Pete Ashton

Stirchley, Birmingham UK. Got the post-covid chronic fatigue bullshit and figuring out how life works now, online and off. Keeper of rabbits. Middle-aged autistic diagnosis. Very interested in composting.

Mostly crossposting from https://notes.peteashton.com

He/Him

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Last Notes

2026-10-26 22:33:07 UTC

Notes and links from 25 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/26/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
There’s been some storms of late, but thanks to us being in the centre of this island they didn’t cause much, if any, damage locally. Still, one of the fence posts started showing a bit of wobble so I did the amelioration shown in the photo. The make-do stake is a paint mixing drill attachment which I used to use to mash up stale bread for composting before I got a mulcher. Everything has a use eventually.
It’s also been clock change time, going backwards I think. I don’t really mind the clock change — it’s a bit odd for a couple of days and then I get used to it — but I do get why people complain about the autumn one. It now gets darker earlier? And we do this on purpose?
So it’s definitely autumn. The big jumpers are out, the dehumidifier is on and it’s raining.

2026-10-23 20:32:47 UTC

Notes and links from 23 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/23/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
Spent a couple of days turning the first couple of years of blogging (2000-2002) into monthly pages for the forthcoming archive site. Back then I was using Blogger and it was pretty much a status—update tool, albeit without a word count. Most of the posts are a sentence or two and none of them have titles, so it’s a bit like Twitter was, maybe?
In August 2002 a relationship ended and I moved into a shared flat which prompted me to start afresh, using titles this time (it’s very notable how from then on the chapters of my life can be delineated by my setting up a new blog) so those two years form a nice package of figuring out what it means to write a public diary that is also a web log. I find most of my writing really cringe, of course, but not to the point where I want to delete it all. Well, not most of it.
This post from March 2001 caught my eye.

2026-10-20 20:23:11 UTC

Notes and links from 19 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/20/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
The last few days of computer action have been spent on the big blog archive project. I’ve been knocking the Art Pete blog into shape, fixing image links and reminding myself what happened during a transformative period.
I spun this blog off around 2009 when I started selling my weird photos at market stalls and it’s a nice accounting of how my idea of what “an artist” is changed over subsequent years. So much of my learning was done in public back then, which lends to a fair amount of cringe as I publicly get things wrong, but it’s all learning that got me where I am today, and that’s good! I’m not sure when all this is going to go public possibly sometime early December at this rate.
Otherwise I feel like my mood and energies have been in a bit of a holding pattern. I’ve not felt bad but I’d struggle to say I’ve felt good. I turned down some work which would have involved doing some...

2026-10-16 19:44:08 UTC

Notes and links from 16 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/16/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
Item! ## My number finally came up on the bowel screening lottery and the vial with instructions appeared in the post this week. Pretty simple stuff, except I’ve can’t remember the last time I had to catch my poop before it hit the toilet water. A rather strange experience I’m not keen to repeat any time soon.

2026-10-15 18:48:05 UTC

Notes and links from 15 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/15/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
Mostly a rest day today. After posting last night I was overcome with brain fog, which hopefully explains any dullness in my prose and the fact that I didn’t correct typos til this afternoon. Visibility has a cost.
Wally was off his food today, hiding in the corners of the run like a sad little sack. As I’ve said many times before, we know not to panic at a change in behaviour but to monitor and be ready for an intervention if it continues. So we carried him out to the garden to force him to move and kept an eye on him. Eventually he had a nibble on some carrot leaves and by late afternoon he was back to normal. Probably just a bit of wind.
On the plus side I managed to get a great picture of him looking really sad and pathetic. Like all great photographs it’s a lie — he was actually making good progress recovering at this point and was in the middle of cleaning his face. Good job he ...

2026-10-14 20:23:10 UTC

Notes and links from 14 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/14/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
One of the original functions of Notes & Links was to make the most of my sofa-bound internet surfing by making it into a writing exercise, and that is dependent on me doing that, hence some days there’s a lot and some days there’s nothing at all. As I figure out how to do more things within my recently limited capacity I will probably do less blogging here, like over the last few days.

2026-10-10 20:26:24 UTC

Notes and links from 10 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/10/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
Friday we had a visit from a couple of 11 year old girls and their mum to see the rabbits. I realised I haven’t been in the company of 11 year old girls for quite a while and they’re quite odd, giggling and whispering to each other. But they was also lovely and kind to the rabbits and that’s what counts. Hopefully I impressed on them that rabbits are not easy pets so they won’t be straight down the breeding centre (aka pet shop).
After that I went to destroy an arm chair that Fi’s sister can’t get out of the house. It took taking the hinges off the front door to get it in and they’ve decided it’s not worth it, so I offered to take it apart with my tools, a process not unlike skinning and boning a corpse. It should have been a low-effort job but I did get a little invested and probably overdid it. But it was fun! I miss being able to just let go, and later I paid the price.
Saturday ha...

