God, pretty much half way through my life (I am guessing, but with the age I’m expecting to live to) and this year, my birthday sucks, hard, literally. You’ll see below what I mean.
The time came to deal with being 40, to be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to it, until I got my pressie which for birthday’s, is a rather odd choice, considering that if someone was given it, it will be thrown out the window pretty quickly, especially if your husband buys it and you didn’t ask for it.
So, leading up to my 40thh (the day I write this), it was marked with depression issues, of them and even at 6 months out, my family wanted to know “what do you want for your birthday?”, lets just say, if you had the same idea I had, 116 123, call that. To be honest, I have a lot of issues with depression recently, not because I don’t want to feel depressed, but things aren’t quite going the way I would like them to and the horrible habit of comparing myself to other people, especially from the school I came from. What makes it worse, is that I am focusing on the stuff I don’t have, which is a wife, kids, a house (although I now have the money to move out of my dads place when needed – with a little help with a mortgage) and I feel held back considerably.
Actually, it is the first time I’ve talked about this on my blog and don’t worry, I have thought about seeking help, its on my todo list. Also recently, as I became an eBay seller to reduce my computer collection substantially, I’ve been doing a lot of selling, my god, one package has become extremely stressful, because Royal Mail decided not to deliver it, instead, it was at my local delivery office for 10 days with no activity. It was suppose to go elsewhere (not Chichester). So, I had a pretty understandably frustrated buyer wondering if I scammed them.
I’ve tried to be helpful as much as possible as well. Yes, registered a complaint and guess how far that got? Nowhere!
So there is that, the thing I have to focus on and I am not very good at doing that, is what I achieved. Now I’ve not really spoken about it, but I was considered a SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) pupil at school – before SEND was a thing, so my education hasn’t been great, left with 2 GCSE’s when many leave with 5 or more, one C and one E grade, couldn’t go any further, couldn’t do A levels, couldn’t do six form, so ended up in college. But what I didn’t expect was to go into university, that was a very last minute decision, because of a course I liked and that was thanks to “Trainz”.
Now I am working in London. I broke records at the school, now I am probably still breaking records after I left. I’d love to know how many pupils actually did go to University and graduated, even more so, how many actually work in London for a large company that millions depend on daily. Many from my school will be going “you’re boasting about what you have done”, actually no, I’ve actually got a bigger challenge and its not about me, its not about others, its about SEND and this is borne out of my frustration of life, you see SEND, jobs and education becomes hard, VERY hard. IT shouldn’t be, but the stigma is still there, the stigma of society as a whole see people like me with Asperger’s Syndrome as “pretty stupid” when actually, we are really really smart, its changing perception of that and as much as I hate to say it, when I come from a far more diverse background, I’ve had that exposure of seeing what the person can do, those that come from state school where SEND isn’t a thing, still have that stigma. That’s what I want to change, just became my education background isn’t that good, doesn’t mean I am less able, in fact, I prove I’m just as able – I just need a bit more support to understand what is the social norms and how to interact (as I interact differently).
I actually had a longer post prepared on SEND, but I never completed it, so that is on the back burner.
So why does my 40th suck? What did I ask for, for my birthday? Well, everything I touch either doesn’t work, needs emptying frequently, the filters clogged very quickly, you need to untangle the bloody thing and no matter what manufacturer you use, its the same situation, so when I go and clean the house, I want the bloody thing to just bloody work. I asked for something that became my companion at work, I remember them at school too, with his great big smile and eyes, that great big trunk sticking out and made a machine human. Outside the UK, he’s not as well known, but inside the UK, he has a dependable reputation and has many other friends in different colours…
.. he’s not a machine, he’s a life long companion! Many people would absolutely hate having a hoover for their birthday. Me? I wanted a Henry. So I finally got my own Henry Hoover. Finally, I can clean the house with a hoover that is reliable and easy to fix. That’s the other complaint, every Dyson I’ve touched, breaks, can you find the bits for them? God, nope, because they stopped making them. Henry’s? Dead easy and dirt cheap! That’s why he isn’t a machine, but a companion for life.
(Side note, I managed to complete a yearly task, trains and daffodils, this is on the flower bed at Haslemere station with the only daffodil I snapped at the time.)
… Passenger Point Queue Generator, the program that took my site offline once.
Its not often you hear a site taken offline for a program that well, does what its not supposed to. I spent quite a while developing PPQG (Passenger Point Queue Generator – for Trainz) and it’s suppose to help with randomising and creating queues for rolling stock for passenger trains. I might enhance this to include freight queues as well, as some of my projects also have freight queues (parcels) included. Not unusual for Railbuses.
I wrote this about 8 years ago in Visual BASIC 6, yes, really, on the train to and from work and it took quite a while. Across several computers and never finished. The reason why I never considered it finished, is because I left a module unfinished and never went back to it. Yes, I use it a lot, I’ve offered it out with its source code on this site which was fine for a number of years, until suddenly, my site got shut down because of it – because it contained malware. Got it back online, hosted it on Google Drive and it looks like its been deleted again. I have scanned it and some sites saying its clean, some are saying it has malware.
It looks like this, doesn’t actually do any file handling and its only 40KB long. I hope it’s bugless but it can probably be buggy accidently. (If you do find some, let me know please).
So used VirusTotal and it says 3 out of 71 providers consider it to have a virus which isn’t bad news, it just means that there is a way and style of my code writing matches a pattern in a Trojan or Virus. After all, all virus scanners look for is patterns in the code, if it matches that pattern, its a false positive. This could also be related to the VB6 libraries and embedded code to identify it as a VB6 programs but without asking a question to why, I will probably never find an answer. Nor would they tell me how their virus scanners work, because of intellectual property and secrecies that could be used to beat the virus scanner. So with that in mind, I started thinking about completely re-writing from scratch, this time, I used Visual Studio Community edition and the skills I already learnt.
The thing I find is that to understand the language as VB.net is vastly different than VB6 (the language structure is different and its more Object Orientated and its compiled rather than interpreted. I could develop it in C++ which isn’t beyond my capabilities, or C# or Java, just all 3 take a lot longer for me as I rarely program in those languages. When I go over to Linux, I might look at that, but then I may end up using GAMBAS anyway.
So, I started off like this on an old laptop that I was going to get rid of and ended up in use on my desk. (Dell Latitude E6430 ATG).
