Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

Police car parked outside!

it’s outside the adjacent block, to be precise, so I don’t suppose it’s anything to do with us as there’s a space free in front of our block

[NickFitz]

Due to the living room light nearest the window having taken to glowing in an ominous deep red hue when turned off, I bought a couple of Hue bulbs with a “bridge” and just started setting them up. The bridge thing, it turns out, needs to be plugged into an Ethernet port on the router. But due to lack of enough power points in the hall cupboard where that lives, this would mean leaving the 4G backup router disconnected. Anyway, as soon as I connected it, it insisted on installing an update and has been doing so for about thirty minutes now with no signs of progress. In that time, I’ve already got them set up in Apple Home

Ah, I restarted the Hue app and, once I’d gone through all the consent palaver again, it found the bridge. Might as well let it get set up, even though it’ll be unplugged and never used again

I didn’t even want the bridge TBH but the pack with two bulbs plus the bridge was on special offer, which made it cheaper than just getting two bulbs

Ah, it’s not been able to set up the bulbs, even though it realised they were there. Time to end the failed Hue experiment and stick with Apple Home, I think

[ladymuck]

~2.5 mins??

Not far off!! It'll take longer than that to get there, let alone get it sorted.

[sadkingbilly]

Now trying to decide if going back and queuing up for a £3.30 refund is worth my time.

~2.5 mins??

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

Quite Simpsonesque out for a change, though it seems as if it may be running in reverse and clouding over more. Pretty breezy too, so the current 5°C “feels like” -1°, and I daresay the expected high of 6° won’t be much better. The barometers have shot up to 1024/1032mB

I too have realised I need to go to Sainsbury’s or somewhere after all, as I’m supposed to take some beer down to my sister’s tomorrow. TBH I’ll probably be the only one drinking it, so maybe I’ll just go to the Local round the corner and grab a few bottles

[ladymuck]

Sainsbury's wasn't so bad in the end. However, Fevertree is supposed to be available at a discount but no discount was applied! Now trying to decide if going back and queuing up for a £3.30 refund is worth my time.

Yes, my Nectar card worked as the gin was properly discounted.

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Dry, sunny, windy. Occasional lumps of fluff. Currently 5 degrees ('feels like' 1) with a high of 6 expected. Barometer up to 1033 mBar.

Sunrise 08:06; Sunset 15:56 GMT

I need to brave Sainsbury's as I didn't go yesterday. Also need to top the car up with petrol ready for the drive to Sussex tomorrow.

[Pondlife]

Morning all, Happy Christmas Eve.

Wind 13 kt from the East/Northeast
Temperature 5°C
Humidity 75%
Pressure 1031 hPa
Visibility 10 km or more
Overcast at a height of 2100 ft

Yesterday's flying was cancelled and so I got a headstart on the Pigs in Blankets followed by National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation to start the festivities properly.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Wednesday.

Dry.

Hints of sun to come.

Chilly in here at 13.5 deg, 12 in the kitchen, 10 in the leanto, 6 in the saltinghouse.

1025.5 mBar, 30.283 in Hg, 769.2 Torr, 14.87 psi, (up from 1020 last night), 65% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 7th of March 2020 NF was feeling out of sorts & had a Chinese meal to compensate, LM watched a lot of iPlayer, and Brillo & BR14 popped in.

Washing frenzy in progress: washing blown horizontal on the line.

Shopping trip to Tesco done dusted washed dried sanitised & put away.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: something about what happened on this day in the past.

Shirt blew off line & landed on grass: I iRoned the fecker anyway: all now airing upstairs.

Shopping trip to Morrisons done dusted washed dried sanitised & put away.

Unhappy news about next door but one's lad's car: oil light flickering, sounds like it's a wet belt engine. He passed his test a fortnight ago.

Now getting outside a cup of mediocre yet consistent coffee.

[NickFitz]

I have gotten into watching Murder Trial on BBC iPlayer which follows a trial in the Scottish courts (who allow filming in court) and is an interesting look at how the evidence is presented, what the defence is trying to achieve, interviews with people involved in the case, etc. Seems to be just one or two episodes a year on just one case at a time. Not dramatically presented, and includes selected highlights from the court sessions to get the key points across.

