My First Rally - Trans Rights (Project 491)

Ahhhhh yes, now where was I? I've corrected my spiralling debt thanks to an early release of superannuation due to financial hardship. Taking away from future me isn't too bad - especially as future me shouldn't really exist. The fact that present day me exists...

mcretro.net/depression-d...

Progesterone metabolism pathways.

Me, Myself and Progesterone

I touched on progesterone (P4) in my last transgender update post. I am not quite sure if progesterone is working in the way I want it to. My biggest annoyance with it is feeling like my brain is on fire just before trying to sleep...

mcretro.net/me-myself-an...

Flicky the cicada upside down on a branch.

Flicky – The Floury Baker Cicada

Ohhh that little cicada was such a survivor. Resting and laying eggs for almost every day for ten days while in captivity.

These events happened one year ago. It doesn’t all end here though as Flicky’s children eventually hatch. 🪲

mcretro.net/flicky-the-f...

Current medication list

Blood Test Results February 2024

A few milestones have been achieved this month. I’ve reached my third month of gender affirming hormone therapy and was able to get an estradiol implant (200mg, compounded). I kicked pregabalin as it wasn’t helping with my anxiety. 🫠

mcretro.net/blood-test-r...

The Garden, Lizards and Bees

We had a giant blue tongue turn up randomly on the lawn. No doubt here for the snails and slugs I keep finding at night. I picked up a tray of beef dog food with minimal grain content and he hasn't shown up since! 😭

mcretro.net/the-garden-l...

New Year, New Something That Rhymes with Year

Technically I’m still the same, but my hammock is weirdly outdoors. For the first time in years I have an outdoor area. I’m no longer trapped in a box. I hate apartments. At the same time...

mcretro.net/new-year-new...

Cute little guy! 🥰

Maintenance Complete – User Is Online!

CG-NAT defeated! The Cloudflare Argo Tunnel works and has done so for about a week. However, due to the way the tech behind it all works…

…I might have inadvertently locked myself out, with help from botnets spamming...

mcretro.net/maintenance-...

Downtime – Planned Maintenance

Here comes the downtime. As my NBN regresses to 4G home internet. Expect this site to be down for at least a few weeks while I get my head around consumer grade network address translation or CG-NAT for short. 😅

mcretro.net/downtime-pla...

HTTP/0.9 Request and Other One-Liners

A quick look at HTTP requests on really old browsers. It was interesting to try and get a modern day CDN – Cloudflare in my case, to play nice with browsers such as NCSA Mosaic which are now almost older than time itself. 😀

Great News, I’m Transgender!

Exactly one month ago, on the 18th October 2023, I came to the realisation that I am transgender. Two weeks later I had an appointment with an endocrinologist. And one week after that a prescription for estradiol valerate 6 mg a day.

mcretro.net/great-news-i...

Dell P190Sb LCD Monitor – The Heist

7th October 2023. Picture the date, picture the time. Walking along a major arterial road. Out of the corner of my eye, a monitor. E-waste? Maybe. Dumped? Definitely.

mcretro.net/dell-p190sb-...

WD Blue SA510 1TB WDS100T3B0B Failure… Again

Oh my sweet WD Blue SA510 M.2 SATA 2280 blade drives. You are such trash. Since I took GeoCities offline I thought I’d erase and sell the drives. But look at what I found...

mcretro.net/wd-blue-sa51...

Forced Veganism Rethink

For the past three years I’ve been vegan. A junk food vegan. Processed foods have always been my friend. They’re cheap, full of energy and bad for you? I’ve dusted off my cognitive dissonance...

mcretro.net/forced-vegan...

OpenRA – Command & Conquer – Red Alert

Silos needed. I used to love Command & Conquer as a teenager. My Athlon 500 MHz sure did clock a few hours as did Andrew’s PC. Then came Red Alert 2 and the Yuri’s Revenge expansion. Such great game play. 😀

mcretro.net/openra-comma...

52nd and Final Blood Donation

A few months ago I decided I was finished with donating blood. A few factors decided into why I would no longer donate.

mcretro.net/52nd-and-fin...

HPE MicroServer with TrueNAS Scale – Clunking Hard Drives

I have been listening to my three or four drives go clunk, clunk, clunk for the best part of a year. Initially I thought it must have been something in TrueNAS... 🤷‍♀️

mcretro.net/hpe-microser...

Shane’s Brains! MRI Scan – October 2023 The latest update in a series of updates it seems! Recently I had the fun of being injected with a chelated form of gadolinium, affectionately known as an MRI contrast agent. It makes fluid filled …

Shane’s Brains! MRI Scan – October 2023

The latest update in a series of updates it seems! Recently I had the fun of being injected with a chelated form of gadolinium, affectionately known as an MRI contrast agent.

mcretro.net/shanes-brain...

GeoCities Archive Retired, Dockerisation Abandoned There’s something about waking up at 3am every morning that just gives you that extra bit of time to blog. Today we’re touching on what happened to my GeoCities Archive. A while back I …

GeoCities Archive Retired, Dockerisation Abandoned

Today we’re touching on what happened to my GeoCities Archive. A while back I had an idea to dockerise my Apache-based web server.

mcretro.net/geocities-ar...

