Skip to content

Standard Reader

Neil Turner's Blog

Neil Turner's Blog

@neilturner.me.uk

Add to list Follow

Technology and randomness, since 2002

0Readers

32Posts

yesterdayLast active

Which book forms your origin story?

I was reminded of this Bluesky post by @garius about the Cambridge Encyclopedia being his 'origin story'. Which led to others sharing the books that formed their origin stories. For some, it was Men At Arms (sponsored link), book 15 in Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series which introduces the Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness....

What else I watched whilst recovering

I've already written about using my sick leave to catch up with Doctor Who, Red Dwarf and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I watched other things too. Here are some of them. The Princess Bride It may be, ahem, 'inconceivable' that I'd never watched this before, but I did indeed watch The Princess Bride in...

dodgeballfeliciaday

We’re in Wales

As mentioned at the start of the month, we're off to Wales again for our summer holiday, and by the time you read this, we should have been there a couple of days. We're staying near Conwy again, in a rented holiday cottage, as a group of five - me, Christine, our ten-year-old and my...

Changing Places Toilet Awareness Day

Today is Changing Places Toilet Awareness Day - an annual event to raise awareness of Changing Places Toilets which offer enhanced facilities for people with profound disabilities. Those of you who read my days out posts will note that I usually include the availability of a Changing Places toilet in the accessibility section. Whilst I...

changingplacesdisabilities

Playlist of the month: football songs

In honour of the England Men's team making the Football World Cup Semi-Finals for only the fourth time ever, this month's playlist is all about football songs. I haven't been watching the games - mainly because they're mostly on late at night or early in the morning UK time, but also because England tend to...

englandfootball

My daily word games

Every day, for the past couple of months, I have been playing the same three daily word games: Wordle, Keywords and Ribbit. Usually, playing them forms part of my morning routine when I first wake-up, and wait for the shower to become free. Wordle You must know this one. Started by Josh Wardle five years...

Should you buy smart home tech from supermarkets?

Look, it's a blog post where the title is a question, and therefore, as per Betteridge's law of headlines, the short answer is 'no'. But that wouldn't make for a very interesting blog post, and so I'll attempt to offer some more nuance. Most supermarkets, and many discount stores like B&M, have a hardware section...

evereadyhomeassistant

Creating a bedtime button in Home Assistant

To help our ten-year-old get to sleep, we play some sleepy music in their bedroom each night. I've now automated this, using Home Assistant and a Zigbee scene button, so a single button press starts the automation and plays the correct Spotify playlist. Here's how I went about it. The button I bought the button...

automationbedtime

Catching up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Having caught up with Doctor Who and Red Dwarf, next in line were the films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I hadn't yet watched. My MCU watching fell behind about the same time as Doctor Who in autumn 2021 - we had watched Eternals in the cinema (and been rather disappointed) and watched Shang-Chi...

antmanblackpanther

The four stages of getting better

I'm still getting on with my recovery, and I'm slowly regaining the ability to do tasks that I couldn't do immediately after my fall. I've found that I go through four stages with tasks: I can't do it myself I can't quite do it myself I can just about do it myself I can do...

mobilityrecovery

My new MacBook Neo

At the end of last month, my new MacBook Neo arrived. This is my first new computer since 2018, and specifically my first new Apple computer since 2010. In this (rather long) post, I'm going to go through my rationale for going back to Mac OS after 8 years on Windows, and review the computer....

Jumping into July

Here we are, into the latter half of the year. I'm continuing to recover, and this month sees us go on our annual summer holiday. Recovery update I'm slowly regaining mobility in my arms, following my fall, and I'm generally in less pain now. I'm still not fully back to normal, but may be closer...

holidayrecovery