Finally it's time to summarise 2023 !

Statistics

number of posts 42

total tags 2126 (recorded in the system)

of which were used in 2023 284

and of which were new in 2023 83

Top tags
1. 14 flog.xml
2. 5 html.xml
3. 5 fail.xml
4. 5 encoding.xml
5. 5 email.xml

See the whole year in Year 2023 summary

See 21 years of posts in The archive

Graphs

Based off this raw data

"Month","Count","Length","Images"
"Jan",2,39,2
"Feb",2,15,0
"Mar",3,60,0
"Apr",3,19,0
"May",1,3,0
"Jun",1,3,0
"Jul",5,76,5
"Aug",7,28,0
"Sep",1,9,0
"Oct",8,72,0
"Nov",2,28,0
"Dec",7,67,2

I can see there weren't a lot of images and that July and Oct had the longest posts.

The most images were in July.

There were almost an equal number of images to posts in Jan and July, but Dec bucked the trend.

Focusing in on the length of posts.

Now I am wondering if I could do an article to post count analysis ...

OK, one more quick post before I run the summaries :D

Light pull 3D print

Problem

Visitors were complaining about the long string light pull in the bathroom. I had got used to it and had a technique using multiple fingers to create friction.

Solutions

I decided to 3D print a new light pull. There is one at the bottom, but it's so low no one uses it.

I could have cut the string and reattached the existing pull. Nah, that's no fun.

I did want to design and print a 3D a stylised Mercury rocket module. But it was a little too detailed and I needed to complete this relatively quickly.

What I settled on was a 360 degree symmetrical light bulb design.

Trial

The easy bit was drawing a Curve in Blender and then spinning it to create the bulb.

I added a track for the string and a space for a height knot. Then I remembered how super glue instantly bonds with the PLA and decided to add some guide holes.

and Error

Print 1 resulted in half a bulb with the string track too small for the physical cord.

Tweaking and print 2 had a larger track but still a bit too small. Print 3 had a much larger track and paired with print 2 worked perfectly.

I then printed the disks I had used for the cutaways. Strangely they only slotted in so far before getting stuck. A few more prints at different thickness showed that the disk shape was at fault.

Started trimming off the curved edges and the overall depth. Eventually I found something that worked "well enough".

Result

Installation involved gluing the cord to one side and waiting for it to cure, then adding a single support (two would not have helped) and gluing the second side.

In the end it looks really interesting and works well.

I need to run the "last year summary" script, but first I have this

Microsoft, never change

Let's break that down.

1. Instructions are to untick to stop receiving spam.
2. Clear check boxes for subjects and sources of spam.
3. But then the last box is a tick to stop receiving spam.
4. But they have got the covered. It's not a dark pattern because there is a single pixel horizontal line that is light grey on a white background.

Of course, I would prefer to just delete that email address from Microsoft, see below.

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History: Why am I here? (time for separate rant)

The kids got an Xbox One for Xmas many years ago. We were at grand parents and expected to stay for a while. Was very annoyed to find that although it came with physical disks, nothing would work without a logged in Microsoft account.

I used my work Microsoft account and everyone was happy. Fast forward many many years later and I had left that company and Microsoft wants me to agree to policy updates.

At some point in the intervening years I managed to switch the main email address.

Click on link in email ... fight the Microsoft login system as it tells me the account I am logging into has a Work/Org or Home options. End up in Office 365, fight logging out and switching accounts. sigh

Find numerous settings, none that seem relevant and notice that old company email address. Must be able to delete it ... NO! Which leads to the screen shot above.

This might be a GDPR complaint. One of the tenants of GDPR is to insure that a company has the correct information on you. But I cannot be arsed.