🤖 I bought a Gundam Gunpla model kit 1. I had a “Oh… these instructions are difficult…and in Japanese…and also difficult…and also completely in Japanese… However. I am the GOAT at Ikea furniture building and after composing myself with a cup of coffee it actually wasn’t that difficult and was pretty fun! Not sure if I’d get any others as I don’t have the room, but I’m glad another bit of Japanese nerd culture is ticked off for me now and I have a li’ll robot buddy 😊🇯🇵
🎬 Playing with Final Cut Pro on iPad and now Mac thanks to the Apple Creator Studio subscription show just how disjointed these apps are.
There are whole features on both apps that don’t exist on the counterpart.
iPad has a fantastic dynamic soundtrack feature. Not on Mac.
Mac supports automatic caption creation. FCP for iPad doesn’t support captions at all…WTF (But you can hack this using titles…)
As a newbie, having access to both apps seems to just make things more confusing… not less 😵💫
👆I’m still very much enjoying playing with the Halide Mk III Public Previews B&W mode. I’m very excited to see how it evolves and it’s great whilst one of their team members have left that they seem to just be moving forwards with an energy and purpose. Very good stuff to see.
🙇 I missed writing an entry last week as I just didn’t have the time! Sumimasen!
Has my telephone meeting (still think it’s a bit daft we had to have a conference call after the online chat, but whatever lol) with Apple about my Techwoven case coming apart and they have agreed to “make an exception” and swap it. I did argue that with the break being in the corner and the fact the glue along the bottom also appears to have failed it seems like a manufacturing fault to me… the case has not been dropped, the phone is fine etc.
Anyway, the dude on the phone was incredibly helpful and a pleasure to talk to. I think the phone service with Apple is the way to go vs the online chat which in my recent experiences has been awful to deal with.
Anyway, that’s a result! A text chat, a 2 day wait and a 20 minute phone conversation later I can carry on with my day now 😂
Due to no fault of my own it appears part of the frame around the camera bump on my Apple Techwoven case has decided to snap and separate from the case. Haven’t knocked it, bashed it. Just took it out of my pocket and felt it stab my finger.
Contacted Apple support on live chat, sent the above photo and I have to have a “telephone meeting” with them on Friday to discuss the issue 🙄
I pretty much guarantee they’re going to imply this is my fault and with the existing service I have had from Apple this year I fully expect them to deny a swap. How crappy is it this is the level of support I believe I’ll get from this flagship brand.
A busy week at work and at home, a the UK continues to be battered with stormy weather. We have a yellow ice warning tonight that goes right into a yellow rain warning tomorrow. Oh joy!
This week had some monumental shifts for Apple’s applications with the launch of the Apple Creator Studio. I had some stuff to say about it and was interested for the launch. I wrote in that article
I already pay £50 a year for Final Cut Pro on the iPad. So upgrading to this suite would “only” cost me £70 a year.
Surely A company like Apple will have a slick way to onboard and uplift from current subscriptions to this offering? Much like when Apple One (Another Apple product I pay for) came around? I just flipped my sub over and was done!
Sadly no. I paid for a year of Final Cut Pro at a cost of £50 in November. When I subscribed to Apple Creator Studio it just started a new subscription for the full £129 a year.
Not to worry! Apple is renowned for their customer support! I’m sure they’ll be understanding about the issue if I raise a support ticket Right? Customer service is one of the pillars that keeps us using their products! My argument is reasonable, I’ve basically upgraded my sub and given them more of my money!
I was irrationally angry about this. Yes, sure I know it’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I’m in the incredibly privileged place that I can eat that cost, yell at clouds, consider my jimmies well and truly rustled and eventually move on with my day (Well… move on after writing this massive rant… lol)
This has been my view all week as the weather across the UK has been utterly grim. Rain, rain and yet more rain. Seems like next week is going to be just as bad! Local areas have had flooding and high winds last night brought some trees down causing a bit more chaos and disruption. I have never longed for summer as much in all my life.
After watching this video about the Apple foldable being announced soon(ish?) I have come to the conclusion that foldable’s, especially this foldable is just not for me. Sure all the folding science stuff is neat, layers of glass and metal and all that. The engineering is surely fantastical. But what’s that do for me? 🤷
For a long time now I’ve had an extremely convoluted method of backing up my iCloud Photos by manually extracting files and then uploading them to an external drive and some cloud storage. Fiddly, awkward and generally not great.
I hate doing it. So you know what that means. I don’t do it as routinely as I should.
Which for something as important as photos of my family… is not great.
