Status Report

I've spent much of the past week feeling various measures of not great, and the last two days feeling pretty awful. Fortunately, it has nonetheless been a productive week - I had a list of five things I wanted to get done, and can report significant progress on four of them:

• I finished two books this holiday, being the final book from The List, and one from the big pile of waiting books. That clears off one of the items from my "clearing the decks" list, and takes a bite out of another.
• We've arranged to have the carpet in the upstairs hallway replaced - that should be done by the end of this month, and just in time for my penultimate update on goals for the year.
• The NAS has been set up! It was horrible, but the various steps were taken, the PCs are now backed up (and set up to back up), the media server is set up and working, and the library is populated at least with some things. I now have a very large task to populate the rest of it, but that's another job for another day (or year).
• I tried to update the church website, only to discover that the server is positively creaking. Some surgery has been done to this, and a big chunk of the update is now done (or at least good enough). There's quite a bit still to go, especially on the back end, but I'm happy with what I've done.
• I did not, however, get any of those 6,000 words written.

All in all, I'm happy with that. I now have one more task on the "clear the decks" list to go, and one goal to complete on my trio for the year. So that's pretty good, I think.

Baking with Surprise! #1: Meringues

One of the side-effects of making the chocolate velvet ice cream is that it left me with three egg whites to use up. Which obviously meant that there was a need to make meringues. And so yesterday, Surprise! and I made up a batch.

Making meringues is, of course, pretty easy, which makes it ideal for a small child to help with - Surprise! had great fun adding the sugar a spoonful at a time, until he got bored of that, and then he had great fun using the electric mixer to combine the sugar with the eggs.

And so now I have ten meringues to eat up...

Not Baking With Funsize #8: Chocolate Velvet Ice Cream

We've all been on holiday this past week. We didn't actually go anywhere, which has meant we've been scrabbling around for things to do. And so, one of those things was for Funsize and I to make some ice cream. Which was, of course, great fun.

I've made this ice cream before, and it is very nice. That hasn't changed with this iteration. Neither has the simplicity of making it. The main benefit of the experience this time was that Funsize enjoyed the process, such that she is now keen to make many more ice creams in the future.

Which means I'll need to come up with some nice flavours for us to try.

#18: "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand (the final book from The List!)

Babylon 5: The Road Home

As I've said before, I'm a huge fan of "Babylon 5" - I consider it to be the third-best Sci-fi show of all time (behind only "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who"). So when it was announced that a new B5 Tv movie was coming, I was of course going to get it and watch it!

Unfortunately, B5 has a significant problem in that the core story (seasons 2-4 of the show) is absolutely solid, but everything around that is of wildly variable quality - "Crusade" had potential but never lived up to it, "Legend of the Rangers" didn't proceed beyond a pilot for fairly good reason, season 1 was very slow and season 5 stretched too little material into too many episodes, and of the T movies only "In the Beginning" was truly great. And any new B5 project has an even bigger problem that about half of the core cast have now passed away.

So a new TV movie was a somewhat dubious proposition. But it's B5, so of course I still watched it.

And it's good. At least, it's good if you've seen and enjoyed the show - it adds a bit more context to some parts of the story, it fills in some of the "darkest timeline" stuff we see in a couple of episodes, and it of course centres around some beloved characters. It's a fairly small moment, but my favourite point probably involved some corn fields, of all things.

But my main reaction to the movie was that it left me wanting to watch "Babylon 5" again, and I just don't have time for that.

My recommendation for this one has to be conditional: if you haven't seen "Babylon 5", don't bother with this. And if you didn't enjoy B5, you won't enjoy this. But if you did, and you feel like revisiting the Third Age of Mankind, this is a fun way to do that.

Ahsoka

There is no Star Wars TV series that I have looked forward to more than "Ahsoka". I'm a big fan of "The Clone Wars" and "Rebels", and very much enjoyed Ahsoka's appearances in both "The Mandalorian" and "The Book of Boba Fett". But after the abject failure that was "Secret Invasion", I actually approached the series with something approaching terror.

The good news is that that terror was almost entirely unfounded - "Ahsoka" has an excellent cast, a strong (albeit very slow) plot, and loads and loads of Star Wars goodness. And the fifth episode, in particular, may be the single best thing Disney have done with Star Wars since they got it.

I don't want to say much more about the series now, to avoid spoilers. I strongly recommend it. But, if you haven't watched "The Clone Wars" and, especially, "Rebels", I strongly recommend waching those first - while "Ahsoka" does manage to stand alone, it gains a huge amount from the context that those shows give.

#17: "Elektra", by Jennifer Saint (good book, by the way)

The SNP's Management Woes 2023

Oddly, the SNP today find themselves with almost exactly the same predicament as Rangers did on Saturday night - the guy at the top is clearly not cut out for it and absolutely has to be replaced, but despite that there is the issue that whoever they appoint next will still have to deal with the same players, who are also clearly not good enough. (There's also an uncanny similarity about them both being utterly strapped for cash, but that's a whole other topic.)

The big difference between the situations though is that Rangers do at least have the ability to go and find a manager from anywhere, and in theory they could find someone who can get more out of the existing crop of players and coax them through to the transfer window. The SNP's list of viable candidates for leader has exactly one name on it, and during the previous leadership election the powers-that-be within the SNP did a really good job of toxifying her in the media.

So, they're basically screwed. At this stage, the future for the SNP looks like being limping through to the General Election, taking a major kicking, limping through to the Scottish Elections, taking another major kicking, dropping out of government, and then maybe rebuilding from there.

In the meantime, Humza Yousaf must go... but don't expect much to improve as a result.

Paramount+

We're coming to the end of our three-month deal with Paramount+. As it happens, I'm going to renew for one additional month (to let "Star Trek: Lower Decks" conclude its fourth season), but after that I'll be cancelling.

Overall, I feel I've had my money's worth from the subscription, but only just - I basically subscribed for the various "Star Trek" shows, and have had good viewing from those. I've also watched two films, one of which I enjoyed and the other not so much. (It would be quite nice if "Scream 6" happened to return to the service in the next month, but I'm not too hopeful.)

Ultimately, though, I have very little interest in the rest of the offering - and, indeed, since I went in assuming I was going to cancel before too long, I deliberately didn't take a chance on any of the other series.

The upshot, therefore, is that I think this is probably a channel I'll dip in to for a couple of months roughly yearly, to catch up on the various Trek series, but otherwise won't bother with. And my recommendation would probably be to do the same. (This makes it different from Disney+, which is basically a permanent subscription for us - there's just too much good stuff on there.)

Clearing the Decks

Now that we're more than three-quarters of the way through the year, and with both my RPG campaign and the final book in The List coming towards their conclusions, I find myself thinking about the benefits of a clean slate going in to next year. There are a number of things that have been sitting in my To Do pile for quite some time, and a few other things that haven't been but maybe should.

In which case, here's the list of things I'd like to get done in the remainder of this year:

• Finish the final book on The List.
• Start reading through the big pile of books I have waiting.
• Replace the carpet in the upstairs hallway.
• Set up the NAS. (Yes, I recall my post from last month. But it bothers me having it just sitting there as an active accusation.)
• Update the church website. That has been sitting ignore dfor far too long, and really needs some attention.
• Finish the writing of the final part of the campaign - I have 6,000 words to go, and it would be good to get them written.

And that's it. I don't expect to get all of these done, and indeed may barely scratch the surface, but at least there's a list to be working through. Oh, it's also perhaps worth noting that this is not an ordered list - it's just a bunch of things to do, without priorities.

Experimental Cookery 2023: Blackberry and Apple Crumble

Excuse me while I wax nostalgic for a moment...

Growing up we had a variety of desserts, often fruit-based (a particular 'favourite' was tinned peaches with condensed milk). In hindsight, this was largely a consequence of my parents raising a large family on a single income. Unfortunately, as time went on the stresses of this got to Mum, and desserts became even more constrained by the need to be extremely convenient as well - fruit sponge was replaced with 'treacle' sponge as the latter could be made in the microwave.

I have, of course, made crumble before. However, I think the last time was back when I was in high school. And, like the aforementioned fruit sponge, these are the sorts of desserts that we used to enjoy that we just don't have any more.

The method for this one came out of Mary Berry's "Simple Comforts". I make no apology for using a recipe for this rather than doing it from memory - that is, after all, what we have recipes for.

Needless to say, this is quick and easy to put together. I spent more time peeling and chopping apples than I did on anything else, and I didn't spend much time even on that. Then it went into the oven, and was forgotten about for 45 minutes.

In terms of taste and feel, this was great. A real nostalgic treat. And, yes, I'd certainly have this again, despite my total inability to persuade Funsize either to help with the cooking or indeed to eat any of it.

All in all, that's a win in my book.

The Countdown

I'm currently reading the final book in The List, which runs to 1,168 pages in length. Given the density of the text, I've set myself a target of 12 pages per day, and have just passed the 800 day mark, which means I should finish it around the end of next month.

I'm very much looking forward to it all being done - this final book is not exactly great (more on that when it is done), it will be good to finally complete this task, but also I have a huge pile of books waiting to be read and it will be good to feel free to get to them.

Rangers Management Woes 2023

These seem to be coming earlier and earlier each year!

After today's defeat, Rangers find themselves 7 points behind Celtic. That means that if they change their manager now, the new guy has it within his power to win the league - just win all your games, and it's job done. If Rangers lose one more game, that is no longer the case and they'll need someone to do them a favour.

(Of course, the current Rangers team are in no shape to win all their remaining games, but that's another issue - I'm just talking about the mathematics of the situation.)