To get the randomisation to work took…. ages! But I worked it out with little help from the internet, which shows that I understand the basic language structure. When I started programming, I had high expectations of myself, thinking an experience programmer would understand off by heart all the required libraries. C++ is a strictly typed language and my god, it can be hell to work with. (Actually, in the office, that is a point, I wonder if the other 2 capable programmers understand C++?) until one of my tutors at the time pointed out that there is 25,000 libraries from memory, approximately! Yeah, I can’t memorise 25,000 libraries and what they do, that would be nearly impossible. Its bad enough understanding union rules for train crew or understanding the limits what you can do on the infrastructure. I know the other 2 understand VB, but Visual BASIC for Applications (which I avoid due to its flexibility). One has a basic understanding of VBA and had to explain to them how the VBA IDE (integrated Development Environment) window, like debugging features – inserting break points and the intermediate window, which is VERY powerful and you can understand how the program is working. But the code? That’s something else. The other understands VBA to a deeper level than me. (Oh one understands I believe Python that I find it difficult to get on with and understands Blender, whereas I tried Blender and struggled.) I like structured rather than spaghetti code, so all my loops and decisions are always indented to which one I am applying my code to (good programming practise) and I was always taught “Do not use GOTO statements”, its not quite true, but yeah, avoid them. Your code is messy! I always use modules; they allow reuse and small code. Goto statements? Don’t. How to get into a mess quickly and have zero usability of code.
On Err GoTo Hell.
You may not understand that! Anyway, I think I topped out for PPQG VB6 at less than 500 lines of code. I’m waiting to find out how this one is doing, but you will need Windows 10/11 at least as I’m building it for .Net Version 8. I prefer 3.5 as it doesn’t need 8.0 or even 10. No doubt I’ll talk about more of its development over time.
Russ the roofer – does it leak? No it doesn’t!
In other news
You may of noticed I’ve done some changes to the site too, small ones on some pages. I finally found the problem with my templates, so I’ve locked the sidebar, footer and header which resolved most issues on most templates and there is a search bar now. I’ve also put some files up, I had a separate page that just directly linked to a Google Drive as I wanted a publicly accessible drive for all the stuff that I’ve not put onto a page, but that didn’t, so I went the manual way. I’ve got some sources to put up and yes, you can download them and do what you like with them. There will be more in the future. That came from my WIP server and if you are after something that isn’t on my site, just drop me an email, the contact me page should work now and I’ll send it over. I also plan to add some sort of feedback to the side bar, so I’ll see how that goes – more importantly, time. Considering I’m feeling like “Bob the builder” at the moment. “Can I fix it? No I f***ing can’t!” As well as – going around the country on the coldest week on record!
Lets just say a Northern guard had a bit of a shock when I hid under a hood and a scarf covering my face, then presented them with my Southern ITSO card, my Staff ITSO card, my PRIV card and my PRIV rate ticket. – it was blowing a gale at -2°C. I had a good laugh, just the Class 150 I was on, (between Ribblehead and Salford Cresent) went from nice and toasty, to the time we got to Blackburn – (or was it Bolton?), it was bloody freezing.
Yes, that is an Class 805 Evero, yes, that is Ribblehead, Yorkshrie. Unfortunately, I’m not friends with Class 800s now, one took me and a lot of passengers prisoner at Carlisle by refusing to release the doors on 5 out of 10 coaches, with loads of alarms going off in the cab as the train refuses to co-operate with the door release buttons. Considering I was a full fare paying passenger in that I actually brought an advance single on a Disabled Railcard.
EDIT much later (next day in fact!):
A partially wasted Sunday with little to do, I was able to get it working. Well, I say wasted, I did manage to rearrange my desk so it was more usable for my height. But, after a lot of head scratching and finding out why variables weren’t parsing, I managed to fix it:
Only 4 or 5 hours to get back into it and produced something useful. VB6 skills are still relevant. (And I didn’t resort of Xojo – another BASIC IDE!) – hopefully, it’s easy to read. I can add a crap ton of comments if you REALLY want.
Its that time again, onto 2026 and I already have some “new years resolutions” (targets). I have a nice easy one, go to the office at work more. Yeah, 2 days at home I didn’t particularly enjoy, in fact, 3 days in some cases. However, as there is some engineering projects affecting me next year, I might find that 3 days at home or 50% in the office over 2 weeks will be the norm (and we have gone for more hybrid working where I work, not less).
For me, what has happened this year? Well, a lot actually, some really big changes too. The only thing that hasn’t changed is my job, but the industry I work in has changed and is changing more and more.
The bad
I lost Buddy – the dog very early on, back in January in fact and to be honest, it still is quite painful seeing Buddy going through his last moments on earth in the worst way possible. I feel the vets should of been much more supportive but they weren’t and yes, I do miss Buddy a lot.
Then came more concerns. I’ve not mentioned it on here, but I had a few health issues that were concerning, it started with issues that I kept getting with a certain type of cold that requires anti-biotics as it causes breathing difficulties over time if it worsens, so I was scheduled for a “spirometry” test as I also been diagnosed with eczema/dermatitis (my skin is a big problem, those that seen me know that my hands are littered with flaky skin and splits!) , so they think I was potentially asthmatic. I’ve been given an inhaler but I only really use it when required,
You thought that would be it? Well, when I was with my friend who was driving to Kidderminster with the dogs from Llandrindod Wells, I noticed a lump on my head that grew out of nowhere and it was hard like that for about a month when I got it checked out. Then on the same side of my body, 2 more lumps appeared. One was really bad, which is a suspect insect bite, one was considered an ingrown hair, the other when I went to A&E (the insect one burst and kept leaking), I was told to get it checked out as there was a 1% chance it could be cancerous – small, very small, so I did, turned out to be a wart. So for about 4 weeks, I was worried I had the signs of cancer because being naturally red headed, the risk of skin cancer is really high. At least I got it sorted when I did.
The end is nigh – for the franchise
The big one? I changed employers and got TUPE’d over, I went from First Group to DfTO from the 21st May 2025, that has been a big change and was it positive? Well, putting it on here will upset one or the other, however, as things go, I’m not going anywhere.
However, as part of this, my box card which First Group employees get, was coming to an end, so what was idea? Use it! Plus my 40 odd tickets a year friends and family discount (which was £6 a ticket and rarely used it). So first of all, I went to Hull, using Hull Trains, an open access operator I wanted to use for years, I finally did it and it was a really smooth great experience. That was on the bank holiday weekend in May. I was going to post my thoughts on Hull (its alright), but to be honest, I didn’t find much to do for an overnight stay, apart from the aquarium, it was a fishy trip, that’s for sure.
The Deep, Hull – 03/05/2025
Weekend after that, I went with the older sister to London with the dogs for a day and did a long walk that Finn and Bailey – oh, I’ve not mentioned those yet. I need to – to Brixton from London Waterloo, it was warm but OK.
