Our new stamps
Before January, we have to turn in all our old stamps and trade them for these >>
Yes, that’s a QR code. Well, no – apparently “QR Code” is trademarked, but it’s the same idea. According to the Royal Mail, each stamp will be unique and the idea is you scan it with the Post Office app and you can connect your letter to an audio or video file online or what have you.
Naturally, it’s making everyone’s spidey sense tingle like mad. I can’t work out any way they can use it for nefarious purposes, though.
Well, not really. These are two stamps from a single book. I overlaid them and they are close but not exact. See here.
The green is one stamp, the purple is the other and the dark gray is where they both agree. Presumably a totally different book of stamps would have more differences.
So in theory, if you sent a poison pen letter and they raided your house and found a similar stamp…eh, it’s a reach.
Honestly, it’s probably just some boomer civil servant’s notion of STAMPS OF THE FU-TURE!
The QR reader in my phone tells me it’s a long string of numbers and letters, but I couldn’t find a way to copy and paste them into anything to compare. If I get curious enough, I might do proper scans of some books of stamps and overlay them to see if I can find a pattern.
Can anyone intuit the formula for how many unique combinations there are in a matrix of 16 x 48 binary dots?
October 24, 2022 — 5:08 pm
Comments: 15
So it’s going to be that kind of winter, is it?
Sometimes, it’s like someone flips a switch and it’s winter. I need to do one last mow, but the rain stretches before me unendingly. It won’t be dry enough again until spring.
One thing I’ve learned here: if a country looks lush and green, that’s a place where it rains. A lot.
The forecasts are hopeless – a little island stuck in a turbulent sea, who’s surprised? – so I rely on the satellites.
It’s weird. Living on the Eastern side of the States, I’m used to seeing the weather come at me, left to right, for days (except occasionally in hurricane season).
It’s not like that here. Weather usually comes up diagonally, from southwest to northeast, following the line of the Channel – but by no means always. Those little blobs can come from anywhere – and when they come straight down from the north, it’s eeevil.
Anyway, rain. For the weekend and beyond. You have a good one!
October 21, 2022 — 6:52 pm
Comments: 5
Poor Henry, lol
I know the feeling. I have three futile cockerels and two nervous hens.
Yes, it’s a real ad. No, I’m not cockerel shopping. Heaven forfend!
I was cancelling the paid membership to this site I forgot I had, and “cockerel” was the last search term in my history. This is when I still hoped to offload a few boys.
October 20, 2022 — 7:07 pm
Comments: 7
Marie, peas and leeks
My cabbage friend below put me in mind of Marie Lloyd and her music hall number “She Sits among the Cabbages and Peas.”
Oh, she sits among the cabbages and peas
With a pretty little peapot ‘tween her knees
She’s a whiz at shelling peas
So she sits and shells with ease
Till the pretty little peapot’s full of peas.Oh, she sits among the cabbages and peas
And she talks to all the little bugs and bees.
They climb up her legs and arms
And all round her other charms.
They see lots of things nobody ever sees.Oh, she sits among the cabbages and peas
With her little dress away above her knees.
All the boys that pass her way
Stand and stare and wish that they
Were that pretty little peapot ‘tween her knees.Oh, she sits among the cabbages and peas
And the little birds are singing in the trees
Waiting till she falls asleep,
Then fly down and take a peek
At her pretty little peapot full of peas.Oh, among the cabbages and peas she sits,
And her pretty little dress so tightly fits
When she stoops to take a pea
That’s the time that you can see
That she’s got a pair of very lovely hips.Oh, she sits among the cabbages and peas,
But one day she felt so very ill at ease.
She was sitting on a hole.
In that hole there was a mole.
It’s no wonder that she felt so ill at ease.
Quote: The lyrics of “I sits among the cabbages and peas” raised some objections so on one occasion she changed them to “I sits among the cabbages and leeks” much to the delight of the audience.
You can hear it here, if you’ve a mind to.
October 19, 2022 — 6:44 pm
Comments: 3
Oops! We’re back
Looks like my database took a nap this evening. Sorry, caught off guard. Please enjoy this large, handsome cabbage Uncle B growed me.
October 18, 2022 — 7:39 pm
Comments: 5
I don’t like to brag…
…but I mastered Mail Merge this morning.
