Week 220: rocket

Monday 5 June 2023

Wrote my first bit of TypeScript, they say it’s the way of the future. The type checker is a pedantic prick.
At last BlackBerry (2023) (dir. Matt Johnson) has reached North American streaming services, so us foreigners can watch a version that hasn’t been recorded on a potato smuggled into a cinema.

Alas, the film doesn’t show anyone getting terribly drunk on an aeroplane and chewing through some handcuffs, and turns out that incident only involved two lowly managers anyway (of course, the actual co-CEOs wouldn’t be seen dead on a scheduled flight).

It’s funny how in the early 2010s the BlackBerry was really popular among sixth formers in Norfolk. Yes really. (Sure grandma lets’s get you to bed.) Next I suppose we’ll see all the kids on TikTok all using Bloomberg terminals.
Btw I think the Apple computer-spectacles will be shit and Tim Apple has lost the plot. They should go back to making printers again.
To the Regent’s Park open air theatre for Tim Key’s Mulberry. An email from the venue promised

scenes which some may find upsetting involving racism and racial trauma, colourism, death by suicide and sexual abuse. The production contains a loud gunshot that is heard in the first ten minutes of the performance.

But these were spoilers for something else (a play) that’s on at the theatre at the moment. Key’s show was just Key, a door, a fridge full of Neck Oil, and a statue of a cat. A nice evening, but no gunshots fired.
Went to one of those panopticon Amazon Fresh shops they have now. Meal dealt – the southern fried chicken wrap was rubbish, but the Amazon Fresh branded paper bag (free!) will be good for putting recycling in. It took 20 minutes for the receipt to come through, which made me think a person had to check the footage of me shopping, maybe it’s not as automated as all that.

Outside there was a lady eating a fistfuls of rocket (Sainsbury’s wild) from a bag (60g) and some kind of pasty (hot food counter). Then I went to a nearby Wetherspoon for a poo and a pint and there she was again, somehow drunker and crazier than I’d ascertained from the rocket eating. Cool story eh.

Later, an anomalous flow of passengers, don’t know how to describe them other than the sort of people you’d see at a Beyoncé concert, yes I quickly remembered that she was in town. They looked fabulous – the Tim Key lot were were fine, but these were like a different species. Good time for the glitter industry.
CNPS: 31. Saw 27–30 on one bike ride, amazing, the sort of thing that makes people believe they’re living in a simulation etc. But I think it will be a while before I see a 32.

Week 219: no one wants to be the 27th Nigel

Sunday 28 May 2023

Some work. Working towards supporting dark mode. The summer solstice would be an apropos time to launch that. I’m impatient and like to release early and often, which isn’t really compatible with bigger grander changes. And I could make the existing maps support this dark mode, but I want to replace those maps with something better which would make that a waste of time. Instead of choosing either option I just sit around dithering.
🎦 Liked three quarters of Beau Is Afraid, which is enough. Larry David’s cousin appears at the end, that was a nice surprise.
A highlight of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is when Margaret’s father one-handedly folds up a sun lounger, such a quick and smooth action, I nearly swooned.
Oh you’re raising money for a donkey sanctuary? No thanks, a donkey killed my _. Etc.
Might have walked past Martin Roberts off of Homes Under the Hammer. Not sure it was really him, his beard looked too neat and what would he have been doing beside the St Crispins flyover? Amazing story.
Unseriously started consecutive number plate spotting last week. I’m up to 26. Beyond 23 you’re reliant on the vain show-offs with personalised plates, and they are many, but they tend to favour the lower numbers. Remember how much the N2 GEL Nigel covets his superior Nigel’s N1 GEL, and times it by a lot to get how much no one wants to be the 27th Nigel. But I’ll get my 27. I do have special access to a database that can tell me there are two 27s in Lincoln and another in Stoke-on-Trent etc, but if I go to Lincoln just for a silly game people will think I’m having some kind of breakdown.
After blowing my nose on a bag for life too many times, got some Piritase (other allergy relief tablets are available). And they seem to work, so that’s nice.