Weekend after that, I took my mum and younger sister with their 2 dogs and my 2 dogs to Bath, that was a nice trip but got too warm, this was a sign of things to come with the weather,
The final weekend, it was again, my mum and younger sister to London and a walk around London. This was the final weekend of the franchise and it was a goodbye and hello. If I don’t fall foul of a policy, I’ll post my thoughts on the franchise. I’ve been in the company from the Stagecoach days and there were some good ideas, don’t get me wrong.
A change of direction – in my spare time
Politics talk. I kept quiet about this, but in July, I became a councillor for my local parish council. This being Fishbourne (Sussex), yes, I am now into politics and making positive changes. This was influenced by my mum and the big reason for doing it was quite simply crime. Sussex police I had arguments with their PCC where crime was going up and nothing had been done about it. So, I did something and I started recording things. I’ve now started a database and I have met many residents to hear their views. I now have a bigger project in the wings (yes, its one I want to sort as well) which is Fishbourne Roundabout, its dangerous, its a hot topic here and the whole A27 (the road that runs from Romsey to Eastbourne) runs right through the middle of the roundabout metaphorically. There is many things I’ve heard and not to upset a certain influential person on this blog, I’ll keep my mouth shut – but I was not impressed when I heard it. (I do agree that the northern bypass wasn’t a good idea anyway as I got my own interest that will be on a direct collision course with them anyway – called railways and a line I want to build and one I want to reopen.) Theres lots to do and I’m getting started. Its slow, but I’m getting there. For those wanting to make a difference, I’ll recommend joining the council, there is one important rule though, you can’t act individually, you have to act as a collective – including all decision making. This maybe a new career if the railway goes Pete Tong. However, if anyone gave me a bribe, I’ll send it back to where it belongs. Sorry I’m happy with what I have got, it doesn’t come with strings.
Work challenges
At work, I’ve not progressed, we are relatively stable at the moment, so the opportunity isn’t there, but work life has been interesting. I’ve gone to a situation of doing nothing to doing lots to doing nothing. Big thing, I actually got involved in 2 events, the 9 day Portsmouth Direct Line closure as I diagrammed the crew on the last trains (yes, I didn’t expect that!) and a small contribution to a railtour, so small, its almost insignificant, but had I picked up something, it would have a massive impact. Yes, I would of been affected by my own problem. It ran, so I wasn’t worried. I even got involved in the Class 701 introduction for a day, that was an interesting experience and that was back in March.
Related to the PDL and being affected by my own work, I also saw all 3 signal boxes on the last day! I managed to take some photos too, with my camera as phones are frowned upon, 2 still exist (Petersfield and Haslemere), but one has now bit the dust. I understand the reasoning however (and that’s a wider subject I can’t talk about on here).
Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland. Belfast/Dublin/Coleraine/Coach Tour of several Irish Places and nearly got sick! Because the roads are rough and I was at the back (June) Llandrindod Wells again/Aberystwyth – Vale of Rheidol Ralway/Barmouth/Bala-Bala Lake Railway (Oct)
I have to say, I mentioned Hull previously in this post because it formed part of the end of the franchise for the company I work for, but going to Northern Ireland in June was scary! No really, it was, it was when there were demonstrations about immigration and when I came across some graffiti that read “locals only, no foreigners – keep out” in Bangor, that scared me. You cannot judge someone’s origins from how they look. Yes, I’ll fit right in – in Ireland as I am red headed and IC1, but the moment I open my mouth, I will be picked out, because I don’t sound Irish, I’m from Southern England which is known to have a posh accent (apparently!), so that was quite honestly scary. Then add the Land Rover Tangi’s roaming around, it wasn’t reassuring at all, I thought I was just about to walk into the next civil conflict since “The troubles“. No, I don’t ever want to go down that route, I don’t want to see it a second time in my life. Keep everything at peace, keep everything going as it is. After all, we are all human. Be peaceful and run trains, you will achieve a lot more, plus your economy does better with tourism.
The website Another big thing, ever since my original site got taken down in 2013 from memory, I’ve been trying to produce a new site with a content management system. Joomla is what my old site used from 2009 to 2013, I then went over to “NetObject Fusion” which is a piece of software that does websites with a storyboard interface and is more of a WYSIWYG editor that builds entire static websites than a content management system. I’ve been messing with WordPress for years, just I never knew how to create a template, even though I had a blog in a sub directory which was used to convey my thoughts. Until I started messing with WordPress properly and found lots of stuff I never knew existed. This allowed me to use my template dated from 2017 to be used and that’s what kicked everything off. Just the ability to create my own template and put them on my site. It worked! That’s what I wanted to do from day one. Once I unlocked that, I spent 4 weeks on and off producing this site. Then launched it quietly. I’ve not changed much. I did have a Google Drive link, but I have had to remove it. I’ll add it back into the future at some point.
I’ve also done a lot more 3D objects for the site, I still am, on and off, just pause for other reasons, then restarting.
Personal life
My life has a change of direction too. I’ve complained about being single for so long, now this is where it gets really weird (such as my life), certain dating site, my ex was on it, just flicked through her profile and noticed that October last year, she left a like. That said site kept trying to match her and me together and I kept avoiding it, I decided to go with it, liked her and matched. This was in January and yes we dated in February, March and April, but haven’t seen each other since, so its a bit of a limbo situation. However, I’ve been hijacked a lot by my family (my mum and sister) as they moved from Fareham to Southbourne, so you can guess who did a lot of DIY work. You got it in one! (ME!) I reckon I spent out of 52 weekends, 26 of them there – or there abouts. It got difficult to manage and it put a strain on my life too. Thank god I don’t have any kids.
In short, change of employer (same job), involved in some special events, travelled to several places, became a councillor, launched this site, dated my ex (x4) and did a ton of dodgy DIY. What a year.
The worst bit: Under 2 months until I am 40 and apparently, I look nowhere near it. That might explain why I seem to be getting young ladies coming up to me recently and the usual youths I have problems with, think I am their age, that will be funny when I turn around to them and point out that I am old enough to be their dad – and scary!
(Something I never thought about before until I started talking about my age, especially when I talk about slammers to my boss who is 8 years older than me and everyone around me is like “what is a slammer?” Slam door train – think Classes 411/412/421/423, even I have managed to travel on Mk2s, Mk3s and now Mk4s on the mainline and Class 310/312s on the mainline. Not forgetting one Class 101 on the mainline – Stockport to Stalybridge, one way in 2001)
Next year goals
Next year, what do I want to do? Get my blue Espace on the road, spend more time in the office rather than at home, do some changes to my desks at home as I got a really uncomfortable chair and go to France. I’ve been saying that for 2 years so far and Jersey is close enough. Now I have some new stuff to try out for my desk at work (a leather seat and a trackball), it would be natural to spend more time at work. At least I don’t have to put up with my horrible low backed seat. Oh wait! I’m sitting in a low backed mesh seat while I type this at home that is begging to be replaced. I’m not bothered about the back, but the base – ouch!
