The previous day and evening had been one of complete frustration as I could not manage to adapt the HTML code with which I had been working to give me my desired rolling automatic display of photos on a particular website. But then just as I was on my way to bed, I had one of those ‘Let us just see?’ moments and went on the web only to find a program that fitted my needs perfectly. This program was beautifully but simply written with some CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) elements as well as Javascript which all give the program its functionality. Whoever had written the program had evidently done so with ‘maintainabilty’ in prospect because well written programs always have a line of comment so that users such as myself can see what each portion of code does and therefore how it can be tweaked to fit one’s needs. So I was delighted to find this program which is just what I was looking forward to and was quickly and easily adjusted to my exact needs and served as the perfect end to a day which otherwise had been filled with a certain degree of frustration. So naturally, I will write this up in my book of ‘What have I learnt today?’ so that I can utilise this program whenever I feel the need. Although technically, I did not really need to spend time on this, I like to keep whatever coding skills in relatively good order and reminds you that in the computing world, whatever problem you have or need to fulfil, someone out there has already been there, done that and acquired a solution. But of course, one has to ask the question in the right way to get the solution that one wants.
I was reasonably surprised upon consulting my smart speaker this morning that the initial temperature was -2° because it did not feel that cold. I think the answer to this conundrum was that in the past few days we have had a fairly icy wind which has made the temperature feel lower than it actually was. I went onto the BBC website and consulted their weather section where they had an extremely good presentation of the week ahead. This was well illustrated with appropriate maps and representations of the weather to come so that now I know that today, is going to be dry and cold, tomorrow a huge band of rain will sweep across the country so good weather clothing is indicated whereas after that the picture is one which is cloudy and showery but with the kind of regime and temperatures which are about typical for mid January. This particular bot of forecast is so well done I may get into the habit of consulting it quite regularly. In the political news this morning, there is an announcement of a new rail line to be built connecting Birmingham with Manchester but work only to start in the next decade. However, no timescale for when it would be built has been provided – or any other details, such as how it will be funded. The Treasury says it wants a new Birmingham-Manchester rail line, but it will not be a reinstatement of HS2. Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government scrapped a planned extension of HS2 between the two cities in 2023 to save money. Land obtained for HS2 between the West Midlands and northern cities will be kept while the project is developed. A new line would ease pressure on the West Coast Main Line, the government said. This seems like one of those announcements in which the government can claim a lot of credit but any expenditure implications will be left for future governments. I imagine that having already acquired a lot of the land in anticipation of HS2, it was sensible to retain it and use it to eventually enhance the network.
In the morning my son and daughter-in-law came around to help clean out the second of ‘hobbit holes’ giving access to the eaves and used as storage space. This particular hobbit hole had a collection of old suitcases, travel and holiday associated things and a collection of old briefcases. We have evidently retained the best of the suitcases whilst disposing of the remainder and a lot of packaging material and empty boxes have now been disposed of. Contained in one of the briefcases were quite a lot of Meg’s old medical records and it was a little sad to see these scribbled over with lots of notes in her own handwriting. I resisted the temptation to look at these in detail but there was also quite a lot of correspondence from the time of Meg’s enforced retirement which records were now more than 30 years old and well disposed of.We even discovered one or two greeting cards from our wedding which was 58 years ago now. We are now left with two large storage spaces but after we have given them both a big clean out, we shall only store a few select articles there well secured inside plastic boxes and well labelled to boot so we know exactly what is retained. As this was the day when the normal domestic rubbish is put in wheelie bins at the end of the drive, I managed to dispose of several black plastic sacks only to be left with three old but large suitcases ready to be taken to the tip. I have actually placed these on the top of our wheelie bins trusting that the reuse disposal crew who come very early in the morning (at about 8.00am) will take pity on me and throw the empty cases into their vehicle as otherwise I have to make quite a long journey to the tip which takes both time and petrol money. My son and daughter in law brought along some delicious home made mushroom soup as well as home-made mackerel paté so we lunched on these items complete with sourdough bread and this was all delicious. In the afternoon, I needed to go to our local hospital for a routine appointment and, as I was there for a minute or so over the hour paid a car parking fee of £4.40 for a stay of about 65 minutes and it is always incredibly difficult to find a car parking space any time after about 8.30 in the morning.