Since Michael Beale is clearly not the solution they need, and isn't going to make it to the end of the season, that means the time to act is now. But there's a really big problem: if you're going to change manager, you need to find someone better. And in this case that someone must be able to take this group of players through to the January transfer window without dropping any points, and then must be able to get through the rest of the season with, most likely, only nominal rebuilding (because Rangers spent all their money backing Beale).

It's really hard to think who they could get in that circumstance.

And yet, do it they must.

The Dream

For the past few years we have had milk delivered to our door. Consequently, the dream has always been to get up before the milk is delivered. ("The dream" doesn't need to make sense; it just is.) I had actually assumed that this was impossible - when I returned home after Grandma's funeral I found the milk waiting for me at half past midnight that night, so getting up before that would be madness.

However, since we adopted Lion I have been responsible for the morning walk on weekdays, and that has seen me leaving the house at 6.15. And the last twice we have had a milk delivery, I've returned from that walk just as the milkman has gotten to our house.

So, huzzah, the dream has been fulfilled!

The downside now is that I need a new dream...

(Incidentally, prior to Covid we had milk deliveries at the office. And on exactly one occasion I made it to the office before the milk arrived. So the dream was fulfilled there, too. We don't have milk deliveries any longer, though that isn't really anything to do with me.)

Resting my Brane

I fell in front of the TV on Wednesday. This seemingly-mundane event really isn't like me - the last time it happened was on the day after Funsize was born. So it's a sign that I'm really tired. Not my usual, extreme, level of tiredness, but something more.

As a consequence of this, I've been taking things somewhat easier the last few days, and intend to keep doing so over the weekend. Sadly, the auspices don't look good...

Millstone

A few months ago, after many years of consideration of the matter, I finally bought a NAS. It's a lovely device, that sits proudly on a shelf in pride of place.

And I wish I'd never bought the damn thing.

It took me several weeks to find any time to get the thing out of its box, and then still more weeks to install its expanded RAM, find, a spot for it on a shelf, and the switch it on. And then I promptly switched it off again, because I had absolutely no time to do anything more with it.

Several weeks later I again found a little time, and started on the "quickstart" guide for setting it up. Which took several hours, and got the device configured so that it is usable.

Sort of.

Because while the device itself is usable, in order to actually do anything it needs to be made visible on our network, it needs the relevant files copied across (and regular backups set up), it needs configured as a media server, and all our other devices need set up to act as clients.

And I have neither the time or, frankly, even the remotest inclination ever to do any of that. Because the whole thing is such a massive pain to do anything with that I really can't be bothered.

At this point, the most honest thing for me to do with it, and the thing that would cause me the least pain and hassle, would be to put it back in its box, put the box in the garage, and forget I ever bought the thing.

(I can't even sell it on now, because it's set up just enough that I'd have to restore it to factory defaults before I did. And even the thought of doing that pisses me off.)

The whole thing has just turned into a devastating waste of time, money, and energy. And is, frankly, really upsetting.

No, Tesco, Nobody Said "Christmas"

Doing the weekly shop this morning I noticed that Tesco now have their first Christmas displays up, bearing the legend "Did somebody say Christmas". Given that it is the 15th of September, and indeed we were enjoying our belated Summer only a week ago, this is frankly absurd.

Hang your heads in shame, Tesco.

How to Screw Up an Idea

Apparently the Welsh government are about to change the default speed limit on their roads to 20mph. Which is absolutely fine, I guess - I'm not particularly a fan, but I don't have any enormous objection.

But...

The law is being changed to make this the default the speed limit on all "restricted roads", which are defined as those where the lamp-posts are less than a certain distance apart.

At which point the whole thing goes from being a reasonable change that I don't particularly like to being one that is utterly insane. Because drivers won't be, and indeed shouldn't be, aware of the exact distance between lamp-posts as they drive through an area. Not only is it an inappropriate distraction from what they should be paying attention to, it's also something that people aren't going to be able to estimate - if there's a row of lamp-posts on the road ahead of you, your estimate of the distance separating them is going to itself be affected by the speed at which you are travelling!

By all means, reduce the speed limits. But for goodness sake, clearly and explicitly indicate the speed limits that apply! We have perfectly good, indeed extremely clear, signs that can be used to indicate the speed limits. Use them.

Day 257: Update on Goals

I realised last night that I was overdue for an update...

• Books: I'm almost halfway through the final book from The List, and expect to finish either late October or early November. I've read a total of 16 books so far this year, which isn't exactly a huge number.
• Blogging: By day 200 I should have completed 84ish posts here, plus a further 42 on The Imaginarium. I'm behind on both blogs, although not disastrously so in either case.
• Redecorating: We've mounted some nice picture frames in our hallway, and so the final remaining job that I'd like to do this year is to replace the hallway carpet. That feels like it should be doable by the end of the year. That leaves a grand total of five rooms in the house that we haven't redecorated since moving in, where the next on the list will most likely be Surprise!'s bedroom. But that's a discussion for another day.
• Other stuff: Nothing to report here.

The goals remain more of less achievable by the end of the year. But given how light they are, that's not a great achievement.

#16: "Firefly: Carnival", by Una McCormack

Gubbed

It turns out that I was wrong about my hard drive - although it did start working again, that was a final flourish before giving up the ghost. It appears to be totally dead this time.

I have purchased a new (and, indeed, bigger) hard drive to replace the failed unit. I decided that was cheaper and less hassle than having to engage with tech support (who, almost certainly, would just replace the drive anyway, with all data lost). I'll have a go at recovering the, fortunately few, things on the old drive that weren't backed up, but I don't hold out much hope.

Which is all somewhat odd: prior to 2023 I'd never had a hard drive actually fail on me. In the course of this year, LC and I have now each had a drive do exactly that, in each case with the loss of some, but not all, data.

That's What Passes for a Good Movie These Days?

The other thing I did on Sunday was finish watching "Top Gun: Maverick", which I'd made three previous attempts to watch and only managed ten minutes (the joy of Funsize and Surprise! discovering TV). It was one of a handful of things I wanted to watch before our Paramount+ subscription expires (the remaining two being "Scream 5" and a second watch of the D&D movie).

Anyway, I had been quite hopeful about TG:M, as it had had some rather good reviews.

Um...

The film follows a time-honoured formula: Maverick is a hotshot pilot who falls afoul of authority. He finds himself called back to Top Gun as an instructor, taking on the mentor role from the original film. There he deals with students with such well-developed personalities as "the arrogant one", "the angry one", "the female one", and, um, "the other one". (There only being three character traits possible for a fighter pilot, and "has boobs" is one of them.)

He also rekindles an on/off affair with Generic Bar-owner #1, in which Jennifer Connelly does her absolute best with a character with no personalty at all. (In theory, the character does also have the hook that she's a single mother. But as far as I can tell, her daughter exists for the sole reason that the two of them can have a conversation about a boat, thus passing the Bechdel Test.)

Anyway.

Maverick has to train his students for an almost impossible mission: they have to blow up a uranium refinement plant in an entirely-undefined enemy nation (might as well be Canada). The approach to this will not be easy: they are required to skim the surface to this point. Then they have to hit a target point that is only two metres wide. Oh, and they have to use missiles, presumably because the shaft is ray shielded. (They even have a bit where one of the characters has to make do without a targeting system, presumably using the Force instead.)

Throw in a couple of scenes lifted almost whole-cloth from the original (replacing beach volleyball with beach football), and then add a handful of callbacks to the first film to tug on nostalgia. And we're done.

On the one hand, it's a work of absolute genius - huge numbers of people went to see it and by all accounts had a great time, and to do that with no originality in either characters or story is impressive. On the other hand, it's just plain silly.

So I must admit, I'm perplexed as to how it can have garnered such impressive reviews - I can buy "terrific, brainless fun", but anything beyond that...?

A Lucky Escape

My big challenge on Sunday came in the form of a broken PC - after restarting Chrome to update I discovered it suddenly wouldn't load my home page (which is a page of links stored on my D drive). I then rebooted the machine as a whole, only to find that the D drive as a whole had disappeared.

Needless to say, I was less than pleased with this, given that the PC is less than six months old. I was less pleased still when I discovered that Dell's automated chat assistant was only able to point me at a couple of utterly useless troubleshooting articles. And, of course, it being Sunday there was no chance of speaking to an actual human.

Though in the event that wasn't such a big deal - the root cause turned out to be nothing Dell could really help with anyway.

In an attempt to diagnose the fault I removed the drive, plugged it into my adapter, and connected it to LC's laptop. That confirmed that the drive itself was working. I then reconnected to the other machine, and accessed the BIOS, and it was working there too. But rebooting the machine still showed the problem.

Then I got lucky. Somewhere in there the machine restarted, and suddenly it was all working again!

The reason for this is that I have a powered USB hub attached (which is on its way out) and an external hard drive (which is definitely on its way out). When the PC restarts, but not when it boots from cold, this hub often fails to activate three of the ports, including the one with the drive attached. It appears that one of those two components is causing the problem.

Which is all to the good. I'll need to get a new USB hub sooner rather than later, since the other devices that are attached are rather important. And one of these days I'll find time to actually set up our NAS, after which the external drive will be obsolete.

So, a lucky escape. Not my best ever Sunday though.

Strange New Worlds

The new Star Trek shows have been a distinctly mixed bag. I've enjoyed "Discovery", but it has been fairly workmanlike rather than a true "must see". "Picard" was okay in the first season, pretty dire in the second, and then great in the third. "Lower Decks" has been consistently great, and after a slow start "Prodigy" came together well (just in time to be cancelled).

"Strange New Worlds" is the best of the bunch. Starting with a fantastic cast, and a setting that hits just the right level of nostalgia, it then adds a whole bunch of really good episodes that just ties things up neatly. Plus, with it being more than 20 years since "Voyager" ended (with "Enterprise" doing something distinctly different), it seems like the writers found themselves sitting on a bunch of really great Star Trek stories that they've now had opportunity to pull out.

