Last Updated: 5th November 2025
Wow! I’ve not done a now page for a good long time now. June was the last one, and even that was late. And in truth, there’s been a lot gone on since then.
Back in June, I was feeling a bit lost with the myriad options I had after leaving university. I considered the option of further study - briefly - I simply didn’t feel excited by it. Compounding that, the state of UK universities now didn’t really give me all that much confidence. I definitely didn’t want to work in UX, I felt hugely disillusioned with it after doing the degree, and the industry seemed to be taking a nosedive. It felt like it was becoming less and less about creating solid products that can last a lifetime and more about engineering things to break, cause frustrations, and extract money from people in the most efficient manor. Not something I could feel OK doing.
And so I looked to different industries and tried researching what it took to get into them. I tried for a few entry level jobs and didn’t get far. I am of course though highly interested in music, audio technology and the like. So when an apprenticeship at a local theatre came up, I applied for that very quickly!
I didn’t end up getting the apprenticeship, but what happened next was what I’d describe as a blessing in disguise: I was recommended a free “bootcamp” course at the local college. After a bit of deliberation, I decided there was no harm in trying, so I signed up for it. After having nearly finished, I feel like I know how to navigate getting work in live sound a bit better now, which previously was an absolute mystery to me.
Whilst I’m still not out of the woods on the “getting a job” front, I feel very relieved to have found something which genuinely excites me, allows me to live, and most of all, doesn’t require particularly flexible morals.
I did my first shadowing session a few days ago at a local venue, and I’ve got an induction at another venue on Saturday, so I’m very much starting to get involved with things I feel. This is definitely a difficult thing for autistic people to navigate I’m finding, sending emails is horrendous, but its getting easier, and I’m finding that what I get out of doing so is well worth the sheer terror of awaiting a reply!
Lots of radio things going on at the moment! I’m running a permenant meshtastic node in Newcastle now, which will soon be switched to a repeater as I’ve got a M7XXI/M node on the way too, due to be delivered today in fact! I’ve got quite a few nodes picked up and there seems to be almost daily activity which is fun to take part in.
I’ve found even cheaper mesh nodes available than the Heltec ones, so I may potentially try a few of those, and that would also allow me to simultaneously experiment with MeshCore, which appears to me to be a technically and socially better standard than Meshtastic. But I am currently very much enjoying help crowd out the 34cm band in any way I can!!
I’ve not been on as much as I’d have liked to have been recently. I’ve been joining into a few nets where I’ve been free, but I’ve been so busy recently that most evenings I’m either out doing something or in bed by 8pm! But I am still very much active on 2m/70cms.
Find out about Now pages and see hundreds more!
If you wish to view old Now page entries, git clone this
repo then execute git log against this file.
Tagged as: now-page utility-pages