Fun fact, in a year, I’ve travelled by Car, Train (Narrow and Standard gauge – steam, diesel, electric, passenger and ECS), Bus, Coach, Ship and 3 planes, an ATR 72, Airbus A319 and an Airbus A320. Fascinating fact, I’ve nearly thrown up on a coach (rough road), car (rough road – rough driving), plane (turbulence on approach to Belfast City Airport – the ATR72 was too small anyway), but this time around, not the ship. The car decks kept me up on the Belfast to Liverpool overnight sailing though! I’ll never forget the car alarms going off below me.
Photos
Oh photos! Yes, you like photos. A selection of some published and previously unpublished photos for the year.
All I can say, what an incredible and here in the south of the UK – record breaking warm year and lets see what 2026 brings.
One final thought
Oh yeah, I didn’t mention one thing, I left it off accidently, in the words of someone I watch a lot of YouTube shorts (swearing);
This fucking thing!!
Coventry VLR – 07/06/2025
I actually rode it, talked to the designers and gave my input into future ideas of the overall design – make it modular and other interesting design ideas. I won’t take credit, as some may notice how I design things, how about a tiller handler used to remove, add or swap modules in a depot to vary the length of a train? The idea of the Class 475 was that and it had a more important reason for its short coaches. Its to do with where I would like the train to go. Chichester on a tramway, from West Street to South Street, round the cross. Buses do it every day, why not trains? (Not that you can at the moment, you can’t as there is no tramway).
Bringing myself back to the subject, its an interesting vehicle and to be honest, has some really brilliant ideas, some I thought of, some of my ideas I’ve shared and some I’ve learnt off them too.
I mentioned about this in my previous blog post, but yes, again, I broke my site again!
Its the contact me form again. I had issues in the past with the site going off line randomly and I’ve been trying to sort that since June or July (yeah, none of that stuff please? You know, the month numbers?) 2025, I can’t remember which, but the site kept going off line, disabled multiple plugins and my site host started a new server, still kept going offline but a lot less than before, so I kept disabling more and more plug-ins. The previous contact form was driven by JetPack, which is a plug-in for WordPress which comes with a handy contact form builder and has other nice features like the ability to update via an app on a mobile device, which I used extensively on my blog when it was in a sub folder before I rebuilt everything and got to grips with how WordPress works (I actually was planning to go back to Joomla as I previously have done, WordPress just has a load of plug-ins).
So disabling JetPack = no contact. Luckily I had another way to build contact forms, which came from PageLayer. If I thought about it, I could of built it from scratch for 4 times the time it would of taken and that’s an estimate as it would require some PHP coding. (I don’t fancy that!)
So imagine my surprise and excitement when I got an email on the 23/12/2025 from a user, read it and great! I can’t respond, because I would be responding to myself.. how the hell? Did some investigation, tests, runs and found a setting I had enabled. “Ooops”. This is in a plug-in called “GoSMTP”, great. So I tried again, it worked but some clients weren’t sending emails. Great.
So with all the plug-in problems I’ve had from the same provider, I thought “Ok, lets fix this”, I did, tried every way possible, removed GoSMTP, it worked – this is the classic developer thing of “it worked on my comptuer.” WRONG!
So tried it on my work computer and guess what? The email bounced! Great, more figuring and testing. It looks like PageLayer uses the existing email client to send a computer which will work if you don’t have an exotic OS. I use a mix of Linux, Windows, Android, iOS and occasionally, MacOS.
Then discovered that GoSMTP doesn’t do what I want it to do as it is for sending emails from the site, not for receiving email (it seem to work that way), so tried pagelayer and that then stopped sending emails via the submit button, so tried the WP form which is driven by… Jetpack. But it also doesn’t work the same way, it sends an email, my wessexelectricnut address never gets it, so goes via my home address. All fun and games.
So if you have tried to send me an email and didn’t get a response, I do apologise, try now. (and I got a lot more bugs to fix! Like the blog pages, I’ll find a way – its to do with the templates).
Ok, short but sweet blog, well ok, a little longer as now I have 4 1/2 days off work (YAY!) and a pile of stuff to do at home (Boo) and places to go in the new year, I.e. hunting Avanti West Coast services on the Settle to Carlisle line (opens in a new window, leaves the site) – which unlike last time as I could do it for free with my box card, will cost me a pretty penny, still with PRIV rate and it looks like with all the engineering work going on, I may sample some new Aurora trains that East Midlands Railway, similar to the Everos I’ll be travelling on, not a great thing but at least the seats are far more comfortable on the Everos than their Great Western Railway cousins.
Anyway,
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!
Hopefully that is clear enough. Things that I may mention in the future, all dependent on time and what policy I’ll break next as there is a social media policy in place that I have to be careful of and I’d like to keep my job.
This might feature and it will require explaining. (I was on it for a start!)
And no, I can’t talk about anything else, please don’t try, messages about them will be binned, not that you can contact me at the moment as I found an issue which will be explained in another blog post to do with the site.
I’ve also started a year in review for me (back in October) and you might be shocked with what I got up to.
Also, for those who read this post on Christmas Day, please do tell me what you got up to. I’m writing this ahead of time but as I don’t have any kids and nearly 40, unmarried (so bachelor) but with 2 sisters and both parents, I’ll be spending time with them, with DIY tasks (please, please don’t go there, its a sore point of mine) and helping with Dinner with 4 dogs going nuts and 1 at home going nuts. (2 bitches, 3 dogs, one dog is at home).
Then I’m back to work on the 29th for 3 days, off for one, back to work on the 2nd for reduced hours (preplanned, possibly working from home), off up north with a friend, then back to work 5th, not decided if it’s the office or work from home. All I know is that I asked for a chair – oh yeah, I am sort of getting something for Christmas.
/!\ TANGENT WARNING /!\
Going off on a tangent!
A new chair in the office and a mouse which became a requirement. The mouse itself is a trackball and for me, I come from an age where trackballs were king, some people swear by them, some people hate them. Its like some settings I’ve enabled because the era I came from. DSTN screens anyone? Old tech, slow refresh rate, plenty of ghosting and what happened to the mouse pointer? You lost it as the mouse often moved between refresh rates, meaning it was hard to track. Even with modern displays, I still lose the mouse. So the solution is simple, mouse trails, visual clue to where the mouse is and moving. Its rather fun at work:
Them: “Why is your mouse laggy?”
Me: “Its an accessibility thing, comes from the era of DSTN displays.”
Them: “What?”
Me: “Errm, look up what a DSTN display (opens in a new window, leaves the site) is, it’ll answer everything, but every laptop in the 90s had them.”
As for the trackball? No one will touch my desk with a trackball to the dock, even though I thoughtfully retained the original mouse, put it in a draw with Sellotape and a note saying “If you don’t like the trackball, feel free to use the mouse in here” on one side, then “and a wireless charger and a lightning cable” on the other side.
/!\ PUN WARNING /!\
(its not very punny!)
I think everyone has just worked out what I am like to work with in the office now. Except, one of my colleagues also had to put up with my tea puns that got me intohot water (at least they didn’t boil over) , I couldn’t sugar coatedit any other way. He was totally tea’edoff at the end of it as I milkone more pun out of it. And that was the PG Tip(s) of the iceberg with what I was talking about, just I felt mugged off at the end of it. I better stop there as I’ll be talking about CUPS(link opens in a new window and/or leaves the site) next, that’s on my Linux machine. Just don’t take a tea leafout of my book and don’t have a drink to that.
I finally went further south, its been quiet for me on here (even though in the background, I’ve been busy) as I have been doing a lot of computer stuff, mainly because I am a councillor, so I’ve been trying to sort out a machine. I also ended up travelling quite a bit, here is a selection of photos from a weekend away, I went as far south as I have been for years, in fact, 49 degrees north. a country not in the EU or the UK but a British Crown dependency. That being the island of Jersey.
For a railway free holiday, oh wait! “Railway free?” Ermm, it has one, 400 metres of it which I didn’t use, but out came my camera(s) and out came the snapping, enjoy. I’ll put one in my end of year review (which I started already).
What did I think of Jersey? Well, a rich (rude word) paradise. It also has quite a bit more crime than when I visited the Isle of Man, the stench of cannabis was all so present on the island but I didn’t feel unsafe. Everything seems to centre around St. Helier and the island is too overpopulated, so it just didn’t feel as wild as it could of been. But when you try to cram 100k residents in an island about 46sq miles, it will feel overpopulated. I compare it to the Isle of Man and the Isle of Man does have a lot more going for it for me anyway. The weird bit is that I found it easier to socialise on the Isle of Man than Jersey. I know the Isle of Man feels stuck in the past, but if I am honest, that isn’t a bad thing.
(Final note, I do often say that when a friend and myself go away, something goes wrong – an airline went bust the night we went over – BlueIslands! It did affect us in a good way, we got back to Gatwick Airport early.)
I’ve not mentioned it for a while, but decided to play “Battle of the Beats” on a local radio station and I’ve taken part in it about 10 times. Usually, it ends up with my arse getting whipped. I started playing it for the first time this year, just for a bit of fun. The radio station is known as “V2 Radio”, you can listen on DAB if you have one of those radios and on the south coast or online. https://www.v2radio.co.uk). Super friendly radio station and a lot of what is advertised is mainly around West Sussex and Hampshire in the UK, so bear it in mind. With Steve, he plays anything and everything, so you can listen in and put a request in.
Battle of the Beats is a part of the show where 2 listeners of the show go head to head, like during the day, they do Battle of the Businesses where the steaks are higher, in that you win free pizza for your team with knowledge. No prizes for Battle of the beats, but bragging rights. The idea is you present 4 songs, the person challenging has to give you either:
A year
A decade
An Open selection
Out of that, you pick 4 songs plus a backup in case of duplication and the audience votes who they like. Some couples get involved with the voting and some households get split. Obviously, some do better than other with their choices and some manage to stay on for weeks and weeks. The voting is easy, Whatsapp, email or calls, Steve or the DJ counts up the votes, the winner stays on for another week, unless its a draw, then the roles are reversed. Its basically a bit of fun. Some can take it more competitive than others, like my second week when I usually end up defeating to a listener, this time, it was the other way round.
You tend to get some surprises from some of the choices (see below), but I have tried in the past putting Dizzie Rascal and Kid Cudi together, I was told that was way too risky.
I started by challenging someone to the year 2008 for music, and I thought “Lets try something”, I thought it would be close, but not what I expected! My plan was to go for club beats, what you would find in a club, this is what I had
If you listen again (Follow this link: Steve Freegard – V2 Radio), it was aired on the 16/08/2025 from the 2 hr mark. Winner decided from the 3hr 15 minute mark.
If you listen to this link and listen from about the 2 hour mark, you’ll hear my selection. The votes? Well, landslide, you’ll have to listen, either way, I was on for another week. One of my friends (known as Steve the Taxi Driver) wanted to play against me and he was like “you better win!”
Oh I did!
So week 2, the year 1993. If you listen again, it was aired on the 23/08/2025 (2hr mark), winner from the 3 hr 15 minute makr.
Usually, I’d get my arse kicked, not this time! I predicted it would be a draw, Steve FG predicted a loss, Steve TD predicted he would lose. I think Steve TD was right, but my guess of a draw was in fact very close. I’ll give you a hint, it was 1 vote (later declared 2 votes) between us – out of 21 votes! He wasn’t happy, I was shocked. Really. Also, I wanted to replace Corona with Urban Cookie Collective – Key, the secret (Which probably would of got me more votes), but I think the artist repetition would have been a problem. I was told I couldn’t use it though.
Now comes week 3, which I am challenged to the year 2000, I think this could be one of those difficult ones to judge.
Me
Opponent
Rui Da Silva – Touch me (Gulty pleasure of mine) and was released 01/01/01, but was played from Oct 2000)
Of course, we have to have back ups, For me, I’ve chosen Alice DJ – Better off alone, which I am considering of swapping out DJ alligator project with either of those 2. I don’t know, someone comment? DJAP doesn’t get much air time, while Kylie does. I’m also trying to go for that EuroDance theme and as it has to be from 2000 or thereabouts, some of the ones I wanted to include like DeeDee is a little too late and adding an instrumental (Yomanda – Synth and Strings) was a little too early.
EDIT later: I changed Kylie Minogue for Ian Van Dahl. Tell me why, Do we build castles in the sky?
I think the voting might be close, Darude – Sandstorm is a very popular choice, I’ve had a landslide where ATB and Darude were both together and proved to be an incredibly popular choice.
Still, I don’t know the voting will go, but if I end up on another week, I’ll be shocked. If I stay on, the one thing I am hoping is an open choice, in that case, I know what I am going for already. Anyone want to challenge me on that? Or you could pick a decade, which I have an idea for 90s. All instrumentals.
If you want to listen to it, it takes place 21:00 BST (British Summer Time – we are still on that), on Friday evening – next show is 29/08/2025 on V2 Radio. (Links open a new window).
Edit 29/08/2025:
Ousted out by one vote! It was nerve racking, I knew it was going to be close. So 3 weeks, I think that was a good run.
