Went to Great Yarmouth, partly to buy a Nite Ize Wraptor which is a thing for attaching a mobile phone to bicycle handlebars. Millets sell one for less money than Amazon.

Well, turns out there’s no longer a Millets in Great Yarmouth. (There’s a Specsavers where I expected it to be.) But there is still a Millets in Lowestoft (where I’d just been) so I went back to Lowestoft where I learned that, of course, a small Millets shop doesn’t necessarily stock all the items advertised on the Millets website. Almost enough to make you want to go mad with a mallet, but instead I just ordered it on Amazon. Never mind, you can’t put a price on the otherwise jolly times I had in Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

Anyway, the Nite Ize Wraptor is good. I had previously used a Quad Lock mount, but I didn’t enjoy keeping the sleek and beautiful phone in the ugly Quad Lock case, and then a bit of the mount snapped off. The Wraptor feels less sturdy, and it’s harder to quickly remove the phone from the handlebars to photograph an escaped pig running past (for example), but that’s OK.

Another long bus journey around some different coastline. At one point, our route was blocked by some parked cars, and after twenty minutes at a standstill and making some phone calls the driver decided to reverse back up the road, and a passenger in the wheelchair, who fortunately had a yellow reflective gilet with him, leapt up to act as a sort of banksman. (Yes there are some maladies that mean you need the use of a wheelchair for longer periods but can still walk about a bit and direct traffic.) He later regained the use of his legs again to close some windows, which I thought a bit disagreeable because I’d rather zip up my coat than catch a virus, but never mind.

Most excitingly, for the first time I’m sure I glimpsed a page of bustimes.org on a fellow passenger’s phone screen. Unlike the The Man in Seat Sixty-One or Martin Lewis, I don’t have a picture of me in the masthead so it wasn’t really like being a celebrity seeing someone reading one’s own memoirs or something.

The toilet cistern, which is a bit leaky as they often are, suddenly went really leaky so I went to fix it. Watched some YouTube videos, which weren’t much help but gave me the confidence to unscrew the push button and remove the cistern lid (damaging the paintwork where some wally had adhered it to the wall with putty) and fiddle about. The floaty thing that’s supposed to float wasn’t floating properly, but now it I’ve fixed it and it’s great, although I’m not yet confident enough to move the screwdriver back out of the bathroom to the place where it’s normally kept.

More forgotten things from previous weeks:

• Some unusual motor cars were parked outside the cinema to promote the new Jimmy Bond film, which I haven’t seen but would probably enjoy. There was a lorry nearby with an Aston Martin branded trailer, by which some of the cars must have been delivered, which beats than driving them all individually. Maybe the lorry driver could have been redeployed to deliver more important things, but I suppose it would be somehow bad for the economy if there weren’t cars parked outside the cinema to somehow encourage more people to watch a charismatic philandering alcoholic facing various peril.

Down by the river I spotted the travel expert Simon Calder standing there with his laptop balanced on a bin. It’s not obvious that you can balance anything on one of those bins, but this was a double-width one with separate chambers for recyclables and general waste and therefore a bigger flatter surface. I think Calder travels around all the time with minimal luggage and working from wherever he lays his computer, which is inspirational, and what’s stopping me doing more of the same kind of thing?

Finally sought medical attention about my sore ear, after dillying and dallying because each time I thought I must seek medical attention I would then change my mind when the ear stopped being sore for a bit. I sought, and I found, and was prescribed my first prescription since I was was a tiny child, and somehow I knew what to do (take a piece of paper to a pharmacy and exchange it and some money for a tiny bottle) and by jingo the marvellous modern medicine works, which is a great relief and my thanks to everyone involved.

To London.

• Went there on an National Express coach. I have some complaints about the booking process, and the ticket which is a cluttered A4 PDF which led me to discover my little inkjet printer is starting to pine for the fjords, which wasn’t a problem because pinching to zoom and having the driver squint at one’s phone screen is OK, but how much nicer would be a proper “mobile ticket” like you get on trains. (Now I discover there’s an app, which allegedly supports adding a ticket to Apple Wallet. So I’ll use that next time.)

• Attended a recording of the tolerable Radio 4 parlour game, The Unbelievable Truth. What fun to see how the radio sausage is made, in a theatre full of Radio 4 listeners and/or enthusiasts of free entertainment. Would attend again.

