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Central Line Time Travel to The Mid 90’s

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London Underground

So instead of replacing all the Central line trains, they’re refurbishing them. There’s a whole drama behind that decision, but I’m not getting into it. Over the past year I think they’ve done, what, two of them? Maybe three? I’ve only ever seen photos. Until going to work two weeks ago.

I got on the train to head into the office and immediately noticed it felt… new. Not “new new,” but “refurbished new,” which is apparently a category now.

Quick recap of what they’re doing: they take the existing trains, strip them down to the frame, rebuild everything, fix the motors, and put it all back together. And in the end, you get something that basically looks like the same train you’ve seen for decades, just cleaner and shinier.

Here’s the weird part. I never rode these things when they were actually new. So in 2025, stepping onto a “brand new” Central line train is like stepping into a fresh-from-the-factory 1990s time capsule.

Some things were noticeably updated. The audio announcements sounded different, the seats supposedly got an upgrade, and the seat pattern definitely changed. But otherwise it was the same old train, just suspiciously clean, like someone hit reset on it.

Strange, but kind of fun for a random Tuesday morning.

Update: Alone, Bacon-Deprived, and Productive

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This is an update to my being bored at home alone post published on Tuesday.

Spoiler: still bored at home.

I’m writing this on Tuesday, editing it on Wednesday, and by the time it posts on Friday, everyone should be home again. With any luck, I’ll be wishing for quiet by then instead of complaining about how quiet it is now.

Funny thing, my kids and I all like American bacon. I’m a fan of bacon, period. British back bacon? Excellent. But there’s something about really burnt American bacon that’s just perfect. The kind so overcooked it disintegrates or shatters in your mouth. My youngest and I both love it that way. My older one just likes normal American bacon, no ash involved.

While they’ve been in the States, they’ve been getting up ridiculously early thanks to the time difference and sending me pictures of their breakfast buffets. Massive trays of bacon, easily a couple pounds of it, taunting me through email. It’s cruel, really.

My revenge? I send back pictures of me with the cat. Either on my lap or in his little hammock. It’s our counter-bacon alliance.

Anyway, I’ve found what to do while they’re away.

Aside from the boring domestic bits, laundry, tidying, a little TV, I’ve actually been writing. Or more accurately, dictating. I’ve been dictating for years, but I’ve been terrible at doing it consistently. I’ve had dozens of unfinished drafts, half-formed notes, and “ideas for posts” that never became posts. Recently I started clearing through all of that. Some of what I’ve been publishing lately was written a year or two ago.

But now I’m finally catching up, and I’m actually writing new things again.

The big change is simple: the quiet. When people are home, I can’t really dictate. It’s not like typing. Talking to myself while someone’s sitting nearby feels weird. My wife’s totally fine with it, but I still feel self-conscious.

Now, though, the house is empty, so I can just grab my iPad, look through my notes, and start dictating. Ten or fifteen minutes later, the rough draft is done. Editing takes longer since it is actually typing, but that part feels different, it’s quieter work.

So that’s what my week looks like: I eat dinner, the cat eats dinner, he climbs onto my lap, and I sit there petting him while writing. Earlier tonight, I edited a batch of stuff I’d written Sunday and Monday. Now I’m writing again, getting ahead, and planning what to post next.

I’m aiming to do more writing Wednesday, maybe a bit Thursday after the office, before everyone’s back home.

So that’s the update: still bored, still quiet, but at least productive. And surrounded by fewer pictures of bacon.

This entries picture is one of the bacon photos they sent me earlier.

Quiet Is Overrated

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This week is school half term. M is taking the girls to the States to see her dad. Originally I was going to take off the week, but I only took one day off. Last time they were away and I took some time off, I was extremely bored.

I don’t know what other people do when their families are away. Everyone sounds like they’re extremely productive and do lots of things that they wouldn’t do with their family around. That is not me at all.

M and the girls left first thing in the morning on Saturday. I was up to see them off and then proceeded to make a lazy morning breakfast and coffee and puttered around on the computer. I didn’t shower and get dressed until close to noon.

I spent the rest of the day doing projects on the computer and some things around the house on my to-do list. So on one hand I felt pretty productive. On the other hand, I didn’t leave the house all day.

On the Sunday I was woken up by the cat or else I probably would’ve slept later since it was the day that the clocks changed. I did more work on the computer and lots of research for some projects I was working on and I did tidy up a bit. But any hopes of going anywhere or doing anything exotic didn’t happen. I did go out to the market to get some food for the week, so it was an improvement on Saturday.

