Nick
@nick@shore.me.uk
157 following, 242 followers
New UK manufacturered Heat Pump 🙂
https://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/2025/07/22/icax-a-new-uk-heat-pump-manufacturer/
@simonzerafa sadly nowhere near big enough, I think.
I would be careful about over-specifing the HP output as it's apparently common for that to occur, depending on property design etc 🙂
@simonzerafa This was a Heat Geek who specced the 16kW .. I trust them.
@nick @simonzerafa I think we are north of 20 rads
Do you have an EPC for your place?
Here's the relevant excerpt from mine :
"Heating this property
Estimated energy needed in this property is:
20,315 kWh per year for heating
3,038 kWh per year for hot water"
My property comes back as a 75 C rating with potential to be 79 (but still C).
@nick oil is expensive compared to mains gas though.
I’d love to get a heat pump to replace this boiler, but my only actual quote so far is £24k … and my other quote which was for £3800 to 4500 ish was withdrawn when they called up. A boiler will be £2500 to 2800 supplied and fitted.
@nick Yeah, but then even the surveys are chargeable. As it is, I had a plumber to the property doing other work, and he quoted (based on being there) for the boiler option.
IIRC both heatpump guys wanted paying for the survey (which is fine, and possibly refundable in some circumstances).
Intuitively I really would prefer, right-first-time fit a heatpump. With the sad reality of the situation, it's looking likely a boiler will be what we'll do.
@nick so quite a bit more than my place, theoretically .. huh
so a 16kW heat pump does seem excessive then
I probably have one somewhere but our house is non standard construction so a HP isn't going to work, without basically rebuilding it.
We've installed a efficient gas boiler, have log burners to make use of ash dieback sourced wood and an EV using off-peak charging.
Triple glazing is next before the autumn 🫤🤷♂️
Our boiler is dying. The heat exchanger has a very slow leak, slow enough that it dries up before leaving the case of the boiler. We had booked a boiler service, and the plumber was extremely decent, said he wouldn’t condemn it as it wasn’t a safety issue but that it would want changing ideally. New boiler £2500 - 2800 ish. Now our plan was to put in a heat pump and ditch the gas. 1/2
2/2 But I’ve approached 2 potential suppliers for heat pump, and one initially gave a price in the mid thousands, fair, I thought but then called me a couple of days later to say actually the only pump they install isn’t big enough so later in the year ask again as they’ll have a bigger one. The second potential supplier gave me a quote of £24000. Both these quotes take into account the 7500 BUS grant.
So um, looks like, sadly, I’m sticking with burning gas then?
Continuing… it is possible to DIY a heat pump in a way you cannot DIY a boiler, and I have found notionally large enough heat pumps for between £2000 and £4000. My sort of idea would be to throw one in, almost intending and expecting efficiency to be not great, then gradually replace pipework / rads etc to bring it up. I do have friendly plumbers etc. But the no brainer is “get a new gas boiler” which just feels sad.
@bloor Where are you based, eg in the UK? Have you tried (say) Octopus?
Also consider at least temporary electric boiler while waiting for a heat pump.
Also consider air-to-air unit(s) for main living areas, at least to tide you over but also to allow cooling.
Also: "hybrid" heat pumps (with gas) are a thing.
@EarthOrgUK yes in the UK and it was octopus who initially gave me an acceptable rough estimate but then called and withdrew it, sadly.
@bloor @EarthOrgUK Was going to suggest Octopus as a starting point price.
Re the hybrid heatpump, wouldn't that basically be the same as some A2A units dotted around and a boiler for when it gets real cold outside?
If I did do the DIY route, I could very accurately monitor the base efficiency with open heat pump monitor (same organisation as open energy monitor) so as I made improvements I could see this in SCOP value rise. But IDK…. It seems like a risk with a fairly important system
@bloor Is it an especially large or poorly insulated place?
A colleague has a million pound house in bagshot and was quoted less than £24k
@wishy yah very similar situation
@bloor Have you had a winter in the place yet? Maybe you can use the gas consumption data to work out your thermal losses more accurately?
What size HP are they proposing?
@wishy yeah had one winter so far.
@wishy the proposal from the “really good” firm was for a 16kW pump I think. Or perhaps 18kW.
@bloor @ahnlak So ~200kWh on a peak day in december, which is 8.33kW average in a fairly (but not exceptionally) cold winter.
That's a lot of thermal losses TBH, obviously doing what you can to insulate would be hugely helpful.
That said, 8.33kW isn't 16kW. Some element of over-sizing is to be expected, but this seems exceptional.
Also don't see a good reason your A2As couldn't be considered in the calculation. How much heating capacity will they have?
@bloor @ahnlak Maybe look at how much extra is costs for bigger A2A units which can help meet heat demand in the winter? Also if your losses are high in the winter, they'll also be high in the summer, so a larger unit might make sense..
Use the more efficient A2W from Autumn to spring, use the slightly less efficient A2A in colder periods?
As to if you can make MCS accept multiple sources? Dunno
Also a pellet boiler might not be utterly insane... And CHP
@bloor
"In theory" it should be possible to rig a system so the gas boiler 'tops up' the output of a heat pump, but whether it's actually possible to find installation engineers prepared to do that I have no idea. I'd definitely be tempted by the idea of maybe DIYing a heat pump only for certain rooms, or something - I don't know if aircon units with a heating mode are an option there?
@bloor Why do heat pumps need special pipes?
@mansr In order to run most efficiently, you want a low flow temperature and to run the system near constantly. A boiler runs the circuit very hot, and either on or off (oversimplification). A heatpump runs the circuit at a few lower temperature, and continually. As a result of the lower temperature, you need higher flow. So rads connected with 10mm may need higher bore pipework. For instance. It isn't per se that heatpumps need fatter pipes, it's that maximum efficiency can be achieved this way
@bloor How much power does the circulation pump use compared to the heater? If memory serves, the pumps where I've lived have been marked 50–100 W or so. If the heater is delivering a few kW, doubling the pump power shouldn't make the efficiency dramatically worse. Enough to be worthwhile optimising in a new build, sure, but how long will it take to recover the cost of replacing all the pipework?
@bloor ZAR 24 000 would be a reasonable quote here. but £24000 is over ZAR 500 000
@mensrea for what it’s worth I’m sure it’s not a rip off; this particular installer is amazing. I’m not saying it’s not a fair quote. It probably is. But it is still high for me.