• Bought a reduced-for-quick-sale packaged sandwich which happened to be gluten-free, and what a horrible sandwich it was, such bread. I’ll never take gluten for granted again.

I can’t think of much else of interest from this week, so what about things from months ago I forgot to mention on here at the time.

For example. Watched an old (not that old) documentary about Nigel, owner of the number plate N2 GEL, and his nemesis Nigel, owner of the number plate N1 GEL. What silly men, I thought, and completely different to my thoughts about about whoever owns jo.sh from Saint Helena, and josh.ua from Ukraine, and another domain name earmarked for some project or other that I foolishly let expire this year.

Flu jabbed.

Spent some time callousing my hands improving the condition of the bicycle. I was removing rust from things – a mixture of laying in vinegar and rubbing with damp kitchen foil depending on the mood – when it occurred to me that shinier things are probably more attractive to thieves, so I stopped. Then after much fighting with some dropout screws to stop a tyre rubbing against the frame, took it to the local bike shop for a glow-up – I might have waited until the actual winter, when mechanics should be less busy, but at least it’s no longer the height of summer, and there’s a few days of rain ahead.

Listened to a recording of Russell Brand’s penultimate Radio 2 programme, ahead of incredibly the thirteenth anniversary of all that. (Thanks Fourble.) It is like listening to two idiots dancing towards a canyon. Some things I found mildly interesting:

• The reason they telephoned Andrew Sachs was to interview him about The Bill Made Me Famous, a documentary about the police drama which I have never seen, and which Andrew Sachs is not famous for appearing in so that’s a bit strange.

• At one point in the show it is revealed that Steve Wright, the Radio 2 DJ whose work I’ve never heard, does his own dentistry.

Anyway, after that of course Brand and Jonathan Ross never worked again which was a shame.

My foot/ankle started hurting a bit again. Hard to pinpoint exactly where it hurts because everything is connected – I think the ankle hurting made me walk differently, which put unusual strain on a bit of the foot, which made that hurt instead, and so on. But I’m grateful that it’s not that bad after a few days of rest, and I had enjoyed several months of it all feeling perfectly normal.

Got a little ear infection, which I thought mainly affected children and animals but I don’t think I’m either. It was really quite uncomfortable for a while. Woe unto me.

🪒 Dropped the metal handle of my Merkur safety razor down the sink plughole. How to fish it back out? I don’t know anyone with implausibly long thin fingers, but what about magnets? I used my iPad Smart Cover to confirm that at least the razor head was a bit magnetic, and then I dangled my Apple Watch charging cable down the drain … nothing. OK, maybe something, but too weak a magnetic attraction to lift the handle out.

Eventually I’ll find a pair of chopsticks, which I’m sure will work, but until then there’s the electric razor, which is fine – less efficient at removing hair, but better at not cutting my face.

The bicycle thief thieved some more. Perhaps I ought to have warned all the neighbours to lock their bikes more securely – wouldn’t that would have been thoughtful of me? But it really didn’t occur to me, and maybe the additional crimes will make the police more interested.

🚍 The automatic vehicle location bit of the Bus Open Data Service hasn’t been working as wonderfully as one would like, and I have every sympathy with the folks involved, computers are hard, but it’s a bit frustrating how long things take to fix at professional places with all their proper processes. Anyway, I could make a remark like “bus back better my arse”, but that would be unfair.

🥯 Made some bagels. It will be recalled that I first made some some months ago; this time, I remembered to adequately butter a flat surface to prevent sticking, but it was no good cos I’d made the dough too wet as if I was making normal bread. So I made yet some more, and this third attempt was actually quite good. Maybe the fourth time I’ll make the effort to make them all the same size, and use some malt syrup for an optimally attractive taste and appearance.

Curb Your Enthusiasm reappeared on Sky Go a few weeks ago, so I resumed watching and have reached the most recent series, of which I’d previously seen some clips and been startled by how older everyone looked, but when you watch the thing in order you don’t notice (despite some long gaps between series). By carelessly reading things on the internet I’ve been spoiled by some spoilers, but it’s not the sort of thing where that matters like the police-on-a-submarine boring crap.