They’re very interesting. Regrettably, it means that I now keep hoping for there to be an interesting murder in Scotland, as I’ve watched all the previous episodes

Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was Daehongsu (2025) or The Great Flood in English, a Korean movie on Netflix. They decided I’d want to watch the English dub of this, but I wasn’t having any of that nonsense and immediately switched it to the original Korean soundtrack; I shall find out at some other date if this choice is reflected in future viewings of films in a language other than my own. Anyway, this started out as a sci-fi disaster movie, as huge floods swept the Earth after an asteroid hit Antarctica, and a Korean mother and her son tried to get to the roof of their apartment block with a bloke from the company whose research department she worked for who’d been sent to help them. It seemed to me that something was a little off about all this from time to time, and it turned out that there was indeed more to the matter than met the eye, and shadowy forces were at work; but no spoilers. It wasn’t the best film of its kind that I’ve seen, but it was OK and had a fair few unexpected twists and turns. Worth a watch if you have access, maybe, though not worth subscribing to Netflix for the sake of it

And then a rewatch of M3GAN (2022) which I recommend without any qualification

Finally, the final episode of Alien: Earth which has been pretty disappointing all in all. But they managed to make this last episode pretty good; it’s just a shame you have to get through the rest of them first

Goodnight all

[ladymuck]

The roast potatoes are good enough. Not quite the level of crispiness I was after but they're not too shabby.

I had a load of milk that would have gone to waste so I made a litre of eggnog to preserve it. I like dark rum in mine, even though cognac seems to be the traditional boozy ingredient.

I have gotten into watching Murder Trial on BBC iPlayer which follows a trial in the Scottish courts (who allow filming in court) and is an interesting look at how the evidence is presented, what the defence is trying to achieve, interviews with people involved in the case, etc. Seems to be just one or two episodes a year on just one case at a time. Not dramatically presented, and includes selected highlights from the court sessions to get the key points across.

[NickFitz]

Tea: spag bol

This was accompanied by E3 of The Black Swan, in which things get quite hairy for a while; one thing you don’t want in your office is an outlaw biker who thinks you’re trying to rip him off

[xoggoth]

Sounds like you’re sorted but if you enjoy playing with maps, Open Free Map is worth a look: https://openfreemap.org/

Cheers NF, looks interesting although footpaths are not really clear as in OS maps.

Got into a right panic last night, couldn't find my wallet after visit to local shop, looked for it everywhere, even searched up the road with a torch. Then I opened my cash box to get some cash out and found wallet was in there. Must have dropped it in there after putting couple of notes in it. So relieved! I would not have slept.

[ladymuck]

I went to the storage unit. I found two suitable tins to house the baked goods HWMBO is making as a gift. I looked at the washing line pole thingy and deduced that it does not come apart into two shorter lengths. I will need to measure up my car to see if I can find a way to get a nearly 2 m long pole into it. Preferably without it smashing any windows or causing any interior damage.

That'll be a job for the New Year.

I am currently cooking a huge tray of duck fat roasted potatoes to take down to Mum's on Thursday for dinner. Hopefully they will come out crispy. If they fail, I still have time to buy some from Sainsbury's.

[NickFitz]

This morning, I got around to washing the new sheet and pillowcases. Need to do the duvet cover too, but I decided to do that separately - maybe tomorrow. The goal is to have nice clean, new, 1600 thread count bedding to come back to after Christmas

And once they were almost dry and draped on the clothes horse, to finish drying naturally, I popped out. First stop: the bins, as I’d cut up some boxes and had a rather bulky load of recycling, so I thought I’d save the young ladies who collect stuff from our flat doors the trouble. However, there were no bins! It’s bin day, so they’d been trundled down to the road end of the small drive at the back of the opposite block, and all the recycling ones must have been full enough to go out. So I trogged off down there to drop it off, and tomorrow it'll be trundled back up that drive to where the bins normally live

Then I took the car out to get petrol. Just seeing the amount of traffic in the vicinity of places where shopping is done made me glad I wasn’t doing any of that

Coming back, I took a minor detour via the local shopping road, on the off chance there was a spot to park outside the chemist’s. Not only was there not any such spot, there was also a van delivering to the bakery and holding up the traffic, so that took longer than expected. And then I came home, parked up, and walked back round to the chemist’s

Anyway, that’s today’s various minor things all sorted out. I still haven’t had any lunch because I don’t really fancy any of the stuff I have in; I might just grab a bag of crisps or some peanuts or something, to get in practice for all the between-meal snacking on Thursday