The small crack in the shelf in the fridge door has graduated to a big crack, and a shard even fell out. I looked up the spare part – it’s just a squared-off polystyrene bucket – and it costs £82! That’s one eighth of the cost of the entire fridge! Unfortunately, the extended warranty on the fridge was only for three years, and this is closer to five years old.

However, I did find the same part for sale from France, with free delivery, taxes paid, for half the price, so I’ve ordered it from there. It takes a little longer, but I’ll put up with a few days’ delay to get it for half the price.

I found a mechanical keyboard for £5.50 in a charity shop, and, after a quick search to see whether it’s possible to flash new firmware (yes), bought it. It didn’t work as a keyboard when I plugged it in, but I could see it was recognised as a USB device. I compiled QMK and flashed it, and it worked! I think it was just set up as a Bluetooth keyboard before; flashing it made it work as a USB keyboard by default. It’s also supposed to have some LED backlighting, but they’re off. I’m happy with that: I don’t need flashing coloured lights on a keyboard.

It’s fun to be able to tweak my own keyboard layout; I’ve set it up so that Tab works as a layer key when held down, and Tab-u gives me an underscore, the key that I least enjoy having to stretch to reach on a normal keyboard (and which I have to type a lot while programming).

Friday was overcast, so the sun didn’t get a chance to heat up the loft, and I finally had the opportunity to spend the day up there sorting it out. I found a couple of things I had been looking for, cleared out a lot of old cardboard boxes, and brought down some things to donate to the charity shop.

Now there’s more space up there, I was able to move some things from my office that I don’t need so frequently.

In the loft, I came across my old point-and-shoot camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01 with a 6 megapixel CCD sensor from 2006. I looked through the pictures on it and was impressed with how good a job it did. The photos really look like photos somehow. Here are a couple from 2013, taken in San Francisco in the now-defunct United States of America:

A street in San Franscisco's Chinatown, with signs in Chinese and lanterns hanging across the street.

San Francisco Chinatown

A street in San Franscisco's Chinatown, with signs in Chinese and lanterns hanging across the street.

Looking downhill towards the Bay Bridge

Also on the 2 GB SD card: a photo of someone I used to work with, who is now worth $3.9 billion (I checked). It’s a reminder of a very different time in my life, that could have gone in another direction entirely. But I’m glad my life turned out how it has, even if I do have to pay a mortgage.

The rubberised coating on the camera had gone the way of all such rubberised coatings, but with a bit of effort and some methylated spirits I was able to remove it to leave a slightly shinier but no-longer-sticky device. I bought a new battery (the old one no longer held a charge) and I’m going to take the camera out for a photo walk some time soon.