It’s been school Half -Term this week, and so the Wednesday posting day has skipped by unmet yet again.

The week has mainly been spent on activities with the kids, so amongst other things we’ve been to Airhop, to the cinema to watch GOAT, and to Think Tank. There wasn’t too much that grabbed their imagination, outside of a somewhat-dated talking robot. The highlight for me an my son was Gamewsorld, a separate exhibit within the museum, that had approx 100 old games consoles all hooked up to play. Some of the examples went way back, including an Atari 2600, a Goldstar 3do, Atari ST, and my first introduction to the world of home gaming, the classic rubber-keyed Spectrum 48k!  The collection covered through the the early 2000’s, with a Dreamcast, MegaDrive, and various Playstation and Xbox’s.

While the boy found some of the older stuff hard-going we did have blast playing Halo on original Xbox, Soul Calibur on DreamCast, an some early PS One racing game I ca’t remember the name of.   I don’t think it’ll be too long before the first gaming console finds its way to our home….

On the nerd front, I started the year trying out some alternative music library software and players (again). I’ve been looking for an alternative to Apple Music for some time, as I’m trying to move away from having all my difgiatk life tied into one monolithic ecosystm. I started 2026 with a 6 week run using Roon, and just finished a week trying out a self-hosted server option, with Navidrome. Spoiler – there’s a reason why that trial only lasted a week or so.  After all this, I’m committing back to Plex, for now at least….