Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was released this very day on Apple TV+: Matchbox the Movie (2026). It seems that Mattel were so impressed by the success of Barbie (2023) that they believed other toy franchises now in their possession would also be suitable for representation through the medium of film; and this is the result. What it is, is a fairly mediocre “CIA agent framed for theft of nuclear weapon” thing, but the buddies who help him save the world and his own reputation are the friends with whom he played with Matchbox cars when he was a kid. Yes, it really is that tenuous, folks! Though they chuck in the occasional pun about “thinking outside the box” and such, to reinforce the audience’s understanding of how hard it is to make a film based on a range of toy cars that aren’t relevant to the plot. Still, it’s reasonably entertaining in terms of explosions and chases and the like

BTW, somebody should have pointed out to them that you can use colons in film titles now, but the form used above appears to be the official version

After that, a rewatch of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) which is also a mediocre action movie, though maybe not quite as mediocre. As I think I said last time I watched it, they clearly expected to build a franchise on this, judging by the ending and the start of the credits. But it never happened, which was probably a good thing as the main cast have all, or mostly, gone on to make some very good films afterwards, which we may have been denied if they'd carried on turning out this kind of tosh

Finally, the last two episodes of S1 of Dark Matter, which I’m still pretty confused by. But I’ll probably watch S2 as well just to see if I can work out what the hell is going on, which was probably their plan. I suspect my poor memory for faces and names doesn’t help with this one, as I can never work out which timeline/universe somebody is supposed to be from or in

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Rack of BBQ ribs and chips for tea, being the M&S ones that have a bit more kick to them

To go with this, a bit of Police Interceptors

[ladymuck]

The wind's gotten up and it's spitting with rain. A lovely combo to walk into after getting my hair done at the hairdressers.

[NickFitz]

Shopping accomplished!

I went past the old place, where the chestnut trees are only just starting to change colour - they always seem to be a few weeks behind, possibly a different strain? Their husks don’t really have much in the way of pointy bits either. Anyway, approaching from that direction brought me to M&S first, where I bought more than I expected to in the Food Hall. All good stuff though

And so onwards to Big Sainsbury’s, where I also ended up doing a bigger shop than expected. This was partly down to needing various things, but also picking up some bits that Not-as-Big doesn’t stock or often runs out of

I’m glad I went and got my hair cut yesterday lunchtime, as the plan was originally to go there first thing today, and that would have made the morning a bit too hectic

Anyway, time to grab some lunch; I think I’ll have a cold chicken leg

[ladymuck]

Afternoon all

Cloudy and dull. Occasionally the sun gets a look-in but I don't think it'll be returning any time soon. Currently 18 degrees and that's the high for the day. Barometer down to 1010 mBar.

Sunrise 07:15; Sunset 18:21 BST

HMWBO and his offspring have left for the airport. I'm doing laundry.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

it’s cloudy out and everywhere is damp from overnight rain, though that’s stopped now. It seems a bit blustery too. It’s fairly mild in theory, but the current 16°C “feels like” 11°; the high will be 19° but only very briefly this afternoon. The barometers are down to 996/1004mB

Off to do the shopping shortly, including a trip to M&S while I’m that side of town

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Friday.

Was damp: now wet, very wet. Raining pouring.

Grey.

Sunless: no rosy fingered dawn this day.

18.6 deg in here, 17.6 in the kitchen, 17 in the leanto, 16 out the back.

1007.5 mBar, 29.75 in Hg, 755.7 Torr, 14.61 psi, (down from 1012 last night), 72% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 6th of April 2020, between 10:18 and 10:27, in popped Brillo, BR14, DaveB, and SimonMac. Apparently getting into Aldi as a couple was verbotten. .

Sleep went away at 03:31 this morning and didn't return until after 05: something despite the reading of the current book.

Entertainment: Further out of town with Jack Hargreaves & Simon Baddeley: butterfiles (enjoyed this bit), cold water fishing in winter (tedious), summer fishing in the Jack Bass lakes (quite tedious though he did catch a fish): altogether too much fishing.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: dashcam bolloxl. Last ep of that series.

Scottish Island thing: Skye: Old Man Stor, dino footprints, Portree, shinty, Fairy Glen, Uig, Staffin Island, swimming cattle, Quirang, Fladda Cuin.

Walk (abbreviated, towpath) walked in the sunshine. Rather warm in the waxed jacket when in the sun.

