Week 80

Sunday 27 September 2020

To the countryside. I was going to cycle there, but found one of the new bicycle pedals hanging off – not a slight on Zonkie’s excellent craftsmanship, but rather the old crankset had somehow perished – perhaps I’d not adequately cleaned out and greased up the thread. Bit odd that the problem appeared to appear suddenly overnight – why didn’t I notice it on my previous ride? – but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

So I went on the bus instead. Good to see the poster about face coverings had been moved from knee to head height.
It was lovely and sunny and good to splash around some saltmarshes and places like that. I almost tripped over a seal pup, who was a bit distressed but managed to wriggle some distance towards the sea.
Then it was cold and rainy and windy. Sometimes the rain was horizontal. Isn’t it remarkable how there are different types of weather, sometimes within the same week.

After the worst of the wind, I noticed a lot of UK Power Networks vehicles outside the Holiday Inn. I suppose engineers from less windy areas were drafted in to help mend all the overhead power lines, and they overnighted (overnought?) there. How interesting.
Of course I made a partrimage, a partrimilgrimage to see the Alan Partridge statue. The genius of the “AHA!” inscription on the plinth is that it’s still readable in reverse (i.e. when captured by a selfie camera).
I am this week’s Coach & Bus Week magazine, which is nice. (Don’t tell anyone, but I slightly prefer Buses magazine, but only slightly.) There’s a bit in it where I said “use case”, but they’ve changed it to “user case”, which is really my fault because it turns out that “use case” is a bit of jargon – what have I become? – and I ought to have just said “use” (as in “hundreds of uses”).

Week 79

Monday 21 September 2020

Some work. I let a so-called “SSL certificate” expire, which is embarrassing. (It can ∴ ought to/should be automated.) I was outdoors when I noticed that something was wrong, and on the iPhone it manifested itself as a mysterious networking error that I convinced myself wasn’t my fault. (I see the Android error message is more detailed, as well as alarming.)
I don’t have many thoughts about iOS 14, because come on. As some kind of plutocrat, I am pleased that the experience of using AirPods and switching between devices is much improved.

The wristwatch can now remind you to wash your hands when you get home, which I can verify works. And it can also, allegedly, detect when you’re washing your hands and start a timer, which, despite campily exaggerating the way I washed my hands, I couldn’t make work. I even tried telling Siri “hello I am washing my hands” and “start a handwashing timer”, but it was all “u wot m8”. Then I was washing some dishes and lo, a timer started. (I suppose the folks who design these things all use dishwasing machines.)
This is my space to record that I had some heavily discounted goat curry and it was OK and I don’t mind that some stuck in my teeth. I’m sure there was also some food that hadn’t been ordered, which is always nice – who knows if it’s normal, and/or the product of disorganisation or the milk of human kindness.
I’ve been listening to Adam and Joe’s old XFM programmes, thanks to the lovely power of RSS feeds which aren’t dead. 2003–2006 really was a different time, as evinced by a few things (e.g. something a bit ignorant about the Wachowskis) I noticed because I’m not a monster, but I also understand that it was, as I said, a different time.
I commend to you David Tennant’s chilling performance as … Denis Norden? Harry Nilsson? Creepy.
Bicycle pedal update. I removed the old busted bicycle pedals, which took lots of straining until suddenly it became very easy, and put the new ones on. Cool story.

One of the things about bicycle pedals is that, to stop it unscrewing during pedalling, the thread goes “the wrong way” on one the pedals. To be precise, the left pedal. If you give it no thought, you might nod along happily with why it’s the left pedal; if you give it a bit of thought, you might start to have questions because based on the way the pedals rotate during pedalling. Sheldon Brown, the best Sheldon, has a good enough explanation that I will remember. (It’s because of “precession”, an effect that can be demonstrated with a pencil and a pair of hands.)

Week 78

Monday 14 September 2020

I keep gashing my leg on some sharp bits of the bad communal bicycle rack here. Thought about complaining to the residents’ association. I suppose I’d have to maim myself badly to have a personal injury case.

