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The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.

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6:19am on Friday, 29th May, 2026:

Three Hours

Anecdote

I appear to have misread my watch. I thought I'd overslept and was getting up at a quarter to nine, but actually I'd underslept and it was a quarter to six.

I did wonder why the bin men hadn't woken me up when they came by at seven.

Oh well, being retired, I can catch up during the day (which is what many of my students used to do).

8:13am on Thursday, 28th May, 2026:

Black Hills

Anecdote

The wedding went really well yesterday. The location, in the Black Hills, was amazing.

Here's a photo of a Black Hill.

The ceremony was outdoors, under that oak tree you can just about see in the middle, where the white ribbons can just about be seen. It was next to a field full of sheep, there was a waterfall, they had their own pizza ovens; apart from being at the end of a single-track road where we had to back up 50 metres to allow a minibus to get past, it was perfect.

The road our AirBnB is on is being closed at 9:30, so I'm rather hoping we'll be on our away home before then.

7:33am on Wednesday, 27th May, 2026:

Mud Hut

Anecdote

We're in the border country between England and Wales today, for the marriange of my niece. She's Welsh, her husband-to-be is English, so it's the natural choice.

The Airbnb place we booked is remote, down single-track lanes and past a village called "Longtown" that has so few houses it can only have been named sarcastically. However, the place we're staying at itself is great!

We're not the only occupants, though.

Fortunately, that's the nest of a house martin, not the vanguard of a colony of wasps.

8:00am on Tuesday, 26th May, 2026:

Insect Loving

Weird

Seen in a garden centre:

I was hoping to see some carniverous plants, but no. They were insect-attracting plants, but they didn't do a number on them one they'd arrived.

Leave it all to the spiders, why don't you, plants.

9:13am on Monday, 25th May, 2026:

Patiencekarten

Anecdote

I bought some more playing cards after a short foray into eBay.

These are patience cards, measuring 5cm by 3cm. They're number 104, manufactured by J. Muller & Son in Switzerland. They were sold as a twin pack, in their original individual boxes and original overall box. This is what attracted me to bid for them. None of the cards themselves were shown, just the packaging, so I figured few people would bid for them. As it happened, I was the only person to bid for them, so that was a win.

Muller are more widely known for their Swiss Costumes design, which was widely imitated across Europe. They didn't produce many other designs, so this one is somewhat unusual. The gilt edging, flimsy paper boxes, high-quality printing and the artwork are very reminiscent of Dondorf productions, but the joker is specific to Muller; it isn't an outsourced rebrand.

I don't know when these were manufactured. The World Web Playing Card Museum doesn't mention them. I know from what it says on the side of the box that they were manufactured in Schaffhausen, where the company moved in 1873. Manufacturing moved to larger premises at Neuhausen-on-Rhine Falls in 1898. So, that would date them 1873 to 1898, which is plausible. If I'd had to guess, I'd have gone with maybe the 1920s, though.

Whatever, they're lovely little cards, however old they are.

8:19am on Sunday, 24th May, 2026:

Dill

Outburst

There are some flavours I really don't like that other people inexplicably do. I might be able to tolerate a very mild amount of coconut or cinnamon, but I can't stand anything contaminated with marzipan or alcohol.

Dill is right up there with the latter. No, I don't want a burger that has had the dill pickle taken out: I want a burger that hasn't ever been in contact with dill pickle.

This explains my horror upon seeing the following in our local Co-Op:

People are going to buy those? Willingly? And eat them?!

Thank goodness they're a limited edition. That's wasted shelf space if you ask me.

Asparagus-flavour crisps, yes, I'd certainly go for those!

8:33am on Saturday, 23rd May, 2026:

The East

Rant

When a word in English ends in a vowel sound and is followed by another word that begins with one, it interrupts the flow of a sentence. Therefore, a filler sound is inserted between them to make them easier to say. The first vowel sound may be modified, too.

For example, if you say "the cat" then there's no problem. The "the" sounds the same as it would in "the dog", it's like a "thuh". However, if you were to say "the other cat" then the usual solution is to insert a "y" sound and change the "thuh" to "thi". This makes it sound like "thiyother cat".

That's how it's been for centuries, at least where I come from. However, back in the 1980s I noticed that some Londoners didn't do this. They kept the "the" sound as "thuh" and put a glottal stop in as the filler. It would be like "the'other cat". I was told once that this came from the speech patterns of immigrants from the Caribbean, but I don't know if that's true or not.

Anyway, recently the continuity announcer on our local TV channel TV has started to refer to the news programmes in our region as being in "the 'east" rather than "thi yeast". Worse, the presenters have started to do this, too, when they never did it before. I don't know whether it's as a result of some directive or just the spread of a speech affectation. It annoys me, anyway.

I'll have to listen out to hear whether they pronounce something like "solo opening" as "solowopening" or "solo'opening".

I'd blame social media,. but that would just ba a different kind of trend-following.

8:14am on Friday, 22nd May, 2026:

Webs

Anecdote

The fruit trees in our garden are infested with some kind of moth. The caterpillars are abundant, and my wife hates them. She cut off a swathe of leaves they'd made their homes and put them in the brown wheelie bin we use for garden waste recycling.

Of course, they were still alive.

There were hundreds of them. Overnight, they crawled out and covered the bin with webs of silk.

That pale brown isn't the plastic fading from sunlight, it's the mass of webs.