2026-10-08 21:36:15 UTC

#wordpress #lazyweb
I have a few backed up Wordpress SQL databases which I'd like to salvage posts from. I do not have any database expertise (beyond spreadsheets, lol) and I'd rather not install Wordpress if I can help it, though I suspect that’s probably the best option.
Is there an easy way to explore the database without my brain melting?
I have a Mac and Windows. No access to a LAMP / *nix server right now.

2026-10-08 19:19:16 UTC

Notes and links from 7 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/08/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
Yesterday I popped to the allotment with my sister for a bit. Had fun getting the scooter to go up the muddy hill — it’s really not an off-road vehicle, but it made it. Was a nice sunny afternoon after the morning rain. We talked about her plans for it now it’s all set up to her liking (due in part to my condition she’s pretty much taken it all on from Fi and myself) it’s probably time to let it mature and see what works and doesn’t work. That said, I’m wondering about a geodesic dome fruit cage and better water harvesting. Of course.
The weather app reported 8mm of rain that morning and which increased the level in the water butts by 11.4cm. This means I can do some fun maths using the surface area of the roof and/or the butts and see, well, something I guess. I should probably get my own water gauge to get an accurate reading for the garden rather than rely on the apps. Oh hell, I’m ...

2026-10-06 18:00:43 UTC

Notes and links from 6 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/06/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
The weather this last few days has been notable. It’s not been hot exactly but it certainly hasn’t been October-typical. I did put a thick jumper on the other day but then today I was in a t-shirt. It’s that transitional thing where a snapshot is misleading and a trend will be clear in hindsight, but it’s still quite odd. Today there was no wind. The trees were still and the clouds (pictured) were static. I watched them for a good 10 minutes and nothing moved. Psychotherapy was good today. Getting into the nitty gritty on some stuff. Lavender is still digging her hole.

2026-10-05 19:39:24 UTC

Notes from 4 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/05/notes-from-oct.html
I didn’t really feel like blogging yesterday, so I didn’t. Not much caught my eye in the feeds and I didn’t do much of note (although I did briefly pop out on the scooter) so when it came to the end of the day and my text document was empty I figured, fuck it.
What I had been doing was building a new home for the 72 Pete blog which I want to move off Ghost before the next billing cycle. I like Ghost but I really can’t justify the cost so I’m switching to Hugo and hosting it on the cheap.

2026-10-03 20:23:28 UTC

Notes and links from 3 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/03/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
Went to visit my sister briefly today on the scooter, thus normalising the whole “going out on the scooter” thing, and when I returned Fiona informed me that Lav had been furiously digging out Wally’s flop-hole and diligently spreading the soil across the lawn. We let her continue until she seemed done and then brushed it all back in.
Happy to say the soil down there looks pretty healthy, as you’d hope having been pooped on my multiple rabbits for over a decade.
In other news I had a look at Hugo, one of the static website generators, and it looks like it might be at just the level I need. Gonna have a deeper dive this weekend I reckon.

2026-10-02 20:48:09 UTC

Notes and links from 2 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/02/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
A fairly nondescript day. Pottered around a bit and didn’t accidentally start a project, so that’s good. Conserving energy and resting properly. Bit bored though.
Trying not to get wound up about the Zionism is racism stuff at the Green conference. I have no idea if Zionism is or isn’t racism but I’ve had a look at who’s pushing it and they seem to be exactly the sort of wankers who make progressive and community organising such a fucking ballache to be involved with. In my experience they’re incapable of actually doing anything useful and so hide behind ideological purity tests that drain energy and distract from the real work of bringing people together to make a difference. I dearly hope the Greens’ policy processes are robust enough to get them to fuck off.
Other than that, feeling OK.

2026-10-01 18:45:31 UTC

Notes and links from 1 Oct: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/10/01/notes-and-links-from-oct.html
My local park on October 1st
One of my goals as set by the CFS occupational therapist is to go to a social space once a week. I’ve picked The Cloak and Dagger on Stirchley High Street as somewhere familar and quiet enough for an afternoon visit (it used to be my regular in its previous incarnation as The Wildcat) but only managed one visit this summer. Realising I was struggling, chum Roo suggested we meet there, forcing me to commit and not back out unless I absolutely had to, and so today I trundled through the park and spent a nice hour in a pub. And it was OK. Fun even once I got there. While going to social spaces with CFS is tiring, my being homebound these last couple of years has meant the anticipation of visiting them triggers a significant amount of anxiety, and that anxiety is really exhausting. So while getting used to going out regularly won’t fix my CFS in itself, it wil...

2026-09-30 21:32:04 UTC

Notes and links from 30 Sept: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/30/notes-and-links-from-sept.html
A quiet day, although I did finally receive a couple of widgets I’d accidentally ordered from China on eBay (hate it when that happens, not so much for the shipping time as for the wrongness feeling of getting something so cheaply from the other side of the fucking world) so I could finish the second stage of the shed water conservation system, connecting the rear butt to the three side butts so all the butts flow into each other. Now I just need a few days of heavy rain…
We watched Once Upon a Time in Space which, as a childhood space nut, I found fascinating as it covered the space stuff that came after my obsession. I was always an Apollo-head and while the Shuttle was cool I wasn’t really paying attention to what was happening through the 90s. This is basically about the space stations, from Mir to the ISS, right up to the present day deterioration of US/Russian collaboration. M...

