Rachel Owens

Some days will stick in your mind and haunt you for a long time after. Today is one of those days.

Whatever you think of RTD, he knows television and knows the warning flares need to be sent up. Television and journalism need to start questioning and pushing back. Pushing back hard.

Up early to try and dodge the #M60 traffic.

Rachel Owens 🏳️‍⚧️ (@rowens@mastodonapp.uk) 783 Posts, 176 Following, 96 Followers · Amateur radio operator/UK power grid engineer. Learnt VB.net many years ago (subsequently forgotten), now dabbling in web technologies. Not a professional programmer. Previously done radio presenting. Never became a broadcast engineer 😢. Aussi salut! Je apprendré à français. Je peux lire et écrire en français mais Je n’est peux parler français bien cette temp. All views are my own. 🏳️‍⚧️ (She/Her)

Seeing as Bluesky is going the same way as Twitter (i.e. Down the shitter), I just thought I’d remind you that you can follow me on a truly decentralised service.

https://mastodonapp.uk/@rowens

I’ve woken up to the sad news that Jane Goodall has passed away. I had the pleasure of meeting her on a couple of occasions through some initiatives we took part in at secondary school. A truly inspirational woman with a genuine passion for her work.

Once happened to me overnight on the M1. Scary thing to read and I was just waiting for the headlights to appear. Thankfully they did not.

That would explain why nothing seems to have happened there. Whilst that project is on hold I’m surprised they’ve not reinstated the part time signals. I’ve seen the M65 Westbound stack up with traffic on the exit slip and the first lane. Admittedly I don’t think it gets as bad these days.

A photograph of the London skyline from around Trafalgar Square. In the photograph the Themes is visible in the foreground with the National Theatre behind illuminated in purple. There are numerous high rise buildings in the background including the Shard with various office lights on. Red anti aircraft lights are illuminated.

So happy to be back in the North West. Much prefer the rolling hills compared to city life. Here’s a picture of London this morning at 01:00 because I couldn’t sleep.

Ooo thanks for sharing this. It is a terrible mess and I’m bored now of driving through Accrington.

Now I’m trying to do the mental calculations in my head to work out if it would be quicker to go through Rishton or take the M65 a junction and sit in the longest set of lights at the Dunkenhalgh. The exciting things I do at 5:50 in the morning 😂

Conflicted this morning around my Hackspace membership. I’m considering cancelling it as I don’t use the space all that often sadly.

A photograph of a Cole’s Snag dog cake in its packaging. If your a Brit, think Colin the caterpillar but instead it’s a dog.

Oooo, it’s an #Australian cake.

Personally I'm really looking forward to the B6236 re-opening.

That's if it ever re-opens.

My hot take is that Wikipedia *should* geo block UK access.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to refurbish the antenna so hopefully there will be a weaker than usual signal to view. I plan on refurbishing the antenna to continue VHF satellite downlink observations.

Just scheduling the final passes of #NOAA19 and #NOAA15 on my #satnogs ground station. After over 15 years and 20 years respectively in orbit their APT downlinks are being switched off over the next few days.

rowens's journey with Träwelling 278.0km from York Rail Station to London King's Cross Rail Station in line LNER.

My first #Träewelling entry. I don’t admittedly take trains all that often because they’re so damn expensive.
Feel free to follow my #rail journey shenanigans there.
https://traewelling.de/status/5615479

YouTube advert (non video) with “How gay are you?” in big letters over the rainbow flag.

YouTube ads are unhinged!

Photograph of the outer sleeve for Bomb The Bass - Winter in July 7”

I’m starting to acquire a few records, mainly Now compilations, but I have purchased a couple of 7” singles such as this which is one of my favourite tracks

Just managed to trip out the home electrics by putting a #poptart in the toaster.

I can hear the Americans laughing from across the Atlantic.

A screen grab of Amazon previously viewed page. The page title reads "Keep shopping for Religious mass" and the featured item is a 5LP NOW That's What I Call Eurovision Song Contest

You heard it here first,
The Church of #eurovision

Having to buy old 50p pieces so I’m able to use an old payphone I bought.

Perfectly normal.

Microsoft: Makes a python tool to convert office documents to Markdown

Me: Oh cool, Microsoft are starting to adopt an open standard! I wonder why?

Microsoft: For use with LLM

Me: 🤦‍♀️ (strong)

And rather trying x number of times and giving up, it would try every 30 seconds, with 10 lots of requests every time.

So I noticed after installing a local DNS server on my network that my desktop PC was spamming the crap out of one specific URL, after much digging and sysmon-ing I discovered it was an RSS reader extension trying to fetch an old feed from a server that is no longer active.

Furthermore to last nights post, the 6 o’clock alarm did ring and I feel very groggy. Where’s that damn bluebird?! #daydreambeliever

Ok, I have just spent far too long (on a week night, I have work tomorrow) typing to get a #payphone from 1990 working. It doesn’t even accept modern day currency. I have no idea why I’ve suddenly got into #telephones but I have.

Funny how politicians can flip flop on their opinions of “hate speech”

Oh great…

I think we can safely assume that all the cheap portable AC units from the likes of Lidl and B&Q have probably all sold out in anticipation of the UK #heatwave