Week 169

Monday 13 June 2022

• Some work. The website gets better. And I took some time to fill in some test coverage gaps, cos that’s a satisfying little game, and in so doing I found and fixed some bugs – brilliant, the process works.

  Oh and my latest sort of high availabilty setup finally got put to the test in in a real scenario: one server went a bit wrong overnight (Varnish spookily started listening on the wrong port) and another seamlessly took over as designed, and I was asleep the whole time, brilliant, we’re close to regaining some nines.

• Forgot I’d locked a bicycle badly outside a Japanese restaurant, and when I went to retrieve it a week later the front wheel had been nicked. Actually, the thief had gone to the trouble of replacing it with a different wheel – a too-small wheel from a mountain bike, with a flat tyre, so completely useless, but I guess it’s the thought that counts?

  It’s gruelling wheeling a one-wheeled bike home, looks a bit funny. And I was reminded that some places you’d expect to sell wheels only deal in posh lightweight racing ones. Started to wish I’d taken up unicycling. Haven’t bothered reporting the crime to the police.

• Without wanting to dox myself, the Killers had a little gig on the football pitch outside here, and it was great fun seeing all the dozens of lorries delivering bits of stage and everything. Most interestingly, Elton John’s playing in a few days, but they’ve already dismantled the Las Vegas rockers’ stage rather than keeping it for the Rocket Man singer. But the Pimm’s and prosecco stalls by the entrance haven’t moved.

  As for the music, well, I don’t know much about acoustics but I think sound sounds better when you’re inside the stadium it’s coming from rather than outside of it, but it’s OK. A small part of me’s almost tempted to finagle a ticket to see the Candle In The Wind singer now, but at what cost?

• 🎦 The Man with the Golden Gun, in which Roger Moore wears some horrible clothes. It’s not one of the best films but ah well. One reviewer says it “suffers from double entendre-laden dialogue”, which feels like a misuse of the word “suffer”. (Missed the start, embarrassed again by there being no adverts or trailers, which I’d’ve known if only there hadn’t been some last week.)

• This is definitely an unoriginal point, but acronyms can be confusing can’t they, “assigned cop at birth”, “all males are bastards”.

• Down by the river I saw the cutest thing, (and also) a brood of ducklings swimming closely behind their parent, using their innate knowledge of fluid dynamics to conserve energy. And then a team of rowers came thundering along in their skiffs, and with a clatter of oars they smashed the ducky babes to pieces.

  The slipstreaming fluffy dears reminded me a tweet there was, actually a screenshot of a Facebook post about bad dudes on their racing bicycles creepily following a lone woman, and I wondered if that ever happens among the birds in the water.