Cock-a-Leekie

A conversation with my wife, the evening before Valentine’s Day 2025:

Me, “How much cock do you think is in there?”

She, “12%?”

Me, “No, it’s only 2%.”

She, disappointed, “…”.

Me, “How about leekie?”

She, “3%?”

Me, “No, it’s 11%!”

She, “…” again.

She’d bought me a 400g tin of Baxters ‘Cock-A-Leekie” soup. Its blurb:

“The finest leeks, succulent chicken, tender rice and freshly grated juicy carrots – that’s what makes our Cock-a-Leekie soup the very best. No wonder this traditional Scottish recipe is loved by so many.”

– Audrey Baxter.

From the Baxters shop site, a photo of a typical tin of Baxters Cock-A-Leekie soup.
From the Baxters shop site, a photo of a typical tin of Baxters Cock-A-Leekie soup.

Stains and smells

Dr Beckmann Stain and Stain & Odour removers get bazbt3’s seal of approval.

Pumpkin puppy (7 months) has no opinion.

Rug Doctor Urine Eliminator stands by, hopeful of action.

Two Dr Beckmann brush headed fabric/upholstery/carpet cleaners. Not for use on pets, however stinky.
Two Dr Beckmann brush headed fabric/upholstery/carpet cleaners. Not for use on pets, however stinky.

Browns vs Fibonacci followup

There’s a fundamental flaw in my reasoning in my recent post – it stemmed from a willingness to believe the starting point I chose had a more direct relationship to the team’s overall performance during the past few years.

I made amendments after some useful feedback in Reddit’s r/Browns, picking a different entry point – the year I became a fan. It brought a more simplistic summary of the Browns:

We lose for 2 seasons and get into the playoffs every 3 seasons.

Loss-loss-playoffs-loss-loss-playoffs, etc.

2018-2019-2020-2021-2022-2023-2024-(2025)-(2026).

Sure the sample size is limited, but I want to believe we’ve another playoff appearance in 2026.

Super Bowl?

Shuggie Bear and a Frawg wearing a Cleveland Browns helmet. They're stood and sat in a totally realistic lily pond.
Shuggie Bear and a Frawg wearing a Cleveland Browns helmet. They’re stood and sat in a totally realistic lily pond.

Code for government

Col on Mastodon provided me with more inspiration earlier, this time with a post linking to a Sky News article entitled “Nearly all US aid programmes worldwide frozen after Trump order“. POTUS1 also questioned the need for FEMA – the USA’s own disaster management body tasked with assisting states in times of dire emergency. But anyway…

I wrote a program designed to guide budding diplomats through the maze of decision making when it comes to aliens.

No, not 👽 aliens, but I’ve no doubt the same logic will be applied when The Space Browns arrive to save my Cleveland Browns.

The program is thankfully devoid of AI, and honestly it’s pretty BASIC.

1 REM ### DecSurpPop v0.01a ###
10 DealWithKids = 0
20 USForeignPolicyKids = 0
30 Month = 0
40 HellFreezesOver = 0
50 WHILE USForeignPolicyKids = 0
60 DealWithKids = 0
70 Month = Month + 3
80 IF Month = 3 THEN Month = 0
90 USForeignPolicyKids = RND()*1776
100 IF USForeignPolicyKids = 1 THEN HellFreezesOver = RND()*2025
110 WEND
120 IF HellFreezesOver = 1 THEN END ELSE GOTO 10

There are no integers on 90 & 100, it sounds too much like “integrate”.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional programmer, so before using this as an integral (ugh!) plank of your basis of government a check of its syntax may be appropriate.

  1. An acronym for the current President Of The United States. Please check which you’re following on any social or government account – it’s been rolled over from the previous incumbent. ↩

Cock and Shito

A few days ago a post on Mastodon caught my eye, posted under the content warning “unexpected lewd at the grocery store”. I’m not linking to it here because I can’t remember the privacy settings of the 2 other participants.

My wife brought both these home 18 months ago; Cock soup is fine, I’ve had it a few times since (giggling each time) and Shito sauce is something everyone must try at least once in their lives.

I liked the Shito so much I took it into work in case anyone wished to share my unfettered joy and give the jar a good home. I felt so lucky when my colleagues only sampled it, such was their love for me.

Anyway, I was moved to take this photo.