It's all great. I don't know how long they'll be able to maintain the quality, and I'm also not sure when I'll get to watch (my current offer on Paramount+ isn't for much longer, and it isn't worth subscribing to for anything other than Trek), but I have no hesitation in recommending this one - if you get a chance to see it, take it!

The Weekend From Hell

It's fair to say we've not had the best of weekends.

In honour of the schools going back, Surprise! came down with some nasty virus last week. By Friday he was mostly back to himself, or so we thought until about 10pm, when he woke up and spewed everywhere. As a consequence of this, I found myself sitting up with him until 1am, initially watching nursery rhymes on YouTube, and then later catching up on the new Futurama while he slept. (Sadly, I'm not particularly impressed with this latest reboot, but that's another story.)

I was then up just after 6am to take Lion for her morning walk. Needless to say, that meant that Saturday was essentially a write off. I'm sure I did the Broxburn Gala Day, but don't really have any memory of it.

Sunday started okay, with us getting up, going to church, and then having lunch. So far, so good. Unfortunately that's where things came unstuck - Surprise! really needed a nap but absolutely refused to go to sleep. Cue lots of crying, lots of frayed tempers, and a generally bad time had by all.

Eventually he did go down, and once he'd had a sleep and then something to eat (after another bout of crying because he was hungry but refusing to eat), all was well once again. But the weekend was thoroughly destroyed.

Needless to say, I was glad to reach Monday!

Catering for Fifty

I have recently found myself cooking BBQ for fifty people. The story of how this came about isn't something I can share here, but fortunately I can share that it went extremely well - the food all came out well cooked (well, mostly - there were a couple of very crispy burgers in there), everyone had enough, and there weren't any points where there was a big queue of people waiting to be fed. Which was all good.

The big lesson to learn from this is: never again! It was too much to take on, at least with the facilities that I had available. For cooking for fifty I think there would be a need for some other cooking facilities, such that I can produce some pulled pork, or similar options to cook for a lot of people at once - a water smoker or similar would be needed.

The second lesson is that the job was actually a lot worse in the build-up than in the reality. I had spent quite a lot of time worried that it just wouldn't work out, and in the end it turned out just to be a big effort, but not fundamentally difficult.

The final lesson, and one that is of use even for our 'regular' BBQs is that the approach of having a dedicated serving area was definitely a good idea - we had a big table set aside for all the non-meat foods, and then another table with the meats (and meat substitutes) to be served from. And these were carefully segregated to account for dietary needs.

And that's really all there is to say about that. It was a really good day, quite aside from my part in it.

Edinburgh

A few weeks ago I found myself needing to go to Edinburgh. That's something I avoid as much as possible as a matter of course, but this time there was no avoiding it. Planning the journey, though, reminded me of why I try to avoid the place.

The first thing that I discounted was driving. Edinburgh Council are famously anti-car - the roads are terrible, the parking is extorionate and quite some distance from the center, and if you do get lost it can be a nightmare.

For much the same reason I discounted the buses. Although there are some buses from close to the office that go in to Edinburgh, without pre-existing knowledge of Edinburgh it's really hard to know which bus you need, which stop to ask for, or indeed how to get back out. Plus, the roads are terrible.

There's the tram link. On the face of it, this is pretty ideal - it runs from Edinburgh Park right in to Princes Street, there's only one stop there, the tickets are a fixed price, and there's a tram every 8 minutes or so. Ideal.

Or it would be, except that there's no parking at Edinburgh Park. There is the Retail Park, which does indeed have parking... but only for customers. Which means that getting the tram means either walking the few miles from the office to the stop (which, in fairness, is quite pleasant - but which adds an awful lot to the journey), or it means driving to Ingliston and parking there - defeating the point of using the tram.

Finally, there's the train. Which has all the same problems as the tram, but also only runs every half hour.

However, in the end I did take the train - just not from Edinburgh Park. Instead I worked from home in the morning, then took the train from Livingston. Which was fine, since it has parking.

But, honestly, it's really not good. For Scotland's supposed capital city, it really should be more easily accessible. Really, how hard would it be to provide usable parking at the key train and tram stations along the way, so that the public can actually make easy use of the public transport that is available?

Oh Deer

I almost hit a deer on my way to work today. While the schools are on holiday I've switched to using the motorway to get to work as it is, in theory, marginally faster. While heading towards the motorway this morning I saw a young deer crossing the road ahead of me. Then it got spooked before crossing the other carriageway and instead ran back across the road - right in front of me.

Fortunately, I was able to stop safely and in time, and so the deer emerged unscathed. Less fortunately, I fear that may be an indication of just how my day is going to go.

#15: "Parenting Hell", by Widdicombe and Beckett

Introducing "Lion"

It has been an exciting week. In addition to the potty training/broken washing machine combination, we were visited by the new addition to our family: as of Thursday the Knigdom of Stevonia will adopt a dog!

She's a retired greyhound - huge, but very calm. She immediately took to the children, and they to her.

LC and I have been talking about getting a dog basically since we got married, but while we were living in the flat in Falkirk that just wasn't an option. When we moved, Funsize was already on the way, and then there was a small window of opportunity once she was two but Surprise! not yet on the way. So this is, in effect, the earliest this has really been a realistic possibility.

Since everyone else has a chocolate-themed "blog name", our newest addition needs one too. And since I could think of only one animal-themed chocolate bar (though I expect the immediately think of another dozen options once I post this), she shall henceforth be known as "Lion".

Bad Timing

We started Surprise! on potty training on Sunday. It's probably a little overdue, but not by too much, and children do seem to take to it a bit better if it's left later.

Our washing maching broke down on Sunday. Because, of course, the moment you start doing something liable to generate a load of extra washing, that's when you want the machine to give up the ghost.

The good news is that it's covered by warranty, so someone will be out to fix it on Thursday. But the next few days could be exciting.

#12: "Lion", by Conn Iggulden
#13: "Star Wars Roleplaying Game", by various authors
#14: "Guardians of the Wild Unicorns", by Lindsay Littleson (which started as a book for Funsize, but she lost interest)

Good Omens 2

LC and I finished watching this last night. Going in, I had serious misgivings - partly because the first series exhausted the first book, partly because sequels are just never as good, and partly because the Pratchett/Gaiman pairing had a certain magic to it that Gaiman alone necessarily lacked.

So...

Yeah, it's good. It's not as good as the first series, but then I don't think anything really could have been. But Tennant and Sheen are now a well-practiced double act and they're both clearly familiar with their roles and also clearly having fun. And the series is just that - fun.

Ultimately, I do recommend it, and I'm finding myself looking forward to the third (and, I think, final) series. It might not work out, of course, but it has been left in a good place (from a storytelling point of view), and there's a lot more fun to be had.

Good stuff.

Still Counts as One

One of my goals for the year was to repaint the painted sections of our main bathroom and downstairs toilet, to hang some pictures in the hallway, and to replace the hallway carpet.

Over the weekend, LC proceeded to paint the downstairs toilet, and also to purchase and fill some picture frames that I then duly hung. Consequently, that goals has taken some massive strides forward.

I do need to stress, of course, that almost none of this was my achievement - all I did was hang the picture frames (and not terribly well!). Still, the goal has taken a big step forward, and it still counts!

#10: "Crucial Conversations", by Grenny, Patterson, Switzler, and McMillan
#11: "Bond: With a Mind to Kill", by Anthony Horowitz

Secret Invasion

There is no MCU TV series that I have looked forward to more than "Secret Invasion". I'm a big fan both of Nick Fury and Samuel L. Jackson, and so a series starring both was almost perfect for me. Plus, the notion of a spy thriller within the MCU, and especially one involving shapeshifting aliens who can look like anyone, with all the tension and paranoia that that implies, is just great.

There is no MCU project that has left me more disappointed than "Secret Invasion". After three really slow episodes of build-up, the series then did very well with episodes four and five, or so I thought, only to blow it with the final episode.

Ultimately, I'm afraid this takes its place as yet another underwhelming MCU project, a tag that applies to most things post-Endgame. It seems that the big plan just came to an end, they've been left with a load of ideas and dangling plot threads, but ultimately they just haven't had any vision for how to build to another climax. Add to that a real-life tragedy that derailed "Black Panther" and a real-life scandal that has left them with huge issues with their new Big Bad, and they have problems.

Sadly, with Lucasfilm also having big failures on all fronts, Pixar largely seeming to have gone cold, and Disney seemingly more interested in dire live-action remakes than in producing the animation they're famed for, it suddenly looks like Disney+ may not be the juggernaut it seemed just a few months ago.

Time for Phone #6

Smartphones have many great advantages, which isn't exactly a surprise - who would have thought carrying around an extremely powerful web-enabled computer at all times would be a definite boon? However, they do have one distinct disadvantage, which is that like PCs they become less useful with time. This takes three forms: the same general slowdown that computers suffer as they are patched and repatched successively, a degradation in the battery life between charges, and storage that becomes increasingly and unavoidably full. All of which means that a smartphone probably doesn't last as long as a non-smart mobile, nor indeed as long as a PC (at least in my hands).

The upshot of all of this is that I've now reached the point where it is time to upgrade my phone again. The previous one has lasted six years after all, which is a good run by any standard, but it has now basically had its day.

Obviously getting a new phone is now much like getting a new PC (though perhaps less confusing, since there's very little by way of an upgrade path once the phone is bought - just the possibility of a Micro-SD card to provide more memory). Which means that having the new phone will be great, since it will represent a significant improvement in performance, but it also means a fairly long and annoying process of getting the new phone set up.

