Reply to: test please delete

[DoctorStrangelove]

VCRs. Our ancestors clearly realised that concealing the instructions for how to do so in manuals that can't be found when you need them would baffle even such an other-worldly threat

You'd have loved the clock setting & timer programming on the Grundig 2x4 Super. Very challenging. .

Morning.

Sunday.

Dry, then damp, now drizzling.

Grey.

Sunless.

Dark.

Dank.

Dreary.

Chilly in here at 12.8 deg, ?12 in the kitchen, 9 in the leanto.

1026 mBar, 30.297 in Hg, 769.6 Torr, 14.88 psi, (down from 1028 last night), 62% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 22nd of March 2020 Brillo popped in more, AndyGarbs popped in, NF popped in, and I was watching a programme about the plague.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s another grey start and it's still a bit breezy, though not as much as it was. Therefore, the 6°C we’re getting right now “feels like” -2°; the expected high is 10°, but will presumably also be discounted. The barometers are up a touch at 1015/1023mB

I see the BST Demon has visited in the night. Strange that such a powerful supernatural being can’t change clocks on older devices like cars, cookers, and VCRs. Our ancestors clearly realised that concealing the instructions for how to do so in manuals that can't be found when you need them would baffle even such an other-worldly threat

[NickFitz]

Monkey Life and other wildlife matters graced the screen today, and did a much better job of it than any of our human leaders ever manage

And tonight, I continued reading Death’s End

Early night now which will, through the power of BST, be transformed into a late night

Goodnight all

[ladymuck]

The fillum was very silly and very entertaining. Mark Kermode mentioned Patricia Arquette's dodgy "Irish" accent, and it was terrible. However, if you ignore that, the rest of the film is a perfect example of the "switch your brain off and enjoy the spectacle" genre. So many funny little details and nods to a multitude of other films.

[xoggoth]

Busy day. Woodland volunteer thing this morning, didn't really do much, long walk to place where we were supposed to be removing bracken and there wasn't any there. Afternoon with loony lady 1. Little history group party this evening at local 15th century place, nice except flipping cold.

[NickFitz]

Tea was brought to me from the East African place

They don’t mess around there when it comes to chilli sauce! I had to take several breaks to blow my nose due to gustatory rhinitis

[ladymuck]

My plants arrived while I was at Argos-in-Sainsbury's buying Mum a new kettle.

HWMBO made a delicious lamb curry for dinner. It was an early dinner today as we're off to the cinema to see "They Will Kill You".

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

It’s a windy day, with patches of blue sky to the west but mostly grey to the east - though a patch of blue has just appeared low in the northeast as well. Currently 8°C which is today’s high, but it “feels like” 0°. The barometers are up though, at 1013/1021mB. Light rain is expected to stop in a few minutes but I don’t know how much faith to put in this prediction given that there is, in fact, no light rain falling at the moment

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Sunny with lumps of fluff. Currently 9 degrees ('feels like' 6) with a high of 10 expected. Barometer up to 1025 mBar.

Sunrise 05:46; Sunset 18:28 GMT

HWMBO and I have been to the farmers' market. I am waiting on delivery of some chilli plants. Royal Mail's estimated delivery slot ended 10 mins ago...

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Saturday.

Up an hour earlier in preparation for tomorrow.

Dry.

Sunny.

Blue sky.

Chilly in here at 13.7 deg, 12 in the kitchen, 10 in the leanto, 7 in the saltinghouse.

1021.5 mBar, 30.16 in Hg, 766.2 Torr, 14.82 psi, (up from 1018 last night), 63% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 22nd of March 2020 Brillo popped in a lot but BR14 managed to get one post in edgeways. .

Washing frenzy in progress: awaiting the iRoning frenzy shortly. Ironing frenzy complete. Everything other than towels now airing upstairs.

Entertainment: Archive hour: thing about Radiophonics, sort of. Well Daphne Oram & Delia Derbyshire were mentioned.

Warm it isn't but the sun & the semigale dried stuff well, thought the couple of minutes of hail added immeasurably to the joy of the morning.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: Moneybox wondering quietly quite why Crapita are so called. .

Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the sunshine & cold wind. Brrrrr.

Entertainment: turning on the wireless and found "Brian" talking to someone. It was The Archers. On a Saturday afternoon. The horror! Oh the Horror!

Tea: soup etc. Nice enough. Entertainment: PM.

