We have had a bit of luck with tradesmen this week -- we were explaining the issue with the plumbing to the man with the excavator who was digging a trench for the electrical work, when he said he could install drains and taps for us. So we now have an electrical conduit to the sheds and a tap in the second shed -- not exactly in the place I wanted, but at least we have a tap. Next we need to get the electrician to install the 10 and 15 amp power points and we will be ready to shift our appliances. Of course the garden looks like a building site but that can't be helped.

I was hoping to start moving some of the crates from the utility room to the second shed, but it's not sealed from the elements and will be very damp until we can fix the gaps around the roof and floor. I am therefore making cases for lavender bags to put in with the ten crates of dolls, and I'll get tape tomorrow at the hardware store to seal all the crates before shifting them. Suzy suggested getting tubs of silica gel for the sheds but they'll be liquid so fast I don't think it's worth it.

Some of the boxes that I had intended for the sheds will have to go into the storage room, which means I'll have to shift some of the plastic crates out of there and into the sheds. I can't wait until we have the extension completed and I can unpack everything.

purplecat

Outfit with the most votes
Romana in Destiny of the Daleks and Martha in Blink, both with 15 votes.

Outfit with the least votes
Bill in The Pilot.

Highest Average Votes per outfit (excluding characters with only one outfit in the round)
Winner: Romana 2 (12 votes per outfit)
Second Place: Martha (11 votes per outfit)
Third Place: Yaz (10.6 votes per outfit)

Most Winning Outfits
Yaz (2 outfits)

Highest Average number of winning outfits
Ryan (1 outfit, 100% success rate)
Second Place: Yaz (3 outfits, 66% success rate)
Third Place: Nyssa, the Romanas, Martha, Bill (2 outfits, 50% success rate)

Taking a week off since I'm on leave, then I'll start the quarter finals!

wellinghall

Hi all.

I am now on BlueSky as wellinghall, as well as Instagram as silmarillioncollector and on FaceBook as andrew.wells.3994.

purplecat

Do you recall this paper (which is also summarised in this article in the Conversation) about which a YouTube video was made?

Well it's just gone and won the journal's best paper award.

I continue to think one should be wary of indulging in futurism and remain glad I managed to keep the words "Rogue AI" out of it.

emperor

It's past the voting deadline, and I didn't vote in the dramatic presentation long form category, but I'm still trying to watch the shortlisted films.

I'd not seen Dune part one, so watched that and then part two (which was on the shortlist this year). It's one book turned into two lengthy films, and part two has a rubbish ending - we get no sense of Paul becoming Emperor as any kind of triumph before it's undermined by the immediate start of the next war. They are both grand spectacles, but their pacing is odd - at times it seems to be dragging and then key events are rather rushed over (so you're left not really quite understanding what happened without resorting to plot summaries after the fact). And the racial politics have dated poorly, shall we say? And I don't think the whole sandworm ecosystem is even vaguely plausible. But there's some great scheming and some interesting characters (albeit that a lot of the villains are entirely 2-dimensional).

The Wild Robot is an altogether different film, very heavy-handed with its messaging and happy to tug on the heart-strings. The plot doesn't really stand up to scrutiny (robot has access to all human knowledge, but doesn't know how geese swim? etc.), but it's well-animated and has lots of fun moments. And despite being the film of the first book of a trilogy, it actually has a decent ending! But I really struggled to suspend my disbelief because the plot is so full of holes.

purplecat

Idris standing on a dias with her hands to her head with an Ood next to her. Green smoke rises from a vent at her feet. Auntie stands below with her back to us, looking up.

muninnhuginn

July 2025

Read:

Shorts:

All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Marissa Lingen
Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer
Monster by Naomi Kritzer
Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything by Effie Seiberg
The Lord of Mars by Megan McCarron
Instructions for Rewilding the Wasteland by Emma Burnett
Let Sleeping Hyenas Lie by Rutendo Chidzodzo
Outlier by R.L. Meza
Paths, Littlings, and Holy Things by Somto Ihezue

