable. This point bears further pondering. I have an idea, I log in, type, upload images and hit publish. It’s there for those able to browse the internet, all in…