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Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK profile picture
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
@Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK

Old roaming Tom Cat (zwerfkater) but still young at heart. Toots EN, (NL,FR,DE). #DevOpa - interested more in retro tech / culture / aesthetics than new stuff. Also transport and public infrastructure in general (with a UK/European focus)

Welcome to the secret goose shed!

Avatar is a tabby point Siamese cat - header picture is a Stentor FM radio transmitter designed in the Netherlands; popular with small pirate radio broadcasters in late 1980s

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[email protected]nip05
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  • wss://relay.ditto.pub – read & write

Recent Notes

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK · 2d
At #Caversham this weekend for my cousins birthday. Successfully dealt with 2,5 hour drive and notorious kerb outside their house without scuffing alloys. First time I have been on a long run since #t...
 Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK profile picture
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK @Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
Spotted two #CCTV cameras on the way back from the restaurant - I think the first one (recently upgraded, looks like its got IR LEDs to snag ANPR data by night) is to guard the portion of Hemdean Road that you can only drive in one direction (the other is restricted to buses),

The second (PTZ on a pole outside the bakery) has been around for at least 10 years - it may even have been there when I lived in the area and would be feeding Echo Tango - TVP / Reading Council CCTV operations centre, which has been around over 32 years now
(I remember when it first got set up)


note1gmek6...
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK profile picture
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK @Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... 15 years ago a lot of kit would still have contained microcontrollers, but it was a case of kilobytes rather than gigabytes and it wasn't expected the device would have Internet connectivity (so manufactures didn't feel they had the opportunity to harvest and sell data to adtech companies).

I suspect there will be a return to traditional devices, but prices may also increase when smart devices stop providing the desired revenue streams//
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK profile picture
At #Caversham this weekend for my cousins birthday. Successfully dealt with 2,5 hour drive and notorious kerb outside their house without scuffing alloys. First time I have been on a long run since #tuning #EA888 engine in #GolfGTI - fuel consumption isn't too bad at all!

Stuffed my face with food and had a few beers (not driving for a couple of days) to the point I have to use mobile phone to toot, as I don't know the WiFi code to use for the laptop and am too drunk to search for it (I risk falling down the stairwell).

Will be helping my cousin later today with configuring a CCTV camera (they had a security incident recently that justifies them deploying one)


1
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK · 1d
Spotted two #CCTV cameras on the way back from the restaurant - I think the first one (recently upgraded, looks like its got IR LEDs to snag ANPR data by night) is to guard the portion of Hemdean Road that you can only drive in one direction (the other is restricted to buses), The second (PTZ on a...
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK profile picture
Case has been dropped against #Serco employee accused of leaking #Thetford #Norfolk asylum seeker accomodation addresses - however this doesn't really let Serco off the hook, nor the local community - many others living in Thetford would have known the addresses (as its not that easy to just hide people in a street), and *chose* to circulate them..

(there's other social media circulating these details and they are not obviously linked to the man who was initially nicked)

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2026-08-22/case-dropped-against-man-accused-of-leaking-asylum-seeker-addresses
note1lf0ar...
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK profile picture
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK @Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
@nprofile1q... I think there are separate but interlinked issues - a lot of folk (not only kids/youths) have lower attention spans and problems reading long-form content, this has been going on 20-25+ years and predates AI by some decades.

Ofc many of these people are now parents, so never taught or encouraged their offspring to read for fun (so reading gets associated with school/formal education and studying for exams and is often approached in a way that makes it seem tedious / boring (exam pressures can cause even an intelligent kid to become disaffected from education!), and corporates are actively encouraging AI everywhere..
note1v3hey...
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK profile picture
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK @Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
@nprofile1q... as a brown person I've had genuine trustworthy friends/comrades over the years who /used/ to be NF ( National Front / fash ) back in the 1980s/early 90s, as the rave scene did change a lot of peoples attitudes towards multiculturalism, but the real test is how they behave now they are in their 40s/50s with family/kids and have to be sober - to be fair, a lot of folk have permanently changed for the better, but there are equally as many from that scene who only calmed down their hate as you couldn't get partydrugs without going amongst black/brown/foreign people, but now they are sober their prejudices have come back..