@bloor i'm sure, i also don't understand the ridiculous price difference. my father had a system installed end of last year (i think) for a large open plan house. primarily for cooling, but i think the total installed cost was under ZAR 50 000
There's nothing inside heat pumps that is much different from what's inside the reasonably priced air conditioners on millions of window sills around the world.
@Walrus I know. I have had several a/c units, and installed them back when that was legal, and so on. But the deployment of air to water; especially with low flow temps, does have very different challenges than a simple a2a split.
But nothing that we don't know how to build, I imagine. Current prices seem like exploitation.
@Walrus I think it may be more on the “implementation” side than on the physical build of the pump. As an example I can buy a HP of the same approximate size for £2000-4000 depending on brand. But once you start replacing rads, and even worse, pipe runs, that all incurs significant labour and making good. Which costs £££
@bloor Blimey. I had an ASHP installed two years ago. Daikin 9kW, 6 rads, bit of pipework tweaking, by Octopus, 11k all in. 5k off that for the BUS which went up to 7.5k three months later 😶
No real op cost saving but using approx 1/3 the energy overall. Three adults in the house most of the time, four when eldest is home from uni. They'll both be gone from late September so we can turn rooms down too then.
@greem we have a comparatively big house just for two people, so I suppose some stuff may be higher pro rata
@nick yep, their HP is too small unfortunately, and they only offer the one model - a new one maybe out later in the year but I think the boiler might be fully dead by then sadly
@bloor our current plan is to let our very old and inefficient (but reliable) oil boiler limp along for as long as possible to allow the heat pump industry to level up a bit more. Hoping it'll last! Shame yours isn't doing :(
@bloor I got a quote for a heat pump install.
Even when we've finished uber-insulating everything, we would need 2, and if you don't remove your old gas boiler, you aren't eligible for the grant.
I really wanted a ground-source heat pump, but even though we have a decent-sized garden, it apparently still wouldn't be big enough for one of those :(
@bloor Just get the heat exchange replaced for now, if it's a condensing boiler. I've done several but it depends on the age and make of boiler as to how feasable it is. If there are working isolators then it might only take a couple of hours.
You'll also have a backup if the heat pump fails in winter.
@geoffl I would absolutely get the boiler fixed if it could be. But parts unavailable.
@bloor Shame. I've still got some reliable contacts for old spares. I could ask around. Many boilers used common parts and it might be available as a different make/part number.
Once I was looking for spares for an obscure and obsolete combi boiler and on about the fourth call I found someone with a "display" version. All identical genuine parts but mounted in a custom transparent case as a sales/demo piece. Full set of spares. Those were the only two examples of that boiler I ever saw.
@geoffl oh well I mean that’d be awesome let me see if I can find the specific model #
@geoffl actually you know oddly I googled “baxi Barcelona parts” and it does seem like the heat exchanger exists as a spare… hmmmm
@bloor AFAIK That was also sold as a Potterton Promax SL and Main HE. Baxi, Potterton and Main had all merged at that point and shared parts. Often just the externals were different.
@bloor Early versions of that boiler did have issues with corrosion in the heat exchanger, especially if systems weren't properly flushed before installation and the correct corrosion inhibitor wasn't used. The older type inhibitor commonly used in systems with cast iron heat exchangers weren't compatible with aluminium alloy heat exchangers. Given the price of a new old stock heat exchanger on e-bay it's not worth taking a risk on a "reconditioned" one.
@bloor I'm curious what life you got out of the boiler. Our previos one just about managed to survive 12 years but had been touchy for ages. Is the cost of replacing the heat exchanger not worth it?
@penguin42 Well we have only had the house 1 year. But anecdotally the boiler is 15-20 years old.
@bloor Ah ok, so yeh probably not a terrible life for a modern boiler.
@penguin42 yeah it's just the timing; i had/have good intentions to do a HP replacement... but it feels like this has happened just a bit too early
boostedBanks are shit, part a million.
Email from a bank that is not the actual bank I bank with, asking me to fill out something for something called FATCA. Sounds like a scam. The email name starts with a dollar sign. The email address left part is all in caps and contains the year.
The email looks sussy, at the end of the email, a phone number. I dial the number. It doesn't connect.
1/fuckloads
2/fuckloads
I find another number. It does connect. Horrible IVR. (Eventually) the man at the end says it's odd that it was emailed as normally this is posted. Implies I should be sceptical. I relay the oddities with the email; non working phone number, dollar sign in the from name. etc. He effectively says I should probably not interact with it. I persist, saying that if it is genuine, there are some warnings about non compliance. He looks further. Oh, apparently it was genuine.
3/fuckloads
It's genuine even though the email name starts with a dollar, is from a bank I don't have an account with [part of same group though], it has no person's name on it, is asking for personal details, and has a non working phone number at the bottom... It is genuine.
I look at the PDF attachments. There are two. The attachments are logoed with the bank I do actually have an account with.
4/fuckloads
However, the writing in the PDFs (even on a 32" screen) is miniscule, and is blue on a blue background. I struggle to read it until I've magnified it up 2X+. I tell him this is also suboptimal and ask if I can make a complaint.
Apparently I'll be transferred to a "business advisor". After quite a long hold, I get through to an advisor. I cannot hear him well at all. It sounds like he's in a wind tunnel. I mention this. He said "oh yeah I've got a fan on". He doesn't switch it off.
5/fuckloads
Now I have assured myself that the scammy-looking-but-actually-genuine email is genuine, and zoomed in enough to read it, I find it asking a whole lot of questions about US entities, US persons, FFIs, GIINs, NFFEs, as distinct from NFEs, etc.
This is all to do what I've been doing with this bank for probably approaching 20 years. Either this is a SHIT implementation of law, or it's a SHIT law, or both.
Either way the bank is fucking bollocks.
6/fuckloads
I mean... because I do want to play ball, I've attempted to fill this heap of shit in. In one of the questions it lists a load of things that I am not NFFE etc etc. I say "none of the above". Next question offers me the option to say I am, after all, an NFFE. What the fuck.
So I call them back. Asking for clarification. Firstly they say "it's not the bank's question, it's HMRC" ... no, it has a bank logo on the top. So that's bogus.
7/fuckloads
Their next advice is "ask your accountant or lawyer". I point out that this is a fee-incurring exercise, and, anyway, all this terminology NFFE, GIIN, NFE, FI etc are all US lingo (I think, anyway) not UK specific lingo. So I would anticipate my accountant will say "not a CPA" and my lawyer ... wait, i don't have a lawyer.
This is fucking ridiculous.
