Either medical knowledge has deteriorated since then or the laws around advertising have been strengthened.
The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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8:44am on Tuesday, 26th August, 2025:
Weird
From the St Pancras Guardian and Camden and Kentish Towns Reporter, 26 July 1875:
Either medical knowledge has deteriorated since then or the laws around advertising have been strengthened.
8:28am on Monday, 25th August, 2025:
Anecdote
Here are around a sixth of the blackberries my wife has picked so far this year from our garden. There's still another bowl's worth out there ripening.
Fortunately, we both really, really like blackberries, if not the rest of the plant.
8:43am on Sunday, 24th August, 2025:
Anecdote
I tried out ChatGPT on three cryptic crossword clues that I'd had trouble with myself.
Here's the first:
Me: Here is a cryptic crossword clue for a 7-letter word beginning and ending with G, going across: "Get along and chime with hack who's had snip". Can you solve it?
ChatGPT:
GELDING
Wordplay: "Get along" = GEL (as in "we gel"), and "chime" = DING. Put together: GEL + DING.
Definition: "hack who's had snip" = a GELDING (a castrated horse).
Fits pattern: 7 letters, starts and ends with G.
OK, well that's good. It did it very quickly — in four or five seconds. I'd been thinking of "hack" as being a journalist, so this one had taken me ages.
Here's the second:
Me: Here is a cryptic crossword clue for a 7-letter word beginning with S, going down: "Is at home climbing above swamp to find more solidity". Can you solve it?
ChatGPT:
Thought for 58s
STIFFEN
Definition: "to find more solidity."
Wordplay: S ("is") + T ("to") + IN ("at home") climbing (reversed in a down clue → I) placed above FEN ("swamp") → S + T + I + FEN, with the F from "find" (initial letter) giving STIFFEN.
It got the right answer, but didn't notice that STIF is FITS (that is, "Is at home") when read backwards (because it's "climbing"). It concocted a weird set of justifications for it instead. To be fair, it was the "fits" part that took me awhile to work out, too.
Here's the third:
Me: Here is a cryptic crossword clue for an 8-letter word beginning with M, going down: "King mostly captivated by young French female novelist". Can you solve it?
ChatGPT:
Thought for 1m 22s
MELVILLE
"King mostly" = ELVI (Elvis, "the King," mostly = drop the final s).
"young French female" = MLLE (abbr. for mademoiselle).
"captivated by" indicates insertion: M(ELVI)LLE → MELVILLE.
Definition: "novelist."
That's exactly right. I'd been thinking "Michelle" as being the name of a novellist, but couldn't get beyond the "elle" at the end until I investigated "King" meaning "Elvis" (which I'd thought the moment I read the clue, but had dismissed).
However, when I asked ChatGPT to solve this clue yesterday, it reasoned completely differently and got it wrong:
ChatGPT:
Thought for 1m 18s
MORRISON
Definition: female novelist → (Toni) Morrison.
Wordplay: M + (ROI) (French for "king") inside SON ("young" male) → M + S(ROI)ON → MORRISON.
In conclusion, then, if you're stuck on a cryptic crossword clue then ChatGPT is surprisingly good at them, but (as always with ChatGPT) you need to check what it produces because it's not always right.
10:26am on Saturday, 23rd August, 2025:
Weird
I've been playing Expeditions Rome recently. It's one of those strategy games in which you lead a legion but still go off on six-person missions. Anyway, it has loading screens when you leavee the strategy map and enter camp. Here are the figures from two of them:
Neither of them seems to know how to hold a bow and arrow. No wonder the Romans conquered them.
8:50am on Friday, 22nd August, 2025:
Weird
There's a level crossing in Colchester with a string of bells over the road before it.
I think the idea is that if you're driving a tall vehicle and you hit the bells, that tells you you'd hit the overhead power lines the trains use if you were to proceed. I could be wrong, though, as I've never seen these anywhere else (or maybe I have but didn't notice them).
I don't suppose the sound of a few bells ringing would stop a driver from proceeding to take out the power for the Colchester to Clacton branch line, given that only yesterday a bus driver managed to hit a bridge in Chelmsford that even I knew was low, but they're a quaint feature anyway.
I wonder if they ring in strong winds and annoy the locals. I think the clappers are still in them.
12:00pm on Thursday, 21st August, 2025:
Weird
I didn't know that dog ice cream is a thing until I saw these signs:
I wonder what flavours they do.
Well, I checked the web site for the Saffron Ice Cream Company, and it turns out there are two flavours: strawberry, apple and sweet potato; broccoli, carrot and blueberry.
So that's ice cream for vegetarian dogs then.
Damn, I was hoping for meat flavour. I might have gone for some bacon ice cream myself, even though I'm not a dog.
