I believe there are some Psion fans here, so I should mention that I've listed a Series 3, a Series 3a, and a Series 3a programming manual on Ebay.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_ssn=avantman42

#Psion #RetroComputing

UK people: there is a petition to disapprove the draft Equality Act guidance. I've signed it, and I suggest you do so too.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/770527

#trans #TransRights #UKPol

We're going to our local pride today. When we first went, I thought I was a cis/het ally. I'm not sure if going to pride helped me realise that I'm non-binary, but it certainly didn't hurt.

I occasionally see people say that straight people shouldn't be at pride. Please don't. Even if they think they're straight, they might not be, and if they can't be around queer people, they might never realise their truth.

#pride #NonBinary #LGBT #queer

On this day in 1942, the village of Lidice in Czechia was completely destroyed in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

The men were all shot, women and kids were sent to death camps. The village was completely erased, the stream re-routed, and the area landscaped. When the nazis had finished, there was no indication that Lidice had ever existed, which is exactly what Hitler intended - he wanted the memory of Lidice to die.

But miners from North Staffordshire ensured that Lidice didn't die, and it wasn't forgotten.

https://russellphillips.uk/product/a-ray-of-light-reinhard-heydrich-lidice-and-the-north-staffordshire-miners/

#OnThisDay #histodons #WW2
@history @histodons

Since it's nearly pride month, I'd like to point out that I have a couple of LGBT+ related designs on Redbubble.

Ideal for the LGBT tank geek in your life.
https://www.redbubble.com/people/rpbook/shop?artistUserName=rpbook&collections=4367810&iaCode=all-departments&sortOrder=top%20selling

#Pride #LGBT #ProtectTransKids

Is there anyone here that could translate a letter from Italian to English for me? It's about 150 words.

I'm happy to pay, but I'm wary of going somewhere live Fiverr because I want a human translation and I doubt I'd be able to tell if someone used an AI.

Boosts welcome.

#translation #italian

@garius my podcatcher just picked up episode 8 of Untitled History.

The title immediately caught my eye, because @jetlagjen 's grandad worked on Blue Streak at Spadeadam.

I sometimes see retro computing posts on here. I have no interest in old Commodore 64s or game consoles, but a while ago I bought a second hand Palm m105 and reminded myself how much I loved mine.

When they were current, I badly wanted a Psion series 3 or 5. I recently managed to get a series 3 and 3a for reasonable prices. They're impressive machines.

I would like to find a real-world use case for at least some of these PDAs. I'm not sure yet what that might be.

#retro #Psion #PsionSeries3 #RetroComputing

The Green Party have told Pantir to "pack its bags and get the hell out of the NHS"

"my letter today to Palantir makes clear we will use every method at our disposal to force them out. Doctors have made clear they do not trust Palantir with patients’ private data, and with its appalling track record, I am with the doctors”.
https://greenparty.org.uk/2026/01/22/zack-polanski-tells-defence-surveillance-corporation-palantir-to-pack-its-bags-and-get-the-hell-out-of-the-nhs/

#UKPol #NHS #Palantir

@mattround I bought Doctype. My 13yo son typed in your ChatMRKV program and trained it using one of my books.

Much hilarity ensued at phrases like "The French prime minister and Syria climbed over the ground troops apparently heading for his release" 😀

I just encountered this weird set of gender options on an NHS survey.

#NHS #NonBinary #UK

I'm looking to buy a second hand laptop. Is there anywhere that will advise on Linux compatibility?

Years ago there were hardware compatibility databases, do they still exist, and if so, where?

#Linux #Laptop #LinuxLaptop

An interesting account of how the gunpowder plot ended.

The Gunpowder Plot’s Forgotten Ending in Staffordshire
https://www.theredhairedstokie.co.uk/the-gunpowder-plots-forgotten-ending-in-staffordshire/

There's a call for help, which I'll repeat here:

Ideally, I would like to identify who currently owns the house and, with permission, carefully record the building in its entirety. Not for clickbait, not for content, but to create a detailed historic record of what survives now, as it exists today.