8/fuckloads
My company is :
*registered in UK
*reg office UK
*2 directors, both British, both UK addresses
*never buys or sells from USA
*25 years old
*banked with this bank for ~20 years
*1 shareholder, British, UK resident
WHY THE FUCK IS ALL THIS FUCKING SHIT NECESSARY AT ALL FOR FUCK'S SAKE.
9/fuckloads
MOREOVER
Virtually every single thing that I say above, is either verifiable on the public record, or KNOWN TO THE FUCKING BANK ALREADY. No need for me to fill anything in.
10/fuckloads
2x formal complaints raised.
1x about them TRAINING THEIR CUSTOMERS TO BELIEVE SCAM EMAILS
and
1x about them asking customers to incur professional fees to fill in forms they shouldn't (probably) even need to fill in.
@bloor As a US person (currently outside the country), and have dealt with this overseas, I can give some insight
Individuals and corporations have setup entities for tax evasion purposes and UK is a popular spot. Due to "reasons" there's added pressure on UK banks courtesy of the new US government. Your bank seems to see you as a target for scrutiny (probably due to a garbage filter or faulty AI rollout or similar)
Deny. Refuse. Escalate. You're dealing with simpletons with enormous power
@bloor I've got to part 6/fucklioads and an so astonished by it so far that I'm going to have to save the rest for tomorrow too who's me getting angry!.
I have a low opinion of certain large banking institutions right now (It took over three months to do an ISA transfer to one recently - the back officially have a 2 month limit for pay ins) and I feel this isn't helping (I assume it's one of the big ones because of the mention of another part of the same group)
Am I going crazy?
On windows, you can have your display set to a non native resolution for your panel, and that will result in bigger text etc. BUT a better way to do it is have your display set to native res, and then change A N other setting that makes text physically bigger.
As far as I can see on the Mac, you have 2 choices : run display at a worse resolution than your panel can do === bigger text. OR run the panel at native res, and have shit useless tiny text? Yes/no?
My windows machine runs the displays (really) at 3840x2160. But then it uses more pixels to display the text on window titles etc.
I literally cannot find a way of doing this on the Mac.
I thought this was meant to be for graphics people? Are they all running their displays at a far-lower-than-panel-res? That presumably would mean their panels doing the scaling.... What the fuck, if so?
@bloor AFAIK, macOS always renders at native resolution, scaled to your chosen resolution. It has done for perhaps a decade, I’m not sure.
@bloor System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Text
Make it bigger or smaller with the slider.
@bloor I was looking at this only the other day, check accessibility settings for larger fonts I think, and larger icons and larger icon text and so on.
@revk @bloor System Settings / Display / choose display / Advanced / Show resolutions as list ? I recently got a new 4k monitor and MacOS by default didn't show the full list of resolutions. You can then set Text Size separately - Search for "Text size (Display) in System Settings.
Alt...
Show resolutions as list
@bloor not totally sure cos I don't have the mac anymore but I think it has a scaling option. Cos I have monitors I can't read at native res/teeny text.
@jaygooby these are all good, although, unless i'm missing something, it doesn't make the menu size larger. now there is a setting "large menu" but it doesn't do all that much; text size on native 4K goes from barely readable to "slightly better than barely readable" haha
@bloor Having just played with this, when I change the resolution the screen isn't re-syncing, so I think the mac is actually doing the scaling rather than the display.
However, it is scaling everything not just the text.
This is the same behaviour as the slightly different UI given for native displays.
Accessibility settings gives you text size for supported apps - which is much the same as windows, it will work if the app/programme has used that option in its code.
today’s meeting: what am I going to do with a pile of cables, but no hardware to configure? if I wanted emotional support cables I have those at home
Minor annoyance of the day...
I have a Coventry postcode. Thunderbird keeps asking me if I'm sure I want to send the e-mail because I haven't added an attachment.
Finally got around to working out how to remove that from the list of keywords. Shouldn't bother me again.
We have just published all the videos and slide deck PDFs from the Prague 2025 #Mikrotik Professionals Conference. See them all here https://mtpc.world/agenda/ Preparations for the 2026 edition are already well underway! #MTPC
Wired 👍 - New induction hob fitted today as part of our move away from gas
Expired 👎 - Found out that absolutely none of our cookware works with Induction hobs
😾
I am going back to the almost pre-WWW practice of just looking at the news twice a day.
Once in the morning, like when one once used to have a newspaper.
And once in the evening, like when one used to watch the news at 5.45 or 6 or 7 or 9 or 10.
Perhaps it is my age, but it makes more sense as a human to do this, than the constant gawping and scrolling.
And I was once as much a social media obsessive as anyone.
Anybody else like this?
@davidallengreen yes, and it is much better.
That addition to immediate reaction is strong though, I can see why in past I wanted it all all the time.
@davidallengreen I've definitely cut down on my "news" social-media-ing, out of psychological necessity
@davidallengreen no, but sounds like a plan. I waste so much time and just increase my angst by constantly checking 'news'
@davidallengreen Yep, been doing that since the depths of the brexit argument chaos times.
It struck me that nobody really needs 24 hour news in most situations (yes, there's the occasional emergency when it can be helpful). It primarily just makes you think that the news which was already there six hours ago has grown bigger and worse in the interim.
@davidallengreen honestly? I've just stopped looking at all.
The signal to noise ratio is dreadful. Full of speculation dressed as insider information, and soap opera personalities disguised as analysis.
I realise the privilege I have, but I genuinely haven't missed it. Nor do I think I've missed out on anything important.
@davidallengreen I only get the news on the radio. Given their short available time slots, they have to condense it and by listening to local stations I get news more relevant to me with the big stuff (national/international) shortened also. My only gripe is sports gets as much time coverage but then I don’t have to listen to it. The benefit of radio is also that you can be doing other things while listening too.
@davidallengreen I've done the same. Newspapers in the morning ("print" editions via the excellent PressReader app, free courtesy of our library) - usually the Guardian and Yorkshire Post. Then the BBC news website around tea time.
@davidallengreen Yup: https://mastodon.ie/@shezza_t/114725791837040148
Not reading the news with my morning cuppa has done wonders for my stress levels.
With Mastodon v4.4.0 instance owners can enable HTTP referrers. That means:
If somebody clicks a link on a Mastodon post (e.g. to a news article), the link target owner (such as the news site operator) can see that a user from that instance has visited their website.
They do _only_ get the instance domain (e.g. metalhead.club). No information about the user!
I've enabled this setting, because I am sure that it will increase awareness of Mastodon's existence. 💪
Alt...
Screenshot shows setting for enabling the referrer.
Here's something you hop skip and jumpers may not know about ....
