test please delete

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Bright and dry but cloudy. Currently 9 degrees with a high of 14 expected. Barometer down to 1024 mBar.

Sunrise 06:04; Sunset 18:14 GMT

A flurry of activity this morning and then an early finish this afternoon so I can be a good citizen and give blood. I have to create a 'ways of working' presentation for gig2. I hate creating presentations, especially when they're being used instead of proper documentation.

[xoggoth]

Cr**py night's sleep. Lounge about until I meet up with ll1 later.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens, and a happy Vernal Equinox (due at 14:46) to you all!

I awoke around half seven and decided there was no need to rush into things, so went back to sleep. I then re-awoke a bit before ten and felt much better for it, so I assume I needed the extra sleep

It’s cloudy out in a blank white sheet of paper kind of way, but not what you’d call chilly at 9°C with an expected high of 13°. The barometers have settled back down to 1012/1020mB

I need to head out to do the shopping shortly. The question is, Big or Not-as-Big?

[NickFitz]

Shopping has been done!

It was Big Sainsbury’s in the end. I was tempted to just go to Not-as-Big, but Diligent Me castigated Lackadaisical Me, pointing out that I was supposed to be getting a set of passport photos of the standard required by the government of the Republic of Ireland, and only Big has a Timpson’s concession where they could be obtained. We (my siblings and I) are going to be applying for Irish citizenship shortly, which is what I need the photos for

We’ll all have to go to an Irish community centre in Manchester where they have somebody who can check all the paperwork and witness the relevant signatures, in return for a small donation, and the plan is to do that some time in April - probably my birthday week, as I’m taking that off work, but it depends on their availability.

Diligent Me also remembered to take the bag of batteries for recycling, some of which have been in there since the old flat, so that's sorted out as well

My preferred parking space, which wasn’t free after shopping last week, was still taken when I returned

Next up: lunch

[xoggoth]

Diligent Me also remembered to take the bag of batteries for recycling

Oh yeh, got a load of them in my shed I keep meaning to recycle, ta for the reminder.

<Brief interlude>

Something I meant to do, what was it?

[ladymuck]

Shopping has been done!

It was Big Sainsbury’s in the end. I was tempted to just go to Not-as-Big, but Diligent Me castigated Lackadaisical Me, pointing out that I was supposed to be getting a set of passport photos of the standard required by the government of the Republic of Ireland, and only Big has a Timpson’s concession where they could be obtained. We (my siblings and I) are going to be applying for Irish citizenship shortly, which is what I need the photos for

We’ll all have to go to an Irish community centre in Manchester where they have somebody who can check all the paperwork and witness the relevant signatures, in return for a small donation, and the plan is to do that some time in April - probably my birthday week, as I’m taking that off work, but it depends on their availability.

Diligent Me also remembered to take the bag of batteries for recycling, some of which have been in there since the old flat, so that's sorted out as well

My preferred parking space, which wasn’t free after shopping last week, was still taken when I returned

Next up: lunch

I didn't know such places existed! Is this for the first stage, getting on the foreign births register, or for the actual passport application?

[ladymuck]

Blood has been donated and I picked up a couple of birthday cards too. Once of which I wrote while on the bus home and posted after I got off at my stop. Missed the collection but it's not needed until next week so, hopefully I have allowed enough time.

[NickFitz]

I didn't know such places existed! Is this for the first stage, getting on the foreign births register, or for the actual passport application?

It’s just a small community centre run by volunteers in an area of Manchester that has a lot of Irish people, as far as I can tell. They offer advice and support with various things like benefits and housing for that community, and also offer this service of checking your paperwork for the foreign births register and witnessing the forms and photos. It’s not an official Irish government thing, but their service is in some sense officially recognised because using them means the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs doesn’t have to check that the witness exists and so on

[NickFitz]

Tea has been lamb tagine with rice

This was from the Sainsbury’s TTD slow-cooked range, rather than my homemade one, in part because I realised I have no way of telling if mine is coming out right without anything to compare it to

Mine tastes pretty similar, so I must have been doing something right

To go with this, some more of the Brazilian air crash documentary

This afternoon was largely devoted to the forum upgrade stuff, specifically, the URLs. Having exhaustively examined the process by which XenForo handles such things, I’m now confident that my approach (which is extremely simple because that way it’s unlikely to break if anything changes in future) works for all the cases it has to deal with