Last week on Saturday night we watched “The Fifth Element” one of my all time favourite films. This week someone else was in charge of viewing choices and we watched Frozen II. Without wishing to give much away the plots are virtually the same, although with a bit less shooting in Frozen 2. Very strange.
Went out onto Beverley Westwood today for a walk. They have cows on there so I took another picture of one. I used my other cow picture in a poster for a departmental event a few years ago, so I could do with a spare.
Our post delivery person is great. But sometimes a bit eccentric. Today they delivered a package while I was in to someone who was out. All I got after spending an afternoon excitedly waiting for my camera strap to arrive (I really should get out more) was a note that said “Number 5 living room window”. Now I don’t number the windows on my house. And our living room isn’t so big as to have 5 windows anyway.
Eventually I worked out that this had something to do with the living room window at house number 5. So I went over and had a look. The window was slightly open and there, on the floor inside was my parcel. Which counted as a win in delivery terms. Although if I’d had a priceless Ming vase in my room underneath the window (which is perhaps not very likely in my neighbourhood I suppose) I’d have been a bit concerned.
The good news is that the camera strap is excellent.
I’ve been a member of Flickr for years. I’ve just paid my Pro subscription for what I think will be the last time. It’s starting to cost around the same per year as Microsoft Office 365 which, to my mind, offers much more for the cash - including photo storage…
I love it when people try new things, especially in difficult circumstances. I was in the local Cooplands bakery getting some sandwiches for lunch and I noticed that they were selling baking kits. I’m not a huge fan of baking itself but I am a huge fan of the things that people make when they do it. So I bought a kit. It’s very nicely presented with nicely printed recipes and beautifully packaged ingredients. You even get some utensils, including the cutter for the gingerbread man and a tray to bake things in.
We’ve done the gingerbread men and the brownies so far, with pizza to come. They were delicious. If you’ve never baked and fancy having a go these are a really nice one-stop shop for all the bits. I hope that they keep making them.
I’m having a tiny break from writing. Today we took a trip to Castle Howard which is one of my favourite places in the world. Before we set off we went onto their web site, dutifully filled out the form, booked our slot and got the QR code that would allow us and a few other people to go in.
When we arrived the place was mad busy. I’ve never seen so many people there. I’m far from convinced that everyone there had done as much forward planning as we had. The good news was that the grounds are so vast that they swallowed up all the visitors and we had a delightful amble round. The weather was kind enough to only threaten to rain a couple of times.
We didn’t need a new toaster when I woke up this morning. But, after I’d reset the earth trip for the second time we decided that it probably was time to get one.
I’ve a suspicion that all the toasters in the world are made in a single large factory somewhere and then have different shaped and coloured skins added in the factory next door. Although having said that there seems to be a huge range of opinions about the various different types when you start reading Amazon reviews. And it turns out that you have to work quite hard to find a toaster that will toast a large piece of bread all the way to the top. The contender above was a good price and doesn’t seem to have too many one star opinions attached to it. It should arrive fairly soon. Then I can stop eating bread and jam.
Many years ago I took my kids to the university to “show them what daddy does for a living”. This turned out to be sit in front of screen pressing keys with the odd bit of shouting at people, which is pretty much all I did at home, so I’m not sure they learnt much. But I learnt a few things from them. Number one daughter picked up a mouse and pressed a button on it. The screen in front of her immediately sprang into action. Brian, who was watching, was very impressed. It seemed that nobody had ever thought to press that button before.
I was reminded of this when showing number one granddaughter my venerable Twilight Zone pinball machine. She leaned one of the buttons and promptly dropped the machine into “In the Zone” mode which triggers all the options and releases all six balls onto the playfield at once. This is something I’ve not been able to do in the many years I’ve owned the machine.
I’m not sure what to show her next time she visits.