I gave them a dose of fly spray. It turns out that they really don't like it, so most of them are now dead. However, my wife stopped me before I did the final side of the bin, in case I killed any bees that might have been nearby. As a result, the caterpillars may have been able to reach the ground along the single-line vertical web they'd built. I guess we'll find out next year if our roses are covered in the little blighters.

Do your job, birds!

8:10am on Thursday, 21st May, 2026:

Sweet

Weird

Putting digital googly eyes on murderous-looking sweet potatoes really helps make them less of a fountain of nightmares.

8:17am on Wednesday, 20th May, 2026:

What Happened Here?

Weird

This was on one of the interactive screens at Bletchley Park.

So, how many purpose-built buildings for tabulating machines are there in the world, exactly?

This is giving off the same vibes as the "Come to Ireland to see the biggest harp in Ireland" sign I saw at Dublin airport once.

8:52am on Tuesday, 19th May, 2026:

Pint of Science

Anecdote

I gave a short presentation at the Pint of Science event in Colchester yesterday evening.

The idea behind this is that scientists describe their work to an intelligent audience that's not familiar with the topic, in a pub. Colchester is short of scientists, because Essex University has closed most of its science departments over the years, so Computer Science experts get called in to talk. It sounded as if it might be fun, so I volunteered.

It was indeed fun, too. Because this was a general audience, I gave a 20-minute presentation about the ethics of dealing with sapient NPCs once we have sapient NPCs. It was basically a cut-down version of a presentation I gave in 2019 at the IEEE Conference on Games. I'll upload it when I get around to it.

I gave out three copies of my book, How to Be a God, to members of the audience, and said anyone else who was interested could download a free PDF of it from http://howtobeagod.com/. They won't finish it, because no-one ever does, but it's conceivable that I might have sold a physical book to someone before they realise this.

For taking part, I was given a pint glass:

Quite what I'll do with a pint glass featuring a brain that's wearing glasses, I don't know. I'm thinking I could drink out of it maybe.

The event took place at the Three Wise Monkeys pub in Colchester, which is big and part of a chain. The room that was hired out was next to the pub's kitchen.

The employees of the pub aren't the only ones at work there.

If there were any public health inspectors in the Pint of Science audience, they can wave cheerio to their level 5 food hygiene rating.

It's Three Wise Monkeys and a Mouse.

8:24am on Monday, 18th May, 2026:

Handbags

Weird

One of the things I noticed at Bletchley Park last week was that in all the reconstructions, every desk occupied by a woman had a handbag on the floor by the chair.

Maybe it was so that women who were spies could be quickly identified by the fact they didn't put their handbag on the floor by their chair.

8:29am on Sunday, 17th May, 2026:

Eurovision Song Contest

Comment

Yesterday was the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest.

As usual, we watched it. As usual, the UK came last. The winners, Bulgaria, got a mere 516 times more points than we did.

There were some real stinkers this year, but they all got more points than our song managed. Ours wasn't ever going to win, but it was significantly better than some of those out there. If any other country had entered our song (with the possible exception of Germany), they would have scored respectably higher. If we had entered any other country's song (including Bulgaria's), we would still have come last.

However, given that we expect to come last, this isn't actually painful for us. Hey, we're plucky!

I did learn something interesting (to me at least) about the UK's performer, Look Mum No Computer. This is the stage name of Sam Battle — but Sam Battle is in turn a stage name. I had heard that he started to use it when someone misheard his actual surname and put it on the venue's billing, but I didn't hear what it should have said.

It turns out that his surname is Bartle. His sister, Jodie Bartle, is a professional footballer who captains Wrexham.

It's conceivable that we're distantly related, because their family comes from Lincolnshire, which is where my line of the Bartle diaspora originated. The furthest I can get back is my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather John Bartle, who was the father of my great-great-great-great-grandfather, also called John Bartle; the latter was baptised 24 Feb 1719 in Kirton-in-Lindsey.

Sadly, knowledge of this genealogical connection to me came too late for the citizens of Europe to take pity on our Eurovision entrant.

I wonder how much Dua Lipa would want paying to perform our 2027 entry.

9:59am on Saturday, 16th May, 2026:

Know your Clientele

Weird

The owners of this establishment in Italy seem to have found their niche.

It's in Manarola, if you fancy ordering a delivery.

9:15am on Friday, 15th May, 2026:

Bletchley Park

Anecdote

We went for a day out to Bletchley Park yesterday, to look around the codebreaking museum.

It was quite interesting. I didn't know that there were 9,000 people working there at its peak, nor that there were 211 Bombe machines in action to help decrypt the Enigma code.

Whenever I look at human endeavours of the past, I'm always impressed by two things: the level of functioning organisation required, and the degree of initiative aforded the individuals involved. Bletchley Park was like a factory with people as components, but they were given a lot of freedom to act as they saw fit. The processes were sophisticated, but fluid. People weren't continually given more and more work until it occupied their every waking moment: they had the time to notice things, to experiment, to relax. This was true across the board, whatever your job was. I don't doubt that it applied to cooks and chauffeurs, too.

Contrast that with today, when people keep getting work piled on their plate until they can do no more. Management interferes, making demands that can only be met by cutting back on something else. The people in charge have ambitions to be more in charge. The people who do the work just want to go home and get some sleep.

The people of the past weren't as advanced technologically as we are today, but they weren't stupid.

I think they may have maybe put up a screen rather than projecting onto a wall with a radiator on it.

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Copyright © 2026 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).