Sun stats

Another lovely day here today and the forecast looks set for more lovely sunny days in the week ahead:

Those temperatures aren’t anything to email home about, but it’s nice enough and, as Mrs 6000 pointed out, it’s hardly summer, is it? Which it absolutely isn’t, no. That would only start on the 1st or the 21st of December, depending upon which system you’re using.

But we shouldn’t be complaining, especially when looking back over at the UK. This image has been doing the rounds over the last 24 hours, indicating the number of hours of sunshine around the UK, the Isle of Man and Ireland over the first 7 (seven) days of November.

Ouch. Eina. My fok. Goodness gracious.

Bearing in mind that London is sitting on an average of about 9 hours 20 minutes of daylight each day, they could have had over 65 hours of sunshine. They got 2.
The Isle of Man – averaging just over 9 hours of daylight last week – got not a single hour.

In seven whole days!

Aberdeen was the big (and rather unlikely) winner. 8¾ hours of daylight each day, and a whole 13 hours of sunshine in seven days. That’s 21% of their daylight as sunshine. Incredible. Their local Burns Unit must be bursting at the seams, just like it is in late January each year.

We made hay (not literally) while the sun shone today, with the Boy Wonder driving himself and his friends down to Agulhas for a long weekend, and LM 6000, having recovered from her singing last night, riding a horse over some big sticks, rather amazingly.

But now it’s time to sit back with a glass of local red, and catch up with the Youtube videos I haven’t had time to watch this week. I’ll be incredibly knowledgeable and a brilliant photographer in about an hour.

Just watch. Literally.

Niche UK Geography Fun

Incoming from The Guru:

this link

It’s a multiple guess choice geography game using satellite imagery of the UK and dividing the areas up into smaller and smaller (and therefore more and more challenging) areas. These are based around the administrative structure of the UK, but thankfully, you don’t have to be an expert on that system to play.

I can vouch for those descriptions of the difficulty of the game. After 10 questions on each, I had scored 100%, 80%, 80% and 60% (eek) respectively. And that was with a fair amount of good luck on top of some educated guesses – a couple of football stadiums were of great assistance.
And with 317 local authorities, 650 constituencies and 8694 electoral wards (I have no idea how many “built-up areas” there are), you’re going to need all the help you can get.

It’s hard, it’s fun, and it’s rather addictive.

It’s also a bit buggy, which can be frustrating, but you could always demand a full refund if you’re not satisfied. (Yes, it’s free. That’s the joke, see?)

Can I just say…?

Blogging is such a fun thing to do. Voice your opinions on a subject or your prediction of an event and you’ll get people agreeing or disagreeing with you, and then everyone moves on, because the internet has created a culture whereby your opinions on something yesterday is so… well… yesterday.

This can be extremely useful when you mess up on whatever you opined or predicted, because no-one remembers it anyway. Only the worse kind of stalkers will go back and look stuff up to get what I believe are commonly known as “receipts”. Most of the time, it’s swept under the rug and you can quietly move onto your next error.

But what if you were right? Because every so often, that does happen.
Well, then it actually becomes a bit annoying, because all that time ago, you said the thing that proved to be correct and yet everyone has moved on and you don’t get to take any well-deserved credit for it.

Not fair.

There is a way around this, of course. You can blow your own trumpet. And that’s exactly what I’m about to do, because [self-blown fanfare]:

Oh my golly gosh.

If only someone had said something two weeks ago(!) about it almost certainly being linked to salad:

Maybe even going as far as to name the actual bit of salad that it would be:

I mean, that could have literally been life-saving advice right there.

I choose to listen to experts because they are experts, and I will happily tell you what experts are saying about football, politics, potato chips, aeroplanes, cartography and AI. Whether you choose to believe my thoughts and opinions on their words is completely up to you.

But do not doubt me on my microbiology.

And please continue to wash all your salad items before use.

Keep well.

Weather confusion

I’m seeing a lot of social media posts from local (SA) people who have chosen to head to Blighty for a Christmas or New Year break. And in so many of them, the caption is something along the lines of:

A quick shot of us all before the rain started again…

or:

It’s another grey day in London…

Oh. I’m sorry. What exactly were you expecting from the UK in the middle of winter? Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain?

This is, after all, a country which you regularly ridicule for ‘not having a summer’, and yet you’re irritated by the fact that it does winter things in winter? Weirdos.

Can I suggest that if you were looking for something warmer and drier, you used your Rands to go somewhere… well… warmer and drier?

More sunshine, but probably less Buckingham Palace.

Honestly though, moaning about the inclement UK weather in early January just makes you look daft. Rather head over there when the weather is better.

I think they have that planned for 2pm on July 23rd this year. But do check nearer the time.