On the plus side, I'm keeping the same SIM, number, and contract, so much of the basic functionality should just carry over. On the downside, I have no idea what my Whatsapp login details are...

Day 200: Update on Goals

Time for the latest update:

• Books: I have recently finished the second of three books from the List. I haven't yet started on the final book, but should still finish by the end of the year (just barely). As anticipated, I have read very few other books this year.
• Blogging: By day 200 I should have completed 67 posts here, plus a further 33 or so on The Imaginarium. I was quite a bit behind at the last update, but managed to catch up in between. I'm now a little behind again, but not by a great deal - with luck I'll be up to date in both places by the end of the month.
• Redecorating: No progress here. I did have to make another small repair job on Funsize's wall, but that doesn't really count.
• Other stuff: Nothing to report here.

I remain optimistic about completing the three goals by the end of the year. The most doubtful, I think, is the redecoration, which we'll know about by the end of October.

For Our Fallen Gondorians

 Back in April, while doomscrolling on Twitter, I saw someone joking that they'd changed their band's signature tune to "For Our Fallen Gondorians". The bagpipe sheet music for this was included in the tweet.

Since then I've never been able to find this sheet music again, no matter how I searched.

Until today. It turns out that my phone quietly saved the file in a secret location, and when I found my phone once again slowing down due to a critical lack of storage, and thus began a purge of old data, I happened to find it.

Which is nice. Now I just need to learn it, remember it, and contrive a good time to sneak it past someone as a lament...

Oops!

I was speaking to a pollster a few minutes ago, and one of the questions I was asked concerned the most pressing burning political issues at the present time. I gave two answers that I thought were fairly non-controversial (the economy and Brexit), then gave a third... and promptly had to clarify what I meant.

Because the third answer I gave was "immigration", at which point I immediately realised that (I think) most people who give than answer mean stopping immigration, which is certainly not what I meant.

On the contrary, I think the way this country is treating people who want to build their lives here, and especially those unfortunates who come here desperately seeking refuge is shameful and is (or should be) damaging to our standing on the world stage.

Indeed, one of the biggest problems we have as a country is that no senior politician (at UK level) is brave enough to stand up and say clearly that immigration is a good thing. Not just because of all the necessary jobs that immigrants appear to be willing to do and nobody else is, not just because they pay in far more to our economy than they collectively take out, but simply in terms of being here.

Diversity is a good thing. It's a shame our politicians can't acknowledge that.

(And if my answer ends up getting lumped in to some Daily Mail headline about immigration being one of the big concerns of British people, I am truly sorry. I should have thought more before I spoke.)

#9: "A Woman of Substance", by Barbara Taylor Bradford (a book from The List - one more to go!)

Minor Annoyances II

Our council are in the process of changing the day for our bin collections, which is absolutely fine. This has, however, led to a big gap between the final "general" bin collection of the old cadence and the first "general" bin collection of the new cadence. That's rather more tricky, as the council have deliberately set the picks ups right on the edge of what people can manage. Still, since it's a necessary change, we could probably be a bit clever and thus cope - it's only another five days wait.

Except...

The council wrote to us offering an additional pick up of the "general" waste bin last week - just put it out, leave it out, and it would be collected. We therefore put our bin out. The council therefore did not collect it.

And that, of course, means that we didn't carefully adjust our behaviours to stretch the additional five days, and now have a bin that is absolutely rammed with almost a week to go before it is collected.

It's fair to say this is a minor annoyance at worst. But those are the worst kind.

Experimental Cookery 2023: Five-spice Chicken Wings

My Birthday BBQ was on Saturday, and in addition to the usual burgers and sausages, this year's flourish was these chicken wings. The method came from Tom Kerridge's "Real Life Recipes" - a book I've used once before with disastrous results.

The good news is that this was a much more successful effort. The chicken just needed put into a bowl with a quickly-assembled marinade, well rubbed, and then left overnight for the flavours to develop. Then a reasonably short time in the oven, turn, another short time in the oven, then five minutes on the BBQ to finish. Oh, and the application of some sesame seeds to complete.

And the chicken was excellent - well cooked, full of flavour, and just generally nice.

The BBQ as a whole was a great success, despite being madly over-catered (I'm not actually sure how that happened - I think some people must just have not eaten as much as expected). We were even lucky with the weather, which had featured showers earlier in the day, rain later in the day, but a dry spell just when it was needed.

All in all, that was a big success. We'll definitely be having these again. (Probably not at the same time as the Firecracker Chicken we've had before, which was also excellent, but there may now be a chicken dish as a mainstay of BBQs for the future.)

Minor Annoyances

A couple of the tyres on my car are slowly losing pressure. That's annoying, but not particularly surprising.

However, the reason I know that two of the tyres are losing pressure is that the screen periodically pops up with the message indicating this. It knows that that is the case because there are pressure sensors on the tyres. And, of course, it is able to detect each time any of the tyres loses pressure, so it is able to check each of the sensors individually.

Which means that the system has everything it would need to tell me which of the four tyres had dropped in pressure, thus saving me the effort of having to check each of the tyres individually.

But, of course, it doesn't do that. Because that would just make things too easy.

(I suspect the real reason is that there's a patent floating around out there which means that Vauxhall can do it on LC's car, but Ford can't on mine. Because some patents are just absurd.)

Anyway, it's a minor annoyance. But those are the worst ones.

Progress on the To Do List

Before the Christmas holiday I made a To Do list with several items on it. I completed very few of these during the holiday, but did eventually complete all but one item.

Before the February break I made another To Do list with several items on it. This time I made a bit more progress, but did eventually complete all but one item - the same item as was outstanding after Christmas.

Before the Easter break I made yet another To Do list. As of this morning I have completed all but one item on it. And, you guessed it, that one outstanding item is the same one as from Christmas.

Still, that's some progress, I guess. I wonder how I'll get on over the Summer holiday?

(Though, funnily enough, that one might actually be completed - due to the nature of that break I won't be inserting that one item on that list. It will still exist on a more general list of things I want to do, but not the list of the holiday specifically. So we'll see...)

Back to School?

Funsize finishes up P1 next Friday, which is fun and exciting - her first ever Summer holidays!

Meanwhile, Tesco's seasonal aisle has, for the past four weeks, been festooned with their "Back to School" range - lots of new and exciting school uniforms that we should buy now to beat the rush (in nice time for her to thoroughly outgrow them for actually going back).

Much as the creeping advancement of Christmas through the calendar annoys me, in truth this is significantly worse. Not only do kinds not even get to enjoy getting to their holidays before being reminded that they're going back soon, but the items on sale become increasingly useless the earlier they are purchased!

The Path Not Taken

One of the more interesting blogs I read has been arguing since day one that the SNP have made a terrible mistake in electing Humza Yousaf, and has been adamant in his belief that they need to replace him with Kate Forbes at the earliest opportunity. One of his arguments recently is that Forbes is apparently the most popular senior politician in Scotland.

Which is true, but...

The fundamental problem is that Kate Forbes represents the path not taken. So as time goes on, and the SNP's problems deepen almost daily, Humza Yousaf looks increasingly like that mistake (in some ways fairly; in others, not so much), and Kate Forbes looks that much better by comparison. "Oh, this is horrible! If only we'd gone for her instead..."

But would the reality of Kate Forbes as First Minister actually be any better? I have my doubts.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that a sizeable number of SNP parliamentarians (in Holyrood and Westminster) are part of the LGBTQ+ community, or allies thereof, and were not unreasonable in their objections to some of the views she expressed in her leadership bid. (I think those questions were largely posed to her as an intentional trap, but that doesn't negate the issue that her answers did represent a genuine statement of her views. All of them, including the statement that she has no interest in rolling back rights, but nonetheless it's not a surprise that people were less than thrilled.) That would make it extremely difficult for her to command the party discipline needed to be an effective leader.

But the second issue concerns the alliance with the Greens. Probably the biggest problem that the SNP government currently has is that everything the Greens touch falls to pieces. Bluntly, the SNP really need to end their alliance with the Greens. That's something Kate Forbes might well do; it's something Humza Yousaf will never do.

The problem is that ending that alliance means returning to minority government. And to run an effective minority government you need allies, or at least people willing to vote for individual measures in order to carry on. In the current climate, that won't be any of the unionist parties - at this stage, and especially with the potential to bring down the government, they're not going to play ball.

And that leaves the Greens as the only option. Break the alliance, and it may well be that the government falls in short order.

While it is looking increasingly like Humza Yousaf is leading the SNP to a relative disaster, at the General Election if not in the Scottish Election, I'm far from convinced that Kate Forbes is the answer. Indeed, I'm increasingly minded to think that there is no answer.

The Worst Gala Day of All Time

Until this weekend, the very worst gala day of all time I'd attended was in a place called Black... something - a tiny village near Greengairs where we'd had a terrible experience. The parade started in one field, passed along a road then to another field, and although there was light rain when we started it rapidly got much heavier. By the time we reached the second field we were wading in mud, and the whole thing had to be abandoned.

Which was a shame, but which pales into insignificance with Saturday's event.

This event is the longest parade we do. The village in question doesn't have much to it - two housing estates separated by the main road - so the parade meets at one end, proceeds down the road and around the other estate, then back up the road and around the first, ending where it started up. It was a hot and sticky day, of the sort that one might mistakenly believe makes for a pleasant piping experience (but really, really doesn't).

But none of that was a problem.

We happened to be there in really good time, and were tuned and ready to go twenty minutes before the start time. And we were second in the parade, behind an ancient open-top "wedding" car, where every time it moved we enjoyed a miasma of fumes.

But none of that was the problem.

