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One Monitor, Two Laptops, Lots Of Thoughts

It’s Saturday evening, the ThinkPad is thinking on Debian as always, and the EliteBook G3 is still elite (sorry, had to). That one’s running ReviOS — technically Windows 11, but tweaked just enough that it behaves like it actually wants to be useful. The ThinkPad’s screen is nicer, but the EliteBook is bigger and better for watching movies when I decide I’ve earned some downtime. Between them, I’ve got everything I need. I’m still a one-monitor man — partly because I like it that way, partly because I can’t be bothered rearranging the desk again. It keeps things clean. Focused. Besides, I’ve got the workbench behind me for when I need to solder things or drop tiny screws into the abyss. Speaking of tiny screws, the K6ARK Morse keys use these M3x4mm grub screws. Genius design. Absolutely infuriating in practice. They’re so small I’ve considered just weighing the whole bag and hoping for the best. Every time I drop one, I swear it phases into another dimension. Yet somehow, the keys ke...
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update

Thursday evening. I’ve just gotten back from that physics talk thing at the university — and what an evening. One of those nights that I genuinely can’t describe properly with words. And look, I’ve never been exceptional at that. Expressing real feelings in real time? Not exactly my strong suit. I tend to find the words only in retrospect, once everything’s already happened. Recently, I've leaned into making a conscious effort to speak nothing but my mind around everyone. Turns out, that’s weirdly magnetic. People seem to gravitate toward me because I actually speak my mind without sugarcoating it. And honestly? I kind of hate that. I didn’t ask for the audience. I have maybe two people I’d really consider proper friends. Plus her, of course. And a handful of others I tolerate but don’t particularly want to hang out with. I know, very emotionally well-adjusted of me. Anyway — I digress. Back to the evening. The talk itself was… relatively interesting. The guy running it was a n...
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Another updatey update

I'm doing terribly at sticking to update schedules — it's Friday already, and oh how time flies. In classic me fashion, I’ve found myself a new small-businessy distraction: making Morse code keys for ham radio operators. Y'know, the kind of people who hike up mountains or sit in parks with tiny QRP rigs, sending dits and dahs across the world. Honestly, I love it. My first proper radio contact with one of those little QRP-Labs kit radios kind of sparked all of this, so it's weirdly poetic that I’m now building gear for that exact kind of operation. I’ve ordered a bunch of parts and printed all the plastic bits — yes, the Prusa is finally online and chugging away beautifully, now hooked up through the Raspberry Pi 3. Which is funny, because that same Pi was sort of my intro to this whole radio hobby in the first place. (Longtime readers — all 0 of you — might remember that earlier blog post where I mentioned that Raspberry Pi event at Bletchley Park. Look at us now.) ...
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Updatey update

It’s been two weeks, I know. But I’ve been a little occupied, just dealing with the slow reset that comes with moving house. I’m downstairs now, near the front door. New room, new layout, new daily routine. The biggest win though? Insanely fast internet. Like, 350Mbps down and 250Mbps up. Probably enough bandwidth to self-host this blog from a Raspberry Pi duct-taped to the wall. Not that I’ve done that. Yet. Maybe once I can afford a domain name and find the motivation to go full sysadmin on it. Until then, I’ve been relying heavily on my ThinkPad for projects, which means Fusion 360 is… not really on the table. It runs about as well as a dial-up modem at a LAN party. FreeCAD? Also a no. It feels more like filing taxes than modelling things. So I’ve shifted to OpenSCAD — basically the nerdier, code-based cousin of traditional CAD software. You type what you want, and it renders it. Possibly useful. Possibly an overengineered coaster. Either way, it compiles. Now that I’ve got solid ...
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All at Once, or Not at All

  She said something maybe two minutes ago. Just an offhand comment while talking about a packed schedule: “Why does everything happen all at once?” And it’s weird how a simple line can flip a switch in your brain. Because I’ve got the opposite problem. My workload, my responsibilities — I’ve scaled them back. Intentionally. Slowly. The mountain of things that used to sit on my desk, both literal and metaphorical, has gradually flattened out into almost nothing. Now I’ve got time. Maybe too much of it. Time to think, time to overthink, time to reflect and spiral and wonder if reducing the noise also reduced something else I didn’t mean to lose. I used to feel like I was drowning in projects and obligations. Radios, printers, code, study, writing — everything stacked like Jenga blocks that I just kept adding to without ever pulling any out. It was chaotic. But it kept me moving. Now? It’s like I’ve emptied the schedule, cleared the board — and found that the quiet doesn’t always fe...
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The Prusa is Perfect (and That's Almost a Shame)

 The Ender is very, very broken. Like, not “oh no, it needs a new nozzle” broken — more like “the entire hotend assembly is physically bent and I am officially done pretending I’ll fix it” broken. It's not the first time I’ve let go of a printer that gave me more problems than prints, but this one's different. There's something weirdly personal about this one. Like the Da Vinci 1.0 I talk about sometimes — yeah, that printer was a nightmare, but it mattered. Not because of the machine itself, but because of what I built through it. The connections. The memories. The way working on it became a sort of background noise to some very specific conversations, especially with her. (And no, I promise not every positive memory in my life is somehow tied to her. But yeah, a good chunk of the memorable ones are.) The Ender’s kind of the same. Not as pivotal, but still something. We talked a lot while I worked on it — mostly late nights, mostly off-topic. And honestly, I think that...
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One More Orbit

Sunday again, and somehow it feels like it got here faster than usual. Tomorrow’s my birthday, which is a weird feeling. Not in a bad way, just in that quietly reflective way where you realise a whole year’s gone by and you’re not quite the same person anymore. The Prusa’s printing happily away, and I’ve just put the Ender back together. No reason other than the classic tinkerer’s hope that maybe this time it’ll behave. Simple, repetitive projects like that are comforting, that remind me of the constants in life. Or rather, the things that feel like constants. Because let’s be honest, most “constants” aren’t really constant. Not in the scientific sense, and definitely not in life. But they’re not quite variables either. They’re somewhere in between. Maybe that’s why they matter so much; they give you just enough structure to keep going, but enough flexibility to adapt when you need to. Tomorrow marks another full orbit around the sun. Feels weirdly fast, but I guess time’s funny like...
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