test please delete

[sadkingbilly]

an accurate description of the parts I’m familiar with would sound more like an incantation intended to evoke some vengeful ancient spirit than anything else

sounds like My area of influence

[NickFitz]

Another week done, and only four more working days till my break!

After many meetings, the final one was the lead dev going through the work he and another dev had done so far on planning the stuff that another chap and myself are taking over. It was pretty interesting, and I feel a bit more enthusiastic about the new stuff now

Earlier, I got a notification that my new iPhone has shipped! It’ll be delivered tomorrow, which is vaguely annoying as it needs to be signed for. So if I want to do the shopping, I’ll either have to wait until it’s arrived, or try to get it done before; and as I won’t know until tomorrow what the expected time of delivery is, I can’t plan around it. I suppose I could go this evening, but I can’t really be bothered

[NickFitz]

Tea was brought to me from the Turkish place, because I couldn’t be bothered to cook. Been a while since I’ve had something from there

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s motion picture premiere was a Spanish film on Netflix, Nowhere (2023), set in a not too distant future when world food supplies have collapsed, leading those who have taken power in Spain to take Special Measures: having rounded up and killed all the old people, they are now doing the same to children and pregnant women, presumably on the basis that those who can’t work effectively are a drain on resources. It’s against this backdrop that a young couple, the woman being heavily pregnant, try to flee to Ireland, the last bastion of sane government in the Western world, by paying people smugglers to get them out. And in short order they’ve been separated, brutally effective Spanish border guards have taken care of the other refugees, and the woman finds herself floating alone in a shipping container which has been washed off the deck of the ship in a storm, with pretty much nothing other than a Swiss Army knife, a tin of sardines, and a few crates of useless stuff

I expected this to be OK, but it was really good! As with all decent survival stories, a lot of it is about her remarkable ingenuity in finding unexpected uses for the aforementioned stuff; I didn’t really see any of them coming. Very much worth a watch

And then I almost, but not quite, got to the end of All You Need is Ears

Goodnight all

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Dark, wet, raining. Sun not long up. Currently 13 degrees with a high of 15 expected. Barometer down to 1019 mBar.

Sunrise 07:27; Sunset 18:06 BST

On my way to Heathrow T4 for a weekend trip to Bucharest. HWMBO will be meeting me there this evening. Partly a points run, partly a need to use a free weekend night hotel voucher before it expires at the end of the month.

[WTFH]

Morning all
CBS, sunny but cool out.
Home in 2 days, not that I’m counting.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s a sunny day with a lot of blue sky on offer, though with some high wisps to the east and slightly bulkier offerings drifting in from the west. Things look a little damp after a fair amount of overnight rain. The wind has eased off a lot too, and it’s a bit cooler: 12°C getting no higher than 15°. The barometers are back up a bit at 1010/1018mB

The new iPhone is arriving some time between 11:30 and 12:30, so I’ll have to do the shopping after that. I could have gone this morning if I’d got up earlier but I didn’t

[xoggoth]

Just had phone call from a "police station" about a young man held there claiming to be from my address. Odd coincidence, had just read about this scam this morning.

Nowt on for 4 days, no loony ladies or volunteery stuff, not sure what to do wiv me time.

[DoctorStrangelove]

^^^NF Om.

Morning (just).

Friday (all day).

Dry.

Was misty now clear as a bell.

CBS.

19.1 deg in here, 18.6 in the kitchen, 17 in the leanto, 13 out the back.

1018 mBar, 30.06 in Hg, 763.6 Torr, 14.765 psi, (up from 1011 last night), 58% RH (the dehumidifier's been on, it was 71% earlier).

Meanwhile on the 6th of April 2020, between 18:02 and 19:29, in popped barrydidit, LondonManc, LM, NF, and me, whilst LM had guinea pig tagine, sorry, misread that, guineafowl tagine from the freezer. Yum.

Trip to that Swansea this very morn, quite why I decided to catch the 08:51 X7 is beyond me since the Oxfam bookshop doesn't open until 10:00. The needful doings have been done again for this month. Due to the hanging about waiting for the bus back, I ended up buying two books from WHS whatever they're called now. Place was like the grave.

I hadn't read some of the donated books, working on the principle that they've been here years if not decades and were of precious little innerest to me. I think that the last time I did that it included "Vanity Fair" and a hagiography of Uncle Dickie (though I discovered later that it had been written by that Peter Hough pilot chappy so might have been worth reading: too late now). This dump included one with what looked like a promisingly filthy cover illustration but proved to be of zero interest. I suspect the collection of Irish stories and a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories will go there next month, the innerest in those being equally lacking.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainmetn: dashcam bollox S5 E5.

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the sunshine. It was almost warm in places. Bought yet another magic squirty thing for cleaning the bog. Only time will tell. .

Alaska Homestead Rescue: North Texs, yeehaw, a 7 acre homestead of a mother, two brothers (one 18 years older than the other), and a wife of the older brother. Totally clueless. 6 of the acres were unreachable because of a creek that's subject to flooding (though less impressive than yesterday's Kentucky river which really knows how to flood). Installed a pair of metal conduits and a rock bridge to allow access to the remainder. Then the usual barns & greenhouses, plus installing a bathroom in the mother's shack. As innerest goes this one didn't cut the mustard. The younger brother did some training with a rifle & managed to off a deer. I suspect the gralloching was less than expert. Jack Hargreaves wouldn't have been impressed, but if it's the first one you've killed, it comes with practice.

Tea: spag with that tinned bol which won't be repeated unless I get extremely desperate. Entertainment: PM.

The News Quiz.

Bab5 S5 E6 "Strange Relations". Bester's back.

Taggart S18 E1 "Death Trap" wherein we get a new DCI, and a new doctor, the original actor having popped his clogs between S17 E5 and S18 E1. Pity. I rather liked him. No new doctor in this ep.

[NickFitz]

The new iPhone is arriving some time between 11:30 and 12:30, so I’ll have to do the shopping after that. I could have gone this morning if I’d got up earlier but I didn’t

It’s here!

The DPD app is quite good but still has its long-running “last 200 yards” issue - it was telling me he was at a house round the corner with four more deliveries to make even as he was at the door of my flat, delivering it

Feel a bit guilty about demanding that my current phone set up my new one; it’s like asking an employee to train their replacement so you can sack them. But it does make it a lot easier than having to faff around looking up the wi-fi password and so on