Then I decided to effect change in a more positive way, by taping bubble wrap to some of the sharp corners. There’s too many corners and not enough bubble wrap to eradicate the danger completely, but seeing the bubble wrap there is enough to remind me to take care, and the wounds are healing. So that’s something achieved.
Cycled to some places. In addition to all the usual eggs and jam, spotted a roadside mask stall, quite near a railway station actually, which is entrepreneurial.
Some work.

Someone complained that the website had become slow, which is a form of nerd sniping, because I care very much about it, and although I’d normally agree that it’s not fast enough, I’d recently made various server-side things faster actually, and it’s certainly not like a state-of-the-art modern monstrosity with lots of JavaScript, and “so slow that you write an email of complaint” is very slow indeed. Who knows if their mobile phone or their internet connection are significant factors, or exactly what is being slow?
A plastic bicycle pedal is starting to fall apart, and it’s actually started to wear a hole in the sole of my shoe (which might say more about the quality of the Allbirds Tree Runners). I’ve wound up ordering some “Zonkie” branded pedals, clearly weird and off-brand and maybe I’d hesitate before buying something like a chain from them, but isn’t Zonkie an excellent name (like a weirdly spelled zebroid), and who wouldn’t want some pedals with ZONKIE written on them?

Good morrow.

Week 77

Sunday 6 September 2020

Cycled past a house with (what I’ve just learnt is called) a “flexi tub” full of cooking apples outside. I didn’t have a pannier with me – had only gone out to put some recycling out, next thing I knew I was miles away on a bicycle – but I had the bag for life the recycling had been in, which I filled with cooking apples and tied to the bike.

Closer to home, disaster struck – the bag for life split, apples all spilled out, a couple got sliced up by the spokes of the back wheel – it could have been a spectacular disaster if it it hadn’t happened at such a low speed, which I suppose is just as well. I still managed to convey most of the apples home, and they baked very nicely.
There have been happenings in the car park here, folks in “test and trace” branded gilets setting up awnings and trestle tables and directing traffic. Hmm.
Had another look for some Toblerone ice cream. There was still no Toblerone ice cream. Then, in a burst of spontaneity, went on a bus to a seaside resort – which I wouldn’t’ve been able to do if there had been some Toblerone ice cream, cos if it would surely have melted in my bag, so that’s good.

The seaside was OK, warm and grey. Plenty of unattractive people walking about outside (as opposed to inside shops). The beach was deserted. Perhaps I’ll go to to some other seaside resorts next week.
Had … a Nando? No, Nando is the creator (of the famous South African Portuguese restaurant chain, and the restaurant nearest to my front door), so suppose I had their monster, and it was merely OK. Nothing I couldn’t have cooked myself. Got the hiccups.
Went to a Paul Foot (the mulleted comedian, not the dead journalist) Zoom show, which was at least worth the price of admission.
Cycled towards some roadworks (it was the evening, so no work was happening), where I was about to dismount to obey the one-way system enforced to accommodate the roadworks. A motorcycle roared past me, ridden by a self-employed delivery person. A worker dressed in PPE leapt from a van, where apparently he’d been guarding the roadworks – so that accounts for some of the high (according to local newspaper comments) cost of the roadworks – and shouted patronisingly at the rider for roaring across a cycle path – you can’t do that, mate – and normally I’d be on the side of the what some would call “jobsworth”, but here there were no pedestrians about and I felt sorry for the gig economy dude who was merely going to park outside a restaurant. But I was too spineless to shout back in their defence. Cool story.

Week 76

Monday 31 August 2020

Some larvae took up residence in and around the bin, which was rude of them. I think I have seen the last of them now.
Just days ago, I’d not come across the phrase “coupe bowl”, but now here I am the proud owner of a whole number of coupe bowls. I suppose they are named coupe bowls because they’re low-slung and sporty like a coupé, or maybe after the former Sainsbury’s boss and margarine brand manager Mike Coupe.

I’ve been eating from some cracked Ikea bowls for a while, and that’s unsanitary, so it seemed time to replace them with some similar but uncracked ones. I swung by John Lewis – pfft, but I was intrigued to learn the phrase “coupe bowl” for the first time. Then tried Sainsbury’s, and lo, they had bowls just like the cracked Ikea bowls (apart from the cracks), and at a discounted price, and also described thrillingly as coupe bowls. (So it turns out that I’ve known coupe bowls all this time, although the nasty retailer doesn’t use that insufficiently Swedish phrase.) And I conveyed them home on the bicycle without breaking anything.