A sachet of Cock flavour noodle soup ("a Caribbean favourite") and a jar of Shito hot chilli sauce with shrimp (a Ghanaian staple).
A sachet of Cock flavour noodle soup (“a Caribbean favourite”) and a jar of Shito hot chilli sauce with shrimp (a Ghanaian staple).

Browns vs Fibonacci

Fibonacci (also known as Leonardo Fibonacci, Leonardo Bonacci or Leonardo Pisano) was born in Pisa, Italy in 1170 and died around 1250. He was a talented mathematician1 probably most famous for popularising the Arabic numbering system and a number sequence named after him – The Fibonacci sequence or Fibonacci numbers.2

I, on the other hand, am not a talented mathematician. I’m a Browns fan.

Nevertheless I’m about to link Fibonacci numbers – more precisely the Fibonacci spiral3 – with the performance of the Cleveland Browns onwards from the disastrous 2016 and 2017 seasons.4 Note, not attempting to link, actually linking.

By the way, before the mathematicians shout at me, though closely linked to the Golden spiral5, Fibonacci’s is composed of a series of 90° arcs within squares of increasing size. It’s not a ‘pure’, continuous geometric shape thingy.

Here’s an image rotated from the Wikipedia original of the Fibonacci spiral in coloured squares, numbered upto 216.

A Fibonacci spiral, with the 1 ,1 ,2 ,3, 5, 8, 13 and 21 squares coloured respectively white, magenta, purple, blue, cyan, green, orange and red. The image and thus the numbers are upside down because it better-illustrates the point I wish to make.
A Fibonacci spiral, with the 1 ,1 ,2 ,3, 5, 8, 13 and 21 squares coloured respectively white, magenta, purple, blue, cyan, green, orange and red. The image and thus the numbers are upside down because it better-illustrates the point I wish to make.

We shall start on this silly journey with the Browns 2016 season represented by the white square. 2016 was bad for the team. Really bad. 1 win from 16 games played. The arc goes up a bit and to the left.

2017 was bad. Worse. Absolutely dire. So the arc in the magenta square drops to the left, representing the zero (0) wins from 16 games.

Now 2018 is when I became a fan of the team. Although the purple arc goes downwards it goes to the right. 2018 brought 7 wins and a tie (!) from 16 games. Woohoo! It was a season of promise, of hope. And we got rid of Head Coach Hue Jackson. Which was nice.

In 2019 the progress regressed a bit, to 6 wins from 16 games, so although the blue arc goes up and to the right it doesn’t fit this scheme I’m outlining. 2019 was generally seen by Browns fans to be a disappointing aberration, so I’m giving Fibonacci a pass on this one. He’s no Nostradamus7 so couldn’t have foreseen Head Coach Freddie Kitchens – promoted beyond his ability at the time.

2020, wow. Cyan, numbered ‘5’. The curve goes up and to the left. An 11 win season from 16. We vaulted into the playoffs, beating the steelers twice in succession, and only falling to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Divisonal Playoffs. Probably the most enjoyable season of football I’ve ever seen. Kevin Stefanski, Head Coach of the Year.

Now, in 2021 you’d expect the team to capitalise on the preceding season. But no. The green arc goes downwards and to the left. We won 8 games from the expanded schedule of 17 games. Not great. Injuries at crucial positions screwed us over and so disappointment was again the order of that year.

And then we lost quarterback Baker Mayfield.

2022? Orange, down, right. Regression again, 7 wins from 17 games. Injuries. Meh.

In 2023 we won 11 games from 17. We got into the playoffs and fell immediately to the Houston Texans. Red square, upwards and to the right. We did it with a quarterback dragged off his sofa halfway through the year and plugged into the offense. Joe ‘Elite Dragon’ Flacco.

Still with me?

Let’s carry the sequence on then, for the 2024 season just ended. For us at least. A mere 3 wins from 17 games. So, what does the arc do with a teeny bit of extrapolation? Up, to the left. Colour? Black I’d imagine. Even accounting for our quarter-billion quarterback woes this was a bad one.

Season W-L-T Fibonacci
2016 1-15-0 ↖️
2017 0-16-0 ↙️
2018 7-8-1 ↘️
2019 6-10-0 ↗️
2020 11-5-0 ↖️
2021 8-9-0 ↙️
2022 7-10-0 ↘️
2023 11-6-0 ↗️
2024 3-14-0 ↖️
2025 Who knows? ↙️
Browns vs Fibonacci

2025 will have an arc heading down and to the left. Pain for us fans? Of course it is, we’re Browns fans. Colour Brown then? It’s expected that 2025 will be a rebuilding year of sorts for us. Fans are already talking about the dearth of quarterback talent in this year’s draft and so pushing for a mediocre-to-tanking season to get a better 2026 pick.

