Neil Turner's Blog

Next door to the Legoland Discovery Centre at the Trafford Palazzo is another Merlin attraction in the form of Manchester’s Sea Life Centre.

This month’s themed playlist is songs that have later gone on to be featured in TV adverts.

A couple of weekends back, Christine had some coursework to do and wanted me and our ten-year-old out of the way for a day.

As well as a free bus pass, one of the silver linings of being diagnosed with epilepsy is that I no longer have to pay for prescription medication.

2026 marked 70 years since the very first Eurovision Song Contest, and so the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford is holding a special exhibition called Setting the Stage.

As I’m currently unable to drive for health reasons, I’ve applied for a Disabled Person’s Travel Pass to give me free bus travel.

This is a miscellaneous post about recent things that have happened with the ESPHome project, and how I’ve implemented them at home.

I have new glasses now.

If you fancy seeing a bit of free public art, head along to the Manchester Arndale Centre some time in the next three weeks to see the MCR Made Icons.

The very warm summer has given way to quite a warm autumn.

It’s been a year since I started doing these round-ups of things that haven’t warranted a full blog post at the end of each month.

Is it worth hanging your washing out to dry?

Do you hate nazis?

It’s taken us almost nine months, but we finally got to redeem Christine’s Christmas present, and go behind the scenes at the Vivarium at the Manchester Museum to meet their collection of frogs and toads at the weekend just gone.

Earlier this month, I wrote about adding Bluetooth Proxy support to an existing Infrared Proxy.

Back in 2024, when we went to Northumberland for our summer holiday, I posted a list of the places that we didn’t go to but had considered.

Last week was Christine’s birthday, and so we both took the day off work to spend the day in Manchester.

On Bank Holiday Monday, we went to Cliffe Castle Museum and Gardens in Keighley, which is about a 40 minute drive due north from where we live in Sowerby Bridge.

So this month’s playlist is about, well, months.

Last weekend, I took our ten-year-old to the Imperial War Museum North, in Salford Quays.

Last weekend, I wrote about turning a Tuya device into a Bluetooth Proxy.

When I was writing up about our visit to the Plas Cadnant Hidden Garden in July, I realised that I’d forgotten to write about when we went to Biddulph Grange Garden in May.

A couple of years back, I bought an M5Stack Atom Lite to act as a Bluetooth Proxy for Home Assistant.

Between returning from Wales, and our ten-year-old starting four weeks at summer holiday club, we had a fallow week where Christine and I took turns to look after them during the daytime.

We’re into the final third of the year.

August is my busiest month of the year at work, although this year I only had to work one weekend, rather than two.

It’s been four weeks since I last wrote about my recovery, following my seizure in May.

In last week’s review of our new Nextbase dashcam, I mentioned that, within 48 hours of having the dashcam fitted, we experienced a near miss which was recorded by the dashcam.

Although it’s not officially released until this coming Friday, it appears that a number of UK cinemas are showing limited previews of Coyote vs Acme this week.