Rick's b.log - 2024/03/26
It is the 21st of November 2024 You are 18.223.237.246, pleased to meet you!

Tea 0.03

...and things were getting confused trying to work out how to cope with the 32nd of March, and so on. Yes, remind me, what's the Unicode number for the facepalm emoji? [ed: 🤦 for the basic facepalm; so... 🤦🏻‍♀️]

This version now adds it (as n days worth of seconds) to the raw time value before trying to work out the date. Let the library date routines sort out these things (because you, Rick, are clearly a twat).

You can now hold Shift when clicking the iconbar icon to throw away the grid and recreate it. This isn't actually that big a thing as clicking the same day as you were looking at in the When menu would do the same thing. But there's now a key for it.
You can now, also, hold Ctrl when clicking the iconbar icon to flush the cached programme data and cause it to be refetched. Note that unlike starting up whilst holding Alt, this will not delete the channel list data.
You shouldn't need either keypress, but they're there if you do need them.

The application name has now been registered. ROOL were just a little busy. Hard at work trying to work out how to make the OS work on a 64 bit processor, right? 😂

Tea is now available on Store, but you can grab a copy here:

Anna and the apocalypse

I hope she doesn't need to go back to get stitches taken out or something, there's likely no way in hell she'll ever go back into that box again (though I'll keep offering her crunchies in it, just in case).

Anna is strange. Sometimes she's soft and cuddly (but not too cuddly), while other times she's a possessed demon who will tear internal organs out without so much as a raised eyebrow. So I was rather expecting her to bust her way out of the box, to fight, to struggle.

Instead, as if resigned to a proscribed fate that she's already aware of, she simply sat down and looked worried.

A worried furball.

After I dropped her off, I popped by the post office to send the portable back to Danew. It was €10.something for a basic drop-it-off and €13-something for getting a signature. So I chose the signature option. I doubt I'd ever see the signature (there doesn't appear to be an option online unless maybe if you sorted out the entire process online through your La Poste account). I dropped a note in to ask if they could leave the machine at the initial setup stage so I can set it up myself, notably selecting English). I wonder if it'll take several weeks to deal with, like last time...

Had to raid my piggybank for Anna's operation.

A few hours later... I picked up a very quiet cat. With a little hood around her head. The vet told me I can begin to remove the bandage little by little as of this weekend (yeah, that'll be fun for both of us!) and next weekend I can take the hood off. Unless, of course, Anna has found another way of getting rid of it.

I took her into the living room and she stumbled around with enormous eyes (she's probably high, like those American teenagers on YouTube after undergoing dentistry procedures), so I plopped her back in her carrier and took her to where she lives. Some familiarity.

She leapt up to the wooden beam over the windows. How the hell did she manage that after a fairly major surgery? In fact, how the hell did she manage that, period. To put it into context, it would be like me leaping up to a fourth floor balcony (for American readers, that's the fifth one up ☺).

Eventually I coaxed her down from the rafters, and all she wanted was that horrible thing taken off of her head. But, alas, it has to be on for a while yet.

I have left her alone down there. Let her come back down to earth in peace and familiar surroundings.

Oh, the expression.

Baltimore's bridge

If you've seen the video of the collapse, what is most remarkable is the speed of it. Like the failure of the apartment block in Florida, one of the major weaknesses of structures is damage to their supports, which will often lead to what is best described as "catastrophic failure".
But, then, while I'm sure people will soon start asking "why weren't the support pillars protected?", I wonder what sort of protections would actually be effective to a huge cargo ship that is essentially drifting out of control until it hits a support pillar.

As soon as I became aware of this tragedy, I headed straight to the comments section of the Daily Mail article that was, at the time, at the top of the main page.
It did not disappoint.

A mash-up of some of the comments on The Daily Mail.

As you can clearly see, Right Wing Nutjobs living up to the description. Just think, in a few months those idiots will be voting either Tory or Trump... <sigh>

Tomorrow... I go to the dentist.

Oh. Joy.

Your comments:

C Ferris, 27th March 2024, 08:31

Is it possible to add Freeview numbers to the list.    Interesting prog :-)

Rick, 27th March 2024, 09:11

Freeview numbering isn't planned, plus as far as I can tell, whether you get C4 or S4C depends upon region (they both have the same channel number), and should The Primary Channels be numbered 1-5... (SD) or 101-105... (HD)? Or both? And what does 7&8 "Regional TV" mean? (etc)  I'm looking at the list at https://www.tvchannelguide.co.uk/freeview.php    So, no, it isn't planned, sorry.

Zerosquare, 28th March 2024, 08:21

> things were getting confused trying to work out how to cope with the 32nd of March, and so on.    What's the problem? According to your own blog's banner, it's the 1489th of March 2020 :)    > Anna is strange. Sometimes she's soft and cuddly (but not too cuddly), while other times she's a possessed demon who will tear internal organs out without so much as a raised eyebrow.     In other words, she's a cat. Hope she'll recover quickly.

jgh, 28th March 2024, 23:08

he he. Do you want "what is tomorrow's date?" code for 6502? :)  mdfs.net/Info/Comp/6502/ProgTips/Date/DateUpdate    yeah. Date Code Is Hard. But not that hard, just face-palm "hard". Just ask Excel if 1900 is a leap year.