Internet Things

2023, quantified

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An AI generated image of a business woman standing in front of a series of charts with '2023' at the top

Okay, so we’re in 2024 now, but I’m taking inspiration from Diamond Geezer‘s Summing Up 2023 blog post to post some statistics on things that I’ve done during 2023.

Countries and counties visited

In 2023, I’ve visited two countries: England, obviously, and France.

Over the course of the year, I have spent at least some time in the following English counties:

  • West Yorkshire
  • North Yorkshire
  • South Yorkshire
  • Lincolnshire
  • Greater Manchester
  • Lancashire
  • Cheshire
  • Leicestershire
  • Northamptonshire
  • Norfolk
  • Hertfordshire
  • Surrey
  • Hampshire

This doesn’t include any counties that I have passed through without stopping.

Most distant points

The furthest compass points I have been to are:

  • Furthest North: RHS Harlow Carr, near Harrogate, North Yorkshire
  • Furthest South: Futuroscope, near Poitiers, France
  • Furthest East: Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
  • Furthest West: Chester Zoo, Cheshire

I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t go very far north in 2023. We will be going further north this year, but are unlikely to go as far south as we don’t have an international holiday planned.

Methods of transport used

I have driven quite a bit this year. As my car’s MOT is due each autumn, I can only estimate the mileage, but I reckon it’s around 10,000 miles over the course of the year. Quite a bit of that was in France.

Train travel has been almost exclusively to and from work – indeed, I’ve only visited four railway stations this year, and every train has been a diesel-powered train. This includes the one heritage railway that I’ve been on, which was the short remaining section of the Derwent Valley Light Railway at Murton Park, near York.

I’ve been on two trams in Manchester, and a few buses, both locally and in Leeds and York. Plus, ferries for getting to and from France. I have not been on an aeroplane since 2015.

Music listened to

My full 2023 last.fm stats are not yet available, but over the year I have scrobbled 13,194 tracks – just 254 less than in 2022. That’s an average of 36 songs per day. Assuming each song is an average of 3 minutes, that’s 39,582 minutes over the year, or 659.7 hours or around 27.5 days. In other words, I spent almost a month listening to music last year.

Whilst I don’t exclusively listen to music on Spotify, on there, pop was my top genre, following by trance, rock, pop dance and Europop this year, according to my Spotify Wrapped. My most-listened to song was ‘Shut Up and Dance’ by Walk The Moon, which I listened to 12 times. To be fair, it is a good song.

Unsurprisingly, Within Temptation was my top artist – I own six of their albums and I’ve seen them live twice.

Books read and listened to

As mentioned in my favourite things of 2023, I read 93 books this year, which adds up to over 20,000 pages according to My Goodreads Year In Books. The shortest book I read was ‘How I Proposed to my Wife: An Alien Sex Story’ by John Scalzi (sponsored link), which was 26 pages long, and the longest was ‘What Just Happened?!’ by Marina Hyde (sponsored link). The printed edition is 472 pages, although I listened to the audiobook instead which is 17 hours long. Not the longest audiobook I’ve ever listened to (that was ‘American Gods’ by Neil Gaiman – sponsored link), but certainly one of the longer ones. Overall, the average length of the books I read was 220 pages.

Beers and ciders consumed

I log the beers and ciders that I drink using Untappd, and this year I consumed 35 such drinks (a decrease from 58 in 2022). Of those, 13 were from Brewdog, which may have something to do with what I got for Christmas in 2021. Several of these were non-alcoholic beers and ciders.

Steps taken

I’ve had my Fitbit Versa 3 on my wrist almost all of the time this year, and have taken a total of 3,695,427 steps – an average of just over 10,000 per day. It also estimates that I have climbed 11347 floors, walked 2,717.1 km and burned 1,079,223 calories through exercise.

Time spent learning French

I started Duolingo’s French course on the 1st January 2022 (so I have a two year streak now), and in 2023, I spent 4,947 minutes learning – that’s 82 hours or an average of 13.5 minutes per day. I also learned 4657 new words in French last year. I’m aiming to complete the French course, which will probably see me well into 2025.

So that’s 2023 quantified. I’m sure I could offer more stats, like photos taken, podcasts listened to etc. if I tracked these throughout the year. As it is, I’m relying on various web services that track data for me that I can refer back to. I wonder how 2024 will compare?

Switching to a new ISP

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Last month, we switched to Vodafone as our new Internet Service Provider (ISP) at home.

We’ve been with Now Broadband (Sky’s budget brand) since autumn 2018, who, at the time, could offer us faster speeds for less money. And they’ve been pretty good; when I was working at home full-time during lockdown, I rarely had any issues. Our bandwidth was sufficient for me to participate in online meetings whilst our (then) four-year-old watched Netflix in another room. Our typical download speeds were in the 35-40 Mbps:

Speedtest.neet results from the 5th November 2023, showing 36.88 Mbps download and 9.35 Mbps upload on our old ISP, Now Broadband

But then Now raised their prices by £9 per month. They probably told us that they would do this, but I have no recollection of being informed in advance.

Finding a new ISP

Meanwhile, Vodafone could offer faster speeds and a new router, for £2 less than Now before the price rise. So, we would be getting a better service, and paying £11 less per month for it than if we stayed with Now.

We used the MoneySavingExpert broadband comparison tool, which showed that Vodafone was the cheapest big name that didn’t have a poor customer service rating. Shell Energy were cheaper, but their customer service isn’t great and they’ve just been taken over by Octopus Energy who don’t currently offer broadband.

