Pardon?

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If you are wondering why I’ve put a picture of York city centre in a post about earwax, you have to ask yourslef what you would rather have a picture of…

I’ve been deaf in one ear for the last couple of days. The problems started when I was proving my manliness by going on the big water slides while on holiday. As a result I got a lot of water in my ears. Normally this disappears after a while. You get a warm feeling down the side of your head as half a pint of chlorinated water runs out of your ear into your collar and you get your hearing back with a pop and a gurgle.

Not for me this time though. My left ear was completely broken. I think a sudden inrush of water had forced a bunch of wax up into the ear and blocked it. In the long term I suppose this would save money on headphones and give me the perfect way of ignoring things I didn’t want to hear (which I have apparently been doing for ages). But I really wanted to go back to the stereo lifestyle and so today I tootled down to a place in Cottingham to have someone look into the problem. The process started with an examination of the working ear, which was completely clear. The broken one however, was very blocked. Ear wax removal involves using a funky sucking thing to gently remove the wax. My wax was apparently very sticky and it took several goes, plus some rinsing with another funky device, to get it all out. The sounds I heard during this process were awesome.

I was tempted to ask if they would do the job for half price, what with them only having to work on one ear, but in the end I was so pleased to get my proper hearing back that I paid up and left very happy.

Hello from Lytham

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I’ve on more piers in the last two days than I have in the last ten years.

Today finds us in Lytham St. Annes. It’s only a couple of miles from Blackpool (you can use the tram to get from one to the other) but it feels like a different world. The huge and wonderful beach is front and centre, although there are still piers and of course arcade machines. We did some kite flying, dug holes and buried bits of each other and all the other things you’re supposed to do on the beach. We even got to watch someone get their car stuck in the sand. Happy days.

The tide does go out a heck of a long way….

Hello from Blackpool

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The most difficult part of holiday preparation (at least for me) was deciding which camera to take…

We’re having a few days away. Today we headed onto Blackpool’s Golden Mile. Everything you would expect from a British seaside resort. I managed to talk folks out of buying me a “Kiss me quick” hat. But we did have fish and chips for lunch and they were excellent. Then we went up the tower.

This is a view through glass, but I still think it looks pretty OK

Behind the golden Mile

Tip Tips

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Took a bunch of stuff to the tip today. Going to the tip is becoming increasingly complicated. Now they have lots of different categories for rubbish. My pro-tip (which I will follow for next time) is to put different rubbish in different bags. Otherwise you will be standing there for ages pulling bits of cardboard out of a huge bag that you’ve just filled. Like I did. The other tip (at least where I go) is to go in the morning. The afternoons seem to be a lot busier.

One of the things that used to puzzle me back in the day was “How to you get rid of an old dustbin?”. If you leave it out for the dustman they just empty it and then move on. It turns out that the answer to this age old riddle is to take the bin to the tip and throw it into the skip by hand…

Bank Holiday shock - with added AI

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I was going to write “We had good weather today which was a bit of a shock, what with it being a bank holiday”. My blog host now has an AI button. I asked it to write something too:

We had good weather today. Bank holiday weather is always a topic of conversation in the UK, and unfortunately, it's typically not the most favorable. On the one hand, we have high hopes for clear skies and warm temperatures, but on the other hand, we are often met with gloomy, rainy weather. It's not uncommon for people to plan for a barbeque or picnic and then be forced to relocate indoors due to the rain. However, there are those rare moments when the weather decides to cooperate, and we are blessed with sunny days and blue skies, allowing us to fully enjoy the holiday weekend. So, while the weather may be unpredictable, it never stops us from making the most of our bank holidays.

There are a lot more words here, but I’m not sure how much value has been added…

A free man

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I’ve shipped my “Bluetooth Chord Keyboard” article to Hackspace magazine. I’m now properly unemployed for a while with nothing outstanding (except perhaps for my talent - hem hem). It will be nice to have a break from doing much. Personally, I give it around a fortnight before I’ll be looking for things to do……

New Chair

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It’s amazing what having a rubbish skip next door but one can do for your life. I’ve just got a new chair for my office. No - not from the skip. That’s where the old chair is going. The old chair is still OK to sit on, but the vinyl covering began to moult around a year ago giving of clouds of plastic particles each time I sat down on it. Then it developed this amazing squeak when I leaned back.

