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
Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:35:59 +0000
The Hollywood golden era actor Don Ameche had six children. They were named: Connie, Bonnie, Lonnie, Dominic, Thomas and Ronald.
Ronnie is a common diminutive of Ronald, so, four of the children could have been Connie, Bonnie, Lonnie, and Ronnie. 😂
Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:39:32 +0000
A feature of the Michael Shayne series of detective B-movies was the clever dialogue. An example:
Cop:
Don't leave town, we might need a statement.
Shayne:
You can have the one the bank sent me. You'll get a good laugh out of that.
Time to Kill (1942)
This movie was the first screen adaption of the Raymond Chandler novel "The High Window". The detective was changed from Philip Marlowe to Shayne.
Tue, 29 Sep 2026 08:18:56 +0000
Burger Queen! 😂 😂
#Highlands #Scotland #fastfood
Thu, 24 Sep 2026 18:00:14 +0000
🧵
... finished.
19,780 files ranging in size from a few MB to about 100MB, converted in around 11 hours. I don't think that is too bad. Conversion was done directly on the USB stick.
Thu, 24 Sep 2026 08:42:40 +0000
🧵
Still going...
Wed, 23 Sep 2026 19:22:39 +0000
My music collection is saved in Ogg and Opus. However, my car can only play MP3 from a USB stick. So, I'm converting a copy of my music collection to MP3 using ffmpeg. There are nearly 20,000 files. This may take a long, long time.