Reply to: test please delete

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was Superman (2025) which was pretty good, I thought; if you’re going to do a new Superman film, it should probably be done this way

And then a rewatch of F1 (2025) which is an entertaining film as it goes. I once got a call from an agent about working with the Torro Rosso F1 team, but I’d just accepted another gig so nothing came of it

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea has been lamb tagine with rice

This was from the Sainsbury’s TTD slow-cooked range, rather than my homemade one, in part because I realised I have no way of telling if mine is coming out right without anything to compare it to

Mine tastes pretty similar, so I must have been doing something right

To go with this, some more of the Brazilian air crash documentary

This afternoon was largely devoted to the forum upgrade stuff, specifically, the URLs. Having exhaustively examined the process by which XenForo handles such things, I’m now confident that my approach (which is extremely simple because that way it’s unlikely to break if anything changes in future) works for all the cases it has to deal with

[NickFitz]

I didn't know such places existed! Is this for the first stage, getting on the foreign births register, or for the actual passport application?

It’s just a small community centre run by volunteers in an area of Manchester that has a lot of Irish people, as far as I can tell. They offer advice and support with various things like benefits and housing for that community, and also offer this service of checking your paperwork for the foreign births register and witnessing the forms and photos. It’s not an official Irish government thing, but their service is in some sense officially recognised because using them means the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs doesn’t have to check that the witness exists and so on

[ladymuck]

Blood has been donated and I picked up a couple of birthday cards too. Once of which I wrote while on the bus home and posted after I got off at my stop. Missed the collection but it's not needed until next week so, hopefully I have allowed enough time.

[ladymuck]

Shopping has been done!

It was Big Sainsbury’s in the end. I was tempted to just go to Not-as-Big, but Diligent Me castigated Lackadaisical Me, pointing out that I was supposed to be getting a set of passport photos of the standard required by the government of the Republic of Ireland, and only Big has a Timpson’s concession where they could be obtained. We (my siblings and I) are going to be applying for Irish citizenship shortly, which is what I need the photos for

We’ll all have to go to an Irish community centre in Manchester where they have somebody who can check all the paperwork and witness the relevant signatures, in return for a small donation, and the plan is to do that some time in April - probably my birthday week, as I’m taking that off work, but it depends on their availability.

Diligent Me also remembered to take the bag of batteries for recycling, some of which have been in there since the old flat, so that's sorted out as well

My preferred parking space, which wasn’t free after shopping last week, was still taken when I returned

Next up: lunch

I didn't know such places existed! Is this for the first stage, getting on the foreign births register, or for the actual passport application?

[xoggoth]

Diligent Me also remembered to take the bag of batteries for recycling

Oh yeh, got a load of them in my shed I keep meaning to recycle, ta for the reminder.

<Brief interlude>

Something I meant to do, what was it?

[NickFitz]

Shopping has been done!

It was Big Sainsbury’s in the end. I was tempted to just go to Not-as-Big, but Diligent Me castigated Lackadaisical Me, pointing out that I was supposed to be getting a set of passport photos of the standard required by the government of the Republic of Ireland, and only Big has a Timpson’s concession where they could be obtained. We (my siblings and I) are going to be applying for Irish citizenship shortly, which is what I need the photos for

We’ll all have to go to an Irish community centre in Manchester where they have somebody who can check all the paperwork and witness the relevant signatures, in return for a small donation, and the plan is to do that some time in April - probably my birthday week, as I’m taking that off work, but it depends on their availability.

Diligent Me also remembered to take the bag of batteries for recycling, some of which have been in there since the old flat, so that's sorted out as well

My preferred parking space, which wasn’t free after shopping last week, was still taken when I returned

Next up: lunch

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens, and a happy Vernal Equinox (due at 14:46) to you all!

I awoke around half seven and decided there was no need to rush into things, so went back to sleep. I then re-awoke a bit before ten and felt much better for it, so I assume I needed the extra sleep

It’s cloudy out in a blank white sheet of paper kind of way, but not what you’d call chilly at 9°C with an expected high of 13°. The barometers have settled back down to 1012/1020mB

I need to head out to do the shopping shortly. The question is, Big or Not-as-Big?

[xoggoth]

Cr**py night's sleep. Lounge about until I meet up with ll1 later.

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Bright and dry but cloudy. Currently 9 degrees with a high of 14 expected. Barometer down to 1024 mBar.

Sunrise 06:04; Sunset 18:14 GMT

A flurry of activity this morning and then an early finish this afternoon so I can be a good citizen and give blood. I have to create a 'ways of working' presentation for gig2. I hate creating presentations, especially when they're being used instead of proper documentation.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Friday.

Dreaming of all sorts of crap: woke at 05:15, read books for an hour or so & eventually returned to the land of nod to a nightmare where I'd returned to Loughborough to do a degree again and it wasn't going well. .

Dry.

Wanly sunny.

Blue white sky.

NotSoChilly in here at 14.3 deg, 13 deg in the kitchen, 10.5 deg in the leanto.

1018 mBar, 30.06 in Hg, 763.6 Torr, 14.76 psi, (down from 1019 last night), 67% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 21st of March 2020 there was a blackbird singing on my late apple tree, LM, NF, BR14, and vetran popped in, and I watch Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome & was unimpressed.

Walk (towpath, unabbreviated) walked in the senseless heat of the morning. Phew wot a scorcher. .

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: some green thing on R4. TWATO.

Trip up to the cemeteries to look at & maintain the graves a bit: the strimmers had done the parents' grave so that was decimated & I decimated it a bit more. You never think anyone had ever taken care of it.

Grandparents graves: not so bad.

Aunt's grave: difficult to find since the daffs were blind this year so it took some doing. Cleared the dead knotweed debris off it & cleaned the headstone of most of the moss.

Long chat with a lady down by the church. Tried to rope me in for a work party to do some clearing of the jungle.

Tea: chicken in white sauce etc. Nice enough. Entertainment: PM. 18 o'clock news.


Taggart S8 E4,5,6. "Ring of Deceit".

[WTFH]

Morning all

CBS, etc, with some frost on the ground and a cool 6C at 6:15 as the sun peaked over the hills. I was thinking it must be getting near the equinox, as I'm sure it went down at about 18:10 last night.

TFIF, etc.

[NickFitz]

The Dark Forest continues to entertain with some intriguing ideas

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea: Guinness-braised beef short ribs with chips

I misjudged the portion sizes when freezing that, and couldn’t finish it all! Must have been hungry when I was divvying it up

Accompanying viewing was E1 (of 3) of A Tragedy Foretold: Flight 3054 on Netflix, about a Brazilian Airbus which, in 2007, veered off the runway at São Paulo–Congonhas Airport. This, strangely, is in the middle of the city and raised above its surroundings, and the plane crashed into a warehouse owned by the same airline, killing many of the people working there as well as everybody on board

[NickFitz]

Another week done!

Still sunny out, but there seems to be some high, thin cloud developing in the distance. There’s a light breeze developing too