Had my bicycle thieved. Gah! I suppose it’s the curse of the good form of transport – they wouldn’t steal a car because cars are shit etc. – but also the storage here is bad, and the electrically powered gate has been stuck open for some weeks. The thief had their pick of several insecurely locked bikes, but chose mine because maybe it looked cool and had a quick-release bolt on the front wheel. (They left the front wheel, presumably cannibalising someone else’s.) Peculiarly, it took me a few days to notice – a few days of walking everywhere instead, because I felt like it.

Luckily, I’d attached an Apple AirTag. It’s not ideal – the main problem is that, as a responsible anti-stalking measure, it makes a noise after 8–24 hours away from its owner’s phone, meaning a bonging sound reverberating around the out-of-Bluetooth-range bin/bike/car park. But this hadn’t yet driven me to detach the AirTag, so I could look at the Find My app and see the last reported location was up a nearby hill. Unfortunately, time had now passed, it wasn’t up the hill any more, and I guess the ruddy perp had defanged the AirTag with the smash of a hammer or by wrapping it in Bacofoil.

Well, now I have a crime reference number, but I think the police are quite rightly busy catching murderers and possibly people who walk past building sites. I trust the updated crime statistics will be reflected in the cost of the rent. And I bought a new (much older and cheaper) bicycle from off of a bloke on the internet site “Gumtree”, which will benefit from some fettling (which I’m capable of) and will be a source of joy, so I’m almost grateful to the slags what done this (but I hope they catch them).

Some work. A database query went all slow, which feels familiar, aren’t computers strange? I reckon I could’ve rewritten it to be quicker – recently I’ve noticed that EXISTSes are often faster than JOINs, which might have helped here – but instead I moved a bit more data into Redis and now it’s so astonishingly efficient that I wonder how it ever worked before. And I’ve saved me tens of dollars of monthly infrastructure costs.

Gruber mentioned the Peter principle (“every employee tends to rise to [their] level of incompetence”), which led me to to watch the late 90s sitcom The Peter Principle in which Jim Broadbent plays an incompetent bank manager named Peter. I don’t think it’s widely fondly remembered – and quite right too, as it’s unfunny and problematic in parts – but watching the whole thing (apart from the pilot which I’ve just noticed) was a fine way to spend some time.

Among other things, at one point there’s a “works on contingency[?] no[,] money down” style bit which, actually, it would be unfair and knee-jerky to say was stolen from The Simpsons cos they didn’t invent it.

Went on a rail replacement bus service, and a local bus service, to Lincolnshire, which was nice. “Market Deeping” is a nice place name.

Had some Emmental – not for the first time, but this time it struck me that it was not that nice, certainly not nice enough to justify the let’s say cruelty of dairy farming – so this is to remind me not to have Emmental again.

🚄 Train back from Edinburgh. I found myself thinking what an almost shame it was that trains were so punctual these days and there was so seldom the opportunity to do a “delay repay” claim. Then there were some overhead line problems! But I’d forgotten that the longer-distance operating companies pay nothing for a delay of less than half an hour, so never mind.

🚍 Say, did you have a good LateSummerBankHolidayNotScotland?

The week before English schools “go back” is busy – it needn’t be that busy for me, as I sit and let the website update itself, but I try to do my bit as if to justify the extra money resulting from extra website traffic. And the state of open bus timetable data still isn’t good enough – it’s better than it was last year, and it’ll get better still, but ugh. Especially “First West of England”, who I’m unfairly singling out but I’d quite like to jettison from the database. And aren’t Bath and Bristol all posh and smug, all because they invented baths and the Bristol stool chart?

As well as everything else I made big progress with gtfs.bustimes.org, which is a semi-pointless sort of self-pastiche.

I walked innocently past a construction site, and an alarm blared and a Northern Irish voice said my presence had been detected and something something police. I returned a few days later and approached with a camera ready to record, but it would not be goaded; never mind, here’s a news story about a cockapoo walker furious with the same model of intruder detection system barking the same pre-recorded message which you can hear if you can click through to the video. I wasn’t so much furious as amused; it’s a bit like the alleged anti-theft measures of electric scooters.

The shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers (and consequently some food and drink), eh? I went to buy some tomato juice, but the shelf of cartons of the cheap salty from-concentrate kind was bare. So I sighed and got a more expensive bottle, which I don’t think is as tasty. But it turns out that I was wrong, and the tory “spiced” juice is excellent after all.