While we were waiting, the car would occasionally move forward a bit, and we were asked to move forward to close the gap. After a while, our Pipe Major got bored with this and decided to play a bit to pass the time. So we started - we played "Scotland the Brave" and the first half of "Rowan Tree". The rest of the parade, on hearing us starting, decided that it must be time to GO! This then prompted a panic from the police, and the event organisers, and it all went a bit haywire.

However, that all got sorted out. And we waited another ten minutes, and then it really was time to GO! So off we went - we played "Scotland the Brave" and the first half of "Rowan Tree", got to the top of the street where we were to turn right... and then it all came to a halt.

There was then a lot of frantic discussion, and a fairly long delay. Eventually, word came that we were rerouting the parade, and going to do the last bit first. So off we went. But because of the way the parade was set up, we kept leaving the back of the parade behind, and so had to keep stopping to let them catch up. Then, about two-thirds of the way around the estate, while we were engaged in one of these waits, the wedding car stalled. And the driver couldn't get it going again.

At length, they got some of the local youths to push the car, got it going again, and we completed that circuit. We got back to the top of the first street (where we were supposed to turn right), and then we stopped. And there was a really long delay.

And none of that was the problem. Frankly, the whole situation was very, very funny.

Until suddenly, it wasn't.

Because it turned out that the reason for all of the delays was that the Gala Queen's Mum had collapsed in the street and the paramedics were desperately trying to revive her. She didn't make it.

In the end we completed the parade. The people there very carefully didn't tell the Queen until such time as there was finally no avoiding it, on the grounds that there was nothing to be done, so they let her enjoy her day as much as she could for as long as she possibly could.

But it's fair to say that the second half of the parade was a very different experience to the first.

It's Worse Than That

This afternoon the Commons are going to have a vote on the sanction recommended by the Privileges Committee against Boris Johnson for his many lies over Partygate. It is, frankly, a rather toothless and pointless sanction under the circumstances, but given that it's all that is available, it's welcome.

There is a great deal of anger at what Boris did: that he partied while people died.

But, actually, it's much worse than that.

Because what those many parties at CPHQ and No.10 show is that those involved simply were not taking the threat seriously. And anyone working there who was taking it seriously will have found their work impeded by those who were not.

It's not that Boris partied while people died. People died because Boris partied.

There is no sanction adequate for that man.

The Vacancy Party

Right now our politics is in such a mess that I've realised that those constituencies held by Sinn Fein are actually the best-represented in the country.

And the fundamental problem is that someone has to win the election: I don't particularly like some of the things our current MP has said, and she represents a party that currently makes the Titanic look sea-worthy (even in its current state), but replacing her just means putting into position someone worse from an even worse party.

And that's pretty much universally true everywhere: somehow, they're all worse than each other.

So what I think we need is a new party, the Vacancy Party. They would have no policies, and make only one promise: if elected, their representative would do as Sinn Fein famously do and refuse to take up the seat. Leave it vacant for five years, and force the parties to get their acts together.

Of course, I dread to think what would happen if the Vacancy Party won a majority. Which, given how abysmal things are in our politics right now, wouldn't entirely surprise me.

How Did They Get That So Wrong?

Spoilers for "The Flash" ahead. If you don't want to know, skip this post!

The best superhero movie I've ever seen is probably "The Dark Knight" (though "The Winter Soldier" comes close). The superhero who has been in the most good movies is probably Iron Man. But if you ask me to name a superhero, my first go-to will always be Superman. And the most iconic of all Supermen is Christopher Reeve. Indeed, so iconic was his portrayal that the entire look of Superman changed.

So I presume that the decision to include a cameo of Reeve's Superman in "The Flash" was made for people just like me.

But having seen it, it is an horrific thing. It just looks bad.

And here's the thing: I'm actually not inherently opposed to CGI cameos of characters played by dead actors - I quite enjoyed seeing Tarkin appear in "Rogue One", for instance. But they have to be done well, and this one wasn't.

In addition to the look of the thing, there's another thing that bugs me: in the cameo Superman's entire world is about to be wiped out... and he stands there and watches. I'm sorry, but that's not Superman. Frankly, the ludicrous cameo by the Nic Cage Superman and the giant spider (which is hilarious in its stupidity) is better than this mess.

I still haven't seen "The Flash" as a whole. It had put me in a bind: on the one hand the trailers looked really good; on another the DC films have largely failed to live up to their promise (the first "Wonder Woman" and "Aquaman" were okay); on a third, there were the star's well-publicised issues.

I guess this one makes it quite easy for me: I'll watch it in a few years when (if) it makes it to Prime.

I Suppose It's Never Not a Bad Time

I have a cold. It started with a scratchy throat yesterday, and has rapidly progressed from there. In hindsight, attending the gala day was probably a really poor decision.

Unfortunately, this has come right on top of an already sucky time, and also at a time I really can't afford to be sick. Hopefully it will prove to be a 24-hour thing, or something close to it. (Or, failing that, at least it could have the decency to incapacitate me for a day or two into the new week...)

Capitulation

I see that Pepsi have quietly reformulated their main drink to remove about half the sugar and replace it with artificial sweeteners. This is rather unfortunate, as it now leaves me stuck - up until now, wherever we went they would serve either Coke or Pepsi products, but that always left at least one option to avoid sweeteners. We're now at a point where half the time there will be no option available that avoids them.

The upshot of all of this is that I'm going to have to admit defeat. And, although I very much dislike the sweeteners, and although they don't really agree with me, I think I'm just going to have to get used to them.

On the plus side, that does mean Irn Bru can come back onto the menu (the 1901 stuff was just too expensive to be more than an occasional purchase, and so eventually just dropped off my radar).

Or this could be the time to stop having these drinks entirely. But that's probably crazy talk.

The Sharp Pencil Conundrum

I have a not-quite-serious theory: those in greatest need of a sharp pencil are those least likely to have one to hand.

Back when I was at high school and exam time came upon us, there were a number of my peers who would immediately spring into action: they'd develop a lovely and detailed study plan, giving adequate time to all the subjects, with all sorts of elaborate schemes and divisions, carefully coloured and decorated. It was a thing of beauty. And then they would organise all their materials, making sure everything was carefully to hand and well prepared.

And then they would carefully sharpen all their pencils to a needlelike point and all to the exact same length.

Meanwhile, a few of us would sketch out the briefest possible plan ("I'll study Chemistry this morning and Maths this afternoon...") and get on with it.

By the end of the day it was likely that the people in the first group had put in an awful lot more effort. But that's not the same thing as actually studying.

The sharpening of the pencils is an especially absurd step: although there is a large extent to which you should, of course, take good care of your tools, pencils naturally lose their sharpness over time if left unused. So the optimum approach with those is to pick a reasonably good one when needed and sharpen it then. Then use it, put it aside, and repeat when you next need a pencil.

Since school, I've seen that pattern repeat over and over again. Basically, in almost every organisation I've seen there are some people who can be relied upon to get things done and some people who can be relied upon to put in a lot of effort.

And those are not the same thing.

Gala Day Season 2023 Begins

The band played their first gala day of the year this afternoon, at Mid Calder. It was fine - the usual two-mile parade followed by lunch, followed by playing around a couple of the pubs. I made my exit at this point, but I think some parts of the band continued their pub crawl afterwards.

The day featured glorious sunshine, which always makes these events more enjoyable - for all that I don't like wearing sunblock, it's far preferable to being soaked by rain. And nobody comes out in the rain, rather defeating the purpose of the exercise.

In terms of playing, the band were okay. We're in a very slightly better position than we were a year ago, having lost the sharpness we gained over the course of the season last year. Having observed attendances at practices over the year, that was inevitable - it's also now clear that this will always be the case, so I've made my peace with it.

And that's basically that. Next week is Uphall Station, while Funsize is in the parade at Livingston Village. Shame I can't be in two places at once.

The Two-Plate System

The BBQ at work yesterday was a great success, but there's some optimization that I'm keen to make in future endeavors. Specifically, this concerns the serving of the food.

The BBQ we have has a rather large cooking area, and then also has an elevated rack for cooked food, intended to keep it warm. However, in practice this has the weakness that food on that rack continues to cook. This is fine if it is taken away promptly, but if things stay there for any length of time they inevitably burn to a cinder. This happened to most of the chicken I had carefully prepared for the day.

The upshot of that is that I'm now planning to abandon the use of this elevated rack almost entirely (indeed, I'm eve considering just removing it, to give easier access to more of the cooking area. Instead, the food will be transferred away to a serving area from which people can collect their own food. This will be done using a two-plate system. (Well, sort of...)

The idea is that the serving area will have all the cooked food on a plate. The second plate will be beside me at the BBQ. As foods finish cooking they will be moved to 'my' plate. Then, as the plate fills up and/or opportunity presents itself, the contents will be moved to the serving plate for consumption.

(In reality, it will be a four-plate system, I think - one serving plate for vegetarian food, one for pork and beef, and one for other meats. That's due to the audience I'm serving, meaning that those are the three divisions needed. I'm not proposing to maintain several BBQ plates, however - that will mostly be handled by segregating items by cook-time.)

That's the theory, anyway...

Day 150: Update on Goals

We're getting towards the halfway point though 2023, so time for another update on goals...

• Books: I'm making really slow progress through the second of the three books from The List - I'm 175 pages in, out of 870ish. I have picked up the pace recently, though since that was from "stopped", I'm not sure that really counts. I still hope to finish the three books this year, but probably very few others, if any.
• Blogging: I should really have completed 49 posts by this point in the year, so I'm still somewhat behind. However, I'm pretty much on target at The Imaginarium, so the catchup is underway.
• Redecorating: No progress here, but I remain somewhat hopeful.
• Other stuff: Nothing much to report on that I haven't mentioned already. We're now well into the long days of summer, which in theory means a bit more daylight in which to do stuff. I'm afraid I'm doubtful of that!