2026-09-30 14:44:59 UTC

Clearing the tabs: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/30/clearing-the-tabs.html
I need to declare browser bankruptcy so to mark the end of September here is bundle of links I haven’t read in full but think might be of interest to what passes for my readership demographic. Click with caution and trepidation!

2026-09-29 20:00:20 UTC

Notes and links from 29 Sept: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/29/notes-and-links-from-sept.html
Psychotherapy day today, alongside a need to rest, so mostly pottering in the garden. Sister came over to borrow something from the shed so we had a brief catch-up. I mentioned my therapy had moved onto some quite specific family stuff and she reacted in a way I couldn’t quite pin down, so I guess a chat is on the horizon!
A friend with Long-Covid emailed about my CFS crashes, wondering if it might be better if I never crashed at all. I think it would! But then I wouldn’t do anything, and the process I’m following is to slowly try and find that point where I can function but not crash. This is not as easy as it might be because I’m not very good at monitoring.

2026-09-28 20:28:35 UTC

Notes and links from 28 Sept: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/28/notes-and-links-from-sept.html
Nothing much to report today. Bit of a fuzzy head so a rest day, all in all.
Not overly happy with my link-notes below. Can’t seem to get the phrasing right, but also my judgement might be off and it’s all fine actually. I will publish and be damned.

2026-09-27 20:42:40 UTC

Notes and links from 27 Sept: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/27/notes-and-links-from-sept.html
So yeah, it’s been a week since I last posted. I had a major chronic fatigue crash on the 19th, the likes of which I haven’t experienced for a long time, maybe since Christmas? It wasn’t nice and I don’t really feel the need to revisit it now but suffice to say it took a while to get over.
I’m still feel a bit on the edge of exhaustion but I appear to have fleshed out my notes about some links today, with a degree of verbosity that resembles the bursting of a festering boil of thought-juice, so something is clearly better.

2026-09-23 20:29:49 UTC

Plex on my old AppleTV box has updated. It can reach my server but can’t play any files.
As I’m currently in recovery from a major CFS crash over the weekend I need this shit less than ever.
Stop updating things that work fine.

2026-09-20 18:12:20 UTC

Mouse thief in the hedgehog cafe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz4aBpRI1cQ
Not much hedgehog action this last month but we've noticed the food has slowly continued to go down. Turns out we have a thief who is ferrying the dry cat food to their nest. They even caught the notice of a neighbourhood cat, though to no great effect.

2026-09-11 21:09:34 UTC

Notes and links from 11 Sept: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/11/notes-and-links-from-sept.html
We went on a relatively big adventure today, driving out to Compton Verney with my sister and bro-in-law. I think it’s the furthest I’ve been since December? Fi gave me loads of opportunities to bail before and on the way there but I made it and was delighted to discover they have a “tramper” mobility vehicle to hire for a fiver, so I was able to traverse all the grounds without fear of fatigue. Total game changer.

2026-09-11 17:04:28 UTC

My stream is getting a bit full of angry outraged boosts which is not a healthy thing to have hitting my eyes in a scroll, so I’m going to have to be a bit liberal with turning off reposts for some folk. I know they mean well but please think before dumping the world’s trauma on people’s plates.
At the very least please be more boring in your actual posts so I can just unfollow without regrets. ;)

2026-09-07 20:47:49 UTC

Notes and links from 7 Sept: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/07/notes-and-links-from-sept.html
Another rest day. Had a go at fiddling with the water butts and quickly got prickly sweat on my forehead despite doing fuckall really, so hit that on the head.
Have mostly been watching the tellyshows, mainlining Silo season 3 which is teetering on the edge of nonsense but just about holding it together. It’s easy to forgive any implausibilities once you get over the fact that a population of humans that’s been isolated in an underground bunker for 300+ years speaks with a variety of accents and has incredibly good skin, but even so they keep pushing things right to the edge. And I’m there every step.
I’m also watching, with Fiona, the second season of Beef which is enjoyable in a “dumb people doing stupid things” sense. Cailee Spaeny is the main draw here. She’d got on my radar in Civil War and Alien Romulus and I’ve been wanting to see if she’s actually as good as those promised. Happy to say she is. Proper acting.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/117/231/718/231/462/045/original/80e84a281482860d.jpeg

2026-09-06 19:24:11 UTC

Notes and links from 6 Sept: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/06/notes-and-links-from-sept.html
Nope, nothing happening today. Still crashed. Recovery in progress.

2026-09-05 20:39:18 UTC

Notes and links from 5 Sept: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/05/notes-and-links-from-sept.html
And lo, the chronic fatigue crash did finally come. All the usual bullshit — tired, impatient, sore, grumpy, irritable, aching, fuzzy head, can’t read, can’t think. It’ll pass, it always does.
Was doing my box breathing (the only thing that helps) and Fi said I sounded like Darth Vader. That explains why he’s so chill.

