Reply to: test please delete

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Overcast. Currently 17 degrees with a high of 21 expected. There may be rain this afternoon, followed by the sun coming out. Barometer down to 1010 mBar.

Sunrise 06:44; Sunset 19:04 BST

Last night I set the WM to a delayed start with some minor laundry. It finished shortly before I got out of the shower, and the cleaned clothings have now been draped on the airer.

I will pop over the road to the farmers' market to see if the Caribbean sauce lady is there when I've finished my coffee (which I'm not supposed to have but one cup a day can't hurt?).

Then the wall painting person is set to arrive by 10:30 to finally finish the garden wall. Once they get here, I will drive down to visit Mum, leaving them to paint and hope they don't nick my stuff.

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture was one of those where I wasn't sure if it was a premiere or if I'd seen it on the telly years ago. But when it featured a PDP-8/e being actively used in the first minute or two, I realised I couldn't have seen it before, as I would have remembered that

So it was the premiere, for me, of Three Days of the Condor (1975) in which a PDP-8/e is seen not only scanning the text of a book printed in Chinese (horizontally) but also converting that text from ideograms into a Latin alphabet transcription and, furthermore, an English translation, all in real time! Yeah, no. A PDP-8/e can't do that. Anyway, the rest of the film isn't about that but is a great example of those 1970s thrillers that directors have been trying, and often failing, to copy ever since. Excellent stuff, I thought

And later, a rewatch of Code of a Killer, the ITV drama about Alec Jeffries' invention of DNA fingerprinting and its use in catching Colin Pitchfork for the murders down near Narborough in the 1980s. Last time I watched this was in the old flat, where I was thinking that the crime scenes were just three miles or so down the road; here, the labs in which Jeffries worked are about half-a-mile away across the park on the university campus. Strange how awful tragedies and major breakthroughs can all happen so close to home

Goodnight all

[ladymuck]

I think baobab fruit was touted at one time as one of these miracle foods that cures everything.

This week I have been watching the latest series of Shetland, which aired shortly before Christmas last year. I like it but it's a bit like EastEnders - far too high a crime rate for me to want to visit.

[NickFitz]

Today I learned (thanks to Scrambled Maps) that Rustenberg, South Africa has a street called Kremetart Avenue.

Excellent!

Checking Google Translate, I discover that in Afrikaans, it means baobab: "a short tree with an enormously thick trunk and large edible fruit. It can live to a great age."

When I went to Unzoomed yesterday, I took one look and thought "I know this! I used to leave work and go for my tea in a pub in that corner, then walk across that square with the statue in the middle on that diagonal path, on my way to a better pub near the hotel!" For it was Bristol, and unsurprisingly I got it in one

[NickFitz]

Tea has been a pork cutlet with chips and beans

Accompanied by a bit of the last episode (so far) of Trucking Hell

[ladymuck]

Today I learned (thanks to Scrambled Maps) that Rustenberg, South Africa has a street called Kremetart Avenue.

[NickFitz]

^^ semantic shift, I think?

Ah, that's it!

Disappointed to discover that my bread has started to go mouldy so no toast for me this morning.

This is why I now freeze bread straight away - I used to throw out about half of it some weeks due to mould!

[NickFitz]

Lunch, as indicated last night, was the remaining bit of the rack of ribs. Still very nice when cold!

Turning sunnier out now with a lot of the cloud having cleared, though there seems to be a lingering haze high up

[ladymuck]

^^ semantic shift, I think?



Morning all

Cloudy start but that's mostly shifted leaving blue sky with some interesting fluff patterns. Currently 21 degrees ('feels like' 24) with a high of 24 expected. Barometer down a smidge to 1018 mBar.

Sunrise 06:43; Sunset 19:06 BST

The wall painting person is back, doing their second coat. Hopefully it'll be finished today as I'm not here next week to let them in.

Disappointed to discover that my bread has started to go mouldy so no toast for me this morning.

[NickFitz]

The mundane laundry is now being laundered

Despite that being the original and correct use of the word, it conjures images of clothes being moved through a series of offshore washing machines before finally returning in an unrecognisable form. I daresay there's a fancy word for a metaphorical usage overtaking the original in everyday parlance, but I don't know what it is

[NickFitz]

The interlopers* having slunk away** from the drive, I was able to retrieve the Corolla from the car park round the back, and now it proudly stands out front next to the big lawn again, in the preferred space

I took it for a drive around the neighbourhood; just enough to warm it up properly. My Dad told me many years ago that this was necessary to avoid condensation damaging the catalytic converter. I have no idea if this is true or not; he probably read it in the paper or saw it on telly, as he wasn't really mechanically inclined. But I don't suppose it can do any harm, unless I crash into something or somebody, which I try to avoid doing

* Neighbours who are just as much entitled to park out there as I am
** Gone to work, probably

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

A bit less cloudy today, so the sunny spells are a bit more frequent. Still quite breezy though. It should carry on much the same for the rest of the day. It's quite mild too, being 17°C ("feels like" 13°) and expected to soar to 23° for a bit this afternoon! The barometers are up some more at 1005/1013mB

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Friday apparently.

Dry.

Grey.

Sunless.

Warmish side of cool in here at 19.4 deg, 19.5 in the kitchen, 18.5 in the leanto.

1011 mBar, 29.855 in Hg, 758.3 Torr, 14.66 psi, (down from 1012 last night), 68% RH (Lidl electric).


Meanwhile on the 17th of February 2020 I was still collecting litter: no good would come of this in 10 days time, NF had a Greggs pasty/whatever for lunch, LM had a free cake and was 85% out the door at her then current gig, WTFH popped in, as did LondonManc, and I updated Churchill on the state of the garden and the river and the waters therein.

Walk (slightly abbreviated) walked in the grey gloom.

River less in spate today & a lot less brown, canal not so close to overtopping the bank, water sitting in next door's garden has subsided a lot: you could probably avoid getting your feet wet today by using a bit of my garden path.

Gosh. Next door's shed is being emptied or something by the new neighbours. I think they may have bought a washing machine.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: green thing on R4 about migration <click>

Freecell score: 92%, 88%, running average: 84%.

Next door has apparently emptied the shed & got rid of some bushes I'd intended to burn when next the fancy takes me. Hope they had someone reliable to cart it all away. .

Tea: chicken in white sauce etc. Much easier to eat sans the rice.

Entertainment: PM. Looks like Putin is well on his way to starting WWIII with incursions lasting 12 minutes.

Just imagine what would happen if NATO did that.

Book.

Bits of this & that, including some Jimi Hendrix in concert until it bored me, followed by some bollox on Blaze that included that ground effect Soviet seaplane thing. Bit of the thing about dangers in post war housing which I've watched at least 4 times.

Other book.

[WTFH]

Morning all
TFIF, etc.
Overcast earlier, and quite humid. Now the clouds are burning off, might be a pleasant day. The Wife has gone out to work, I have a load of washing on, and this day next week I'll be getting ready to shut down to go on holiday.

[NickFitz]

Tonight's major motion picture was a rewatch of Limitless (2011) in which a failing writer comes into a supply of a new, illicit drug which confers access to the mythical unused 80% of the brain's capabilities and, with its assistance, starts to build a new life - though problems inevitably arise, ranging from side effects to Russian gangsters to oleaginous American capitalists. It's an enjoyable yarn, notable for featuring that Anna Friel off of Brookside and also Abbie Cornish, the Australian who was so good in Sucker Punch; though it also has some American actors in it (Bradley Cooper, Robert de Niro, and so on)

Goodnight all