Thomil's Random Ramblings

So, next in my series on company-provided gifts that I received earlier this year we have… a notebook. Yep, you read that right, and no, I haven’t lost my mind. Well, not recently anyway, that happened a long time ago. And to be fair, it’s not a regular notebook either. This contraption is called Rocketbook Fusion, and it is an erasable, app-enabled notebook. Apparently, erasable notebooks in general are a thing, something that completely passed me by ever since I started using OneNote for all my notetaking needs. Anyway, when that company gift selection came around back in January 2021, this Rocketbook Fusion looked interesting, so I decided to grab one of those. Hey, wouldn’t want any of my gift points to go to waste now, would I? So, what is this Rocketbook Fusion exactly? Essentially, it is just your regular notebook. However, it sports specially treated pages that you can write on like usual, but that are waterproof. When writing with a special pen, you can just wipe the writing a...

If you’ve spent as much time on the internet as I have, you’ve probably come across ads for Grammarly. They’re certainly a staple over on YouTube, second in pervasiveness and irritation only to those Chinese stolen-asset rip-off games that just won’t die! But I’m getting side-tracked here. In recent days, I’ve looked into Grammarly myself and I have to say, I don’t like what I see. In fact, I’d consider this service to be highly problematic, certainly from a writer’s perspective.  On the surface, Grammarly looks like a pretty useful tool. It ostensibly helps you detect errors in your writing and helps you avoid overly complex and intricate phrases, the latter of which should be more than familiar to every reader of this blog. In all seriousness though, I can see the basic utility in such a tool, particularly if you’re not someone who’s used to writing or if you’re someone who’s emails always sound the same, no matter whether you’re writing to your team, your manager, or your spous...

Last weekend, as I was aimlessly browsing the web, I came across an article that outlined how German discount retailer Lidl had started a scheme to hand out free period products to girls & women in need, a laudable and worthy cause. It requires online registration and an app to get access though, which caused a whole flurry of comments and outrage online. Nothing new there. It was one of the arguments used by the detractors that really got my blood boiling though, when some idiot proclaimed that anyone who owned a laptop, or a smartphone was wealthy enough not to need that scheme in the first place. Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me? I do realise that I'm in a position of incredible privilege by being in a position in which I'm able to afford some pretty decent hardware and I'll be the first to admit this. However, this supposed luxury argument hasn’t held any water whatsoever for years, probably for over a decade at this point.  While I’m pretty sure that argument ...

I’ll admit. I never expected to even get the device I’m reviewing in this post, despite being a long-time Apple user, I just don’t take their audio ambitions seriously and honestly, when I want to spend hundreds of Euros on a new set of headphones, I’ll buy Bang & Olufsen, thank you very much. At least there, I can replace most of the key parts of the headphones in question and I know that at least the on-ear and over-ear headphones will last for ages. After all, my Beoplay H8 are still going strong! That being said, my E8 in-ears had been giving me trouble for quite some time, and when the AirPods Pro were one of the options during the company gift selection that also netted the DJI Mini 2, I decided to take the plunge. After All, I was in the market for some truly wireless in-ears. And I wasn’t about to shove Samsung’s in-ear kidneys, the other truly wireless option, into my ears. Several seemingly interminable weeks later, the big day arrived. While the packaging of the AirPods...

I’ll be honest with you guys. When I originally purchased the Microsoft Surface Go 2 back in early December 2020, I did so partially out of emotional reasons rather than to just fulfil a need for a lightweight mobile “writer’s notebook” and blogging machine. I’d been Surface-curious for quite some time and to be frank, I wanted to get my hands on something that was a) not Apple and yet b) not company-provided and as such locked down by company security rules. As such, I decided early on that a second look at the device would be in order. Now that I’m approaching the end of my fifth month with the Surface Go 2, I think it’s time to start writing down my thoughts. Granted, this still won’t be a complete appraisal of everything the Surface has to offer, simply due to the fact that I’m based in Ireland, and we’ve been in a non-stop lockdown since December 26th, with no sign of any lifting on the horizon. At the same time, the weather has mostly been simply atrocious, meaning there really ...

There’s something that’s seemingly popped up everywhere since the lockdown started here in Ireland. And no, I’m not referring to the proliferation of covidiots, conspiracy theorists and other dipshits that seem to spring up from under every rock. I’m talking about coffee trucks. Whether it’s in a converted trailer, at the back of a vintage truck, or in some other mobile contraption, these things have seemingly spread all over Corks parks over the last year or so. Well, what few parks there are, but that’s a whole other debate. And as you would expect, this has caused quite a bit of criticism, but not for the reasons one might expect. Yep, trailers like this one are what all the fuss is about. You see, much of the criticism isn’t aimed at the fact that many of these coffee trucks don’t provide any bins or any places to sit, or that they seem to be almost completely unregulated, all of which are completely valid points that should be addressed. No, the main point of criticism I’ve heard ...

Isn’t it strange? Sometimes, you want something really badly, try to twist and turn your finances to somehow be able to afford it, but still can’t make it work? And then, a few months later, you end up getting that object of your fancy anyway, without any effort? It happens very rarely, but it did happen to me earlier this year. My employer, an IT security company, had decided to allow all their employees to choose a number of high-tech gifts of their choosing, within certain limits, naturally. Those limits were more than generous however and have given me more than enough material for the next few articles on this blog. Anyway, one of the gifts I chose for myself was a new drone, the DJI Mini 2. There’s really nothing wrong with my DJI Spark , but it is getting on a bit, and I’d had my eyes on the Mini 2 ever since it was announced. I could never make the financial side work however, so when I got the opportunity to get it sent to me as a gift, I grabbed it with both hands. It was “on...