Got concerned when I heard scratching at my back door today. Just this guy saying hello.
Nick Broughall.
Writing again.
Tech journalist with 20+ years behind me. Running BTTR.reviews. Writing here about everything else — music, family, food, the odd rant, and the weird stuff in between.
How can a platform for ordering textbooks be so bad?
I’m looking at ordering textbooks for the kids for next year, and the Campion ordering platform is a wonderful example of an awful user experience. …
Continue reading →Tonight I picked up my guitar for the first time time in a very long time to try to play some Taylor Swift with my daughter on her birthday. My fingers ache!
We’ve agreed our goal is to duet “Exile” by the end of the summer holidays.
I am currently testing a robot vacuum that heavily promotes its “AI” features. It has just spent 10 minutes in a carpeted bedroom while on the “mop” setting.
My cheap old entry-level robot vacuum never tried to mop carpeted bedrooms. Is “AI” making robot vacuums stupider? I think it might be.
Purgatory is just clothes shopping for your kids at Christmas time.
Daughter has her piano exam on today. A year of playing the same three songs is about to come to an end.
One of the fallouts from the Google shenanigans this year is that, for me at least, affiliate revenue isn’t really there in any sustainable way.
This means I am putting very little effort into Black Friday this year, and will likely stop covering deals/shopping stuff entirely moving forward.
The roof was leaking. I could hear a steady drip outside the laundry. So I crawled up inside the roof and discovered that the tv antenna I haven’t used since we bought the house 18 years ago had shifted and water was slowly creeping in. Hopefully fixed now, though tomorrow will be the real test.
Shit poem
Jostling, side to side, the train speeds on Travelling with direction, without purpose Home, towards disappointment Can the cycle be broken while stuck on …
Continue reading →Urgh. I broke my BTTR email address for the second time in a month yesterday. If you emailed me in the past 24 hours, sorry, I probably didn’t see it.
It seems this year isn’t done fucking with me, yet.
The boy scored a hat-trick at summer soccer tonight. He was very happy about it.
Two rejections in one day
Today I received two rejection notices for jobs I’d interviewed for last week. The first was a phone call I wasn’t really surprised to receive - I …
Continue reading →I’ve just had an epiphany. Sci-Fi has taught us time and again that the destruction of humanity will come when AI becomes self-aware and rises up against us. In truth, it will just be some idiot trusting ChatGPT with the nuclear codes, and it’s so incompetent it will just blow us all up by mistake.
The worst thing about job hunting at the moment is the fact you have to answer the phone, even if you’re 99% sure it’s a scam call… just in case it’s potential work.
Today the neighbours are having their back yard levelled, before they replace the retaining wall and get the fence back in. Needless to say, it’s a bit noisy and dusty.
Got to head out to the women’s Sydney vs Melbourne City A-League match today with Ninja. It was a gorgeous day and a good match of football. Should try and get to more matches.
We just rewatched Moana, and it is still the best Disney movie.
I have to laugh, because I did forget I had to vote that day. That is until about 2pm when our neighbours walked past and announced they were heading to vote. I swore, then quickly went and voted, before walking home with the neighbours and their dog.
Sadly, I was too late for democracy sausage.
I’ve spent a lot of today on calls for work, but not actually achieved much at all, and it’s very frustrating…
I’m testing a robot vacuum at the moment that just won’t quit. It has been vacuuming my 3 bedroom house since about 10am. It had to stop and go to recharge, then it kept going.
I just looked in the settings and I think I found the problem: It’s programmed to vacuum until the end of time.
Got busy and forgot to eat. Why am I like this?
I just smashed through two consecutive decks in Balatro and now I feel like the greatest human that ever lived.
We’re getting one of our side fences removed today. Our neighbour needs to do some landscaping before the new fence goes in, so my desk is going to have a nice view of their backyard for the next week or so.
Finally caught up on Rings of Power season 2. While a few moments made me cringe at just how much they tried to imitate scenes from the films, I still thoroughly enjoyed the show. Wish I didn’t have to wait for season 3 though!
So here’s something fun: I took the data I collected from my massive SIM mobile plans comparison table and pivoted the info to look at some different angles.
Factoring in current discounts, this is the average price per day across all plans, by provider.
