Questioning my life choices regarding French knots on mono needlepoint canvas.

Oh god finally Mariah has turned up….

Phone updated last night and now it’s a slider mechanism to switch off timers. As a solid and regular user of those things, can I just say that is really not what I wanted.

Thread is absolutely worth a look and I would highlight the point on carbon emissions.

Additionally, I don’t know why I am seeing the toast maker in chief around again but it seems there are a lot of luck 10000s today. xkcd.com/1053

Currently working on this. It’s really pretty and although I usually work a different type of canvas, I am getting on fine with it. That being said, most needlepoint content online is American and Jesus Christ some of them are insufferable cows.

Work were comparing Spotify year notes yesterday. One of them said her father listened to like, 50,000 minutes of music. She couldn’t get her head around that. She totalled 14,000 minutes. So far, I have over 150,000 minutes.

The Rose Field arrived overnight on my Kindle account. I really should have booked today off.

Random things I have longed to see: a parallel parked Ferrari. Achievement unlocked yesterday.

Doilies don’t lead you astray because you spend your life counting.

I spend a lot of time reflecting on what is wrong with the internet and I can only conclude it is that there isn’t a thing created that the Americans cannot wreck because they only value money. Advertising and venture capital feature in my RCA.

YouTube’s search is insufferable. I ask for needlepoint. I do not need or want a story about a six year old whose passport was delayed because she was named after a book character. Search needs to stay on topic all the time. Not vary off into viral crap.

Vancouver Zoo has a sea otter cam in case you need to know this. www.youtube.com/live/9mg9PoF...

This is an exceptional book.

Not the US’s decision. NATO is more than the US.

YouTube Premium is updating terms of business to state that access should be primarily from my country of subscription. Given I subscribe AND pay in Ireland but am mostly in Belgium, I am interested to see what will happen: do they block access? Do they force advertising on me?

Flew through Dublin Airport yesterday evening, T1. It really isn’t designed for more passengers.

Flew into ORK yesterday and unexpectedly saw a couple of vintage machines parked up next to the old terminal building. This is why. www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster... WWII-era DC-3 aircraft turns heads as Swiss aviation enthusiast visits Cork for summer holiday. The DC3 is gorgeous.

76sqm is far, far too small for a three bedrooms apartment. It will not reduce demand for houses. Honestly think if they want to do this, they should be required to live in one of those pathetically small apartments for 5 years themselves.

OmG the hurling score.

flic.kr/p/2r8anDQ this is what I do with an iphone

I have kind of lost my photography network over the years, but let’s just say I wanted to buy a new camera, Canon for pref but will consider others, what is the best midrange option with removable lenses? Do I need to go mirrorless? My last DSLR was a 40D - and I have shot with a G7 most recently.

Kerry had a record though. I understand Richard Mulcahy wasn’t welcome there after the civil war either.

I have kept a diary for more than 30 years and the question of what to do with them my death is a frequent question on r/journaling in Reddit land. I find that my view has evolved over years. Simply, for now, I will leave instructions for them to be offered to local and national archives, sealed.

Okay this is everywhere but as recently as 1990, I had a university lecture point at my Walkman and complain this this device meant people were talking less. So Nancy is like 30 years behind the times on this. Plus, actually, I may not want to talk to Nancy and/or her ilk.

Dunno if it is just me but this looks really like a headlice or flea comb. Maybe the owner had baby kittens? Ran a rescue?

Menstrual cycle classes would probably help a lot of Republican men.

Apparently it is too hard to let people get off Metro trains before you shove your way on. Or not block access to the platform. I know it rained today but seriously, this isn’t rocket science.

The opening prolog of Fake History by @ottoenglish.bsky.social should be required reading for pretty much everyone. I hope the rest of the book is as good.

Stuff to read, not scroll

Semantics aside I wonder at the profile of those who answered it was a good idea.

I went to Antwerp Zoo yesterday to draw live animals. I think I may have watched more Dumbo as a child than I thought.

I wonder if they realise what this says about their priorities in terms of actually enjoying life versus the accumulation of more money than they can spend. Also, the likelihood is that the things that make them like life in the UK probably have a social/tax paid component to them. So yeah…

If you work in tech at all, you have to read this thread to the end.

arstechnica.com/space/2025/0... absolutely worth reading

Hayfever season is here. Can the mosquitoes be far behind?

Also that Mother’s Day was always in Lent.

I remember trying to explain this to a phD student in health data about 10 years ago. He was a white man and couldn’t comprehend that the data would be biased, inaccurate. Data was data, agnostic, per him. No. It is actually somewhat self selecting.

Really wish people would not use the word vision for a delusion.

It seems to me the conversations are dead online. Most days when I start writing a post, regardless of where, I just abandon it. What is the point? The trust is dying.

We should boycott this. www.rte.ie/sport/us-spo...

I love this idea and this is part of my drag when I am in London. I go for bookshops.

Power outages latest information shows 715,000 premises without power now and Powercheck website is coming under pressure. #StormÈowyn

My favourite EN male poet is Robert Frost and I like this for today: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47548/... to be honest, I am considering going back to blogging. It seems to me social media is rarely social and not very media. Twitter was handy for local news at a point. The butterfly is not yet.

Finished my first 2025 book today. It is What An Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman and it’s an overview of what we know about owls. Recommended to natural history fans.

If anyone has access to turnout figures for all of the constituencies after yesterday’s election it would be good

I think it looks stunning but dear his some of the moaning in the comments is very disappointing. Macron got a lot of pushback about this timeline five years ago and yet they somehow did it. A few people need to look at how that project was managed, it must be informative.

This is such a niche request I choose to share it. If you can help…

I am #currentlyreading A Cold Spell by Max Leonard which is a nonfiction work dealing with humanity’s experience of ice and cold. I am about half way through. Would recommend if you are interested in history and cold weather. I spent a chunk of yesterday engrossed in the Little Ice Age.

There really needs to be a calendar of all these days.