My wife Christine recently introduced me to a new animé series on Netflix called Delicious in Dungeon. It’s based on a manga, of which we also recently picked up the first book.
If you like Dungeons & Dragons, and food, then you’ll probably like Delicious in Dungeon. It follows a small guild of explorers, who are trying to save their friend despite losing all their supplies. Hungry, they resort to eating the dungeon monsters they encounter. Early on, they meet a dwarf, who seems highly knowledgable about the best way to cook these monsters and end up eating delicious food of dubious origins.
The animé adaption of the manga is pretty good, with each dish presented like it would be on a cooking programme. In the manga books, the dishes even come with ingredients and nutritional information.
It took me a little while to get into the first episode, but I found it enjoyable and funny despite not being a big animé fan. The only animé I have watched more than a few episodes of is Pokémon, and that’s probably because I play Pokémon Go every day, and so am familiar with the species.
It’s a Netflix exclusive, and new episodes are being released weekly. There are currently 13 volumes of the manga, with a 14th due out this summer. We picked up our English translation from Travelling Man in Manchester.
“Dancing Lasha Tumbai” by Verka Serduchka. A memorable performance from Ukraine in 2007. Allegedly ‘Lasha Tumbai’ was changed from ‘Russia goodbye’, as Eurovision tries to be non-political (but invariably is). It came second, losing to Serbia. It’s one of those very silly songs that epitomises Eurovision.
“Euphoria” by Loreen. Currently holds the record for most votes for any song performed in a Eurovision final and rightly a winner for Sweden in 2012. Loreen went on to win Eurovision again for Sweden last year, although I’m not so keen on her 2023 song “Tattoo”.
“Ooh ahh… Just A Little Bit” by Gina G. The British entry from 1996, and an absolute gay anthem. It didn’t win, although it came seventh which is pretty good compared to recent British Eurovision performances (2022 excepted). Gina G is actually Australian, and now Australia competes in Eurovision. Please don’t think too hard about the geographical implications of this.
“Satellite” by Lena. A fun little song which won for Germany in 2010. Lena would represent Germany again in 2011 but wasn’t as successful.
“Je Me Casse” by Destiny. The Maltese entry in 2021. A friend described this as Lizzo meets Mr Saxobeat (an Alexandra Stan song) and I agree, but it works. It came seventh. 2021 was an unusual event as it was the first show since 2019 and had a significantly smaller audience. Also, four countries (including the UK) got nul points that year.
“Only Teardrops” by Emmelie de Forest. This was the 2013 winner for Denmark.
“Thing About Things” by Daði Freyr. The probable winner for the contest that never was. This was Iceland’s entry for the 2020 contest that was cancelled due to you know what. Daði Freyr came back with a new song for 2021 but didn’t win.
“Diva” by Dana International. This won in 1998 in Birmingham, following Britain’s most recent win in 1997. Dana International was the first openly transgender Eurovision contestant and won with a great song.
“Toy” by Netta. Israel’s win in 1998 was followed by another win 20 years later, with this unusual but catchy song.
“Glorious” by Cascada. Whilst Cascada’s lead singer is British, this was the German entry for 2013. It didn’t do so well, coming 21st overall.
It’s Eurovision time again! It’s in Sweden again this year, after Loreen chalked up her second victory last year. The first semi-final was last night, and the second semi-final is tomorrow, with the main event on Saturday.
Watching the Eurovision finals used to be a big thing for us, and we would either go to friends’ houses for a Eurovision watching party or host our own in previous years. However, with an eight-year-old to get to bed, it’s not proved practical in recent years. Still, I’ve listened to all 37 entries on Spotify, and here are my highlights and lowlights:
Douze points
“The Code” by Nemo (Switzerland). Heartfelt lyrics by the singer about coming to terms with their non-binary identity.
“No Rules” by Windows95Man (Finland). This was the first song that I heard, due to its video going moderately viral on social media a few weeks ago. Very much a novelty song, but catchy.
