Craig Sawyers

Happy birthday Grahame!!!

SAS Rogue Heroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAS:_Rogue_Heroes I had not realised that the SAS (Special Air Service) was a created entity in 1942, but quickly became the sort of thing we know of today. Once they got going, and started causing clandestine mahem in desert warfare against Rommel's supply chain, they invented their own motto - still the SAS's motto today - "Who dares, wins". Anyway, a must watch.

Happy birthday

Happy birthday Knucks!

Happy birthday!

We had it after 3 shots. Woke up feeling like shit, took a test - ping! Wife was out playing tennis. Came back "I feel a bit weird" take the test I suggest. Ping! Just like a bad head cold. All clear 5 days later, and led a 12 mile walk 5 days after that. I've lost count of how many shots we've had now; definitely 6 and possibly 7.

Thanks guys - got it now. Some of the MoFi stuff looks expensive on first sight. But vinyl records were always expensive. Back in the early 70's LP records were around (in US-speak) $6. since then retail prices have increased by 17 times. Which means the real value in today's money is $106. And those flimsy records came with pops and crackles from new. So MoFi's price of $125 for their virgin vinyl, 45rpm ultra high quality pressings is not much more we were paying in 1972 for complete rubbish.

Doesn't let me read that article unless I subscribe. Sigh.

The number of The Beast!

Happy birthday!!

Those names are absolutely true. I have personally been to both Penistone and Cockermouth.

I had a pair of ESP6's in the mid 70's. Those were the self energized ones with a transformer in each earcup? I remember that they were not light. Sounded good as I recall, but listening time was limited by the head crushing weight and the sweaty fluid filled earcups.

Happy birthday!!

https://www.billboard.com/pro/donald-trump-guitar-company-cease-and-desist-order-gibson/

Pretty tame though by comparison with the ice hockey match I went to on the same trip. Everything went as it ought, until helmets came off and a fist fight started. I was astonished at how totally brutal ice hockey was.

I've sat in the front row during a visit to Salt Lake around a decade ago. The thing that freaked me out is that the ball would be thrown full tilt straight at you - until a hand the size of a snow shovel appears as if from nowhere and collects it. I found it a great experience.

This is turning into Craig and Carole's theatre adventures! Yesterday afternoon we went to Stratford (on Avon) to see Othello. Our benchmark was a superb version we saw at the National Theatre in London maybe 10 years ago with Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear (https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/whats-on/othello-2013/ . This version seen yesterday however was an astonishingly good performance. 3.5 hours (including interval) so hardly cut back at all. When, near the end of the play, Othello strangles his wife Desdemona, the stage blacks out. So all you hear is legs thrashing and the breathing of Othello. https://www.rsc.org.uk/othello/ The photograph is a multi purpose cube which contains in this case three main characters when they are dead. https://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/othello-royal-shakespea-23889

Went to London today to see The Duchess, with Jodie Whittaker. (She was the only female Doctor in Dr Who, and was in Broadchurch) Modern setting of the early 1600's original play. Only partly successful in a modern setting, but a shocking and unsettling last 45 minutes. The Duchess's deranged brother ends up putting a gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. There was a spray of blood from the back of his head - I have no idea how they did that. In the movies they use an electrically triggered blood capsule, but I've never seen that on stage before. So a play where everyone dies apart from one - the assassin, now reformed, who agrees to bring up the (dead) Duchess's son. https://trafalgartheatre.com/shows/the-duchess/

One of our most important Labour politicians, John Prescott, has died aged 86 after Alzheimers https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce9gp7eke44t https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prescott That recounts a famous incident where a protestor threw an egg at him from behind. Feeling something running down the back of his neck, he turned and decked the guy with a punch. When Tony Blair (the PM at that time) asked him what happened, Prescott replied "I was carrying out your instruction to contact with the electorate"

Macintosh alas sold its soul to the Private Equity devil. And that means that they take as much money out while they own it, and then sell it. So it is no surprise at all that they flogged Macintosh/Sonus Faber to a company who would buy it and maximise their profit. Hence Bose.

Microsoft, as part of the latest security update, sneaked in a link to Copilot, shoving a link on the bottom ribbon. What is Copilot? Well it is an Generative AI thing, that they have named Prometheus. I knew that I remembered something about Prometheus. Well he was one of the Greek Titan gods. And he bestowed fire for humanity - which I guess what was in Microsoft's mind, intelligence being a metaphor for fire. What they entirely missed is the Zeus was so pissed off with Prometheus that he had him chained to a rock. Each day, an eagle would come and eat his liver. Overnight the liver would grow back, only to be eaten again. So Prometheus was sentenced to permanent agony and torment. I guess the marketing team at Microsoft failed to spot the problem inherent in the name!

The densest planet in the solar system - here; the Earth. Kind of figures - there are lot of dense people living here. Least dense planet in the solar system - Saturn. It is less dense than water. So if you had a bucket of water large enough (and that would be vey large indeed!) Saturn would float. Factoids of the day over and done.

And Earth imaged by Cassini during its mission to Saturn

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." Carl Sagan

That is some hard yards! Nicely done.