I’m enjoying the Ribble game on Puzzmo
Scores on the doors:
| Date | How long | Words |
| 21st July | 5:39 | According to Wiktionary , an axon is 'A nerve fibre which is a long slender projection of a nerve cell, and which conducts nerve impulses away from the body of the cell to a synapse.' |
| 14th July | 2:22 | Quite a quick one today. Ribble had hydrophobic, and allowed 'hydro', but not 'phobic'. Maybe 'phobic' on it's own isn't a generally accepted usage? |
| 13th July | 12:38 | A couple of words I didn't know and a couple I didn't recognize today. 'Rill' is a rivulet. 'Lien' is a claim on someone's property. 'Linty' is something covered in lint. 'Lain' is a layer or a past tense version of lie |
| 12th July | 3:14 | 'Hew' seems to me to have slightly contradictory meanings. It can be chopping bits off of something, or it can be rigid conformity |
| 11th July | 4:47 | 'Quail' can be a bird, it can be to cower in fear, or it can mean to curdle |
| 10th July | 3:10 | 'Dolt' is "from Middle English dold, a variant of dulled" |
| 9th July | 4:05 | 'Husk' in the sense of shell, or casing possibly comes from the middle English _hus_, meaning little house |
| 8th July | 3:00 | 'Trice' is a nautical word meaning to haul or jerk something, presumably like a sail or an anchor, very quickly. The ordinary usage of 'in a trice', meaning quickly, comes from that |
| 7th July | 3:26 | According to Wikipedia, "During Gerardo Machado's dictatorship in Cuba, Havana citizens were forbidden to dance the conga since rival groups would work themselves to high excitement and start street fights. This was not the case when Fulgencio Batista became president in the 1940s - he permitted people to dance congas during elections, but a police permit was required." |
| 6th July | 4:18 | 'Oaf' is "Variant of awf, aufe,[1] probably from Old Norse álfr (“elf”)". Wiktionary says the plural can be 'oafs' or 'oaves' |
| 5th July | 4:38 | 'Tome' implies a single volume of a larger work, apparently |
| 4th July | 2:08 | |
| 3rd July | 6:49 | 'Fief' is essentially the same as 'feifdom', as far as I can tell |
| 2nd July | 3:30 | 'Lute', as well as being an Olde Worlde guitar, can mean something used to seal joints and stuff - something like putty 9th July update: I learnt via the marvellous Saint Denis show that a 'luthier' is someone that makes and maintains stringed instruments |
| 1st July | 10:37 | 'Owie' is _colloquial, North America, childish_ A painful, usually minor, injury. 'Agar' is "From Malay agar or agar-agar, both meaning jelly" |
| 30th June | 2:55 | 'zinc' is from "German Zink, possibly from Zinke, spike (so called because it becomes jagged in the furnace)". |
| 29th June | 4:05 | 'Tuft' is "Middle English, probably alteration of Old French tofe, from Late Latin tufa, helmet crest" |
| 28th June | 13:10 | 27th June | 7:37 | Tort is the legal thing, and French for 'wrong'. Torte is a cake | 26th June | 6:27 | an octad is "A group or sequence of eight" |
| 25th June | 5:10 | |
Watching: Brazil ‘70: The Third Star 🍿.
Possibly something for football nerds of a certain age….but I’m very much enjoying it
They used to say if you don’t like the weather in England then you can wait five minutes and it will have changed. Starting to feel its the same for Prime Ministers.
I’m not much interested in Burnham vs Starmer. The significant story seems to me to be how badly the right did
Reform is dying out there, absolutely dying on its arse - Ian Dunt substack (my retitling)
Great bit of detail about Count Binface
The man in the bin is a comedian named Jon Harvey. He used to stand in elections as Lord Buckethead, including in the former prime minister Theresa May’s constituency in 2017 so that she had to face down the dreadful results for her party alongside a man with a bucket on his head. However, after receiving a copyright complaint from the American film-maker Todd Durham, who created Lord Buckethead for his 1984 science-fiction film Hyperspace, Harvey had to rebrand as Count Binface.
Binface, foxes and raving loonies: the UK’s proud history of costumed candidates
Pic: Jpdfive, Count Binface, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Wondering whether I’d rather see Chelsea win the Premiership away at Tottenham or away at Bournemouth 😀
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
Chelsea - Scores & Fixtures - Football - BBC Sport
I’m back at Outpatients. Being a total wuss, I always feel a bit sorry for myself….until I see other people who are much worse off than I am.
There was a chap in the radio the other day who had bought a bottle of beer from each of the 48 nations in the World Cup.
As each team gets eliminated he’s going to drink that country’s beer.
It’s a nice idea. I wonder whether that last bottle of beer, of the side that never gets eliminated (England, obviously), will ever be drunk, or will it become a family heirloom, passed down and treasured through the generations.
It’s coming home. Possibly. ⚽
It’s great that the referee’s signal for “hydration break” is the same as the mime for “do you want another beer?” ⚽
I was pleased to hear the first “and rightly so” from Alan Shearer in this World Cup.And rightly so. ⚽
My very favourite comedy ever is a radio comedy set in a corner shop near Glasgow, called Fags, Mags and Bags.
I just listened to an episode in which they mention Bensons for Beds, Salisbury.
I might have to go and get my picture taken in front of it.
I like to think I understand a bit about The Troubles and All That, but often something takes me aback.
Celtic manager Martin O’Neill says that his dad was one of two barbers in their village…but some Protestants got their haircut by his dad, who was Catholic, too.
The fact that this is worth mentioning, 60-odd years later, makes me realise that although I might know some stuff, I’ll never properly understand.
Went to the pictures last night. I enjoyed Batman Begins, but I couldn’t help thinking of how odd it now seems for a billionaire to be the good guy
Watched: Batman Begins 🍿
I’m enjoying ‘Play Nice’. Sex and the City meets the Haunting of Hill House?
Currently reading: Play Nice by Rachel Harrison 📚
I’m trying, and on the whole failing, to do stuff with ansible.windows.win_dsc:
To get the list of ‘parameters’ for the particular DSC resource you’re mucking about with you can do this:
Get-DscResource sqlrs | select -expand properties
Name PropertyType IsMandatory Values
---- ------------ ----------- ------
DatabaseInstanceName [string] True {}
DatabaseServerName [string] True {}
InstanceName [string] True {}
DependsOn [string[]] False {}
Encrypt [string] False {Mandatory, Optional, Strict}
PsDscRunAsCredential [PSCredential] False {}
ReportServerReservedUrl [string[]] False {}
ReportServerVirtualDirectory [string] False {}
ReportsReservedUrl [string[]] False {}
ReportsVirtualDirectory [string] False {}
RestartTimeout [UInt32] False {}
SuppressRestart [bool] False {}
UseSsl [bool] False {}
I’m walking the Clarendon Way from Winchester to Salisbury
I’m collecting donations for Farleigh Hospice, who helped look after my dad at the end of his life. Link is below, in case anyone in Fedi-land fancies chipping in
This chap, who played for Solent Kestrels in #Southampton, England, is as I understand it guaranteed an NBA Championship ring.
He played for both the Spurs and the Knicks this season