Since last reboot

oming up next week is a meaningful (to me anyway) milestone. It’ll be 1000 days of uptime on my laptop:

roy@bubi:~$ uptime
 06:37:35 up 990 days, 21:49,  3 users,  load average: 9.03, 8.29, 8.10

I’m tempted to do a reboot after 10000, but don’t quite see the point doing so.

am feeling very energised or generally energetic this month. We got good news last month. Someone else received a truly massive bill.

By midday today (UTC), after a long night’s sleep (10pm to 6am), I’ve caught up with global news and published over 30 new pages across 3 sites. I intend to keep up this pace and maybe increase it further.

Today we finally have much-needed rain, some of it heavy, so let’s hope that the grass outside (everywhere, not just our lawn) will get greener. The yellowing this year reminds me of the terrible drought we had in 2018 when many lawns died. I still remember the year due to that. Some have not recovered since.

ince returning home a week ago I’ve published about 200 new pages/articles in Techrights and nearly 50 originals in the sister site, aside from 7 in my personal blog. Had I not worked out almost every day and slept extra hours (I began sleeping a lot more in January 2025 after 20 years of relative deprivation), I would probably manage about 350 per week, not 250. But it’s not the point that matters, as the key decision was to eliminate all use of social control media, spend less time checking bad news sources (many news sites turned rogue; they rely on their past karma to attract visitors), and I’m generally a lot happier and more focused. I know people who suffered burnout because they spent too much time doing things they didn’t enjoy (typically because they got paid to do so, hoped one day they would turn the money into belated gratification).

Pursue your passions, do them in moderation. That’s what life ought to be about.

It raised awareness of the very things they were trying to suppress.

N a lot of ways we have already won. What do I mean by that?

Well, first of all, we’re finally going to have our laws rectified, perhaps as soon as later this year.

Second, since we were defiant and ended up making sacrifices for the sake of the nation and for Software Freedom, among many other things such as real computer security (as opposed to American back doors), more people will get involved and are already getting involved.

The cat is out of the bag; lawfare does not always work – it has only backfired spectacularly.

love birds.

Birds are lovely, adorable animals. They’re enjoyable to feed or even just to look at. Birdwatching isn’t just some reactional activity of old generations (elderly people); anyone out there should be able to enjoy that and it doesn’t cost anything. Today we watched a wren hiding in the trees and singing. Later another bird walked towards our door, so we treated it while it was carefully watching no other bird noticed (or competed for the seeds).

But we don’t really want the birds inside the home, not just for sanitary reasons or damages. We seldom let them indoors, sometimes for shelter from horrible weather, sometimes by accident, and sometimes not (neither). The Sick Bird walked into our home once and it was – for a change – with full consent because she was vulnerable.

Birds are in general not domesticated and it would be cruel to put any kind of bird inside a cage. It’s not in their nature and massive cages in zoos are still cages. We need more wildlife, not zoos. As for pets, it depends on the animal.

UST this past month this site turned 20 and today I realised that some time around the end of this year the combined age of Techrights and Tux Machines would be 35 years. No kidding! That will be when Tux Machines is over 18.5 years old and Techrights is past 16 (less than 2 months from now).

The Web is moving fast, just like software. A century is off the scale for computing (nothing lasts this long) and a decade is also a long time. Several decades is exceptional, so I’m quite proud to have come this far. For sure, based on my situation, there’s at least another decade left.

He’s no meat, he has feelings

year ago Rianne became fully vegetarian (we had both been gradually stepping in that direction for about 3 years already) and last month we got to meet some adorable highland cows and sheep at the outskirts of Manchester.

Rianne feeding the sheep

That calf is truly adorable and he was bullied by the sheep

On Wednesday we went for a long walk in nature (about a mile from home) and passed by the construction site (less than half a mile from us) where there would soon be a new facility for sports and entertainment, right alongside the famous Manchester City Stadium. Mock-ups below.

Looking from our home’s direction

Looking towards our home