The Voice Referendum What the actual fuck Australia? When it comes to politics I am very left leaning and the echo chambers I frequent tend to be left aligned. Oh, aaaaaand I might not have voted. But what the hell are…

The Voice Referendum

What the actual fuck Australia? When it comes to politics I am very left leaning. But what the hell are we doing voting no on something that benefits the First Nations people – with no disadvantage to anyone else?

mcretro.net/the-voice-re...

Floury Baker Cicada Emerging This all started a bit grim finding a flattened cicada being attacked by ants and a dead beetle who probably couldn’t get to soil. But there’s always a story to be told and her one lies…

Floury Baker Cicada Emerging

This all started a bit grim finding a flattened cicada being attacked by ants and a dead beetle who probably couldn’t get to soil. But there’s always a story to be told and her one lies in the video. 🙃

mcretro.net/floury-baker...

Shane’s Brains! MRI Scan – September 2023 We’re on day 25 of the never-ending headache. The good news, however, is that I have been to a neurologist who prescribed some indometacin (US: indomethacin). Indometacin is a nonsteroidal an…

Shane’s Brains! MRI Scan – September 2023

We’re on day 25 of the never–ending headache. The good news, however, is that I have been to a neurologist who prescribed some indometacin, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), like naproxen or ibuprofen.

mcretro.net/shanes-brain...

The Headache That Keeps Marching On We’re on day 11 of having a headache on the right-hand side of my head. It does not respond to ibuprofen, naproxen, paracetamol, or diclofenac. Just my luck. The only thing that seems to be h…

The Headache That Keeps Marching On

We’re on day 11 of having a headache on the right-hand side of my head. It does not respond to ibuprofen, naproxen, paracetamol, or diclofenac. Just my luck. The only thing that seems to be having any effect is pregabalin.

mcretro.net/the-headache...

Shane’s Brains! CT Scan – September 2023 After having a headache for nearly a week I figured I should get it checked out at the local GP. Thanks to having a somewhat decent health system in place, I had a CT scan just one hour later. Havi…

Shane’s Brains! CT Scan – September 2023

After having a headache for nearly a week I figured I should get it checked out. I did some looking but couldn’t see anything, well except for the big diagnostically irrelevant but neat looking, calcified falx cerebri.

mcretro.net/shanes-brain...

Final Fantasy XVI Live Stream (2023) Click the image above to beam on over to the full playlist. Clocked in at 2 days, 14 hours total total. Wow! I always play in cinematic (or easy mode) for most games. I guess I consider games a nov…

Final Fantasy XVI Live Stream

Clocked in at 2 days, 14 hours total total. Wow! Overall though I would recommend this game if you enjoy killing dragons and stuff. I don’t know, I guess I am very keen for the Final Fantasy VII Remake parts two and three to be released. 😍

mcretro.net/final-fantas...

Docker, GeoCities Search, and RetroChallenge 2022/10 Results Where to start with the last few days. Why not here! The RetroChallenge 2022/10 results are in. Looks like I nabbed the Grand Prize. Not too bad. SuperNick also got a place, congratulations! SuperN…

Docker, GeoCities Search, and RetroChallenge 2022/10 Results

Where to start with the last few days. Why not here! The RetroChallenge 2022/10 results are in. Looks like I nabbed the Grand Prize. Not too bad. 💁‍♀️

mcretro.net/docker-geoci...

Sleep Hygiene and Sleep Health – The Data My ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet trial arrived a couple of weeks ago. After setting it up and picking some starting options the data flowed for roughly two weeks. Nasal pillows are not suitable for me…

Using the Open Source CPAP Analysis Reporter (OSCAR), we can delve a into the data. Any days missing data are due to insomnia keeping me awake all night. Not fun. Anyway, let’s look at some of the days in more detail and the different event types.

mcretro.net/sleep-hygien...

Integrity and Extracting the GeoCities Archive – Rebuild V5 Quick heads up, this is a post for my own reference. The above is a screenshot from here. Another awesome thing about using tar files is that you can search for things in them and extract them base…

Integrity and Extracting the GeoCities Archive – Rebuild V5

Quick heads up, this is a post for my own reference. The above is a screenshot from here. Another awesome thing about using tar files is that you can search for things in them and extract them based on wildcard searches.

August 2023 News With August nearly out of the way, I thought I should do a quick post on what’s been happening. First up we have Bloodbourne (PS4 edition). I’m afraid to say I am terrible at it and it …

With August nearly out of the way, I thought I should do a quick post on what’s been happening.

mcretro.net/august-2023-...

MiSTer ao486 Core – Dial-up Modem Testing via VoIP First thing, I should probably note is that this was from relatively early on in my testing with VoIP back in 2021. I didn’t use anything fancy apart from the VoIP box, some phone cables and …

First thing, I should probably note is that this was from relatively early on in my testing with VoIP back in 2021. I didn’t use anything fancy apart from the VoIP box, some phone cables and good luck. Coupled with a really great guide of course.

mcretro.net/mister-ao486...