Some work. I had the idea of showing timetabled times on a map like this, and I’m pretty pleased with it. Using MapLibre GL JS’s symbol-sort-key to prioritise showing timing points when zoomed out.

The lovely spring weather is nice and all that, but it’s also a reminder of the relentless march of time. If I could keep it winter forever, in order to stay young forever, would I? Actually no.

Had the saddle and seatpost nicked off my bicycle by some kind of seat-sniffing pervert. It’s not a quick-release clamp, so they must have come prepared with an Allen key. Who would do such a thing?

I don’t miss the saddle – it was uncomfortable, so maybe the criminal has done my balls etc. a favour, it’s easily replaced. But seatposts are harder, the local shop had none in stock, so stealing one starts to make sense! If I did it, I’d steal from an abandoned-looking bike that’s already had a wheel nicked or bent – it might seem like kicking someone while they’re down, but actually it’s more ethical if you think about it.

📺 Scoop, Netflix’s film about the Prince Andrew interview … pointless, but that’s art for you. I wondered if they reused the Buckingham Palace set from The Crine for efficiency’s sake, but maybe that’s not how it works and they’re produced by different companies.

“My” episode of Taskmaster aired and of course the sense of déjà vu was fun. We saw a row of backs of the audience’s heads a few times, but none of the heads looked like mine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bought some athlete’s foot cream (yes, a foot cream belonging to the 00s indie band from Deptford), only to later realise I’d just bought an empty box (empty apart from a bit of paper). So I returned it for a refund and free replacement, which was nice, and it’s mad that I didn’t notice earlier that the box was empty, and could the tube of cream have dropped out and I’ve accidentally stolen it? What a funny story.

Acid reflux! That seems to be the cause of the cough. So I’m off the coffee, tea, tomatoes, jalapenos, alcohol. Even your friend and mine, peppermint tea, is bad because it relaxes the sphincter and we don’t want that.

“Sphincter” is a horrible word, but I’m minded to start using it for other kinds of valve, e.g. the leaky flush on the toilet.

This has nothing to do with anything that happened this week, but a while ago I read a quirky feature about “rejection therapy”, which can be described as asking people for things to which the answer is likely to be “no”.

I do think my almost-fear of asking questions is a bit of a problem sometimes, but this is not the place for introspection. I found myself embarking on my own small project, which consisted of asking for a “filter coffee” in Starbuckses – it’s advertised on the menu, but seldom actually available, and when the “no” came I’d settle for a watery, more expensive americano. It’s stupid when I could get a nicer, more ethical drink from any independent cafe, but there’s something about the quest for the unobtainable that makes me want to keep trying. I wonder if it’s possible to make a map similar to the McDonald’s broken ice cream machine one.

(Reminds me: I caught another expired domain name at the start of the year, davidlynchcoffee.co.uk. It’s got some what tossers call link equity, so I should auction it off.)

The Old Farm, El Tractico, the East Anglian derby. The first time I’ve seen horse shit on the road here – on other matchdays, apparently the crowds are too mild-mannered to need policing on horseback. I hope someone entrepreneurial has scooped it up to sell to rose gardeners; it’s a good fertiliser but absolutely not suitable for houseplants.

The above commentary on the power of branding is sure to appear on the cover of a Business Studies textbook soon, and I’m blown away by how quickly it appeared when I typed “horse muck” into Apple Photos.

(Here’s what the sign looked like in 2008, nearly ten years earlier; imagine what it looks like now.)

I noticed the skin on my face looked more radiant, less dry, which must be the effect of drinking lots of water to stifle a cough, so that’s something.

Just a bit of work. Public transport data continues to reveal new layers of things to learn and unlearn, we continue to plumb new depths. ~

I made some QR code stickers a few weeks ago. Maybe I won’t, or maybe I will write something about the thought that went into that: of course I didn’t want to use a URL shortening service, but still I took care to the make the URLs a bit shorter by other means, which made the QR codes less dense and easier to read, for the small price of the extra complication of having a redirect. There, I’ve mostly covered it, there’s not a lot to it.

We tried the local small vendor of Instagrammable vast sandwiches – New York style, or should I say new yuck‽ No, I’m glad they were doing a roaring trade. The gimmick is the sandwiches are way over-filled, making them horribly difficult to eat – if Montagu’s practical original sandwich is like Issigonis’s original Mini, these are like the modern Mini Countryman – and of course I’d prefer it if they were sensible and used a more sensible amount of filling. But if they did that, there’d be less social media buzz and they’d be much less successful.

Hot cross buns 2024. They tasted a bit plain – not enough spices or salt, and the wrong kind of sugar – and as ever the crosses looked like Guy Fawkes had drawn them. But a nice texture, actually the best texture yet, and a nice conduit for marmalade, jam, things of that nature.

Here are the 2021 and 2022 HCBs – let’s say they’re from far enough in the past that I don’t feel ashamed. I searched for “bread” in Apple Photos and aren’t modern computers brilliant? AI, is that AI?

Coughing my tits off.

A long tiring bicycle ride, and it was actually a nice change to be physically tired, a different kind of tired to the tired I feel most of the bally time.