9:24am on Wednesday, 20th August, 2025:
Anecdote
It occurred to me that perhaps I should throw out this CDROM-based genealogy software:
The contents of both are available for free online, and scans of the actual documents from which they were badly-transcribed come with the subscriptions to the genealogy sites I frequent (Findmypast and Ancestry).
Maybe next, I'll get around to throwing out the CDROMs of licence-free clip art, photographs and fonts I've kept but haven't used for 20 years.
As for why I'm of a mind to throw out old CDROMs, well, it'll save my family the bother of doing so when I drop dead 50 or 60 years from now.
10:42am on Tuesday, 19th August, 2025:
Anecdote
Well, no sooner had I said I go on morning cycle rides that are eight or nine miles long than I take a wrong turn and wind up in the next county. At least I now know I can cycle 14¼ miles without its killing me.
My wife didn't kill me either; a buffer period is built into her coffee-requirement system, and I got back just in time.
The scenery was quite nice, anyway.
8:39am on Monday, 18th August, 2025:
Anecdote
When I retired, I thought I'd try to lose some weight and lower my blood pressure by going cycling. However, the gearing on my bike was completley out of whack after I changed the inner tube on the back wheel. It resisted all my attempts to fix it, so I gave up and bought a new one.
Old bike:
New bike:
I'm really pleased with the new one. It has an electric motor I can call upon, which means I'm able to go on much more varied journeys as I'm no longer faced with hills that knock the stuffing out of me when I go up them. I've had it for maybe two months, and take it out most mornings. Before the schools broke up, I was averaging maybe five miles a day on it, but now there's no school traffic I can set off earlier and do eight or nine miles before returning home in time to make my wife's morning coffee. If I left it any longer, she wouldn't get her coffee and I'd be in intensive care.
I decided to donate my old bike to charity. It turns out there's a nationwide one called Re-Cycle that refurbishes old bikes and gives them to bike-deprived people in Africa. They don't pick up bikes from your house unless you live within ten miles of their HQ, but as their HQ is conveniently (if bizarrely) located in a barn 2½ miles from where I live, they did pick it up. I hope they have better luck with the gears than I did. It would also be good if they could align the handlebars so they were 90 degrees from the front wheel brackets instead of more like 87 degrees, but I doubt they'll manage it because it's a single piece of metal. If nothing else, they can sell it for scrap, anyway.
Also, it has a new inner tube on the back wheel.
Needless to say, going out for daily bike rides has had no discernable effect on either my weight or my blood pressure.
8:37am on Sunday, 17th August, 2025:
Anecdote
You don't often see Hallowe'en goods and Christmas goods for sale next to each other in August, but sometimes you do.
The reason for this particular juxtaposition is that one of our local garden centres, Mill Race, is closing down and wants to sell off everything it can before it does so.
Quite why garden centres think festival decorations are anything to do with gardens is another matter entirely, of course.
9:58am on Saturday, 16th August, 2025:
Anecdote
My recent morning read has been a collection of two novellas and a set of short stories by Stanislaw Lem. I finished it yesterday.
The first story, Solaris, was made into a 1972 film by Andrei Tarkovsky, which I watched at university when an undergraduate. The novella was largely in line with the film, with just a few minor changes; fortunately for the film, removal of the text's lengthy info-dumps were some of those minor changes. On the whole, I preferred the film (even if, at 2¾ hours, it was overly long); that might have been because I rather liked Natalya Bondarchuk, though. Given that I've seen the movie only once, and that was maybe 46 years ago, I should probably watch it again. Then it'll turn out that info-dumps were indeed present, but I excised them from my memory to spare myself trauma.
It's weird how someone can envisage a future that has a microscope powerful enough to see at the subatomic level, but still puts a vast library of actual books on a space station, and has recordings made on tape.
The second story, The Chain of Chance, is some kind of detective tale. It was bouncing along quite well, until I realised that there was no point in trying to figure out what was going on because it was bound to involve some kind of unforeseeable technology (which it did, in the form of a pharmaceutical weapon). That rather spoiled it. Detective stories are meant to be "Here's all the evidence, see if you can figure it out", not "Here's all but the one, vital piece of evidence you need to figure it out, you'll just have to wait until I choose to tell you it".
In addition to info-dumps, Lem does rather like to make statements in Latin.
The short stories were of an unusual kind, written as if they were reviews of books. It was a nice device, and a good way for Lem to introduce some of his ideas for novels without having to go to the bother of writing the novels. His propensity for info-dumps and Latin aside, they were generally interesting reads. This set of short stories was the very reason I bought the book, because I was recommended one of them, Non Serviam (Latin for "I will not serve", according to Google Translate). I can see why I was recommended it, as it has something to say about people who create worlds that contain intelligent beings, and how they should interact with said beings (spoiler: they shouldn't). I'd have referenced it in How to Be a God if I'd read it earlier. Of the other short stories, U-Write-It is probably the most apposite, envisaging as it does a world where anyone can write a story cobbled together from the words of people who can actually write stories. Welcome to the Kindle store.
