test please delete

[DoctorStrangelove]

X8 home again home again jiggety jig.

Very slow journey, hideous traffic.

Tea/dinner this evening was battered haddock, done to a turn, or possibly a tern.

With the addition of a shedload of mushrooms it was all very nice.

This evening's epic was "The Way of the Gun" with James Caan, Ryan Philippe, Benicio Del Torro, Juliette Lewis, et al.

The Way of the Gun (2000) - IMDb

Bloody, senseless, but I suppose it was ok in its way.

Not helped by being something other than region 2, so an alternative dvd player was required, the zapper of which is so small I need my glasses to figure out wtf the buttons are.

hi guys! - missed me?
no?
oh, well
i didn't expect so

Who are you? Why do you have a colander on your head?

This evening's 2nd feature was some nonsense on Blaze about secret NASA files.

This was rapidly replaced by "Callan", one of the eps where he's Hunter, which is not a natural career move for Mr Callan, all in all.

Looks like the road is going to be closed from the 19th of April until the 3rd of May.

Oh deep joy.

[NickFitz]

Changed the bed, and in a fit of optimism I ditched one third of the duvet. Now down to the 9 tog part on its own, the 4.5 tog part having been returned to storage to await the summer.

So if we get a sudden cold snap, you'll know whose fault it is

[greenlake]

Looks like the road is going to be closed from the 19th of April until the 3rd of May.

It could be worse....much worse....

[NickFitz]

As the incipient collapse of the national food supply due to start today has been postponed, I plundered the reserves of pre-cooked meals in the freezer for dinner tonight: chicken in red wine sauce, with Cajun potato wedges (freshly made) and petits pois

I always miscalculate the number of spuds to chop up when making wedges, so I'm now left with enough for another meal. Which means some of the space freed up in the freezer is now occupied again

[NickFitz]

Tonight's first feature was The Equalizer 2 (2018), which has received middling reviews hereabouts. It is a bit weak compared to the first one; the first forty minutes or so is weak on narrative flow, and it generally just doesn't come together as fluidly as the first one. And although I'm not averse to gore in these things, there were a few moments when they seemed to throw in an extra moment of close-up brutality just for the sake of it; maybe trying to make up for the overall lack of cohesion. So not that bad really, but it lacks whatever they managed to put into the first one that made it so good

To follow, I decided to rewatch a film with a similar underlying premise, but generally much better and more fun: Hanna (2011), which I previously watched getting on two years ago. Excellent stuff, with plenty of action and some extremely funny touches to boot. Also a very good soundtrack composed by The Chemical Brothers, for those of an age to know who that fraternity might be

I gather Amazon have created a TV series spun off from this or something, but haven't seen it so have no views thereon

Goodnight all

[DoctorStrangelove]

My feeling after watching Eq 2 was that I should have waited either for it to go down to £5 or, alternatively, until it reached 33p in a charity emporium.

However it wasn't as disappointing as "Oceans 8" in this respect.

Did your viewing of "Hanna" include subtitles in a foreign language burned into the video as did my first dvd, along with definition so poor that I thought I was going blind?

Happily the 2nd dvd was up to scratch.

I should have washed the "Way of the Gun" dvd before playing it because it stuttered a bit.

There's no country indication that I can see but that disc is definitely not region 2.

Changed the bed, and in a fit of optimism I ditched one third of the duvet. Now down to the 9 tog part on its own, the 4.5 tog part having been returned to storage to await the summer.

So if we get a sudden cold snap, you'll know whose fault it is

Whilst it's better to live in hope etc. "Ne'er cast a clout 'til May is out".

<brief hiatus and interstitial pause during which the WM did its thing and a trip to town was undertaken in the endless search for dvds>

Sunny and almost warm now, whereas it was sunnyish and distinctly chilly earlier.

It is, of course, almost noon, whereas tomorrow it will be nearly one p.m. following the ridiculous time change.

However the EUSSR has deemed it A Bad Thing which will no longer happen after 2022.

Along with cars that will no longer be able to break the speed limit.

Today's haul of previously owned dvds is a mere 6" or so, it seemingly being a quiet week on the charity emporium donation front.

I don't know if any of them are R1 or otherwise not R2.

<hiatus during which lunch was consumed>

Lunch was poached egg with poached tomato on toast.

It was okish, but nothing special.

Just found a black ladybird with red spots on the laundry drying on the line.

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

Quite sunny out again, and very mild with it

[NickFitz]

My feeling after watching Eq 2 was that I should have waited either for it to go down to £5 or, alternatively, until it reached 33p in a charity emporium.

However it wasn't as disappointing as "Oceans 8" in this respect.

Yes, Oceans 8 was a real let-down. I hadn't even realised it was possible to make a disappointing heist movie before that

Did your viewing of "Hanna" include subtitles in a foreign language burned into the video as did my first dvd, along with definition so poor that I thought I was going blind?

Happily the 2nd dvd was up to scratch.

Unusually for films in the iTunes Store, it doesn't even have any foreign language subtitles as an option. Many films in there have a dozen or more available, though I've yet to bother with non-English ones. And the definition was fine

Whilst it's better to live in hope etc. "Ne'er cast a clout 'til May is out".

I forgot about that

[DoctorStrangelove]

I forgot about that

.

It's a glorious afternoon, ideal for ferreting stuff out of the garage ready for a trip down the dump.

Very suspicious really, it's just lulling us into a false sense of security prior to 3 feet of snow by Wednesday.

[NickFitz]

As a change from configuring servers with Chef, I'm working on this Mac app to allow me to examine the films in my iTunes Library in ways that Apple apparently can't be bothered to include in iTunes itself.

For example, you can view your entire film collection grouped by genre in iTunes. You can also view all unwatched films. All unwatched films grouped by genre: no, why would you want to see that?

Anyway, I got that working in a couple of days back in February (a competent Mac developer could have done it in an hour or so, but I've never written Mac apps before and had a lot to learn) and now it occurs to me that it would be handy to view watched films ordered by the date I watched them. This was inspired by the recent experience when I thought "Hmm, I know I watched that but I don't really remember it, let's watch it again" only to realise as the first scene started that I did in fact remember it very well, as I'd watched it about a month before

So back to Xcode it is. Turns out I actually remember quite a bit of stuff now, so it's going quite smoothly

And I've been careful to keep all the data handling stuff outside of the UI code, so I might turn that into a library and then use the same code in an iPhone app for doing the same thing

Then it should, if I can be bothered, be possible to point the phone at the telly and have it use machine learning to work out which film page I'm looking at on the Apple TV, either by deciphering the title or (for bonus points) recognising the cover art, and tell me when I last watched it

Not sure if I'll go that far, but it would be an interesting challenge