This is quite a long post, but I thought I’ll give it my thoughts in the hope it will help someone. (image quality is pretty poor, I had the blind down because the day was a bit hot and my office faces south!)
I’ll start by saying that I hope this review is useful to someone as they are sold on AliExpress where I find some of my interesting equipment, I’ll also tell you what I think. My reasons for purchasing is related to a new position I took up in my own council as previously mentioned, to separate my data and if I am honest, I didn’t want to spend out too much for a device, so seeing a Pritom L8 for less than £50 looks very tempting, what’s it a good buy though?
First impressions:
When my local Evri courier finally dropped off the package, I was instantly greeted with a white bag with a bubble like surround to protect its journey across the seven seas. Well, it flew it, but you get the idea. First problem, green credentials = 0! Its all plastic wrapping to protect it from its bumpy journey.
Getting into it? Well, that was a different matter, the outer wrapper came off easily, the inner one?
Judge for yourself. Things aren’t looking hopeful already. I then was greeted with a nice glossy box. Ok, not as bad as I thought, took the shrink wrap off (green credentials = -1) and then lifted the box.
Well, isn’t this a bit unusual! Shipping the tablet in a case. I’ve heard of tablets and phones shipped with the case, but in the case? That’s another matter. The box was paper, which is good (green credentials = 0) and lifting the tablet out reveals more paper (green credentials = +1).
As for the manuals? Very thin on the ground.
On picking the device up, the one thing you will notice right away is how flimsy the case is, for the price point, its understandable, so a few millimetres here and there of material removed is forgivable. I guess most will end up in the hands of children (I’ll get on to this later) and it will be smashy smashy like Adam Smasher. So the price point is very appealing to parents who don’t want to buy and iPad which – spoiler alert, would be better. However, they would also be much more delicate in terms of use and wallet. So a 3 year old losing its rag and chucking it across the room in a fit of rage, its better to lose a £50 note than something costing 3 times as much. Not that I think it will stand up to that punishment – its not rugged.
On turning it on, it has a factory applied screen protector, peal and what I thought was one part, was 2 part! Nice, if only it was a little thicker. It feels thinner than a sheet of foil.
Build
All plastic! Seriously, plastic fantastic, nothing to write home but it has some weird shaping on the back. The case included is thin as a cheap rubber band, with about as much protection. Knocks, bumps, it will take, but a full on 5 year old tantrum? Probably not and I won’t have much hope for that. I don’t have kids, so I can’t tell. So far, its put up with my daily abuse of going to and from work and a little office work. The screen cover? About as rigid as a microfibre cleaning cloth! To actually stand it up, you had to use it one way, that’s it. Theres also some really weird decisions too. The case doesn’t allow access to the SD card slot, there is 2 speakers (apparently), a microphone on the side which I haven’ tested and 2 cameras. One front and one back – but wait, is there three?
You may of noticed there is a bump showing 2 lenses, ones fake, end of! I proved it because I covered both lenses with my finger and found the bottom one fake. It also doesn’t seem to have a flash either. It looks better than it is, but this is how manufacturers get you to buy their products. At least it has a full size headphone jack at the top of the device.
It also feels really weird at the back. The back feels smooth with the case but it doesn’t feel uniform with the back cover if you take the case off. Maybe the moulds are to cater for multiple tablets? The back looks like it should be a cover, but in fact one moulded unit.
The front? The screen you can clearly see where it is in the frame, its not pure black, but a gray which makes me suggest it uses the older TFT standard, which may explain the price of the tablet. The screen protector is a nice addition though, even it it cost 10p.
Turning it on
This is where I was shocked. It lies, it really does, but they are white lies. Its not Android 14, its 13. So that’s lie one, its one camera, not 2 on the back, but what else is there? Actually, it really isn’t bad. First impressions leave a LOT to be desired.
It started for me and it was slow as hell! No seriously, it was. It turned off, when I turned it on, I couldn’t press the next button on the Out Of the Box Experience screen (OOBE). It didn’t respond. Once I gave it a couple of seconds, I could and reacted normally. It was initially very slow through the OOBE screen, but got quicker and quicker.
Once I logged in, it still was slow, it was 5 minutes in by this point but slowly getting faster, for about half an hour. I was then greeted with possibly the most plain skin of Android. Android as it was intended! Oh, it also got hot, but I initially used a USB to ethernet adapter.
Oh yes, that was a nice surprise. I thought the USB port was for charging only, at this price point, the USB-OTG spec I was expecting to be completely missing, the first adapter didn’t work, but my second one did! So it supports USB-OTG. Good start.
It came with all the Google apps needed and it was geared towards children, you’ll get loads of questions about that at the OOBE experience, so the target audience is children. That’s good. Installing everything, I went for Outlook, Displaylink and a few other apps, geared towards work. They installed without an issue. Poked around in the settings, oh, its Android 13! But the listing was Android 14. It seems to be Android 13 which is Ok I guess. You have the option of extending the ram, this is actually virtual memory and is likely to wear out your storage quicker, so watch out for that problem. And you get the idea.
User experience No skin = nice, its actually pretty quick. I’ll be honest. I was expecting a slideshow! I was not expecting anything impressive but so far, it is pretty good. The screen actually was quite nice, it can be a problem in bright sunlight, but really, its not bad. Its got some surprisingly good viewing angles and it doesn’t have many noticeable problems from when I used it, except…
(No more shown as I am using Microsoft Launcher and to respect GDPR)
The navigation bar! Oh the navigation bar that has been there since the early Android days sucks! Why? Back works, menu works, multi tasking (square) doesn’t at all. So if you accidently close an app, you have to relaunch it. That is the only bad thing about this tablet.
Otherwise, the speakers are pretty OK, I bass isn’t great to be expected, but its clear to my ears (acceptable) and not a garbled mess. Videos play smoothly too and it didn’t get hot after the first initial use. Battery life? Forget it! Seriously. 4 hours if you are lucky.
On screen keyboard? Expect typos, its split by default, so that’s something to watch out for. But for the price? Its not bad.
(Pritom L8 top, Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 8.7 bottom)
Performance I’ve not tested, but as I didn’t want to mess up my council work with my personal work, I just went on WebGL samples and started the aquarium. Compared it to my Samsung and it actually held its own. Its nowhere quick but it did keep up, it really wasn’t horrible and the photo shows that.
Bluetooth works well, I had a keyboard connected and I had no issues, Wifi works on my network without issue and it can charge from anything, not quickly, its rather slow! It works, that’s the thing that really surprised me, there is soo many horror stories of tablets that really suck, this was one of them, so I thought. It really wasn’t’
Camera Samples
As for the camera, just one big piece of advice. Don’t expect much:
Moving objects? Camera lag? Yep, it has it all
Bright sunlight? Forget it!
