Category: learning curve

Swiss next?

Posted on

Loadshedding is very annoying, but we’re coming closer and closer to the realisation that we’re not the only ones who are chronically short of electricity.

As documented, the UK and Australia have come very close. And Shanghai and China were recently rolling their own blackouts. Now, there are warnings that Switzerland – yes, Switzerland with its neutrality, mountains, engineering brilliance, intricate timepieces, army knives and just general perfection – is likely to run out of power this winter.

When Switzerland is struggling, you know that there’s a real problem.

“Repeated, hours-long power cuts”. That sounds awfully familiar.

As I’ve mentioned before, some other country experiencing loadshedding doesn’t make the situation in SA any better. And our loadshedding is for a different reason to theirs (tl;dr – it’s massive, wholesale, unimpeded corruption), but it does remind us to maybe drop a bit of the exceptionalism.

The Alpine grass, despite what you’ve seen in The Sound of Music (that was Austria, I know) (although €707.23 per MWh there, too), is not always greener.

UPDATE: Loadshedding: now with added Finland.

Bits and Pieces

Posted on

It’s Curry Club this evening, so I’ll likely be enjoying a Jal Frezi rather than blogging in front of the fire. In the meantime, please enjoy some (or more) of these snippets which don’t quite deserve a blog post of their own, but equally don’t deserve to be completely ignored, either.

The last phone boxes
5 million phone calls are made each year from the UK’s remaining 20,000 phone boxes. I think that both those numbers seem ridiculously high. This is a lovely long read about phone boxes and their place in an ever-changing society.

Hike
The Boy Wonder is hiking the Lion’s Head tonight, with the promise of hot chocolate on the summit. It’s actually getting ridiculous how many Bootlegger coffee shops there are in Cape Town now. (Substitute Costa in the UK or your local ubiquitous high street coffee outlet in to make this “joke” work for your country.)

Ironically, there is usually a Vida e Cafe truck parked at the gate to the Lion’s Head hiking trail.

UCL Draw
Once again, Sheffield United have missed out on a place in the group stages. I might still pop over to the UEFA Youtube page to watch the draw for the 2022/23 competition live this evening though. 5pm BST = 6pm CAT.

With no apologies to Elvis…
…John Cooper Clarke’s (You Ain’t Nothing But A) Hedgehog

“You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t nothing but a hedgehog
Foragin’ all the time
You ain’t never pricked a predator
You ain’t no Porcupine”

“Hedgehogs! Leave some hedge for everyone else!”

And…
August is nearly over. So, in a mall near you:

It’s a very seasonal thing:

And, as you can see from this graph of interest in that song on Google, the interest in that song is very much waning. This is great news, but it’s also worth noting that even if people aren’t quite as bothered as they used to be, history shows that we are likely to see the annual uptick beginning in the next few weeks.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

More loadshedding this evening…

Posted on

…this time not in the UK or Australia, and not (holds thumbs, crosses fingers, whispers quiet prayer) in South Africa, either. Nope – this time, it’s Shanghai and Chengdu in China.

Uh-oh.

That sounds familiar.

I completely sympathise with the people in these cities: loadshedding is a complete pain in the butt, but once again, it’s somehow reassuring to know that we’re not the only ones suffering.

After all, as the famous old saying goes: “a problem shared is now a problem for loads more people than if you had just kept it to yourself”.

Exam results

Posted on

The IGCSE results came out this morning, which has prompted nervousness, anticipation and possibly a little insomnia in the family over the past few days.

We need not have worried.

The Boy Wonder sailed though with some properly excellent marks. A testament to all his hard work and our superb genetic mix. But probably mainly his hard work. And so now, an interview at school which will hopefully be nothing more than a formality, given his results and the criteria they set for continuing studies, and then, from next week, it’s English, Business Studies, Computer Science and Maths.

But first, I think some celebrations are called for this evening. (We would have done so this morning, but… that meeting…)

Proud parents today. And very often at other times as well.

No time for the post I wanted to do

Posted on

Because I’m saving battery for the United game this evening.

But I did find out the RGB code for the colour of the purple colour of the “stuff” on the “new” Elizabeth Line which goes across London. Don’t ask how. Or why. (The colour, not the geography of the line.)
But the RGB code for that Elizabeth Line purple is:

R105 G80 B161

Which means that the Hex code is #6a50a1.

Which looks like this.

I have no idea why you would ever need to know this, but if you ever did… well… it’s right there.

Tomorrow’s post will be another compilation of images, but right now, I need to excuse myself and go and do some football. A James McAtee debut is incoming.