2026-09-03 21:37:05 UTC

Notes and links from 3 Sept: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/09/03/notes-and-links-from-sept.html
Another long night-and-morning’s sleep with no weird stress dreams, so that’s nice. I might have some tomorrow though as I fear I might have overdone it this afternoon.
My sister and bro-in-law were available to help sort out the roof of the rabbit run, something I’ve been slowly working on for a couple of weeks, and came over at 3pm to help lift my construction up. Of course once it was up it didn’t quite work as I’d planned.

2026-08-30 21:24:12 UTC

Notes and links from 30 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/30/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Another doing-things-away-from-the-computer day in which I might have overdone it but I tried to be careful about pacing so we will see. Fingers crossed for no big crash tomorrow. Things involved getting the third water butt connected to my array at the right level so none of them overflow (or at least they all overflow at the same time) and then testing the connections. The connections leak but I had a feeling they would because they only have washers on one side and the butts are slightly curved so no matter how tightly I screwed them in there’s likely still a gap. Yes I did text Fiona asking for help with a tight screw in the butt. It’s not easy to do a full reach around in those things. Sorry. Not sorry.

2026-08-29 19:45:32 UTC

Notes and links from 29 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/29/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
I’d planned for today to be a computer-based writing day, given the rain forecast, but when I sat down to do some computer-based writing nothing was happening. Wrote a couple of sentences, deleted them, and figured a break outside might help. And then I spent the whole day in the garden, in the rain, doing garden stuff.
Turns out doing the prep work yesterday meant actually installing the water butts was a really simple job. I’m quite liking this new system of taking so much time over tasks (in order to avoid triggering a fatigue crash) that I think them through to a degree I’ve never been able to before. Sure, in the past I could have done the whole thing in a couple of hours but I would have fucked something up.
So we now have two water butts hidden between the rabbit run and the fence, ready to receive rainwater once we sort the roof out, and tomorrow, if I’m up to it, I can instal...

2026-08-28 21:09:56 UTC

I propose that we free ourselves of the subsurvient tyranny of being “followers” of people online and adopt more empowering terms such as “monitors” or “observers”. Then when people talk about having “four thousand monitors” the full creepiness of this state of affairs will be much clearer.

2026-08-28 20:51:18 UTC

Notes and links from 28 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/28/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Spent a reasonable amount of time pottering around in the garden today, along with a trip out to the local building supplies barns. While the dome water collection scheme is clearly a dumb thing to keep my brain active, we do have a more serious plan to capture rainwater from the rabbit run and today Fi drove us to Selco and Wickes to get stuff. Specifically two 210 litre butts, some guttering and a bunch of plastic bits and bobs.
The rabbit run is a classic piece of Pete iteration. It started off as a basic aviary made up of 3x6ft panels bolted to the shed, which I then put a sloping roof on so we didn’t bang our heads, and then put corrugated roofing panels on to keep the rain off. Because none of this was planned properly, and because it doesn’t really matter (the rabbits have full access to the shed for real shelter) the drainage is a bit haphazard. I plan to fix that with the str...

2026-08-25 20:16:31 UTC

Notes and links from 25 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/25/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
While this post is mostly about Lav she wasn’t very camera friendly today, while Wally-the-tart went and did this. So here’s Wally. Lavander is much better. She recovered about 10pm last night, taking some pellets and running around after treats. Her “down time” was a bit longer than we’re used to for a problem we can treat without the vet and I was sure we’d be on the phone first thing, but no, she’s fine. This happens to one of the rabbits every few months and we’ve very good at spotting it. We tend not to panic and call the vet but monitor the bun and treat as needed. Most of the time they get better and we save on vet bills, but because we’re quick off the mark we never know if the rabbit would have recovered fine on their own. Wally went a bit off last week. He suddenly changed his behaviour and didn’t want any treats, so we initiated the usual plan of giving him a tummy massage ...

2026-08-24 20:49:29 UTC

Notes and links from 24 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/24/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Another recovery-type day though I haven’t managed it too well. After a slightly disturbed sleep I woke at 1:45pm and remembered a friend was visiting at 2pm, so got up and greeted them. It was one of my low-energy friends so not a massive drain but still a catch-up with an interesting person with news from the outside world. I could definitely feel my head spinning by the end.
Then I failed to rest effectively and spent time on the website stuff, getting more and more frustrated with it and close to throwing in the towel. Online documentation remains terrible, mostly being a random assortment of blog posts that solve very specific problems.