Non-fiction

A Tribute to Sheri S. Tepper's Speculative Fiction by Robin Anne Reid
On the Architectural Hostility of Doorknobs by Robert Kingett
The Definitive, Insane, Swimsuit-Bursting Story of the Steroid Olympics by Amit Katwala
The Fairy Tale Heroine’s Journey: A Structure for Writers by Kate Farrell
The great abandonment: what happens to the natural world when people disappear? by Tess McClure
Wing and a Prayer by November Kelly
Beware of the Google AI salesman and its cronies by Gisele Navarro
Protect the Wild - A Decade Fighting for British Wildlife by Robert Pownall

purplecat

( Spoilers under the cut )

bunn

We've decided that we're going to sell the boat after this summer (it's not cheap to run, and the engine servicing & repairs in particular are painfully pricy). I'm going to miss being able to run down to the open sea and out to the islands in the spring, I know, so I'm making the best of it while we've got it.

( Many many photos. )

Tree News

The sycamore tree that was leaning perilously over the neighbour's house (with scary rotten side to the trunk) is no more! Pp decided to put it up as a 'job available' on Mybuilder, and we immediately got a contact from a shiny new young garden and tree management company, run by two shockingly young yet highly competent people who quoted very reasonably for the tree to be removed. They had the relevant certifications & insurances, so we went for it, and wow, did they work. They were here from about 10 am to after 8 and hung themselves by ropes from the tree with chainsaws to take bits off. Then they chipped it all, and took away the logs!

I asked their advice about the elm tree next to the sycamore, and was delighted to hear that they thought it was in fine fettle and needed no work done. You don't see that many elms about, so I really wanted to keep it (assuming it wasn't also a terrible peril to the neighbour's roof). It looks very fine now you can properly see the shape of it - though you can see it was sort of leaning away from the sycamore a bit. With luck, it will just fill out a bit on that side. There is the ever-present risk of Dutch Elm disease, but I am hoping that the wild sea-winds may be enough to keep the beetles at bay. Certainly there's no sign of DED yet.

I asked the tree guys to leave the big rotten stump of the sycamore in place, hoping it will continue to rot and perhaps become hollow and enliven the local environment. It may shoot from the left over bits, but if it does, it's now small enough that I can easily manage the shoots with loppers.

purplecat

The work I'm involved with on the CRADLE Project involves trying to put together an assurance case for an automonous robot to be deployed... somewhere. At the moment the various bodies like HSE, The Office for Nuclear Regulation, The Civil Aviation Authority and so on, don't really want to be drawn on what evidence they would need to be certain due diligence had been performed for the deployment of an autonomous robot. We're therefore trying to produce some evidence that a robot is safe and see if they might at least admit they wouldn't throw such evidence out immediately.

We're also interested in how the production of such evidence could be made more stream-lined to avoid having to come up with new processes each time a different robot is considered. Hence Towards Patterns for a Reference Assurance Case for Autonomous Inspection Robots (which doesn't appear to be Open Access even though it should be, but I'm pretty sure anyone reading this here knows how to contact one of the authors and request a copy, should they be interested)

ruthchinn

happy pride & tzom kal.

purplecat

Cover of The Doctor Who New Adventure novel The Pit by Neil Penswick. The Doctor lies unconscious in a red sandy landscape. A man in 18th century attire stands anxiously by him. Winged creatures fill the sky. One close by is a Pterodactyl being ridden by a bare-chested blue woman carrying a spear.

Many people consider The Pit the worst of the New Adventures. I remember very little about many of these books but I do recall some stuff about The Pit. I don't recall hating it, but I don't recall enjoying it very much. Given its reputation it's been analysed quite a bit and consensus seems to be that its problems are that its fundamentally rather depressing and the Doctor doesn't really make any difference to events. It's attempting to do something clever and thematic with the character of William Blake. I'm not familiar with Blake so I can't really comment, but I get the impression that the Blake connection doesn't really come off.

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adaeze

Reading

Power and water

Costume Bracket: Round 4, some stats

(no subject)

Prize-winning Paper

More Hugo Films: Dune, The Wild Robot

Random Doctor Who Picture

July 2025

July 2025

The Interstellar Song Contest

Sea & Tree.

Towards Patterns for a Reference Assurance Case for Autonomous Inspection Robots

(no subject)

Random Doctor Who Picture

Profile

December 2023

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