Reply to: test please delete

[mudskipper]

I'm reading a book about Ada Lovelace. I've only just learned (maybe something everyone else knew) that the Analytical Engine (i.e. world's first computer) was never actually built, and Lovelace's program never run until many years later on a modern emulator (where a bug was found!). I feel quite cheated.

[NickFitz]

Tea has been the last of the beef short ribs in Guinness thing, with chips

That’s been sat in the freezer for ages, but it’s about time it moved out and made space for something else

It was quite cold when I was finally able to eat it, as the router seems to have succumbed to a touch of heatstroke at some point last night. It’s working OK now, but various things had ended up using the 4G backup wifi. In particular, the stereo-paired HomePods I use for sound from the telly had become so confused that one of them was refusing to switch from the 4G wifi while the other had realised it should go back to the normal one. Even powering off for a few seconds didn’t help, and in the end I had to unlink them from my phone and restart them as if from new. This was a pain as it meant standing near them holding my phone and confirming things while they got themselves set up, though to be fair it does go very smoothly with the minimum of questions. Anyway, with that done, they were back to working OK and I was able to return to my lukewarm food

[DoctorStrangelove]

Morning.

Sunday.

Damply dry.

Sunny (wanly).

Blue sky in parts.

23.6 deg in here, 24.5 in the kitchen, 22 in the leanto, 19 outside, 20 in the saltinghouse.

1009 mBar, 29.796 in Hg, 756.8 Torr, 14.63 psi, (up from 1005 last night), 57% RH (Lidl electric).

Meanwhile on the 31st of March 2020 AndyGarbs, covbob, eek, LM, NF, vetran, WTFH and I popped in. NF was doing hard sums about the electric & gas readings whilst I was reading The Mitrokhin Archive which was at the stage to naming all the useful idiots giving away bomb secrets to Stalin.

Washing frenzy in progress. It spotted with rain just to celebrate. .

Defrosting fridge again. Contents of said fridge now in Lidl(tm) electric cool box thing and the freezer. Couldn't find the power supply I usually use so pressed another one from Ye Olde Sloughe of Desponde into use.

Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: yahoo news about the Orange Mother****er as is my wont when Di Ti Di is on R4 & I can't be arsed to find anything else.

Those things at the requisite stage of dryness & requiring the attention of the iRon have received & are airing upstairs.

Entertainment: Archive Hour: The Home Guard, first broadcast 2003. Goodness me, I never knew there was a Home Guard Act 1951 when "they" imagined that the Home Guard might be able to defend against Soviet nukes. Disbanded 1957.

Fridge is still defrosting. Maybe I should do it more frequently, preferably before there's enough ice to support a polar bear.

Fridge defrosted.

Tea: baked beans with cheese & baked spuds. Nice enough.

During washing up & cleaning out the fridge it started raining, so the two items still on the line met the TD which still took 15 minutes to dry the feckers.

Fridge cleaned & reassembled.

Entertainment: TPTV: The Directors: Howard Hawks.

Some bollox on 5 about TV shows from the 1970s, including the toe curling Parkinson interview with Helen Mirren (whose name I had to look up FFS , my ongoing brain rot is becoming irritating).

Some bollox on 5 about the summer of 1976 (which I remember) and the autumn deluge of 1976 which I don't.

Blaze: The Danny Trejo thing. More bollox. Oh look: there's a Roman villa in that Engerland place, who'd have thunk? I suppose the Romans had a mere 400 years to build one or two. After all, whatever did they do for us?

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Sunny spells with lots of cumuli clumping around the place looking scenic. It’s 21°C with an expected high of just 23°, and there’s a strong breeze making it “feel like” 18°. The barometers are steady at 1003/1011mB

The bedroom got cooler overnight! It was down to around 23° when I awoke, from 25° when I went to sleep. And the breeze is currently helping it cool down even more

[NickFitz]

To keep the apes happy, we watched the first episode of Chimp Kingdom on Netflix, about a very large group living in a rainforest in Uganda

Tonight’s reading was A Game of Birds and Wolves which is about the war games developed by a team of Wrens at the Western Approaches in WWII to develop better tactics to counter U-boat wolf packs in the Atlantic

The bedroom was back up to 28°C earlier but there was a decent breeze, so I left the big window completely ajar for a couple of hours which brought it down to just over 25°

Goodnight all

[NickFitz]

Tea was brought to me from the East African place

Still looking pleasant enough out, but there might be some rain soon

[NickFitz]

Too small for that. It’s an A5-sized envelope with something of moderate thickness in the middle - possibly a few grammes of coke wrapped up

The mystery is solved! It occurred to me to go to Companies House and have a look at the list of shareholders in the confirmation statement for the limited company through which we all own the property, and the chap it’s addressed to is on there

The list doesn’t have any addresses though, so I have no idea which of the 50+ flats is his. So I’ve emailed the management company to ask them to either tell me his address so I can take it to him, or let him know so he can come and collect it

I’d already scribbled out the address with black Sharpie and stuck a “Not known, return to sender” label on it. But I don’t suppose he’ll mind that - he’ll just be glad to get his gramme of coke or whatever it is

[ladymuck]

The bed was stripped and the linen washed before we went to Costco. On account of us buying things that needed refrigeration, we opted to leave the storage unit visit for another day.

