Maybe there are unjust airport taxis out there?
The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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8:53am on Wednesday, 20th November, 2024:
Weird
How can you be "just" airport taxis when you're also Lynn's pristine cleaning services?
Maybe there are unjust airport taxis out there?
6:07pm on Tuesday, 19th November, 2024:
Anecdote
I went to London today to meet my best friend from university, Ulin. He's a year older than me and has now retired, but we sat and chatted outside the Starbuck's at St Pancras for nearly four hours. Although we keep in touch, I haven't seen him in person for about 30 years.
He hasn't aged.
HE HASN'T AGED.
Apart from wearing glasses, he looks pretty much the same as he did last time I saw him. Oh, except he has two white hairs on his head, too. I have more than that in a single eyebrow.
I don't know what sorcery is involved, but whatever it is, it's effective.
8:48am on Monday, 18th November, 2024:
Anecdote
Here's another puzzle format I've been working on, provisionally called Rat Run.
The puzzles are fun to create, but take much longer than the Plaitword ones do. I'm not sure that the instructions are clear enough, they seem a bit too wordy.
Anyway, let me know what you think.
Here's another one:
11:50am on Sunday, 17th November, 2024:
Anecdote
The designer of Runescape, Andrew Gower, has brought out a new game called Brighter Shore.
I haven't played either of these, but a Youtuber called J1mmy has. What's more, he's analysed it using my Player Types system ("updated", but hey, it's public domain so you can do what you like with it).
I haven't seen this done before, at least not for 50 minutes, so it's been quite informative for me.
As of the time of writing, 188K people have watched this video since it went online yesterday.
Another 188K people have heard my name! Muahaha!
9:45am on Saturday, 16th November, 2024:
Weird
I got my first new banknote with Charles III on it this week.
It took rather an effort to show you a picture, because my image-processing software "isn't authorised to process international banknotes". Fortunately, Word and Powerpoint aren't that clever, and let me crop a photo of the note then export it.
The left side of his face as we look at it seems assured, but the right side seems worried.
I can't say it's a great likeness, but it's better than the ones we see on Portrait Artist of the Year, which tend to look like something in Dorian Gray's attic.
8:38am on Friday, 15th November, 2024:
Weird
It's not milk chocolate: it's milk chocolate flavoured chocolate.
7:40am on Thursday, 14th November, 2024:
Weird
In a BBC article yesterday about a driver who still had a valid licence despite having accumulated 229 points on it (normally 12 are enough for a six-month ban), the law was explained by a senior solicitor advocate, whose photograph accompanied the article.
Here is said photograph:
Portraits such as this give hope to AI face-generation systems.
1:48pm on Wednesday, 13th November, 2024:
Anecdote
I put together three pocket puzzle books featuring the Plaitword puzzle I invented.
I took a prototype with me to hospital when I had my op a couple of weeks ago, and it came in really handy during the unexpected 90-minute delay.
Let's see how well they sell with absolutely no publicity on my part.
8:18am on Tuesday, 12th November, 2024:
Anecdote
I bought some more antique playing cards.
These are Bezique decks, which I don't normally purchase because there are only 32 cards in each pack. However, I put in bids for maybe a third of a price of a regular pack, and won them both. Neither have index numbers and neither is turned (that is, for some of the cards, such as the Queen of Spades, the suit indicator is on the right rather than the left).
The top one is a Reynolds deck from about 1863. It's fairly standard, and goes nicely with my other Reynolds decks.
The bottom one is a Woolley deck. I didn't know Woolley made Bezique decks, but apparently they did. This looks to be the same pattern as the full decks they made between 1865 and 1875 (unturned, no indeces, no colour for the face cards' faces), so is probabbly from the same era. The Ace of Spades looks to have some water damage, but other than that it's in better condition than the Reynolds deck.
I don't think I have any other Woolley packsso this one will have to go nicely with itself instead.
10:13am on Monday, 11th November, 2024:
Anecdote
I saw this book at the book fair I went to the other week:
I had a copy of that when I was a child. I used to be given a Rupert annual every year by my maternal grandmother's twin sister.
I was sorely tempted to buy it. My mother gave away most of our childhood books when I and my brother got too old for them. As a result, although I have memories of the books, I don't have the books themselves. My mother's own mother did a similar thing, giving away the books we used to read when we stayed with her during the summer holidays.
Losing the books was rather saddening for me. Obviously, I wasn't going to read them ever again anyway, but they represented a connection to happy times. Giving away the books was like saying that the happy times would never return. They won't, of course — you're only young once — but for a few moments those times can be recaptured. Seeing an old favourite and reminiscing re-establishes a connection, which even if it's only transient is nevertheless a lovely feeling to have.
I have maybe 30 or more Just William books in the attic that I saved before my mother gave them away. I haven't read most of them more than once, but they serve to show that my fond, wistful childhood memories are real. If I could have saved even half a dozen of my other favourite books, I'd have been satisfied.
Oh well. I just hope that the children who were given them derived as much joy from them as I did.
Today's children may well have to make do with texts read on electronic readers, but I'm sure they'll cope.
10:48am on Sunday, 10th November, 2024:
Anecdote
Recently, I've been remembering a lot of dreams.
Normally, I don't remember dreams at all unless: 1) the dream wakes me up; 2) waking up gives me the dream; or 3) I decide to have a dream before I go to bed. For the past fortnight or so, though, I've been having dreams that I didn't ask for and that weren't trying to wake me up.
I've been having them since the umbilical hernia operation I underwent, in fact.
