Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

Busy night of Christmas shopping done, i.e. spending five minutes buying a load of Amazon gift cards and some bags

I have shedloads of wrapping paper, some of it dating back years, due to having often finished up in Sainsbury’s on Christmas Eve when it’s all "buy 5 get 5 free" for stuff like that

[NickFitz]

Last of the Popeyes leftovers with chips for tea. I should order less, as I’m bored with it by Monday. Nice enough though

This was accompanied by The Crash Detectives on iPlayer, telling the dismal story of a cyclist killed by a careless van driver

I treated myself to an Advent Calendar this year! Last time I had one of these, all you got for opening the door was a little picture of a candle or a star, but this one is from a French company and contains fancy liqueur chocolates. So I now have a little bit of chocolate containing a tiny quantity of Armagnac to enjoy

[NickFitz]

Just put the breadmaker to work on a wholemeal loaf

After lunch, I noticed that my upstairs neighbour’s van’s lights were on, but he might have been on his way out so I didn’t pay much attention. About an hour later, I noticed they were still on and the van hadn’t moved, so I popped up and let him know, and he went out and turned them off. That’s the second time I’ve done that for him

It’s only a small van but it’s equipped as a camper in the back and has a solar panel on the roof. But I don’t know if that would have saved him from a flat battery, so it’s probably better to let him know

[NickFitz]

Lunch has been some Popeyes hot wings

I came across a classic bug this morning. Some data that was supposed to be saved in a cache for two months wasn’t there, and my colleague had hunted fruitlessly on Friday for the reason it had gone astray. I didn’t know the code involved so started working out what it did, whereupon I encountered this line:

cache_stuff(cache_timeout=60 * 60 * 24 * 20)  # 2 months

Now, as any fule kno, if you’re dealing in seconds then 60*60*24 gets you to one days’ worth. Then multiplying by 20 gets you twenty days… so why does the comment say 2 months?

And that was it! The problem is that a month is approximated as 30 days, so two months is 60 days, and when you look at this line, you see the “2 months” comment at the end and you see 60 appearing, not once but twice, in the calculation, and you think it seems OK and you go off and start looking at another place where you think the bug might be. I spotted that the 20 at the end was the culprit almost immediately, because I didn’t know the code so I had no idea of where else I might look

To add to the fun, this data is generated at the start of the month, so it might not even have been noticed that there was a problem if somebody hadn’t happened to be looking at it after the twentieth of November

[NickFitz]

Links are up

[ladymuck]

So I can snag the om

[ladymuck]

And now for some filler

[ladymuck]

Afternoon all

Dull start this morning but I can see some patches of sky trying to break through. Currently 8 degrees and that's the high for the day. The cloud cover will return with rain expected later. Barometer down to 998 mBar.

Sunrise 08:24; Sunset 15:49 GMT

Another morning of meetings. Need to find out from both gigs what their intentions are for 2026.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Monday.

Dark.

Dank.

Dreary.

Sunless.

Black side of grey.

Wet.

Windy.

Chilly in here at 14.4 deg, 12.5 in the kitchen, 12 in the leanto.

995 mBar, 29.38 in Hg, 746.3 Torr, 14.43 psi, (down from 1005 last night), 62% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 4th of March 2020 Brillo and AndyGarbs popped in, xogg was digging ditches and looking forward to new Spitting Image eps, LM was moving on gigwise which NF thought was A Good Move, my leg was painful, whereas the computer room at the library was very quiet.

Freecell score in the dim dark grey blackness of the morning: 92%.

Lunch: brunch. Freecell.

Walk (abbreviated due to the inclemency of the weather, towpath: overtopped in places by the canal) walked in the grey sunless gloom of the afternoon.

Small puddle forming at the bottom of next door's garden. Again.

House roughly vacced.

Tea: chicken in white sauce etc. Nice enough.

Entertainment: PM <click>.

Book. Other book: the one about the orange mother****er.

Panorama: PFAS. Oh look: the "light water" firefighting stuff at 3M is riddled with the stuff.

Oak Island nutjobbery. Feck nose what they won't find this week after last week's 17 century plastic liner discovery. .

[WTFH]

Morning all it was blowing an absolute hooley all night, and still is this morning. Very wet and windy walk has been done.

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

It’s a stormy sort of a morning out there, with rain carrying on from overnight, and the trees waving their arms and creating lots of wind. Extremely grey and gloomy, needless to say. The rain’s expected to continue through the day and the evening into the night, finally packing it in a bit before midnight. At least it’s comparatively warm: already at 10°C (though it “feels like” 1°) with a daily target of 12°. The barometers are down to 987/995mB

I remembered to make the bed before I wanted to get in it yesterday. I decided it was time to combine the two parts of the duvet to activate full winter mode, though it turned out to be very mild compared to other nights recently. But I had a very comfy night’s sleep

[NickFitz]

Or wierdos who've stuck Christmas trees up their ....

Not sure that would be suitable for festive family viewing

I managed to get some more investigation of the new forum software done. It would help if they updated their documentation; instead, quite a few powerful features can only be discovered by ploughing through old “what’s new” posts for various versions on their support forums

Tonight, I read some more of The Forgotten Soldier, in which they had one hell of a time advancing in a German offensive through Belgorod then hastily retreating, as it turned out the Russians had secretly built up their forces in the expectation of exactly that (helped by John Cairncross passing decrypts from Bletchley Park to them) and gave them an absolute pasting

Monday again tomorrow, but it’s the penultimate working Monday of the year

Goodnight all

[xoggoth]

Or wierdos who've stuck Christmas trees up their ....

Last bit of toothpaste inspections today, hope to get the darn reports sent off this week. Old farts' xmas do tomorrow and another on Weds.

[NickFitz]

I had some turkey slices that Needed to be Eaten™ as they’d failed to make it into any of my lunches last week, as had been intended. So I had them with chips and ketchup for tea. Not the most exciting of meals, but it was OK

This was accompanied by the latest episode of Ambulance, which I think is the last in the series. They should do a Christmas special featuring people who’ve been electrocuted by fairy lights, or injured themselves with a chainsaw while trying to cut down a Christmas tree

[ladymuck]

Afternoon all, Glasgow calling

Lovely sunny day. Not even a wisp from my vantage point. No breeze either. Currently 4 degrees and that's the high for the day. Barometer at 1009 mBar.

Sunrise 08:22; Sunset 15:50 GMT

Slow start to the day on account of being woken around 4am with a headache and only just shifting it sufficiently that I feel functional again.

Journey up to weegieland yesterday was uneventful.