Went for a walk with my sister and her dog today. Turned my ankle over within 20 minutes. Still painful to walk on.
Anyway, here's a picture of the dog, who had a whale of a time. #DogsOfMastodon
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SimonM
@Simon_M@mastodonapp.uk
mastodon 4.6.8By day, I'm a financial analyst; by night, I'm asleep.
Hobbies: Reading, hiking, observing cricket, buying books
Beliefs: Nonconformist christian, left-of-centre, mostly liberal
Once took part in a royal marines training exercise by accident.
135 Followers
105 Following
50 Posts
Joined December 16, 2022
Currently watching on TV:
Race Across The World; Succession; House; Taskmaster
Currently reading:
Katabasis
Things I'm really good at:
Spreadsheets, trivia, making a full English breakfast, spotting other people's typos
Things I'm really bad at:
Drawing, painting, remembering people's names, spotting my own typos
Reasons for prime ministerial resignations:
Cameron: Gambled the future of the country to try to shut up some backbenchers and lost the bet.
May: Incompetence at getting a deal.
Johnson: numerous instances of misconduct in public office
Truss: Endorsed a mini budget that was economically illiterate and which damaged the finances of many a pension fund.
Starmer: Was just a bit dull and uninspiring.
What I would love for YouTube to implement, in place of the 'skip' button whenever they interrupt what you're watching, would be a "fuck off, nobody's interested" button.
Any time anyone presses it, the ad is skipped is not only skipped, but is never shown to anyone else ever again. This would come up on all ads within 1 second. No such thing as an unskippable ad.
Last week, I decided to buy #CrimsonDesert. Have put in about 22 hours since then (a lot on Sunday when I had to have my foot up).
Absolutely massive game. Barely ventured out of the starting area - when I did I came across a swarm of enemies that were I was under-leveled for.
Overwhelming majority is enjoyable, though I will say that I'm now into a string of liberating camps, they can take ages. By that, I mean it can take a full hour just to reach the boss battle at the end.
#gaming
The only thing SharePoint is useful for is as an opening pair of guesses in Wordle.
Replying to on mastodon.social
@cmconseils@mastodon.social Another term is maienschein - "May shine" which refers not to the crepuscular rays, but to the light that goes through the young translucent leaves, creating a green-gold glow.
With the Strait of Hormuz now being closed to shipping traffic, the price of oil is expected to increase very sharply.
Remind me, which country recently commandeered the entire oil output of Venezuela?
Replying to
@Waxingtonknee@mastodon.org.uk Anything where a tech company tries to force an update on anyone ought to be outlawed. I bought my TV about 4 years ago. It constantly says it needs to update an operating system. I just wait for that box to disappear. If you bothered to make it right first time and it ain't broke, it don't need an update.
Replying to
@underseamonkey@fosstodon.org @thegreenparty@threads.net I'm broadly sympathetic to the party, but I wish Polanski had a modicum of credibility. When faced with same basic economic pressing by Rory Stewart, he demonstrated his ineptitude.
With details now emerging about the compensation for car finance misselling, it is likely that fraudsters will be lining up to pose as a claims company to "help" you manage.
Be cautious, check with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), don't give your banking details out.
This feels more like a threat than something to be looked forward to.
Has anyone mentioned it's a tads on the warm side?
Just found out I'm going to a be a great-uncle.
Should I change my name to Bulgaria?
Ok folks. If Burnham is unopposed,.do I get to count as a tick on my 2026 Bingo card the item labelled "Labour leadership election"?
#Labour #Burnham #UKpolitics
Rude joke
Yesterday was the first major announcement of Tube strikes starting today. So this evening, I walked back to Waterloo from my office, instead of taking the Jubilee line. This meant I missed the 18:23 service and instead got on the 18:50 train.
We're slow running at the moment because the 18:23 service has broken down. So I've sort of not lost any time because of the strikes. At least not lost any that I wouldn't have lost anyway.
Pete Hegseth is a cruel, heartless and evil man.
He loves only violence and has no regard for the sanctity of human life.
I have previously heard of the film, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey as a horror film based on the children's story character.