Cool story. I also bought what’s described as a “pasta bowl”, and it’s reminded me how eating from such a large, flat bowl really heightens the experience of eating pasta compared to eating from a plate. Cool story.
Proving again the power of influencer marketing, I bought some new masks. And that was a great decision – it turns out that masks made by professional seamsters are better than the ones I made by cutting up a threadbare tee shirt and roughly sewing with a needle and thread.
Some work, in fact rather alarmingly a lot. Maybe I should write about it. One thing I did, which wankier typists would call an “architectural change”, made the line on a CPU graph plummet wonderfully, and I was really pleased. (I’d previously dismissed it as premature optimisation, and to be fair it was at the time – it’s amazing how long my terribly inefficient batshit sufficed for.)

That, and other grand things fixed, but still plagued by some problems I don’t understand. But what a thrill to think that maybe in weeks to come I’ll understand them.
Anything else? I was starting to become jetlagged again – despite having not touched a jet, of course – but I think setting an alarm on a Sunday morning has snapped me out of it as I feel appropriately tired, so it’s good to know that works.

Week 75

Monday 24 August 2020

Some cycling. For once, I had some coins with me, so from various kerbside stalls could buy some jam, some eggs (although that stall had a card terminal – the way of the future), and some free cooking apples. Now the cooking apples are slowly rotting as I dilly-dally about buying an apple corer, in a thrilling race against time.

Pausing on a railway bridge, I glanced at Real Time Trains, which is a thing to do. On this occasion, I saw that some interesting train was about to appear, and sure enough minutes later a yellow Network Rail infrastructure monitoring train roared underneath me – not the actual Flying Banana, maybe the flying plantain.

Trains! From my bedroom, and other rooms, especially when the window’s open, which it simply has to be sometimes, I can hear trains rattling over a distant bridge, sometimes their horns cheerfully honking. I don’t have a problem with that, but I’d have even less of a problem if I could see the trains, which I can’t without a system of mirrors or a drone or a canoe. If only there were some way of seeing them on the internet.
Some work. One thing I’m trying to do is discourage enthusiastic fellows from contributing information about bus vehicles’ previous owners and stuff, because there are specialist websites for that sort of thing, and each bit of information takes up some of my time because one has to check for spam and porn because it’s the internet, and anyway who cares? But how to discourage it now the genie’s out of the bottle, without pissing over all the enthusiastic fellows’ contributions so far?
Spent some time peering at different shops’ freezers, looking for Toblerone ice cream. Didn’t find any Toblerone ice cream. As I said, I don’t like Toblerone ice cream any more than the normal amount, but I’ll be disappointed if it’s been discontinued. Perhaps supply has been affected by the rona – in which case, fair enough, people not dying in ice cream factories is more important than ice cream itself – or demand has been affected by warm weather.
Semi-Detached is less shit than one would expect. Well, the pilot is half an uproarious hour, but maybe don’t bother with the series after that.

Week 74

Monday 17 August 2020

I don’t know if you’ve noticed how the amount of shit gets more and more with every day. But think how we’ll be looking back at now with nostalgia in a few months!
In a fit of pique, I discarded the sourdough starter and made a wonderful boring loaf in a tin using some instant dried yeast I’d had all this time, bought casually back when it was supposed to be difficult to buy yeast. It was a delight, a great bulging thing, just the right size and shape to fit in the toaster, and untainted by lactic acid.

Now, maybe discarding the levain was a bit silly, not because there’s any value in it being old – it’s a Trigger’s broom (ship of Theseus) situation – but because it’s a waste of a bit of flour and water. Oh well.
Some work. Fixed some embarrassing errors. Ugh.
Went to some not very faraway places and saw some things. Got rained on, which is at least different to sweating.

In conclusion, another week in the history of weeks.

Week 73

Monday 10 August 2020

It’s been warm out.
Didn’t “staycation” (and the more obscure “holistay”) use to mean a holiday (vacation) spent at home? But people are using it to describe any kind of domestic tourism, like staying in a holiday cottage. Why don’t we go the whole hog and use “staycation” for any holiday that involves staying anywhere?

