That sounds fantastic! I love the idea of progressively decorating, sounds much less daunting

I’ve really enjoyed getting to know more about Krampus over the last few years

Are you in a Nordic country? Sounds nice!

I’m atheist too but spend most of December in cold churches. I like the ritual of it even if I don’t actually believe

I live in the UK so tipping thankfully isn’t a thing here as we have minimum wage. I will tip if I’m at a restaurant with a group of people but otherwise I won’t tip at all. Hospitality workers deserve to be paid more but it’s not up to the customers to supplement a dodgy business. I am in a union and will always vote for parties who advocate for employment rights though.

Tipping is very much a cultural thing and I think it’s not wise to treat it like it’s the same everywhere. In the US it sounds like it’s a necessary evil and if I were to visit I would comply, but it’s not the same as in other countries.

Sting has a lot to answer for

Singing can be surprisingly expensive. My fees for 1 year with two choirs is almost £350, plus extra for hiring/buying sheet music, transport to and from rehearsals and tours. Plus the dinner I have in town before rehearsal (it’s only itsu but it mounts up). Oh and a concert dress (hopefully I only need the one this year), that was £80.

It’s worth it though!

Sounds like the Baader Meinhof effect to me

In all honesty nothing in particular, moreso that I want to explore what’s possible. I used IFTTT for things like switching WiFi on when my phone was in a specific location, saving emails with receipts/order confirmations to somewhere central like Google Drive (though trying to find a non-google alternative). I also liked the Pocket integration.

I find it so interesting how PE is a class one can fail in some parts of the world. We have PE as a compulsory thing but would never get graded on it (just as well, refused to do a lot of it) unless we chose to do it for our GCSEs.

Yeah we had to do it in junior school (so between 9-11) but never did at secondary school. I was in junior school early 2000s in UK.

I could never do it and didn’t really see the point. Plus it always hurt my hands.

I don’t do notes outside of work (where I use Microsoft OneNote to make notes of meetings and any coding training/code) but I keep many lists.

At work I also use Rocketbook, which is a physical notebook you can reuse. You upload the notes to the cloud and then wipe off. It’s great.

In terms of Lists though, they pretty much run my life. Lists of books to read, lists of things I see that my family might like for Christmas (so I’m never stuck not knowing what to get them), lists of places I want to go, films to see, pro/con lists, etc. I use Google Keep but probably going to start looking for a FOSS alternative

Is CBD available where you are? Some people find that helpful (I have some CBD gummies that help my back pain)

I’ve been trying to find solo board games for ages but they’re hard to come across. One day I’ll have the courage to go to the board game cafe but not yet

I love Lego, been getting into it more as an adult than I ever did when I was little (was too expensive). I love the botanical collection, have a nice bouquet at the moment

What kind of you do?

That’s such an underrated skill! Constantly seeing people on Nextdoor asking for help fixing their old watches. If you have a repair cafe then it’s worth volunteering, you’d have a lot of practice!

The fact you have depression/anxiety and have managed to turn going to the gym into a habit is impressive, tell me your secret!

I sing choral music (I’m a soprano) in a couple of choirs. Summertime can be rough as during the rest of the year I’m busy a few nights a week but they break up for the summer holidays which isn’t great for my mental health.

I also do jigsaw puzzles - started during lockdown and it’s good to be able to do something manual rather than screen based. Calming too.

Also just started crochet, making a baby blanket for my incoming niece. Not very good at it but hoping the baby won’t care.

Otherwise I go to comedy shows regularly and try to read as much as I can.

Cat mode?

I would love one please if you still have some!

Good to hear he’s still at it. Wouldn’t have blamed him if he took a break from everything after the last few months.

Still not had an invite to check out Tildes so not seen it, but wish him well.

I think there’s a time and a place for algorithmic feeds. When it comes to Facebook i personally think it makes sense to have a way of filtering the important things first, based on who you interact with. It’s a social network in the definitive sense; we care about some people more than others depending on where in the network they are. However we’ve seen how things go when Facebook use it with pages/news stories (which is really concerning).

For things like Twitter, I want chronological. It’s a real time platform based on sharing information across a larger audience. Its use in breaking news makes timing important. It’s largely gone to shit now because Musk, but in its heyday anyway.

Ideally there should always be a choice, or at least some transparency around how the algorithms work. That way everyone can choose what works for them based on how they use the platform.

Wow things have moved on a lot since I had a blog on Blogspot by the sounds of it!