panto

Unblogged November

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I quite like doing these round-ups of previously unblogged minor things at the end of each month. You can read what I wrote in October, and now here’s November:

Peter Pan-to time (oh no it isn’t)

We’re off to see Peter Pan at the Bradford Playhouse this weekend. It’s the annual pantomime from one of the local amateur dramatics societies, The Bradford Players. It also marks ten years since I helped backstage with Sleeping Beauty, a previous pantomime production. We don’t see a panto every year, but we know some of the cast and so we want to support them. Some tickets still available for the performances taking place today and tomorrow, but be quick.

The Bradford Playhouse is hosting another panto next month – Cinderella. By contrast, this is a professional production – several showings have already sold out but others have good availability. It’s cheaper than many mainstream theatres, and by booking to see it, you’re supporting smaller independent theatres.

I suck at soldering

In last month’s unblogged update, I mentioned how I was playing with a ESP development board to add Wi-Fi control to an existing non-smart device. In the end, I gave up, as my soldering skills just weren’t sufficient to keep the wires soldered to the contact points on the circuit board. If you’re interested, the device I was modifying was an Ikea Uppåtvind air purifier, and I was using this guide. To be fair, even if it had worked, I was using a much larger board than the D1 Mini recommended and so there’s no guarantee that I would have been able to re-assemble it anyway.

York Christmas Market

Whilst we were in York last weekend, alongside visiting York’s Chocolate Story, we also had a browse of York’s Christmas Market in Parliament Street. Even on a Sunday morning, it was very busy, and overall the city was the busiest I’ve seen it (remember, I grew up in York). Indeed, people have been complaining about how busy it is.

Christmas markets can be a bit hit-and-miss – I remember going to the Manchester Christmas market several years ago to find it was basically the same four stalls repeated across the whole city. York’s market is mostly local businesses, and it’s a good mix of food, drink and gifty things. We always buy a litre bottle of barbecue sauce from The Chilli Jam Man when we go.

Black Friday

I literally only bought two things on Black Friday this year, both from Amazon:

  • A 3 way plug with USB-A and USB-C (sponsored link). Christine has had one of these for a while and uses it daily; I’ve bought a second one because I want a charger for the bedroom that doesn’t have any LEDs on it.
  • The Actually Delicious One Pot Cookbook (sponsored link). This is the latest cookbook from Poppy O’Toole, aka Poppy Cooks, and it’s reduced to £10 (from £22) in their Black Friday sale. We already have her Potato Book and Slow Cooker books and use them both frequently.

Oh no it isn’t…

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What? No updates for two days? Yes, I know – I was a wee bit busy yesterday, what with visiting Northumbria University and then watching the pantomime at The Theatre Royal. That, and Blogger suddenly stopped working, so what I had spent 10 minutes typing never got posted. So here’s what should have been posted yesterday:

Just posting since I have a few free minutes. Northumbria was okay, though the accommodation didn’t impress me – the catered accommodation looked okay but being a slightly picky eater (I don’t go for junk food) I wanted to go self-catering, and their offerings looked rather too basic. And there are no in-room facilities for accessing the university network/internet – not even a phone socket. That means a trek over to the computer work areas – a minimum of a 10 minute walk, and there you have little freedom about what you do (checking a Hotmail account was specifically mentioned as being banned…. great…).

The course looked good, though; like most university computing courses it concentrates on Java but seems to offer experience with Windows NT 4.0 (which is what the University network uses) and some form of Linux – it used the KDE desktop environment anyway. It’s quite industry based too, and the third year is a compulsory work placement (I’ve applied for a four-year sandwich course).

I’ll be able to give a better judgement once I’ve been to a few more universities though – Newcastle is next. I also need to apply for my student loan pretty soon too, to make sure it’ll be there in September.

The pantomime was very good too – unlike most other pantos in this country it doesn’t rely on D-list celebrities and gladiators to use what little acting talent they have to prance around doing the same regurgitated plays every year. This one uses the same 3 actors and 2 actresses it uses every year (plus a few extras) and is written by Berwick Kaler (who always plays the dame); although it loosely placed on a traditional panto, it never truly follows the story.

Take this years, for example – Jack and the Beanstalk. Although there was Jack, a beanstalk and a giant (also played by Berwick) who said “Fe fi fo fum”, it was based on a mountain in Skipwith (note: there are no mountains in Skipwith – in fact its almost totally flat). Most of the jokes have a local theme (some of the jokes made reference to the A64 roadworks and the selling of York City) and Berwick rarely takes it seriously (spraying water at the people inside the pantomime cow, for example). Overall, three and a half hours of great entertainment – and only £8. What’s more – it runs from the beginning of December to the end of February, so you have little excuse to miss it, though on most nights the theatre is full, so you need to have your skates on and book in advance if necessary. Oh no you won’t. Oh yes you will. It’s behind you…

Manchester University gave me an offer of a place for next year, taking my total number of offers up to 5 (out of a possible 6 – Edinburgh have yet to get back to me). Although it is the university I most want to go to, I may have to turn it down since they require an ‘A’ grade in Maths – something which I don’t expect I’ll be able to offer them. At the moment, UMIST (the neighbouring university to Manchester) is my first choice, followed by Newcastle, but this may change since I have yet to visit either university. But at least both have achievable entry requirements.