2026-08-23 21:02:51 UTC

In today’s links and notes I wrote a bit about the Lady No-Kids cartoon and some research I did into its author which resulted in finding a lovely blog post about the whole strip.
https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/23/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/117/146/843/245/768/702/original/1d60c9ab2277db72.jpeg

2026-08-23 20:56:13 UTC

Notes and links from 23 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/23/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Definitely a rest day today. Fi had a visitor, a friend of a friend she’d met recently who turned out to be involved in the Disabled Photographers' Society amongst other things. While I am now a disabled person who takes photos it’s not something I’m keen to pursue right now (to be honest I never identified much with the photographer community - I’m definitely one of those wankers who calls themselves a lens-based artist).
But they do raise funds by selling donated camera equipment at photo shows and I have LOADS of lens-based junk in the attic which I’ve been wondering what to do with. So we took it all down yesterday and today she took it away. It felt a bit weird going through the boxes holding the detritus of my camera hacking from around 2006 to 2016. I kept a few items as most of it was just bits-box hoarding, but even so. The end of an era that ended a decade ago.

2026-08-23 13:21:15 UTC

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@nprofile…zfc7 Oh wow, the list of narrators is insane.
Ada Calhoun, Adam Horovitz, Amy Poehler, Ben Stiller, Bette Midler, Bobby Cannavale, Chloe Sevigny, Chuck D, Crosby Fitzgerald, Dave Macklovitch, Elvis Costello, Exene Cervenka, Ian Rogers, Jarvis Cocker, Jeff Tweedy, John C. Reilly, Jon Stewart, Josh Hamilton, Kate Schellenbach, Kelly Reichardt, Kim Gordon, LL Cool J, Lucy Sante, Maya Rudolph, MC Serch, Michael Diamond, Mix Master Mike, Nadia Dajani, NAS, Pat Kiernan, Philippe Zdar, Rachel Maddow, Randy Gardner, Rev Run, Rosie Perez, Roy Choi, Snoop Dogg, Spike Jonze, Steve Buscemi, Talib Kweli, Tim Meadows, Wanda Sykes, Will Ferrell & Yoshimi O

2026-08-23 13:18:30 UTC

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@nprofile…zfc7 That Lucy Sante essay at the start about New York in the early 80s is divine.
Might have to check out the audiobook now. Tnanks!

2026-08-22 18:32:15 UTC

Notes and links from 22 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/22/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Bit of a burnout day today. Everything’s just a little bit hard, a little bit frustrating. I want to do all the things but I know that if I try I’ll crash, so I’m trying to stay still without going stir crazy. All my usual strategies are working as best they can but it’s just a question of waiting it out and recovering from the fatigue.
Here’s some stuff I read today, without commentary due to burnout.

2026-08-22 13:15:27 UTC

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@nprofile…cmq0 Huh, the fence thing is a bit of a surprise, though I get the fire risk. I’m deciding between the south-facing fence and the east-facing shed roof. Although the shed is mostly wood so maybe that’s not permitted either? Plenty to ponder…

2026-08-22 12:29:34 UTC

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@nprofile…0xcx I lent my giant spanner to a neighbour. Their tradey took it home with them so they bought me a replacement which is even bigger.

2026-08-22 12:06:03 UTC

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@nprofile…4m9h Thanks! And yes, I was very pleased when Omnivorous Dilettante fell out of my fingertips. :)

2026-08-21 18:30:13 UTC

Notes and links from 21 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/21/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
My mum, who was herself a teacher and therefore quite invested in my education, was clear that I was doing fine at school until I had to write essays. We could put this down to all manner of things that were not diagnosed in the 1980s - dyspraxia, AuDHD, you name it - or we can go with the contemporary observation that I just wasn’t “achieving my potential” for some reason (subtext, laziness), but the end result was I never really learned how to study. A Levels were a bust, university (as a mature student) was a disaster and while I taught myself to write the writing I do tends to be pretty automatic. I write to figure stuff out. These things I publish are my workings.

2026-08-21 17:37:29 UTC

Was thinking, if I could afford to pay for the Guardian again (now they’ve got rid of the mostly-awful Observer, which I never bought in the print days), the most valuable thing would be the option to customise it.
Specifically to exclude authors on subjects I’m interested in but whose writing is, shall we say, not ideal. Peter Bradshaw, Jonathan Jones, Stuart Heritage, Marina Hyde and Lucy Mangan to begin with.
I realise I could theoretically build something like this from their RSS feeds but since they want my money…

2026-08-21 14:56:28 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh I always thought yeah, that’s technically right. But Mars is still a planet. Wouldn’t want to live there though.

2026-08-21 13:33:46 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh This is a Michael Crichton saying. My right-wing oil-industry anti-ecologist father told it to me as a teen. Make of that what you will. :)

2026-08-20 21:34:20 UTC

Notes and links from 20 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/20/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Lots of steady rain today for the first time in what must be a couple of months if not longer. The lawn was properly soaked. Been feeling a bit tired in the head today. Mental activities needed extra effort and result in fuzziness and a sense of failure, which is never nice. Needed to pull back and rest the brain, which is never easy as a fatigued brain does not want to rest. It wants to think all the thoughts.

2026-08-20 12:53:42 UTC

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@nprofile…u54w My GP introduced this in Birmingham and a week later turned it off.

