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Tonight’s major motion picture premiere was Supergirl (2026) which was OK, if a bit patchy. Jason Momoa’s character had some great lines, but it felt like they could have made more of him; after an excellent introduction, he became something of a deus ex machina to be dropped in when convenient. A lot of it felt like that, TBH; it didn’t really cohere. Entertaining enough for the most part, but I expected more
Shopping tomorrow! Viz, of course, and some other essentials, such as food
Lunch was for wimps today, as I decided to take a chance on dashing across town to get a haircut. The hairdresser’s husband isn’t dead yet so she was there, and there was just one chap being done and nobody else waiting - well, his toddler daughter was also there and was hoisted onto his knee to have her fringe trimmed after he’d been done, but that doesn’t really count
So with my hair cut in a reasonably timely manner, I got back home only to find that five minutes after I’d left, the AI session had been arranged at short notice! I’d already missed the start of it, but it was being recorded on Teams so I was able to catch up by skimming through the transcript afterwards. It was mainly either stuff I knew or stuff about policies and so on. For example, there’s a strict prohibition on letting AI generate code and also the unit tests for that code: you can have it generate tests for code you’ve written, or you can write tests for code it’s generated, but never the twain shall meet. This seems sensible
Having dealt with several security updates and fixed one minor problem whose only symptom was creating a load of warning messages when tests were running in the morning, I spent the rest of the afternoon fixing a bug which also wasn’t affecting anything but might have reared up and bitten somebody at some time in the future. This turned out to involve code dating back to July 2018! So most of the time was spent writing tests for it, as there were hardly any and I didn’t want to break anything. The end result was several dozen lines of tests, plus about six lines of code that fixed the potential bug
Blue sky and the occasional wisp. Currently 12 degrees with a high of 15 expected. Barometer up to 1022 mBar.
Sunrise 07:13; Sunset 18:23 BST
Yesterday we had a very early dinner (pre-theatre) at Acme Fire Cult; very good if a little on the salty side. We then wandered around the corner to the Arcola Theatre to watch The Turn of the Screw, based on Henry James' novella. Followed by a Q&A with the script writer and director. An excellent evening.
Later today HWMBO's eldest and I will be off to Camden to see another play. We will then meet with HWMBO afterwards for dinner.
Clear blue sky today, but it’s a bit chilly as a result: currently 7°C and reaching the high of 15° this afternoon once it’s clouded over. The barometers are back up to 1008/1016mB
I managed to wake up properly, or at least enough to get up, on the second alarm
It’s Tech Debt Thursday today, so a break from the usual stuff - though there isn’t much usual stuff left TBH; although there are some remaining things to do, they depend on others outside our ambit getting stuff done. So they’ll be handled in an ad hoc fashion after next week, when I officially move on to… well, I’m not quite sure TBH. There’s a PowerPoint deck from a planning session I didn’t go to which I’m supposed to have a look at as that has the high-level details, but I forgot so I should probably do that
Today, I had hoped for a bit of peace and quiet to deal with the last few minor things, but it sounds like we’ll all be doing some kind of introductory AI session. The department has been very cautious about letting AI anywhere near code, but Number Ten is still very keen, so there’s been a small trial during the past year which is now gradually being expanded. It sounds like we’re about to be inculcated into the cult. I shall see if I can use up all my tokens on the first day, generating documentation of the older parts of this thing that I still don’t fully understand, as I’ve been putting that off for a while now
17.9 deg in here, 17.7 in the kitchen, 15 in the leanto, 9 out the back.
1016 mBar, 30 in Hg, 762 Torr, 14.74 psi, (up from 1013 last night), 68% RH (Lidl electric).
Meanwhile on the 6th of April 2020, between 10:15 and 10:18, in popped Brillo, BR14, DaveB, LM, northernladuk and SimonMac.
Entertainment: Further out of town with Jack Hargreaves & his step son: Cuckoo Maran chickens, hiring a cockerel for same, sea fishing for bream, transferring river fish to a new lake formed from a gravel pit dug to build a motorway.
Bab5 S4 E21: the bits I missed yesterday despite having the dvds over by there on a shelf.
Sunny now. .
Walk (unabbreviated, towpath) walked in the sunshine. Two conversations, one of which revealed that the funny noise & flashing blue lights up the road some days ago was due to some oik crashing his/her/its car into another car coming the other way down the road. Fisticuffs ensued apparently.
Lunch: brunch. Entertainment: dashcam bollox S4 E8. Scottish Islands thing: Shetland: Papa Stour, Muckle Roe, Whalsay, Out Skerries. The curse of the Bruce Lairds: last one died in 1944.
Alaska Homestead Rescue: S5E1: Newcastle Wyoming. It was 110 deg F when they arrived, on a homestead that once again lacked a water supply despite having a 930 ft deep well that had been drilled 20 years before. Dealing with the well was complicated by finding a sinkhole under the wellhead when they dug a trench to install a magic tapping point some 6 feet down below the "frost line" (avoids the pipeline to the property freezing during the arctic winters). Used a pitless well adaptor to interface the well to the pipeline. Turned out the original owners had committed suicide due to the pressures they faced. Their children contacted the Raneys for help. All 3 turned up in this one.
Tea: beans on toast etc. Nice enough. Entertainment: PM.
Bab5 S4 E22 "The deconstruction of falling stars". I recall how weird this ep appeared the first time I watched it back in the late 1990s.
Tea has been southern not-fried chicken out of the freezer, with chips and ketchup
This was accompanied by yet more crime in NY City, this time the Central Park jogger case, the perpetrator of which confessed when he was already serving a long sentence for rape and murder, at which point they got around to checking the evidence for DNA and discovered that the five guys they’d blamed had nothing to do with it
It turned sunny here late in the afternoon, as promised. More rain on the way tomorrow though, I think
Scrabble with old lady nearish neighbour this morning. Didn't finish second game as I accidentally bonked the board when reaching for my phone and messed all the tiles up. Book reading thing this afternoon, I'd actually read something for a change. Not proper walky today due to weather, just 30 min wander round nearby village roads.
Lunch was a bratwurst in a couple of finger rolls, with curry ketchup and crispy onion bits
The rain seems to be gradually petering out, though I don’t think it’s stopped completely yet. It’s still very gloomy but in theory, there may be some sunshine late in the afternoon
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