I’m not one of those fans.

But you can’t argue with the mathematics of all this.

Can you?

Of course you can.

When I posted a version of this to the r/Browns subreddit someone made the point that since Coach Stefanski arrived it’s been a win-lose-win-lose sequence. That’s not entirely true, it’s actually been win-lose-lose-win-lose-lose, etc.

And so I updated the chart:

Season W-L-T Fibonacci #, coach
2018 7-8-1 1 (HJ,GW)
2019 6-10-0 1 (FK)
2020 11-5-0 2 (KS)
2021 8-9-0 3 (KS)
2022 7-10-0 5 (KS)
2023 11-6-0 8 (KS)
2024 3-14-0 13 (KS)
2025 Who knows? 21 (KS?)
2026 Super Bowl! 34 (KS?)

There’s a pattern. 2018 and 2019 (before Stefanski arrived) improved on the preceding 2 seasons, but weren’t great. The Fibonacci numbers are odd.

2020 showed up as an even Fibonacci number, and we reached the playoffs. Remember this.

2021 and 2022 again brought a slide in results – odd Fibonaccis both.

2023 was an even numbered year, and we reached the playoffs. Which was nice.

2024, predictably as far as I’m concerned, brought a desperately deep low in my fandom. An odd-numbered year.

2025, well, as an odd Fibonacci I expect nothing better than misery.

But, as the table clearly states, 2026 is going to be a Super Bowl season; we Browns fans should expect nothing less!

Footnotes? Oh yes!

  1. The life, works and legacy of Fibonacci (Wikipedia). ↩
  2. The Fibonacci sequence (Wikipedia). ↩
  3. The Fibonacci spiral (Wikipedia). ↩
  4. A List of Cleveland Browns seasons (Wikipedia). ↩
  5. The Golden spiral (Wikipedia). Linked here for the continuously zooming/magnifying image at the top of the page. Oooh, mathematics porn! ↩
  6. Wikipedia image by Romain, credits. ↩
  7. Noted seer Nostradamus (Wikipedia). ↩

Longrow 18

I won our 3-person office NFL ‘Pickem’ this year. We each had to try to correctly predict more winners than the others from every game, every week throughout the 18-week regular season. It’s not a trivial pursuit, it’s not just guessing a result by looking at what other people are thinking.

Before we started none of us really spent time choosing a reward from the others for gaining the ultimate victory.

Anyway one of the guys pushed me a bit for an answer, and so did the other. And today, one brought in his treasured shiny hipflask with something special sloshing gently inside. For me to try.

It’s a ‘Longrow’ 18 year old single malt.

And I’m just about to take my first sip.

And I’m going to make the most of it.

I don’t know much about whiskies or whiskeys, but I do know, when I’ve tried one, what I like.

It smells perfect. It’s peaty, which I like. Love.

Ideally, and it seems extraordinarily churlish of me to say this given the circumstances, my choice would be a Laphroaig 15 year old – probably the most rounded (most polarising) whisky I’ve ever tried. But the price went silly after the company withdrew it then brought it back. It would have been silly to even ask for a miniature bottle.

Ok, I’m going to sample this ‘water of life’ neat from my 20 year old ‘Glencairn’ glass – a most-treasured present from my wife 3 days after we got together.

Please don’t be disappointed that I’m not briniging you an evocation of a Scottish loch in the autumn, crushed walnuts or burning tyre smoke. Naah, it’s unlikely I’d be able to separate stuff out like someone trained in this sniffing, sipping, swirling thing.

I cup the glass across my fingers and palm, take a long sniff, swirl, sniff, anticipation, sip. Think.

Same again, swill it round the old gums. Think.

Feel it going down. Think.

It’s a really good-sized measure this.

Because I’m bloody-well worth it!

Anyway, as an experience after almost-exclusively drinking Bud Light for the last couple of years it’s beyond my ability to describe.

Honestly, I’m not keen on the aftertaste. The initial taste though is awesome, and as it grabs the gums adds to the ‘experience’ a drink costing almost the absolute top end of my limit back when I had…

It slides down really really well too. Really well. Did I mention that already?