“Rim Tim Tagi Dim” by Baby Lasagna (Croatia). A thumping beat drives this song.
“We Will Rave” by Kaleen (Austria). Feels like 1990s Eurodance, but in a good way.
“Always on the run” by ISAAK (Germany). A good voice; Germany came last in 2023 (they should have chosen Patty Gurdy) and this is a much stronger entry.
“Unforgettable” by Marcus & Martinus (Sweden). Not as strong as some of Sweden’s previous entries but a good performance on Saturday could see Sweden hosting two years in a row.
“Liar” by Silia Kapsis (Cyprus). This was ranked top in last night’s first semi final, and rightly so. Silia is only 17 too.
“SAND” by SABA (Denmark).
“Loop” by Sarah Bonnici (Malta). Malta have put entered some good songs over the years but never seem to win, which is a shame. This is a good one.
“Ulveham” by Gåte (Norway). I like this one. It won’t win because songs that aren’t in English rarely do well.
“11:11” by Megara (San Marino). As above, unlikely to win but this is a pretty storming song.
Nul points
“Europapa” by Joost (Netherlands). Like Austria’s entry, sounds like 1990s Eurodance but not in a good way. More suited to kids birthday parties.
“Doomsday Blue” by Bambie Thug (Ireland). This just sounds like a lot of noise and unnecessary shouting to me, but it made it through last night’s semi final.
“Hurricane” by Eden Golan (Israel). This is a by-the-numbers Eurovision entry that will probably not get through the semi-finals because of who the host country is. I’m surprised Israel was permitted to take part this year, as Russia and Belarus have been banned for the past three years.
The UK Eurovision entry
This year, the UK will be represented by Olly Alexander from Years & Years with “Dizzy”. It’s not bad; I don’t think it’s the best song, but often success is determined by the quality of the performance on the night.
The UK has had mixed success in recent Eurovision competitions; Sam Ryder’s “Spaceman” came second in 2022, leading us to host last year through Clearing as Ukraine (the actual winners) couldn’t host, due to being invaded by Russia, another Eurovision country. However, last year, Mae Muller’s “I Wrote A Song” didn’t achieve the same success and came second from bottom. Which was a shame as I felt it deserved to do better.
It would be nice if the UK could repeat its 2022 success, but I don’t think it’ll be our year.
We have six Google Home Mini devices around our home, and now I can get Home Assistant to automatically deliver broadcast messages. Here’s how I did it.
Broadcast messages
When you have more than one Google Home device, you can say ‘Okay Google, broadcast [message]’, and it will relay that message to all of the other Google Home devices in your home. It’s useful for announcing that dinner’s ready, for example. Our house is long, rather than square, and I’m hard of hearing, so we use this quite a lot.
What I wanted to achieve was automation of these broadcasts, so that a broadcast was triggered by an event. This is possible thanks to the Google Assistant SDK integration. It’s a bit of a faff to set up – I recommend following this guide or watching the video embedded below:
Call the service
Once it’s set up, you can test it by opening Home Assistant’s Developer Tools. Click the ‘Service’ tab, and choose the ‘Google Assistant SDK: Send text command’ service. In the command, type something like ‘broadcast "This is a test"‘ and click ‘Call Service’. If you’ve set everything up correctly, your Google Home devices should all say something like “Incoming broadcast; it says: This is a test”.
Create a script
As I write this, the latest version of Home Assistant (2024.4.x) doesn’t allow automations to call services directly. So, to be able to trigger the broadcast, we’ll first need to create a Script in Home Assistant. In my example, I have a script called ‘Washing machine finished broadcast’. The ‘mode’ is left at the default setting of ‘Single’, and then I’ve created an Action which is to Call a Service. As above, I have selected ‘Google Assistant SDK: Send text command’ as the service to call, and then entered ‘broadcast "The washing machine has finished"‘ as the command, which I have ticked. I’ve left the rest blank.