2026-08-19 19:27:31 UTC

Notes and links from 19 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/19/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
A day of mooching punctuated by an overdue visit from Roo to shoot the shit. Both our social batteries were low so it only lasted half an hour, but she brought brownies, which helped.
Otherwise I seem to have got my reading bug back, or maybe people have returned from holiday and are writing again. Quite a nice bundle of links down there.
In rabbit news a magpie came down and sat on the fence right where Wally was and they stared at each other for a good 10 minutes. Wally’s quite territorial at the moment when it comes to cats and squirrels but I’ve never seen him acknowledge a bird before, let alone a bird acknowledge the rabbits.

2026-08-19 17:43:24 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh I think it’s why I’ve always enjoyed doing stuff in Birmingham rather than London or Manchester. There’s absolutely no danger of being considered cool here so the wankers keep away and you can just get on with it. (Can get a bit frustrating when people outside don’t notice what you’re doing, but at least you’re doing it.)

2026-08-19 17:07:07 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh Metal never suffered from being cool. Cool ruins everything.

2026-08-19 11:18:38 UTC

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@nprofile…cmq0 Related to this, an interesting thing to do if you have Google Earth is to look at historic aerial photography of the UK in the late 1940s. All the parkland (in Birmingham at least) is allotments.

2026-08-18 21:18:09 UTC

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@nprofile…0xcx The shed is definitely going to happen. The house is tricker as there’s very little space along the side of the house where it comes down. If we didn’t have the small shed by the house we could just about make it work but it’s a tiny amount of space as is. I’m working on it!
To be honest, I just had a silly idea about the dome and decided to run with it.

2026-08-18 21:10:21 UTC

Geodome rainwater thoughts - Notes and links from 18 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/18/geodome-rainwater-thoughts-notes-and.html
We got some rain last night, about 3mm or so, with more on the way over the next few days. So I’m finding myself thinking about rainwater collection. I’ve already got a plan to install an array of butts behind the shed this autumn which should be able to save a kilolitre or so and Fi’s OK’ed the budget to buy them (since I’m not earning these days) since it’ll help keep the rabbits' lawn fresh.
What’s a little more interesting is considering how the geodesic dome could function as a rainwater collection system when it’s not in use as a shaded seating area. Here’s a picture of the dome, taken in 2000 when it first went up.

2026-08-18 15:30:13 UTC

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@nprofile…u54w I resent the labour required to engage with this fake marketplace. But, yeah gotta be done.

2026-08-18 14:53:58 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh There are people who don’t put salted peanuts in their ice-cream. I mean…

2026-08-18 14:52:17 UTC

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@nprofile…u54w We’re on Fuse. My take is they’re all as bad as each other and I try not to engage but Fi does the swap every year for the best deal. So far they’ve been pretty good, I think. (Lukewarm, I know, but at least they’re not shit!)

2026-08-18 11:23:01 UTC

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@nprofile…agez Boids

2026-08-17 21:57:34 UTC

Fiona was texting with a young autistic queer artist and was getting confused by some of their references. I was able to translate.
Thank you Mastodon. Couldn’t have done it without you.

2026-08-17 19:06:23 UTC

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@nprofile…0xcx I was very pleased that my sister’s immediate response was to take the parachute before figuring out what to use it for.

2026-08-17 18:13:38 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh I remember learning that there’s a point on the curve where it becomes cheaper to send out replacements than do proper QC. They know that x% will probably be defective and as long as replacing that x costs less than paying a team to manually checking every item…

2026-08-17 18:09:34 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh If everyone was OK we wouldn’t be typing into little boxes. ;)

2026-08-17 18:03:45 UTC

Notes and links from 17 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/17/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
One of the things we did yesterday that I forgot to mention was chop up a parachute.
Last year someone offered most of a parachute on my sister’s street chat. It’s the real deal, ex-army designed for dropping vehicles from planes (apparently), and quite large. She took it and then realised she had a massive parachute, so offered it to me. I took it with the idea of using it to cover the geodesic dome, which it easily did but to no useful purpose. We don’t want the dome to be completely covered and dark inside.
So I had most of a parachute and no real use for it. I offered it around to some of the usual suspects with no joy and eventually Fi found a sewing group who could use the material.
And then I found a use for it.

2026-08-17 13:31:03 UTC

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@nprofile…2kpl Noted!

2026-08-17 12:03:48 UTC

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@nprofile…cmq0 I read something (and can’t find it now, of course) that humans are really resistant to change, but really good at adapting to it once it happens, to the point where they don’t realise change happened, which feeds into their resistance to change. Unless I’ve got that wrong it might explain a lot.