My best guess is that I'll complete the three goals, but only just. Which is somewhat pathetic, really.

Despite that, life actually remains mostly positive. Mostly.

One Conclusion, One Beginning

We had a BBQ yesterday, for the first time since I fitted the new regulator and hose. As I mentioned before, I had had some trepidation about this fix, and so approached the cooking with some small measure of fear. But I'm still here, which suggests that it was probably okay. So I'm calling that job done.

At work I'm now preparing for our first BBQ of the year. (For complex and confusing reasons, I'm the resident grill-master.) I therefore spent quite a bit of time this morning getting the BBQ out of storage, giving it a thorough clean, putting the grill plates back in position, and turning it on to make sure everything is in working order (it is).

So now I'm in meal planning mode, both for the work BBQ on Thursday and also for my birthday BBQ at the end of the month. In both cases, I'm hoping to surprise people with something they didn't expect. But what, that is the question...

Chickens Come Home to Roost

The latest polling evidence makes for grim reading for the SNP. If the seats fall as this poll suggests, they'll lose 23 seats (technically 20 plus three others that were won by SNP candidates but are currently held by ex-SNP MPs). My own MP falls into that group.

Now, on the one hand, that's somewhat unfortunate, as our current MP is one of the more effective SNP MPs. On the other hand, given some of the things that she has expressed, I won't be particularly sorry to see her go. (Funnily enough, I'm not keen on outright misandry.) But on the other, other hand, the prospect of replacing a largely-useless SNP MP with a totally-useless Labour one isn't exactly thrilling.

But, fundamentally, the issue isn't really a swing from the SNP to Labour. The issue is that people who voted SNP last time are going to stay home, while everyone else votes tactically to replace them with Unionist candidates. 45% of the electorate will give you a landslide, but only if that 45% is motivated to turn out.

And therein lies the rub. The SNP are, frankly, not giving anyone a reason to bother voting for them. They're not going to be in government, so whatever policies they put forward, on just about anything, are irrelevant. (Plus, of course, if they were relevant then they'd need to be judged on their record in Holyrood, which in recent times is abysmal.)

That leaves the constitutional matter. Now, their "de facto referendum" could have been a foolhardy move, and there's a very real chance that had it succeeded it still wouldn't have made any difference. But it would at least have motivated the 45%. But they're not going for that. Instead, they're asking for a mandate to ask, yet again, for a Section 30 order for a second referendum.

Well, let's not bother with that. We know the answer already. If the Tories win the election, the answer is "no". If Labour win the election, the answer is "no". If there's a hung parliament in which either the Lib Dems or DUP hold the balance of power, the SNP will be locked out, and the answer is "no".

There's a tiny chance that we might end up with a hung parliament in which the SNP hold the balance of power. But here's a thing: Labour will never do a deal with the SNP to take power. Even if the 'deal' is "do whatever you want, and we'll vote for it, and ask nothing at all in return", Labour still wouldn't take it. They'd let the Tories back into power first, since the alternative is five years of the right-wing media saying "See?! We told you so!", followed by them being wiped out at the next and subsequent elections. So even if that tiny chance did pay out, Labour would let the Tories take power... and the answer is "no".

A Section 30 Order for a new referendum is long since dead. If that's what you're asking for, you're saying you've given up on independence. Which means that the 45% have no inbuilt reason to bother voting for you.

And so I'm left with no reason to bother with them. They've failed us for too long. The chickens have come home to roost.

Ever-Smaller Roads

In theory, the main road on my commute is the M8. That's the busiest moterway in Scotland, it's a big, serious road, and it's also nice and direct.

Except that the M8 is horribly busy, so actually it's really not the road to take. The best way to work is to use an alternative route that is similarly direct but which is much smaller, has a lower speed limit, more traffic lights and roundabouts, and is generally the lesser option - in theory.

Except that that road is currently ravaged with massive, long-term roadworks. Which means that the best way to work is currently to divert off that road and into a bunch of small, winding roads through a couple of villages, across a level crossing, and then onto some narrow country roads.

I noticed this morning that there are now some roadworks on one of those roads. I dread to think what the next step is.

Something I Don't Understand

There are many things that perplex me about the Tory government, not least how 17% of people can still think of voting for them. (Seriously, I can just about understand the mindset that leads someone to vote Tory. But to vote for these Tories, when in addition to everything else they're fundamentally bad even at being Tories...) However, there is one thing that particularly confuses the hell out of me:

As we know, the most valuable natural resource of the future is going to be clean water. ("Quantum of Solace" is not a good Bond movie, but on that point it was absolutely bang on the money - and that was fifteen years ago.) This isn't a controversial opinion, or some bizarre eco-hippy shit; it's a very simple and clear fact.

Why then are the Tories allowing, even encouraging, the privitised water companies to turn all of England's waterways into open sewers? Why are they actively destroying the very resource that is going to become so incredibly valuable?

As I said, they're really really bad even at being Tories.

It Was Nice While It Lasted

I see that Summer has been and gone. It was an unusually good one this year - it lasted almost all of Friday!

Not Helping

Some stuff is happening at work that is intended to improve things. At least, that's the stated intent, and I choose to believe it. Sadly, that stuff is raking up everything that has happened over the last two years, some of which it turns out was better left buried.

Right now is not a good time.

Snooze

I've always tried to resist the use of the snooze function on my alarm - I've generally been of the view that I'd rather build the extra few minutes into my sleep, and get up straight away with a later alarm. (Plus, my understanding is that this gives better sleep overall anyway.) Granted, there have been times the snooze alarm has gone off, but that's been because I've not stopped the alarm properly for one reason or another.

Until this week.

On Tuesday, to my lasting shame, when my alarm went off I just couldn't face getting up. So the snooze went on, and I snoozed indeed.

Granted, that had been after a difficult night in which Surprise! had gotten me out of bed for an hour about 3am, and when I returned I found that Funsize had evicted me (and so I slept the rest of the night in her bed). But still.

Anyway, we survived this great horror. This time.

Worryingly Fixed

After a few failed attempts, I managed to fix our BBQ at the weekend - I'd sourced and purchased a new regulator and hose some time ago, but found that actually fitting the hose was remarkably difficult. But after several attempts, the application of washing up liquid and boiling water, and the strategic use of a glove, I managed to get it into place. Then the clips were appropriately tightened, and the job was done!

At this point, per the advice I'd seen about doing the job I checked for leaks using an officially-branded product for this task. (It was actually just "bubble goo" - the very same stuff that the kids use for blowing bubbles. But since the consistency of these things varies, I was somewhat comforted by getting an official product just to be sure.)

So, anyway, I checked. No bubbles. Then I checked again, just to be extra sure. It really, really doesn't have any leaks.

And yet...

I find that there's a tiny part of me that would rather that the repair had definitively failed. That would have forced the purchase of a new BBQ, which isn't something I want to do, but could be preferable.

Because there's a tiny part of me that just won't be happy with this one until I've actually used the BBQ to actually cook some food. I'm absolutely certain that the parts used are good, I'm absolutely certain that the fitting is correct, and I'm absolutely certain that there aren't any leaks. So there's no reasonable doubt as to the efficacy of the fix. But there is still an unreasonable doubt to contend with.

Some Thoughts on the Coronation

I'm of the view that spending a quarter of a billion pounds of scarce public money on giving a rich old guy a new hat is not a particularly worthwhile use of resources at the best of times. To do so while in the midst of a cost of living crisis is bordering on the obscene. And to pay for it, in part, by diverting funds away from foodbanks is frankly indefensible.

That said, if you absolutely must do such a monstrous thing, I guess it's better that it's done well. And, looked at purely as a demonstration of Britain's absurd obsession with pageantry and dressing up, it was certainly done well. The hat went on, and stayed on, with scarcely a wobble. What more could you possibly ask for?

So... yay, I guess?

Oh, one more thing: the right wing press are now positively glowing about Penny Mordant's performance, and have now declared her to be the favourite to become the next Tory leader. Apparently, strange women distributing swords is a suitable basis for a system of government in Brexit Britain.

Roll Over

We've hit a fun new phase.

Surprise! is still not quite at the stage where he will sleep through the night. He seems to be getting better, but it remains the case that at some point in the night he will start crying and come into bed with us.

However, in the last couple of weeks Funsize seems to have also started to suffer from disturbed sleep, and in particular from nightmares. As a consequence of this, she wakes up and comes through to us as well. (Plus, I rather suspect she's milking it somewhat - her brother comes through, so she wants to as well.) The upshot of all of this is that quite often we've ended up with all four of us in our bed, and while it's a big bed it's really not big enough.

Unfortunately, this has left me trying to sleep while balanced on the edge of the bed or, more recently, simply giving up and retreating into Funsize's bedroom, switching off the unicorn nightlight, and trying to get some sleep. It's not ideal, but when they all roll over, one falls out.

Experimental Cookery 2023: Venison Haunch Steaks

For the past several months we have had a couple of venison steaks sitting in our freezer waiting for us to decide what to do with them. We finally used them up today - any notion of turning them into tacos or otherwise chopping them up was discarded, and they instead were seared and then served. I took the opportunity to make 'real' chips to have with them, but otherwise it was all fairly simple.

And that was a winning meal. Really, we should have done it much sooner. Alas, I have no idea when, or even if, we might do these again. Still, good stuff.

Invitation Declined

I see that we're being invited to personally swear allegiance to our beloved new monarch at the coronation next week.

Personally, I'm quite glad of this. Because up to now it was possible to argue that we'd been represented by various people - by our MPs, by our MSPs, by Humza Yousaf as First Minister and by Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, by the heads of the churches and universities, and so on and so forth.

But if we're being invited to individually swear allegiance that all disappears. And an invitation to swear allegiance is also, by extension, an invitation to decline to swear that allegiance.

