Thomil's Random Ramblings

It’s springtime, the weather is getting warm, the trees are in full bloom, and I haven’t written anything about TFI Bikes for far too long. Well not on this blog anyway. It’s high time I changed that, especially since TFI Bikes is just going through the biggest paradigm shift since the system was introduced here in Cork in late 2014. After a very welcome, if somewhat tepid refresh in the wake of the 2020 lockdowns, the last year has seen a veritable flood of new features rolled out across the network. Let’s take a look then, shall we? Everything started in February 2025, at least from my perspective. Engineers Ireland hosted a presentation by Telclic, the operating company behind TFI Bikes, in the Rochestown Park Hotel, one which was thankfully also streamed online. A lot of this presentation dealt with the mechanics behind the scenes of TFI Bikes, how the docking stations actually work, what the software backend looks like and what it’s hosted on, etc.. More importantly though, the pr...

There's no denying it. Over the last few months, I've not really done much on this blog. The reason is simple, my life has been going through some momentous changes since the beginning of the year, none of them being really positive, and I had to focus most of my energy on simply keeping going! Having said that, I have continued working on new blog posts in the background as well, brainstorming ideas and typing up drafts, but I couldn't really find the focus needed to get an article ready for publication.  But there's another reason as well. You see, back in November of 2024, I embarked on a trip of a lifetime in order to fulfil an ambition that I've had for years, on a route that has been on my mind for longer than I care to remember. I went on a voyage on the famous hurtigrute, the Norwegian coastal ferry and mail packet route that has been running for over 130 years at this point. The round trip as spectacular, from the landscapes to the northern lights to the wa...

I guess it’s time to go old school again, with just some notes and no massive Notion document as a guide. And why not, given that the topic is somewhat more off-the-cuff than usual. You see, a few weeks ago, my YouTube home page suddenly got inundated with videos of creators I’d never seen before shouting to the heavens that they were going to quit Amazon because it was blocking them from downloading their Kindle ebooks.  Say what now? I waited a bit for the hyperbole to die down before finally watching a video with a somewhat more sane take over on Nebula. Apparently, Amazon had decided to retire a feature that had allowed Kindle customers to download copies of their ebooks to their PC or Mac in order to later transfer them to their Kindle via USB. Huh. I’d never even realized that such a featured had existed, it hadn’t really been communicated that this was an option and the feature had been buried deep in Amazon’s already overloaded homepage. However, as is the case so often in ...