Anyway, I'm glad I read the book as a whole.
Next up, I'm finally getting around to reading The Mote in God's Eye, which has been on my "I should probably read this" list since about 1976.
11:17am on Friday, 15th August, 2025:
Anecdote
Colchester's nicest tearoom, Tymperleys, is closing down. It was the front-page headline of today's Essex County Standard.
I used to eat there maybe 3 or 4 times a year. It did a very good Darjeeling, and its eggs benedict were rather special, too. Its setting, in a 15th-century building (for many years the home of Elizabeth I's physician, William Gilberd), was pleasant and secluded. I used to take visitors to Colchester there if they wanted a chat over a light lunch.
I knew that Tymperleys was closing down on Monday, when it featured in the local BBC news. That's why I was in town on Tuesday — we were having one last lunch there. I held off blogging it until today, though, because I expected it to feature in the Essex County Standard, which indeed it did. What I didn't expect was that the ECS wouldn't describe it as "the popular restaurant/tearoom/café/eaterie".
Whenever a restaurant/tearoom/café/eaterie closes in Colchester, the ECS describes it as "popular". This is invariably false, because if it were popular then it wouldn't be closing. Tymperleys was not, however, described as being popular. This may have been because it actually was popular.
The reasons for closing it down, described on page 5 inside the newspaper, include: the recent rise in National Insurance; the 20% rate of VAT paid by the hospitality industry; people sharing slices of cake between two instead of buying one each; inflation; lack of footfall. With regard to footfall, perhaps more people would have dropped in if Colchester town centre wasn't dominated by: other café's, barbershops, nail bars, tattoo parlours, charity shops, vape outlets and newsagents that give the impression you could buy illegal goods from them if you knew the codeword.
It took about an hour to be served when we were in Tymperleys on Tuesday, because one of the cooks was off sick.
I'm sure that anyone equating "off sick" with "having a job interview" is being entirely unfair.
8:39am on Thursday, 14th August, 2025:
Anecdote
I've been replaying Baldur's Gate 3 recently, and yesterday I finished it.
As usual, I managed to get Jaheira killed by accident, with Minsc a subsequent casualty. Astarion left the party when I wouldn't help him become head vampire. Nevertheless, I succeeded in recruiting all the factions I wanted to recruit, albeit being unable to summon them for the final fight. I didn't give any characters more parasites to increase their mind-flayer powers (even the one who changed into a mind-flayer). I also didn't spend any of those coins that give Karlach some kind of boost, as I never remembered I had them. Oh well!
This time round, instead of playing as a sorcerer, I played as a ranger. It's the same as a sorcerer except you shoot people with arrows instead of magic missiles. My always-there party members were Lae'zel (because she can hit people three times per round later in the game) and Shadowheart (because otherwise I'd have to be a healer myself). I mainly had Karlach as the fourth, but swapped her out for one of the others when I needed to advance their quest. Shadowheart was my love interest, because she was ever-present and, unlike Lae'zel, isn't Lae'zel. I wish she didn't have a distracting scar on her face, though. You're a healer, Shadowheart! Heal it! Oh, and stop moaning about being unable to speak to your dead parents when you have a literal Speak With The Dead spell in your armoury!
I enjoyed this run through, though, and it had a nice new epilogue at the end where you get to meet your party members six months after you've won. I won't be playing it again any time soon, though, as its replayability suffers because of the limited number of companions; I suppose I could take the evil route next time, which would net me some different ones, but that doesn't appeal.
Right! Time for something new now. Let's see what's awaiting in my Steam wishlist....
9:55am on Wednesday, 13th August, 2025:
Anecdote
I was in Colchester yesterday over lunchtime.
School is out, so the town centre was teeming with teenagers, mainly gaggles of girls. They were all wearing the same outfit: black short-sleeved top; bare midriff; short denim skirt or shorter denim shorts; short socks; white trainers. Very occasionally, one would have black shorts, but otherwise they were all co-ordinated.
It's weird how kids complain about school uniforms, then when they're not at school they all wear the same look.
I'd have taken some photos to show you, but it would have been awkward if I'd been spotted and worse if I said "I'm going to put them on the Internet" by way of excusing myself.
8:27am on Tuesday, 12th August, 2025:
Weird
Rural Essex is apparently famous for its sunken lanes.
What I would have done if there'd been anything coming the other way — even a bicycle — I've no idea.
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Copyright © 2025 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).