It will be very interesting to see what fraction of the country actually care about this pantomime, versus merely having to pay for it.

Risking It

For the first time in about nine months, I'm going to leave my work laptop in the office. It's a risk, but one I've decided to take - I could really do with having a couple of days completely away from it.

In other news, it has been a tough week.

Under Consideration

A few weeks ago I was approached about the possibility of becoming an Elder in the church. Apparently, they're keen to get a younger insight!

Anyway, I have since been considering the matter carefully.

On the one hand:

• Someone has to do the job, and the truth is that the existing Kirk Session is only getting older. The ability of others to carry it is likely to diminish, and so it's somewhat incumbent on those of us who can to help out.
• I'm also conscious that you need to be in the meetings to have a voice. This goes back to an incident in my first church many years ago, when the then Kirk Session put out a statement on a controversial topic that I very much disagreed with (to the extent that had it gone beyond a simple statement and into actual policy, I would have had to consider walking away). I felt that the wider congregation should really have been consulted, but the truth is that the Kirk Session was acting within their remit. In which case, being on that body would be a good thing.

But...

• I'm very much the sort of person who will either commit to something fully, or not at all. I'm not keen on doing something in a half-hearted manner, and I really dislike dropping the ball. And it's fair to say that I'm already somewhat stretched in my commitments. In which case, do I have the time to take something new on?

It's a tough one. Especially as it is by no means guaranteed that the opportunity would come again...

#8: "Eldership", by various authors

D&D: Honour Among Thieves

I had a window of opportunity on Monday, and so made my way out to see the new D&D movie. I was lucky to catch it - it had already left our local cinema, and none of the other nearby ones had shows I could catch. Luckily the one near my parents' had a couple of showings, which meant I stepped back in time. That said, they've refitted their screens with reclining chairs for all customers, which was a pleasant surprise. And so, I sat down in an almost deserted cinema to watch the film.

And it's okay. It's a perfectly fine film, a diverting way to spend a couple of hours, with the same blend of action and comedy one might expect from a "Guardians of the Galaxy" or recent "Thor" film. The cast were all pretty good, the pacing was good. It was all good.

And almost completely unmemorable. Indeed, almost all of the best bits of the film had already been released, in the form of the trailers, TV spots, and other promotions. What was left was the connecting tissue, which was all fine but was mostly just... there.

Ultimately, my view is... yeah, it's okay.

On the plus side, it isn't the cinematic abomination that was the previous films, so that's a positive. On the other hand, that's not exactly a high bar to reach. And I'm struggling to find a reason to watch this one over, say, watching "Guardians of the Galaxy" again (which is funnier, more action packed, and just generally a bit better on every metric).

Make of that what you will, I guess.

#7: "Flying Scotsman and the Best Birthday Ever", by Michael Morpurgo (a book for Surprise!)

Picard Season Three

As I've mentioned before, I rather enjoyed the first season of Picard, but for a rather disappointing finale. I thought the second season started extremely well, but then collapsed into an awful mess. So I came to the third season with seriously mixed feelings.

The good news is that having finished it this morning, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable. Yes, there were details here and there I didn't care for, and some of the fan service was rather extreme, but I felt it told a good story, told it well, and gave the Next Generation crew the send off that Nemesis really failed to give them.

I'll not say any more than that, due to the risk of spoilers, but I will note that the show ends by setting up a potential successor series that I would very much like to see. Which is great!

A Case of Bad Timing

As often happens, we had a few days of good weather during the Easter holiday. So I took the opportunity to bring the BBQ into use for the year. This involved giving it a good clean, and purchasing a new canister of gas to use with it. This proved to be more of a challenge than expected, but was eventually successful.

When I turned the BBQ on, part of the level on the valve then broke off in my hand. We were still able to use the BBQ for that meal and then switch if off again to make it safe, but can't now use it again until the valve has been replaced.

This was something of an annoyance in itself, but otherwise unremarkable except for one detail: for some time I have been considering replacing that BBQ with a new one, and any new purchase was going to be a charcoal BBQ. Unfortunately, the time to make that purchase is not immediately after buying a new gas canister!

Still, it could have been a lot worse, I guess. So that's a win at least.

The Emergency Alert Test

There is to be a test of the Emergency Alert system on Sunday, and the right wing commentariat seem to have lost their minds over it. A couple of quick thoughts:

• If you're going to have an Emergency Alert system, it really does need tested occasionally, for the same reason all our employers have to have periodic fire drills - it's not enough to assume that these things work, or even to show that they work in theory. If they're important enough then they need to be tested, in real life, before we find ourselves having to rely on them.
• The reason for the Emergency Alert system itself should really be one that that right wing commentariat should be able to appreciate: it's basically a replacement for the old air raid sirens from their beloved Blitz. Basically, if we find ourselves in a situation where something is liable to go wrong at short and unpredicatable notice (such as, heaven forbid, we are once again subject to bombing raids), we will probably appreciate having an alert system in place.

Of course, I stand ready to revise my opinion if the government of the day decides to start misusing it (sending alerts for any and all nonsense at their whim). But if that does happen, it's easy enough to switch off.

As it is, having a one-off test of the system is quite a good idea, really.

The Twilight Zone

A controversial statement to start: Celtic could do with drawing their next game.

My reasoning is as follows: As things stand, Rangers are on 79 points with six games to play - the maximum total they could achieve is 97 points. Celtic are on 91 points, with an insurmountable goal difference. What that means is that if Celtic win their next two days they will have won the league... in every sense but the strictly mathematical. (By which I mean that strictly speaking it's not impossible for Rangers to oerturn it, but it's just not going to happen.)

The upshot of that is that if they win their next two games, Celtic fans will find themselves in a weird twilight zone - do they celebrate the league win when it's not quite done, do they wait for the next game when it's a formality, or (most likely) do they have a mix where some people do one and some the other and it turn into a bit of a mess?

Far cleaner is if they draw the next match, then win two, jump from 95 to 98 points, and put it beyond even strict mathmatical doubt in one step.

(Not that it really matters all that much - the league is long since done. The only remaining questions are just when do they cross the line, and what is their final points tally?)

On the other hand, as far as I can tell, the highest-ever points tally in Scottish football is 106 (though I might be wrong - I haven't checked every single season!). If Celtic win all six of their remaining matches, they could hit 109. Which also provides a compelling reason to keep going!

The Endless To-Do List

Over the course of this holiday I finally made some progress on my To-Do List: I managed to complete the second-last item on the list from the Christmas holiday! (I also managed to complete all but one item, coincidentally the same item, from the February break's list.)

Alas, the To-Do List for this holiday has a couple more undone items at this point, though one of them was something of a "how long is a piece of string" task - I was never actually going to get properly caught up on the blog, so just making some progress was something.

Still, that To-Do List remains a serious frustration, especially as I'm not really in a position to simply delete anything from the list. All the remaining items are either things I must get done or are things that I really want to get done, in preference to other potential items.

So we'll see. I don't think there's any prospect of making progress at my next holiday, so the next little while will need to see me trying to deal with the list while not on holiday...

Day 100: Update on Goals

100 days into 2023, so here's the latest update:

• Books: I have now read six books this year, having completed exactly one since the previous update (and that one was in progress when 2023 started!). It's fair to say I won't be reaching 60 books this year! I have started the second of the three books from The List, but am making really slow progress. Still, there's time enough to think this goal should be completed by the end of the year.
• Blogging: I should really have completed 32 posts by this point in the year, so I'm a good bit behind. I'm also rather behind at the Imaginarium also. That said, I did make up some ground in March, so it's not impossible that I'll catch up. We'll see.
• Redecorating: A very small amount of progress here - I changed Surprise!'s cot into a bed yesterday. The rest of the task remains as it was, but that's not a massive problem, I think. That said, we'll need to figure out when we're going to do any of the other parts, since I have absolutely no free time, and all my holidays are long since assigned.
• Other stuff: The main home PC died a rather spectacular death and has now been replaced (as recounted at length elsewhere). LC's laptop has also been consigned to the past, with a replacement due imminently. This was unfortunate, as I wasn't sure what the budget for a replacement was, so we've taken a best guess. I'm now enjoying my Easter break, which I'll probably blog about more once I get back. The Summer holiday is now mostly booked, with only two things I'm aware of needing locked down (and a big bill to pay).

I remain confident that all three goals will complete by the end of the year, but I'm very glad I didn't set any others, because even this rather unambitious set is proving challenging.

A Suggestion

For the benefit of Google, Amazon and the like: if I spend some time searching for some big-ticket item (a BBQ for instance) and then I stop searching for said item, that's probably a decent indicator that I've made a purchase. Indeed, there's a very good chance that you know I've made that purchase, especially if you're Amazon.

In that case, it's probably not such a good idea to spend the next several months pushing adverts for BBQs (or whatever) into my feed - there is no world in which I need more than one. Can I humbly suggest that a better approach, if you absolutely must, would be to send me adverts for BBQ accessories? Because while having your adverts foisted upon me is inherently annoying, at least they're marginally less annoying that way.

Ticking Off a Job

Ever since the New Year, I have had "fix car" sitting on my to-do list - it got scraped when we were going to soft play late last year, and paying to have it put right looked like being inordinately expensive, so it fell to me. Anyway, I've finally managed to find some time, and some decent weather, and now the job is done.

Huzzah!

(Well, almost. There is one final step required, after the paint has had four hours to dry. But that's a matter of a few minutes' work, so I'm not counting that.)

Religion in Bute House

On his first night as First Minister, Humza Yousaf posted a picture on social media of him leading his family in prayer as they broke their fast (it being Ramadan, and he and his family being Muslim). Which, frankly, is entirely fine, and normal, and in a multicultural society is to be celebrated.

