Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was Sinners (2025) which offers a fascinating insight into African American society and culture in the Deep South in the 1930s, and also… vampires!

It really is a winning combination, and makes for a great film

Then a rewatch of Anora (2024), partly because it was seasonally appropriate as it features a New Year party, but mainly because I'm still curious as to why it won Best Picture at the Oscars. I found that, as I thought when I last watched it, it’s a good film! Very entertaining. But best picture? It’s good, but I reckon some of the other nominees were better. Then again, it does have a lot more footage of young ladies in almost no clothes than the other nominees, so maybe the august luminaries of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who vote on these matters are just a bunch of dirty old men

Goodnight all and once again, a Happy New Year

[NickFitz]

Happy New Year, denizens!

[NickFitz]

Lots of mucking around with RealityKit and GameplayKit today. Something odd is going on with something that I thought was working, but I haven’t worked out yet if it’s a bug in Apple’s stuff or if I’ve broken it

Lunch was a Pukka sausage roll. And for tea, I treated myself to something brought from the nearby Turkish place

And I’ve just finished watching the final episode of Titanic Sinks Tonight, which ended the way all such things end

There was somebody from my Dad’s side of the family who was lost with the Titanic; he was a cabin boy, I think. I don’t know his name though

[ladymuck]

Invoice issued. That's a wrap (work-wise) for 2025.

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Sunny start, clouded over since. Currently 4 degrees ('feels like' 1) with a high of 6 expected. Might be some rain this afternoon. Barometer down to 1027 mBar.

Sunrise 08:48; Sunset 15:53 GMT

Last billing day of the year. A couple of minor busy tasks to complete and then I'll be invoicing.

No plans for this evening. Just a quiet one indoors with HWMBO.

[Pondlife]

Morning all,

Definitely a cold finish to the year.

Wind 3 kt from the North/Northwest
Temperature 1°C
Humidity 86%
Pressure 1032 hPa
Visibility 10 km or more

Heading down to Somerset to see friends for the New Year shenanigans and it's even colder there so lanes are potentially going to be slippy.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Frosty start this morning, with a lot of white roofs out the back and a similar lawn out the front; the cars look a bit chilly too. It’s 0°C at the moment and supposedly “feels like” -3°, and it’s not getting above 3° this afternoon. Tonight apparently might not be quite as cold as last night, but that’s just a lead-in to a cold snap at the weekend. The barometers are down a bit at 1018/1026mB

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Wednesday apparently: confirmed by "More or Less". .

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky.

Cold in here at 11.4 deg, 9.5 in the kitchen, 7 in the leanto, 2.6 in the saltinghouse.

1028.5 mBar, 30.37 in Hg, 771.44 Torr, 14.92 psi, (down from 1030 last night), 56% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 8th of March 2020 NF was feeling a bit crook, AndyGarbs popped in, along with LM, and BR14, whilst the Beeb were celebrating 42 years of H2G2 on 4Extra as was their wont.

Washing frenzy in progress: should have done it yesterday since stuff is freezing on the line. We shall see at 15:30 how much they've dried, if at all.

Next door's washing has been on the line for 3 days: it was dry yesterday: today: Who knows?

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: More or Less from this morning.

Walk (towpath, unabbreviated, sunshine) walked. Cold out there.

Shirts are about to meet the TD then the iRon. The smalls took forever, as if they'd never been on the line, the towels (separately, just the two cos I forgot the others) a loooong time. All airing upstairs now. Should have washed them all yesterday when they wouldn't have frozen on the line. Oddly there wasn't much water out of the TD: about a cup and a half.

Tea: Tesco battered haddock. Nice enough. The only thing I actually bother to cook now.

Entertainment: PM.

Scotland Yard: "Murder Anonymous (1955)" the one with the High Court Judge pontificating (The Right Honourable Sir Travers Humphreys PC), and the philanderer who got his just deserts. Lustgarten rather less lugubrious than usual and Ewen Solon not playing Sgt Lucas for a change.

Abandoned Engineering: Calumet Radar Station Michigan: the one that directed the F86 onto the UFO in 1953. Italian Excalibur nightclub in the form of a mediaeval castle replica that bit the dust when the owner was accused of being a Mafia don despite not being one. 16th Street Railroad Station Oakland CA: was the terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Prevlaka, Croatia. Victim of the post Yugoslav wars in the 90s.

Feck all else on.

Next week: Elementary returns thank feck.

[NickFitz]

This evening’s viewing was E3 of Titanic Sinks Tonight, in which there was still some of it left above the surface by the end, but certainly not as much as its designer intended

And later I read some more of There Is No Antimemetics Division v2, in which things are going pretty badly on dry land too

Over the past few days I’ve been tinkering with various things to do with RealityKit and GameplayKit, which included working out how to add a skybox using an equirectangular projection - I don’t know why they call it a box, as it’s a sky sphere. I started out using an image of the whole sky from the ESA’s Gaia probe, but unfortunately it made the Milky Way so bright that things were getting lost against it. So I found an image from NASA which just has bright stars without all that additional light, and it works better for what I’m doing. It’s much easier to work out which way you’re rotating the camera when there’s a night sky swinging around you as you do so

Goodnight all

[ladymuck]

Much darts watched today. Some very good matches

[NickFitz]

Tea has been chicken tikka masala with rice and naan

I could do with using up more stuff out of the freezer as there isn’t space for the leftovers. But I got the chicken for this out of the freezer and that space has already ended up filled with other stuff. Oh well, I’ll figure it out somehow

[NickFitz]

Still off til the 5th so have absolutely know idea what day of the week it's supposed to be.

Same! It feels like Saturday and Sunday keep coming around with ever-increasing frequency

[NickFitz]

DHL delivered, so lunch has been a real German bratwurst (25cm in length) in a soft deli roll with crispy onion bits and curry ketchup

[Pondlife]

Morning all (just),

Still off til the 5th so have absolutely know idea what day of the week it's supposed to be.

Wind 12 kt from the East/Northeast
Temperature 6°C
Humidity 75%
Pressure 1035 hPa
Visibility 10 km or more
Overcast at a height of 3800 ft

This week's soup has some left over parsnips in from the Christmas veg and I'm not sure I'm a fan TBH.

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Sunny with occasional wisps. Currently -2 with a high of 2 expected. Barometer up to 1040 mBar.

Sunrise 08:48; Sunset 15:52 GMT

I need to finish getting this document updated and then that'll be the majority of the work done for this year. It's simple enough, making it a nice job for this time of year when there's little else, work-wise, vying for my attention.