2026-08-16 21:47:04 UTC

Notes and links from 16 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/16/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
At the back of my mind this week was the sense that nothing had gone badly wrong, chronic fatigue-wise. I appeared to be living a reasonable normal life doing the things I wanted to do at a pace and capacity that didn’t feel constrained, so maybe I’d cracked it? (For the unaware I’ve been working on pacing to reduce the severity of post-exertion crashes, basically relearning how to be in the world as a disabled person). It was getting a bit spooky as I got through another day, and then another.
And then I woke early this morning from a stress dream with paralysed legs and a sick feeling in my stomach. Ah well. The rest of today has been a mix of sleeping and trying not to engage with anything at all, because everything is difficult and frustrating, while still trying to move around and not just curl up on the sofa.
This is still good progress. I made it through a week with no fatigue ...

2026-08-15 21:34:47 UTC

Notes and links from 15 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/15/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Saturday WebDev Diary
(First in a series?)
I’ve been spending a bit of time this week, and a few hours this afternoon, messing around with Eleventy, a piece of website building software that looked like it might match my needs and my capacities. I’m still not sure but it’s not been harmful to my fatigue so far.
As with many veteran bloggers I’ve found myself dabbling in template modification and building with varying levels of success over the decades. I am by no reasonable definition a programmer but I can decode an if/then or while statement and edit to do something slightly different, which is usually good enough. And while my CSS skills are basic they get the job done on a superficial level.

2026-08-15 21:31:49 UTC

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@nprofile…k2pn Frankly I was getting bored of my knees.

2026-08-14 20:16:33 UTC

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@nprofile…k2pn I’m assuming it’ll be like this til mid Sept and then it’ll be downpours through the autumn. But fucknose.

2026-08-14 20:10:39 UTC

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@nprofile…k2pn Could smell it in the air yesterday evening.

2026-08-14 20:07:11 UTC

Notes and links from 14 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/14/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
The reality of the wildfires in South Birmingham is starting to sink in. Years ago there was a tweet (remember tweets?) saying:
“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”
I’m not personally filming it yet but friends of mine are sharing wildfire footage from their friends' doorbell spycams in Druids Heath, a mile or so up the road and part of my MP’s constituency, so it’s only a matter of time.

2026-08-14 15:40:07 UTC

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@nprofile…cmq0 Strong memory of being involved with a British Council exchange art project where I showed a Kenyan artist around Birmingham for the day and we went to the museum where they had an exhibition about the Mau Mau rebellion which I knew nothing about. Neither of us were surprised by my ignorance.

2026-08-13 22:15:31 UTC

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@nprofile…tk8a Imagine being Lawerence Fox and seeing that.

2026-08-13 21:33:53 UTC

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@nprofile…0xcx Oh, very much an and/or with him!

2026-08-13 19:56:39 UTC

Notes from 13 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/13/notes-from-aug.html
Summer holiday childcare duty today with both the great nephs, M (10) and G (6). Given the heat and the inevitability of them getting frustrated with each other after a period of time we stuck on a movie. And then I did a jigsaw with G while introducing him to the music of Steve Reich, which seemed to calm him down. He’s very much at the “is it ADHD or is he just six?” stage and I had a feeling repetitive minimalist percussion might work.

2026-08-12 20:42:10 UTC

Notes and links from 12 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/12/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Partial-eclipse day today and since I had a bit of energy I decided to get the camera out and take some photos. Our local park has a bit of a hill and a decent view of the sky so we headed over to meet some chums, along with a decent chunk of the local community.
Eclipses, even partial ones, retain their majesty and awe. Even though I was dicking about with the camera and explaining to people how to get a decent image with their colanders that magic was still palpable.
I’m still working on the images I took which aren’t that amazing but were fun to get, so look for that tomorrow.

2026-08-12 13:00:21 UTC

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@nprofile…kqsg
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/117/082/660/625/228/604/original/dc9b34e70106676c.png

2026-08-11 22:23:59 UTC

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@nprofile…l6w9 @nprofile…saqv @nprofile…m0nj I was thinking about this earlier but couldn’t remember the reference. Seen it a lot in run down industrial areas of Birmingham.

2026-08-11 20:25:28 UTC

Notes and links from 11 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/11/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Feeling good today and wanted to note that. Since the back pain subsided on Saturday I’ve had a nice few days and found myself sitting in the garden feeling contented and at peace, something which hasn’t happened much recently. Had my psychotherapy session which was also remarkable for not being full of trauma and bad thoughts and was more of a fun chat about stuff in my past, which kinda feels wrong because therapy’s supposed to be dredging up the darkest shit, right? But fuck it, why not. I might have even unlocked something, though of course I have no idea what it could be.

2026-08-11 17:16:18 UTC

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@nprofile…cys7 @nprofile…saqv Transport is also used on https://www.gov.uk/ and one of the reasons that site is so good (not always in terms of content, of course).

2026-08-11 17:12:49 UTC

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@nprofile…saqv Yeah, doesn’t fit your criteria but I think Londoners do consider it theirs.

2026-08-11 16:50:29 UTC

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@nprofile…saqv I feel like Gill Sans is _very_ much of London, but that might be too obvious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gill_Sans

2026-08-11 15:11:54 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh @nprofile…zejv I’m with you on the fury. I used to happily help people with their tech but recently I can’t because I get too angry and it gets in the way.