Just spent an inneresting half an hour examining the contents of the wardrobe: 6 pairs of trousers I no longer fit, two pairs I do fit, 2 pairs of M&S jeans (regular) that I fit, a pair of cords that I don't fit, 4 pairs of "slim fit" jeans that I can get on, but are difficult to get off again, and are in danger of gelding me should I be so incautious as to attempt to sit down: definitely don't put a wallet in a pocket or it's a certainty. .

Are red jeans still a thing? Askin' for a friend. .

"To the four corners": 1956: the 4 corners of the UK: Kilkeel (granite quarry), Cardiff (docks, Butetown, coaling colliers in the docks), Crossbost, Isle of Lewis (a wedding), Lincoln cathedral plus the castle. A Brooke Bond Tea film, which explained the bright red Commer Bedford CA van with their logo on the side in one scene in Lewis.

Maigret S4 E1 "Poor Cecile". Nearly word perfect on this one. .

"Blacklight (2022)" with that Liam Neeson. Lowest rated Neeson film on rotten tomatoes: pretty meh really: filmed in Australia apparently, Bruce.

[WTFH]

Morning all
Didn’t go shedshopping yesterday, went fora drive and a wander around RHS Rosemoor. Not out of bed yet, but I can tell you it’s CBS.

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) in which a pornographer demonstrates how ridiculous the Constitution of the United States of America is successfully defends his right to free speech. Fair play on the Jerry Falwell defamation case

And then a rewatch of 300 (2006) because it’s always fun to see somebody who believes they’re an invincible god-king get punched in the gob <- I reckon the Spartans would have smoked like fish if they’d had the opportunity

Finally, a further episode of Hijack in which German tube trains show a remarkable ability to keep on truckin’ despite any and all explosions in their undercarriage

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea has been a ribeye steak with fried onions and chips

This was accompanied by E1 of Estonia, a documentary series about the ferry that sank in the Baltic in the 1990s. This is on HBO Max, which has just launched in the UK. I already have their blockbuster stuff like The Wire and The Sopranos, as well as many of the big films they offer. So I thought I’d try to confuse their algorithms by starting my use of the service with a series in which almost everybody is speaking Swedish, Finnish, or Estonian. Maybe it’ll start recommending loads of obscure Nordic programming instead of bothering me with mainstream stuff

The import worked OK once I’d added the index to the source DB, taking the same amount of time as without my customisations of the code. I need to go through checking obscure stuff, and there’s one aspect of it I think needs adjusting, but that’s the last really big part of the import process mainly or wholly working as desired

[NickFitz]

It was a soggy walk to the garage to pick up my car. That light misty rain that doesn't feel like much but all of a sudden you're wet.

The job looks good but I'll take a closer look in drier and sunnier weather (should we get any). More importantly, the car is shiny clean.

[NickFitz]

This afternoon has been largely spent on the new forum stuff, in which I eventually discovered I was falling foul of a decision I made about five years ago

I’ve had to do a lot of work on the import of posts to ensure it goes smoothly, taking into account stuff relating to the work I did for the vB5 migration back then. I was pretty sure it was good to go, so I cleaned down the database and started a new import. All the previous steps went smoothly and it started importing posts… and it seemed incredibly slow

I left it running for an hour to give it a chance, but by the end of that I did a quick calculation and concluded that it would take it around forty days to import them all! Clearly, something was wrong

So I tried single-stepping through the top level function, and it turned out one function call was taking a few seconds to run. All that function does is run a SQL query and return the results, and this was one of the bits I’d had to modify; but I didn’t think I’d done anything too drastic

But it was using a table I’d added to the vB5 database back in the day and, on further investigation, I realised that one of the columns it was using in there didn’t have an index set! This column was only retrieved as one of the columns in a SELECT by the stuff I added to vB5, whereas in the importer, it’s used in the WHERE part of the query. So this meant the DB was having to scan this table, which contains millions of rows, repeatedly. That was the decision I made back then - I added indexes for the columns the vB5 code made use of, but didn’t bother for the one that’s now suddenly important

In addition, the way the importers work in the new stuff is that they’ll set a time limit for processing a chunk of data, apparently so they can output a progress message even if running on very slow shared hosting and so on, and pick up where they left off if they didn’t complete that chunk - but they fetch a new chunk with the current starting position from the DB. So it was going and getting 500 rows of data, which took several seconds because of the missing index, then processing the first row - after which it found it was over its time limit! This meant it was processing one row at a time, and taking loads more time for each one than it should have taken it to process 500 rows

I added an index for that column, and now it’s running along at a cracking pace