Kind: Notes
Short content: a post or status update with just plain content and typically without a title.
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Drinking a coffee while editing a podcast episode in the beautiful Ullswater valley, and this lovely little pied wagtail came by to say good morning!
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Pied Wagtail (motacilla alba yarrelli) atop a dry stone wall.
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I spent a while failing to interpret this sign. It seemed to be saying that if you didn't clear your tray... then you'd get ketchup poured on your wrist?
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Printed sign reading 'this is a self-clear area; thank you' beneath a red illuminated icon of a hand onto whose wrist a bottle drips.
It turns out there's a baby bottle warming station on the other side of the bins.
(It is possible they my brain is struggling from a lack of sleep.)
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It's been too damn hot out, so Ruth, the kids, and I took refuge at the snow park of an indoor ski centre!
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Ring riders on an indoor ski slope.
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Wikipedia @ 25: Milices Patriotiques
My random Wikipedia article of the day was Milices Patriotiques, who were a 22,000-strong communist group and part of the Belgian resistance in the Second World War. Which sounded really interesting, but their article was tragically short so that's pretty much all I have to say about them!
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Hold your head up high and show some PRIDE.
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A pride parade.
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If the Romans played bingo, do you think the callers would have used 'bingo lingo'?
- Legs two
- Growing up the wall, four
- Seagull in flight, five
- Long-nosed dead man, nineteen
- Pornography, thirty
- Use your tongue, fifty-nine
- Smiling in a blindfold, a hundred and one
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An American-style bingo card with Roman numerals in place of the numbers and 'quadrum gratuitum' in place of the free space. Based on an original photo by Oeil De Vautour / Edwin Torres, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
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Wikipedia @ 25: Jim Marshall
Today's random Wikipedia article was Jim Marshall (photographer). I enjoyed reading about him and even looked up some of the many photographs that he took of musicians in the 60s and 70s, but decided that because I was literally just writing about a photographer that I learned-about on Wikipedia, it probably wasn't the time to write about another!
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Wikipedia @ 25: The Bugler of Algiers
Today's random Wikipedia article, which didn't make it into a full blog post or podcast episode like a few earlier ones did, was The Bugler of Algiers. This 1916 silent film, based on a novel called We Are The French, has no surviving copies and it's no longer even known what role some of the billed cast played in it! Among others, it starred Kingsley Benedict, who would later go on to feature in Fast and Furious! No... not that one... the 1927 silent comedy (which you can watch on YouTube... it's... about three times as long as it needs to be, IMHO).
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Rubberdogging
Rubberdogging, verb: attempting to invent a solution to a technical problem by explaining it out loud to a pet. From "rubberducking", the practice of doing so to an inanimate object, and "dog walking".
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Wikipedia @ 25: Presto Card
The Presto Card is Toronto and the surrounding area's equivalent of London's Oyster Card. I enjoyed learning about it, but I don't think it justifies a whole blog post of what-I-learned.
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This plant has sonehow managed to grow through the atrtoturf lawn of our temporary home!
Life... uh... finds a way?
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A leafy plant growing in the middle of an artificial lawn.
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Observation:
Media franchises attract fandoms, and many get their fair share of character 'shipping (especially of the attractive characters).
Soccer also attracts huge fandoms... but I don't think I've ever seen or heard of "soccer slash" (even of the attractive players).
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Four-cell table showing the intersections of Fandoms and Slash with Media and Soccer, respectively. Media + Fandoms is a photo from Comic-Con; Media + Slash is a comic art picture of Captain Kirk and Spock kissing; Soccer + Fandom is a full World Cup stadium; Soccer + Slash just shows a question mark.
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Why, when I change the temperature on the thermostat of my Renault Zoe does it change the fan direction, too? Is this a UI affordance for people who want their faces colder but their feet warmer? I don't understand!
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A white hand turns the thermostat knob in a car from 19℃ to 20℃ in 0.5℃ increments; the untouched nearby fan direction control seems to change of its own accord. Initially blowing towards the user's face it switches on 'towards feet' at 19.5℃ and switches off 'towards face' at 20℃, and reverses the process when the temperature is turned down again.
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Even this self-checkout thinks I'm eating too much chocolate.
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Self-checkout screen abbreviating a product name to 'Cadbury Giant Butt'.
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Four OpenBenches
Despite Google making it harder for me to do so 🤬, I managed to add not one, not two, not three but four new memorial benches to the OpenBenches database during a dog walk this morning.
A particular excitement was adding my first bench with two plaques.
It's the little things.