2026-08-11 12:11:56 UTC

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@nprofile…agez Happy soonday

2026-08-10 17:56:50 UTC

Notes and links from 10 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/10/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Mostly a rest day today though I did get out on the scooter before the next heatwave hits. I’m enjoying photographing the same trees in the park and hope to have a good series across the seasons by next summer.
I remember when I took the previous shot at the start of July, when we’d only had a couple of heatwaves, I thought the grass was looking parched. Compared to now it was positively verdant.

2026-08-10 15:12:49 UTC

I’ve had six emails like this from different “people” over the last couple of months, according to my spam folder. I have to admit I’m intrigued, not by the prospect of a free piano (my sister and I already have our mum’s old piano which we’re looking to find a good home for, so I’m a terrible mark here) but for what the scam could be.
https://social-coop-media.ams3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/media_attachments/files/117/071/856/832/996/597/original/b9f0acaca8be9e79.jpeg

2026-08-09 21:49:39 UTC

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@nprofile…nrwh I was talking to my great nephew about this the other day. One of our neighbours named theirs “Troy and Abed in the modem” which is a delightfully deep cut.

2026-08-09 21:48:05 UTC

Notes and links from 9 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/09/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
While talking with my niece at the tea party yesterday she described her kids as “going all yampy” which was the first time I’d heard this midlands expression in the wild. I felt like an ethnologist who’d stumbled upon a tribe he’d only read about in old Lew Stringer comics.

2026-08-09 15:41:18 UTC

@nprofile…saqv Re: https://unsung.aresluna.org/ipods-circular-apps/ My first thought about the iPod nano button was its similarity to a classic iPod scrollwheel.

2026-08-09 15:30:16 UTC

Clearing the tabs: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/09/clearing-the-tabs.html
Thanks to my week and a half off I’ve got a bit of a backlog and need to clear the decks. Here’s some things I’ve half-read and think might be of interest. Cravat emperor, or whatever.

2026-08-08 19:47:05 UTC

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@nprofile…kqsg I love solving problems like this and I’m so glad I’m actually being useful and not one of those annoying people. :)

2026-08-08 19:44:42 UTC

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@nprofile…kqsg Broom and shovel I reckon.

2026-08-08 19:12:51 UTC

Notes and links from 9 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/08/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Great-neph M’s 10th birthday tea party today with his cousins and older family, which includes me. The theme was monster trucks, hence the last-minute cake decoration (above) made by his mum which I thought was magnificent.

2026-08-08 13:46:44 UTC

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@nprofile…kqsg Aha! A dead-hedge. Nice. (And good for wildlife too).

2026-08-08 13:38:53 UTC

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@nprofile…kqsg I mean once they’re down as a means of compacting them for disposal. Scatter them on the lawn and hoover them up with the spinny blade walker.

2026-08-08 13:33:32 UTC

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@nprofile…kqsg Ooh, I have a tip! Run a lawn mower over them. (I do this to make them compostable.)

2026-08-08 13:11:40 UTC

Hedgehog Cam 2 - 6 August 2026 https://youtu.be/kryPYyNOU0A
#hedgehog #hedgehogs #UKWildlife

2026-08-07 18:13:12 UTC

Notes and links from 8 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/07/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
Went to see the musculoskeletal specialist this afternoon about my bad back, which was doing much better today until he gently poked at my lower spine to see where it hurt, and then it hurt again. It’s nothing major, thankfully, and it should continue to improve. I have a 5 page PDF of gentle exercises for my core muscles to try. Let’s see if I can do them for a more than a few days before I forget.
This was one of those moments where I was reminded that I don’t leave the house very often and that this sort of thing takes a toll on me. I don’t think I did enough to trigger a crash but I definitely felt the fatigue afterwards.

2026-08-06 20:55:18 UTC

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@nprofile…9me5 @nprofile…ryua All that, plus it’s August and there’s not as much news around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_season

2026-08-06 20:53:23 UTC

Notes and links from 7 Aug: https://notes.peteashton.com/2026/08/06/notes-and-links-from-aug.html
With judicious application of ice-packs, tiger balm, ibuprofen, walking up and down the garden and lying on my side, my bad back has slowly gotten less bad. I can now sit upright for more minutes than previously and occasionally forget to take my walking stick with me to the bathroom. I have a doctors appointment (more accurately a musculoskeletal specialist) tomorrow so I’m sure it’ll have totally cleared up by then. The text message with the appointment reminder called them “The MSK” which sounds like a cool rapper name and has me wondering what the K stands for. The Musculo Skeletal King? I shall try not to ask and focus on listening to their advice.
Trying out a different blogging format, in the sense that I’ve thrown out the format. I’ve bashed this out in an evening based off my bookmarks, but the future plan, such as it is, is to write through the day and see what format is need...

2026-08-06 19:52:34 UTC

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@nprofile…ryua Reminds me of this article from 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20170816153004/https://decolonizedtech.com/2017/08/15/against-black-inclusion-in-facial-recognition/