I do have plans to go do an activity on the day off I planned on Monday but like I said, I don’t know what people fill their days with when their family’s away. At the idea of it I’m excited for the free time. Then as the time gets closer I realise it’s gonna be way too quiet in the house and I’ll be bored since I say constantly my children are my entertainment budget. They really are. I’m writing this and they’ve not been gone two full days yet and I already miss them all.

Mmmm??? 20-Year-Old Bread

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After Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, I realized I needed to do some basic disaster planning. I didn’t live anywhere near Louisiana, but I had friends who were affected, and it got me thinking about what I’d actually do in an emergency.

So, not long after, I bought a full case of U.S. government MREs, Meals Ready to Eat. Technically, they’re not supposed to be sold, but plenty of people on eBay had them. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have some emergency supplies. At the time, I tested one meal to see what it was like. It was fine, edible if uninspired, though a few of the options weren’t things I’d ever eat by choice.

Fast forward to when we moved overseas. The MREs came with us, naturally. I packed them up as part of the emergency stash. By that point, they were already ten years old, but I’d read stories about people eating 20 or even 30 year old ones that were still fine, just a bit bland. They’re vacuum sealed, built for long shelf life, and if you store them in a cool, dark place, they can last far beyond the stated five years.

Of course, I didn’t exactly follow that advice. They spent years in the eaves of the loft, cool for most of the year but pretty hot in summer. Recently, while clearing out storage, I found the entire case still there. And that’s when I thought, maybe it’s time to finally get rid of them. Even if they’re technically still edible, it’s hard to justify eating something that’s older than some of my colleagues.

Still, curiosity got the better of me. I opened one up, planning to cook it just for fun. I didn’t go as far as heating the entrée. Using the built in heating element would have required to goto the garden outside but I tried the shortbread cookies and the flatbread. The cookies were perfectly fine, and the flatbread, other than a faint aftertaste, was totally edible. No mold, no weird smell, just “slightly” vintage bread. I may open another one and try heating it up someday soon.

The package I opened even had a 20 year old pack of M&M’s, which I may let the kids test in the name of science. Overall, I’m impressed. The stuff really does last. It even made me hesitate about throwing it all out, replacing it wouldn’t be cheap. Then again, the original case was meant for one person, and with four of us now, it wouldn’t last long in a real emergency. Plus, I’m not sure anyone else would agree to eat 20 year old flatbread.

Still, credit where it’s due: the U.S. government sure knows how to make food that refuses to die.

AMEX Points For A Concord Flight Please

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I’ve had an American Express card since university. My dad used to joke that I was the youngest person he knew with an American Express Gold Card. He gave one to my sister and me for emergencies when he and my mom weren’t around, so we had it pretty young. The only reason it was that card was because that was what he had to supplemental cards to.

After university, I got my own Amex in 1998, and since then, I’ve racked up a lot of Membership Rewards points. Not millions, but hundreds of thousands at least. Back when I was traveling for work, no one cared if you earned points on your personal card for work expences, so I accumulated them pretty quickly.

At first, I didn’t do much with them. But as the balance kept growing, I figured I needed a goal to work toward. A regular plane ticket didn’t seem special enough—though I probably redeemed points for one or two back in the day. Then I saw something in the American Express points catalog that caught my attention: a Concorde flight from New York to London, with a return ticket on British Airways, for 200,000 points.

I’d always wanted to fly the Concorde, but it was way out of reach financially. So, I thought, Why not make that my goal? I was almost there when the Concorde accident happened, and the planes were grounded. With my hopes of flying the Concorde gone, I didn’t know what to do with my points anymore. So, I kept saving them, not realizing that holding onto points is actually one of the worst things you can do. Their value drops over time; you’re better off spending them.

Eventually, I started redeeming points here and there. A few years after the Concorde dream died, I used some to buy M a MacBook. I know merchandise isn’t the best way to redeem points, but I think I got a decent deal on that Apple redemption. Around the same time, we used points to save almost half the cost of our honeymoon. Those two redemptions happened within about a year, but even after that, I still had hundreds of thousands of points—and I kept accumulating more, despite knowing it was a bad idea not to spend them.

Finally, in 2017, I decided to burn through everything I’d built up. Once again, I ignored the “best practices” and spent the points on merchandise. While I could’ve gotten double the value if I’d used them for travel, the item I bought had been on my wishlist for a long time: a really nice watch. So nice, in fact, that the points only covered about half the cost. Even though I didn’t maximize their value, I don’t regret it. The watch was worth it to me.