Google Maps is imperfect, so sometimes drivers of light goods vehicles (ven) ask me where somewhere is and I get to tell them, which is satisfying, but it would be better if it were better. Anyway, I’m more fond of OpenStreetMap, which a concerned user has the power to change. (I know one can suggest edits to Google Maps too, but pfft.)

There are some new buildings around here, which I’ve added to OpenStreetMap, and I’ve marked the non-obvious entrance of this building, and there are some new roads I want to add (but it’s a bit difficult). All of which are even more satisfying, and might make those delivery drivers’ jobs a tad easier, although I suspect their robot GPS bosses mostly don’t use OSM.

Went to Edinburgh. Excellent.

I was going to bring my bicycle, but there are disconcerting stories about the hassle of booking a bike onto the train, and the handlebars banging into the emergency 🛑 button. And anyway, I had a flat tyre – an inner tube seemingly full of water, or was it some kind of special glue intended to automatically seal any puncture?

So I hired one of them Brompton folding bicycles from Peterborough station. I’ve tried before – they text you some digits to enter into a keypad, and I’d never got past the stage of the keypad beeping to say “you did it wrong you stupid human”. But this time I tried again and again, and by the time I was almost late for the train a little door unlocked for me to lift out an entire bicycle contorted to the size of a small suitcase.

Apart from anything else, it meant I had something to sit on in the vestibule for the first few hours of the journey until a proper seat became free. And it’s quite a fun bicycle – you can’t help but smile and laugh when you see a grown adult pedalling furiously on a silly little-wheeled contraption, and it’s nice to spread smiles and laughter.

Went to Luton, which is the sort of thing I like.

You know the magnetic swipe cards that modern hotels have instead of room keys? You’re supposed to keep them away from mobile phones, lest the electromagnetic radiation affect the magnetic stripe, which is bollocks, but still they invariably stop working after precisely the second night. I only had one night in Luton, but getting into the hotel room was a challenge, even after the excellent staff replaced my card twice – I think something was (and remains) wrong with the lock. Woe is me.

And the combined bath/shower was a bit poor (water kept trickling out of the taps, no matter how hard I yanked the knob to engage shower mode), and the air conditioning wouldn’t be silenced, and I took against the ergonomics of the stylish plastic chair and the TV remote control. And the breakfast was strange – while perusing the buffet, I was presented with a big plate of egg and bacon and sausage, which was fine but a bit presumptuous (how could they tell I would eat those things?). (And I usually enjoy a badly scrambled egg, but there was something quite wrong about this one.)

“I’m never staying at an Ibis again,” I found myself thinking, which is possibly a seven-word short story or a reusable New Yorker Caption Contest cartoon caption. But actually I’m curious to see how other Ibides compare – I’m sure I’ve been to a better one before, and what about the “Ibis Budget”?

I’m not Christine Teigen’s mother (who’s she?), but I’ve owned more than one pair of AirPods. I console myself that they’ve been out for a few years now, and I would probably have broken more wired earphones in that time, but it’s an icky situation, and one can’t simply throw them in the bin because batteries etc. Well, at last I went and took the busted AirPods to CeX, which is less remunerative than eBay might be but also less hassle. Cool story.

I’ve been making something using the “Street Manager” open data about roadworks in England. There are synergistic synergies with other things I’ve made, and haven’t we all stories of passenging on a motorbus (or another combination of gerund and wheeled noun) only to discover that the gas/water/electricity/telephone wallahs have duggen a big hole without telling anyone?

There’s already a website that used to be called “roadworks.org”, now just part of a whole “suite of operational tools” made by a whole compamy of beshirted smiling people. I look at it sometimes, it’s useful, but is there’s some point in making yet another thing that’s a bit like that existing thing?

Apart from anything else, I’ve been using OpenLayers for the first time, about which I have some complaints, but this isn’t the place.

For some while, I’ve been suspending avodo pits in water, and at last one (an unusally big one) has sprouted roots and a stem so into some compost it’s gone, which I’ve just realised is possibly too early so back into the water it will go.

A dog and a person spent a night in the living room here. Some other things happened but I’m tired.