My poor old Kindle is about to be exiled to the wilds by Amazon, banished like some elderly hermit who has dared to outlive the fashions of the age. No more buying, no more downloading, no more anything. After years of loyal service, the little thing is being marched off into digital retirement and straight toward a landfill. And for what? Because it has a keyboard. A keyboard. The sheer audacity of functioning buttons in the year twenty twenty six. The horror.

And as if that were not enough to make a grown man sigh into his tea, my other Kindle, the Paperwhite, is also on the chopping block. Two perfectly good, perfectly functional devices, still holding charge, still doing their job every single day, being nudged toward the great electronic graveyard because someone in a boardroom has decided they are too old. Electronic wastage dressed up as progress, like putting a fancy hat on a donkey and insisting it is a racehorse.

All because it is apparently too expensive to update the software on older Kindles to handle the new book format Amazon is pushing in the name of stronger digital rights management. Stronger for whom, exactly? Certainly not for the reader. Do you not long for the days when buying a book meant the book actually belonged to you, rather than being rented from a distant corporate overlord who can revoke it at will?

I mean honestly, Amazon, if you are going to force me into an upgrade, can I at least stack the twenty percent discount from both devices and stroll off with a smug forty percent? It seems only fair at this point. 😄

I received an email today informing me that my LiveJournal account, yes, that ancient digital relic, has officially turned 21.

Twenty-one. As in, legally allowed to drink in every jurisdiction that still pretends LiveJournal is a thing.

I had genuinely forgotten I even had one. It’s been lurking in the shadowy corners of the internet like a time capsule filled with questionable poetry, dramatic status updates, and the occasional pixelated GIF of emotional turmoil.

But now that it’s reached the age of majority, I suppose I owe it a celebratory pint. Maybe two. Maybe a full round of shots and a long, cathartic conversation about how we’ve both changed.

So tonight, I raise a glass to my LiveJournal, my moody, melodramatic, HTML‑decorated companion from the early 2000s. May it drink responsibly, avoid posting while tipsy, and never remind me what I wrote in 2005.

For those who may be new around here, my blog has gone through four iterations, with LiveJournal being the second incarnation.

• Version 1: Hand-coded posts on my original website back in the early ’90s — before the word blog even existed. Just raw HTML, questionable colour choices, and the burning need to overshare.
• Version 2: Migrated to LiveJournal, where angst met animated GIFs and every post felt like a diary entry written by candlelight.
• Version 3: Took up residence on the Three-Ninjas site, because clearly what my thoughts needed was a dojo.
• Version 4: (And hopefully final version) is right here — on this very page. Still rambling. Still oversharing. Just with better fonts and fewer sparkly backgrounds.

I’ve been haunting the digital wilds since about ’94, back when the web crackled, hummed, and occasionally threatened to set your modem on fire just for looking at it funny. A personal website here, a blog there, sometimes both held together with duct tape, HTML guesswork, and sheer optimism. Realising that I’ve been online for more than three decades is… equal parts impressive and mildly horrifying. At this point I’m basically qualified for a seat on the Internet Druids’ Council.

So yes, by the ancient laws of cyberspace, I am fully authorised to shake my metaphorical walking stick at the TikTok generation. All you hyper‑edited, dance‑looping, algorithm‑summoned sprites may kindly vacate my virtual lawn with your chaotic jingles masquerading as music. I was here when “You’ve Got Mail” was a cultural event, when websites proudly displayed hit counters, when we all wanted to FREE KEVIN, and when animated GIFs were considered the height of sophistication. (That last bit is, of course, a filthy lie. Animated GIFs have never been acceptable. And it’s Gif, not Jif. Do not make me fetch my stick.)

And yet here I remain, still typing, still tinkering, still refusing to log off, and now deeply amused to discover that the Internet Archive has been quietly preserving my online ramblings since the late ’90s. Which means there are, quite literally, thousands upon thousands of historical documents chronicling the last thirty‑ish years of my life, preserved for all eternity. Or at least until World War Three wipes out all technology.

I always assumed I was hysterical. I never expected to be historical.

The heating in my place is via storage heaters. So they heat up over night on cheap electricity and then discharge the heat over the day. To do this they are all wired into a separate fuse board that only becomes live when the meter switches to over night mode.

For those not familiar with the UKs system, think of the meter as having one incoming feed, and two outgoing. One outgoing is live 24hours a day, the other turns on at a set time, and then off again. This switching is all done automatically.

OR….. It used to be done automatically, it has not been working for a few days. I did not spot when it stopped working because it is not the cold yet so I only had the one heater on. When I spotted that heater not working, I tested it, and then turned some others on to check. All remained cold the following day.

Ergo, the  meter is not turning the second feed on, so must be broken. Sever calls to the Power Supplier who just kept suggesting I hire an electrician to come check the heater, until I could get them to understand the issue is on their part of the system. And they agreed to send out an engineer.

The engineer turned up and said I needed a smart meter, I said No. I did not want spyware in my house. It was then that I found out that the original plan was for all normal meters to be turned off last June, and they needed to be replaced. If you want access to cheap overnight power you needed a smart meter, if you were happy for the same price 24 hours a day you could have a dumb one (but they had no dumb ones anyway).

It was while chatting to the engineer that I discovered the reason for the change was (and I am still in shock). The UK meters are controlled by radio waves from radio stations. They play a sequence of beeps at a set time to turn the overnight on, and then off again. And since UK radio stations are all going digital the signal is going. The government has pushed it back a bit from the June deadline since a large number of the UK still runs off radio waves.

All our technology and we need Radio 4 to control our meters… Madness

The engineer sorted the meter swap so heating worked again, and it only took him 2.5hours to do what I calculate as a 30 minute job (And that 30 includes a coffee break).

This morning I received an email from Microsoft Xbox.

“As part of our compliance program for the UK Online Safety Act and our ongoing investments in tools and technologies that help ensure age-appropriate experiences, we need you to verify your age so you can continue enjoying social features on Xbox.”

This amused me a lot, since apart from December when I dusted off and used my old Xbox after the winter storms blew up my PS4. my Xbox has been collecting dust for over a decade. The account itself is old enough in the UK to go to the pub and get pissed, since it is over 20 years old.

I believe if I was actually under age, I would either need a time machine, or a past life to be able to create the account many years before I was born.  Twitter had the right idea by saying anyone who has an account older than X (see what I did there) number of years is obviously old enought.

Some of the things in the UK my account is old enough to do :-

• Buy Alcohol (18 or 21 depending where in the UK)
• Buy Fireworks (18)
• Have Botox (18)
• Buy offensive weapons (18 previously you could only get none offensive weapons)
• Get married (18)
• Join the army (16)
• Drive a car (17)

Some of the things in the UK my account is NOT old enough to do :-

• Avoid age verification

Many, many years ago…

Or in the early 90s when Spodding was a thing, I got chatting to some cool people in Aberystwyth University on Surfers, and the Pleasuredome. After ages of talking, they invited me down to visit.  Yes, children, in the days of “Stay away from strangers”, and  “be careful of people you meet off the Internet”. it never mattered to Spod’s, we traveled the world meeting strangers in strange places. Spod’s are special bunch of people. We are also trendsetters since now everyone orders strangers off the internet to drive them places.

Anyway, I met a great group of people. The ringleaders being Laz and Babbit.

Over the next few years I would often pop down to Aber for the odd weekend for parties, drinking, fun and madness. These are the guys who formed the Reindeer Liberation Army, amongst other things. We all moved apart after University, but everyone stayed friends online.  The friendships formed from Spodding last, you can go years without talking, and the second you reconnect you go on as if you were never apart.

I still have Shroom the reindeers here, that she gave me to look after, which led to an interesting interaction with the police that I will post on here one day.

I have just heard that Laz passed away yesterday, after a battle with illness caused by a stroke she had twenty odd years ago.

She was the heart of the old aber-group, and I felt that something needed to be posted to remember her.

We will miss you Laz.

Google messaged me with a search term update, since this site has had some new popular search terms that have brought people here.

Now the first two are basically the same thing “Kuji in pdf” which makes sense to me since this PDF has been downloaded over 900 times this month alone. So I can see that it may be a popular search term, although who knew so many people are interested in Kuji-In.

But the one that is really confusing me is “necrophilia game”.

I am not sure which I find more confusing, or worrying. The fact people are finding this site from that search term, or the fact that so many people are googling that term that it counts as a “growing term”.

P.S. For those curious, I searched this site myself for necrophilia (yes, I will book myself in with a therapist later) and it turns out there is a post from 2009 called “Fable-2 – Bigamy, Blackmail, & Necrophilia” so at least one mystery has been solved, now I just need to know what modern trend is calling on so many people to google “necrophilia game”?

After four years in the role of Provincial Webmaster, I have decided to stand down for the position.

It has been a fun four years, I got the Province onto Twitter, YouTube, etc. I wrote a new website for the Province, and spread our news over Social Media increasing the good publicity for the Province. It has been a fun four years, but it is now time for a new challenge. 

So I have stepped down from the role.

I can now officially announce the news that I am now the New Webmaster for the Provincial Grand Lodge of North Wales.

The previous Webmaster reached out to me a short while ago to test the waters on if I was interested in taking over the role from him. He had been looking after the site, since he fire wrote it a LONG-LONG-Time ago. After discussing the requirements of the role, and the amount of work involved, I agreed to put my name forward.

So an interview was arranged with the Provincial Grand Secretary, and the current Webmaster, the interview went well. I knew it had gone well because it ended at the bar with the Provincial Secretary getting the drinks in.

And now, it is all official, I have formally accepted the role and have taken over the running of the sites.

It will be 100% official at the Provincial AGM when the PGM thanks David for all his work, and welcomes me as part of the team.

I thought I would take a minute out of my busy hectic day to give a shout out to all my fellow under-appreciated systems administrators out there in their dark offices on this the 16th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day.

Consider all the work your sys.admin does behind the scene, keeping your network connection running, your email not being overly flooded with spam, your IM’s running at a decent speed, and being there to fix a server outage at 3am just so some people can go look at the funny picture you uploaded.  Consider how often this creature gets thanked on his day to day fight against spammers, hackers, lUsers, Software Updates, etc Consider this, then be happy that this IT Hero gets one day a year when (s)he gets appreciated.

So everyone, go take a coffee, cake, or gift to your sysadmin now. or at least drop by their hidy hole to say thanks.

For more information on this IMPORTANT festive day go read THIS SITE

For those about the Insane Asylum Myself & Demopengu are fond of Cake, Beer, & Chocolate (Oh and anything with glowing blue LED’s) !!!

P.S.

Consider this as well. Your Friendly SysAdmin has access to your email, they know what you have been doing and to who. They see all the packets of data traveling back and forth from your machine, seeing when you are working and when your just browsing ebay/facebook/etc, They know what websites you’ve visited (and can change your history to show you been looking at p0rn in the office), Stuff you may not want made public.  They control your password, your login name, your email address, how much of the networks bandwidth you can use, what IM clients are banned, and a million other things that help you through the working day.  Consider this well, and remember, “Its only one day a year!“