The Bluestocking does a late night flit again

[Magpiecomplex]

New thread, you know the drill!

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Modom would definitely like her lemon unlicked, please, unless the citric acid would leave the lick goodness unchanged but neutralise the badth.

How wonderful all the AI pictures are. Well done, everyone.

On the topic of medical issues, I think I must be very lucky. My local hospital trust is good at sending me home with leaflets and phone numbers, and printed letters/ reports sometimes, too

The thing I think is really clever is that I can see my results, messages, letters, appointments and so on by logging into a dedicated website. I can have blood taken at my GP surgery in the afternoon and many of the results will be on the website before I go to bed. (I think the samples must be collected from the various medical practices in the late afternoon.) I can look at graphs that track my results for each test over time, with the normal ranges also shown on the graph. I appreciate that it’s all automatic but it seems like magic to me.

I’d imagined this was a general NHS thing but maybe it’s just our trust.

Here’s a screenshot of my homepage.

I have a sentimental fondness for Ardal O'Hanlon. As someone with roots in the grey soil of Monaghan, he's a local lad to me.

Though it's unlikely we're related. He's from Carrickmacross and my folks were from Clones and Emyvale at the other end of the county. In the border country small differences are big differences.

Exactly😂

The medical app I use is a different one but pretty good for showing blood test etc.
except as we recently discovered, the ones done via the GP show up but the bucketful DH had done by the hospitals earlier this year didn’t. I think after involving PALs he’s managed to get them all, but found that some of the letters he’d gothad misreported a few of them. And there’s a 6 week lag on the consultants letters being typed up …wtf? That’s got to be an area ripe for AI automation with competent human checking.

Good evening bar gerbil! I had a GOOD day at work (mostly) so I'm standing a round for everyone. Drinks are on me (or would be if we ever paid for them anyway).

'Small differences are big differences' -
That great Monaghan man Patrick Kavanagh wrote
Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row.

Yes, Errol, it can take a while for letters here to be typed up, too. Contrast that with the colonoscopy report I had, where I was given the typed up report before I left and that was on a Sunday, too - bits of the hospital take the 2 week pathway very seriously. The locum consultant had explained it to me when I woke up, but as I’d had sedation I don’t think they expected me to remember any detail.

Are all your blood test results processed at the same place, irrespective of where the blood is taken, as they are here? If so it seems perverse for some to appear on your DH’s records and others not.

Sometimes I think of Benedict Kiely (a great Tyrone man) and feel that I should hoke out my copy of Nothing Happens in Carmincross. There was someone who knew what border villages are like.

I went up to Edinburgh a while back and passed through Berwick, and maybe I'll go back and stop there. I'm not sure if there's anything to see or do in Berwick, but I still can't quite believe that it's a real place. The places in between have their own fascination.

I know one small child who managed to get covered virtually head to toe in mud in Berwick. I wouldn't recommend it as an activity.

Cheers, Magpie! I'll have a vanilla milkshake with vanilla ice cream & toffee fudge sauce, please - with something strongly alcoholic beside it, because I looked on ebay for figures 6cm high, & Marie was right about the female ones. I shudder to think what sort of model scenes people (men, it's men, isn't it?) use those for. I wondered if the corresponding male figures existed - but I really didn't want to find out. Why so small? So you can build a model s!x dungeon & still hide it from your mum?😂🙄

Maybe you've hit on something there, Android. With the advent of the new law on porn, maybe there'll be a rise in stop-motion 1:48 scale home porn movies instead?

I've used a mobile phone app before to try out Stop Motion animation. I can't remember which one but it was very straightforward just point click point click. Maybe "Stop Motion Animation".

I need the laugh emoji back, because there's no way I'm loving that.

I would like to clarify my animations were not pornographic! 🤣

You have no idea how much I like finding that two other Bluestockingers share my love for the poetry of Patrick Kavanagh. I was introduced to his work as part of a poetry selection when I was doing my A level English in 1968, and I've loved and read it off and on ever since. In fact I wrote a paper on his work when I was doing my MA and even went down to London to Colindale to read some of the newspapers he'd edited in the 50s in the British Library collection. Epic is one of my favourites, and another is Is.

The only thing is not
to imagine one ought
have something to say -
a raison d'etre, a plot for the play.
The only true teaching
subsists in just watching
things moving or just colour
without comment from the scholar.
To look on is enough in the business of love....

(from memory so forgive misquotation).

@MarieDeGournayHow about homemade playdough for the people? Maybe add a bit more oil than the standard recipe to reduce the risk of cracking as you dry them out slowly prior to painting and sealing with clear lacquer? Not re-poseable, but cheap to make. I might experiment myself come December (I'm thinking tree decorations).

I should have a rummage and see how tall the Father Christmas who presides over the snowy wastes of Christmas cakes chez Tropaeolum is. I think he's a bit less than 6cm, maybe 5cm-ish?

I am utterly crap at taking pictures on my phone. I don't know why, but I find it really awkward to get my hands in the right position & then press the stupid little thing in the middle of the bottom of the screen (so it's unbalanced) - which half the time doesn't actually work anyway so I end up stabbing the screen multiple times & not even knowing if it's worked in the end. Just give me something with a real button to press & a confirmation that it's taken the bloody picture.

I hate mobile phones. Well, smartphones. Well, my smartphone. It probably doesn't help that I have a foldy-out cover on it, which I need to hold open while trying to take a photo, meaning I need an extra hand or something. But I hate it even without that.

Trying to find my way around it is impossible, because there's no conceptual layout behind/linking the screens IYKWIM. I thought it only seemed insane to me because I hadn't paid enough attention, so I moaned about it to DH 😁& we sat down & went through it together, on our matching phones - & it really is insane. He hadn't believed me, but it's true. You're on the main screen & you go right & down to get to a certain page of apps, say, but if you go up & left you don't get back to where you started. That sort of thing. It reminds me of early games like Zork. I'm sure one had a maze like that.

And you have to swipe to finish phone calls, instead of pressing the red or green phone which seems more normal when they're sitting there in front of you. And it says 'conversations 2' in a button as though you could press the button & be shown both conversations, but it doesn't do anything if you press it & who cares anyway I'm just wondering what it's trying to tell me, & why are some things conversations & others aren't, apparently randomly?

When I refuse to give people my mobile number on the grounds that I don't carry it & avoid using it, they look at me patronisingly as if they're thinking, 'Poor old dear, I suppose they didn't have computers in her day' whereas I used to design systems & I would never have designed an interface as counter-intuitive as this one. And don't get me started on trying to use a tiny little pseudo keyboard on a screen with my sausagey fingers and the keyboard makes you change screens for basic punctuation. Aaaaaargh!

Thanks for listening. This has, of course, been dispacement activity because it's my turn to make dinner. Sigh.

@Boiledbeetle I have just caught up on the parallels thread and want to particularly thank you for your 'stuffed in a pocket' comment. I'm still sniggering...

@ifIwerenotanandroid I just say cheese out loud and my phone camera snaps a photo.

I too cannot take pictures with my mobile. I really, really, really have to fight the urge to put it to my eye like a proper camera. I don't find framing the subject at all intuitive.

Could I have a chocolate ice cream sundae, with cherry sauce, chocolate sauce, cherries, chocolate shavings, whipped cream and chocolate wafers? Thank you!

I hope I don't get any on my face.

One dessert coming up.

@ifIwerenotanandroid are you my DH? He won't use a smart phone - only has a flip phone - for exactly the sausage-finger reason.

And a cherry fizz flavoured lick! Adds a certain je ne sais quoi.

three other Bluestockingers . . .