Ceud Mìle Fàilte
Thank you for dropping-by, I hope you enjoy your visit. The main content is to be found in the blog, where I discuss everything and anything, but, topics including: photography, nature, technology, food, movies, music, politics, and life in the Highlands of Scotland, make regular appearances.
I commonly write reviews of movies (or films, if you prefer). Some movie reviews are short, others will be discussed in more detail. The scope covered will be mainly mainstream English language movies from the 1930s until the present day.
About me
My name is Iain MacDonald, and I live in the Highlands of Scotland (although I have lived elsewhere in the past). I use Fitheach as my online pseudonym, on this website, on Mastodon, and on Matrix. I am a big fan of Free & Open Source Software, which I use both professionally and at home.
Computing and technology tend to infuse themselves into my other interests, as once you learn some skills in one area it is convenient to use them to solve problems in other spheres.
When not tinkering with computers, I am likely to be found repairing things because living in the countryside you learn to be resourceful.
Of course, man doesn't live by SSH tunnels and kerosene vapour burners alone, so, food, as a subject, makes regular appearances, too.
My latest Life articles
My most recent ramblings can be found in the Life section.
My latest Mastodon posts
Mastodon is a microblogging app that is part of the decentralised web known as The Fediverse. See this article for more details.
Fitheach
Fri, 14 Aug 2026 10:05:46 +0000
Just had a visit from a mother and baby Sika deer, in the garden. Always nice to see the next generation.
#nature #Highlands #Scotland #photo #photography
Fri, 14 Aug 2026 09:42:53 +0000
Farage winning the by-election means that the Investigation into his "personal gift" of £5 million can be re-opened. The re-opening of the investigation has been confirmed on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards' website. Screenshot of the website also shows the investigation into Richard Tice. I included that just because.
Fri, 14 Aug 2026 09:00:43 +0000
The photo shows some of the candidates at the Clacton by-election count, waiting for the results to be announced.
"Our" man, #CountBinface is unmistakeable in the line-up. Very noticeable for his absence is the by-election winner, Nigel Farage. Farage was too much the coward to even show at the count.
Farage got 22,239 votes, 63.3% on a 44.4% turnout. #Binface got a very respectable 9,455 votes (26.9%), he will get his deposit returned. We likely will see Binface again.
Thu, 13 Aug 2026 23:04:40 +0000
What's the old adage about things happening in threes?
My original film noir download was **terrible** quality, so, I went looking for another. I thought I would check IMDb for reviews. Nope! IMDb (which is Amazon) requires one to login to see the user comments about movies. That's another recent change, for the worse.
Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:26:52 +0000
Ye gods!
I'm also finding many #YouTube pages are now presenting javascript challenges, which breaks standard yt-dlp. This only happened to-night. I don't know, it's a constant battle.
Luckily, installing Deno, and including this on the yt-dlp command solves the problem:
--js-runtimes ~/.local/bin/deno
Your chosen location may differ. See the docs.
https://docs.deno.com/runtime/getting_started/installation/
Thu, 13 Aug 2026 20:53:31 +0000
Well, that's #reddit dead for me.
After about 10 seconds of loading any page on reddit an overaly appears, demanding one either creates an account or to login. That won't be happening.