Stay hydrated x

Week 218: Bristol

Monday 22 May 2023

You know some sickos vandalise Wikipedia and get a kick out of their made-up falsehoods being out there, maybe even tricking hurried journalists into copying them. But it’s even better to add well-sourced, true facts and later read similarly-worded things in the newspaper etc, and convince yourself that they’ve borrowed something you wrote.
Friday. The Quantcast consent management platform broke for a few hours, affected a lot of websites. You must know it, it’s the pop-up dickhead who says “We value your privacy”, drones for a bit, then offers the choices “MORE OPTIONS” and “AGREE” – hardly the “enthusiastic consent” one should strive for – I hate it, but on the other hand it’s helped to pay for all the yoghurt and cheese knives I could ever want. Anyway, all those websites slightly broken for a few hours, quite something.
30-ish hours in Bristol, which I didn’t hate despite my best efforts.

There and back by Megabus. Who knew sitting down could be so exhausting? ComfortDelGro my arse.

A problem with travelling by coach is sharing the roads with private motor cars, who tend to crash and generally cause congestion. Opening the railways to motorists would level the playing field. The poor driver hadn’t been told about some roadworks in Oxford, got a bit lost … maybe double-crewing would help. It’s really poor that, in 2023, the Prospect Coaches–operated services don’t track on the tracker.

On our late arrival, a waiting man was irate to learn he’d have to wait even longer before the driver could legally drive the next journey. If the authorities were truly pro-growth, there’d be no need for breaks, after all there are amphetamines instead.

That’s probably enough character-building slow travel for a while, I just checked how quick and reasonably priced the train would have been and I was humbled.
📺 Billions, in which Damo Lewis plays a rich fellow, the titular Robert “Bobby” Billons. I know he’s been in lots of things, but I’ve only ever seen him guest-presenting Have I Got News For You, so I’m still impressed by his adopted American accent and ability to do things other than reading-aloud some mildly satirical but establishment-friendly jokes. The rest of the cast has an high number of actors one recognises from other things too. Anyway, Billions is OK and apparently the later series are even better so that’s something to look forward to.

Have watched all sorts of other things in recent weeks, of course, but didn’t feel like I had anything to mention about them here, which is fine.

Week 217: invigorating

Sunday 14 May 2023

Some work. Trying to minimise the delay between a bus moving on the road and the corresponding rectangle moving on the map. The bus open data service purportedly updates “every ten seconds”, and it does, although the timestamp of the data is often 10–20 seconds old. (It would be better if it worked by subscription rather than polling, but the worse, simpler method has some advantages.) Every second counts, so I set about doing something clever to wait an extra 0– 9 seconds between updates to be sure of getting the freshest data. It seems to work, so I’m pleased; it’s a bit like trying to go to the pie shop as soon as possible after some pies have come out the oven, but not really.

Amidst the work I sloppily, unprofessionally made a mistake, so the locations of some rectangles were jumbled entertaingly for a bit. I wish I was more careful about avoiding this sort of thing, but I’m not, and no real harm was done, move fast and break things innit.
Enjoyed the thunderstorms we’ve had recently. Deliberately nipped out at the sound of some rumbling, and the hail lashed down as promised; it didn’t clean my bicycle and jacket as well as I’d hoped, but it woke me up, invigorating.
To Simon Munnery’s show at the arts centre. He’s probably a genius, but could just be an old man talking crap – doesn’t really matter. Oh, at one point he holds up a what he calls a Venn diagram but I think is an Euler diagram (here he is with an actual Venn diagram), but it’s hard to heckle if you’re not totally confident about the pronunciation of Euler. I mean, I know how to pronounce Euler, but it would sound like I’m hollering about oil, and anyway I’m not the heckling sort.
Forget the troll farms of Saint Petersburg, there’s a rich seam of bots tweeting things like “it pleased him to state on many an occasion that he was born at East Dereham” + some Chinese characters + a photograph of a lady overlaid with some text promoting something. The example quote comes from The Life of George Borrow by Clement K. Shorter, obviously. Not sure what the point is but it’s also (unintentionally) art.
Was given some weird posh biscuits and – and this is the most candid I’ve ever been on here, so I so hope no-one reads it – they didn’t appeal, although I’ve met many more unappealing ones. (Placed them in a food bank donation box.)

