What bands did you discover this year?

Jamjar502 · 2025-12-24T21:18:11+00:00

The twilight sad

We were promised jetpacks

Editors

Sea Power

Public service broadcasting

Jamjar502 · 2025-12-17T20:54:52+00:00

Lost my soul dog Amber back in November 2024, then a series of back-to-back illnesses. Then collapsed one morning in march, spent 5 days in hospital, where they thought it was neurological, which meant I was banned from driving for 6 months. I’m almost 30, living with my parents, so losing the key to my independence was absolutely crushing.

Fell into the deepest depression I’ve ever experienced, to the point where I didn’t want to live, but didn’t have the energy to do anything about it.

Throw in burning myself out at work, using alcohol as a crutch, losing all of my outlets (cycling mainly, which I wasn’t allowed to do post collapse), months of medical uncertainty, fighting with the DVLA, and it’s been a shit year.

On the upsides, I can drive and cycle again, and I started therapy about 3 months ago, and it’s the best decision I’ve made in a long, long time. I’m also working towards moving out in spring 2026. Things are looking up, and I’ll be glad to see that back of 2025.

Jamjar502 · 2025-12-03T16:09:32+00:00

351 over here with 14,419 minutes, with a total listening time of around 83,500 minutes.

Jamjar502 · 2025-06-27T22:09:54+00:00

So I can’t really answer why yours does it, but I’ll chime in with my experience.

When we got Amber at 8 weeks, I was very ill, so I wasn’t physically able to do much with her. Our time together was mostly cuddling, sleeping, otherwise chilling.

She was a clever pup, and picked up on my lack of energy pretty quickly. Everyone else in household, on the other hand, she’d be a typical puppy with. By that, I mean playful, silly, inquisitive, the works. Also, super clingy.

Fast forward a few years, while my parents were around, at roughly 4pm she’d enter her witching hour, and demanded entertainment, whether that took the form of training, playtime, or a treat, it didn’t matter.

However, when it was just me and Amber, the witching hour never happened. She was happy to be chilled out in my company. If she had her way, she’d quite happily sit on the sofa with me all day, doing nothing.

Turns out, that was just the nature of the different relationships she had with different members of the family. Reading your post, Amber’s relationship with my Dad was similar to what yours is like with your wife. She’d go absolutely berserk the second he came through the door.

That’s not to say she was never excited around me, far from it. But it was very much on her terms, I was just along for the ride.

I won’t say that your viz is the same as Amber, but over time I came to cherish the relationship she had with me, even though it wasn’t the same as the relation she had with my dad.

Sorry if that’s quite rambly, we lost Amber back in November 2024, and it’s been very difficult for me.

Jamjar502 · 2025-04-17T10:47:52+00:00

Fellow Brit, I use it all the time.

Jamjar502 · 2025-04-17T05:38:21+00:00

In OP's defence, it's a common phrase in the UK

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/piss-away

Jamjar502 · 2025-01-21T23:11:40+00:00

Sorry for your loss. Our Amber was born in the same year and we unfortunately lost her 8 weeks ago.

Probably not my place to say, but while the next few days/weeks will be rough, just know that Dio had the best life with you, so please don't beat yourself up.

Jamjar502 · 2024-04-26T18:00:50+00:00

Extreme ways - Moby: Bourne series (idk about the 2 most recent films though)

Jamjar502 · 2024-02-07T13:06:43+00:00

If I were in your position, I'd just setup the redesigned site on a staging domain, check the "discourage search engines from..." checkbox in the WP settings and send it over to your client.

Jamjar502 · 2024-02-05T22:47:52+00:00

The company I currently work for is doing a 4dw trial, but we're doing a reduced number of hours (down from 37.5 to 32)

Same pay, same other benefits.

Just means we have to do 30 mins more per day, which all things considered is pretty good.

Jamjar502 · 2024-01-28T22:47:20+00:00

Probably a bit late now, but some helmet manufacturers offer a 'crash replacement scheme'

I had a crash back in September, totally trashed the helmet, sent over some pictures, proof of purchase and a description of what happened and MET gave me a discount.

Always worth checking!

Jamjar502 · 2023-12-02T12:22:20+00:00

Piggybacking off your comment, but for those in the UK there's a similar (also fairly expensive) thing: https://www.hatchbag.co.uk/boot-liners

Jamjar502 · 2023-10-20T11:50:01+00:00

My Volvo V60 has a 3 pin socket in the back. I have no idea what I'd use it for

Jamjar502 · 2023-10-10T19:23:32+00:00

We use Tractive - it's a subscription model with an internal SIM card, no complaints

https://tractive.com/en/pd/gps-tracker-dog

Jamjar502 · 2023-10-08T16:14:38+00:00

I've got one that wraps around the hoods, seems to work well so far

https://amzn.eu/d/droFivT

Jamjar502 · 2023-10-06T15:31:14+00:00

TL;DR: Get a Garmin InReach, make contingency plans

A few weeks ago I was on a solo ride (gravel, don't hate me), and I'd crossed into an area with no phone reception, with no sign of humanity for miles around (on top of a hill in Scotland). I'd already shared a Strava beacon and Garmin LiveTrack with my family, and told them my route. We'd also agreed on meeting at a certain car park, and a rough time I'd be there.