I can’t wait to sniff the empty glass in the morning. Trust me if you’ve never tried it, just have a go. I first did it with a Maker’s Mark – a whiskey I hated from the very first sip.

I feel nice and warm now. Nice. Warm.

Onto the second half then.

Cheers!

I’d better remember to give the hipflask a bit of a polish before handing it back, but I’m not washing it out.

Some context:

A post from 2016: ‘Hic‘.

One from 2017: ‘Drunkard‘.

A bit later in 2017: ‘Makers Mark review part 6‘.

Flash

A group of maybe 8 teenagers walked past the house a few minutes ago, one saying, “Oh my God, there’s a bloke ¹ sat in the dark on his phone!” That was me, that was, Mollie cat sat on one leg, Pumpkin puppy resting her head on the other. But the young people outside wouldn’t have seen how warm and comfortable we were.

The irony wasn’t lost on me as I looked up to see half of their faces illuminated by their screens, and one taking a photo of the front of the house – with flash. I’m not worried about my privacy, after all I was sat there with the curtains open, and from what I know about light, reflections and angles, there’s a better-than-good chance the photo would be one of a flash bounced back from the window.

But hey, maybe I got my 15 minutes of fame early this year?

So, teenagers walking past in the dark (we do have streetlights) and cold (hovering around freezing) and damp (the fine rain that wets you through), at this time of year‽ There must have been something pretty catastrophic happened this weekend to make that happen!

And unless the content creators to whom they owe their very lives are down today it’s not TikTok, this isn’t the USA after all (where the company’s self-enacted, political-points-scoring ban started this weekend).

So, I wonder what calamity sent them out today?‽!

¹ A British English word for man, guy, me in this case. (At least they didn’t say “old guy”).

Surf.social

(After spending time ‘testing’ I’ve added a few more notes in the addenda at the bottom. I’m likely to update this post as things progress… or ignore it entirely).

Well, the itch to try Surf.social (a new social and all-internet aggregator from the people who make Flipboard) became too great and I reached out to them. @marci@flipboard.social (internet royalty!) saw my plaintive cry and set me up with an invite code. Thanks Marci!

I’ve installed the beta app within the iOS TestFlight environment and signed in using my Mastodon credentials. Easy.

It took a while before the splash screen gave way to the intro (I succumbed to the urge to force-close it), and now I’m in!

Unstructured observations:

Adding sources to one’s Home feed or a custom feed using the built-in search page is fairly intuitive and quick. Just type something and a range of source types appear. Magic?

Me first, though I’m no narcissist. I hope. My Mastodon bio page is a bit truncated but it’s probably too big anyway.

The Feeds, Posts and Discuss tabs behave differently to each other.

  • Feeds shows one’s feeds (Home and custom).
  • Posts is a Flipboard-like flip interface with a limited number of one-at-a-time posts shown.
  • Discuss has a free-scrolling list of the same posts, again a limited quantity.

Right now my Watch, Read and Look tabs don’t have any content, and because it’s a beta I can only see the top of the words “Nothing is here right now”, with no ability to scroll down. I’m using a beta of iOS 18.3 until the next public update, and on an iPhone XS.

Ah, it’s variable, I looked at another feed and can see the whole message now. A good thing I’m used to pretending I properly beta test stuff isn’t it!

Picking an individual account to follow in a feed either shows nothing for a Micro.blog user’s account (I guess it’ll take a while to populate) or, in the case of the RSS feed for xkcd.com, another Flipboard flip layout. Incidentally, I initially used Surf.social’s browser setting to open in an external app, not sure I like it so will change.

And the xkcd feed truncates the images, based as it is on their height not width; I’d prefer to see the whole thing previewed but maybe that’s just me?

I do like Surf.social’s search. It’s a world apart from Mastodon’s because it finds stuff. (I know Mastodon’s philosophy is to limit visibility and thus the likelihood of abuse; so this is not a complaint).

Whoever’s working the Surf.social account right now sent me this very useful reply:

“Here are two ideas to dive in:

  1. Start by surfing some of the great custom feeds we’re featuring in Home. Try tapping the Sources tab to get a sense of how these feeds are built.
  2. Tap “Create a New Feed” to get started making your own custom feed. Once you’ve done this, tapping the star icon will let you choose between adding a feed to home or other feeds you are making.

The email you got from us should have more suggestions!

Contact us at support@surf.social if you have any issues

Otherwise feedback@surf.social is welcome

Ride on… 🤙

And with that I’ll stop writing and just have a play for a bit.

