Our transportal home [507]

Greetings from the shed...

Jan 17, 2025

My dog stands in a frosty country lane looking over at something she heard in the grass. — A phone photo taken on a dog walk

I’m Christian Payne, autotelic, photographer and writer. Thank you for opening this email or clicking on a link. There’s lots here, but you don’t have to read, watch or listen to it all. Thanks for joining in.

#TheAction

This week has been a little hectic. Especially today. Earlier on I had to leap into action with an antenna to do some direction finding. I tend to keep my nerdy radio focused adventures for my ham radio newsletter, so I’ll go into more detail over there. It looked something like this.

I'm standing on a track with a 70cm beam antenna plugged into an iCom ID52

A few of you will know exactly what I was up to.

And then, just as I had settled in to write this we got a call saying someone wanted to view the house at short notice. Something we have been hoping for, but our plans have only been a string of ideas up to now. Feels a bit scary/real.

I just took a peek at the community map and realised that the place we’d like to move to could not be further away from quite a lot of you. It’s an accident I promise. :-)

A map with a red ring around the Scottish Borders

If it happens, it will not only be a whole new part of the UK, it could also be a whole new way of life.

As the world prophesies ‘Black Swan’ events for the coming year, I’m ignoring that which is outside of my control and contemplating technologies and ways of living that don’t automatically offer us a new way to be exploited. Things that champion community, decentralisation and resilience. Think mesh networks, time banks, community solar, permaculture, open hardware, alternative communication systems and libraries of things.

We can but dream. Are you in?

I get so frustrated with these modern day tech-bro-emperors pulling the strings as powerless we plod on, heads down, checking for the next distraction.

We’re dreamers, survivors, clicking links, (if we’re lucky chinking drinks) refusing to drown in the mundane.

Let’s keep on sharing stories. They hold the weight of our reality and it might be that change is only a dream away.

#ThePictures

RIP John Blakemore. Born in Coventry like me. I never got to meet him but know of his as ‘a photographer who inspired a generation’.

Andy from flak photo has curated a list of PhotoPeople.

#TheWords

Writing about writing.

Mnemonic

Thirty days hath September, April, June and November.

Unless a leap year is its fate, February hath twenty-eight.

All the rest hath three days more, excepting January,

which hath six thousand, one hundred and eighty-four.

— Brian Bilston

#TheSound

This piece of audio was from David Sheppard who recently gave me the pleasure of a new experience when he asked me to help him carry a tabernacle from the backseat of an old VW Golf into a Vicarage. In this instance it was a tabernacle in the sense of a small arc of the covenant type thing rather than a Mormon temple. The tabernacle was bloody heavy and the audio he recommended, fascinating. It’s called One Hundred Ways of Listening and well worth your time.

Another podcast I listened to was from Matthew Syed’s Sideways and the series Appetite for Distraction. Five short episodes well worth your time. The title of this dispatch comes from an episode when they were talking about the power of our networked devices.

#TheConsumed

Having not imbibed all week, I’m treating myself to this as soon as I finish here.

Beef is the worst food for the climate. Can it be done better?

I tried a new pasta sauce this week. It involved blending avocado, garlic and cream. But probably needed more salt and pepper and perhaps even some parsley. I liked it but no one else did. I’m just trying to change things up.

#TheThings

First comment on this post is brilliant.

I have more than enough distractions for now but the Nintendo Switch 2 has finally been announced. I rarely play mine but I know i’ll be tempted.

Who the hell throws away old SD cards? Outside of the possible uses suggested in the link, here are my five suggestions…

Add them to a drive case to make your own SSD
Soft mod an old Nintendo Wii
Cram them with songs for the car, or of you car is really old, to populate a tape!
Record a one off podcast and hide it somewhere Audiocaching style.
Or how about loading one up with your favourite (ahem) copyright free favourite books, songs, films and other files and throwing it in a bowl at a file sharing party. If they still exist. Maybe a bowl like this?

Obviously I’m talking about your old gigabyte cards and not a shiny new 4TB type card… Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.

I lost my favourite mini pocket knife through a hole in my jeans. But found a last remaining one in a sale on a random horse riding site for £31. Bargain for what it does.

#TheThanks

Last week I offered ‘massive thanks to the paying subscribers who support this dispatch’ and I singled out a guy called Tim as he’d PayPal’d me out of the blue.

A little while after hitting send on the newsletter, I drove up the A1 to get a particular pack of M&S almond cookies from Brampton Hut service station. As I walked in, Tim was walking out and despite never meeting in the flesh, he recognised me.

This was serendipity at its finest as Tim and his wife had been driving from France with their worldly belongings in a van and still had a long way to go.

I love it when the universe stops us in our tracks like this. Thanks again Tim. ♥️ And also to your fuel gauge that perhaps had a part to play in our meeting.

You too can tune into the universe like Tim. I have a feeling it has something to do with performing a random act of kindness.

Upgrade to paid

Or if you prefer a random hat tip you can do via PayPal

Pay what you like via PayPal

Thank you for reading, sharing, liking and supporting a human doing manual work with their brain.

#TheWeb

Here is your crib sheet for what we learned about LLMs in 2024.
If you live within the circle shown on the snippet of the Documentally community map shown up top, please add yourself just in case the move happens.
I was sad to find that Leonard Cohen’s number one online fan shut all his sites down. I’m glad there is an archive of some of the pages.
Sad to hear David Lynch has died. I pictured him in a longer scene.
You might have already read about Meta’s continued decline into yet another dehumanising cesspool. On the upside the smartest out there are quitting Meta (FB, Insta, Threads etc) and migrating their networks elsewhere. It’s a bit of work but worth it. Some of my places include Letterboxd, Discogs, GoodReads, Flickr, Foto, Strava, Untappd, Swarm, Vivino, LinkedIn, YouTube, Mastodon, or search ‘Documentally’ on Wire, Signal, Bluesky or Zello. Oh, I’m also on or Monzo which is another way of supporting me here ;-)
Interesting reading… Offcom’s media use and attitudes report for adults in 2024