Status-Q

Rose and I enjoy visiting art galleries, and occasionally making some modest purchases. Actually, we’d like to make a lot more, but on the occasions when we aren’t limited by budget, we’re limited by the available space in our little house.

So if I told you that we had recently ventured into life-size bronze sculptures, you might think we’d finally abandoned reason for madness.

But then, you’d need to see a picture of our latest purchase.

One of our favourite furniture shops in the area, Angela Reed in Saffron Walden, now has a cafe. And it’s very good.

I have a new camera. It’s also rather good. Time to celebrate by bringing the two together, I thought.

We then went to see a different catering establishment: the old kitchens at Audley End.

Oh, for the curious, my new toy is a Fuji X-Pro 2… a nice update to my much-loved X-Pro 1. These were quick test shots with my 18-55 zoom.

My mother, in her younger days, used to be a midwife. She once delivered a pair of twins, just as the clocks were going back.

The younger one ended up with a birth certificate stating that he was born before the older one…

Ansible is a system for setting up, managing and configuring machines – one at a time, or in vast numbers simultaneously. We’re using it more and more at Telemarq.

There are several tutorials out there that go into some detail about how to use it. This isn’t one of those (though it’ll teach you the basics). This is just intended to give you an idea of what’s going on if you find yourself sitting in front of a directory full of Ansible files, looking at unfamiliar file formats.

Also available on YouTube.

I had these slides in a directory from when I was bringing some friends up to speed in the past, so I added a soundtrack in case they were useful to others.

Got a spare tree stump lying around? Here’s an idea that just involves a little delicate chainsaw work…

Found on Facebook. Shared in the free world.

I do like firing up my RSS reader from time to time. Reading articles and blog posts, which may, in turn, be carefully-considered responses to other articles and blog posts.

It’s like Facebook, but for grown-ups.

Oh wow! A wonderful thought has just occurred to me…

If we leave the EU, does that mean we don’t have to see those notices about cookies on every website?

Getting rid of those surely outweighs any benefits we might get by staying in. Where do I sign up?

Got a quick snap of a DVLA van in our street the other day…

The things on the roof are cameras, looking out for the registration numbers of untaxed vehicles. Now that we no longer have tax discs, the traffic wardens can’t easily do it.

One of my neighbours had let theirs lapse accidentally, and got a big sticker on their window…

Here’s something that could do with a standards body. I don’t even know what these are called. Quick-release webbing buckle? Something like that.

But wouldn’t it be handy if you could clip any two (of approximately the same size) together? Buy extension straps and know that they’d work? Clip your camera case onto your rucksack and your dog lead onto your pushchair?

You know it makes sense. All you have to do is boycott manufacturers who aren’t paying members of QIQRWBSC (Quentin’s International Quick-Release Webbing Buckle Standards Committee).

This Guardian piece by Julia O’Malley gives a rather different viewpoint on Sarah Palin from the one we usually hear.

There was a time when Sarah Palin was normal by Alaska standards. Way back before the hoopla, and way before she endorsed Donald Trump, she made sense as a politician here. That’s not the case any more. I’m told she lives in Alaska most of the time, but she’s invisible in public life.

But back in the day, I liked her – and so did many in my community. I’m not conservative, but she grew on me when I worked as a reporter in Anchorage in the mid-2000s, and the reason had nothing to do with politics. She was a kind of regular person I recognized as of this place. Tough, funny, pragmatic. She loved Alaska like I did. If you didn’t know her then, it’s hard to explain or believe.

Worth a read. Especially for anyone thinking of going into politics…

Thanks to Hamid Farzaneh for the link.