Peter Oliver @mavit@bergamot.social

This class 730 has new train smell, which is like new car smell but with wider gangways and walk-through carriages.

Used the official National Rail Online Journey Planner today, while https://traintimes.org.uk/ briefly wasn't working. You'd think in the last two decades they might have caught up on ease of use, but nope.

@sil Are you organising a pub crawl this year, and will it be on Wednesday?

@jameswallis Re your article in today’s Telegraph, Trivial Pursuit is good now?! What was the fix?

Yesterday I ate my first Tim Tam. I was expecting Penguin, but there was something about it that put me in mind of the Tunnock's Caramel Wafer.

It’s feels pretty insulting to see West Midlands Cycle Hire bury the lede of heavy price rises behind dubious claims of “pricing improvements”. If you’re short on cash, or TfWM think the budget would be better spent on buses or whatever, be honest about it. You’re offering a public service, not selling a commercial product, so you don’t need the sales bullshit.

My typical journeys are now three to four times more expensive. The sad reality is I’ll probably drive more.

You know how people say, “My wife was talking about stepladders near my phone, and now whenever I go online I get all these adverts for stepladders”?

(I never believed it, but, whatever, use an ad-blocker)

Well, anyway, the other day I was listening to Black Country, New Road in the car, and the satnav on my phone diverted me down the Black Country New Road. Spooky.

Given that the combined Twitter/Mastodon client I use is now 50% useless, I should probably switch to something more Mastodon-specific. But... does anyone know of a combined Mastodon/Bluesky client?

@mavit Perhaps Threads federating helps crystallise people's choices.

Choosing a Mastodon server isn't like choosing an email provider, because, back when email was new and unfamiliar, you didn't choose. You just got given a mailbox by your university or employer or ISP.

By the time that independent email providers were really taking off, you had clear, concrete reasons for your choice, such as price (Hotmail), brand recognition (Yahoo!), features (GMail). But Mastodon servers all look kind-of the same, so how do you select one?

Digbeth's freshest street art.

Iron Horse has been groomed and moved.

This year, a song I like won a Grammy, and a film I liked won an Oscar. Is this what it’s like to be middle-aged? Am I middle of the road now?

I dread the day that manufactures of hotel smoke alarms catch up with the rest of the electronics industry by discovering the ultra-bright blue LED.