Royal Oak

Lancashire vs Kent in the Blast (T20) quarter final at OT today. A marked difference between this game and the Hundred games I saw last month. Today's was a much more partisan crowd, of Lancashire fans, invested in the team and the result. As such, the atmosphere was miles better, the excitement was real Lancashire won, thanks to Liam Livingstone, probably the most frustrating batsman in world cricket. He comes off for about one innings in eight, but they are worth seeing.

Sad news, liked the Turtles, and that first Flo & Eddie LP. I loved "Billy The Mountain" as a teenager.

You may not have much longer to get into the format, as there is a lot of talk of it becoming a T20 game in the next year or two, apparently driven by the new owners. I'm sure it will end being an offshoot of the IPL. I hear that Manchester Originals will become Manchester Super Kings and Oval Invincibles are to become "Mumbai Indians London" Something much more low-key. Lancashire vs Durham in the One Day Cup, at Liverpool a couple of days ago. In August, all the Counties' best players are picked for the Hundred, which means that the One Day Cup is now a de facto Second XI competition. Lancashire have lost ten players to the Hundred this year, so are unsurprisingly being battered every game.

I had quite an interesting interaction with AI today, with a jazz flavour. I was browsing Ebay for records the other day, and came upon a collection of 100 LPs. They were close to where I live so I messaged the seller to see if he had a list, or any more pics. He responded with a half-finished list of around 45 LPs. This excerpt contained all manner of the "big" modern jazz titles eg Speak No Evil, Song for My Father, Sidewinder, Idle Moments, Cool Struttin', Red Clay, Waltz for Debby, Brilliant Corners, Kind of Blue, Ah Um, Time Out, Saxophone Colossus, Blues & The Abstract Truth etc. A little strange, but I figured this must have been a curated collection, perhaps influenced by those "100 jazz albums you MUST listen to before you die" lists. In between the classics were the usual tiddlers; Oscar Peterson, Pablos, Lionel Hampton on Vogue, Jasmine reissues, Paul Desmond on A&M, Basie and Ellington etc. I bought the collection and arranged pick up for today. I didn't check the LPs on pick up, as I didn't feel the need. Anyway, once I opened the box when I got home, there were indeed 100 LPs, but all those big titles were missing. In the past I've bought LP collections off Ebay where the seller has removed items between listing and handing over, so I messaged the seller to tell him the LPs were missing. He was mystified, and sent me pictures of all the LPs in the collection, all in my box. It turned out that he had taken pics of every LP and uploaded them to Chat GPT to create a catalogue, presumably to save himself the bother of typing all that information himself. Chat GPT then simply invented a list of 100 jazz albums, pulling it out of its metaphorical arse. The seller, totally unfamiliar with jazz, thought nothing of it. He showed me a screenshot of him accusing Chat GPT of fabricating the list of records. It answered "You're right (name) I shouldn't invent records. Thanks for catching that" The seller offered a return, which I declined as the collection was decent anyway, so no harm done. Good job it wasn't reading my CT brain scan, or telling me whether the mushroom I foraged was poisonous....

Manchester Originals vs the Northern Superchargers in the Hundred. These teams have new owners, and next year will probably have new names. Originals won both women's and men's games on the day, the latter by some distance. Beautiful weather and a large crowd.

I went to the final day of the Old Trafford test last Sunday. First test match for 40 years, and the forecast rain never arrived. Not sure I'd do it again - very busy, huge queues for refreshments, and we had to shoot off a few overs early to avoid an hour waiting to be able to get on the tram to head home. The India fans (probably more than half of the crowd) had a ball, with three centurions to cheer, and a very good performance to bat out the draw. I saw this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudhir_Kumar_Chaudhary I'd never heard of him - it was an Indian chap sat next to me who told me all about him.

These?

I just saw on Cricinfo that MI had lost 7 of their 10 group games, mad. Taking the art of not peaking too soon to a new level. Derbyshire vs Lancashire a couple of weeks ago. Played at Chesterfield, a club (amateur) ground, in the middle of a municipal park I tried to get a pic of Chesterfield's famous crooked spire, this is the best I could do from inside the ground

👍 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.