Nothing happened again!

Earlier this year I mused about my lack of activity here and intended to write more regularly. That didn’t happen, despite maintaining a reminder in my system. As the end of year approaches I’m tidying up ahead of travel and resolving again to try to write more regularly in 2025.

Life has been busy enough to provide plenty of topics for writing. That earlier piece was posted just before we left for Japan with Lucas. Since then we have travelled to South Australia to cross the Nullarbor by camper van and to FNQ by train. Those trips were blogged to our travel blog as the upcoming trip to Thailand and Cambodia will be.

In between we have continued to enjoy active retirement. Majella had a busy year with Sing Australia and continued sewing (and other craft) with her group of friends and most days at home.

We have both been active with the Toowoomba First Nations Allies group that we helped to start after the referendum failed in October 2023. I look after the website and we are both involved with a book club as part of the group activity. If I’d been more diligent about writing here though the year there were other TFNA activities that deserved recording.

My health following my brush with kidney cancer last year has been good. Scans and other checks in June, September, and December were clear. I continued to volunteer for mentoring at Toowoomba Flexi School through the year and plan to do that again next year. Working with immigrant kids at the main campus did not work out for me.

I continued weeding in Hancock Street Park with Friends of the Escarpment Parks but also took on updating and managing the FEP website and was tagged to represent FEP on the Darling Downs Environment Council committee which made me a member of the FEP committee also. Majella and I both got involved in the campaign to preserve Deongwar State Forest.

Once it was clear that the volunteer who had developed the database used by FEP to record work done in the various parks was unable to bring it across to the new server platform I took on that task. The database files had been exported and I was able to import them and then write PHP and Javascript code to develop basic functionality. That work benefitted from assistance by ChatGPT but requires added functionality that I will work on in the new year.

The FEP work was my major development effort but I continue to update and manage websites for St Thomas More’s Parish and the Cri du Chat Support Group as well as FEP and TFNA. Mostly that involves no more than a monthly check on functionality but occasionally updates are needed.

I have continued to take on small writing and editing jobs for former UniSQ colleagues but have decided to cease that work in 2025. I have plenty to keep me busy otherwise and we don’t really need that small trickle of extra money.

Photography, mostly around the local area, continues to be an interest and I have posted a few less than 1000 photos to Flickr this year. Those are what survived editing from what would have been several times that many photographs taken.

I have had ideas for things to write about and sometimes, when I return to a website or database task, I regret that I had not recorded what I had done. I have some skills with computers but do nowhere near enough to develop and maintain fluency with languages and techniques. Keeping a record would help.

Other thoughts that might deserve recording stem from my increasing frustration with politics and politicians. Vision, leadership, and courage are sorely lacking.

I will try to post more regularly in 2025. We’ll see how that goes but in the meantime here is our video summary of 2024: