Author: @bazbt3

Husband, father. 2 cats, 1 dog. Cleveland Browns fan. Engineer. English. Prefers asynchronous chat (unreliable). Bought first computer 1981, asking silly questions online since 1997.

Thwarted

Today, and for the first time in years, the local LibDems candidate visited and leafleted. Amazing; a refreshing change.

Speculating from my amazement and my opening comments that I might be amenable to rejoining the party, he… well I’m honestly considering it, and I have the urge to use my vote wisely[efn_note]This did not end well.[/efn_note] this time around.

Your and my previous scorn, though not entirely misplaced, has… Let’s just say, although neither of us expect a win, both realise after the disappointment of recent years allied to the Nasty Party, there’s a long game to be played here.

At the time of writing though, no-one in Rochdale can know much about any of the candidates; fewer than 15% of the candidates offered up any background information about themselves, see the link below:

https://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/elections/candidates/31

Oh, the title’s ‘Thwarted’ simply because I’ve been prevented from winding myself up for a good old-fashioned moan.

Chess 2

Playing against the Chess.com computer at the lowest difficulty level I’m getting a lot of games ending in a ‘stalemate’, including one where only the computer’s king remained.

Ok, I’ve read the stalemate rules but it seems just wrong that I’ve not won anything yet. I’ll be honest though, as a newcomer to the game I’m happy enough when I last more than 25 moves without being soundly thrashed.

Migration v2

I'm transferring Markdown blog posts from my GitHub Pages repository (repo) into my WordPress blog, this way:

  • Open MWeb for iOS (a Markdown editor with publishing capability.)
  • Make _posts and _images folders and copy all the posts and images from my local copy of the repo into each.
  • Open each post in MWeb.
  • Check for links to old blogs:
    • If none found then strip the YAML post header, ensure the post date matches the original and publish to WordPress.
    • If links found, hold until later and publish the earlier, link-free posts first.
    • I also attempt to use the original post date but know I've failed on at least a couple of occasions. It's not massively important.

Blog posts to migrate:

Date Remaining
2019-04-06 360
2019-04-10 207
2019-04-12 187
2019-04-15 117
2019-04-22 57
2019-04-27 16

(Table updates at various milestones.)

Kebab 3

Previously…

The local chip shop has been selling Greek-style chicken and donner kebabs for a few weeks now, as a sideline. My first ever chicken kebab, a week after they started, was utterly wonderful; a shame I only had 3/4 of it after sharing with daughter 2 and some of my meat with my mother-in-law.

About 4 weeks ago I had my second, a donner, again with salad, fluffy flatbread and sweet chilli sauce. Not as good as the chicken though, it has to be said.

Today, after a too-long hiatus, I had another donner kebab (the chicken had sold out.)

Now, it’s been suggested that eating a kebab from a tray with a blue plastic fork is ‘wrong’, that eating one on a plate with metal cutlery is also ‘wrong.’ So today I took a saner man’s suggestion and upped my game by eating it on a big plate with the shiny cutlery, crucially whilst wearing a (quilted) smoking jacket and toting a pipe.

Er… ok, I don’t have a smoking jacket or a tobacco pipe, so made do with this bubble wrap and a yellow Kazoo!

Full.

Content.

Podcasts?

This is a placeholder post to celebrate the very best audio posts from the previous incarnation of my blog. Both of them![efn_note]Linked, not embedded, because it’s quicker and easier.[/efn_note]

The first ‘Audio file’ was recorded on 24 January 2016 and ‘Bins’, the second and my most recent, 5 days later.

Not podcasts though, for I am not a podcaster.

Chess

For the last couple of weeks daughter 2 and I have been playing a game of chess every few days. She’s been learning at school and doesn’t need any tuition from me.

Now that sounds as though I know the game. Nope, I’m a novice. Almost. I’ve played occasional games against computers since the nineteen eighties but it never gained much traction with me; until recently I lost every game.

Since buying the chess set as part of a ‘Classic Games Compendium’ I’ve had to overcome an early dilemma: do I let my daughter win? That’s an easy one, no. We discussed it and I gave her my rationale: when she beats me the first time I’ll be, at that moment, the proudest daddy alive.

Oh, before I forget, a colleague has offered to play me. I’m not ready yet but, just in case, at lunchtimes I’ve been playing against the computer. Level 1. No wins yet but one stalemate 1/2 indicates what I’m going to call ‘improvement’.

For now though, being honest about this, I’m happy to have my ego massaged by beating my baby.