So who’s it for? Anyone who doesn’t mind a cheap tablet for day to day work that don’t want to spend out for anything expensive. If you are hard on your equipment and tend to break things quickly or go into an area with high amounts of crime, this might be a good buy and no thief is going to want to touch it. Especially when you just do basic work on a tablet. Web browsing, content consumption, bit of word processing, maybe a spreadsheet, it will do it. No issues. Anything performance related? Give it a wide berth. I’ve not tried emulation yet, but it might actually deal with DOS emulation or retro gaming.
Just make sure you carry the charging cable. You will need it and a power bank. It also doesn’t have 3/4G, but has an SD card slot.
Would I buy another, surprisingly, actually, yes, it really isn’t bad for the price.
Reported specifications: Allwinner A523 Octo-core CPU (ARM 8xA55 cores at different speeds, 4×1.8ghz + 4×1.4ghz) Mali G57 GPU RISC-V embeeded controller (WHAT?) 4GB LDDR4 ram 64GB eMMC 8” capacitive touch screen
But the question remains, why is it so cheap? I spent many times thinking about this problem and then it raises more questions than answers. For a start, I’m not suggesting anything at all. In fact, it might be one point that is true and pushing their goods out. So lets start with a list:
– Cheap labour. Assembling these tablets in a factory with low labour rates maybe one thing, its not unknown, but a lot of companies do this, its why China has become so popular. However, the question is, how cheap is too cheap? And at what expense? What is their contracts saying? Are there any concerns about welfare in the factories to reach that price point?
For a fascinating look into how the factories operate, I recommend these videos, its worth a look and draw your conclusions. These were shot 10+ years ago, but even then, the welfare didn’t seem much of a concern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfyAjkPIYyc
Thin profit margins. Again, not unusual, but its not unknown for companies to build devices through a contractor en-mass where they build one long production run. But doesn’t seem to be the case with this tablet as it was built in June 2025. So may have a late production run. Considering I wrote this in August 2025, that’s about a month hanging on a shelf if not slightly longer
Drop shipping.
Drop shippers are notorious for having, no stock and having to sell products fast, because having products sitting in a warehouse for months on end is extremely costly. In fact, places like AliExpress and Amazon do charge for space after a certain interval. So if you can’t sell a product, you pay for the space it takes. Often again, you look at extremely thin profit margins because of the competition. In some cases, you’ll do anything to get rid of these products, even if it means making a loss because it’s not sold. Even then, in some cases, it’s a case of actually not sending out a small order, but a big one which is less costly than the storage space. That has happened to a colleague of mine
Cheap components. Now I’ve not mentioned the specs. It’s an 8” tablet, tablets of this screensize are not that common, they used to be, but not any more. I find them difficult to hide and 8” tablets fit into places where a larger one doesn’t, such as my trouser pockets. (Yes really). Now smaller screensizes should lower costs. The use of plastics rather than metal is the same and makes the device more rugged (yes really), then we come to the boards, these maybe repurposed boards, but I noticed the A523 chip fitted to this tablet, which was a surprise. Now CPUs or in this case SOC (System On Chip) changes a lot in the budget range when manufacturers try to break into the market and get known. This is actually an old hand called “Allwinner”, who back when Android was appearing was known to produce ultra cheap chips, the Allwinner A523 is no exception. What is surprising is that Allwinner didn’t really deal with much budget range SOCs for about 10 years, so its nice to see them back in the market. Many manufacturers were usually looking at Mediatek who really broke some ground and Spreadtrum who apparently are now UNISOC. Again, Spreadtrum is a name that appeared then disappeared. Allwinner isn’t exactly known for its friendliness to the OpenSource community however and there are controversies. On the other hand, VIA used to offer budget CPU’s but seemed to of faded into obscurity.
Questionable business practices
This is just one of those things you wonder “is it actually happening” kind of thing? The answer is, you don’t know, what happens on the factory floor. Often, the manufacturer of the device is ethical, but not necessarily the component manufacturer. Its not just workers rights that needs to be considered, what is going on in the background? Why are they cheap? Is it because there are other bad links?
Questionable Hardware hacks.
This is one I want to see for myself, I think I can possibly do it and find out, then again, all manufacturers are at it, some more than others. Does Pritom have a link to the Chinese Government? And that may mean, is it riddled with spyware? The answer is, until you do some sort of network diagnostics to inspect every packet, you really can’t tell. Its like the Huawei vs Trump scandal all over again. You can’t base a ban because you feel like it or you got dodgy proof, can you prove it? I can’t, I can only suspect it and until I get more information, I cannot confirm or deny. These days, the only real way to get away with something is to bury it so deep into the firmware, no one can detect it at the surface or takes specialist equipment to find it.
Safety concerns
Apart from the above, which I’ve covered separately, this is unlikely due to the way they work but there is one thing I am particularly concerned about. The mainboard, screen, cameras, shouldn’t pose much of a safety risk in normal use, but I don’t know if it is RoHS certified (Reduction of Hazardous Substances). Which, what is the case carrying? It maybe plastic, but is it painted? With VOCs? (Volatile Organic Compounds). The big one is the biggest concern is the battery to me. Will it turn into a spicy pillow or worse? Sounds far fetched but with lithium ion batteries blowing up everywhere in e-bikes and e-scooters, you have to wonder. After all, why did the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (nearly ended up with one myself) have a high failure rate with batteries blowing up even after a recall? As long as this device doesn’t and is able to expand during a fault, its unlikely to blow up in my face – literally!
Regularity problems
Finally, I’m going to finish with something common with cheap products, they often have faked or missing regularity information, this seems to have it all, but if I do a FCC search for 2BNGZ-L10, comes up with this, some small discrepancies between the names and location: FCC ID 2BNGZ-L10 But more importantly, no products listed. The more you wonder.
Later addition (25/08/2025):
I wrote the post in early August and since, I’ve taken it to and from work, used it at work and kept upto date with the council. It’s performed pretty well in that retrospect and I’ve had next to no issues – except the battery life. It will last 3 days with occasional use, but drains fast if you use it too intensively.
However, the USB port doesn’t support HDMI out I discovered, not a biggie, so I used my DisplayLink Dock which worked without issues – proving it does support usb OTG.
How many times do you hear “if you see something not quite right, contact the BTP on the text number, see it, say it, sorted”.
I travel on the railways a lot and I have an eye for detail which does have some advantages, because you get to know what’s right and what is wrong. Plus I interact with the rail staff and occasionally, passengers. When you travel on the same line, day in, day out, thousands of times, you get a feel for things that don’t look right.
