I was sat on the Tube the other day opposite a bloke in shorts who had ‘Mum’ tattooed on one knee, and ‘Dad’ tattooed on the other.
I don’t have any tattoos but I’m often curious about other people’s. Why did he have those on his kneecaps specifically? How did he he decide who got the right knee and who got the left?
If I wasn’t quite so English I might have asked
Delighted that PSReadLine seems to be installed and on by default on Windows servers. The POC server I was mucking about on went down last night, and I thought I’d lost all the command history, which I was kind of depending on
$(Get-PSReadLineOption).HistorySavePath
…shows where the ‘treasure’ lies
While I was reading this I thought how great it was that when a writer sits down to write a book that book can be about anything.
It can be about Romans or rabbits, or attack ships on the shoulder of Orion, or whatever.
This one is a time slip murder mystery about a slightly flakey woman with a dysfunctional family and a random waiter.
I really enjoyed it…but the thing I thought about a book being about anything was slightly undermined by the first bit of the Acknowledgements, which I just read
Getting a book onto shelves is hard when that book doesn’t fit into a clear publishing category…
Finished reading: Vivian Dies Again by Caroline Hulse 📚
How to set up a scheduled task running as a managed service account
I tried to do this both in the GUI and in powershell, but whatever I did I couldn’t get past the GUI asking for a password, or this error when I ran the task
Task Scheduler did not launch task "\matttesting" because user "chelseafc.co.uk\msa$" was not logged on when the launching conditions were met. User Action: Ensure user is logged on or change the task definition to allow launching when user is logged off.
The solution to this problem was to use the old schtasks executable.
schtasks /create /TN 'matt testing using schtasks' /SC DAILY /ST 16:45 /RU 'chelseafc.co.uk\msa$' /RP '' /TR C:\temp\matt_testing.bat /RL Highest
Please enter the run as password for chelseafc.co.uk\msa$:
My Crucial Track for 21 April 2026 - “Famine” by Kate Nash
What is your favourite cover song?
“Famine” by Kate Nash
This is certainly my favourite new cover song. It’s Kate Nash (who had a hit with Foundations and was in Glow on Netflix) doing Sinead O’Connor.
The instrumentation is different, and there’s an added verse, and it’s great. I thought Sinead O’Connor was marvellous, and it’s nice to have her work re-interpreted.
Nash makes points in the video about how English people are ignorant about Irish history….guilty as charged, really.
“Famine” by Kate Nash on Apple Music
This is from Crucial Tracks. My profile is here.
Lots of Spurs fans in transit this morning. There’s a feeling of waiting outside the Headmaster’s office, to take their punishment
I almost feel sorry for them
Almost.
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
Interesting as always from @iandunt.bsky.social , however ‘Rejoin’ is a rubbish word.
In the same way that ‘Brexiteer’ sounded more swash-buckling and exciting than ‘Remainer’, ‘Return’, for example, is a lot cooler than ‘Rejoin’.
Batman returns, the thin white duke returns, the magnificent seven return etc
These words matter, imho.
I’m delighted for Super Frankie Lampard.
Someone wrote that he’ll always be Frank Lampard of Chelsea, and I totally agree.
I took this last night when I was out plodding around Salisbury.
I like the way the shop window reflections work with the model of the Ralph Feinnes, who I vaguely remember from school.
I really enjoyed 2026 🍿
I’ve read a couple of reviews basically saying it’s not serious enough for serious times, but when it gets to Mr Trump I like that it’s about the silly and the trivial side of him.
The words to “All things bright and beautiful” were published in 1848.
They were written by Cecil Frances Alexander, who lived in Strabane. 1848 was the time of the Irish ‘famine’, which makes the line about “the poor man at the gate” quite dark.
To be fair, the famine may not have had such an impact in Strabane at the time the verse was written - I don’t know.
The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And ordered their estate
Reminded of this by Kate Nash’s new version of Sinead O’Connor’s song
Love the Star’s headline, although you do need to be of a certain age, and have watched UK Sunday afternoon telly
At 8:01 PM on April 6th he is temporarily distracted by videos on the internet. He posts a colour video of New York from the early 20th Century and writes: “New York City, 1929!” Not long afterwards, at 1:06pm on April 7th, he threatens genocide
I don’t agree with eveverything that Mr Dunt says here:
…but I can’t disagree with very much of it
My Crucial Track for 10 April 2026 - “The Ballad of David Seaman” by Murray Lachlan Young
Post one of your favourite ballads
I’m not proud of myself for this. It doesn’t say good things about my character that I take nearly as much pleasure in the failures of the Arsenal as I do in the success of Chelsea, but there you are.
Also, David Seaman seems like a good chap. I should be ashamed of myself.
This hardly qualifies as a ‘track’, but I know it as ‘The Ballad of David Seaman’, and it is a good song.
The scene is set at the end of the European Cup Winners Cup final in Paris in 1995.
It was in the 98th minute and the game was nearly gone
And Seaman stood upon the turf and urged the Gunners on
The crowd expecting penalties were whistling for time
But one cruel Zaragozan saw the keeper off his line
Oh, and up stepped Seaman’s nemesis and his name it was Nayim
He kicked a mighty lofted ball so high above the scene
And Seaman scrambled backwards to face a final card
To be beaten by a cannonball from over 50 yards
Marvellous stuff! 😀
The poet’s website is https://www.murraylachlanyoung.co.uk/
This is from Crucial Tracks. My profile is here.
Powershell to show extentions for Azure VM’s
Get-AzVM | select -expand Extensions | select @{L='ComputerName'; E={$_.id.split('/')[-3]}}, @{L='Extension'; E={$_.id.split('/')[-1]}}
Nice bit about chalk figures
The Guardian - On the shoulders of giants: roaming among England’s famous chalk figures
Port Vale coming to Stamford Bridge embodies the romance of the FA Cup. Jumpers for goalposts, Corinthian spirit, and all that
Still hoping to hear “You’ve had you day out, now ‘go’ off home” early in the first half, though
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
Death on the Nile is on telly atm. Is this the most starry cast ever?
The novel was adapted into a 1978 feature film, Death on the Nile, starring Peter Ustinov for the first of his six appearances as Poirot. Others in the all-star cast included Bette Davis (Miss Van Schuyler), Mia Farrow (Jacqueline de Bellefort), Maggie Smith (Miss Bowers), Lois Chiles (Linnet Doyle), Simon MacCorkindale (Simon Doyle), Jon Finch (Mr Ferguson), Olivia Hussey (Rosalie Otterbourne), Angela Lansbury (Mrs Otterbourne), Jane Birkin (Louise), George Kennedy (Mr Pennington), Jack Warden (Dr Bessner), I. S. Johar (Mr Choudhury) and David Niven (Colonel Race).
A nice little video thing from the Beeb