The Seal of Approval comments on the Otter of Leith

I am the Otter of Leith, sir. I swim in its crystalline stream. It's only the neds wot piss in it That give my fur its peculiar gleam.

Amen

It I have to enter one more &!65#@27)%33jng six digit verification code today, I shall officially resign my humanity and register as an Enigma machine. See if I DYVWR MPDEK FSYER BSE.KX don't

One of the major downsides to AI is that any idiot can share scenes from a dream whether you like it or not. This one is wrong in almost every detail.

Warm Leathette/Warm Leveret

Meanwhile, here in the science fictional future of today, my house is being attacked by Chinese robots using infra-red lasers. I fighti back with a laser of my own, screwed to the wall, next to the sofa, in the Edinburgh burial ground wherein I live. It's Friday.

J G Ballard on the South Bsnk Show , twenty years ago. I first found his work in the SF section of the local library when /i was ten or so, and and got hooked on the atmospherics of the first three novels. Later, called by the vast temporal resonances of the far night sky... youtu.be/8LosxrbL3sU?...

New favourite military aviation phrase - it hit like shit from a tall moose. 8/10.

I know now Boards of Canada isn't doing Boards of Canada, somebody has to do Boards of Canada, but THIS much Boards of Canada? open.spotify.com/track/2lYthf...

This is, as they say, une banger absolute. If your booty don't twitch to this neat, DNR. Chppn. open.spotify.com/track/2L1FLX...

All that AI and visual precessing cleverness embedded in the untold petaflops of its mighty machinery, and the Google Photos web app cannot read a QR code in an image.

I have stumbled on a completely weird link between ROTOR, the early Cold War British radar network, and the maximally bonkers Trumpian medbed conspiracy theory. It may involve crayfish. Research continues.

What I love about Apple iOS is attention to detail..

Old agency adage: "If the client pouts and sighs Make their advert twice the size If that's still unsatisfactory Show a picture of their factory only in the direst case Print a picture of their face" And in Rupert's Inbox PR Surpise today... trials and tribbleations.

My T1154{R1155 RAF Bomber Command radios have arrived from Kent via a specialist courier. Far too heavy for one man to lift, and that's just the radios. The power supply is similar. All came with enormous amounts of documentation which is fantastic. Now to get it on the air.

Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan has a new album, Public Works And Utilities. Not the variety of BoC, but the vibe, the uneasy nostalgia of avivd childhood flashback in the middle act of a trip. Lovely. spotify.link/8bvvWp06yXb

Bluesky search is broken, so good luck searching for why.

Going through the ONT data sheet in the hope of finding a way to get it to disgorge stats. Np luck so far, but amused to see it has a Dying Gasp Alarm.

It took Openreach months to get a fibre five metres from the cabinet to the house, but I have slipped the surly bonds of Vjrgin to touch the face of Zen. Nice to plug my existing router straight into the ONT - just add PPPoE creds and VPN/WiFi etc just carry on. As it should be.

Integrity. Must be powered by irony thrusters.

AI fun. Palb had a lyric fragnebt stuck in his head -"I don't want your secret police, I don't want your spies" and tried to look it up on line. Google AI said it was from "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of" by Morrissey. He tried different varaints of the lyric, and each time the AI came back...

I may have just bought an unfeasible wireless set...

@marcrileydj.bsky.social Robert Fripp tells tq\es of the tour bus. Thank God my tablet is gin prooi. Think you could slip it out on t'wireless? Me neither. open.spotify.com/track/0CzS4s...

The refurb Pixel 8 Pro I got to replace my moistened Pixel 6 has a bunch of spec updates that don;t matter to me, nor did I expect them too. But - the screen is now bright enough I can read the bus app at bus stops in way more daylights. Huge for me. Who knows what matters.

Went to read this, was mesmerised by 'pantheon of aggression', a juxtaposition of concepts that shouldn't work but somehow does, precipitating a snow globe shower of ideas each time you shake it. All aspect of human violence its own god? What does mythos draw? Language and mind are crazy fun.

Summertime, and the freelance is flowing Staffers are on hols, and the well's running dry Oh, your budget is rich, and your readers are looking Commission me, baby, don't you cry.

"The new supercomputer has the power of 100,000 home computers and will allow the training of a British version of ChatGPT. Yhe minister said that the data it could process in a swcond would take everyone else in the world 80 years to achieve." HOW CAN I WORK IN THE MIDFT OF THIS MINCE?

Now me Samsung Tab A9 tablet has gone mad. The finger pattern recognition system has stopped working, so I can't get in. The sort of petty annoyance fixed by a restart via the long press on the power button. Which as of late has added the need to verify via the pattern.

A piece of long-lost tech pub trivia: in the 1990s, PC Magazine UK used a portfolio of images to test printers. So big sister, PC Mag US, with their own. One of theirs was a striking black and white portrait of a familiar face. Production asked their American cousins if they knew who it was...

400 miles from home. Return journey imminent. All the travel things on phone. Which phone? This phone. This afternoon. This ungood.

We are now working for the Internet, not the Internet for us.

In short: Bluesky will use Epic Games' age verification system to comply with UK regs. This collects an INSANE amount oour data, which Epic will use how it wishes. This is what 'think of the children' actually means. I cannot and will not consent to this felonious garbage.

That's me off Bluesky then. www.thegist.ie/the-gist-age...

Third interstellar object spotted hurtling through the solar system. Very fast, very interesting, not around for very long. Can't say I blame it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vza...

So the Vera C Rubin discovered 2100 new asteroids in a ten hour first look engineering test. Which sounds a lot... just wait until you see them. LOOK AT THEM! TEN HOURS! The Vera C Rubin telescope has a ten year iiinitial mission. youtu.be/DTuq-vBsDJE?...

Virgin Media is rejecting my billing login becaiuse I am on a VPN, in an unfamiliar place or on an unfmiliar device. I am in fact on my usual admin PC using the IP assigned. By Virgin Media. Two hours' excruciating customer support later, it's 'a 24-48h outage.' Time to give up on them.

Fave new astrophysics - appreciable percentage of universe's gold created by transmutation in magnetar starquake flares. Hugely violent spasms of htperstrange physics. Philosopher's stone energetically improbable, I'm afraid.

Thinking thst Elon von Musk's V2 Starship is too aptly named... youtu.be/0C_L-qgHsE0?...

Hello, 1930s. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cv...

No flaps and gear down. Mmm.

Beware, all ye who venture into Ayr by trainmeaning to get a cab to and from your actual destination. Most local can numbers you find online don't work, as the drivers gave up during the pandemic. Those remaining are booked up days in advance: if you haven't, you are SOL, solider. Gurthermore...

Portable ham ops are nothing new.

"In essence, former officials said, nobody is above the law except Mr. Trump." Happening right in front of us - a rule-of-law crisis created by the Supreme Court and Republicans in the Senate

also www.adsgroup.org.uk/knowledge/th... - good people working together is a formula that works better when you discard bigotry. How could it be otherwise?

Truly, Starship is the Hyperloop of space.

SpaceX's use of tasteful electro beats during Starship tests is all very well, but... youtu.be/s4prQ11orEM?...

Well. youtu.be/hT7x1NvGf5k?...

Richard Dawson & Circle - Henki richardmichaeldawson.bandcamp.com/album/henki “Henki is a record from Richard Dawson, the diminutive Geordie troubadour and Circle. Making it the greatest flora-themed hypno-folk-metal record you’ll hear this year.” (h/t Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone) www.juno.co.uk