Today has been a bit of a bust. My son, who is currently looking for work, visited a job fair today which didn’t really have anything suitable. Then, to top it off, the volunteering post he’s applied for was unsuccessful too, mostly because it was mis-advertised. And then he discovered that his application for a temporary job he’d applied for (and had interviewed for) had also been unsuccessful.

The job market for young people is not great in the UK at the moment, to the extent that the government are actively seeking ways to address it, so I’m reassuring him that he shouldn’t take these rejections personally – there are many, many other young people in the same boat – but it’s hard not to feel for him as a parent.

The day was not that great for me either. I had to travel for a customer meeting in another city and present on a subject that had required some prep and research. It’s the first time I’ve traveled for work for a long time, and I don’t mind doing so, but I was a little anxious about how my presentation would be received. Unfortunately I didn’t get to find out as some other sections of the meeting overran and my bit had to be dropped. Everyone was very nice and apologetic about it, and there will be another chance to present on the subject, but it would have been much less disruptive had I been able to join the meeting remotely given the circumstances. Oh well, I guess these things happen.

And finally, to top everything off, it seems that Flickr has decided to stop working properly in Firefox today. Clearing the cookies and cache, and even rebooting my PC did nothing to resolve the issue. There seem to be no other reports of problems either, so it seems like it’s just me. In the end I had to use Edge to log in instead.

Apropos of nothing here’s a picture of Pac-Man that I took in Mablethorpe at the weekend.

Panasonic Lumix GX7 & adapted Olympus Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 SLR lens.

Taken on 19 October 2026