Rick's b.log - entry 2025/04/12

Sakura!

Pink cherry blossom.

And another, you'll note that I like the colouring of sunset.

More pink cherry blossom.

Here's the white cherry.

White cherry blossom.

And here's the white cherry with sunset colouring.

More white cherry blossom, with beautiful bokeh and lighting.

Now, I don't tend to take or publish portrait aspect photos because I'm very particular about photos being "the right way up". But once in a while there's the exception that justifies breaking the rule.
I'm sure you'll agree that this exception is exceptional.

So much blossom! Honestly, a photo just can't do it justice.

Mowing...

Yet more mowing, it's that time of the year.

In my defence, it's supposed to be slightly cooler and rainier in the coming week, which is the sort of weather that will get the grass growing. So it's better to get it cut when the opportunity presented itself.

Butterfly flowers?

A patch for bee flowers.

Big Town

I walked around the Leclerc and got some things. I saw a dinky little ride-on mower for €1,490. That's about as much as I paid for mine. Notice the dinky little wheels. I'm not sure that would cope, or be safe, on my ground.

A dinky toy mower.

Notice that position of the mower deck. It is not that big, only 61cm if the sticker on the steering wheel is the blade width, it looks like there is only the one blade. Here is a view from the other side. Granted, this mower has a grass collection system, but the fact that the cutting deck is off centre like that would drive me out of my tree.

Off-centre cutting deck.

Then I went to the Au vide greniers that has moved to be right next to Action and not buried around back someplace. There wasn't really anything that took my fancy. However I found a clunky old typewriter for forty euros. I have one, with a QWERTY keyboard as it's British, not unlike this. I'm not sure where I put it. Maybe I ought to see if I can find it and clean it up?

An old typewriter.

Many years ago I used to have an ancient typewriter that was... obscure. There was no '0' or '1'. If you wanted a zero, an upper case letter 'O', and a one was a lower case 'l'. If I wanted an exclamation mark, it would be a full stop, backspace, and an apostrophe. There was no '-', you'd have to push the carriage half a step up, type '_', then put it half a step down again. But there was a key with ¼ and ½ on it.

I went into Action afterwards, and amused myself by noting the knock-off USB cables had to call itself an "8 pin" because "Lightning" is a trademarked name. ☺

The eight pin plug.

Finally I stopped by Picard. My half-empty freezer is now a lot less empty.

Stuff I bought

PG Tips.

PG Tips is what the Leclerc had. It's a tea produced in Kenya. It is clearly not Tetley, I could tell that. But it's a perfectly servicable tea. I wouldn't be like "what the hell is this?" if I was served it. So I'll keep an eye on the PG Tips on Amazon. Tetley is my preference, but I think PG would be a perfectly acceptable plan B.

Going to a supermarket that had Heinz, I felt it would have been a good idea to stock up. The chili sauce was "buy one get one half price" so I did.

Heinz sauces.

I picked up some beef gravy.

Beef gravy powder.

I noticed this.

Beef gravy...for vegans?

Questions, questions. The first is how does one have a vegan/vegetarian beef gravy? But the biggest question must surely be why would a vegan/vegetarian want to eat something beef flavoured? Isn't the point to not be eating animals (or animal-origin for vegans)?

Finally, there was a greater selection of Dulce Gusto stuff. Actually, given that it's just a special shaped capsule and not restricted stuff like barcodes, more companies can make compatible offerings, rather than the rather restricted selection available for Tassimo.

Argh! Coconuts!

Yup. It's that coconut one. Rick's blog is ruined forever, right? ☺
Let's up the ante. The alternative option was Milky Way. There's no Mars or Twix or any of the rest. It's the puffed one or the coconut one. So nerr! ☺

I was back home by twenty past noon. So all of that was done in the time that I lay in bed wasting my life the other week. Hmm...

A new security camera

I can't expect too much from the cameras. For what they are they are pretty cheap. For this one, I wasn't sure if I should get it this month or not. I've been procrastinating for a while now. So what I did was I put my phone on the table, closed my eyes, gave the phone a spin, then prodded the screen. Upon opening my eyes, I'd hit the "Buy it now" button. Okay, message received. Ordered yesterday, delivered today.

What my new camera sees.

Of course, the camera doesn't currently record events because, well, some certain twat (I wonder who?) didn't think to buy a µSD card to put into it.

Duh!

What 80s group was "Soul Li Soul"?

This is what happens when you have crappy fonts where one can't tell the difference between "ell" and "aie". It's not Soul Li Soul, it's Soul II Soul.

AI art

Uh, sweetheart, you're "holding it wrong".

Looking at this picture, what genre are they going to be?

Let's swap the guitars for teddy bears. It's interesting how they have been aged down and given alice bands, none of that was in the prompt.

Awww, even goth kids need a hug once in a while.

Change to holding axes, they're older and... that's a lot of axes.

Nope. F*** Everything And Run!

Finally, let's try blood-soaked teddy bears. My inner goth approves, but there's so much to unpack here, like how are the teddies able to bleed? Maybe one shouldn't overthink this.
<Rick immediately begins overthinking the murder of innocent sentient mass-produced teddy bears>

Little girls shouldn't play with sharp objects.

I can't mess around any more, the free tier provides me with twenty lowish quality 4×5 (portrait!) images per day and I'm all out. If you have any suggestions that isn't likely to be blanked as being unacceptable content (so no "children plus sex toys"), leave a comment.

Doctor Who?

And we made it seventeen minutes and then a tear. Ho-hum.
On the other hand, the "companion" isn't a starry-eyed "oh my god, my own time lord, how exciting". She's known him for all of one episode and is done with this timey-wimey crap.

I think we'll just skip right over the nonsense of the very final scene. I won't describe it so as not to spoil it for my readers, suffice to say "those things are from opposite sides of the planet, so that just wouldn't happen". But I guess viewers needed some easy visual cues to entice them to come back and watch The Doctor cry some more.

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A tree-dwelling mammal, 13th April 2025, 00:06

Rick - if I ever happen to come over to France (a big 'if', my passport expired some time ago and I've not had cause to renew it), I'll pack a large quantity of PG Tips into the car and bring it over. Do you prefer loose tea or teabags?

Rob, 13th April 2025, 01:12

Hmm. Plenty of Tetley in the cheap shops here. I'd bring you some if you weren't so far away! (and if I had a valid pasport..)   Just looked at how far.. Google maps reckons it's an 11 hour drive, with ferry. Whose website tells me it's 6 hour crossing for £384 both ways! That's a bit much.. So looked at flights.. Somewhat less, but I also got offered a bus at £131 round trip (to Rennes.) that's less than just the fuel would cost me driving, but it's over 21 hours per journey! Sorry Rick, if you do get desperate, I'll just post you some!

C Ferris, 13th April 2025, 10:17

Any firm/person in Ireland able to post supplies?

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