My big adventure last week was replacing the battery in my bike, which is very fiddly to get in and out but I triumphed in the end. The old one wouldn't hold a charge so I had to walk down to my local mechanic, drop the old battery off for disposal and pick up the new one. It was so nice to have a face to face chat with someone different that I hung out for a bit over a socially distant coffee.
I'd decided I wasn't in the mood for VE Day, but when I was out and about on Thursday the houses with bunting looked so jolly that I relented and hung a flag from the balcony.
I had a busy weekend, by current standards: I baked muffins (in red, white and blue cases, because I happened to have them) with the tail end of a bag of frozen summer fruits, and pretzel rolls, and finished my latest aeromodelling project. This was a Huey helicopter kit I modified to represent a helicopter from The Living Daylights, and my first serious attempt at a custom build. It's a mess but I'm pleased with it.




TV and movies: I agreed to review my friend's Black Archive on The Robots of Death, a Tom Baker Dr Who story, then realised I hadn't actually seen it. Luckily my flatmate could provide, and we watched it over our now-traditional Friday night pizza. I'm a sucker for a good robot story, and I loved this one, with its Art Deco robots and nods to Isaac Asimov.
My mum alerted me to The Battle of the River Plate on Saturday, which appealed not only because it's Powell and Pressburger-directed but has a cast full of people who would later be famous for very specific roles: Bernard Lee is the captain of a captured ship, and as far as I'm concerned this is now M's backstory, while Patrick Macnee looks surprisingly gorgeous a decade before The Avengers and right at the end we get a rare beardless Roger Delgado. I was especially pleased about surprise bonus John Le Mesurier, who isn't even credited.
Talking Pictures kindly screened a Humphrey Bogart movie I hadn't seen, The Enforcer, on Monday night. It was a strange film, but fun, culminating in one of the hammiest death scenes I have ever witnessed.
I spent Monday 'at' ConCon, the cross-government content conference, originally to be held in Manchester but moved online very competently. I attended talks on whether we can get rid of all the PDFs on government websites, on how Transport for London convey information to their customers and NHS Digital designed their app, and a panel where we collaboratively edited the Wikipedia entry on content design. I finished the day all enthused about my job and my community.
Bonus: I attended the whole thing in bed in my pyjamas.
Now the regulations have been relaxed so you can travel as far as you like for exercise, which means that technically I could ride to the coast and splash about in the sea. It's tempting.
May 15 2020, 07:29:58 UTC 8 months ago
Helicopter looks good to me too. If it's a mess it's one you did a good job of hiding. Other people won't notice.
May 16 2020, 08:21:40 UTC 8 months ago Edited: May 16 2020, 08:22:11 UTC
And thanks! You're right, of course, and other people won't notice the botched bits as much as I do, or at all. I have also convinced one Twitter friend to give model kits a go, which I'm very pleased about.
May 16 2020, 08:31:46 UTC 8 months ago
The Key to Time's a variable season, but everyone likes The Ribos Operation and I think The Stones of Blood is a bit under-rated. Enjoy!
May 17 2020, 07:59:55 UTC 8 months ago
Sarah started watching Stones of Blood last weekend and I realised why everyone loves Professor Rumford so much.
May 15 2020, 07:50:58 UTC 8 months ago
I'm curious, why would anyone want to do this? I'm quite happy that in many (though not all) cases you actually get PDFs these days, rather than Word/Excel files or other such things.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it … :D
May 16 2020, 08:20:02 UTC 8 months ago
May 16 2020, 09:13:05 UTC 8 months ago
May 17 2020, 08:00:27 UTC 8 months ago
May 18 2020, 09:48:28 UTC 8 months ago
I just saw a Kenya Government press release that seems to have been issued as a .docx
May 18 2020, 10:38:14 UTC 8 months ago