I signed up using Quidco (referral link) and should get £82.50 cashback in late spring, so factoring that in, what a savings.

The switchover took a couple of hours, and seemed to happen early in the morning, so by 7am we were already online with Vodafone. And the speeds are much better – around 75 Mbps download and 19 Mbps upload, so almost twice as fast. Considering that this is over DSL, I’m impressed with how fast it is.

Speedtest.neet results from the 21st December 2023, showing 74.11 Mbps download and 18.87 Mbps upload on our new ISP, Vodafone Broadband

The new Vodafone broadband hub is also better than the basic Now broadband router that we had previously. It has four 1 Gbps Ethernet sockets for a start, compared to just two on the Now router; this means I no longer need a separate Ethernet switch. It also looks nicer; it’s free-standing but has mounting holes on the back for screws.

Digital Voice Line

The hub also supports Digital Voice Line, where your phone calls are made over the internet, rather than PSTN. Openreach intend to switch off the analogue phone network in two years time, so switching now is timely. This means that our landline phone plugs into the hub, rather than the micro-filter attached to the master phone socket. That being said, since the switchover, our phone hasn’t actually worked. The fact that it took me several days to realise shows how much we use our landline, but I’ll need to get on to Vodafone to have them look into it.

As with all changes to a new ISP, over the first few weeks there was a little instability with the connection. But it’s settled down now and works well. The other issue I had early on was with connecting to my Raspberry Pi externally, as port forwarding didn’t seem to work properly. This was a bit of a gut punch, considering how much effort it took me to get Home Assistant working with HTTPS, but it seems to be sorted now.

If it’s been a while since you switched your ISP, I would recommend that you do a quick check to see if you can get a better deal elsewhere. Broadband providers make a lot of money from people who just let their contracts auto-renew. Even if you’re happy with your current ISP, you could try haggling with them to see if they can offer you a cheaper package.

Ghost Signs

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You know those old painted adverts you sometimes see on the side of buildings? York, where I grew up, has a famous one for Bile Beans, due to its prominent location, but there’s also one in Halifax too.

Historic England is building a list of these, with photos and GPS locations, and you can contribute. I’ve added one near where I live in Sowerby Bridge – it’s seen better days, but perhaps in Historic England have a list, then there may be money and resources to restore some of these.

Ianvisits mentioned this last week, and it’s encouraging to have seen the list grow in the days since. It’s not just painted adverts like this that are welcome – signs for old and defunct shops can be added too.

My Podcast Diet – August 2018

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Matt Haughey, who has recently quit Twitter and returned to blogging more, has posted about which podcasts he listens to regularly and semi-regularly. It’s a good idea for a blog post, and so I’m going to steal it.

Podcasts that I listen to straightaway

These tend to be topical podcasts that would go stale very quickly.

  • BBC Radio 4 Friday Night Comedy Podcast – whichever show happens to occupying the 1830 Friday comedy slot on BBC Radio 4. Normally this alternates between The News Quiz and The Now Show, but Dead Ringers pops up in summer. Weekly, every Friday, somewhat obviously.
  • The Bugle – topical satirical comedy from Andy Zaltzman and rotating guest hosts filling the gap left by John Oliver (yes, that John Oliver). Weekly, every Friday.
  • The Guilty Feminist – this was the podcast that I saw live in March 2016, which mixes discussion of issues relating to feminism and stand-up comedy. Hosted by Deborah Frances-White with a rotating guest co-host. Weekly, every Monday.
  • Standard Issue Podcast – a magazine style-show covering women’s issues, as well as interviews, women’s sport, and regular features on TV shows and Disney films. Once a month, there’s a ‘gigcast’ with celebrity chats recorded live in front of an audience. Weekly, on Wednesdays, with occasional bonus content at weekends.
  • Reasons to be Cheerful – a new podcast co-hosted by Ed Milliband and Geoff Lloyd, which focuses on a political issue each week.

Podcasts I listen to regularly

  • The Comedian’s Comedian – stand-up comedian Stuart Goldsmith interviews a fellow comic (or comedy group) about how they work. Always enlightening. Weekly, on Mondays, but seemingly on a break at the moment – probably due to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
  • Made of Human – stand-up comedian Sofie Hagen (formally of The Guilty Feminist) interviews people about life and how they handle it. Warm and friendly. Weekly, on Wednesdays.
  • Felicitations – Felicia Day’s relatively new podcast, about what she’s been up to, and parenting. Weekly, on Thursdays, but seemingly on a break at the moment.

Podcasts that I listen to when there’s a new season

These podcasts run as seasons and so new episodes don’t come out all year round, but I listen to them regularly when they’re on.

  • Mrs Brightside – stand-up comedian Susan Calman interviews a fellow celebrity about depression and mental health. Weekly, on Mondays. Series one has just ended, but should be back later in the year.
  • The Infinite Monkey Cage – science podcast co-hosted by Professor Brian Cox and Robin Ince, with a different topic each week. Guests are a mixture of scientists and comedians. Weekly, on Mondays, with new episodes available now.
  • Global Pillage – comedy panel show about diversity, hosted by Deborah Frances-White. Weekly, on Mondays. No new episodes at present.
  • Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP) – stand-up comedian Richard Herring interviews a celebrity guest in front of a live audience in London’s Leicester Square Theatre. Weekly, on Wednesdays, back in the autumn.
  • Grownupland – a podcast for millennials about adulting.
  • Newsjack – weekly comedy sketches with an open-door writing policy, so anyone can submit.
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