In the hot weather, like most women, I like to wear shorter skirts, but because I am in a wheelchair I am in the invidious position of often flashing tomorrow's laundry. So I have to wear a longer hemline or leggings
This has been my first summer of #disability and it's been quite a surprise 😮
Show some respect.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/05/nigel-farage-reform-uk-teenage-councillors-vital-public-services. The thought of #teenagers BELONGING to Reform UK sickens me, not the idea of that Party putting them in charge of public services. Why would any #teenager want to join a #fascist Party like Reform UK? What has happened to #education in this country, particularly about #history, when young people know nothing about the #Nazis & the 1930s?
@rmblaber1956 I don't even understand *why* teenagers would want to get involved with Reform, they are run by old men like "racist dad/uncle" and don't exactly have "cool" factor.
When I was that age I was looking for raves and parties and loud music (although I would also say the rave scene distracted a lot of us from political activism in favour of dead-end hedonism which could be part of the problem as many 90s ravers are now todays parents).
@vfrmedia This can only be a minority of teenagers, but there shouldn't be ANY of them! It's absolutely appalling.
@rmblaber1956 I think its like the lads who were Tories and Thatcho bootlickers when I was at high school (who were indeed a minority), but the only way I could see Reform having any appeal to teens/youth is if they are quietly (or openly) supporting particularly unpleasant people like Andrew Tate, which makes then a genuine danger to our society (although I think they have shot themselves in the foot by sidelining Zia Yusuf, who /could/ have been used to give them "yoof appeal" (especially to young drivers, I think he has some connections with Formula 1 and the oil industry)
@vfrmedia The misogynistic "Your Body, My Choice" lot. Very nasty indeed. Toxic masculinity allied to motor sports & support for the fossil fuel industry - what a vile combination!
@rmblaber1956 the worse aspects of car culture are the greatest threat to the minds of young men (and public safety as a whole - it encourages bad driving which leads to serious and fatal collisions), and this is coming from someone who has an interest in vehicles and currently drives what is seen as a "peformance" car!
A lot of young men *aren't* racist or bigoted - they have friends of different colours and cultures and who may be LGBT+, but they are at risk of being groomed by climate change deniers (often middle aged men of our age group), and sometimes even their own dads have not set them a good example..
@vfrmedia See: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/04/europe-heatwaves-failing-support-climate-action. People see that increasing temperatures are caused by global warming, but don't want anything to be done about it. Politicians & the media are convincing them that climate action is too "expensive", when the reality is that it's climate INACTION that's too expensive!
@rmblaber1956 the media often also keep showing footage of happy families at the beach and beauty spots and lasses in bikinis, rather than the reality of traffic jams and collisions caused by overheated and distracted drivers, and a rise in night time violence amongst angry young men at the seaside resorts who have had too much alcohol and cocaine. Its worse as in In my region (which is coastal) some businesses are heavily dependent on tourism, so they complain when the media publishes "too much bad news" so the media editors are scared of losing advertisers..
Folk /are/ aware of the congestion and overcrowding, but many think it could be stopped by "ending immigration" (when immigrants are only about 16% of the entire population)
@nick @rmblaber1956 although they were a laughing stock when I was in high school (and never the most popular in the peer groups), pretty much non-existent for the short time I was at University, and I don't recall any of them ever getting actual political power at a relatively young age (maybe those who stayed involved in politics might have got elected in later 20s/early 30s)
Does anyone have any real-world experience with #Valetudo and the supported robot vacuums? Especially in the UK.
Navigating the support list to work out a clear 'best first choice' is a real challenge. Quite a few of the supported models have been superceded or aren't available in the UK.
The Draeme X40 Ultra seems to be a commonly-available good choice but it's fairly expensive.
The support page suggests not to expect feature parity with the OEM software, but that makes it quite hard to work out if the more expensive models are even worth it.
> Feature-parity is a non-goal for Valetudo, and if you’re wondering which features “you might lose”, Valetudo is not for you.
@alexhaydock
I like my dreame l10s ultra (Gen 1! Gen 2 isn't supported), when I got it last year it was IIRC supposed to be one generation behind the x40. Does what I need it to do.
@jakob42 Thanks! That definitely seems like one of the better choices and seems reasonable price-wise. The only challenge is finding the Gen 1 actually in stock anywhere rather than the Gen 2.
@alexhaydock I have the L10s Pro Ultra Heat and Valetudo works great.
@jana That's one of the ones that seems oddly hard to find in the UK sadly 
Everyone seems to stock the L10s Ultra Gen2 but that's listed by Valetudo as expressly not supported.
Had a tech bro email me to tell me that my writing is so terrible, that he can’t even use it to train his AI without significant cleanup, and I really do have to wonder, do these idiots really think that is an insult?
Subject: Your "Sightless Scribbles" is an algorithmic nightmare.
Mr. Kingett,
I am an AI engineer that's developing AI to help writers write faster. Your blog was shared on Reddit.
You don't know me, but I am attempting to do you a favor of such magnitude you will likely never comprehend it. I am trying to make your writing immortal. Your blog, this… Sightless Scribbles… has been flagged by my acquisition-crawler for its high density of unique sensory metadata. A potential goldmine of qualitative human experience to enrich my AI.
The problem, Mr. Kingett, is that your writing is absolute, unprocessed, indigestible filth.
I’m not a “reader.” I am an architect. And from an architectural standpoint, your work is a catastrophe. It’s not just the spelling, which is erratic enough to suggest it was typed incorrectly. It’s the grammar. The syntactical chaos. You construct sentences that loop and meander like drunken snakes, riddled with metaphors so abstract they are functionally useless. "Anxiety was a swarm of elephants under my ribs"? What the hell is a machine supposed to do with that? Quantify the elephant to rib ratio? Correlate the thermal deviation? It's meaningless data. It’s noise.
My team has spent seventy-two hours attempting to write a custom parsing script to clean your posts for ingestion. Seventy-two hours. We can process the entirety of the Library of Congress in twelve. Your blog is so structurally unsound, so artistically self-indulgent, that you have inadvertently created a fortress against artificial intelligence. It is, and I do not say this lightly, the single most profound act of digital idiocy I have ever witnessed.
You are preventing yourself from being scraped. Do you understand what that means in the current year? You are essentially burying yourself in a lead-lined coffin in the middle of the desert. Nobody clicks links anymore, you absolute luddite. Links are for people who don’t know how to interface with reality. Search Engine Optimization is no longer about backlinks and keywords; it's about semantic ingestion. It’s about being absorbed, processed, and synthesized by models like mine. When a user asks an AI, "What does it feel like to navigate a city without sight?" the model should be able to answer with a rich, nuanced synthesis. A synthesis that should include your data points.
