Week 215: standard deviation of heights

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.