This nasty little virus has a lot to answer for. Including the death of a British tradition, the “polite cough”. In times gone by if a British person wanted to attract someone’s attention - perhaps it might be a waiter, or a a person who has cut in front of you in a queue, or someone who has parked their car on your foot - you would issue a polite cough to open up the sequence of apologies that would inevitably follow: “I’m so sorry that I left my foot lying around on the ground where you could drive over it” - etc etc.
Nowadays a polite cough has every chance of having you wrestled to the ground by a couple of burly folks in hazmat suits. Oh well. At least we’ve still got the “disapproving look” left.
Very pleased with myself. I’ve taken on City Hall and won in a tumultuous 50 minute battle. Admittedly it was East Riding Council, and I was just trying to order something via their web site. But it felt like a battle.
And I did have to give them 10 pounds to sign up to get the service (and I’m not really sure why). So perhaps we’ll call it a draw.
What a man I am. I spent the morning writing and the afternoon demolishing a summerhouse. Who knows what I’ll do this evening…
Blimey. That was something of a storm last night. I was watching the progress on the amazing LightningMaps.org and wondering how close to our house the dots would get…..
What do you do when faced with a dripping tap? Answer, in my case, is try to fix it. No matter that it wasn’t my tap, the urge to show off my plumbing skills was too hard to resist. So, after a rummage around under the sink I found the isolator for the tap in question and, after a bit of swinging on a spanner managed to pull out the leaky bit.
At this point I was feeling somewhat smug. All we had to do was find a replacement and drop it into the tap. And then someone pointed out that all the water in the house was off.
Oops. Perhaps the isolation valve that I’d turned off did a bit more than I thought. So I put everything back together and turned the isolator back on again. And the water was still off.
Now I was more than a bit worried. My attempt to demonstrate my skills was showing something else entirely Then we discovered that, owing to a supply fault, the water was off in the entire area.
We drove off to the DIY superstore marvelling at the way circumstances collide. How a dripping tap had coincided with a water outage, both events calculated by fate to make me look like an idiot. Then the DIY superstore showed that it was a lot less than super by not having any of the replacement parts in stock. So we took our masks off and headed back.
To find that the water pressure was back to normal and the tap had stopped dripping. At least I’ve learned something, which is that some designs of tap fitting need high water pressure to force them shut. We’ve ordered some spare parts in case the problem comes back again. And I’ve discovered (but not learned just yet) that sometimes fools really do rush in where angels fear to tread…..
Some people are making a very silly fuss about being forced to wear face masks in order to reduce the chances of them dying. Perhaps it is because they don’t have access to masks as cool as the one above, made for me by number one wife.
Apparently loading web pages, finding errors in them and then emailing their owners is now a business model. I got an email from Tracy this week telling me that she had found 83 errors on my blog pages. Oh well.
While I was playing with the tape recorder yesterday I found an inlay I made for one of my tapes. Hand typed on a Silver Reed portable typewriter with no undo whatsoever. The numbers on the left and the readings on the tape counter for the start of each track.
You’re right. I needed to get out more…..
As part of my ongoing program of trying to distract myself from writing today I got my old reel to reel tape deck out to see if it still works. It does. I had to take the drive to pieces to lubricate some of the parts that move the idler wheels in and out of connection with the capstan flywheel, and there was a rather distracting moment when I undid something and a little spring pinged past my ear into the air. But I managed to get it going and re-live some of my musical tastes from the early 1980’s.
Fully dressed
I love the way that the fact it uses “silicon transistors” is a thing worth sticking on the front. Although it does indeed use them. There are around fifteen or so inside I think… .
Is he the guilty one? Have fun finding out.
We did our Murder Mystery thing tonight. It was great fun. The script was suitably silly, there was plenty of scope for wild over the top acting (the only kind I can do) and there was tons of intrigue.
We also raised a few quid for a really good cause. If you want to have a ton of socially isolated fun I can strongly recommend it. You can sign up here.
Made this little chap today out of Magic Clay. Very proud of myself.
Clever Person:
Switches to bulbs that should last for ever.
Clever Idiot:
Switches to bulbs that should last for ever. And buys a spare set.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
