Still active

think that it was 2001 or maybe September/October 2002 in Manchester Computing when I began making pages that later became schestowitz.com (prior to that the address was different, I used a Web address under another domain). When I began writing in boycottnovell.com (which is shown as correlated above), in 2006 onwards, I wrote a lot less in schestowitz.com. Almost no new material/pages got added.

It feels good to “be back” in schestowitz.com, the ‘domestic’ or original ‘turf’ online.

Will schestowitz.com ever turn 40? I reckon so. It’s needed for E-mail (not only my own).

As planned

arlier this year I decided to offload more personal and/or non-technical topics to this blog. 3,300 posts since 2004 may sound like a lot, but this year alone it was almost 1,000 of them.

The effort to offload topics was successful in the sense that expectations were met. It seems like the right way forward.

Better late than never

oday (earlier this morning [1, 2, 3]) I spoke of “3 years since the [server] move” (to the UK) and some reader said it was more like “3 years since the servers were moved” though no server was moved, we basically abandoned the American servers (a “server can mean hardware, OS, or daemons [...] or, I guess, even services based on those,” the reader said).

I was gonna say “services” instead of server/s, “so from the outside it looked like a move,” the reader said, “but on the inside it was a complete rebuild” (including the operating system).

The move away from CentOS was long overdue. It now seems like many others abandon CentOS [1, 2, 3].

Put away the gadgets

‘ve noticed that About Manchester published this quote ysterday: “Trees will play an increasingly important role in helping our cities adapt to a hotter climate. Having just experienced one of the hottest summers on record, we have all felt first-hand the importance of trees and their cooling effect and benefit to cities, plus they make places feel more beautiful. During Mayfield’s life over the past 300 years, a tree has never been planted in this part of town. It’s always been an incredibly busy, industrial part of the area. Mayfield is about transforming a part of Manchester that was once overlooked and largely inaccessible into a vibrant green place where people and nature can thrive alongside one another. Having seen for many years how much people love Mayfield Park, we’re delighted today to be extending it to be even bigger. Part of that growth is the rehoming and redesigning of The Intelligent Garden. It’s a natural fit for that vision, bringing together nature, technology and design to explore how our urban landscapes can respond to the challenges of climate change.”

But technology isn’t needed there. The article seems to be promoting gadgets, i.e. part of the core problem.

The real and meaningful astronomical event

realise that the 2026 autumn equinox is upon us (Source: BBC) and it’s not the same as solstice. Quoting the article: “The equinox will occur at 01:06 BST on 23 September, according to Royal Museums Greenwich. It is a precise moment in time when the Sun crosses the celestial equator and neither hemisphere is tilted towards or away from the Sun, meaning day and night are roughly equal in length across the world.”

Goodbye, summer.

It’s better for more than just moral reasons like solidarity

‘ve only just realised that days ago marked 3 years since we moved everything to Simply in the UK. This webhost was recommended to us by Catalyst2, whose services I had happily used since 2003 or 2004.

One lesson I’ve learned is, if your team is mostly based in Europe, then it makes sense for hosting to be in Europe (or EU in this case).

Think local.

Combatting FOMO

remember how in 2009 or 2010 I was attempting to almost phase out E-mail usage (unless or wherever it was absolutely necessary, e.g. account creation/verification). It didn’t exactly work, but I did reduce my usage of E-mail.

Some years ago I made a habit of checking my E-mail only about once a day (unless I was expecting some very important and/or time-sensitive message from somebody).

This year I sometimes don’t check E-mail for a couple of days straight. I then realise I didn’t even miss anything critical. Put another way, there would be no benefit associated with checking E-mail more frequently, except maybe FOMO.

“Today I catch up with email,” I told someone yesterday, “and I think the above is outdated?”

I saw a message from 3 days prior. “Sorry, I don’t check email every day (anymore),” I said.

No harm done, and had I checked messages all day long I’d basically spend a lot of time triaging/gardening SPAM. About 90% of the E-mail I receive is SPAM.

Even if there was no SPAM at all, I’d probably still choose not to check E-mail every day.

Society, in my experience, compels people to be “wired” all the time and do everything “in real time”. That prohibits focus and obstructs concentration.

If you’re not a “999″ operator, then you probably need not see or respond to everything urgency.