Thomas Womack

A window of the boxes of what used to be high-end hardware, left in the sun so long that the prints have faded to blue …

What is the name for what they’ve done to this tree? I don’t think it’s drastic enough to be a full pollard but it’s much more dramatic than anything I’d call pruning.

I was today old when I discovered that walui (わるい) in Japanese means ‘bad’, hence waluigi.

Opinions about #Marmite are famously both variable and strongly held. That it doesn’t live in the desserts and custard section I would have hoped would be almost universal.

Time to replace the windscreen wipers: six minutes. Time I procrastinated with the new box of windscreen wipers right there by the front door: three weeks.

Contender for Most Tolerant Cat

11pm, BEDROOM INTERIOR Child: knocks on door waking me up Child: Is it a time when we ought to be asleep? Me: Yes Child: So why aren’t you asleep? Me: because you’ve just knocked on my door to wake me up

Edward Wright baptized #OTD 1561. In 1599 he proposes the median as a measure of central tendency & methods of variance estimation for navigational application. He is also the first (& so far only) Fellow of Caius College Cambridge to be granted sabbatical leave to be a pirate.

Subjectively very long rehearsal: two largo movements where the second bassoon is mostly silent, and then the conductor says he wants to skip the nice fast scherzo with lots of tutti bits because it’s too hard.

There is a tree full of hornets in the middle of our village. Today butterflies are landing on it too

I gave in and allowed my six year old to trace around her piece of ham. She was saying tearfully that it was the perfect shape and she could never get that shape again.

Welcome to the Cherry Hinton menagerie!

Saw a radio station with the tagline ‘Satnav for your soul’, and the more I think about it the more sinister it gets: “follow our directions to our choice of destination without having to think about what you’re passing through”

I am not at all sure that reading What We Are Seeking and When There Are Wolves Again in parallel is quite the path of wisdom.

Great, this error message from Apple setup is, being interpreted, ‘do not try to set up your new phone on the day iPhone 18 Pro becomes available’

I mean, I wouldn't pick that fight anyway because I'm not a transphobe, but doing it with the guy who has spent his life min-maxxing his Stength and Charisma stats and is married to literally fucking Xena the Warrior Princess seems absolutely fucking insane to me.

At any reasonable valuation of time, spending 20 minutes a week chipping a bucket-load of ice off the inside of the freezer that doesn’t close properly is a better deal than buying a replacement freezer. But when I’m standing with a bucket and cold hands it doesn’t feel that way.

This is a terrible time for everyone to be losing their shit about migrants. We're headed full-speed into an epoch that's going to be defined by enormous flows of migrants fleeing climate disaster. Everyone ought to be thinking about how to maximize the number of people they'll be able to rescue.

Does anyone else have the thing where they wake up thinking they’ve slept like Rip van Winkle and it must be at least supper time, and it’s actually 0930?

I am certain this sandwich shop knows what it’s doing

‘Chime Street was in an area that wasn’t exactly poor but was close enough to a poor neighborhood that there were a great many ostensibly decorative iron fences’

‘There were stories about what happened if you turned a stranger away. They were the sort of stories that ended with “And you can still see the blasted stones to this day.”’ Enjoying the new @tkingfisher.com very much.

(seen on the Adafruit blog) Putting surprisingly clear images into readable QR codes by convincing the reader to use only the centre of each 3x3 pixel block, then error-diffusing the forced colour of those pixels into the underlying grey-scale image. www.andrewt.net/dithered-qr-...

Rain over the Puys from the Puy de Dôme

Five sorts of fruit at breakfast and then ham and cheese baguette and a cafe au lait for the other two meals is a reasonable nutrition approach, no? It’s one that the aires de service on French autoroutes seem to suggest

Making a small vow that the next time I drive straight over the Pyrenees will be in a car with more than homeopathic quantities of torque. My darling 998cc Dacia Sandero was really struggling up some of the hills at 15mph in third.

New country!

The bar and shooting range also offers axe throwing. I am distinctly surprised to have encountered this in Europe!

I recently watched Iron Man (2008) for the first time in over a decade, and it's a real lightbulb moment to realize that every executive, business bro and tech guy currently obsessed with using ChatGPT or Claude or whatever thinks they're like Tony Stark talking to Jarvis

The Sun went out

MECHANICAL ELEPHANT

Marvels of French culinary innovation: ice cream sold with a spoon cast out of waffle-cone material that you can eat afterwards!

More than 10% of the way to Zaragoza (via Calais and Nantes). I wish there were a slightly clearer statement of when we needed to drive onto the ferry …

Fortunately I double-checked what was being requested, because I think fried breaded prunes in a salt, pepper and chilli spice mix with noodles would be unusual if you meant prawns. Though now I am thinking of devils on horseback and Zwetschgenknödel and actually it might work … another time :)

FIVE? What sort of heretical un-Lego-like number is FIVE?