Week 216: bees hate him

Monday 8 May 2023

Sunday. Walked around a lake, paused to sit on a bench and look at the telephone, looked up to see two mallards engaged in a lewd act, good grief.

Just around midnight, fireworks. Must be to celebrate my latest weeknotes, ha ha. Geese crying, cheers, nice one.
Gave myself a sinus infection or something, possibly by cycling too far with an AirPod Pro in my ear and pollen in the air. I’m being a wimp but it’s not very pleasant, what a birthday present. Lost my Pedometer++ streak. But not really being able to go anywhere with my gushing nose has been a productivity boon.
Voted. The local Green Party councillor was a Tory councillor a few years ago, which makes me wonder what’s the opposite of being kicked in the head by a horse?
In my notes I’ve written “bees hate him!”. It takes a moment to remember this is about the lawncare influencer “SB Mowing”, who cuts people’s grass for free and makes videos about it, which is popular for obvious reasons – satisfying to watch, and the VIDEO titles are LIKE this.

The YouTube comments are full of adoration, but I want to whip up some controversy: it’s not completely selfless, the videos are surely more lucrative than a traditional charging-customers-for-lawncare-services business model would be, and I’m sorry, anyone who uses a leafblower is a wrongun. And isn’t an “overgrown” lawn actually much better for the bee community? But I’ll grudgingly accept that it probably doesn’t matter, none of the boring American gardens ever resemble wildflower meadows, and it’s good that he uses his strimmer to improve the accessibility of footpaths.

(He’s based in Wichita, Kansas, which raises the question of why he doesn’t call himself the Wichita Lawn Man, but to be fair a rival business had already taken that name.)

Week 215: standard deviation of heights

Sunday 30 April 2023

Every so often, someone well-intentioned writes in to point out, for example, that searching for “Kingham” doesn’t just find things about the village in Oxfordshire by that name, there are some less obviously relevant things too (that happen to stop near a faraway road called “Kingham Road” etc). The more relevant things are listed first, so it’s fine, there’s nothing to fix, but there are lots of ways in which searching doesn’t work how people expect it to, and perhaps I could save everyone the trouble of writing in. A start would be using SearchHeadline to highlight some matching words; it and the underlying ts_headline work differently to how I imagined, which is interesting. Ah there are a hundred more pressing things I should work on instead.
A few hours in Great Yarmouth. Walking past the pier, I learn that Roy Chubby Brown is still around – at least, he’s performing at the Pavilion Theatre, but then so apparently is “Elvis”.

I’d been keen to admire the Market Gates bus station since it was jet-washed a few months ago. The passage of time means my memory of how it used to be has faded, and it’s had time to get dirty again, but I’m happy to say it did seem notably clean.
🎦 How to Blow Up a Pipeline. !!! The best thing I saw all week. If there’s anyone here from any of the law enforcement agencies, of course I spent the duration shaking my head disapprovingly.
To Aldous Harding, a marvellous time. Arrived rudely late at the end of the support act’s performance, and at the back of the room there was unprecedented murmuring from people who couldn’t see the stage. It doesn’t help that she sits down sometimes, but also maybe the standard deviation of the audience’s heights was unusually large, or small – which is worse?

(Like Huxley Pig, the fictional pig who hung out with a cockney seagull, it’s not clear if she’s named after Aldous Huxley at all – at least it depends on what you mean by named after.)
If you like quiches more than you like to coronate things, the coronation quiche is conflicting: has it ruined quiches for me, or endeared the monarchy to me? I’ve never coronated anything in my life, but I’ve bought some frozen broad beans with a view to maybe making something, it’ll be a frittata because pastry is too establishment.

