2026-11-06 05:46:25
Revisiting a bandwagon from 2023 courtesy of Maique and Canion (which still sounds like a 70s cop show). I still use an Android phone so here's what I use on Google Pixel, not Apple.
All-in-all very little change here; I am a creature of habit, content with my set-up for the most part.
I switched to Proton Pass just before the CEO went bonkers and I'm planning on moving to pCloud's password manager as a least terrible option.
Also dropped Todoist (along with Habo for habit tracking) as lists and check-ins were making my life uncomfortably gameified.
2026-11-06 05:36:11
Robert Birming wants us to get to know each other, this November. Here's my hat in that particular ring. Learn more about "Knowember1" on Robert's blog: Knowember, get to know your blogger.
This was taken at a house party many years ago by my friend, Ade. I had recently dyed my hair, like Gerard Way, as an homage to those carefree college days when we were discovering things and rebelling against things
and refusing to blend into a crowd.
I've written before about where my online handle comes from; hryggrbyr is the original spelling of my surname from over 500 years ago.
Everyone just calls me Thom though (even if it's 50/50 on whether they spell it correctly). I've never really had a nickname, per se. When they ask for a name for taxis or coffee, I invariably give my surname because there's wayyyy too many damn Thomases around and, unless I'm in a particular part of England, relatively few Rigby's!
Mostly I blog from my phone. Mostly.
I usually bash out a few sentences whenever I have a second or two spare; waiting in the car, sat on the toilet, train commutes, dog walks.
I love the idea of sitting down at my desk in front of my trusty laptop, cracking my knuckles, and typing out well-researched long form content but I simply do not have time. Yet.
I started this particular blog after a bit of a hiatus because of Friday Random Ten really. It reminded me of the old days of blogging on Live Journal and Blogger. I started writing more and more, ported over content from an old blog, some photo-sharing sites, and dev.to (is that still a thing?).
Nowadays, I'll write about anything. My usual output is book reviews, weeknotes, and carefully constructed and thoughtful opinion pieces rants about technology.
I also share my photography here instead of other places because of reasons.
Now it's your turn. Answer these same questions and send me the link! Get in touch by email, hit me up on the Socials™, or elsewhere online.
1 Just realised it's know-ember not know-vember (thanks, Eryth!) so I've corrected it. Urgh, now I have to set up redirects, lol.
2026-11-05 05:38:31
There's a particularly tricky hill start on my drive home. When I was learning to drive it was the bane of my life; I would stall every single time for a good couple of turns of the lights much to the chagrin of the people queued behind me.
It was very demoralising and I thought that, once I cracked it, I'd feel a great sense of achievement. But I didn't.
The hill start isn't difficult at all now I've been doing it for a few years but I don't feel great about it. It's just something I can do. Why is that? Where's my pride in this achievement?
It's not like I never feel a sense of pride in achievement; when I nail a bass riff, take a lovely photo, or write some banger code, I feel great! All warm and fuzzy and proud of my achievement. So why not with nailing this hill start?
It turns out it's because of "negative reinforcement". I was under the impression, from parenting books and dog training manuals, that this was about discipline and chastising inadequate behaviour rather than praising acceptable behaviour but my understanding there is flawed. There is a difference between "negative reinforcement" and "punishment".
Negative reinforcement is where the goal is "stopping the bad thing" as opposed to "getting the good thing". In the case of my hill start, I achieved a state where the bad thing wasn't an issue anymore. That's a completely different mental response to "getting the good thing".
Even though I succeeded at something, I beat a challenge, it didn't result in something good — it just resulted in something bad stopping.
2026-11-04 06:27:33
I'm working on a project at work for entity mapping; using semantic triples to describe a knowledge graph of a client's content ecosystem. It's mostly a boring spreadsheet so I was wanting to visualise it as Nodes and Edges so it's easier to understand for less technical people.
In my quest to find some off-the-shelf software that can turn an Excel file into a picture deterministically, I discovered Turtle, a Python library for drawing diagrams using path descriptions in (mostly) human-readable steps:
import turtle
SIDE = 15 # length of each side in pixels
turtle.fillcolor('yellow') # Set the fill color
turtle.begin_fill() # Start recording the shape to fill
turtle.forward(SIDE) # Move forward
turtle.right(90) # Turn 90° clockwise
turtle.forward(SIDE)
turtle.right(90)
turtle.forward(SIDE)
turtle.right(90)
turtle.forward(SIDE)
turtle.right(90) # Final turn returns the turtle to its starting direction
turtle.end_fill() # Fill the shape with yellow
turtle.done() # Keep the window openThe cursor crawls along the (invisible) path like an adorable baby turtle.
from turtle import *
color('red', 'yellow')
begin_fill()
while True:
forward(200)
left(170)
if abs(pos()) < 1:
break
end_fill()
done()As the docs say, the possibilities are limited only by the imagination!
2026-11-03 05:22:20
I was served a cup of Earl Grey in a café recently; Picard's brew of choice, if memory serves.
I rather enjoyed it so I bought a box from Twinings and they have a story on the side where they claim to have invented it.
The blend was put together on the instruction of the then Prime Minister of England, Earl Grey, who liked it so much he gave his name to it.
Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.
2026-11-02 04:54:54
The British (original) version of anthropomorphic steam train drama for children, "Thomas The Tank Engine" was originally narrated by Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr.
Ringo was replaced after a few seasons by soundalike Michael Angelis who was married to Corrie's Gail Platt (the lovely Helen Worth).
This I already knew, tbh. But what's news to me is Michael's brother, Paul, was the voice of Ringo Starr in the Beatles' animation for "The Yellow Submarine" bringing the whole thing full circle. Or something.