Happy May! I did more travelling in April, taking advantage of the warm weather and spring feeling that’s arrived.

Early in the month, I walked half of the Wandle Trail along the River Wandle, from Croydon to Morden. It was a lovely day through some idyllic bits of London, and I hope I can finish the trail sometime soon.

Later in the month, I visited Copenhagen to help host a Tailscale meetup, and I spent a few extra days in the city to explore. It’s a lovely place full of waterways and canals, just my sort of thing, and I particularly enjoyed my walk around the inside (then outside) of a fortress that’s built as a five-pointed star:

But by far the most exciting trip was to Linz, for the European Brass Band Championships 2026. My sister Coco plays percussion for Flowers Band, who were there because they were the best English band at the British National Competition in 2024. Linz itself has a lovely ye olde worlde vibe, and it’s right on the banks of the gorgeous River Danube:

It was lovely to hear Coco play twice – each band plays the same set piece on the first day, then a piece of their own choice on the second day – and they were clearly having a lot of fun doing it.

It would have been nice just to see them perform, but as a cherry on the cake, they won the whole competition! Flowers are the 2026 Champion Band Of Europe, the first English band to win in over a decade, and the first band from the West of England ever to win. They’ve worked hard to get there, they played fabulously, and the win is well-deserved.

I am very, very proud.

What have I been writing?

All my writing this month has been about my local computer setup, either Python or my blog:

• Quietly quantum-resistant blogging

• Auditing my local Python packages

• HTTP GET requests with the Python standard library

• Building a basic cache with SQLite

I’m clearing out my queue of “how do I computer” topics; as I rejig the backend of my website I’m refamiliarising myself with a lot of old topics and writing them up properly. Expect more posts like this in May and beyond!

And just a couple of notes:

• The FileExistsError exception exposes a filename attribute

• HOME_GET_ME_HOME is a Citymapper Shortcuts action

• Filter a list of JSON object based on a list of tags

• Start a Caddy server in a subprocess during a Python session

What’s making me smile?

Aside from the nice weather and outdoors:

🧦 I discovered Many Mornings socks in a bookshop at Linz train station. They're mismatched socks with bright and fun patterns, and if the lemon-patterned pair I bought don’t turn out to be a metaphorical lemon, I expect to buy some more.

🌈 I’ve been watching several Apple TV shows recently, and I’m enjoying their new intro credits, which were created with physical effects. The video showing the glass props and film setup is really cool.

📙 This month’s book club book was Love Expanded by Wren Burke. Somebody described this book was "a collection of windows" into different topics around ace/aro experiences, love and relationships, and it’s an apt description. We’ve been on a run of great books this year, and this was another good one.

I hope you have a lovely May, and I’ll speak to you again soon.

~ Alex