Week 166

Monday 23 May 2022

• After a week or so of perfect reliability, at last the connectivity problem happened again. Brilliant, I thought, and leapt to point the floating IP address at a different server. But immediately that server started having the problem, and the other was OK again – the problem seemed to follow the floating IP address around.

  So let’s say that floating IP address is cursed or something. The DigitalOcean support folks are useless, although I wouldn’t dream of leaving negative feedback when asked to rate my satisfaction, because it’s probably not the poor staff’s fault.

  The main thing is now I have a new, better solution involving a Cloudflare load balancer, so let’s see how that works out. I have some complaints about Cloudflare’s UI, had great difficulty finding my way around and trying to input my card details to pay them some money, but never mind.

• 🎦 Benediction (the Siegfried Sassoon biopic). It had already started when I stumbled in, I guess were no adverts and trailers because it was a special early screening that was supposed to be accompanied by a recorded Q&A? And the projector bulb was rather dim. Still, glad I went. It’s a slightly odd voice that Peter Capaldi does in it.

• On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Some jolly silly fun. Twice we saw an associate of Telly Savalas falling to their death from off of a mountain, and neither time could George Lazenby’s Bond think of a lame quip, even though each fall was long and slow – pathetic – but never mind. Your local Vue are probably showing the remaining films over the next several months.

• Last week, one of the things that made me mutter oh fuck off was when the centrist media hyphenate Richard Osman came on the loudspeaker while I was considering washing-up liquid in Sainsbury’s. Osman was advertising his new audiobook, I think? But they don’t sell audiobooks in Sainsbury’s, so how strange.

  Friday. Had a little evening bicycle ride. Went to Sainsbury’s. Osman’s disembodied voice boomed again, and this time I stayed quiet, and turns out it’s a paperback he’s advertising after all. Makes more sense. Cool story.

  A little mechanical problem on the way back meant I had to walk for a bit and spilled some beefy Korean supper on the ground. The sticky red puddle had almost all gone by the following morning, licked up by foxes I presume, nice for them. This might feel like a warning about the perils of active travel, but it’s equally possible to spill milk in the boot (“trunk”) of your motor car, and foxes’ tongues won’t help you then.