Today, I came across that problem. I’m writing this, because I would like to see more diligent passengers and just speak out. I’ve generalised everything, so it doesn’t come across as specific to a situation, its very relevant.
While on my usual train, I came across someone who smelt highly of a foul odour, nothing unusual, leaving London anyway, there is a lot of trouble further down the line, so usually, they get off at an intermediate stop, such a larger town. However, the smell and the dress code draws suspicions. I then watch them go to another coach on the train, to the quieter coaches which I ignore but the guard on the train, I make them aware of the individual so they don’t have any issues with them.
I think nothing more, until later on, when they are still on the train, miles away from London, something not quite right, especially given the apparent age, smell and dress code, hanging around by a doorway in the coach you are in. They look at you with suspicion, but don’t say anything.
Its not until I get off the train, after finishing talking to the guard, I then witness the same person again at the station I’ve got off, observe what they are doing and notice that they push their way through some barriers and walk out, despite being challenged by staff. So say nothing, look and walk away, out of the station.
Now this would have one suggestion to me and it shows, a little observation can get you thinking of something possibly more sinister that needs to be looked into. In this case, the length of journey got me suspicious, along with the age and there has been a lot to do with “county lines”. I can’t prove it, but I suspect it.
So what did I do? Report it as soon as I got home, via email. I would of reported it them at the time, but sometimes, discussing something with someone near to you which is what I did might encourage you to report something that would otherwise go amiss. If it doesn’t turn out to be true, its fine. But think of it this way, if you don’t say anything and your allegations are true, what could happen next?
God, 2 weeks have been a real problem for this site!
You may of noticed, I ‘ve had a lot of problems with this site, from Internal Server 500 errors (caused by running out of memory, not storage or bandwidth) to actually disappearing all together! I’ll explain.
I’m probably the oldest client on Cadence networks, this site is probably the oldest on their server and unfortunately, servers do have a limit to how long they can run before they give up. Thats the spoiler alert. So what happened?
Simple, it got old, but to get there, I had a number of problems.
Originally, I was trying to solve my Internal Server Error 500 as it was caused by this site getting a bit on the large side. It contains my previous WordPress account posts and media as well as modern stuff that shows off my abilities. Detailed in this post:
It worked for a week, very very well, I was keeping an eye on cPanel (which is the web hosting manager, basically controls my part of the site from a larger cluster with shared hosting) for the server information, made sure I wasn’t overloading it because – well it would be bad because if that happens, things break, unintentionally. Now I don’t know how many sites are on that server, but I guess there is a few and it is one server, known as whm0.
Now the last thing you want, is to knock not just your own site, but everyone else’s and you got to take some responsibility for that if it does, like I did. Set the PHP memory limit in WordPress to 128mb (I.e. allocate 128mb to this site for the sever side processing), checked, loaded up the site, checked, done. A week later… it broke – not just the site…
And every other site now was suddenly offline. To make matters worse, cPanel also allows you to have a mailbox connected to your domain. Its not bad, its not the best and it doesn’t live up to what Zimbra can do, it works, it does the job. I still think Outlook is the best though. Now if you have my world email address, which is tied to the domain, you then realise that this email account is tied to the same inbox that is on the site, which means, no site = no emails = bliss – or stress!
So, an email later, site back online. It lasts just over 2 days and cuts out, again! Gets reset after a support email, cuts out 2 days later and then gradually gets shorter and shorter, until it cuts out on a weekend and offline for 2 days which was 10-12th August 2025.
In the meantime, I try everything to reduce the load, thinking that I was the problem, poured over the logs, got my dad to do the same, nothing out of the ordinary, but cPanel was moaning that the storage devices (not hot how they work, but still) was reporting errors. It was the “/” storage area to begin with as cPanel runs Linux, so drives look different in Linux. “/” is basically the root directory.
So, I did more and more diagnostics with the same outcome, now I am having nightmares and what was making matters worse is that Jetpack was adding to it. Random notifications at 05:35 for a start saying my site is offline.. ARRGHHH! It started giving me nightmares. So I went more and more nuclear, until I thought “lets do one last ditch effort, back everything up and delete everything, how long will it last?”
The nuclear option then proved something.
A day later, the server shut down again, but I didn’t report it, I had then discovered that we are not looking at a software fault, but now, a hardware fault. Then the next problem, “/mnt/backup” was showing errors! Yeah, the server was dying a slow and painful death. It got replaced this morning for something better. Plus they had issues with it for some time.
So, to qtp, thank you for your services, sadly though, its time to put you to bed. Good night.
In the meantime, they’ve upgraded me to a server with 2 extra cores, so it should be slightly quicker. However, I just can’t believe everything happened coincidently at the same time as I was sorting another issue out. I guess that is the irony of life. Hopefully, I’ll rest easier tonight – oh, I got to setup Jetpack on my tablet again, the Samsung Tablet anyway. I got a review coming up, involving it, but not as the main star. I went out shopping on payday for a new tablet, the cheapest one I could find on AliExpress without being too cheap. I couldn’t find any indepth reviews, so its time to put my thoughts on it. The reason is also slightly more interesting as I have a draft post and I plan to talk about it more in the future – I also need to update my CV with the new task.
Yes, I’ve gone down the political route, actually, I’m Apolitical, in that I don’t support a political party of any shape or form – but representing my views at a local parish council about local issues. I’ve been “co-opted” for about a month, in that I am elected by the councillors and not the members of the public and I got elected in by a large majority that really shocked me.
I’ll be talking about that in time to come and what difference I have made as I plan to do something for the better. I should point out, being a councillor, I can’t act on my own, but I can act as a body for decisions, although there is things I will be bringing up and I have a notepad for that, this is also where the tablet comes in as I have a council email address and as my inbox is subject to FOIA and SAR which is similar to my current employer – I don’t want my personal data mixed in with public data and vice versa as for a start, you got a number of laws to consider, that being the Data Protection Act 1998/General Data Regulation Act 2016 (which pretty much replaces the DPA 1998, even though I find out we call it DPA 2018) as well as Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and Local Government Act 2000 or there abouts – I’m not 100% on this, but you get the idea where I am coming from. Considering FOIA needs to have a pretty good excuse for not having something, but at the same time, you have to adhere to GDPR/DPA which can be a fight between what’s right and wrong. You can’t just say “you don’t have it”, “why don’t you have it?”.
Hence my desire to review it and why I brought it. If you are wondering, I got a PriTom L8 tablet. 8 inch, £50 with savings, well was a little cheaper than that and so far, for the purpose I brought it for, its Ok. I’ll explain more and my concerns with it hopefully in the future. Lets say, it was a surprise in both ways. Particulary when I pitted it in an aquarium WebGL test with my Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 8.7.