The bedding is now dry and I'll put it back on at some point.

A magpie keeps investigating the tub that my gooseberry plant lives in. Its not fruiting yet so it's not to nick my berries.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Maybe I should buy it to keep my books in

That's more or less wot I did. Then I ended up having to fecking live in it with them.

Never mind, I don't suppose I'll last a lot longer, then someone else can dispose of all the crap.

i.e. my dear niece/nephew when I put him down as executor. . <DrS in Mad Cruel Bastard mode>

[NickFitz]

The ground floor centre right flat opposite is being emptied of its furniture, which is being deposited in a van parked on the lawn. Just checked and it’s still for sale on RightMove. Maybe I should buy it to keep my books in

And the mundane laundry is on, using the quick cycle that does washing and drying in less than two hours

[NickFitz]

^^^ I wonder if it's packets of tobacco like my parcel. .

Too small for that. It’s an A5-sized envelope with something of moderate thickness in the middle - possibly a few grammes of coke wrapped up

[NickFitz]

Afternoon denizens

Lots of cumuli en masse outside with blue gaps here and there, and the wind is getting back up. It’s too hot but nowhere near as bad as the last few days: 28°C, which is the worst it’ll be and marks the end of the present heatwave, as it’ll fall back to the low twenties from tomorrow - though there are signs and portents of more unpleasantness starting next weekend. The barometers are down to 1003/1011mB

Sad news for the apes today as the wildlife stuff has been cancelled in favour of cricket! I’ll have to find something else for them to watch among the various streaming services

[ladymuck]

Morning all

Sunny with a mix of lumpy and wispy fluff. A tiny hint of a breeze. No sign of damp from the 4am rain that woke me up. Currently 28 degrees with a high of 30 expected. There's also a chance that the overnight low will drop below 20. Barometer up to 1017 mBar.

Sunrise 04:46; Sunset 21:23 BST

Waiting for a delivery and then HWMBO and I will go over to Costco before stopping at my storage place on way back to check for BBQ parts and make an educated guess as to what size unit to move to. The one I have is technically too big for what's in it and the price increase next month has galvanised me into moving to a cheaper location.

[DoctorStrangelove]

^^^ I wonder if it's packets of tobacco like my parcel. .

Morning.

Saturday apparently.

Dry.

Blue sky.

Sunny.

24.9 deg in here, 25.6 in the kitchen, 23.5 in the leanto, 23.8 in the saltinghouse, 22 outside the back door.

1007.5 mBar, 29.75 in Hg, 755.7 Torr, 14.61 psi, (down from 1009 last night), 64% RH (Lidl electric: it reached 60% yesterday evening).

Meanwhile on the 31st of March 2020 BR14, covbob, eek, LM, NF, and WTFH popped in, with WTFH ordering the survival essentials of 66 assorted bottles of wine: no mention of shotgun shells or baked beans.

Lunch: brunch. Enterteainment: FOOC <click>.

In other news: no more Long Wave. .

Attempted to discover what the yellow flowers in the lawn are, still not sure despite some googling.

Never mind, they'll be mown short shortly. If I remember to drop the lawnmower from 6 to 3.

<hiatus>

2 and a bit lawns mown: too knackered to bother with next door's big lawn today. Yellow flowers now in compost heap & the bit where they were mown at 3.5 which should discourage them a bit. Managed not to mow my orchids.

Now getting outside a mug of mediocre yet consistent coffee which was preceded by a mug of cold orange squash since the colour of urine a little earlier was rather inneresting in a highly coloured way.

Tea: soup etc.

Entertainment: Maigret S1 E1 (1960).

BBC4 Voyages of Discovery: Magellan. <spoiler> He died in the Philipines & didn't make it all the way round </spoiler>

Blaze: Hitler's Engineers: dear old Wernher. An archetype for Musk?

Blaze: something else. Thanks to NF's book: The WRNS war gaming thing. Doenitz is winning in 1941. And just to irritate me: Colossus had nothing to do with Enigma, and it wasn't an Analogue Computer FFS and neither were the Bombes.

Irritating to see RN officers saluting inside a building without wearing a hat. Apparently Not The Done Thing, what?

There's a new channel: "Rewind TV": and last night it was showing some very uninteresting T&A, to wit: Emanuel in London followed by Blue something or other. Stone me.

[NickFitz]

Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was The Running Man (2025) being, as the year would suggest, the new one, not the original. I assumed this would land somewhere between acceptable and garbage, so I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be really good! Well worth a watch, I reckon

And then I decided to rewatch The Intern (2015) because I hadn’t in a while and I like it

Today, something turned up in the post addressed to somebody who doesn’t live here. This happened once before, then some stranger turned up and claimed it the same day. They aren’t getting it this time though; it’s going back in the post as “Not known at this address” and if somebody turns up asking for it, I’m inclined to shrug and say I gave to to the police and see how they react

The wind dropped a lot after sunset but I left the bedroom window ajar and it went down from 29°C to 24°. Still feels warm, but that’s definitely better

Goodnight all