Posting something about the upcoming Rio Olympics yesterday, I asked a question:
"Who are we supporting this time?"
It should have been obvious really. But it wasn't. In case it's not for you, watch this YouTube video…
Turn the sound up…
Martin, thanks.
It's nearly 4 years since the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony. 4 years. Wow!
Rio De Janeiro!
Er…
Where's the advance publicity here in the UK? Look, I know a country hosting an event is bound to have a crazy run-up to the main event; local interest in the shape of homegrown heroes* and the possibility of winning a ticket lottery to view a niche sport on a weekday evening are things everyone can grasp hold of…
Who are we supporting this time?
*No, not heroes. Emphatically-not heroes. Role models of course (until the wheels fall off) but a single-minded dedication to accuracy or speed does not a hero make.
The mobile hairdresser paid a visit today. She tidied the girls' fringes and hair at the back, did something with my wife's and, rather odd this; dropped a load of greying hair on our kitchen floor after she'd cut mine.
I feel a lot less scruffy now. Maybe I should shave; back to a goatee?
3 plumbers were asked to quote for work – to replace 2 radiators. Here's a mercifully shortened tale of woe…
Dear Plumbers, how difficult can it be to:
He changed the radiators, that much is true. The rest though, naah,' twas a bit crap.
The worst bit though, when he told me he was on a course in London today & tomorrow. My wife mentioned afterwards that he'd spoken on his phone (loudspeaker of course) with a woman just around the corner about a job he was doing there today.
During his followup call later, after I'd got rid of him, he let me know that I could ring him today and if we were having problems he could look on Thursday. The thing is, consistency is all in attempting to spread positive feedback about a business. To tell me "I'm not being evasive" when telling me why he couldn't make it today; sorry mate, I'll be looking for tradesman review sites now.
So I spent time bleeding the system until it just worked.
2am.
Today for lunch I went around to the café and bought a spam & egg butty and blueberry muffin, and sat at my desk to eat them.
Feeling much better now.
This Mothering Sunday (aka Mothers Day) we went to church – it was the Brownies' and Ladybirds' Flag parades too.
I thought about my dear departed mum and the sacrifices she and dad made to keep us comfortable and to support me until I started to work…
During the service the choir sang Psalm 127, and the temporary vicar asked us, with a smile, to follow along too – if we could.
Yeah, it's impossible without choral training and a safety net, so I simply traced the words with my index finger. I was lucky that I could read the words; I'd taken my reading glasses along this time!
So, here it is, Psalm 127, from the King James Version:
1 Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.
2 It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
3 Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
5 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate.
I occasionally have dark thoughts about the results of my quivering arrows, but overall, in a non-spiritual sense, I've been blessed by my 2 girls.
The thing is, I don't really care if I've misinterpreted the Psalm; I took something good away from it.
It snowed in Rochdale today, and Rochdale ground to a near-halt. My drive to work, a journey that normally takes around 20 minutes, took 2 hours!
It happens every winter, every time it snows.
The utterly clueless idiots-behind-their-wheels appear to make my desire for a 4-wheel-drive car a near-irrelevance.
'Near' isn't total; that'll do for me.
February 29 (Wikipedia) is a date that appears only during years divisible by 4 (with an integer remainder!) – apart from those divisible by 100 (but not 400) no, don't stop reading…
There are a lot of interesting notable dates, people and legal facts mentioned on the Wikipedia page, so it's quite a scroll to get to…
In this modern age Bachelor's Day doesn't retain the same importance it once had. But if you're on the edge of popping the question to the subject of your undying love, it's a heck of a day to do it.
Gloves on standby!
During November 2015 I decided to start a daily journal – an activity which soon changed into an almost-daily series of blog posts. During the time since I've noticed a shift in the way I approach social media. I'm not sure I like it.
The blogging exercise quickly morphed into a need to create a test site, added to GitHub.com in parallel to my main 10Centuries blog account. I've also been experimenting with rudimentary self-hosting.
As this has happened I've been neglecting both my blog and those people who comment on the posts. I've not even been keeping up with the shiny new 10Centuries.org after my initial flurry of (hopefully constructive) fault reporting during the early private beta stage.
So it's time for a rethink.
Sure it may be the time of year at fault; I'm not alone in noticing a realignment of priorities away from social media. But this time around I'm analysing in a bit more depth.
So…
Rather than concentrate on 'self' I think it's time I looked at others' blogs. It's only fair.
I've quite a backlog of posts in my RSS feed reader. Time to read, folks.
If you have a blog of your own please let me know, if I have or if I haven't already got it queued up I'll take a look!
Thanks!
I've been asleep, honest! Knowing there would be a solution to my Raspberry Pi automation woes I started to search around 2am.
Google and Stackoverflow.com are pretty handy at this time of night; 'rvm installation not working: "RVM is not a function".
It turns out that all I needed to obviate my need to run the scripts in a login shell was to copy the second line of code from ~/.bash_profile to ~/.bashrc.
Thankyou Haris Krajina!
No, I'm not going to wait up.
A small number of us wear similar sweaters for work – similar in that they're self-coloured and pleasantly form-fitting. Ok, in my case it's because they've shrunk in the wash… (but that's the subject of a previous, uncomfortable-for-me, blog entry here.)
Yesterday a slightly awkward exchange occurred at the coffee machine, one which I felt an urge to follow up by email. I'd had a brilliant idea – a Eureka moment (but without the nudity and attendant spillages.) Here's the brief exchange:
"As an engineer I’m bound by a code of professional conduct to suggest a solution to the jumper hue issue; a daily palette based on the colours of the rainbow. In ascending frequency order, and by day.
Unfortunately though, my purple one today falls outside the rigid boundaries of the, it must be said, unfortunately limited scheme. Your flagrant Thursday jumper today merits a red card I’m afraid, though I’m sure you could carry the visible spectrum off better than I were you to try harder.
I’d better start work on version 2.0.
Baz."
The reply came a little later. I'd honestly not expected one.
"Hi Barrie,
Thank you so much for your email. Well, what can I say? I’m disappointed with myself that I have got off to a bad start on the first day of the week, but I do feel that I need to correct you on something. Your jumper hue is not purple. I do believe it’s a wine/beetroot shade, but definitely not purple.
Whilst I appreciate and do accept the card, I can’t accept a red one. Red is just not my colour. I don’t do red and that’s that. Red is not good for us gingers, I’m afraid and as I am too bound by a professional code of conduct as a ginger, you will simply have to come up with another colour.
I eagerly await your palette…
Have a nice day,"
Me, speechless, though not apoplectically-so:
"*Baz stills sense of outrage,
standssits corrected, starts work on v2.0.1*"
The conciliatory response came an agonising-for-me 50 minutes later:
"I must say that the beetroot/wine colour does suit you though. A warm colour for these Wintery times. I would even go as far to say that it’s perhaps a burgundy. There’s not many who can carry such a shade off."
Awesome. And, with that, order in my universe was restored.
Which was nice.