Addenda

(Listed in the order found, feedback for some sent to the developer via the TestFlight app):

I’ve explored a bit more and thanks to Marci added a ‘Puppy training‘ feed container containing their ‘Dog Training. Help!‘ feed container. It’s a really cool concept and it just works. Feeds of feeds in feeds, oh yes.

I’d really like to be able to add RSS feeds by URL but it doesn’t look to be possible, at least not yet. For instance I have feeds for a couple of subreddits I moderate; I’m sent either new posts or new comments in those subreddits, and I get my post submissions, saved links and incoming messages from across the network. I’ve a couple of custom Google News searches running too. When RSS feeds arrive I’ll be happier.

I recently signed up to the Bluesky.social network to follow accounts that primarily exist (or until recently) existed on Twitter – and do not exist on Mastodon, not yet. Now I’ve not looked in Twitter for a while. Whilst my timelines there aren’t as ‘polluted’ as some I’ve heard about I’m just opposed to using it since elmo bought the place. I’ve been careful who I follow to maintain a degree of sanity. However, Mastodon is where I want to be, and that’s why – for me – Bluesky isn’t comfortable. Using Surf.social removes the need to check Bluesky – and so I can focus on what I’m interested in without necessarily seeing any discussion.

Mastodon polls don’t show the available options, only the supporting text.

Update: I thought at first there was no ‘proper’ method to remove a source from a custom feed – that one must select it, add and then select the feed from which it must be removed. The dialogue then shows the operation’s success. And so I said “Early days yet.” However I found what’s likely to be the intended method of removing a feed – select the ‘…’ menu at the top of the feed and choose the option to remove from there.

Viewing a Mastodon thread a post is linked to still sends me out of the app despite me deselecting the ‘Use External Browser’ option in Settings.

A feed’s Watch (videos), Read (articles) Listen (new to me, no content yet) and Look (somehow different to Read) tabs now have content. Too granular?

The Listen tab is probably a placeholder for me because I haven’t added any podcasts yet.

Bug, or just my ineptitude: Attempting to add Jeremy Cherfas’ excellent food series ‘Eat This Podcast’ by searching first for his name brings it up in the Podcasts section (complete with familiar icon and description) but then attempts to add a ‘November Learning’ feed. Searching by its title instead simply fails to find the podcast feed in the Podcasts section or anywhere else.

Update: I really really do like the way the feed ‘containers’ work. I’ve setup 4 so far:

  • ‘Puppy training’ (containing Marci’s feed),
  • ‘Quotes’ (quotations),
  • ‘bazbt3’s feeds’ (unoriginal I know),
  • And one called ‘All’, containing the preceding 3.

So I’ve gone 3 levels deep.

Ok, quite a lot of the feed items don’t render particularly pleasingly, and I should probably turn off auto-starting videos (if there’s an option to), and I still don’t really understand why there are so many tabs and what they’re used for. But the app has promise, and I can see why the Flipboard team decided to make it, it’s kind-of… liberating.

Fleas

The area of Mollie cat’s back immediately ahead of her tail has always been sensitive. I recently noticed it had become ‘crusty’ under her fur – as-if she had a bad case of lumpy dandruff, and what I’d term hyper-sensitive (I am not a nurse/doctor).

We got home from the vet earlier. It’s fleas. The vet ran a fine-toothed comb through the fur, rolled the flakes/flecks, whatever they were, in a paper towel and found leftover blood. Flea poo.

So Mollie got a flea and worming treatment, a steroid injection for the sensitivity to touch (she licks and bites when it happens), and I signed her up to the vet’s health plan to reduce ongoing bills.

She’s 15 and I’m, er… a few multiples of that. It’s my very first experience of fleas, aside from the amateur nit nurse in primary school mistaking my dandruff for tiny organisms. My mum resented the implication and marched down to school to confront the errant lady, despite what we now know about the link between nits and good cleanliness. (Anyone, at any time, with clean or dirty hair it matters not, can get head lice and nits, and it’s not difficult to get rid of them).

Anyway, Pumpkin puppy already had her treatment on plan so I just need to get Stella cat’s done, and get her signed up to the plan.

And some flea spray for the house. And wash yet more bedding and…

…maybe get the girls to mention it to their friends, some of whom might be mature enough to not judge…

And only now, as I write this, has my skin started to…

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!