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.
The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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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.
9:18am on Saturday, 14th June, 2025:
Weird
A shop front in Colchester:
Next time I'm in town with time on my hands, I'm going to try get me some of this vintage coffee vinyl.
9:14am on Friday, 13th June, 2025:
Anecdote
When I was at school, my weekend job as was a bingo caller in an amusement arcade (Pastimes, now sadly demolished). The chap in charge of maintaining the arcade machines, Eric, had a Simca van. I don't know that I ever saw any other road vehicle made by Simca, and I'm not surprised because it was an ugly thing, but it was Eric's pride and joy.
Soon after getting it, he was pulled over by the police. Here's a 50-years-later paraphrasing of how I was told the conversation went.
Eric: Hello, officer, what's the problem?
Cop1: Your van has our registration number.
Eric: No it doesn't.
Cop1: Yes it does. ATB 18S, the same as ours. [Note: I don't recall the actual number, but it was something like this]
Eric: That's not right, it's ATB 19S
Cop1: No it isn't, look.
(Eric gets out of van and looks)
Cop1: See? ATB 18S, the same as ours.
(Eric looks)
Eric: That's not right.
(He goes round to the front of the van)
Eric: ATB 19S, yes, that's right.
Cop1: You have two different numberplates. That's against the law.
Cop2: Er, are you sure we're ATB 18S?
(He goes round to the back of the police car)
Cop2: Yes, it's ATB 19S.
Eric's van and the police car were indeed ATB 18S and ATB 19S, but each had one of the other's number plates. It turned out that they'd been manufactured in the same place and mixed up when they were sent to the dealers.
I'm sure this doesn't happen nowadays.
I was reminded of the story because my daughter wanted (and got) two identification labels on her newborn son, to make sure there was no chance of an accidental baby-swap.
11:30am on Thursday, 12th June, 2025:
Anecdote
My wife finally conceded that if we haven't used her fondue set for 40 years, we're probably not going to use it.
It's not that we don't like fondues, it's that we don't like fondues you heat up by lighting a container of methylated spirits underneath them.
10:23am on Wednesday, 11th June, 2025:
Anecdote
The clock on my home office wall stopped. A battery change did nothing, so I bought a new one.
Buying a replacement anything is a good way to make the original work again, and that's what happened here.
I was looking at the hands on the clock, which were slightly bent, and in the process presseed on the axle in the middle to which they all connect. This caused it ro burst back into life. There must have been a loose wire or something.
The new clock makes a slight whirring noise as it goes round, so I stuck with the now-functioning old one. The new one is under the TV, where no-one can hear it, and it's more visible than the carriage clock also we have there.
I guess it'll have to be moved when the grandchild gets old enough to self-propel, but for the moment it's doing a splendid job.
Yes, I know the two clocks in the picture aren't exactly synchronised, but so long as neither of them is slow I'm OK with that.
9:08am on Tuesday, 10th June, 2025:
Anecdote
So, yesterday our younger daughter presented us with our first grandson.
It was something of an effort, on account of how he weighed 8 pounds 10 ounces (3.9kg) and my daughter is only 5 feet 1 inches (155cm) tall.
Needless to say, we're rather pleased.
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Copyright © 2025 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).