I loved teaching Scratch. And I’ve written about DRAKON - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/04/why-arent-there-more-visual-programming-languages-an-ode-to-drakon/

I think they’re useful for building algorithms. But the tools themselves aren’t powerful enough for anything too complicated. I hope that changes though!

Are there any UK-specific communities?

It is so nice today that I’m going to be WFG (working from garden). I hope my laptop doesn’t overheat.

Anyone else planning the same?

If you are planning to put a memorial bench there - or anywhere - you can add it to our crowdsourced list at https://openbenches.org :-)

Part of it is being an open data geek. And part of it is trying to understand the psychogeography of the world.

Set your meal preference. I usually choose “Asian Vegetarian”. That guarantees you a (somewhat) tasty curry and you’ll also be served first.

If you’re travelling to somewhere with a significant timezone change, prepare beforehand. Start shifting your body clock about 1 hour per day. Most importantly, shift when you eat your meals - that seems to be the key for me.

Unless you are flying business class or higher, there’s no real way to get a good sleep on a plane. All the gadgets in the world won’t help. Get a thick sleep mask and some earplugs and hope for the best.

Once the seatbelt sign is off, take your shoes off. You’ll feel a lot more comfortable. Put them on if you go to the toilet though!

In the UK, you can use Curve. That gives you a physical or virtual card which proxies your existing Visa / MasterCards (not Amex).

But it doesn’t have an NFC app you can use on Android. As far as I can tell, there are no other virtual NFC payment apps.

And, of course, it doesn’t really improve your privacy posture. Your bank still knows who you spent with - as does Curve.

If you want a free fiver, you can use my Curve referral link - http://curve.app/join#D4MK9ZKN

I think the phrase you’re looking “necessary but not sufficient”.

Proprietary code could contain something which is bad for privacy or security - but you’d never be able to tell. Hence OSS is a necessity.

Open Source code can still track you, sell your data, be insecure etc. So openness is not sufficient.

I’ve been trying to watch the new Joni Mitchell concert via YouTube bootlegs 😄

Hope there’s an official release of it soon.

The Pi is great - but try to stick to doing one thing at a time with it. Multiple tabs, background music, and live streaming simultaneously is going to make it feel very slow.

Pi OS is probably the simplest - unless you want to spend those two weeks configuring everything 😀