2026-10-20 22:02:46
The past couple of weeks have been tough. I'm not entirely sure why, but my mental health has taken a downturn. It doesn't feel like the meds are really doing anything at the moment, and I've been increasingly restless and fitful during sleep again.
Yesterday, I had to go back to the doctor's as the pharmacy was having problems getting hold of my repeat prescription so we also discussed the current situation.
I've had an almost constant headache for the past 7-8 days, occasionally dipping into migraine territory. This has been attributed to not being properly rested. Even though I may be asleep, I am not gaining the benefit.
Consequently, I've been advised to take melatonin to help promote healthy sleep alongside an increased dose of fluoxetine — I don't think I can go much higher.
Autumn has hit with a vengeance, and the reduced hours of daylight likely don't help. I always struggle at this time of year. The transition from away from the long days of summer really affects me.
All this, and things being quite busy at home, have meant that studio time has been at a premium. The last couple of times I have managed to get up there I just listened to the same 16 bar loop on repeat, knowing that the track should exist but not having the headspace to work on it properly.
Yesterday, I took delivery of a Roland TR-505 bought cheap on eBay. It's in excellent condition for a 40 year old device, especially the screen, and I'm hoping it'll give me a bit of inspiration through shiny new toy syndrome.
I had a quick play last night, comparing it to the 505 samples I have on the LM Drum, and it sounds very nice — really punchy.
2026-10-18 05:25:26
Spent about half an hour tweaking the CSS for /photos so that it correctly matchea the rest of the site.
I'd already linked the main theme CSS, styled the title, and added the footer but things were conflicting. It just needed a bit of attention to ensure everything lined up correctly.
Looking pretty good now.
2026-10-12 04:37:35
It's been four months to the day since I started wearing the Sekonda Hybrid watch and, apart from the initial setup period, it's just been put on its fourth charge. That's right, I'm still only having to charge it once a month, irrespective of how much I use it or how many notifications I get.
I originally said I'd be happy charging it once a week, but this is beyond my wildest expectations.
Consider me extremely happy with it.
2026-10-11 02:53:40
I think I've just fixed a bug with the <source:markdown> element in the RSS feed not getting populated.
Testing works when run directly — this post will test it's also okay when getting triggered by a new post.
Update: Looking good. 👍
2026-10-09 17:50:51
Word of the day: opprobrium
2026-10-09 05:09:59
It's been a bit quiet here lately for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I've been focusing on music in my spare time (hence the recent releases) what little there has been of it.
Second, things have been pretty manic in one way or another which has resulted in the aforementioned little spare time.
Third, I've been pretty low and flat — not really had the headspace for ideas in words, just rhythmic sounds. Yesterday was a case in point: I just felt tearful all day for no apparent reason.
As is the way, when I don't write I also generally don't read so /reader had a bit of a backlog.
While flipping through a few unread posts, I saw Robert Birming's post "Let's make /photo pages" but wanted to do things slightly differently.
A while back, I wanted a quick way to browse through, and search, the images on the site — the result was photos.php: 1
It's a simple page that lets you browse a month at a time, displaying any images uploaded during that month. There is also a search function to find things by file name (without the extension).
As this is in the root of the site, I set up a quick internal redirect from both /photos and /photo.
no prizes for originality there ↩