Lot’s of people don’t realise is that iCloud is not a backup. it’s just your files offloaded to the cloud. Sure it’s sorta on your computer and in the cloud, but really there’s still just one copy. Especially if you offload storage. It’s subject to outages, corruption and accidental deletion just like any other file on your computer.
“Two is one, one is none”
- Navy Seals or something apparently… I dunno but it’s a good quote
🇹🇭🎒 Eldest has been on his backpack through Asia for a week already. He’s been in touch every day sending lots of updates and photos which has been really nice to see. Looks like they’re having a wonderful time. We FaceTimed for the first time today. I used FaceTime with the Apple TV for the first time and it worked really well! Made it feel much more natural.
“One Powerful Collection, One Smart Subscription”
So it finally happened. Apples creative software has been dragged into the subscription world for good or for bad, with a bunch of AI smeared over it to make the shareholders happy. As is typical of modern Apple, there’s some good, some bad and some general confusion about how the heck the whole thing is gonna shake out.
Well, a big one this week as my eldest and his girlfriend set off backpacking Asia as part of their gap year for six months. I’ll miss them very much whilst they’re away, but I’m very proud of them and delighted they're off on such an amazing adventure.
Ok, let’s get the obvious out of the way first. I am a certified member of the pika fanboy club. I love this service and what they’ve added to the service this year. Check out the Features they’ve added already! including the absolutely massive steps forwards they’ve made in photo hosting. 1
This post serves two purposes. To thank Good Enough for such a wonderful platform as well as of course soapbox the specific little tweaks I want for my own selfish purposes 😈
So that being said, thanks Good Enough! I hope you have a wonderful 2026 and here’s my little wishlist for Santa next year 🎅
I would love love love the ability to have BBCode style spoiler tags on Pika for when talking about media and doing reviews. Sometimes I might want to talk about spoiler style content from games, TV shows etc. It’d also be a great way to content warn sensitive content on Pika as well. I have Tooted this to them and I hope it’s on the roadmap for 2026.
As someone who posts a photo series that can’t really responsibly post photos he features, I would love to be able to directly embed a Mastodon post on my site.
This is mega niche, but I have a realm of buttons at the bottom of my site. Some silly, some not. I have two sub-wishes for these.
Make them linkable
Be able to have them side by side (I cannot figure out the formatting for this for the life of me, maybe I’m just being silly)
And that’s really about it! I’m incredibly happy with my little cabin on the web. Here’s to another year of the indieweb and blogging! ✍️🤘
This one was huge and is such a wonderful addition!
🦃🎄 Christmas is nearly here! At the hospital I work at the canteen does Christmas dinners every day in December, and as staff you get a discount. How could I resist!
We were joking that next year we should do some sort of charity challenge where we try and have one every day for as long as we can go. I think I might actually end up admitted to the hospital if I actually try that though! 😅
Hats off to the amazing canteen staff who make this happen. It must be such an operation to do this for a whole month for 100’s of people a day. 👏👏👏 Just one of the many parts clinical and non-clinical that makes the NHS so special.
I have engaged the Christmas wallpaper 🎄
Shoutout to @Iconfactory@iconfactory.world for the fabulous Wallaroo app!
After hearing about this via the great retro computing YouTube channel “This Does Not Compute”, I could not rush to Amazon fast enough to grab a “Maclock” of my very own.
It’s a simple alarm clock based off a classic Mac, but the quality of the mould used on this thing punches way above its weight. For £20 shipped directly from China via Amazon, I can’t really fault how this looks.
This little guy arrived today. Will do more of a write up soon. 🖥️
I cannot believe how fast these weeks are going by. Another week where I have felt constantly busy whilst still not managing to get my shit together somehow… (Davey…isn’t that just life? Yeh perhaps…)
🏳️⚧️ It was Transgender Awareness Week culminating in Transgender Day of Remembrance this week. Seeing how the UK’s politicians and press continue to treat transgender people is frustrating and disappointing. I will continue to practice my allyship as best I can and provide a safe and supportive environment in my personal and professional spaces, speaking up against hate wherever and whenever I can.
✍️ Blogging! I love it! Why am I not doing it more!?!? 🤔 I guess with trying to focus on the gym/health as well as life in general at this time of year I just haven’t had time to sit down and properly work on some “bigger picture” posts. Maybe I’m just a bit old and boring…
I do plan to write up about my change in newsfeed readers (See lower in this post for more info) as well as my Wishlist for Pika in 2026. There’s also some gadget posts to come through as well. Let’s get it done!
I still struggling with bringing back Every 100th Of A Second. I think I just need to get out a “catch up” one with some of the shots I have and then crack on with a schedule. I will try and get this out tomorrow. I still struggle with having a series to do with pictures when I can’t embed the pictures on the post… 😂