Song: Covers by Me!

Posted on April 20, 2026 by Ponder

While listening to the song Louise by the Human League a while back, the words “As if we were still lovers” seemed to transpose themselves in my mind to “I’m sick of all these covers” so for some strange reason I decided to complete the whole song with my own lyrics.

I searched high and low for a backing track but couldn’t find one so I decided to create it myself using a tracker program called Madtracker 2. After much fiddling getting the baseline right I found I just couldn’t get the main backing sounding anything other than awful and realised it’s because I have no idea how to use chords. A little help from a friend of mine (thanks Liz) and I had the chords for most of the song. I got the last help just before Christmas 2005, then things got too busy and I upgraded and lost the original tracker file I’d been working on! Anyway, months later I finally get around to thinking of completing it so put out a call for the original, which I was sure I gave to a few people, and thanks once again to Liz I had something I could work with, which I’ve now finally completed!

I know I still can’t sing so take appropriate precautions regarding glass, etc. before you start. I also hold no responsibility for any panicing animals or mental illness brought on by my voice , nor any other unfortunate incidents. You play this as your own risk! I apologise unreservedly to the Human League for “Covers”, but hope you enjoy it anyway and sympathise with its message 😉

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SoundCloud Breach

Posted on April 20, 2026 by Ponder

Yesterday I had a scam email sent via the address I only use for SoundCloud so I went searching and found >> this << piece of information.

I’ve tried to reach out to them to find out why I wasn’t informed that my personal details were in that breach so I could take appropriate actions before crap like this happened.

Enter the AI Chatbot Otto.

It was an absolute nightmare trying to get it to put me through to the right place and I’m still not sure I was successful. I was supposed to get an email with a support ticket number but nothing so I chased it up today; it’s apparently still open awaiting an actual human to look into it.

In the meantime I’m going to host my meagre 6 tracks here and this site will now host any future music from me if I ever get the whim to create any more.

I have already changed the email address associated with my account and deleted the old one so it’s now invalid but if they don’t give me a satisfactory response I shall simply delete my account there and be done with it. Mistakes are made but not actually informing their users of the breach is not a mistake, it’s at best incompetence and at worse deliberate concealment.

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Song: Let Me Forget by Me!

Posted on April 20, 2026 by Ponder

Just before Superbowl 2012, Madonna released a new track – Give Me All Your Luvin’. The chorus just triggered off something and caused me to lose… something, so I decided to put some new lyrics to it.

Rules of The Game:
1) You are playing The Game (there are no exceptions).
2) If you think about The Game, you lose.
3) Loss must be announced.

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Desktop Arcade Setup So Far

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Ponder

I still need to design and build the rest of the cabinet but here is what I have so far.

The main guts sit in the base and are secured. The display controller and audio amp will be affixed to the rear of the cabinet in upcoming builds. The draw holding the keyboard does pull out so the keyboard is stored when not in use and available when needed. The screen is rotatable and seen here in a vertical orientation for Bomb Jack.

It’s all working well so far and I’m very pleased with progress but I do need to get some more blue filament before I can build the rest of the bottom part. Due to nearby events and occasions this will have to wait a month or two!

Posted in 3D Printing, Positives, Retro | Leave a comment

3D Printer AMS Fix

Posted on April 14, 2026 by Ponder

Today I learned how to disassemble the AMS for my 3D printer. This is the “Automatic Material System” that allows up to 4 different filaments to be used in single print (more if you daisy chain them).

The red filament got wedged solid. Well solid enough that I was not prepared to put any more force into trying to pull it out so I went searching and found how to disassemble it to clear such jams.

It turns out it was really simple, once I’d located the correct tool! It’s just 2 screws and the main assembly lifts out. This also gave me a chance to clean out the spilled desiccant beads but I did have a problem afterwards in that I’d taken out one of the active support shaft assemblies and misplaced it. It turns out I’d put it with the phone tools I’d got out while looking for the correct tool to undo the screws! This is essential for cleanly rotating the spool as the filament is fed or unloaded.

I now have a new bezel printed for my desktop arcade project. Here are two photos showing front and back. Front shows my reflection taking the photo (unavoidable) and the back shows gaps that will hold the magnets that will keep the bezel in place in the case surround. It’s designed to be square so rotatable to match game orientation. The screen is an iPad 3 screen connected to an HDMI/VGA display controller, both obtained from Ali Express.

Posted in 3D Printing, Positives, Retro | Leave a comment

More Cookie Compliance Nonsense

Posted on April 12, 2026 by Ponder

I don’t track anyone. I have no interest in tracking anyone. I have no interest in monetising this blog but the Health Check on this site insists on this notification. I don’t think I need a compliance notice but I’d rather not take any chances.

Now that nag had popped up again in my dashboard so I’ve changed it so it doesn’t show unless you’re logged in and as the only current person able to do that is me it should be hidden from everyone else.

If you do get an account it will be via mutual consent anyway so no problem there.

Let’s see how this goes. If it still nags I might just say bollocks to it, remove the compliance plug-in and take my chances. As I said, I don’t collect any information (apart from normal server logs which I don’t skim for data) so I’m unlikely to need compliance anyway.

Posted in General, Negatives | Leave a comment

EmDash – A Spiritual Successor to WordPress

Posted on April 11, 2026 by Ponder

I heard about this via Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast on TWiT. It’s a new CMS/blogging platform based around WordPress (though not using any WordPress code) and they’re making a big noise about the way it’s more secure by design and how plugins are all sandboxed but…

…it’s written using and designed to use AI agents, so they can basically fuck off. I’ll stick with WordPress and use a minimal number of plugins.

If you want to take a look at their blog post out of curiosity or interest (I’m not going to use code written by AI but I’m not going to tell anyone else what to do) you’ll find that here.

Posted in General, Thoughts | Leave a comment

Userbase Cleanup

Posted on April 11, 2026 by Ponder

I’ve had a clean up for security reasons, deciding to start from scratch with users registered on this blog. I’ve deleted all users except my main one as nobody has logged in for years and you don’t need an account here to post anyway.

If anyone really thinks they need an account (view/comment only) then let me know and I’ll manually add you. This is for trusted friends only though. As I said, you don’t need an account to comment.

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Cookie Consent Hidden

Posted on April 6, 2026 by Ponder

Since this site will be more active and the cookie consent notices that the “health check” in the admin panel practically insists is installed even though I’m not accepting new accounts are a pain in the arse, I think I’ve found a way to hide these on the vast majority of this site. If you do see any then please let me know and I’ll see what I can do to hide those too.

Comments are open but I’ll probably have to approve each one. You can use a fake name (preferably a recognisable alias) and email address as they won’t be verified. I’m not expecting it to be busy with genuine comments so I’ll just use a human filter (me) to check each one before approval.

Real spam tends to be blocked quite effectively.

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Vlog 102

Posted on April 6, 2026 by Ponder

Well here we go, let’s see how long I keep this up this time around.

Remember though that even when I’m not posting, this blog is always still here.

Please note: most videos are also on Odysee but that doesn’t embed well here.
If you want to check out that version you’ll find in from this link.

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