The metal recycling plant will feast upon this in due course.
The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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8:24am on Sunday, 29th June, 2025:
Anecdote
As predicted, no sooner had I thrown away the mystery key that I found than I discovered what it was that it unlocked.
The metal recycling plant will feast upon this in due course.
8:49am on Saturday, 28th June, 2025:
Anecdote
When I was at aged 16-18, we visited a power plant on a school trip. This was notable for three things:
1) Only after we entered a room with immense electro-magnets in it did the person who was showing us around remember to ask if any of us had a pacemaker, because if so we'd be dead.
2) I encountered my sixth first computer scientist , the first one who wasn't called Tony. Her name was Roz.
3) I was given a punched card.
I kept the card, because it says Nuclear Data File Card on it. When I was at university, I had the idea of using it for one of my assignments to confuse the punched-card operator, but I never did; they probably wouldn't have noticed it.
It's amazing to think that Essex University used to go through a million punched cards a week back in the late 1970s.
We weren't allowed to take the chad and throw it around. Being card, it was biodegradeable, but apparently it was deadly if inhaled. We could understand that, so only threw it at weddings instead of confetti.
10:41am on Friday, 27th June, 2025:
Anecdote
As en Emeritus Professor, I was invited to attend the University Court yesterday. This is an assembly of the local great and good (High Sheriff of Essex, commander of the Colchester Garrison, Bishop of Colchester — that kind of person) along with the university executive team (including those of the Student Union) and padded out with people like me.
The event was opened by the Chancellor, then there was a report given by the acting Vice-Chancellor, Maria Fasli, whose term ends in July. I didn't learn much from either of the presentations, because I'd heard most of the content before. Still, it was worth attending and I'll go to the next one.
Maria is moving the the University of Sussex, which is another research-intensive 1960s UK university. Back in 1973, Professor James Lighthill was commissioned to write a report into the worthwhileness of funding AI, and concluded it was a dead end so no research funding should be made available for it. All UK universities that were getting into the subject immediately dropped it, except three: Edinburgh, Essex and Sussex. Maria's aread of specialisation is AI (particular big data analysis), so Sussex is a good fit. It wouldn't surprise me if she was being groomed to be their next vice-chancellor, given that she has the experience and is still only in her early 50s.
Given that she's been at Essex for the past 29 years, she got quite emotional, especially at the sustained level of applause that accompanied the end of her speech.
The University Registrar is also leaving, and at the end the Chancellor thanked them both and there was a standing ovation. I don't bow to peer pressure, and only stand for standing ovations if I actually agree with them. If it had just been for Maria I would have stood, but not for a joint one with someone else I wouldn't have stood for. I don't want to be patronising, even if almost everyone else was.
After the event, there was a networking gathering. There were five or more trestle tables there with drink on them. Half a table had non-alcoholic drink on it (berry and mint fizz) and the rest had wine, beer and gawd knows what else. There were also three bottles of sparkling water on offer. Large numbers of people descended on the non-alcoholic section, probably because they'd driven to get to the event and didn't want to be consuming alcohol for the drive back.
I thought there were going to be nibbles, too, and had been expecting to fill up on them. None appeared, though, so after half an hour I left. That may have been the cue for them to bring something out ("the guy who didn't stand in the standing ovation has left — bring out the roast swan and the suckling pig"), but I suspect not.
I had a McDonald's on the way home. Thanks to the touchscreen ordering system, I couldn't say I wanted no dill pickles and had to pick them out by hand.
9:56am on Thursday, 26th June, 2025:
Weird
Children's books of the future.
9:32am on Wednesday, 25th June, 2025:
Weird
I spotted these in the supermarket earlier this week:
They appear to be identical products in different boxes. The pictures on the boxes are identical except for having different colours for the product itself.
Given that both of them look like something you'd be distressed to tread in, if this is some kind of A/B testing, I'm going for C.
9:04am on Tuesday, 24th June, 2025:
Weird
I came across this sign for a public footpath when I was out and about the other day.
Given that you have to jump across a metre-wide ditch into a metre-wide ruck of nettles to follow it, that perhaps suggests why the oats at the other side haven't been flattened by countless ramblers.
9:13am on Monday, 23rd June, 2025:
Weird
Prompt: "Full length color photograph of a young woman. She is dressed in modern casual clothes. She spins around and is now in her supergirl costume!"
Midjourney 7's animation definitely has problems with rotation.
9:40am on Sunday, 22nd June, 2025:
Anecdote
Asda's magazine rack labels and the magazines themselves have parted company.
9:55am on Saturday, 21st June, 2025:
Anecdote
Midjourney has started to allow the creation of moving images based on static images that it's created. I've had a play with it.
It turns out that it's really good. As with a good many other static-to-moving image AI systems at the moment, people still have a tendency to look as if they're from the Far East in vigorous animations, regardless of whether they do in the original picture; I guess this is to do with where the majority of the training data originated. For normal movement, it's fine. It doesn't have the jelly-fingers in waving that other systems do, although to be fair this seems to be because it makes people wave very slowly.
The guardrails are tighter than they are on static image-generation. Some of the images that Midjourney was happy to generate, it isn't happy to animate. It also likes to think that some images are of children when they're of adults (which it should know because it generated them from a prompt that says they are).
Overall, though, I'm very impressed with it. It's better than everything else I've tried.
That said, it does have some issues.
You noticed the jacket has buttons instead of button holes, yes?
11:24am on Friday, 20th June, 2025:
Weird
8:59am on Thursday, 19th June, 2025:
Anecdote
I was in London yesterday, to see my old friend Eric Goldberg. We usually meet in the vicinity of the ticket booth in Leicester Square, which has been closed for awhile for refurbishment.
I got there early, and while I was waiting noticed a number of people appearing who seemed to be in weird costumes. OK, so that's normal in London, but there did appear to be a steady stream of them. It was when I saw a woman appear dressed as the lead character in Clueless that I twigged it was some kind of theatrical event.
In addition to her, I saw characters from Legally Blonde, Starlight Express, Matilda, Moulin Rouge, Cabaret, The Great Gatsby, Tina Turna and Burlesque. Most of those names probably have — the Musical appended to them.
So, we'd happened to choose to meet on the day the ticket booth officially reopened, for which there was "star-studded celebration" to mark the occasion (the reopening, not our meeting). It had been selling tickets for several months, but yesterday Eric was the last person to buy a ticket (for a show tonight) before they closed it so they could open it.
Here are a couple of characters (from Cabaret and Matilda) getting their hair touched-up by professional ahir-toucher-uppers.
I'm not a fan of musicals so have no idea who these people are.
8:24am on Wednesday, 18th June, 2025:
Anecdote
My wife doesn't like spiders, so at the moment it's safe for me to put things in the attic that I don't want her to find.
I don't know where I'll hide them if she ever gets a portable hand-held vacuum cleaner.
9:44am on Tuesday, 17th June, 2025:
Weird
These electronic displays on Greater Anglia trains don't pull any punches.
8:37am on Monday, 16th June, 2025:
Comment
We're often told that we've had a month's rain in a single day, but we're never told we've had a month's sun in a single day.
The sun is so much better behaved than the rain.
9:36am on Sunday, 15th June, 2025:
Anecdote
Ooh! Two people I know got OBEs in The King's Birthday Honours list!
One, Andrew Copson, heads up Humanists UK. The other, Susan Wilkinson, will become my elder daughter's mother-in-law next month.
There may be other people I know who've received one, but I'm not reading through over a thousand names to find out.
There's only one person in the games industry who received an honour: Alex Boucher, who got an MBE. He lives in Colchester and I've never heard of him.
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Copyright © 2025 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).