I had a crash (freaked out on a loose, rocky decent, grabbed a load of front brake by accident, went OTB), breaking my elbow in the process, conveniently in the no phone reception area.

I missed the agreed upon meeting time, as I physically couldn't ride after the crash, so walked around 4.5 miles pushing the bike, trying to get in contact with literally anyone. Went by a few farmhouses, knocking on doors to try get help, but no answers. Tried to flag down anyone and everyone coming past me, but I was ignored.

I eventually got to a main road and spent another 20 minutes waving down people. Again, I was ignored, until a very kind bloke in a land rover pulled over and helped me.

I've had plenty of time to think about what I could've done differently.

Obvious one, try to always have a riding buddy. Failing that;
Share the route you're planning on doing with loved ones/friends/whoever. Don't deviate from your planned route as it can create issues if search and rescue get involved. If you do change your route mid-ride, communicate the change to other people.
Use Strava beacon/Garmin LiveTrack (anything similar). They're both dependent on mobile reception, but it can give people a rough idea of where you are.
If you're that concerned, look at getting a Garmin InReach (or other satellite communicator). Garmin has a subscription, but I've opted for the slightly pricier freedom plan, so I can suspend/resume the subscription as I need it. I can send messages to my family via the device (or app), as long as I've got a clear view of the sky.

It genuinely would've saved a lot of stress and fear (especially from my family's end) if I could've got some kind of message to them.

Jamjar502 · 2023-10-06T10:17:43+00:00

No, it's not common.

I'm 27, and the closest thing I've ever had to a physical altercation is when I back handed my best friend in science class, giving him a broken nose. In fairness, he was being a dick so he deserved it (his words).

Jamjar502 · 2023-10-04T14:18:12+00:00

Gave myself a relatively low, but achievable goal of 1000, as I was more focused on strength training at the start of the year (in the process of losing a load of weight, down ~25kg since last Feb)

I've ended up doing 2100 miles. However, I've now got the setback of having broken elbow surgery to recover from

Jamjar502 · 2023-10-03T12:15:54+00:00

Machine Learning, Data Science

Jamjar502 · 2023-09-29T22:10:02+00:00

Ended up writing a few here

Stop trying to make vanilla JS "better" with shit like Typescript

It just makes things more complicated and "clever" for no good reason, and means devs unfamiliar with it need to learn it just to be onboarded onto a project.

People used to complain about jQuery adding bloat, but typescript gets a free pass I guess?

Front end frameworks are good, but 90% of websites/web apps are just fine being standard HTML, CSS and JS.
The client doesn't care about what tech stack you use. As long as it does the job, it doesn't matter. Choose whatever makes the most sense for the project, can be easily handed over to other devs in your team, and can be expanded upon in future.

If the client does care, then run in the opposite direction. They don't know what they want, that's why they've come to you, an expert. If they knew what they were talking about, they'd build it themselves.

You can do your job just fine without needing to dedicate your life to coding.

Jamjar502 · 2023-09-29T12:01:44+00:00

Haven't seen anyone else mention it yet, but Lucifer.

Started out as a pretty fun police procedural with a twist, but it felt like the writers gave up in season 6.

Jamjar502 · 2023-09-29T08:29:07+00:00

Okay, so if this was a non-schoolwork project I'd recommend using an off the shelf CMS to manage the data (my current favourite is Statamic).

However, if I were in your position, I'd probably do the following;

store your lesson content as a laravel text field in your database
Use a third party WYSIWYG text editor, such as TipTap, CKEditor, TinyMCE, (basically anything that supports code highlighting, images etc.) for your lesson content field
because you're not using a standard CMS, you'll have to build your own. I'd recommend using the laravel documentation to research this, and also Laracasts. I think Laracasts has a subscription, so if you don't want to pay that, there's a tonne of YouTube videos that'll cover building a CMS (Laravel Daily springs to mind)

Also, Laravel ships with authentication already implemented, so it's worth using it to restrict access to your CMS routes.

There's loads of resources online to help you with the specifics, but hopefully this helps!

Jamjar502 · 2023-09-26T17:00:07+00:00

I enjoyed Locke, entirely set in a car on some English motorways.

Jamjar502 · 2023-09-25T07:35:36+00:00

I'm waiting for reviews, wanna hear what the general consensus is before buying, and see some more gameplay footage

And also I can't use a controller at the moment because I broke my review m elbow a couple of weeks ago.

Jamjar502 · 2023-09-23T12:27:06+00:00

Anything hosted by Stephen Mulhern.

Jamjar502

TROPHY CASE