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Things bought online recently, in descending order of recency:
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Flypaper. It’s harder than ever to find in real shops these days, maybe because it’s revolting, but the alternative is spray-cans of toxic mist which are surely far worse. Alas, I was away when the delivery came, and the package was stolen from outside the front door, which is a first. Fortunately, the flies have all fucked off anyway since I cleaned the kitchen and emptied the bin, so it’s fine, and I won’t be grassing up the delivery fellow for not leaving the parcel somewhere safer.
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A gooseneck kettle. (They’re all gooseneck kettles by the time I’ve finished with them.) The spout is actually much narrower than any goose’s neck I’ve ever seen, all the better to get the precise pour you want for making coffee. And it looks so pretty, and there’s a temperature control knob. But in every other respect, it’s worse than a normal kettle – it’s often annoying that the water pours out so slowly, and you’ve got to strike the power button in just the right way (a bit like swatting a fly) or it won’t turn on.
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Some Merz b. Schwanen T-shirts. (The guy in The Bear wears them you know.) They’re nice, and come with a bit of stripy string that’s just the right length to make a cummerbund for your AirPods case. But it’s important to size up if you don’t want to accentuate your curves too much, and one of the T-shirts had some unacceptable pilling under the arm.
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Some work. My big and grand reworking of some things continues gently; obviously, the summer solstice deadline I set myself whizzed by, which is fine.
Cast my eye over the new Travel Norfolk journey planner. It has some admirable qualities, but they’ve taken some diabolical liberties – using OpenStreetMap data without attribution, and being sloppy about performance. There are some massive uncompressed hunks of GeoJSON, and it loads satellite imagery in the background even when you’re viewing the ordinary map tiles. Basically, I’m pleased that it’s not that good (yet), because I think my thing I’m working on will be (on average) better.
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🎦 No Hard Feelings (2023). The Buick Regal is a sweet car that looks a bit Ford-y but that’s just how cars looked in the 90s; turns out the most recent car by that name is in fact a rebadged Vauxhall Insignia.
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Almost tweeted a thing, but I couldn’t decide whether to call the Right Honourable Mark Harper MP a tosser, a prick or a twat, and that’s probably for the best.