I’m experimenting with trying to remove Sonos. That’s a story for another time.

But a part of that is switching my smart speakers over to Apple Homepod and Homepod Mini. I already have a few around the place, and they work well with Homekit and Siri.

I already had one Homepod Mini in my office, but to replace the two Sonos One, an extra Homepod Mini to create a stereo pair was a non-negotiable. As it happened, I had one on the shelf (I tend to pick them up if I see them being sold secondhand…) - this one was actually brand new and never used. Nice.

When your son says “Daddy can I have a 3d printed Ender Pearl?”

What are you to do?

Hope you enjoy!

This is one of those crazy tech issues that really shouldn’t be an issue… until it is… and then it takes you far too long to figure out. And the resolution is crazy simple.

The video describes it but in short:

• You should be able to import multiple parts to Bambu Studio and it will offer to create a single object with multiple parts, for you.

This is what you want, but sometimes, it doesn’t work! I was struggling with this for a while. I thought it was a limitation of e.g,. Tinkercad or Bambu Studio.

Not gonna lie - I freaking love the Bambu Labs X1C - have been having huge fun with it.

Tinkercad gives me the n00b 3d design skills I need and the X1C takes the guesswork out of printing the stuff.

So…. a short video on a compelling use for it. Admittedly the £2 fix doesn’t justify the £1k cost of the machine… but still, fun!

Lots more on this topic to come, I expect!

Add another to the stash:

The second of 2025’s ultra-distance running events - having finished the BTU Highland Ultra a few weeks previous.

This was an altogether different beast. 36 miles around the cliffs and coast of Guernsey. You basically smash together the (mostly road-based) Guernsey Marathon with the Dogbreaker (bathing pools to the Imperial on the cliffs.)

It’s an interesting event. I think if you were coming fresh to the island to take part then it would be an amazing experience, but having completed all of the various components individually (in some cases multiple times) already, it felt like a bit of a slog and a bit of a tickbox exercise.

This was last week:

When I completed 2024 Ironman Vittoria Gasteiz - my main takeaways were

(a) that before considering Ironman (or even Extreme Tri) any further I needed to get better at running, but also (b) that of the three disciplines in triathlon, I was at that time most drawn to the running.

So with that in mind, I set my sites for 2025’s challenges on some ultra-distance events. And quite by accident - listening to a podcast about something called the Jungle Ultra - the Beyond The Ultimate Highland Ultra landed on my radar. This seemed to tick all the boxes - I like running, I like mountains, and I like running in mountains. I’d heard great things about Knoydart, so this seemed like as good place to start as any.

Last year, I invited you (yes you) to begin.

I still remember hearing that poem for the first time, an inspiring poem by Sophie Diener called ‘The First Step’ which elegantly captures the reasons why so often ideas languish as mere items on a to-do list. It spoke to me then and it still speaks to me now.

I may have clumsily used it as an opportunity to post about how people should do hard things but really it was a message to me, to go and do hard things.

I am very much a macOS person but having just gone through the rigmarole of installing a new Windows 11 PC I wanted to document a couple of things.

The machine is not modern and is being repurposed as a first gaming PC for the house - i.e., Steam, hence needing Windows in place of macOS.

The components were fortunately just modern enough to allow Win11 to install by enabling TPM in the BIOS in the usual way. The Windows installer has come a long way since the last time I’ve had to do this and must say that other than the points noted below, it was relatively painless. Really just next next finish.

If you enjoyed the first exciting instalment of this series on Nintex workflows in SharePoint failing to run after security patching and were sad that that was seemingly the end of it, then DON’T WORRY! BECAUSE IT’S BACK.

That’s right, just when you thought all was fine and hunky-dory in the world, your friendly IT service providers once again went ahead and did some more server patching and once again went ahead and managed to knacker Nintex workflows. Specifically workflows using the state machine activity with the observed behaviour being that workflows simply would never reinflate after switching state.

An enquiry into values

My magnum opus. For now, at least.

“What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. Although it’s not very factual on Zen Buddhism. Or Tiny Workshops either.”

Vid

It is inspired by the great 1974 work of philosophical examination by Robert Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Well the title is, anyway.

Explainer to follow.