If you don’t know mail merge, it’s the procedure for making data from a spreadsheet bulk print onto labels or envelopes or your latest Ponzi scheme letter. You take a Word file and an Excel spreadsheet and smash them together until labels dribble out.
Uncle B phoned and I told him what I was doing and he was like, “Mail merge? That’s something I did in Wordstar in the Eighties.” And, as far as I can tell, they haven’t made a single improvement.
I’d really hoped I had reached the point in life when I didn’t need to learn stuff any more.
October 17, 2022 — 6:49 pm
Comments: 15
Dead Pool 159:
G_d’s Middle Finger has won the prize with Angela Lansbury. Mr Finger says he worked with her on Murder She Wrote, but I was unable to extract the deets. Perhaps he’ll visit us again in future.
After a long career on stage, film and TV, Lansbury will be remembered for playing a teapot and America’s most prolific serial killer.
Are we ready? Doesn’t matter – duck!
0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.
1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).
2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.
3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.
4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.
5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.
6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.
7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
The winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.
October 14, 2022 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 62
What are people living on?
I attended a meeting today with several other local ‘heritage’ businesses – a tourist information center, a couple of local museums, that sort of thing. Hoping to pool our resources in, erm, trying times.
For one, we can’t get volunteers. None of us. They just didn’t come back after lockdown. Bless ’em, a couple of our best died (not covid, we’re just a terribly old organization).
But we can’t get paid staff, either. I gather this is a problem in all sectors, up and down the country. It’s like people got a taste of not working during the lockdown and decided they rather liked it.
Surely, though, everyone still has a mortgage and groceries to buy. How are they paying the bills?
That’s the silver lining if we really do have a desperate hard winter – at least we’ll all be able to get paid staff! Pollyanna, that’s me.
Please enjoy this picture of fat kitty that Uncle B took on Sunday. Yes, we still have some things in bloom, though looking decidedly tired. One day, he’s going to forget he shared access to his Google pictures account and hilarity will ensue.
See you back here tomorrow for Dead Pool Round 159.
October 13, 2022 — 4:45 pm
Comments: 13
I have shamed us all
Bot sentinel doesn’t so much measure bots as people who break the Twitter terms of service. And I have scored satisfactory. Folks, I very nearly scored normal!
To be honest, I’m not surprised I register as mild mannered on twitter. I’m more of a scalpel than a hammer. Okay, more of an empty tin of Spam with a super jaggedy edge.
Call a lefty an asshole and you give him a spasm of anger. Gently mock his beliefs in their weakest places and you make him howl until he rage-blocks you. Even better, ask sensible questions politely until he cracks.
It’s a sport.
I was checking up on myself because last night, I really did cop a timeout for a tweet – my second ever. Twitter demanded I delete the offending tweet. Whatever could it be? I wondered.
You know Dylan Roof, the shit-heel who shot up a black church and killed nine people and got the death penalty for it? When Fox reported his appeal to the Supreme Court had been rejected, I tweeted this. And caught a ban for it.
Twitter’s algorithms are so busted.
October 12, 2022 — 6:37 pm
Comments: 9
Today’s word: ambrotype
Today, a man brought in a whole box of wonderful family ambrotypes. This was a cheaper photographic process than the daguerreotype and was later superseded by the tintype.
That helped us date them neatly from some time in the early 1850s to the early 1860s. Not that he didn’t have his documentation together!
One was a very elderly man – possibly a posthumous portrait – meaning I reckon he was born around 1780. He had an old-fashioned cravat to prove it. Spooky.
(Not the example picture, though. That’s an ambrotype of Abe Lincoln. I think we can all agree Abe was a very freaky looking dude).
The man was donating all these family pictures and the meticulous research that went along with them. People do that a lot – give us their family histories. I think they feel they’ve done a duty by handing them over. We’ll get the names in our database and future historians will have access.
The best part? He knew who every one of those people were and he had documentation to go with them.
People, I am begging you – with my professional hat on – don’t leave all your pictures digital. Print your favorites and write on the back who they are.
RIP Angela Lansbury. G_d’s Middle Finger take the dick. Back here. Friday.
Dead Pool 159.
October 11, 2022 — 7:37 pm
Comments: 10