Entertainment: Alaskan Homestead Rescue: Naples, Idaho: built by millennials on 9.5 acres, most of which isn't flat. The bench they dug for the house lacks a wall to stop the land above from sliding. Oh, and there's a railroad line through the property, with a train every half an hour at the busy times. Misty comes down with ?plague? about halfway through. Sounded really rough. In the end it all got sorted.

Tea: chicken in white sauce etc. Nice enough. Entertainment: PM.

News quiz. Mildly amusing.

Bab5 S5 E1 "No compromises". Someone tries to off Sheridan.

Taggart S17 E5 "Falling in love". I have no fecking idea who killed who. .

[WTFH]

Morning all
Overcast and windy, but 17C warm on our walk earlier.


TFIF, etc.

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was Supergirl (2026) which was OK, if a bit patchy. Jason Momoa’s character had some great lines, but it felt like they could have made more of him; after an excellent introduction, he became something of a deus ex machina to be dropped in when convenient. A lot of it felt like that, TBH; it didn’t really cohere. Entertaining enough for the most part, but I expected more

Shopping tomorrow! Viz, of course, and some other essentials, such as food

Goodnight all

[ladymuck]

Today's theatrical performance was also very good. It was followed by a very nice dinner at a Uyghur restaurant just off the Tottenham Court Road.

[NickFitz]

Tea has been spag bol

To go with it, more of A House Through Time

[ladymuck]

I feel the interview was "meh" but will find out tomorrow or Monday at the latest.

Now off to Camden.

[NickFitz]

Lunch was for wimps today, as I decided to take a chance on dashing across town to get a haircut. The hairdresser’s husband isn’t dead yet so she was there, and there was just one chap being done and nobody else waiting - well, his toddler daughter was also there and was hoisted onto his knee to have her fringe trimmed after he’d been done, but that doesn’t really count

So with my hair cut in a reasonably timely manner, I got back home only to find that five minutes after I’d left, the AI session had been arranged at short notice! I’d already missed the start of it, but it was being recorded on Teams so I was able to catch up by skimming through the transcript afterwards. It was mainly either stuff I knew or stuff about policies and so on. For example, there’s a strict prohibition on letting AI generate code and also the unit tests for that code: you can have it generate tests for code you’ve written, or you can write tests for code it’s generated, but never the twain shall meet. This seems sensible

Having dealt with several security updates and fixed one minor problem whose only symptom was creating a load of warning messages when tests were running in the morning, I spent the rest of the afternoon fixing a bug which also wasn’t affecting anything but might have reared up and bitten somebody at some time in the future. This turned out to involve code dating back to July 2018! So most of the time was spent writing tests for it, as there were hardly any and I didn’t want to break anything. The end result was several dozen lines of tests, plus about six lines of code that fixed the potential bug

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Blue sky and the occasional wisp. Currently 12 degrees with a high of 15 expected. Barometer up to 1022 mBar.

Sunrise 07:13; Sunset 18:23 BST

Yesterday we had a very early dinner (pre-theatre) at Acme Fire Cult; very good if a little on the salty side. We then wandered around the corner to the Arcola Theatre to watch The Turn of the Screw, based on Henry James' novella. Followed by a Q&A with the script writer and director. An excellent evening.

Later today HWMBO's eldest and I will be off to Camden to see another play. We will then meet with HWMBO afterwards for dinner.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Clear blue sky today, but it’s a bit chilly as a result: currently 7°C and reaching the high of 15° this afternoon once it’s clouded over. The barometers are back up to 1008/1016mB

I managed to wake up properly, or at least enough to get up, on the second alarm

It’s Tech Debt Thursday today, so a break from the usual stuff - though there isn’t much usual stuff left TBH; although there are some remaining things to do, they depend on others outside our ambit getting stuff done. So they’ll be handled in an ad hoc fashion after next week, when I officially move on to… well, I’m not quite sure TBH. There’s a PowerPoint deck from a planning session I didn’t go to which I’m supposed to have a look at as that has the high-level details, but I forgot so I should probably do that

Today, I had hoped for a bit of peace and quiet to deal with the last few minor things, but it sounds like we’ll all be doing some kind of introductory AI session. The department has been very cautious about letting AI anywhere near code, but Number Ten is still very keen, so there’s been a small trial during the past year which is now gradually being expanded. It sounds like we’re about to be inculcated into the cult. I shall see if I can use up all my tokens on the first day, generating documentation of the older parts of this thing that I still don’t fully understand, as I’ve been putting that off for a while now