We popped by Scandivans to visit Ripley mid surgery and talk to them about material choices for the interior fit out. They'd also replaced the main cabin window as the old one had started leaking badly, which is apparently not uncommon for these long vehicles as they flex quite a bit - and she's 7 years and 100,000+ miles old. Sam and his team are super detail focused and I am really confident we're going to get a result that we're really happy with.
Thoughts
Short-form updates, long-form articles, and everything in between.
โI feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.โ
This is one of the best lines or descriptions I've ever read about burnout, overwhelm an exhaustion. I think about it a lot about this whenever I'm feeling particularly depleted. The last few weeks have been tiring. Late nights with work, the house renovation, side projects, family, life admin and van repairs.
Hack The Box: A Leader in The Forrester Wave for Cybersecurity Skills and Training Platforms
Hack The Box has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Cybersecurity Skills and Training Platforms. Again. This recognition follows Forresterโs independent, criteria-based evaluation process, which included comprehensive vendor profiles,โฆ
Re Burning Nest 2026: Tickets now on sale๐ Where? A secret location near Exeter, Devon in the UK (relatively easy to get to by train from London if you fly in and donโt know the UK).๐ When?18-24th May 2026๐ What?Burning Nest is a long established UK regional burn set in a beautiful, lush green, woodland glade with lakes and trees... Come hang out for a week of silliness and shenanigans (though you can come for build and strike if you want extra fun). Tickets are limited to 1000 in total and weโre expecting 2026 to be popular, so grab your ticket in the first wave now. www.burningnest.co.uk - Find out morehttp://bit.ly/44tpI76 - Quicket
20 years ago today, I was sailing in the Fastnet Ocean Race and we were just a few miles away from rounding the rock. I still viscerally remember the hours around this photo, but it was two decades ago. It's weird how things start being measured in decades as you get older... A reminder of no longer being young.
I made this little video with my compact camera at the time.
https://youtu.be/aIh12jafSag?si=JJSN0xhNjFfcRN3q
The shared Whatsapp group that my oldest daughter, Robyn Collins has for her, me and her other mum always cracks me up. I love that she's a fellow geek.
Lovely walk along the river followed by a drink with Ali and Bee
We just spent a couple of nights at a camp site where we were the only guests with a lovely pub nearby. Now we've settled Ripley into a very quiet, leafy place for the evening.
Brighton adventure with @fenviolet__ . Mostly involving booze, food and sun.
My house still isn't ready, though I am assured that builders may be starting soon. In the meantime, I'm doing the #vanlife thing for the next few months.
This week is rushing round fixing things and installing bits that need to be added to allow me to work off grid.
Then on Sunday, off to catch the ferry to Spain to go to Nowhere @going_nowhere_burn in the desert.
Pride at Wells with some of my Burner friends. Wells is apparently the smallest city in the UK and was where Hott Fuzz was filmed.
Thanks to @desert_ablaze for doing my eye makeup.
Thank you to any of my non-trans women friends that are willing to sign this to help protest people like me from being driven out of British society.
This Supreme Court result has been financed by our very own "made in Britain" far right Oligarch, JK Rowling. The court elected to refuse to hear from trans people and took evidence from transphobia driven hate groups who misappropriated the label "feminism" in an attempt to make something grotesque seem reasonable (who doesn't want to protect women from monsters??). The result was at the very least grossly unfair and arguably blatantly corrupt. Should billionaires be able to buy this kind of access to our laws?
Baroness Falkner, a far right friend of JK Rowling has said she intends to use this result to push for nationwide policies that will effectively target trans women and drive them out of public life. These people will harass gyms, restaurants, airports, public services and anywhere that has anything remotely resembling gendered facilities into exclusionary policies. Many will comply out of concern for not following official guidance and being sued. It's not hard to imagine that we will see policies preventing passports or drivers licenses being issued to trans women because of the sex marker. Without ID, one cannot prove right to work or rent housing. This is a very pointed attack on a vulnerable minority.
We've all heard the poem "first they came for...". After they've won against people like me, they're coming for gay marriage and women's rights. This glorious "victory for women" is the opposite. We've already heard that the British Transport Police has now rolled out a policy allowing male officers to strip search anyone they suspect of being trans women. It's not hard to see how this puts all women in danger (trans and non-trans). How many masculine presenting women will be harassed in women's toilets for looking trans? This is only a victory for the far right.
If you're not trans and are against what is happening, but are not sure what to do, consider donating to the Good Law Project. Fighting this will be expensive (as it was for the far right). However unlike the far right, we don't have a billionaire to fund our defense. Please donate whatever you can afford.
https://goodlawproject.org/crowdfunder/fighting-fund-for-trans-rights
I don't mean to brag or anything... but guess who just got called a
"filthy lesbian bitch"? And he'd only just met me!
Article by a friend of mine on why the USA is now too high a risk for transgender visitors:
Quick reminder folks: The Matrix was a movie made by trans women as a "trans metaphor" (in the directors words).