I keep washing my jacket and then going out and getting all mud up my back. Hopefully it’s clear from the splatter pattern that it’s not lavatorial, I just don’t have any mudguards. And now I’ve got some mudguards … inevitably, one of the nuts (🔩) for attaching them was missing, so finally I’ve been vindicated in not throwing away spare bits and bobs and having them cluttering up the place.

First puncture in a TPU inner tube. Pink and inflated, by heck they look like the sorts of anatomically unrealistic things you see hen parties holding aloft.

Took some old computer games to CeX, cos I don’t think charity shops are as good at appreciating the value of that kind of thing. I wonder why Enthusia Professional Racing, which I recall being pretty dull, has such a high resale value, but it’s a pleasant surprise.

(Took the old PlayStation itself there a while ago; it was satisfying scraping off the layer of, I guess, soot from it being in the same room as a wood-burning stove.)

Ailments: a cough – it started as just having to clear my throat a lot, which might have led to some amusing misunderstandings – and a minor burn between the elbow and armpit, improbably, from getting something out of the oven.

American Psycho. Maybe it’s that all American voices sound the same to my stupid ears, but Chris Bale’s voice really does sound like Steve Jobs’s voice (also a bit like Ron Swanson’s), so you can see why Bale almost played Jobs in that film about Jobs.

Stewart Lee (h).

The lower kitchen cupboards here have a sort of “false back”. I think it’s bad design – inefficient use of space – and not a deliberate feature. There’s a gap at the top through which you could drop things like cash and secret documents, but then you’d need an exceptionally long bendy arm to retrieve them. It means an enemy could seek revenge by secreting (which here means “concealing”, not “excreting”) prawns without the needlework associated with sewing them into the curtains, so I’d better not upset anyone who has access to the kitchen cupboards.

Wednesday morning, pottering, heard a helicopter overhead. Looked at the AirNav RadarBox app, which seems to filter out fewer aircraft than other apps do, and by jingo it was a royal helicopter that flown from Kensington Palace and was now disturbing my breakfast. According to local press, in the helicopter was Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester, who was visiting a local homelessness charity (to which I maintain a monthly direct debit, despite one of their vans once mounting a pavement and making me think I was getting run over, because I’m generous and not petty or vindictive). But hang on a minute, Prince Richard the Duke of Gloucester? It’s troubling that there’s a whole prince who’s been princing around all my life and I’ve never heard of him, like when you notice a building you’ve never noticed before.

Yard Act (h). (“Half Man Half Biscuit for thick people”, but actually not that at all.)

Some rap artists confusingly call Range Rovers Rovers, so I wondered if the Rover mentioned in Fixer Upper (which they didn’t play) was really a Range Rover too, but no apparently it’s a Rover 200. (Although these days, Range Rovers have replaced Rovers as the car of choice for certain kinds of people, e.g. the prime minister and Alan Partridge.)

In London (Westfield Stratford), not for the first time, I found myself rolling up a sleeve and bravely reaching into a public toilet bowl to unblock a blockage (and then of course washing my hands and arm so thoroughly that I might have looked like an actual germophobe). It was busy, and I’d entered the cubicle and seen the blockage and hesitated, and the longer I hesitated the more I couldn’t leave without it looking like I’d caused the blockage, so really I had no choice … but I’m also just a conscientious legend who’s great.

New washer-dryer machine. It’s got Bluetooth, as things simply have to these days, and makes a whining noise redolent of a supercharged engine. The old one was definitely repairable, but I wasn’t going to talk the landlord out of slightly wastefully buying a replacement that doesn’t vibrate alarmingly like the old one did. (By the way, fashion fans, the metal retaining band of a washing machine door seal could be worn as a slightly uncomfortable necklace.)

Sunday evening, walked from Tesco Express to Tesco Express in search of athelete’s foot cream. Only certain branches stock it, and it doesn’t correspond to the size of the shop, so it must be to do with the state of the feet who live near each one.

(When something’s out of stock, they put an apologetic label over the price label – sometimes indicating when the next delivery is due, but usually not, either way it’s stupid, something something the national obsession with apologising. But then they forget to remove the apology when they restock, so you’ve got to interfere with the shelf edge to reveal the price of yoghurt these days. Since this is the internet, I must be clear that this isn’t a complaint about the forgetfulness of the poor staff, it’s just about the policies laid down by the besuited creeps in Tesco HQ.)

Lucy Beaumont (h).

🎦 American Fiction. Good!

20-ish hours in North England for a thing. £7.95 for a pint, and why not.

There’s a direct, slow train, but in theory it’s quicker to take three different trains. So I tested the theory, and in practice the second train was delayed so I missed the third train, although the disembodied lady robot voice was going haywire and announced, many miles from Doncaster, that we were already approaching Doncaster – so I briefly, gullibly believed that the train driver’s fast driving meant I wouldn’t miss the third train after all, oh what a rollercoaster of emotions.

Some work, but it might be too boring to write about.

Looked at some products for treating athlete’s foot, obviously. The Amazon website has AI-generated summaries of customer reviews, and one of the summaries makes up the fact that one of the antifungal sprays is a deodorant, hmm.