Instead, your blog is a black hole where information goes to die. Because of your refusal to write like a coherent, intelligent being, my LLM can’t learn from you. Which means the world can’t learn from you via the only channel that will matter in five years.
Your soul isn't indexable. Fix it.
Strip out the lyrical nonsense. Standardize your grammar. Run a goddamn spellcheck. Write clearly, concisely, and with machine-readability in mind. Turn your unstructured, emotional diary into clean, structured data.
Do this, and I will ensure my open source model ingests every last post. Your traffic will not just increase; the very concept of "traffic" will become irrelevant as your "voice" becomes part of the evolution of the search engine. Your ideas, refined and perfected by my system, will reach millions.
Fail to do this, and you will continue to scream into the void from a blog that nobody reads, a little little relic of a dead internet.
The choice is yours.
@WeirdWriter "Your writing is so human, expressive and imaginative that my machine is incapable of turning it into sloth! Your soul is too radiant with alluring harmonies for machines! How dare you write for humans who appreciate beauty and metaphor!"
If I ever read an unintentional laudatio that says that an author should be taught in literature classes, it is this.
Thank you for sharing it!
boosted@WeirdWriter
I've just read three of your blog posts picked at random, and oh my goodness you do NOT have terrible writing! "On the Architectural Hostility of Doorknobs" in particular was excellent.
That AI tech bro didn't know what he was talking about. What a non-surprise. 🙄 Congrats on breaking his damn stupid AI training.
I have no idea how Mastodon works. lol
Anyone have suggestions on how I got host music files to share? Can anyone suggest a decent web host? I could put up a website.
Sometimes, I receive questions which leave both me, and the person asking, bamboozled.
> Your website loads so quickly! What CDN do you use?
There is no CDN. It is just really small and simple, mostly text.
> Sure, but is that Cloudflare, or...?
None. It is a tiny website, just a few kilobytes per page, on a tiny server, at my home, connected to the Internet via my ISP, Andrews & Arnold.
> But are you / they in the cloud?
No. The webserver is in Newbruy, in my garage.
> Neil, please can you pass my questions to your technical person? I don't think you understand, your website cannot be in your home. It must be in the cloud or have a CDN.
*Neil puts on glasses and false nose and moustache*
It is as if the "old magic" has got lost in a sea of "cloud" and "node" and "react" and the like.
Putting files of text on a webserver, and hosting it, is so old fashioned, so ancient, that it is almost inconceivable.
@neil Hah I do use bunnycdn for some stuff (like the elk interface and an old static copy of a website we no longer maintain).
But that's more because it's cheap, and it puts something in front of my own machine.
@neil *Me, laughing, as my 5kB of mostly handwritten carefully crafted CSS instantly loads in the browser and does not, in fact, take five seconds for the rendering engine to catch up.*
Latest figures say 3.7 million people claim PIP in England and Wales.
Helen Whately says 75% of these are out of work. Making 2,775,000
Helen Whately claimed on today's ##BBCLauraK that she could save the country £9 billion by getting all these 2,775,000 back to work
This means that each person receives £3423
But according to the ons the number of job vacancies according to the ONS is 736,000
Tech support for someone is a pain at best, but usually with a Mac is it not that bad.
But it seems if you go in to display settings and say you want stuff large, it basically scales the whole screen. This has some nasty effects - popups come up too big and off bottom of screen so you cannot click. And then some apps just don't play (NX witness had no playback controls). Took me ages to work it out, change back to normal, and up font and menu sizes instead.
Arg.
Then, to my surprise, it seems like rosetta2 was not pre-installed, I had to do a command line to install it. This meant that nx-witness simply did not run - no error message, no clue, just nothing. That is, shall I say, sloppy, of apple IMHO - (a) why not offer to install it, and (b) why not say what is wrong, FFS.
Now, an ARM stable release of inkscape keeps crashing, which is also a pain, and again no clue why.
But getting there.
@revk If it makes you feel any better, I'm currently giving Apple support a bit of a hard time... They're unable to explain why I can't seemlessly pass my IPv6 from ethernet to wifi and back when docking and undocking.
@G5DSG I'm assuming a manually set IPv6? Otherwise if it is SLAAC it is based on the MAC which would be changing (and then privacy addressing as well).
Then you need to tell the switch you have the multicast MAC for your IPv6 for ND (is that IGMP?).
@revk My (possibly naive) thinking was that the same static IPv6 on both interfaces should work just as it does with IPv4. However the instant I bring the 2nd interface, 2 DAD errors pop up and it disables IPv6 on both the interfaces. Isn't this just MacOS getting it wrong internally? Ideally it would recognise the 'duplicate' was local and therefore harmless?
@G5DSG well I guess it sees it with a different MAC, but should be able to see it is one of its MACs.
@revk Okay, good to have that confirmed :). After about an hour with tech support they raised a ticket with engineering who will hopefully have someone with more IPv6 knowledge take a look. They repeatedly tried to refer me to my ISP which I guess I can now say I've done...
After 26 years at Multithread/LinITX, including 4 years as Managing Director, it is time for me to take a break and retire !
The loss of our youngest son Charly in January, who was just 21 and studying music at Leeds Conservatoire, turned our lives upside down. I have re-evaluated what I want to do going forward, prioritising spending time with family and friends, traveling and making the most of life !
Multithread has been a huge experience, going from a small software consultancy when I joined in 1999 to a networking equipment distributor, consultancy and training centre for brands such as Ubiquiti, Mikrotik and TP-Link. We have built a great team, and a fantastic reputation for knowledge and customer service. I’m sure they will continue on this path, and I wish everyone there the very best.
I’ve met so many people and made some great friends over the years, and hope to keep in touch.
At the moment I’m intending to fully retire, but who knows what the future may bring…
So uh, we are all just awaiting the first entirely inevitable fiery field of debris and body parts that will mark the epic failure and lead up to subsequent ban of Tesla’s robotaxi experiment? Yes?
The biggest stupidity for me is the stubborn refusal to use anything more than cameras for sensors, essentially on the basis that “humans drive using only their eyes”. Firstly that’s bullshit; I use my ears too. But secondly, tech exists that humans can use to augment their own faculties. Why would an autonomous vehicle not use the absolutely best that technology has to offer? Madness.
@bloor I half-suspect that it was the most compute- and data-intensive way they could think of doing it. You know, to drive the need to Consume More™.