Today, I discovered that the same producers have made something similar in a film called Bambi: The Reckoning.
This might be my next 'bad film' watch.
Replying to on mastodonapp.uk
@aroundthehills@mastodonapp.uk For the most part, I think Trump is more narcissistic than he is jingoistic. Not so with Hegseth. It's as though his world view consists of two parts:
1) Watch the high destruction films of Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich
2) "We should do this in real life"
After the bank holiday, I was due to be in the office 3 days this week,with a working from home day on Wednesday.
Tuesday
Had to deal with an insurance claim on after someone drove their car through my garden fence.
Thursday
I woke up with a nosebleed so I accidentally reenacted the horse's head scene from The Godfather.
Friday
Someone (not me) collapsed on the train, so we stopped to wait for an ambulance. I hope they'll be ok.
16 June.
Ten years since the murder of Jo Cox at the hands of a far right extremist. Here is a reminder of her maiden speech to Parliament.
https://youtu.be/u3OQRnJ1zrQ?is=cPiAp8TD3wJhK4It
#politics #UKpolitics #MoreInCommon
The Major Oak has been declared dead as there were no leaves on it this spring. It lasted over 1,000 years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyer9m0jmko
#Trees #Nottinghamshire
Whoops. Mistakes happen. No harm done.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y9egn7882o
Sometimes, I fear my wit is lost on most people.
Not sure if it's happening for anyone else, but #YouTube has suddenly started playing all videos at the lowest resolution. I didn't change any settings. It just started this morning.
Then I did try changing my settings to go to highest resolution by default when I'm on WiFi. It still defaults to 144p (and then says it's "Higher picture quality") when 1080 is available. I keep having to change it manually on every video. Very annoying.
Am trying to guage some accent/pronunciation differences within the UK. If you say out loud "That's our family cat" is 'our' a closer homophone of 'are' or 'hour'? And, roughly, where are you from?
Choices are limited, so apologies for that. Feel free to reply to add nuance or if you're not from the UK.
Slightly grim topic, but I was thinking about two of our most wonderful national treasures recently and how elderly they are.
I was wondering who we might end up losing first:
Slightly grim topic, but I was thinking about two of our most wonderful national treasures recently and how elderly they are. I was wondering who we might end up losing first:
When the king goes to visit the Orange Toddler, he ought to bring with him an invoice for the damage caused to the UK economy by America's latest war of choice. #politics #globalpolitics #war #Iran #Hormuz #StraitOfHormuz
Replying to
@aroundthehills It was a known side effect of a medication I'm currently on. Was sort of expecting it.
Replying to on mastodonapp.uk
@aroundthehills@mastodonapp.uk Good call. Sort of happened to me by reverse once. My mum did genuinely get a new phone but her message was not convincing. I gave her a test: name the 3 cities where her children went to university and name which family cat came in between [Cat A] and [Cat C].
I forgot it was the school holidays. Not only for us Brits, but for loads of students from other countries who travel en masse to central London.
The evening commute on the Underground was a bit... chaotic. Particularly when one group of (I think) Spanish students congregated at the bottom of the lone 'up' escalator, temporarily blocking all other people from escaping the depths of the tube.
On Saturday, I turned my ankle over. Had increased difficulty walking on it and it was really quite painful by the end of the day. But I kept my shoes on until I got home.
By Sunday, the ankle had swollen a fair bit and I could no longer put on shoes.
But I didn't do a good job of keeping my foot elevated, as you are supposed to. So that swelling has sort of 'gone down' in a literal sense; not of reduced swelling, but it has moved into the foot. Pain has largely gone, but for every step I take I can now feel a 'sloshing' of the liquid in my enlarged foot. It's like carrying a water balloon on the end of my leg.
I've heard some interesting accent variations on words. When working with people from Australia and New Zealand, I've often heard the word 'data' pronounced as 'darter'.
Today, was a new one though. A South African colleague has pronounced it as 'daughter'.
In other news, I was quite pleased with the #cricket today. Though even as a #Durham fan, I felt a bit sorry for #Gloucestershire, having won the toss and put the visitors in to bat, only for them to end the day on 456 for 2, with one of the openers hitting an unbeaten double century.