Royal Oak

👍 I may send the inner sleeve coupon from my "Donald Byrd's Best" LP (and a cheque for $5) for a BN T-shirt.

I threw my Blue Note Connoisseur CD OBI strips out, when I should have saved them and sent them off for a Blue Note watch, or whatever the prize was.

Yes, he bowled 10 overs in the entire second innings, and I think six of those were after tea. I guess he didn't fancy it, the privilege of being captain I suppose. He is due to play in the Derbyshire game starting Sunday. I have a day off work on Tuesday, so will have a drive over to Chesterfield if the weather is good.

Lancashire vs Kent at Blackpool Cricket Club, day 1 last Sunday. It wasn't a good day for cricket. It was cool and then poured down for a while between lunch and tea, so I left early. The shot below I took during the 5 minutes the sun came out (to the cheers of the crowd). You can see the top of the world-famous Blackpool Tower in the background.

Any interactions I've had with AI (at least the ones I know about!) seem to have been fairly negative. I've noticed that with any Google search I perform on my phone (but not on my PC, for some reason), the top result is now always a summary driven by AI. I've noticed a couple of times it's factually incorrect. I have often felt Google Maps trolls me by sending me on unnecessarily convoluted routes, particularly in more rural areas of the UK. And any Chatbot I have ever used (banking, mobile phone etc) has merely been another hurdle one must clear to get to a real person, who may understand what I am asking for. The whole Google Gemini thing, or the AI girlfriends one hears about? That just seems insane to me. Some will call me a Luddite, and perhaps they are right. In any case, I wouldn't trust it to help me make a decision of any import.

Ebay offers AI generated descriptions when selling. For vinyl, they are faintly preposterous "The record is black in colour and housed in a cardboard sleeve", "12 inches in diameter", "Would make a superb addition to any music-lover's collection" and the like. For work I have to write reports. Though the reports are about human beings, they are somewhat formulaic, and have a narrow scope. This means I can use a few judicious shortcuts and templates, and churn them out quickly. I have wondered if at some point, the customer will start thinking I'm using Chat GPT to write them.

Go Super Kings! I see Daryl Mitchell scored 8 and went for 53 off his 4 overs, but still won the game with a tight last over. Good player is Mitchell, was excellent for Lancashire a couple of years ago.

Ah fair enough. After seeing some of South Africa's defeats snatched from the jaws of victory over the past 30 years, I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if they end up losing this by about 15 runs.

I saw some badly edited highlights of the SF innings this morning - 269 is a ridiculous score. Are the Texas games better attended? Looked quite a sparse crowd - no cheap tickets to entice the locals in?

Gosh, didn't realise MLC started in June! Also, didn't realise the games were played in blocks in three different locations - that does make sense, rather than teams jetting between cities for games.

Is this a horse?

It's been cracking the flags in Manchester for weeks! A fairly sedate day at the cricket today. Didn't get to see Sir JA as Lancashire were put in, and managed to bat (slowly) all day.

Off to OT tomorrow. A day off work, Sir JA is in the squad, unbroken sunshine and 23 deg C forecast. I suppose the only drawback is that it's Derbyshire, possibly the least exciting team in the country.

Lancashire vs Gloucestershire at OT yesterday, weather glorious once more.

I see JA's Lancashire comeback has been further delayed, with a new target of 16th May. I am now thinking this is never going to happen, if England come calling for his coaching / mentoring services