It has taken me about two months to drop Google as my search engine and web browser. The reason it's taken so long is the alternatives suuuck. Oh my god they suck.

I am now using DuckDuckGo as my search engine and the results are bafflingly stupid sometimes. You'll run a search and it chooses completely the wrong word in your query to focus on, and there doesn't seem to be a thing you can do about it. But I'm now just used to it?

I've switched browsers to Firefox because Google are limiting the extent that ublock can block ads, and this is the most difficult one. Stupid search results, I can live with, but Firefox is unbelievably annoying in some ways.

I do a lot of local web development, and I have dnsmasq running the localdev TLD. Both Chrome and Firefox do not like it when I go to clientname.localdev - both search that value in your default search engine. Both require you, first time, to enter http://clientname.localdev. Annoying. Firefox, however, requires you to enter http:// every time you type out a subfolder path on an existing fake domain for the first time, too. Google has figured it out but Firefox just cannot and it makes me scream every time I type out clientname.localdev/path/to/something and end up on a list of search results rather than my local version of that site. As I write this, it occurs to me that I could point one of my real domains to localhost and it might solve that problem, but I feel like I shouldn't have to do that!

That's the primary annoyance but there's loads of other slightly annoying things about Firefox that make me want to jump out of the window (we live in a bungalow). I think I'm now just used to being annoyed all the time.

Is this what it means to be a grumpy old man? I don't care for it.

I think it's maybe a symptom of advancing age but I've been enjoying watching sports a lot lately. Between F1 and badminton, I spend a fair amount of time on this already, but apparently there's always time for more. I like having it on in the background, too. Something about the sound of sport creates an atmosphere that I find comfortable. F1 is good for this; anything with an engine is good background noise.

I wanted to try watching some NBA again; I used to watch it a lot as a kid so I watched a Lakers game. I also had no idea what the format of an NFL game was but I've been super intrigued about it for a long time so I watched a match and loved it. Hugely preferred it to basketball, so I've signed up for a DAZN mid-season pass to watch some more NFL for the rest of the year. Who wants to talk football? I don't know anything about it and I'm going to have questions.

In a game where you can play as a pangolin, how are you going to play as anything other than a pangolin? Don't talk to me about axolotls; have you even seen a pangolin?

I've just used Cloudflare's Under Attack Mode for the first time, and it stopped a Denial of Service within about 10 seconds. I'm so impressed. I don't know why - Cloudflare's stuff usually Just Works, but I don't think I was expecting it to work that well/quickly.

We don't deserve Cloudflare. I don't even mind it being the basket I put all my eggs in.

The feature of iOS that I hate the most is developers being able to have web URLs open in a little browser within their app. I never want that. I don't want to have to log in in a little browser in your app. I want to use the browser I use which is actually already logged in at the URL I'm trying to open. I hope Apple gets rid of this one day because it makes me cross every single time.

The way my brain handles and compartmentalises anxiety makes me a walking, self-sabotaging anxiety factory.

This year I've been helping Sussex Badminton Juniors organise courts for their matches. This is everything I hate in a task - it's time-sensitive, there's money involved, there's many people's time involved. It's totally wrong for me, but I was asked and I am pathologically incapable of saying no to things I could do. I even try on a regular basis and I just can't do it - I always end up acceding.

Two fixtures for this season have been driving me up the wall. I've lost sleep. Last night I was Googling badminton courts in Hampshire for a fixture that I just have not been able to place, because I couldn't sleep worrying about it.

Today I've been phoning around every open tab on my phone, and finally managed to find somewhere with availability for the date I need, got it booked and it's all sorted. And immediately my brain says "don't know what you were worrying about - it's all fine". Why am I like that? I have none of that visceral fear that I had two hours ago; that I'm a total failure. It all just evaporated immediately. I get how compartmentalising can be good for self-preservation, but at least leave me some residual memory to protect me from repeating my mistakes!

Having a puppy is bonkers. Why do they learn everything you wish they wouldn't immediately, but things you want them to learn take forever?! I gave Forest a treat before bed to get him into his crate three nights ago, and every night since then he thinks there's something delicious in my hand. But trying to get him to pee outside has taken two weeks! Dogs are annoying.