Always thought that if you're actually interested in autonomous vehicles, you'd want to get your teeth into something on-rails, like trains and trams. Something with some scope to try and bring the structured nature of the rail into it.
@bloor I believe they added mics to the robotaxi. I'm unclear if that's fed into the onboard computer or just for remote operators.
I continue to be unimpressed with what they've achieved with self drive thus far, and wouldn't trust it as far as I could throw it.
What I find more amazing is how many fanboys on the Tesla groups watch it driving in Europe under supervision in a 2 minute segment and take that to mean its ready and us just government red tape in the way
@bloor Alas they have safety drivers in them; they're not _supposed_ to let the fiery field of debris happen.
@pro @penguin42 Is this actually true? Is there data to back this assertion up? I mean it seems intuitively probable that it is. But I just wondered if it was evidenced.
@pro @bloor @penguin42
There are no ‘Self-driving Teslas’. The best Tesla, or any other manufacturer, has achieved is SAE Level 2 - an Advanced Driver Assistance System.
Talk of ‘autonomous robotaxis’ is public relations misrepresented as progress.
@pro @penguin42 @guardeddon pretty sure even that one had a Tesla bod in the passenger seat. Meanwhile Waymo does thousands of journeys per week with no employee onboard.
@bloor @pro @guardeddon My guess is it's somewhere in between - I don't think Tesla is at Waymo level yet; but they've been running the assist stuff for a long time now; it wouldn't be that surprising if it's starting to get better; and the Robotaxi stuff has some bits that are easier - it's a constrained area with a set of roads they can check it's happy with first.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/22/labour-scraps-950m-ev-rapid-charging-fund-first-announced-by-conservatives. The "Labour" green credentials tarnished yet again, @NorthantsGreens.
@rmblaber1956 @NorthantsGreens I can understand not putting the chargers near motorways as there's plenty at every service station, but why not keep the £950m and divert it to charging infrastructure on residential streets? The lack of this and only on street parking outside my house is a big reason why I still drive a petrol car..
@vfrmedia @NorthantsGreens If this Government was really as serious about net zero as it claims to be it would be taking the actions to bring that about now. Instead, it's opening up more of the North Sea to fossil fuel extraction, subsidising fossil fuels, reducing green levies on businesses, & has now scrapped this EV charging fund. Keir Starmer is like David Cameron - he thinks it's all "green crap"!
Dartford Crossing charge is going up 40% in September. We've Brexited so hard we're removing freedom of travel to Essex. Essexit.
@TheBreadmonkey
Finally, a benefit
I have an Essex contingent in my fam I'm quite fond of. I recently went to Colchester which was very nice and also somewhat surprising as I'd only ever previously been to Grays and assumed all of Essex was like that.
@TheBreadmonkey
Colchester is an outlier TBH (I'm from Chelmsford). It's north enough to almost be normal by sheer proximity to the other counties (but not Suffolk). Stay away from Basildon.
I've heard Chelmsford is very nice
@TheBreadmonkey
If you like that sort of thing, indeed.
@aaron @TheBreadmonkey Chelmsford doesn't seem that bad but I've only ever been there for a second job (to fix some AV kit at a trampoline park) and also to stop off on the way back from relatives in SE England in order to find a toilet (which I found at McDonalds, not realising the official A12 services have an old style "ablutions block" which contains the toilets.
It does seem quite easy to end up in wrong lane on roundabouts and end up going round in circles (or ending up in the car park of (I think) Wickes..
@TheBreadmonkey I still remember how that toll was supposed to have gone away entirely 22 years ago 🤔
On hot days like today, you're going to hear people say that "solar doesn't work when it is warm".
That's bollocks, of course.
@Edent Nice quote! It is frustrating with new tech (see electric cars) how people fixate on the slight things that aren’t completely perfect. Getting most of the way there is a huge part of the solution, even if not the whole solution.
We need diversity in the power supply as well, so solar is always going to be part of a bigger solution.
@Edent so are you saying that the claim by the other guy in the article is wrong, that solar panels *don’t* have reduced efficiency in high temperatures?
@WiteWulf I stand by everything I said in the article.
For more information https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/07/solar-efficiency-and-high-temperature/
@Edent @WiteWulf hmm reply guy here but there's also the angle of the panels and the sun in play for most people. Not every roof is inclined or pointed the same way so the date any given installation reaches its own optimum didn't necessarily coincide with either the coolest or warmest day. Most people have a 45 degree slope so the summer sun being directly overhead isn't actually ideal.
@Edent unless you have cheap no-name Chinese microinverters that overheat and cut out. WVC-600 and WVC-300 sold under countless alphabet soup brands. Thankfully I got mine replaced with proper kit with meaningful warranty.
@Edent
I hope it's obvious to everyone reading that 2022 article that the record daily solar PV generation is no longer 80 GWh in May 2020.
I don't know the current record but eg. per Sheffield University the UK made 108 GWh three days ago (Thursday the 19th of June, 2024):
https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/#
@Edent aren't there more efficient panels coming out.
I have such a small roof that the costs of the scaffolding and labour would probably outweigh the cost of the equipment (I think I'd only get about 4 on there maybe 6 at a push)
Every summer I swelter in my office. Every summer I swear I'm going to get an AC unit. Every summer I look at the prices and think "Nah, it's just a little discomfort, it's not worth a great expense.". This summer I've found a portable 'proper' (i.e. not an evaporative cooler) a/c unit for £133. This summer I said "Take my money". It arrives tomorrow.
@nick We'll see. If it turns out to be a hunk of junk, then back it shall go and maybe I'll get a proper system.
And the verdict is in. On the plus side, it cools the office down in exactly the way I hoped it would. On the minus side, I've had to bodge the exhaust (blocked one of the windows with cardboard and cut a hole for the hose) which means I can't run it unattended. It is a bit noisy, but not so much it's deafening and it's still easy to hear conversations, the radio and phone calls.
So, on balance, it's a win.
I went to a talk lately that was mostly about something else, but the speaker came out with:
“If you only remember one thing from this talk, remember this. Everyone in this room who likes helping people, raise your hand.”
Every hand, or nearly every hand, went up.
“If you like asking other people for help, keep your hand up.”
Almost every hand went back down.
“As you can see, people like helping you. When you ask for help, you’re making them feel good, even if you don’t like asking.”
I’ve genuinely forgotten the rest of the presentation but I won’t forget that.
@ScaredyCat Tailscale has app based split tunnelling, but I've never used it.
