Cycles: 20250422-20250615

Err… how is it June already‽ The seasons have been yo-yoing back and forward it’s hard to know where we are in the year. When someone mentioned a potential heatwave over the summer, I had to do a double-take. I’m just pleased there are spats of dry and wet weather.

The garden, or should I say meadow, is at least knee high at the moment. Both front and back garden are well and truly wild. I’m enjoying the five or six single-track pathways worn between the back door, the garden office, raised beds and washing line. Equally enjoyable is looking out across a sea of green waves whilst sat at the dinning room table. There’s something really conforming about being submerged in nature.

Our pond is starting to seem nestled in now. I frequently catch a glance of a cheeky water beetle flashing it’s rear end before disappearing under the pea-green surface. The occasional frog and toad have made an appearance too, breaking the murky water whilst a funfair of damselflies, perched on a floating log, getting up to no good.

There’s been a sudden burst of growth in the raised beds and our micro orchard of two: soon we’ll have a glut of tomatoes, squash and apples. I’m determined to make good use of the wind-fall fruit this year, perhaps apple cider vinegar?

I’ve really struggled with finding the time and energy to write. My thoughts and ideas are getting lost between the gap of work life balance. It’s good to finally get another Cycle written.

While there’s not been much content being written, I have been tinkering behind the scenes. I created a json feed of my chronological content firehose – Everything Everywhere All At Once – which plugged into Echo Feed for easy syndication to Mastodon. It just worked! The json syntax is my development spirit animal.

I’ve also been playing around with my home network recently. Partly because tinkering is fun but also with the aim of freeing up a Raspberry Pi 4 for BirdNetPi: a self-hosted birdsong monitor. After trying to install a bug fixing fork of the PodGrab, I ran into some problems so I took a punt on AudiobookShelf. I’m absolutely delighted I did and with the results, especially the mobile app with local streaming and offline access for audiobooks and podcasts.

Related to this, I’ve been considering hosting an RSS feed of individual podcasts that I’m not quite ready to subscribe to. Up until now I’ve been using Huffduffer for this but find the lack of websites willingness to an exposed mp3 file absolutely infuriating. Huffduffer also has a limit of RSS items. So with the help of Podcast Index I’ve been collecting podcasts on my website since this week. I’ve added the RSS feed to AudiobookShelf and as its on my website anyone else is welcome to too! IndieWeb FTW!

I’m officially a John Lewis & Waitrose Partner! It’s been an absolutely wonderful three months working with some really smart and kind people. It goes without saying I’m over the moon.

We’ve made a lot of progress in our team in the time since my last post. There’s some things to address to keep the momentum going. I’m really grateful for the constructive criticism and feedback I’ve received so far and excited for the challenge(s) to come.

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of attending Tamsin and Charlie’s Content Rising. A day-long conference exploring the power of storytelling to address and inspire climate action. I left fully reinvigorated and reconnected with my passion for nature and the people doing impactful work. With this inspiration or nature I spent some time on Saturday setting up BirdNetPi. Even with the only shoddy USB microphone I’ve had to hand, I’ve clocked up 626 detections and identified 10 different birds… including a Short-toed Treecreeper! Now begins the research for a decent microphone.

The panic of realising just how out of shape I was hit hard on the train ride home from Guilford after riding the Downs Link with Andy Keetch. With Brothers in the Wild – a leisurely two-day bikepackingglamping event – the weekend after I sprung into a week fitness cramming mode. After some pre and post-work rides, I somehow got away with it.

The weekend in Dorset was fantastic; superb people, weather and scenery. I felt somewhat out-nerded by the bike-obsessed folks. More of this please!