Rickrolled by the BBC

Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey! That's how I'm starting the day as I write this blog post, with a mug of English breakfast tea for good measure. Over the festive period I've puzzled out how to keep this website fully static and produce these blog posts without resorting to a static site generator or a content management system. Everything you see here was handwritten in Notepad++, and the text you're reading was drafted in Microsoft Word on an iPad.

The world of technology in which we live in today is a far cry from the one that existed when I wrote my first blog post in September 2007. I'd just left high school and was finally able to access broadband Internet at home for the first time. I was also about a year away from buying my first smartphone, which was the "all-new" iPhone 3G. I have no doubt that I'll cringe at how corny and rough-around-the-edges this post is in 17 years' time as well.

I think if you asked a time traveller whether they wanted to visit 2023, they'd probably make their excuses and leave. The world was frequently on fire, battered by storms, and riddled with warfare. The domestic political situation in the USA deteriorated, the FIFA women's world cup final was overshadowed by sexism, a group of rich holidaymakers died in an imploded submersible, Elon Musk continued to ruin Twitter, and monkeypox joined COVID-19 as a global health emergency.

However, we should also take the time to metaphorically smell the roses. In 2023, the UK and EU finally agreed to a modified Northern Ireland protocol under the Windsor Framework, which opened the way to renormalised relations after Brexit. My country also celebrated (and protested) the coronation of King Charles III. Striking workers across the Western world scored important victories that will impact us for decades to come. Loreen returned to Eurovision and won it again, Taylor Swift was Time magazine's Person of the Year, and India became the fourth nation to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon.

I personally saw in the New Year with a bottle of prosecco, a belly full of vol-au-vents, and the BBC's coverage of the firework display in London. For reasons best known to the schedulers, they chose to broadcast a Rick Astley concert on either side of that coverage. It's perhaps a good thing that Rick decided to cover '80s classics from other artists first before he, with crushing inevitability, dropped "Never Gonna Give You Up" on us all once again.

And of course, we kicked off 2024 with Steamboat Willie becoming public domain. Although I should warn you in case you're planning on watching it yourself that Mickey Mouse is kind of a dick in that cartoon, and at one point he pulls a group of suckling piglets away from their mother and starts playing with her tits.

Gearing Up For 2024

During the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2021, I bought a cheap used model 2 Honda Jazz (or "Honda Fit", if you're American). It's served me well since, although I did have to swap the original alloy rims for aftermarket steel wheels because I discovered that they had rusted out and started leaching air out of tyres that I've also since had to replace.

Over time I've spruced the car up with new windscreen wipers, a pair of new license plates, and a new spare wheel. I also periodically re-glue the door seals and wipe down the seats and doors with white vinegar to stop the interior from getting mouldy. I'm hoping that a microwaveable dehumidifier will help with that problem as well, because driving around in a car that smells like a chip shop usually leads to me visiting one, and that's probably not good for my waistline.

Each year around this time I take the car in for an annual service and MOT test, and then hold my vinegar-flavoured breath. Last year I skimped a bit and just paid for an interim service because I didn't think that I'd driven enough miles, and the receipt afterwards had a giant shopping list of problems that I should urgently pre-emptively fix. This year I paid for a proper two-year service and a fuel additive, and somehow all those problems that I hadn't gotten around to fixing yet had all magically disappeared. In fact, my tyres even gained a few millimetres of extra tread depth, according to my mechanics' measurements. It's "amazing" what the more expensive service options can achieve...

I think it was a fair cop though when they suggested replacing my car battery. Not long after I bought the car, I knocked the cabin light on without realising and left it overnight. The next morning, the ancient battery that was already in the car when I bought it was dead as a doornail and wouldn't charge. I called a breakdown service, and they replaced it with a cheap spare one they had in the back of their van. It was slightly too small for the cage, so when a later MOT "advised" about it rattling, I just wedged it in place with a bit of wood. Impressively, that held up for three years before the battery finally failed a drop test, so I don't feel bad about replacing it with a properly fitted one later today.

I also intend to replace the brake pads later this year, because they are a bit worn and it's cheaper to replace them before they've worn down enough to mess up the brake discs. I also want to replace the stereo system with an after-market touchscreen one, because the 14-year-old factory-fitted stereo system isn't compatible with DAB digital aerials and doesn't know how to handle "modern technologies" like smartphones or Bluetooth. I've been talking about that second idea for a couple of years though, so I'd say that there's around a 50-50 chance of me actually getting around to doing it at some point in 2024.

If this is sounding like a janky way of maintaining an older petrol car, that's because it is. As a fully remote worker I don't have a daily commute to worry about anymore, so owning a used car outright seems to be much cheaper overall for a low mileage driver like me than leasing or financing a brand new car every few years. EVs are sadly still well outside of my price range, but I suspect that even if they weren't, the lack of charging infrastructure would be a problem because as a renter I can't necessarily fit my own home charging station. Hopefully that situation changes dramatically over the next 5-10 years, because unless hydrogen fuel cells suddenly get a lot cheaper, electric engines are the future.

And There You Have It

Thank you for reading the first blog post in what I'm hoping will become a weekly event every Sunday. As the Internet moves away from closed platforms with walled gardens to decentralised platforms with open meadows, I hope that my writing can play some small part in the texture and weirdness to come.

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