test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tonight's tea was just the thing for cold weather like this: scouse

A good-sized bowl thereof, to be precise. Also, I remembered that when I was a kid our mum would give us bread to have with it, so I returned to the ancient practice of my people and it turned out it's an excellent idea

Generally OK, though since posting earlier I've noticed a slightly weird feeling about my lungs - as if they've been slightly reduced in capacity. I'm now wondering if I might have a bronchial infection or something like that

Anyway I've had a bowl of scouse, which is well known to have healing powers, and I'm taking it easy in the hope it sorts itself out. If it deteriorates, I'll call NHS Direct and see what they suggest; there is a walk-in place available seven days a week, but it's right across the city and only open 8am - 8pm

Luckily I got the remaining bowl of scouse into the freezer before the hospital shenanigans commenced (unlike the Scotch broth of blessed memory) so that's what I had for dinner tonight, along with a couple of hunks of sesame seed bloomer that came in the Sainsbury's delivery; and very nice it all was

[cojak]

Dinner from the Chinese, and very nice it was

Accompanied by a bit of Traffic Cops, which is suitably mindless entertainment whilst eating. It's on Channel 5 now, but - and I only found this out yesterday - the Channel 5 app on the Apple TV has no adverts! It's usually too annoying to watch their stuff online because not only does it have as many adverts as watching it when broadcast, it usually also only has two or three that are repeated every single time, and sometimes even played several times in succession during the same break. But for some reason, probably to do with Apple's rules about giving them a cut, there are none at all on the Apple TV

This also means I can watch NCIS: New Orleans advert-free, should I so desire. And a load of "documentaries" about how terrible poor/sick/fat people are, but I'll leave those to some of the regulars in General

I haven’t tried Apple TV - does it cost anything?

[NickFitz]

I haven’t tried Apple TV - does it cost anything?

There's the cost of the box itself, of course. And you need an iTunes Store account, though that's free and you probably have one anyway. After that, its core function is streaming stuff purchased on the iTunes Store, whether music or video. It also allows you to connect to any iTunes libraries shared on the same wifi network. And you can get apps such as BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, and whatever the Channel 5 one is called, to stream free stuff; though if you have a recent TV or even Blu-ray player, one or other or both will probably have those apps anyway. And it now has Amazon Prime, though again, you may well already have that.

Oh, and it supports AirPlay, which allows you to stream video or whatever from your iPhone/iPad/Mac to it wirelessly for viewing on your telly.

But it's probably only worth getting if you either buy or rent TV and films from iTunes, or if you want to play the games that are also available for it.

[NickFitz]

Tonight's viewing experience started with a bit of an Arne Dahl thing in Swedish, but I wasn't really in the mood for it, so I bailed on that after about twenty minutes. Instead, I returned to Life (2017), which I'd started watching recently but found a bit slow and had also bailed on after almost exactly twenty minutes.

And it turns out that it's at about the twenty-two minute mark that it really starts to take off, and turns into a good film. I thought there were a few hand-wavy bits here and there, and the dialog could have been a bit snappier in places, but overall it's worth a watch, once you get past the slightly dull bits (astronauts talking to schoolchildren from the ISS, and suchlike "human interest" gubbins that adds literally nothing to the story) that clutter up the first twenty minutes or so

And after that, the end of season three of The Americans. I'll be running out of that soon at this rate.

Goodnight all

[WTFH]

Morning all looks a bit chilly out, so might delay the gardening for a while.

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

Nice sunny day out there, though I suspect it's also pretty chilly

[WTFH]

All apple & pear trees pruned, and the cuttings have been shredded.

[NickFitz]

Ribs and chips for tea

And there were a couple of sausages in finger rolls earlier, too. I need to go to M&S sometime, as I'm very low on the preferred sausages for that purpose. I don't suppose walking into town and bringing some sausages back will kill me, or not directly

[NickFitz]

Tonight's viewing experience started with a bit of an Arne Dahl thing in Swedish, but I wasn't really in the mood for it, so I bailed on that after about twenty minutes. Instead, I returned to Life (2017), which I'd started watching recently but found a bit slow and had also bailed on after almost exactly twenty minutes.

And it turns out that it's at about the twenty-two minute mark that it really starts to take off, and turns into a good film. I thought there were a few hand-wavy bits here and there, and the dialog could have been a bit snappier in places, but overall it's worth a watch, once you get past the slightly dull bits (astronauts talking to schoolchildren from the ISS, and suchlike "human interest" gubbins that adds literally nothing to the story) that clutter up the first twenty minutes or so

And after that, the end of season three of The Americans. I'll be running out of that soon at this rate.

Goodnight all

I forgot to mention that I also watched The Terminator before Life, mainly to refresh my memory of it, the idea being to then watch the new improved (or at least tidied up slightly) restoration of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). But it turned out that the latter doesn't have English subtitles, and it was a bit late to be disturbing the neighbours with that malarkey where you turn the sound right up because they're all whispering for a minute and suddenly a dozen bombs go off, accompanied by a hundred machine guns and a banshee wailing, all at maximum volume

[WTFH]

TFBSZ