Week 214

Monday 24 April 2023

Some work. Found and fixed one bug that had resulted from past me thinking past past me was a stupid loser and wantonly deleting whole bits of his work, even though he’d actually known what he was doing. Now I’m the most enlightened me so far, I’ve even left a comment for future me.

Some media coverage from the estimable Dublin Live and others. That was nice.

There’s a new bus route a stone’s throw from here, of little use to me except for setting my clock by the hourly distant rumble of engine. It’s interesting that none of Google Maps, Traveline or the any of the other apps know about it yet – a better man would make a fuss and get it fixed, but I’m professionally curious to see how long it takes for the data to percolate without my intervention. I’m embarrassed about the low resolution of my laser printer, but I stuck a printed timetable in the downstairs lobby, doing my bit.
📺 Beef, which isn’t a spin-off about the character Matt Berry played in [Vic and Bob’s] House of Fools. Too long but rewarded persistence.

I was going to mention how, partway through, a characters’s white Mercedes-Benz GLC silently turns into a white G-Class, and fair enough it’s only ten hours long so they didn’t have time for a bit where this is explained, it’s explicable anyway, helps show the passage of time and stuff.

There’s a bit where the characters receive an emergency alert on their mobile phones, reminded me of the first time I saw a garbage disposal unit on TV (I’ve still never met one in real life, they’re much more common in American kitchen sinks than here). Anyway, someone must have been watching that moment at exactly 14:59 on Sunday, which I hope was nice/spooky for them.
I think Missing (2023) (currently showing in cinemas, but I used VLC Media Player on the sofa for a change) contains one typographic anachronism, but I don’t want to be the sort of person who points out that sort of thing.

Week 213: in the pocket of big tumble dryer

Monday 17 April 2023

Some work. One of the features of MRSK is a rollback command, which, I learnt in the most dramatic way (not very dramatic) I didn’t know how to use, still don’t.
While I was looking for pegs, my freshly laundered pillowcase blew off the balcony into a car park, to entertain everyone queueing interminably to leave the car park.

Coincidentally, a “polite reminder” later appeared in the lobby, politely reminding us that “UNDER THE TERMS OF THE LEASE […] NO WASHING/LAUNDRY SHOULD BE HUNG OUT TO DRY ON THE HAND RAIL TO THE BALCONY” – I hadn’t known, but it strikes me as political correctness gone mad, someone’s in the pocket of big tumble dryer. “WASHING/LAUNDRY” is unfortunately broader than “clothes”, but it’s had me googling “is airing different to drying”, I think that might be a loophole.

The reminder also says keeping pets isn’t allowed – a small dog has overnighted here a few times, which I hope falls outside the definition of keeping, and also who’s to say a given animal isn’t livestock? And someone with a ballpoint pen has written “Liars! Pets in cages are allowed”, which, written down like that, is a bit jarring, like what kind of sicko keeps a goldfish in a cage.
Last week they were working on a local telecommunications mast, 5G I presume, with a cherry picker on the back of a Unimog which fitted comfortably on the pavement but still they’d closed a lane of traffic and set up a temporary signal-controlled crossing. So I went to cross the road to buy some quiche or something, and waited for the green 🚶, and was nearly mown down by cars so I guess they’d wired up the lights wrong. When they left, the strip of grass beside the pavement was all churned up. This isn’t very interesting.
To Ipswich to see Frankie Boyle (+ special guest Christopher Macarthur-Boyd), the largest theatre in East Anglia. Unusually, there were signs up forbidding going to the toilet during the show, fair enough (maybe ableist?), he’s clearly got sensitive hearing and is easily distracted by people coughing and coats rustling. Heard some murmurs of almost disappointment on the way out, the word “tame” was used, I think it’s good that these days he’s careful about punching up not down, but not the horrible people of Ipswich I suppose.

