The final of the short term lets we’re staying in (before we switch to a medium-term one!) while our flooded house is repaired is also perhaps the prettiest. Our village this week is peak-Cotswolds, for sure!
Kind: Notes
Predictions in a Hat
Two decades ago this month my friend Matt posted five predictions about the future of the world. I’ve revisited these predictions twice since: ten years later and twenty years later, and “scored” his predictions both times.
I love that the Web’s memory (and the persistence of URLs) makes this kind of long-term conversation possible.
Note #28647
There was no mixing bowl in the house large enough to make enough pizza dough to feed all of the Three Rings volunteers present at this year’s 3Camp, so I just had to pour out all the ingredients onto the surface and work from there.
Fools Mode
I’d completely forgotten that my website pranks visitors on April Fools’ Day with a randomly-selected one of a selection of “features” until I went to it myself and got “party mode”.
So yeah, this year I managed to April Fools’ myself.
Note #28634
Some days, developing Three Rings is about being hunched over a keyboard alone in the middle of the night, swearing at Rubygem incompatibilities.
But just ocassionally it’s about getting together in beautiful places with some of the most dedicated geeks I know… to swear about Rubygem incompatibilities.
Either way, a walk in the garden can lead to the insight that gets you to the solution.
Note #28632
Not even thanks to Daylight Saving but just because I felt energised and excited, I got up to watch the sunrise this morning… before starting work on a new Three Rings feature!
Note #28621
Kicking off 3Camp 2026, our annual volunteering event, with the traditional “receive and sort a ludicrous amount of groceries” activity.
Eject Toast
Most-often when a toaster has a ‘cancel’ button it’s simply labelled ‘cancel’, ‘stop’, or with a cross. But this week, I discovered a toaster that uses the ‘eject’ icon – like you’d find on a VHS tape recorder – on its button.
At first I thought this was an unusual user interface choice, but I’m coming around to it. It feels like a more-accurate and skeuomorphic representation of what actually happens than a cross suggests.
But the existence of toasters like this one does necessarily mean that, some day, some Gen Alpha will see a tape deck in, like, a museum or something, and will say ‘hey, that’s cute: the button you press to pop the tape out is the same as the one you use to pop your toast out’.
Big Pride
Like many in the UK, I’m dismayed every time I see the plague of St. George’s Cross (flag of England) that nationalists have been hanging on lamp posts on recent years.
So it gave me great joy to see that this lamp post had recently acquired a (larger!) pride flag. 🏳️🌈
If we’re going to become a country that hangs flags everywhere… I’d much rather that they be flags that speak of inclusivity and diversity. ❤️
F-Day plus 38
It’s 38 days since our house was damaged in a flash flood, and today’s the first of our ‘BER’ assessment. BER stands for Beyond Economical Repair. It basically means that anything on the list is something that the insurance company intend to ‘write off’: to declare irreparable or not-worth repairing and scrap, replacing it with an equivalent new one.
So today, while I work, I’m watching a trio of men carry all of the soft furnishings, white goods, and rugs, plus any plywood/MDF-based furniture that got soaked into a pair of vans on the driveway, making notes where possible of the makes and models of things as they go.
My home is rapidly becoming more cavernous and echoey.
F-Day plus 35
It’s F-Day plus 35, and I’m spending a few hours working in the habitable part of our flood-damaged house while I’m “between” two AirBnBs.
The dog, who doesn’t normally get to come upstairs, is sitting with me on the landing. Except she also wants to keep an eye on what’s happening downstairs.
The result? Her back legs are sitting and her front legs are standing as she peers blepfully down the stairs.
Note #28553
Somebody should make a tea cosy but to fit a cafetiere.
That sounds like a great idea.
Chapattidilla
Wanted a quesadilla. Didn’t have any tortillas, so substituted chapattis.
It went… only okay. The earthiness of the chapatti pairs with mature cheese less-well than the cornflour-sweetness of a tortilla does.
I tried it, so you don’t have to!
Note #28497
A lot of things are hard right now. But I appreciate that Spring has come and I can enjoy a cheese & pickle sandwich and a fake beer for lunch in the sun. All to the sounds of the birds singing… and, somewhere behind me, the dog excitedly demolishing a pile of pine cones.
It could be worse, right?
Horse Gym
My current temporary home – and, necessarily, office – is directly next door to some kind of “horse gym”: a contraption a little like a huge revolving door to encourage one or more horses to exercise by walking around it:
Every now and then my peripheral vision registers that there’s a horse outside the window and, for the dozenth time, I look up from my work and glance around to barely catch it vanishing off on yet another lap.