Whilst here, I’ve also added a time condition. As this will be triggered when the washing machine finishes, I don’t want it to run when we might be asleep. We have Google Home devices in each of the bedrooms, and we sometimes run the washing machine overnight.
Home Assistant runs script actions in order. So, if you also want to add a time condition, you’ll need to add this before the Google Assistant SDK service call, or re-order the actions. In this example, I have created a Test action, where the current time is between 8am and 8pm. Outside of those times, the script will fail and not process the next command, so the broadcast action won’t be executed.
So now, as well as sending a notification, it also triggers a broadcast (within the time constraints).
Other things you can do with Google Home
Once you have the Google Asssistant SDK integration installed in Home Assistant, you can use scripts to run any other command that you would say to Google Home. You could, for example, create a button on your Home Assistant dashboard, which triggers the text command ‘play Never Going To Give You Up by Rick Astley on Spotify‘ if you want to automatically rickroll the other occupants of your house. It can also control smart home devices which work with Google Assistant, but do not yet have a Home Assistant integration.
Today marks 11 years since Christine and I got married, on the 4th May 2013 in York. This apparently makes it our ‘steel’ wedding anniversary, hence the AI-generated image of a steel wedding cake that accompanies this blog post.
We don’t have any major plans to celebrate this year; for our tenth anniversary last year, we had a nice lunchtime meal at Engine Social Dining. Also, I turn 40 this month and so we’ll be celebrating that instead.
We are aware that May 4th is Star Wars Day (May the Fourth be with you…) and whilst our wedding wasn’t specifically Star Wars themed, Christine did come down the aisle to a string arrangement of the Imperial March.
Looking back at my blog archives, I posted the day before and day after the wedding in 2013. I wrote a mere two sentences in 2014, and then didn’t really write anything more until our fourth anniversary in 2017. I may or may not have written anything in 2018 for our fifth anniversary, but if I did, it’s not in the Web Archive. And whilst I had resumed blogging again by the time of our tenth anniversary last year, I didn’t write about it at the time.
Christine and I are still happily married, and we try to take the time to keep making our relationship work. Here’s to at least another eleven happy years.
Today is election day for much of the UK. It’s not a general election, as much as I would like it to be; that will be sometime between mid-June and mid-January. But here in Sowerby Bridge, we have two elections taking place:
As I am a card-carrying member of the Labour Party, I’ll be voting for them in both elections. It’s likely that Labour will win both too. Our local authority, Calderdale Council, is already a Labour-controlled council, as are the four other local authorities that make up West Yorkshire. And Tracy Brabin, the incumbent mayor, will almost certainly be re-elected. Although very little local polling has taken place, Labour are polling significantly ahead of all other parties nationally.
Over in York, my parents will be able to vote for an elected mayor of York and North Yorkshire for the first time. This will be a more interesting contest, as York tends to lean towards Labour and the Liberal Democrats, whereas the wider (and more rural) county of North Yorkshire leans Conservative. If David Skaith wins the mayoralty for Labour, it will mean that the Conservatives really are in trouble when they finally call a General Election.
There will also be mayoral elections for the first time in the North East and East Midlands, and the Conservative mayors of Tees Valley and the West Midlands will be hoping to be re-elected. Again, should these mayoralties fall to Labour, it’s a sign that the Conservative party are a spent electoral force.
London mayoral election
And there’s the London mayoral election, where Sadiq Khan will be looking to become the first modern mayor to be elected for a third time. The ULEZ seems to be the key issue here; it was a key part of Khan’s manifesto and most of his rivals want to scrap or curtail it. The exception seems to be Count Binface, who instead wants to expand free parking to electric vehicle users between Vine Street and the Strand. Except for those who drive a Tesla.
We’ll get most of the local council elections tomorrow, with the mayoral election results coming in over the weekend. It certainly promises to be an interesting few days in British politics.