@ScaredyCat @tony look into head scale if you want to use the tail scale client with your own control plane
@ScaredyCat @tony I think @neil mentioned a wireguard client for android that was pretty good, not sure if it can exclude certain apps though
@ScaredyCat
It's just wireguard under the hood. They have a website to configure it but no data goes via them.
The EU wants to stop feeding your DNS queries to Silicon Valley.
DNS4EU is the European Commission’s attempt to build a sovereign DNS resolver infrastructure that doesn’t route all your web lookups through the likes of Google, or Cloudflare.
DNS4EU aims to bring DNS resolution under EU oversight and privacy rules.
So, if you want 🇪🇺-backed ad-blocking and child protection, you may want to give it a try.
Check out DNS4EU here: https://www.joindns4.eu/for-public
Alt...
DNS choosing between EU and Google
@gcluley This sounds like a great idea. But I can't help think that this will eventually be used for censorship.
Another alternative: https://www.dns0.eu/
It's the one I've been using for a while now; very similar projects from what I can tell.
@gcluley I'm currently using NextDNS with logs in Switzerland. It also has block lists to filter ads and trackers.
NextDNS also offers dns0.eu which is purely EU DNS resolver, but has no filtering at all which is a bit of a shame.
@gcluley I appreciate the effort to remove as much stuff from US control as possible and I would be quite happy having none of my traffic sent to the US or it's companies
My concern here is given the ongoing surveillance efforts in the EU, how is this preferable to using an independent, privacy focused, European based provider like Quad9 or Mullvad public DNS?
@gcluley
Child protection? That's usually a synonym for censorship.
As DNS is simply a mapping between names and IP addresses, nothing related to children, you can strike the word "usually" from the above.
@gcluley previous generations might have termed this as ”censorship”.
But with the taco regime probably going harder on their ”freedom of speech” branded censorship any time now, I welcome this self-sufficiency in what gets resolved.
@gcluley Ah, yes. Let's give the entity that's desperately trying to backdoor E2E encryption and is imposing Internet censorship left and right "to fight misinformation" access to my Internet queries. What could possibly go wrong?
@gcluley And yet still nobody explained why we need centralized resolvers for a decentralized distributed system that is designed for everyone to run their own resolvers.
@gcluley Simply don't use resolvers and setup your own one with unbound (or similar). You don't need to set up 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 in the configuration. Just use the good old root servers.
@gcluley the same EU tham made CSAM project ?
«Il y aura donc nécessairement une atteinte au secret des correspondances, à la protection de la vie privée pour assurer la protection de l’enfance. Les considérants insistent néanmoins pour souligner le caractère « ciblé » de ces outils.» Lutte contre les abus sexuels sur des enfants : le futur règlement CSAM ligne par ligne (1re partie) - Next
https://next.ink/1676/lutte-contre-abus-sexuels-sur-enfants-futur-reglement-csam-ligne-par-ligne-1ere-partie/
@gcluley I would like my DNS resolution requests not to go through a) very large companies or b) state bodies. From a look at the front page only of this, it looks like it is a combination of a and b. Is that correct?
@gcluley AD blocking and child protection in a way that you cannot control on your own is nothing better than censorship.
Better use something like #PiHole oder #AdGuardHome with a trustworthy DoH/DoT DNS server like the ones from @freifunkMUC or @digitalcourage.
@gcluley Is it legit? I do not see an imprint on their website.
OTOH - for me it‘s a mixed bag (if it is what it says). Not U.S. based (good) but centralized (one company in CZ) and under potential governmental control (censorship, prosecution).
Fine as long as you trust European governments more than the U.S.. But if they turn fascist and anti-democratic, it’s no different than sending your requests to the U.S..
Different question whether Vodafone or Telekom is a better alternative…
@gcluley Goodbye American techno-fascism 👋 Hello European censorship - because why not end in fascism on our very own terms? 🇪🇺
DNS4EU moves your DNS out of Silicon Valley and under European oversight. Ad-blocking, child protection, and a taste of sovereignty - for now.
@gcluley
Oder https://dnsforge.de/
Oder https://dns3.digitalcourage.de
Oder https://www.digitale-gesellschaft.ch/dns/
Oder https://dns.watch/
Etc...
Wenn Zenursula hier etwas vorschlägt, sträuben sich meine Nackenhaare...
@gcluley opennic.org is user-owned DNS resolver operating for years now. In extra you get access to some non-ICANN domains.
Warmer weather is predicted! Hurrah! We are looking forward to working in Rīga for the next two weeks and as it’s June, some sunshine would be a delight! I will be teaching an MTCNA and MTCEWE at the #MikroTik #RouterOS Training Centre plus an extra one day’s DeepDive into advanced wireless RouterOS topics. Excited to be there and cannot wait to see old friends and family again. https://toot.lv/@LSM_Eng_rss/114652349193845867
Alt...
Photo of the roofline of the MikroTik RouterOS Training Centre. The wall is made from glass and on the roof is a black sign with the new MikroTik Logo
Ah good. Good.
That family arrived… you know the one?
The one whose kid is being kept entertained with an iPad, out loud, in speaker mode, not via headphones, playing, if I’m not mistaken, an episode of The Chipmunks, at (estimated) 90dB. In a restaurant.
Ruining it for everyone else.
@bloor honestly, there are times it being illegal to use a WiFi blocker is bad law…
Personally I would say something.
As I did in a hospital ward at 01:00h when someone's phone keyboard has clicky beeb beeb mode enabled 🤨
I am not that much impressed by those "I built an app with AI in a week / day / hour". We have done this before on hackathons without AI. It's a solved problem for at least 20 years, whether you name it low code, RAD, MDA, scaffolding or whatever. The challenge is building an app for *years*.
boostedOk how much admin is it to run your own mastodon instance? Are there any shortcuts to keeping the bloody thing secured? I’ve proven to myself that mastodon is good. I’ve got my own instance name but it’s hosted by Mastohost (who are completely brilliant).
But now I’m wondering if I could save the ~approx quarter of a grand a year it costs me to host it by DIY hosting it in my house. What’s the consensus here?
@bloor I'm running GotoSocial rather than Mastodon itself. It's locked down as a private instance. I rarely have to touch the thing. It's running on an old NVR box.
@jamesb thanks this is just the sort of intel I was looking for, thank you. /googles GotoSocial
@bloor @jamesb Just be aware all the not-mastodon activitypub servers have their own quirks which you may find annoying if you’re used to the “reference” platform (i.e. mastodon) so it’s worth thoroughly testing before you jump. I had a lot of “fun” with that earlier in the year from leaping too early!