When I took the old chair to pieces for disposal I discovered a date stamp of 2003. I think its time had definitely come.

Power Cut Friday

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Of course this might not be what caused it

First thing that happened was that the shower failed. It was producing nothing more than a low buzzing sound. Not what you want if you are stood naked underneath it. I’ve had this happen before. The usual solution is to fit a new shower (after you have got dressed). I’ve done this several times over the years. Once with jetlag. But I was hoping for a bunged up filter. I took the shower to bits and I was just removing the filter cover when the 3D printer stopped with an alarm. And wouldn’t power on again. I was just wondering what the third thing was going to be (problems like this always come in threes) when when the washing machine flashed up a fault code.

Then everything went off and I relaxed. It must be a power thing. I put the shower back together. And then the mobile phone signal vanished. I was expecting that important things like cellular networks to have some kind of battery backup, but apparently not. That was kind of worrying. We were completely out of contact with the rest of the world. This is how we must have felt in the seventies. Except that in the seventies our landline phones still worked.

The power came back after about twenty minutes. We did eventually get a text telling us that the power had gone off (in case anyone hadn’t noticed) but that was all. I reckon that for about twenty minutes before the power failed we had been running on a low mains voltage. Anything using a “switched mode” power supply would have kept working. But anything with a motor in it would be suffering. So computers and screens all worked fine. Showers not so much.

I always thought that the power companies tried very hard to provide either 250 volts or nothing, but it turns out that this is not the case. The good news is that everything has come back fine and so all we had to do was reset a few clocks and throw away a half completed 3D print.

A few weeks ago the UK had a test of an “emergency broadcast” thing where most people’s phones buzzed with the message “Do not worry. This is a test”. This made us all feel much safer (except of course for those who didn’t get the message). However, if It turns out that at the first hint of trouble our phones are all going to be disconnected it makes all that effort seem like a bit of a waste of time.

Coronation Curtains

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We watched the coronation today. At least, we watched the interesting bits. One thing that struck me is that Marvell do a much better job with their costumes that we do. The Guardians of the Galaxy have much better threads than this lot. I suppose that back in the day the outfits of all the great and the good seemed much more impressive. Most of the things I saw people wearing today left me thinking that someone’s front room curtains now have great big archbishop shaped holes in them….

Bins and Binnability

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The new kitchen bin arrived today. The old one broke and the type of replacement was the subject of some heated discussion. At one stage I said “But I’m not sure any of these will do exactly what we want” to which the reply was “But at the moment we don’t have a bin”. Fair point. It is always important to remember that with some things, including bins, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

We got the new bin out of the box and put it in the kitchen. It’s perfect.

ChatGPT and my existential crisis

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Last week I discovered that ChatGPT can write “In the style of Rob Miles”. I’m not sure if it will do this for everyone. The internet creates bubbles of personalisation so that our searches find the kinds of things that we like, and perhaps ChatGPT does that too. Perhaps if you ask for something “in the style of Rob Miles” you’ll get the version that fits with your interests. Even so, ChatGPT knows about a version of me.

ChatGPT knows me because I’ve been blogging and posting stuff for over 20 years. There’s a lot of Rob on the internet. Although I must admit that all those years ago when I decided to put up a blog post every day I didn’t think that it would be a step on the road to creating a computerised copy.

It is a tiny bit worrying. Do I need to exist any more, now that there is a freely available version online? People have been known to pay me to write things “in the style of Rob Miles” but now anyone can do it. Where will this lead? Folks might get ChatGPT to write horrible things in my style. Even worse, they might get paid instead of me. When I put my blog up I don’t remember ticking a box that said “I allow companies obsessed with shareholder value to mine this data and use it to create machines that can imitate me.” Oh well. Welcome to the modern world. It is a form of immortality I suppose. At least until ChatGPT finds a better Rob Miles