Of course, this was then met by wailing and gnashing of teeth from certain quarters on social media. Often, the refrain was "if Kate Forbes had won, and posted a picture of a Christian prayer meeting, would the response have been the same?"

Well, leaving aside the fact that she would have been unlikely to do so, two quick things:

1. There's no actual evidence to suggest that the response wouldn't have been broadly supportive. Granted, there would be some people on social media taking umbrage at the whole thing... but then, that's no different either.
2. Even if the response had been wildly different, though, that's not a valid criticism of Humza Yousaf - it's a reflection of the intolerance of some sections of our society, and especially on social media.

Hopefully, this extremely intolerant focus on the religious convictions, or lack thereof, of the two highest-profile candidates in the recent contest will prove to be a very short-lived thing. Because if we really are the tolerant and inclusive society that we like to think we are, it really shouldn't matter.

Of all the things Humza Yousaf has done in his time in politics, that is one of the least worthy of remark.

Finally Finished

At the weekend I finally reached the end of "Cytonic", the third, but not final, book in Brandon Sanderson's Skyward 'trilogy' - as with many of these series, it has grown somewhat in scope since he began. (And, in fairness, it's a setting and a story that can bear a little expansion, so that's not too bad.)

This novel has had the unfortunate distinction of being one that I've been reading since last year. It has just taken me a veritable age to get through. Although, in fairness, that has very little to do with the quality of the book (which is fine, though it's very much a bridge between the start of the series and its end), and more to do with just not finding time to do any reading at the moment.

Anyway, with that done I'm hoping to pick up the pace rather - I'm still hopeful of finishing off the two remaining books from The List this year, and have a massive backlog of books to get through!

Honestly

Congratulations to Humza Yousaf on becoming the SNP leader, and soon the next First Minister of Scotland. He wouldn't have been my choice, but maybe I've misjudged him. He certainly deserves every chance to prove me wrong.

And I do sincerely hope that I'm wrong.

#6: "Cytonic", by Brandon Sanderson

Backup Plans

After a lucky escape with the hard drive from my old PC, we've been hit with a not-so-lucky event - the portable hard drive the LC uses for her work failed. Unfortunately, much of the content of that drive wasn't copied elsewhere, and although much of the drive was salvageable it certainly wasn't all.

Which is all a bit of a disaster, really.

The key lesson to learn from this one is quite simple: backup early and often, and try never to have a single copy of anything that's really important. And, ideally, set up your systems so that those backups are made automatically on a regular basis so you don't have to remember.

Which is an expensive lesson to have to learn again, but I suppose it could have been worse.

Never Simple

The task of setting up the new PC never seems to end.

We were extremely lucky to find that the hard drive on the old PC remained intact, which means that we didn't lose any data in the move. I've now copied everything across to the new PC, though for the moment it's all in a dumping ground folder - I still have a task to sort it into some sort of order and get rid of any files that truly are obsolete. (That's not as big a job as it may sound - I did a massive digital declutter a few years ago, so there are only a few stragglers to sort out.)

However, this has meant that the list of jobs to do for the new PC has dropped from 3 to, er, 4:

1. I have to set up a recovery image. Annoyingly, the advice I saw said this needed to be at least 16GB, with 32GB recommended, so I duly bought a 32GB drive, only to have it turn out that 32GB is the minimum and, worse, that "32GB" drive was effectively just very slightly smaller than that.
2. I have the aforementioned reorganisation to do.
3. Once that reorganisation is done, I need to install Dropbox - I want to do this near the end so that the file locations dovetail properly.
4. I need to switch the anti-virus software from the (perfectly good) version installed to the (also perfectly good) version we've been using for years.

I'm hoping to get all this done by the end of the weekend. But I'm not entirely hopeful - these tasks just seem to be growing arms and legs constantly.

Going to the Polls

The polls open for the SNP leadership contest today. The winner will be both SNP leader and, barring an absurd shock, the next First Minister of Scotland, so while I don't have a vote (not being a member of any political party), I obviously have an interest.

There are three candidates: Kate Forbes, Ash Regan, and Humza Yousaf. But, realistically, there are only actually two - Ash Regan is the least well-known of the three, she has had virtually no media coverage, and so regardless of any other factors she's not going to win. (In the same way that the Lib Dems aren't actually going to win the next General Election.)

The problem with that is that there isn't really a great choice available. On the one hand, Humza Yousaf is undeniably the more experienced of the two, having held almost all the big roles in Sturgeon's government at one time or another. Unfortunately, he's made a mess of all of them. And he seems extremely cold on the topic of Independence - the de facto referendum notion would be off the table, being replaced by, well, nothing. Which means that a Humza Yousaf-led SNP wouldn't be getting my vote - I wouldn't be voting on the competence of the government, and neither would I hold my nose and vote for independence.

On the other hand, we have Kate Forbes. She's much less experienced, but in the big job that she has had she has done very well (and, indeed, did well at extremely short notice). She also presents far better than Yousaf, and has made no bones about identifying that the SNP government has been slipping for a long time. She might just make for an SNP government that I wouldn't have to hold my nose to vote for.

But...

There are two big negatives with a Kate Forbes-led SNP. The first is that she's also very cold on independence, dropping the de facto referendum plan. Her replacement plan is slightly more credible than Yousaf's, but not meaningfully so.

The other one, though, is her social conservatism. As I noted before, I don't agree with many of her views. The truth is, though that they wouldn't be a block on my voting for her - but that's the nature of the privilege I enjoy. For those more directly affected, I can well understand that those views would make for a much more significant problem - and that might be an absolute block on her running the type of government that we really need.

It's fair to say that it's a tricky one.

Only, not really. Because as I've indicated, a Humza Yousaf-led SNP is almost certainly not one I could vote for; a Kate Forbes-led one probably is. So while I'll readily accept that others may come to a different conclusion, and while I understand entirely why, my support, caveated and wavering as it is, basically has to go to Kate Forbes.

Her Two Front Teeth

Funsize has her first wobbly tooth, scant days after her final birthday party. The tooth fairy has been contacted and is on standby.

I'm surprised by this development, as it feels awfully early. Bluntly, I'm not ready for her to have her permanent teeth, and all the pressure that goes with that. But that's academic now - apparently, five years old is on the early end of the 'normal' range, and therefore nothing to worry about, and so onward we go.

Still, it's a pain. There I was thinking things were settling down for a bit (especially as Surprise! is no longer moaning about being taken to nursery), and now it's all change again.

Expensive!

I've just received my credit card bill for the month, and ouch it's expensive! It's not unexpectedly so, given that in the past couple of months we've bought a dishwasher, a new PC, paid for a holiday and started booking another holiday, and Funsize somehow managed to arrange to have multiple birthday parties all of which had cost associated with them.

And, luckily, we have reserves in place for precisely a circumstance like this.

Still, it has been rather a shock. We'll need to make sure to cut back on the expenses for the next couple of months. Which will be tricky, since there's the other part of that second holiday to book.

The Setup Games

When I ordered our latest PC, I was advised it would be available around mid-March - later than I'd hoped, but I figured it was worth the wait. Plus, it was coming on a Monday, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle for LC to arrange to be in for the delivery. But on Wednesday there was 'good' news - the PC was coming on Saturday! This was a bit more of a hassle, as we were busy entertaining on Saturday, but at least we'd be around for the delivery...

Then on Friday, just as I was walking out the door to head to work, I received a text telling me it was coming between 12.20 and 13.20 that day. Um, great... I think? Anyway, I had to hastily switch to working from home on Friday in order to take the delivery - I neither wanted to have to wait for the inevitable rescheduled delivery (which no doubt would be a hassle anyway), nor did I want to risk them leaving it in a 'safe' place.

So the new PC arrived on Friday at 11.30. Which is almost one of the times they said.

The PC then sat in its box until Saturday, when I dug it out, connected it up, and got started. And inevitably found that I didn't like it - Microsoft have, in their wisdom, decided to change the desktop layout again and don't provide a handy "put it back the way we like it" option. Sigh.

The requisite moan about that out of the way, I then got started with installing the various bits of software: a replacement browser, the office suite, PDF and ZIP tools, and so on and so forth. It really does feel like there should be an easier way to do all of this, but unfortunately right now it looks like there's just an easier way to do some of this.

So we're now more or less set up. As far as I can see there remain three things to do: recover as much of the data from my old PC as possible (we have backups, but I'm hoping that the hard drive remains intact so I can get the definitive most up-to-date version of everything), reinstall Dropbox (which is best done after getting the data, so the folder can be set up easily), and switch the anti-virus software (from the installed free trial to the one we've been paying for).

It's funny how getting a new and better PC still involves hours upon hours of work getting it ready.

Willow

I was rather surprised, but actually rather glad, when Disney announced a TV series continuation of "Willow" - although it's not the absolute best film in the world it was a lot of fun, and if everything else is getting a revival then why not? We finally sat down to watch it over the past few weeks and... it's not the best show, but it's fun.

The truth is that "Willow", like "Wheel of Time" and "Rings of Power", is pretty much just "fantasy lands of generica" - a mismatched fellowship of characters gather for some quest, have some adventures, and then there's a big showdown at the end. You've seen it before.

What sets "Willow" apart from the other two is that this one doesn't really take itself too seriously - yes, there's a world-ending menace out there, but it's not the po faced doomscape that we've come to know and 'love'. That's a good thing.

That said, "Willow" does start rather badly and then gets better as it goes (although the very best episode is at the halfway point). So I'd suggest trying to stick it out for those first few episodes before passing judgement.

And that, I think, is all I have to say about that. Except to note that we'll watch a second season if there is one, which isn't the case for "Wheel of Time".