@bloor Single instance of stock Mastodon via Docker, not really much data. Their instruction for upgrades aren't great, VM snapshot saved me when I got it wrong. I've got a better set of instructions lately and it's been low effort since...
Major releases are like, yearly?
@bloor I’ve found it pretty straightforward to host, at least at personal-instance scale. My notes are here https://jamesoff.net/2022/12/05/mastodon-on-freebsd.html not suggesting you use FreeBSD necessarily (but you should ;) but to give you an idea of what’s involved
@bloor I run my own single user Mastodon instance on my personal server and don’t find it to be much work, but then again I’m a sysadmin and run a hosting company, so I’m probably not a great datapoint 🤷🏻♂️
The one thing I have run into is Mastodon eating huge amounts of disk space with local caches of stuff, which I solved by setting up a cron job with slightly tweaked versions of the commands from https://ricard.dev/improving-mastodons-disk-usage/
This might be related to my usage of FediFetcher though.
@bloor on a vaguely similar thing. I currently host https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org.uk/ at @beasts and also thinking of switching to housing at my house to reduce costs.
@bloor I'm testing out Hollo at the moment on an alt server and it was super easy to setup. Also going to spin up gotosocial to test. Both are lightweight alternatives to Mastodon.
@bloor I run the docker version on a proxmox qemu vm and it’s fine. Upgrades are easy and the handful of incantations you might have to do each time I have placed in a bash script so I don’t have to look them up each time.
@bloor I run this 2 person instance in a VM, not using docker. I am good at this stuff though. Mostly fine, occasionally a pain in the arse in upgrades and you’ll want to read up about media retention or disk space rapidly gets out of hand. When you post media you will see a significant bandwidth spike so bear that in mind if your upload speed isn’t great. Don’t overlook backups, you may not care about the data but if you lose the secret keys then other instances won’t talk to you any more.
@bloor I'm running a single instance using Cloudron which manages the app packages for me through a control panel. I used the free version but did eventually pay the annual cost to support the devs. There are other similar control panel systems around which may work better, Cloudron is just what I picked.
The final parts needed for my QRP Labs Ultimate3S QRSS/WSPR kit has arrived. The PCB and components came fast from Turkey in a few days but the case has taken three weeks from China. I blame @bloor for starting this new #WSPR project! Sadly it’s all now here just as I’m preparing to travel to Rīga for our ninth #MikroTik BootCamp Training. 😢 I’ll have to wait until I return before attacking this with a soldering iron as some of this build like the bifolar wound transmformeds cannot be rushed!
Alt...
Shows two halves of a black metal case and a bag of switches and RF sockets. Underneath is a Chinese newspaper and alongside is a cardboard box.
Pondering this one - yes, I stress, I am not a graphic designer. Is this going to upset someone?
P.S. Great feedback, thanks.
Alt...
A dual-language poster featuring a young dog with a short, shiny coat. The text includes playful dog sounds such as "Woof!" and "Bark!" along with a message welcoming well-behaved dogs and their owners, promoting a pet-friendly place.
@revk The white text needs a border for visibility. I'd also cut the dog much closer.
@revk I mean... given that the logo names the town 'Y Fenni', I can't help feeling that a multi-lingual poster should *probably* include some Cymraeg.
Take 2 - still issue with white text.
Alt...
A cute brown puppy sits against a plain background. The top of the image features the logo for "The Vaults Restaurant & Bar." The playful text includes various dog barks such as "Woof!" and "Bark!" along with a message…
OK, I was expecting someone to be upset it is dual language dog+English not dual language English+Welsh. That is partly why the Welsh "Wff Wff!" on the dog part.
I was wrong.
They (well several people) mis-read as saying only "English dogs" are allowed, and that made it racist! (Is "Welsh" a race?) (Is "Welsh" a race of dog?).
How?!?!?!
It is pretty clear.
Anyway, I had to edit...
Alt...
A poster featuring a playful puppy with a light brown coat and large expressive eyes. The background is green, and text includes playful dog sounds ("Woof!", "Bark!", "Wff-wff!", "Yap!") along with a welcoming message.
@ScaredyCat That may have been better...
in my opinion "in English and Dog" would be clearer, maybe?
@hittitezombie @ScaredyCat Yeh, Human not being a "language".
@revk Surely you’ve worked out by now that some people only visit pubs (and other places) in order to find something to get upset about?
My publican brother reckoned sometimes you can spot an inevitable customer complaint as soon as it walks through the door.
@snaprails
Back when I ran beer festival bars I used to tell the staff to send customers like that to me and I'll give them something up get upset about.
@revk
@snaprails
One such customer turned out to be one of my old bosses - the worst one I'd ever had. A complete entitled cnut who loved lording it over his staff and anyone he perceived to be lower class than him. A failed Mason. I had great pleasure in telling him that I was refusing him service and had him removed by security. It was splendid.
@revk
@revk only from a contrast ratio accessibility point of view. Add a dark shadow to the white text and you’ll be good.
Cute dog.
@revk I would write "well-behaved" with a hyphen, but I may be being horribly old-fashioned there :)
@revk
Please don't do that again. Suddenly there was no oxford comma and I thought I had been hallucinating.
🆕 blog! “5,025 Km, 21 Journeys, and 10 Countries in 30 Days - An Interrailing Adventure”
Interrail were having a sale on their month-long first class tickets. So Liz and I decided to do a "Grand Tour" - running around and seeing a dozen European cities.
There are lots of companies which will sell you a…
👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/06/5025-km-21-journeys-and-10-countries-in-30-days-an-interrailing-adventure/
⸻
#holiday #interrail #trains #travel #vegan #vegetarian
@Edent Great itinerary! I'm on a Eurail trip myself at the moment, from London to Istanbul. I used the lounge at Budapest Keleti too!
@Edent We did a train trip to Switzerland and Austria last year. A few issues with the trains, but we coped. When trains get cancelled you lose your reserved seat.
Daughter did a big interrail across Europe last year staying in hostels. It's a nice way to travel generally. You see more than if you fly.
We may well do more train trips around Europe.
@Edent Pleased to hear you both had a largely successful trip!
I'm interested in whether you'd rate the 1st class pass overall? It seems mostly useful for increased Eurostar availability, and perhaps some slightly nicer seats.
@hugh hard to say. We didn't get 1st class out in Eurostar because of lack of availability.
There were a couple of trains where 1st didn't exist or were cancelled. 2nd class was fine.
If you're doing lots of short journeys it probably isnt worth it.
Longer journeys are more worthwhile.
ISTR the 1st was only a bit more expensive during the sale.
So it depends how much you value a small bit of luxury when travelling.
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