test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture premiere was Gran Turismo (2023), based on the true story of Nissan recruiting gamers who were good at the eponymous PlayStation game and turning them into actual racing drivers, participating in actual FIA championships. This was really good - much better than I expected it would be - and is well worth a watch. I bet the real guy's mother was well chuffed when she found out she was being played by Geri Halliwell, aka Ginger Spice

And then a rewatch of one I saw a few years ago: Boiler Room (2000). This draws from much the same well as The Wolf of Wall Street and is somewhat overshadowed thereby. But it's OK, though one does wonder why the soundtrack features so much gangsta rap when the film only has one African American character, who's a woman and very clearly not a gangster

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Fog descended last night as the temperature fell; it's still there and showing no signs of going away. Could make the drive south quite interesting

It's -2° now and not even expected to get to 1° until early afternoon, so that'll help. The barometers are up a little though, at 1003/1011mB

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Saturday.

Dry.

Sunny.

Frosty.

Blue sky.

Cold in here at 10.2 deg, 8 deg in the kitchen, 6 deg in the leanto, 0.1 deg in the saltinghouse.

1013 mBar, 29.91 in Hg, 759.8 Torr, 14.69 psi, (up from 1010 last night), 69% RH (GDR hair), 52% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 1st of August I found a wasp's nest in the garage while NF was updating Barrington Pheloung's details on wiki and relating wasp related stinging episodes from his misspent youth as a gardener: let's be careful out there & check for wasps in your slippers.

Walk (abbreviated) walked in the sunshine & extreme cold.

Lunch: baked spud etc.

Entertainment: Three Days in June (as opposed to 7 days in May) on PBS: how the Irish Met Office assisted in D Day with a forecast from Blacksod Bay, Ireland.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/irel...ding-1.4598678

More tidying up of the ex apple tree. Strewth there's a lot of twigs.

Tea: spag with the last portion of bol etc. It was unusually nice.

Entertainment: PM. Sliced Bread (Y&Y) repeat.

Some stuff on PBS about the usual. Patton was in one part of it.

Doctor Who 60th anniversary Part II. Well that was weird.

Doctor Who thingie on BBC3. So that really was Bernard Cribbins, his very last scene.

Maigret S3 E8: "The crystal ball". Didn't get a lot out of that one.

Part 2 of the thing about Concord(e) on 4+1.

It's raining quite heavily.

[ladymuck]

Afternoon all, local time 1305

Sunny, a bit of cloud. Currently 17 degrees, might reach 18. It's summer in Bulgaria!!

Had a lazy morning and now planning to go out for the afternoon .

[WTFH]

Afternoon
It appears we may have water in our oil tank. Boiler stopped working this morning.

[NickFitz]

Home again, having battled through the freezing fog southwards and back!

With a nice dinner in the middle

I didn't go for the Christmas dinner on this occasion though, preferring honey and mustard glazed bacon chops with fried eggs and chunky chips. Very nice, as was the sticky toffee pudding and ice cream that followed

Going to be another foggy night, if the general fogginess outside is any indication

[NickFitz]

Tea: a bit of KFC. Delivered, obviously, because it's far too cold out there to be venturing forth myself

At lunch, my nieces told me their great aunt asked after me when they saw her a couple of weeks ago. When their Mum and my brother got married about thirty years ago, the aunt in question tripped over something outside the manor house the bride's family lived in, and hurt her ankle really badly. I was close by and, on the basis that I'd been on a first aid course years before, had a look. I gravely advised her that I thought she may well have broken it, and somebody got her in their car and took her off to A&E, where it was found that I was correct. The only other times I've met her have been at my nieces' christenings, but apparently she still asks after me and praises my medical skills every time she sees them, all these years later

The strange thing is that three or four years after that, the bride's brother got married, and at that reception she again tripped over something and broke her other ankle!

[NickFitz]

I missed most of the wildlife stuff today, what with being away, but I recorded Monkey Life so I'll catch up with that tomorrow

Tonight's major motion picture premiere was Sneakers (1992) in which Robert Redford leads a group of white hat hackers who come into possession of a black box that can do things that attract the interest of certain people you don't want to be interested in you… rather good this one, I thought

The fog has dispersed, but it's still freezing and there's a forecast of possible snow starting any time now

Goodnight all

[WTFH]

Morning all
Up with the dog waiting to see if the heat comes on

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Sunday.

Wet. Raining.

Grey.

Dark.

Dank.

Dreary.

Sunless.

NotSoCold in here at 11.8 deg, 11.5 deg in the kitchen, 7 deg in the leanto, 4.5 deg in the saltinghouse.

1006.5 mBar, 29.722 in Hg, 754.94 Torr, 14.598 psi, (down from 1009 last night), 69% RH (GDR hair), 55% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 2nd of August 2019 it was warm but grey, the wasp's nest in the garage was identified as a wasp's nest due to the wasps flying in and out, NF was reading more of the Pepys diary, and the Twitter real time feed thereof was mentioned. The suggestion of offing the wasps was studiously ignored.

Raining sufficiently to discourage the neighbour with the chainsaw who is logging the remains of the apple tree.

Freecell score in the grey gloom: 100% (of 13), running average: 86%.

Lunch: baked spud etc.

Entertainment: The Food Programme.

Thing about DSOTM on Sky Arts. Well it was on.

PF: Delicate Sound of Thunder on Sky Arts. Well it's on. And they played "Comfortably Numb".

Read book.

Film thing about Terminator 2.

Read start of next book.

NASA's unexplained files: Apollo 11 Aristarchus crater shine just prior to the landing. Is Phobos hollow? Mars Curiosity "UFO" anomaly. X Ray pulsar in the LMC that pulses too slowly (18m interval). Is it an alien Orion space drive. Lightning storms coordinating their discharges. ?Magetoaerodynamics? and why are all the papers classified. Kuiper belt missing mass. Apollo 17 moonwatcher: probably a flying geologist's hammer. Sun toucher: either aliens or a cosmic ray hitting the detector.

Quite why it was necessary to tulipe on my little thread about the Victorian era naval shell is quite beyond me, but there's fecking tidy then.