Since then, I haven’t let points pile up the way I used to.

I’m not sure what triggered the memory of the Concorde, but I made a note to write about it. Taking that flight would have been legendary, but the watch is still a pretty great consolation prize.

I Sort of, Not Really, Built My Own Search Engine

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Here’s what I mean: I talk a lot about privacy and the steps I take to keep my digital life locked down. For years, I’ve been a DuckDuckGo loyalist. I dropped Google search ages ago, and I don’t really miss it. But somewhere along the way, I stumbled across the idea of hosting your own meta-search engine, and of course, I had to try it.

So no, I didn’t invent an algorithm that crawls the internet. But I did spin up my own private search setup. I started experimenting with SearX, and eventually migrated to SearXNG, which is the more actively maintained fork. I run it locally on a Raspberry Pi 5, which already pulls duty hosting a handful of other media services and Docker containers. Through Tailscale, I can securely reach it from anywhere on my devices. In practice, this means I get a private, ad-free search experience that no one else can see into. It’s not flashy, but it’s mine, and that feels good.

Has it been life-changing? Not exactly. It’s cool, and I like knowing I have it, but more and more of my “searching” these days gets funneled through an LLM. That workflow is a whole separate rabbit hole I’ll save for another post.

For now, though, I can say this: if you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to run your own search engine, even a “sort of” one, it’s empowering, surprisingly doable, and it gives you just a little more control in a space that usually takes it away.

Is This Really An Empty Train or Another Universe?

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This morning I headed off to the office. The central line has had its fair share of issues for over a year – late, slow, and packed trains are the norm, even on weekends. So, when I arrived at the platform and a train with virtually empty cars pulled up, I hesitated. I couldn’t help but wonder which universe I had stumbled into. I know it’s not the best universe, given that the train was still dirty, but I managed to easily get a seat.

As a side note, I should disclose that there were about three people in the car I boarded, but I used Apple’s photo magic to remove them from the picture, so I’m not posting random strangers’ photos.

WiFi on a Washer And Dryer, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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When we did some work on the house, we bought new appliances, including a washing machine and dryer. I was surprised to find that both came with Wi-Fi. I mentioned this to one of the workers who was building the closet to house them, and he asked, “Why does it matter?” He didn’t see a problem—after all, who cares if someone knows you’re running the washing machine?

I told him that wasn’t the risk. Without diving too deep into a formal risk analysis, I rattled off a couple of scenarios to make my point. For example, someone could send remote commands to flood the house. Or, they could overspin the washer or dryer, potentially causing a fire. Those were just two risks that came to mind on the spot. I don’t think I convinced him, but I ended the conversation with, “We won’t be using that.”

And that’s the issue—most people don’t understand the risks that come with having Wi-Fi in home appliances. What’s worse, manufacturers aren’t taking security seriously. Just look at the headlines, and it’s clear: many of these systems are either not updatable or don’t get updates because it’s too costly for the manufacturer to maintain them. Combine that with in my opinion the lack of any real benefit to Wi-Fi in appliances, and the risks far outweigh the rewards.

I’ll admit, I set up the Wi-Fi on the washer and dryer for about two weeks just to see what it could do. The plan was always to disconnect it afterward, but I was curious. During that time, all I got were notifications when a wash or dry cycle finished. I could also view the settings on my phone, but I never actually used that feature. The notifications weren’t even helpful—the machines already make a loud, distinctive tone I can hear from anywhere in the house. Maybe if you live in a giant house, the notifications might be useful, but for us, they were unnecessary.

After my little experiment, I disabled the Wi-Fi and haven’t used it since.

When we were shopping for appliances, the salesperson tried to sell us a fancy Samsung refrigerator with a touchscreen and Wi-Fi. M and I both immediately said, “No. Just no.” I’d read somewhere that they want these “smart” refrigerators to get to a point where they can read RFID tags in food items and automatically reorder anything you’re low on. The younger version of me would’ve thought that was the coolest thing ever. Present-day me, though, thinks about all the privacy violations that would come with companies knowing everything about your eating habits. Plus, it reminds me of that scene with the “smart” fridge on Silicon Valley. I’m just glad M doesn’t like stuff like that either.

Christmas Crackers

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All set for Christmas. Ordered these bad boys in October. I learned my lesson two years ago when I ordered them early and didn’t realise I ordered miniature ones. Why do those ezist at all I will not know. By the time we got them it was so close to Christmas we couldn’t find them anywhere!