Upgraded to a Better Mobile Phone Finally

After roughly 10yrs of trying, around this time last month I finally managed to successfully upgrade to a replacement for my trusty old iPhone 3GS smartphone.

It took just over a year of saving, but after 2-3yrs of looking longingly at it as an option, I finally upgraded to a refurbished iPhone 12 Mini in Black, with 128GB of onboard storage.

I’ve paired it with a TORRO phone case, made from genuine black leather rather than the fake PVC leather crap some of my previous cases have been made from that eventually start flaking like a chimney sweep with bad dandruff. Continue reading “Upgraded to a Better Mobile Phone Finally”

Stir-Fried Wrist

The last few weeks I have been trying to get back into cooking stir-fry, seeing as I was actually able to get my hands on most of the necessary ingredients.

Last Wednesday (24th July), a few days after web hosting had been restored, I was cooking stir-fry for that night’s dinner when once again I had a slight mishap doing it.

Throwing in a couple of handfuls of frozen ready-cooked diced chicken into a wok of hot oil, I managed to get some of the hot oil splashed on my wrist, resulting in a slight injury. Continue reading “Stir-Fried Wrist”

Gettr: Anti-cancel-culture My Arse

So called “free speech” network #GETTR is now banned from my estate of websites for false banning my personal account for “Violence/Harassment/Bullying” when all I do is copy & paste most of the same news stories to it I copy and paste to most of my other socials without really interacting with anyone.

Much like other fake anti-cancel-culture social network Minds.com

New Thicker Fleece Jacket

For christmas this year I decided to buy my Dad a new thicker fleece jacket since he’s always complaining about being cold (even when temperatures in the livingroom are pushing past 80°F and making me black out from dehydration and lack of breathable air after he’s over-compensated the central heating thermostat).

I eventually found an Island Trading Sherpa Fleece Lined Hoodie on Amazon UK for a good price, and got him the charcoal version.

I also bought the black version for myself since I recall liking hoodies, but don’t think I’ve had one that still fits since the 1980’s before my age reached double figures. Continue reading “New Thicker Fleece Jacket”

Change Coming To This Blog – SSL Status

After weeks or maybe months of considering it, I have decided to make a small change to the jduck1979 website / jduck1979 blog you see here.

In order to keep Google and assorted Web Browsers happy with the SSL / HTTPS status of this place (and because I need the advertising revenue), I have decided to switch this place over to a sub-domain of one of my other websites in order to avoid having to cough-up £125 a year to the Web Hosts for more than two SSL Certificates.

Using SSL / HTTPS will (in theory) keep this place more secure, and maybe even make it run a bit faster when I’ve got it re-wired properly. Continue reading “Change Coming To This Blog – SSL Status”

Bought Some More Domain Names

Once upon a time I ended up owning around 120 domain names after a wild stab at trying my hand at domain name investing around 2007/2008 after 1&1 UK (now “Ionos“) tag teamed with a company called SEDO.

In the intervening years after turning some of them into actual websites, or getting shot of them to save money I wittled them down to only having around 14 of the things.

Now I seem to have developed an urge to have another go at it, and picked up 6 of the things in the past month.

Might pick up a few more in the coming months if I see anything decent going cheap.

I picked up “StupidSillyStuff.com” + “StupidSillyStuff.co.uk” to go with the “Stupid Silly Stuff” facebook page I inherited that’s somehow grown to 10k followers.

I’ve bagged “FunnyCatVideos.co.uk” because “Funny Cat Videos” is apparently a cheap keyword with lots of traffic. Continue reading “Bought Some More Domain Names”

Ramping Up Instagram

I’ve had an account on Instagram since at least March 2013 (based on my earliest upload there I can find), but been pretty hobbled with what I could do with the place since all my devices got too old to run the latest version of the app.

 

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A post shared by John D. (@jduck1979)


Not that it was much easier to get stuff up on there when they still worked, having to first transfer stuff from my camera to the PC to the device in order to get it up on Instagram.

Once the mobile devices were no longer an option, I kinda left it for a while until having a stab with Android emulator software Bluestacks. Continue reading “Ramping Up Instagram”

Changing Blog Themes

The other day I finally got round to changing the wordpress theme on this blog.

I’d been meaning to for at least a year, maybe 2 years, but like many things never seemed to get round to it.

I’d already done a similar switch on some of my other blogs where I’d been using one called “Responsive” after google started getting naggy about how you make your website around 2014-2016 insisting you use “responsive web design” (shortly before they then got naggy about using AMP as well / instead of)….

As much as I like the theme when I first installed it, the creators seemed to make a bit of a hash of it through numerous theme updates.

For now I’ve gone with the “Twenty Sixteen” theme until I find something better. Still probably have a bit more fine tuning to do with it.

Honeywell HTF090B Turbo USB Fan – Best small fan

Recently bought this Honeywell HTF090B Turbo USB Fan to replace a cheapo USB fan I bought on Amazon back in July 2010 after the wire snapped on me.

Button on the front provides 2 settings: on or off.

When it’s switched on it feels almost as powerful as the Prem-i-Air 3 speed mini tower fan I bought at the same time as my old USB fan does on it’s lowest setting.

The USB cable is a thin 2-wire affair similar with a jackplug type thing at one end similar to a voltage adapter plug thing 1980’s/90’s kids may be familiar with from running their old Walkmans + Gameboys off the mains to save on batteries…. the other end a standard USB thing, so you can power it off a PC or I’ve also managed to plug it into the USB mains chargers than came with my old iPhone 3GS + iPad2.

The battery compartment has a plastic battery holder that pulls out via a ribbon to reveal the other 2 of the 4x AA batteries hidden inside. Item came with 4x fairly respectable “GP” branded Extra Heavy Duty AA’s ready fitted.

The fan tilts on a click-wratchet so it stays put when angled.

Only problem I’ve had with it is that it has a habit of readily falling over if you have it angled even the tiniest bit forwards.
Sends it clattering down off the top of my PC case nearly every time I turn the thing off, or when I pull myself up out of my gaming chair.
Normally it just hangs there on the cord like a stranded bungie jumper, and only twice has it fully made it onto the floor – once with the cable parting company with the fan, and just before I wrote this review it took the USB clean out of the socket.
Still working fine despite it’s lemming-like tendences to come crashing down onto my keyboard or the floor.

Honeywell logo printed on front of it barely lasted a few weeks before it’s almost faded to nothing.