My previous employer is among the most enthusiastic offenders – I could pretend I left that job in protest about it, but it would be pretence. The only thing worse than this erosion of the meaning of “staycation” is people complaining about it.
I quite like Toblerone ice cream, which is a kind of ice cream bar on a wooden stick. (Don’t call it an ice lolly or you’ll upset people.) Alas, it’s hard to find in shops – this week, I went to two branches of Iceland, who’ve stocked it in the past, and none was to be found.

I searched Twitter, wondering if other people were having the same trouble, and just found folks who’d bought the ice cream but were disappointed by it. Someone griped that it’s nothing like Toblerone – one of my favourite things about it, as I don’t much like Toblerone – and another that the inefficient triangular shape represents poor value for money.

To be honest, I don’t like Toblerone ice cream that much, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But it’s encouraged me to have another go at making Supermarket Market work.
Let me be clear: I can’t abide motor cars. But I enjoyed watching some of the many videos released this week where Gordon Murray talks about his ludicrous new T.50 supercar. You could watch him talk all day – in fact, really, because there’s a lot of videos and they go on a bit. Some of the quirky things about Murray are his shirts, his saying “motor car”, and his saying “funky”.
A sore bum has cast a shadow over most of the week, as sore bums are wont to do. I expect there are worse things, somewhere, than a sore bum, but I can’t imagine what they’re like. Well, it’s barely sore at all now, so that’s good.
I have no respect for the pathetic nerds who post their week noteses before the week has finished. I spent the last minutes of the week in a thrilling race against time to maintain my Duolingo streak.

Week 72

Monday 3 August 2020

What happened this week?

Some cycling, which, apart from being nice, was horrible when I was being assaulted by the wind blowing sand and pollen at my face. And now I have a sore bum, to which the solution is… to stop sitting down? I have applied a salve.
Can’t believe I never mentioned the number on the front door. Shortly after arriving here, I took a damp cloth to the frontage in an attempt to wipe off an icky residue – looked a bit like battery acid, but was probably glue a tradesperson had used to stick the numbers on with – and whoosh, off fell one of the digits. I stuck it back on with Blu Tac.

Cool story. But I should just be thankful that none of the digits look like any other digits when upside down, so, should the Blu Tac’s adhesion give out, I’m no more likely be accidentally raided by armed police like in Line of Duty because an upside down 6 looks like a 9.
Because this icky warm leatherette sofa is icky, back when I could sit down comfortably, I bought a fancy and difficult to clean throw. It’s big enough, if not big enough to completely cover the whole sofa, but one of the things about throws is that they move about and bunch up when sat on.

Searching for advice about keeping throws from bunching up, I found a thread on Mumsnet, the internet site famous these days for worse things than asking politicians their favourite biscuit and a fierce rivalry with the entirely separate site Netmums. I wondered if it was possible for even soft furnishing tips to be transphobic, but I didn’t want to find out.

Week 71

Monday 27 July 2020

One more bus, to return me to the point I’d started at last week. This one had a squirty hanitiser dispenser near the entrance (although I only noticed it once I’d sat down), and a badly designed A4 poster about masks at knee height (like it was aimed solely at toddlers or something).
Saw some more of some relations. They’d come all the way from a different country, which feels bizarre, but apparently you can go on a thing called a boat, these days, and float across the English channel.
Like some kind of Paul Rudd (the irritating famous dude with a famous fear of condiments), I declined the offer of some condiments on a vegan sausage sandwich – a poor decision.

I think mustard is the ur–sausage sandwich condiment, but Danny Baker’s sausage sandwich game (“red sauce, brown sauce, or no sauce at all?”) suggests it isn’t one of the two main ones.
Hooray (hurray?) for the return of the Late Night Alternative.
Renamed some main Git branches from “master” to “main” because it’s just a better name – it’s less letters and less syllables and greater descriptive.
After some weeks of parsimony, an unusually cheap rabbit bhuna to end the week, thanks to an Uber Eats discount code. Collected it myself from the sash window of the restaurant, and it kept its temperature, double- or triple-bagged in a paper bag in a plastic bag in the bicycle pannier. I hope that somehow Travis Kalanick pays for the discount, and not the salt-of-the-earth local restaurant staff.

The service design of Uber Eats is bad.