Week 212: burnt and misshapen

Sunday 9 April 2023

Hot cross buns. Used a duck egg, forgot the butter, and didn’t have any caradamom or ginger, but I soaked the fruit in the juice of some clementines, which imparted a marmaladey flavour, and they’re the best buns I’ve ever made. It’s important that they look a bit burnt and misshapen, else how will anyone tell they’re homemade?

Yes I’ve also tried some of the shop-bought buns this season. As you know, I’m dead against the diabolical liberties of chocolate and salted caramel, but the “St Clements” bun (as in “oranges and lemons say the bells of”?) is an agreeable innovation.
Some work.
- Waffling (in the US “being indecisive” sense) about fonts. The problem with the default system font is that some people have a questionable one. Maybe that’s not a problem, and part of the beauty of the web platform is that users are free to ruin your pixel-perfect design however they like, smear mustard on their screen and choose a non-native resolution. But. What’s a nice mid sans serif? Several candidates don’t have any ↙← direction arrow glyphs, or I don’t like the look of the tabular numbers, or the “st” kerning pair looks a bit uncomfortable.
- Started using MRSK. It’s spicy new software and not quite as seamless as all that – there are seams – but my new setup using MRSK is cheaper and better in all sorts of ways (I was using the DigitalOcean App Platform for the previous 31 weeks) so I’m pleased.
- I’ve a little GeoDjango app that has maybe one user per week or so (a client). Spent the weekend moving it to Google Cloud Run, using Litestream to squirrel away a copy of the database (this example was most instructive). Thanks to scaling-to-zero it should now cost pennies, which is many times less that it had been costing, great.
🎦 Air (2023), a film about a basketball shoe? My Nike shoes are maybe slightly too narrow for my wide feet, even though I sized up, isn’t that interesting.

Turns out the Odeon website seat picker UI (user interface) uses React, so it’s not terribly difficult to use the React developer tools browser extension to see the status of a seat, what a game-changer.
One of my Twitter bots stopped working, incredibly not the fault of Twitter but just the solar panels API renewing its certificate. So I bothered to repair it, and then went further: from Monday, it will tweet at actual sunset instead of 10pm. I know there are some other ways that bot could be better, but I’m so tired, and ultimately it’s all doomed so what’s the point?

Week 211

Monday 3 April 2023

Some work.

Is there a term of art for the “then every _ minutes until” or “at these times past the hour until” things in the presentation of public transport timetables? They can save paper, but on a web page where the canvas is infinite they only save a bit of bandwidth, and they’re annoying and confusing. Someone had even written a script to expand a copied-and-pasted abbreviated bustimes.org timetable, I think it might have been an Emacs Lisp thing but I can’t find it now. Stupidly, I’m reluctant to throw away all the hard work it took to implement these abbreviations, but at last I’ve stopped the “then hourly until” and others who don’t save much screen space, so that’s something.
🎦 Pearl (2022), lovely stuff.
Infinity Pool (2023) has a plot some have called “silly”, which of course I thought was great, but I grew to resent having to sit through all the rich buggers’ antics. I suppose managing to be boring despite everything is a sort of achievement.

There’s a bit where Alexander Skarsgård takes a protracted moment to lock a door, and I could relate because earlier I’d used a toilet cubicle with a loose-hanging door latch, had to use my bag to hold it shut, wished I’d had a screwdriver with me but realised it probably needed new holes drilling. Immersive cinema!
Turns out the Odeon private API does distinguish between broken and occupied seats. The possible seat-availaility statuses are “Available”, “Broken”, “House” and “Sold”. But it’s complicated, you’ve got to use the seat-layout endpoint to work out which seat each seatId refers to, and I’m so tired.
To London’s wooden Shakespeare’s Globe to take in two candlelit early Edinburgh previews.

The coach stop arrangements at Stratford City bus station have changed, the information has become more contradictory, and it’s a desolate place to wait at night-time. But it’s character-building, and slightly cheaper than the train.
To the ancestral home, a bit cold and musty, I never remember to bring thick enough socks or an extra jumper. Nevertheless, nice.