2025 Manifesto

Cycling

As well as keeping up the general fitness, I want to have some targetted events. I'm not sure I'll properly race again (though I am keeping my race license for now), but might be convinced if the fitness is there and the course is right.

Targetted Events

• Struggle Dales 200km route - grippy and long. This will drive early-season fitness and getting winter base miles in.
• Struggle Moors Gravel 100km - this is going to be Gills b'day present to me, and will act as a focus to get more off-road riding in.
• Harrogate Nova TT League - in 2024 I was distinctly mid-field no matter how you slice it. Overall improvement on individual courses and league position is targetted.

Bike Maintainence
Commitment to not use a shop for maintainence, do it all in-house...on all bikes. The "biggie" is the winter service on the summer bike (which is the most complex bit of work). As a stretch goal maintain someone elses bike.

Vegganuary

I'm going to try and live veggie for January. Why not Vegan? I hear you ask.

• Dairy
• Honey (see below)
• I don't think it's that healthy, and it's sorta stupid

The main purpose is to force a stricter focus on my diet, and try and shed some weight. The goal is actually a lower calorie density in my food (more fibre and protein, less carbs and fats). I've been experimenting with meat alternatives (and some of the burgers you can get now are really remarkable (the best being Not Burger and Beyond Burger, though even the cheaper options are now pretty convincing. I have no intention of going veggie, but some structure around diet for a while is hopefully a good thing. Chance of success? Maybe 50% I reckon, and I might delay the start until 2nd January, as on New Years Day I'm marshalling a CX event, and with 12+ hours standing in a field scheduled, I'm not going to be picky about food offered.

Beekeeping

In January we start a beekeeping course with Harrogate and Ripon Beekeepers Association, with the plan to have a couple of hives at the bottom of the garden by the stream. Aim to have hives in place in the next 12-18 months, once the course is complete. We'll also need to prep the bottom of the garden (a low flood-proof bench for the hives, and some violent gardening).

Tattoos

After a bit of a crash-induced delay in 2022, I've re-started work on the arm tattoo. It took a while finding an artist I was happy with (fortunately Leeds is a bit of a tattooing hotspot, however the downside is that a lot of choice can be confusing, and current trends are for fine-line and delicate work, which is not me). I've already had one full-day session in December, and the next is booked in for January. I reckon that the arm/shoulder will need 3-4 more sessions to complete, and then I want to get some lower-leg work planned in for autumn/winter 2025.

Dog Training

Also crash-delayed, we need to work on the dogs. Reaver is, not to put too fine a point on it, a shit-eater, and it's a problem. We were working on it in 2022, and then I spent a long time in hospital/bed, and then we got another dog (which makes training really hard). We are now working with a local dog-trainer (specifically with Reaver, however Errol is getting similar training by default, as they need to be split up when they are trained for now). The goal is to have him walking off-lead without the poo-hunting drive overtaking him. Early signs are promising, but we need to go forward with this and get it embedded. In the short term it is disruptive, but hopefully we can see some long-term benefits.

Finances/House

So these are now basically the same thing. We have a list of big-ticket, long term improvements to the house we want to do, and just need to sort out the finances really;

• Rear kitchen/dining room extension (with upper bathroom)
• Solar panels and heat pump
• Heating system replacement (linked to above, we need better radiators and pipes for a heat pump)
• Driveway replacement
• Garden re-work (post-extension)

To some extent all these are linked (the solar panels would go on the south-facing rear of the house, where we are planning an extension, and the raditaors are requried for a heat pump. The driveway wouldn't be replaced until we have completed building work).

I've got ballpark numbers in my head for each of these based on a very high-level of investigation (the extension is 20sq/m @ ~£2k/sq/m, then a new kitchen and bathroom on top at ~£10k each. Heat pump and solar panels are ~£10-12k, and radiator replacement is ~£10-12K. Driveway is also ~£10k, so getting on for £90-100k I think).

Tech Refresh

My laptop is going on for 4 years old now. I mean, it's still incredibly fast, however it's soon to be 2 generations out of date. I also don't really need a laptop as my main machine anymore, I'm well settled into a home-working role, and it's noisy for running 7-8 hours a day. I think I'm going back to a desktop in 2025. My phone is similarly going on for 4 years old. Both are still completely fine, but I will investigate a refresh.

A couple of other nerd items;
1) Move the servers. Currently I have a box of servers running some always-on services (Plex, AudioBookShelf, a LAMP server, a *cough* small server that pretends to be based somewhere in the deep USA for reasons) in my office. Due to the vagaries of the house network they don't have great bandwidth. I want to move them down into the dogs bedroom/snug, and sort out cabling so they are directly connected to the main router. If/when we get the driveway done I'm planning on getting a patch-lead run out to the garage, and I can then move them out there, but in the short term get them hard-wired directly into the main network of the house.

2) Start upgrading my music collection to FLAC. The self-hosting all started when I stuck my heels in and refused to move to Youtube Music 4 years ago. It's moved well beyond that now, however the main use of the in-house servers is still providing streaming of audio. I'd now like to start making this objectively better than most streaming services, and add in high-definition audio.

Currently I have ~35,000 tracks hosted, with an average bitrate of 128-256 in mp3 format. Absolutely fine for general listening, however I'd like to start future-proofing this. I'll start sourcing FLAC-bitrate stuff and building out a second library. It used to be the case that storage of this would be infeasible (I estimate ~1-1.5Tb, compared to ~120Gb for the current library), however my main media server currently has just over 38Tb of storage, so frankly it's not a worry now).

This has already started, and will probably take 2-3 years I think, but it will remain as a background task.