If you own Holbeache House, know who does, have had access to it in the past, or have any information about its ownership or recent history, I would genuinely love to hear from you. The same goes for anyone with photographs, documents, or personal memories connected to the house.

Local history is very often preserved not by institutions, but by people who care enough to share what they know. This feels like one of those moments.

If you can help in any way, please do get in touch.

#histodons #history #Staffordshire #LocalHistory
@history @histodons

I really wish people would just accept it when someone says they don't have the spoons for a thing.

Today I had to go and collect a hamper from the community grocery. I was told I had to go to the carol service first. I said I couldn't cope with that. He insisted ("It's only half an hour"). It was only when I said I'd just go and not take a hamper that he relented.

Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful for the community grocery, and the hamper. I'm sure most people would enjoy the carol service. But for me, it just made me upset.

#FreeSoftwareAdvent day 15: Nextcloud

SyncThing is great for synchronising files, but I also have a self-hosted Nextcloud server. If I only wanted to synchronise files, I'd probably just use SyncThing, but I use Nextcloud for things like CalDav for calendars and CardDav for contacts as well as files.

More recently, I've also started using Nextcloud apps. In particular, I use News for RSS feeds, Notes for simple notes, and RePod for podcasts. The apps accessed through the Nextcloud dashboard on the web have minimal functionality, but it's enough for me. In the case of News and Notes, I also use the official Android clients, which also offer mininal functionality, but again, I don't need any more. For podcasts, I mostly listen using AntennaPod on Android, which I'll talk about tomorrow.

It's worth noting that there are companies that will host Nextcloud for you if you don't want to self-host. At least some of them have a free tier if you don't need a lot of space.

https://nextcloud.com/

@nextcloud

#FreeSoftwareAdvent day 11: Dokuwiki

I use Dokuwiki a lot. I have a private wiki for personal notes, my business has a private wiki for documentation, I maintain an RPG website that is a wiki, and there are others. I even write my books in a modified Dokuwiki.

I particularly like that pages are stored as plain text files. On some of my wikis, I've taken advantage of that by writing bash scripts to check or edit files.

https://dokuwiki.org/

#FreeSoftwareAdvent day 5: StreetComplete

StreetComplete is an Android app that displays local data from OpenStreetMap, and asks questions to improve/update the data.

I joined OpenStreetMap in 2006, back when many roads simply weren't mapped. I remember reading an article (probably around that time) which predicted that OpenStreetMap would get progressively out of date.

The author said that adding new things to the map was fun and exciting, but there were challenges with keeping the map up to date.

First, people wouldn't want to fire up something as big as JOSM just to make a small change. Second, updating the map was much less interesting, so people wouldn't bother.

The inevitable result, the author said, would be that OpenStreetMap's data would degrade and it would gradually become unusable.

StreetComplete addresses that issue by making it easy and fun to keep the map up to date. You can't use it to add a missing road to the map, but you can use it to add details like whether or not the road has lighting.

It will also periodically check that things are correct, so when StreetComplete asks "Is this rubbish bin still here?" and the user selects "No", the bin is removed from the map.

I've made over 19,000 edits using StreetComplete. If I'd had to use JOSM, I wouldn't have done most of them. It's an excellent app, and I thoroughly recommend it.

https://streetcomplete.app/

@streetcomplete

#OpenStreetMap #OSM @streetcomplete

My #ActuallyAutistic son has issues with time management. He takes ages to do things. I'm not sure if it's because he zones out or something else.

Can any autists out there suggest ways we can help him to manage time better?

For #FediBookFair, I'm going to do an #AskMeAnything. Reply to this post with your questions, and I'll answer them when I get a chance.

This weekend, authors and publishers (including me) will be writing about their books, research, and related topics, with the #FediBookFair hashtag.

If that sounds interesting to you, please follow the hashtag and boost this so that more people can join us.

If it doesn't sound fun, please mute the hashtag. Nobody wants to fill your timeline with stuff you're not interested in. You can find out how to do that here: https://fedi.tips/filtering-your-timeline-to-hide-posts-on-mastodon/

@history @militaryhistory @histodons
#history #histodons #MilitaryHistory