Mo'menths July 2026: The Long Way Round

July, the beginning of the second half of the year. It would be a perfect time to reflect on the first half of the year, but instead, I spent most of it sending letters to Microsoft and trying really hard to not get too frustrated with the whole process of getting my account back, it has been 67 days since I last had access to my account, and I am still waiting for a satisfactory resolution that's more than the standard "the team is working on it" response, although that ironically isn't the worst response, but that's for another time. I have also spent an extraordinary amount of time working on Project Homelab, which has been a great experience, more on that later.

The interesting fact of this month is brought to you by my friends at Microsoft, who apparently can't reinstate your account until you either take them to court or blast them on social media. Yes, you see I didn't use the word "fun", because there's nothing fun about that fact, and no, I couldn't come up with an actual fun fact for this month because of the bandwidth that this whole account shenanigans has taken up, but I will say that I have learned first hand that big corporations don't care about you, even if you are a paying customer. The best they can apparently do is make you chase your tail in endless loops of filling out forms, automated responses and after a few strongly worded letters, email interaction with someone I'm not entirely convinced actually cares.

• Project Homelab is taking shape
• Another masterpiece of movie making in The Odyssey.
• A last minute hike to breathtaking views on an absolutely perfect day.

This month like last month, has mostly felt like being in a holding pattern, that's not to say that nothing has happened, but it has been a month of being very patient. Thinking about it, I have taken every opportunity to talk about the whole Microsoft account debacle to anyone who will listen, and it has been a great way to vent (thanks to those who have listened).

The main standout thing this month was saying yes to a last minute hike with a bunch of wonderful people, it was a perfect day for it, and the views were quite simply breathtaking. The hike was organised by the people at Teachers Connect, whose mission is to host events and create a community for teachers, and I would highly recommend checking them out if you are a teacher or know any teachers. The hike was a great way to meet new people, and I am glad I said yes to it.

The last day of the month was spent with the Destiny crew, starting with a fun if pricey dining experience at Steak and Company restaurant, then the main event of the trip, which was seeing Spider-Man: Brand New Day in Dolby at Odeon Leicester Square, the seats we had were right at the front which is not my usual preference, but you try and book the best seats you can get when you are booking for 9 people, a little over a month before a very popular film is released. The film itself was actually quite good when viewed in isolation, but as part of the larger MCU, it felt like Disney finally realised that they have been making a lot of mistakes with the MCU, and this film was a course correction, which is a good thing, but it course corrected a little too much and the movie felt soo much smaller than it should have been, especially given the very next film in the MCU is going to be this galaxy spanning epic, that may or may not choke on its own ambition given it hasn't had much in terms of build up, I want to reserve judgement until I see it, but I am not holding my breath.

This month in Project Homelab, I finally went and organised my photos and videos, in preparation to move away from Google Photos (keeping Amazon Photos because of the unlimited photo storage). The process of getting all of them in one place was time consuming, but worth it. Getting it done involved downloading everything from Google Photos and Amazon Photos, comparing their contents along with the contents already on Immich (self-hosted Google Photos alternative), fixing the metadata as much as possible, and then uploaded the missing files to Immich. I did also learn to never use anything but the Camera app to take photos and videos, as the metadata from apps like WhatsApp and Instagram are basically non-existent, which makes someone like me who likes to keep their photos and videos organised, very frustrated.

The server itself has been running very well, and I have been able to get a lot of the services I want running on it, but there's always more services to add to reduce my reliance on big tech, while also improving my privacy and security.

The number of films logged this month is the lowest so far at 12 (which is actually 11 since I saw The Odyssey twice) bringing the total so far to 106, there wasn't a lot of films out this month anyway. The main highlight of the month was The Odyssey, which was a masterpiece of movie making, I experienced it in 70mm format at Odeon Leicester Square, which was an incredible experience and my default for films like this. I have also seen it 3 more times, one of which was in IMAX (sadly not the 70mm IMAX), but there's already plans to watch it again, these times in Dolby Cinema (yes, you read that right, by the time the movie is gone from the cinema, I would have seen it at least 5 times, it is that good). The other highlight was The Invite, which was a fun ride and a brilliant film making experience, I would highly recommend it. Evil Dead Burn was a fun watch, it reminded me of the new Resident Evil games in its weird family horror, dingy house in the middle of nowhere theme. One more honourable mention is Pinocchio: Unstrung, which I can only describe as chaos the movie, it was fun to watch, the practical effects were incredible, the story is a bit all over the place, but that's neither here nor there, it was a fun watch.

In theatre this month, I did something a little different and went to see The Hunger Games: On Stage, which is based on the first book and film, and it was a fun experience, the set design was incredible with a lot of moving parts. I also liked how there were parts of the show where the audience was involved, it added a bit of active participation that made it more engaging. The seat I booked for it was intentionally one of the sections that moved back and forth throughout the show, which was quite a unique experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the franchise.

In books, nothing happened this month, I did not listen to any audiobooks.

The reason there is no book recap this month is because I have been rediscovering a lot of music that I haven't listened to in a while, but also apparently mostly listening to the same music I've been listening to since February (looking at you Project Hail Mary soundtrack). And as you can see from the screenshot below, it's a nice visual representation of my music listening habits this month. Maybe next month I will do a weekly snapshot.

The main event for August is the UEL Alumni Big Weekend fourth edition, which I am very much looking forward to. I also plan to try and get some resolution on the Microsoft account debacle, and to continue working on Project Homelab, which is taking shape nicely. I also plan to catch up on some reading and explore new music.

This is the seventh entry in Mo'menths. August follows, TDCAU!