The dreams aren't very good — they're typically just short fragments — and I'm fully aware that I'm having them (I'm a lucid dreamer), but it's worrying that they don't fit the normal-for-me parameters. I realise that most people probably dream like this every night, and that I myself also probably do; it's just that I don't usually remember the dreams. I've been remembering them of late, though.
Naturally, I wanted to know what was going on with them, mainly so I could stop them. Having to deal with nonsense in the middle of the night isn't fun.
There was no apparent relationship between the dreams. They were all on different topics, when they had a topic at all rather than just a theme. I won't go into details, because other people's dreams are always boring, but they covered a wide range. Some were about contemporary issues, some about memories, some were weird imaginings, some about things I'd been thinking about while awake. Some didn't even have pictures, they were just feelings.
I tried asking around in the dreams to find out what caused them, but they didn't last long enough to give meaningul answers. When I extended them, they became merely about being extended.
I set up a mental process (another weird thing I can do) to search for any rogue such processes that might have been set up while I was under general anaesthetic, but it drew a blank. Those processes never last longer than a fortnight anyway before I forget about them, so it was a long shot. Still, worth a try.
The dreams didn't use language, which I knew was important evidence. My inner voice is such that only "I" get to use language, and nothing else in my head does except at the level of tokens (words as inter-connected symbols). They do use language when I set them up, because I set them up, but these weren't using language so I knew I wasn't responsible for them. They can use language when I use it, too, but that puts me in control of them; I learned nothing from them that way.
The eventual cause turned out to be the fact that I didn't notice when the general anaesthetic kicked in at my operation. Normally, I notice when I've gone to sleep (which may seem unusual, given that I'm asleep, but it's how it appears to me), but for the operation I didn't. I think there must be some kind of housekeeping that goes on at the falling-asleep point normally, but for the anaesthetic this didn't happen because I didn't notice I was falling asleep. As a result, I hypothesised, the usual sleep-initialisation events didn't occur. It did occur when drifting off to sleep on subsequent evenings, though, so why was I still getting the after-effects two weeks later of not having performed it but once? Was I doomed to have these annoying dreams every night in perpetuity now?
I figured that maybe the what-to-do-when-falling-asleep routine was a toggle: switch dreams off when go to sleep, switch dreams on when wake up. By not noticing I'd gone to sleep that one time, this meant I switched dreams off when I woke up. The overall effect was to reverse the order: switch dreams on when go to sleep, switch dreams off when awake. That would mean I wouldn't have been able to dream while awake for the past two weeks, but because my imagination is under conscious control while I'm awake I would be unlikely to discern any difference (and indeed didn't).
Anyway, if this theory was correct, I ought to be able to reboot the system by deciding to have a dream. When said dream finished, it would reset the remember-unbidden-dreams toggle and matters would return to normal.
I therefore had a decision to make: remember annoying dreams or never decide to have bespoke ones. From what I can gather, most people remember a good many dreams but have difficulty arranging for bespoke ones. Having lived this existence myself for the past two weeks, though, I can't say I was in favour of it. Therefore, two nights ago I gave myself a deliberate dream (set in the universe of the Arabian Nights, if you're interested) to reset the toggle.
It worked. I had no annoying dreams last night. Phew!
The ability to access slightly more of my subconscious than most people seem able to is on the whole not a lot of use, but I do want to protect it because it can at times come in very, very handy. Also, I'm used to it. I'm glad to be back to (my) normal.
I didn't enjoy remembering my bizarre night-time subconscious expressions, so am impressed by the fortitude of those for whom it is their default.
9:19am on Saturday, 9th November, 2024:
Miscellaneous
Essex University's Student Union has put up a series of posters outside the lecture theatre block. Here's a composite image of them:
Ignoring the figures in the background, the panels show:
man
woman
dog
three women
woman
woman
woman and man
woman
woman
men and women
man in drag
two women
two women
That's quite a female bias there, but it does make sense.
If you want to attract women to Student Union events, you show pictures of women; if you want to attract men to Student Union events, you show pictures of women.
We don't have a marketing degree at Essex University, but someone in the Student Union seems to have a handle on it.
10:29am on Friday, 8th November, 2024:
Anecdote
Recently, my mouse started sporadically treating a single left-click as a double left-click, which made me realise I could hate Windows even more than I did already. Up until it did that, I'd liked the mouse. I figured I'd buy an identical replacement.
The original was a wired UtechSmart gaming mouse. I checked Amazon and it was no longer available.
I spent half an hour searching Amazon for something else, and finally settled on a wired TITANWOLF gaming mouse.
It arrived yesterday. It's identical to the UtechSmart one except with a different logo and a gloss finish rather than a matt one. Even the software is the same. Oh, also the cable is red (which is good as it makes it easier to follow it) but slightly shorter (which is not good as it gives me less play when I need to move my PC unit around).
I had to configure the buttons so that the 11 and 12 produced - and = to match what MMO skill bars want. Gawd knows why the defaults are NUM+ and NUM- on a gaming mouse, but they are.
I also sped it up, so my wife can't use it and so will be reluctant to commandeer my PC.
The UtechSmart mouse is now available on Amazon again. It's £2.03 more than the TITANWOLF one, so I don't feel cheated.
Hmm, it looks as if I need a new mouse mat, too.
9:58am on Friday, 8th November, 2024:
Weird
We have a "scarecrow trail" in the village around this time of year, which is basically the same as one for effigies of Guy Fawkes but not restricted to effigies of Guy Fawkes.
This is the one the Girl Guides made:
They know their audience.
7:39am on Thursday, 7th November, 2024:
Weird
A view of the timeless St Peter's Church in Colchester.
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Copyright © 2024 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).