test please delete

[NickFitz]

Thats it, just ignore all my hard work!

It only takes 10 mins, if that.

I'm saving it so I have something to look forward to later in the month

I've set a reminder to do it before Monkey Life starts, as it's a Sunday.

[NickFitz]

Really nice tea: chicken thighs in red wine sauce, with chips and peas

And there's a couple more portions cooling down so they're ready to migrate via an overnight stay in the fridge to the freezer

[NickFitz]

It's been about a year since I last watched it and we've all learned a lot since then, so it was time for a rewatch of Contagion (2011). There's a number of things that don't make much sense with the hindsight we now have (a wristband might be OK for Glastonbury or the Cambridge Folk Festival, but it's not practical as a long-term denotation of the vaccinated over the course of a year or so in a country the size of the USA) but overall it stands up pretty well I thought

As I have it on iTunes, one thing I noticed straight away was that it now comes with a thirteen minute video of Covid-19 stuff, not hidden under the "Extras" menu where "Making Of" and suchlike things usually reside, but right next to the movie itself on the main menu; and it's by Matt Damon, Jennifer Ehrle, Cate Blanchett, and Laurence Fishburne. It's slightly out of date now ("It'll take at least sixteen to eighteen months before there's a vaccine") but this was put together in short order, scripted by an American public health research institute, and filmed by those people in their homes on their phones, right at the start of the pandemic because somebody realised that if loads of people were now watching this film because of the pandemic, sticking this on the main menu would be an effective way to get those important messages out. I reckon that was a really good idea, and I hope Apple leave it there as a record of how our society tried to deal with a reality close to that depicted in the film.

And then, although I think it isn't that long since I last watched it, another rewatch of Looper (2012). Time travel stories are always tricky, and this time I finally got my head around the aspect of the story where old guy back from the future only realises certain things when they happen to young guy who is himself because things didn't happen that way when he lived the life that had got him to being an old guy. That's all explained quite clearly in one scene in the movie, in the sense that it's explicated by the character; but it still takes several watches to grasp how that affects the story in various ways. Or maybe I'm just a bit dumb

Finally, The Shield S1E9, Throwaway (TV Episode 2002), in which… well, standard: bad things happen to people who don't deserve them, and people who do get away with it

Goodnight all

[ladymuck]

Morning all

It's bright out, there's sky visible through the fluff, and dry. Currently 5 degrees ('feels like' 3) and will make it up to 6 later. The cloud will remain all day but with a low chance of rain. Barometer up to 1032 mBar.

I think, for the first time this week, I felt awake when I got up. Maybe it's because it's the weekend.

Today's Kantar diary fact is:
Bayer registers 'Aspirin' as a trademark 1899

[vetran]

Planning for the worst now being kicked off. The phrase "we want to keep you but need to confirm what you'll be doing" doesn't leave me feeling all warm and snug.

Yeah employers / clients can be so sensitive. They decided to replace our bespoke system with and off the shelf system (in a few years) they forgot to discuss the developers future and were then surprised that they spent all day on the phone to agents,

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Dry.

Blue sky in parts.

Wanly sunny.

Colder at 15.9 deg in here.

1034 mBar, 30.53 inHg, 54% RH.

Saturday by all accounts.

Restless night's sleep with some very odd dreams (some of which appeared to include the late Strangelove parents in a particulary peculiar way).

<hiatus>

Walk walked in the sunshine.

It got warm enough to take my gloves off by the time I'd reached the res.

Freecell score: 100%, running average 84% (83.6 something).

Lunch: Heinz lentil & ham soup with Morrisons wholemeal sunflower and spelt bread, bramble jelly sandwich on same, red corner yog, 0.91 pints of good Glengettie tea.

<hiatus>

It's a lovely afternoon so it's quite logical to stay in the house out of the dangerous sunshine potching about with an ancient Athlon mb that I may have "borrowed" from my old computer at work.

The electrolytic caps look like they could do with replacing but there you go.

It's now in a case that I must have "borrowed" from somewhere, possibly it came from my predeceased predecessor, since I very vaguely remember some box or other coming from that source.

All I have to do now is remember where I put the Win2k hds that went with it.

Which may be difficult considering the number of ancient hds that are littering the place.

<hiatus>

Managed to remember to put some more fatballs out for the feathered dinosaurs before it got all dark.

They're going through them like lightning at the moment.

The birdseed, not so much.

Tea: spag with more of that remarkably fiery bol, I think I went a little over the top on the chilli powder in that batch, it's hotter than the chilli con carne batch, , a yog (to cool down), some tinned peaches (Del Monte, ditto), 0.91 pints of good Glengettie tea.

Entertainment: "Operation Gobi (1953)" with Richard Widmark, or how the US Navy had weather stations in the Gobi desert in WWII, which got shot to ribbons by the warriors of Nippon.

Evidently set late in the war since they're obsessing about reaching the coast & sailing to Okinawa which wouldn't have been a Good Idea until about July 1945.

Other entertainment: figuring out the focal length of an ancient prime focus dish I bought about 40 years ago.

f= D*D/ ( 16*d ) according to multiple sources on the interweb thing.

Thusly with D=122cm and d=31cm, f=30cm as given by various calculators.

Apparently this means that the LNB is level with a string across the face of the dish.

I shall play with this once I get A Round Tuit.

I may be able to find one after 40 years.

Haven't got a prime focus LNB so the available offset ones will be experimented with in a no doubt futile attempt to find something inneresting to do.

The scrolling through the dozens of channels on the box having proved futile, I decided to do a little light reading, as may be discerned from the Currently Reading thread.

Once more I am gratified to find I've bought the same book twice, though there is some excuse in it having been republished by a different company in a rather nicer version of "Voices of the Codebreakers" by Michael Paterson.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voices-Code.../dp/1784383139

[vetran]

Yes, just had a look at it and lost any sense of urgency. I'll set a reminder

The other year, I got the census records for this place from the late 19th century. I think it was 1891 that there was a Methodist minister staying here with the family and their two household servants. If he was an honoured visitor given the best guest room - and one assumes he would be - then he may well have slept in what is now my kitchen

So a Methodist in your madness? (if you see my kitchen with screaming kids everywhere you would understand).

[xoggoth]

Re census records, just completed the government census online. Boring, how often do you cut your toenails? etc.

[BrilloPad]

I see the forum still looks like something Satan sicked up. About time the old one returned.

[ladymuck]

I see the forum still looks like something Satan sicked up. About time the old one returned.

NF is working his way through the bugs, like a good busy bee that he is.

I must say, after the initial traumatic shock, I'm mostly used to it. I don't find the mobile web version very user friendly but that is better than the old site.