Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026, 6:06 pm
Beefing up the animals

recently added several more birds to the feeding cycle, especially young ones. We must nourish them for autumn, then winter. Sometimes they hang around me when I sunbathe, so I can’t say “no”. They are demanding.
We’ve stocked up enough food for them to last until Christmas. Same for the fish, as all new fish are doing OK, I hope for 12 months to come (like the last time). The critical period passed for environmental adaptation and they have a lot of food.
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026, 11:29 am
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).
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026, 10:11 am
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.
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026, 9:51 am
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].
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026, 9:27 am
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.

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026, 8:46 am
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.
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2026, 7:54 am
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.