Chris Worfolk's Blog

I’ve started to play around a little with home automation. Despite, or perhaps because, I’m a software engineer, I’m sceptical of this kind of technology. What’s the redundancy? What’s the failover plan? In general, I wish everything was less connected. My new studio lights can be controlled from my phone using Bluetooth. I don’t want this. I want a big button on the back. Buttons almost never break. They don’t need software updates or stop working when there is a new release of iOS.

With modern technology, we often settle for a technology that mostly works and just live with how infuriating it is. Think about all the devices you have to charge every night. Or that sometimes you cannot get signal on your mobile. Signal works most of the time. But a bunch of times it drops out or does not work in certain places and we just live with it. I don’t really want that for my lights. I want to be able to turn them on and off every time like a light switch does.

But despite all of this, I have decided to give it a go, because I am too lazy to turn both lamps on when they are at separate sides of the room. Now I can do them both from my phone. I explicitly went with smart plugs that have a physical button on them, so if whatever infrastructure is used to control them goes down, I can just hit the button to operate them.

As a result, I now have some lovely accent lighting on my canvas prints:

Leeds Autism Practice is excited to announce we’re now offering autism assessments for under 18s. These aren’t bookable online yet, but contact us to for availability. You can also read more about the process on the Leeds Autism Practice website.

I think the major victory here is that, despite my advancing years, I stayed awake for the whole thing. The end scoreline might suggest there was a bit of a contest. But the Seahawks were never under pressure and always in the driving seat. Bad Bunny’s half time show was excellent.

It’s been at least 12 years, and possibly as many as 17 years, since we threw a housewarming. They used to be raucous affairs. Now they’re very grown up, the alcohol has been swapped for canapés, but the conversation is just as top-tier as ever.

It rained all day. So much for Dry January.

This made things really muddy. There was no escape from the mud. Every time I put my bag down to get something out of it, there was mud all over the floor. My beautiful new changing robe is now covered in mud. There is supposed to be mud on the course – it’s cross country. But it would be nice if there was a safe space somewhere.

The course was nice enough. Not brutally hilly, just regular Temple Newsam hilly. There were several water crossings. The deepest was well above me knee and on some of the shorter people, up to their waist. It is a good job I had my phone in a waterproof bag. I managed to get around without falling over, so that was nice. Might need some specific soft mud shoes for next year, though.

Lots of lovely baked goods at the end. Thank you to everyone who baked and th team captains for organising.

A beautiful misty morning for Roundhay’s 700th event. This ticked a box for me, too: it was my 7th Roundhay parkrun which takes my p-index to 7. Not bad given I only reached 6 earlier this month.

We recently moved house. Wouldn’t recommend it.

A day out at a service station? What a great idea. Skelton Lakes offers a track around the lakes and you get to see plenty of birds. But it is muddy, though. The most muddy you can be without officially being a bog, I think. Might have ben a better idea to take the tarmac path over to the canal. Lesson learnt. The service station offers toilets, food, and three hours of free parking.

I was delighted to wake up on the morning of the race and see the ground covered in snow. Then the race emailed to say it was still on.

First, it was really cold. I put four layers on and it still took me 30 minutes to warm up enough to strip down to 2-3. The snow wasn’t the issue, though. It was the ice. All of the hills were icy. Mostly going up hill but there was still at least one descent that was icy. A lot of people fell over. Thankfully, I did a slow potter around, and stayed upright. It was cold enough to trigger a nose bleed, though.

Otherwise, it was a lovely race. Would do it again if it was warmer.

I rented a van last week and when I turned up, they said the van I had booked has just been written off and would I please take an EV van with an automatic gearbox. It was a fun drive. I did briefly drive an automatic in Iceland and it is easier. And it felt like a quiet ride that still had plenty of power. I didn’t have to mess around charging it, so I didn’t get the full experience, but it seems like a good way to go. Range was 180 miles on a full charge.