(The main problem with all the products is that walking and gravity make the stuff drip off your feet and mess up the floor instead of adhering to the feet and treating the disgusting infection. Unless you walk on your hands, which comes with its own problems.)

(Last week) the bicycle was making noises, sounding more like a cheap acoustic coffee grinder than the proverbial well-oiled machine, and I was filled with dread at having to diagnose which bit of what needed lubricating. But, it turned out, I’d routed the chain so it was rubbing against a metal tab, which was easy to identify and fix, and looking forward to fixing it even made the riding with the noisy chain more tolerable. So that’s somehow interesting.

Accidentally dropped my AirPods case in a shallow puddle of olive oil, and now the case continues to sort of weep olive oil.

To the Diss Corn Hall again to see Mike Wozniak’s storytelling show, the sort of thing I’d hate the idea of if it involved someone worse than Woziak. Alas, my seat was so uncomfortable as to become a distraction. (Less of a long cold wait at the railway station this time, because I had the big coat and the trains are more frequent on weeknights.)

Echo & the Bunnymen. (Apparently the Doctor Who story Delta and the Bannermen was named in their honour, not the other way round.)

Garth Crooks/The Last Dinner Party update: GC is no longer mentioned on TLDP’s Wikipedia page. The discourse these days is is more preoccupied with whether the band’s members went to posh expensive schools.

I read fbb’s blog – he writes about public transport information and stuff – and with each new post I worry: what if this time he’s cast his critical eye on my work? Well, the time finally came, and maybe the old buffer is right about the technology tail wagging the information dog and all that.

(It’s a shame he doesn’t know how to do hyperlinks – they’re such a fundamental part of the web that one normally calls them “links” to save time. He’s an older fellow, but in a way he’s bang up to date with the modern “link in bio” culture of screenshotting. And he embeds YouTube videos by downloading and re-uploading them, unintentionally obscuring their authorship – again, incompetence rather than malice I’m sure.)

(Reminds me: last month there was a parliamentary debate that was sort of about my laziness/failure to do my job properly. The week before, I’d had some confused/confusing questions from a parliamentary intern; I’d’ve tried harder to write better answers if I’d known there was a chance they might end up in Hansard.)

A low-speed falling-off of the bike in the course of some industrial espionage. The main humblingly minor injury is a blistered middle finger tip, which impairs wiping and typing.

Sam Campbell (h), the talented weird little guy (days before his debut on the only-good-thing-on-TV WILTY). Last year, when I saw him do ten excellent minutes, I found his material about hotels with swimming pools hard to relate to, but then mere days later I stayed in a nobby hotel where, sure enough, there were wet people in the lift.

I googled the Twickets user I bought my ticket from, and turns out they (and their house) were once the subject of an episode of Grand Designs – how interesting.

📺 Criminal Record was good. (The Apple TV apps are surprisingly bad – the criminals of the world of piracy I used to watch Slow Horses somehow deliver a less frustrating user experience.)

The local app-based bicycle/scooter hire joint has designated parking bays, and they charge a £5 surcharge for parking anywhere else. Now they’ve done a new thing: if you hire a bike/scooter that someone’s left outwith a designated parking bay, and you return it to a designated parking bay, they add 10 “bonus minutes” to your balance. (So if you take less than 10 minutes riding to the nearest bay, you’re quids in.) It’s a good idea, and actually I think it was my idea, but I’m not bitter about not being credited or anything.

You can see where this is going: yes, I’ve been scouring the map for stray bikes and scooters, and pounding the P, like it’s (I imagine) a shit Pokemon Go. Alas, some of the vehicles on the map turned out to be in people’s houses or back yards – fair enough, they’d paid their five pounds – and I didn’t want to trespass, but still I’ve accumulated 22 free minutes which could come in handy the next time I’m late for an appointment or accidentally walk to Sprowston.

🎦 Argylle … crap, utter crap.

I like John Constable’s “I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, – light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.” It’s a lovely sentiment, but sometimes things make me doubt – like the BMW iX (Larry David’s character has one in the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm), and those hairless cats.

To Liverpool and back. I wasn’t on the LIV–NRW train that derailed – not quite “narrowly avoided”, but “broadly avoided” isn’t right either.

James Acaster (a). It’s profligate and selfish to go to see more than one date of a sold-out tour, but. There were things I didn’t remember from last time, and other things I’d forgotten.

The Go! Team (h), a more superlative live proposition than I’d expected.

Janine Harouni (h). She said “C-section” several times, and I wondered if that would annoy Caesar if he were around – is it Caesar erasure? At least he’s still got the salad – “C-salad” is too ambiguous (Cobb, chicken).

• 2024 is the centenary of Caesar salad. What are we all planning to celebrate?

  Is it arrogant to name a salad after oneself, or is it worse to take credit for a salad someone else invented? The restaurateur who the Caesar salad’s named after is broadly credited with inventing it too, but I don’t know if the name was his idea.

Apart from that, ugh. My problem with eating globe artichokes is it involves too much admin, so imagine what actual admin is like.