Jo-ho-ho

I got a little offended at this and then thought, actually, no wait ...

The instructions for drying this jacket in a tumbledryer show a cartoon of the jacket PLUS three tennis ball icons being put into a tumble dryer. It took me a while to work out what the icons for the tennis balls meant. They also look a little bit like mini Victorian silhouettes.

:D

Including the instruments of the apocalypse 😂

Timelapses In the strictest sense these are not timelapses but composites made of sequential photos, but that wouldn’t fit on the menu. I blogged some of these the other day (“When did the blossom…

Composite images showing when the Greenwich Park cherry blossoms opened last year. Timings may or may not be predictive for 2026 though. Ignatius Sancho café saplings seem to be the first (end March), Cherry Tree Row ones open last (got going 6-10th April, burst - 12 April).

Has anyone done research/writing on Wikipedia as citizen science?

View of the whole tree which is not laden with blossom and I think it probably flowered in February. It looks quite sparse. Near Langdon Park station, What3Words: famous bleat edge

A close up of a twig which has a handful of blossoms but mostly just large pink stamens. Photo taken against a bright blue sky with an aircraft caught in the shot.

Close up view of remaining pink blossoms and quite a lot of new green leaf growth.

I went to take this shot of some petals on the ground to show how large they are, then realised that I was looking at a whole load of peach or nectarine stone husks. I think nectarine but the pips of fruits have not been something I've given my full attention to thus far.

Found a 'cherry' blossom tree w large pink petals not far from Langdon Park DLR & wondered what species it might be. Then spotted the ground below which suggests a peach or nectarine (Prunus includes cherry, peach, nect, almonds, plums = stone fruit trees) #FlowerHamlets

Stall End | Unknown | V&A Explore The Collections Portion of a stall-end depicting a two-masted ship on water with stars, crescent moon and the sun above; St Nicholas Chapel, Kings Lynn; ca. 1419

Talking of celestial navigation, a post on Instagram prompted me to pay a visit to this at the V&A yesterday - a stall end from St Nicholas Chapel, Kings Lynn. Ship, stars and marine animals in one gorgeous bit of early 15thC carving #histSTM
collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O121909...

A tweet from me sent on 4 December 2011 - "What's the deal with the pandas? It's been at the level below yellow bulldozers all day (HitchHiker's Guide reference)"

... that they no longer have to specify what it is they're currently discussing. If I'm super interested I can track back, or just wait for the yellow bulldozer to 'drop' as time goes on and a picture emerges.

“The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with."

I like this because it feels like the process of ambiently making sense of something. E.g. I might visit Bluesky and see posts from which I can infer that everyone's already been talking about a thing for so long...

“You know, said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.” “Why, what did she tell you?” “I don’t know, I didn’t listen.”

“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”

Still chuffed I got that in as intro of my finals paper on Rousseau.

Nice, whale photos are helping people track them and have shown they cover a fair bit of ... water.

Obviously can't rule out identical-twin whale sharks or quantum whale sharks of course ;)

A composite image made of a grid of 8 photos taken over several days between 11th March and 4th April, showing the cherry tree saplings at Vanbrugh Gate by the Ignatius Sancho café being completely in bloom by 25th to 27th March and losing flowers by early April. As far as I'm aware this is the same species as the main ones on cherry tree avenue. I'd be tempted to suggest that they're blooming earlier cos they're saplings - but there are a couple of saplings at the row of cherries that don't open early so may be a different variety, or a different soil / environment / sun level etc. Dunno. Having fun trying to find out though.

A composite image made of a grid of 16 photos in a 4 by 4 grid pattern taken over several days between 11th March and 18th April, showing leaf and flower buds gradually opening in March and then really blossoming in April. These ones went into full blossom a couple of days before the row of cherry blossom in the park but I think they are the same species.

A composite image made of a grid of 16 photos in a 4 by 4 grid pattern taken over several days between 11th March and 18th April, showing leaf and flower buds gradually opening in March and then really blossoming in April. This is the large cherry tree in the Flower Garden right which is seperated from the Ignatius Sancho café by a railing and the entrance is near Vanbrugh Gate. There's also a block of loos there which is handy if you've been enjoying this with a cup of tea. I love my photo on 16th April, with the petal fall on the grass. So much pink!

I enjoyed making these & will now call myself a Data Scientist, oh yes :)

• Saplings @ Vanbrugh Gate / Ignatius Sancho café, Greenwich Park (earliest to bloom)
• Cherry tree blossom @ St John / Evangelist, Blackheath
• Large cherry tree in Flower Garden nr Vanbrugh Gt

Three photos of the same buds on a cherry tree in Greenwich Park taken on the 4th March (bottom), 7th March (middle) and 9th March (top). Although the angle of each photo is more or less the same there are slight differences (and different weather too) but the buds themselves don't seem to be budging.

I started checking the trees a bit earlier this year and certainly nothing much has happened (at least not visually) to these leaf / flower buds.*

Some species of Prunus have separate leaf and flower buds, some are combined - I'd never thought to pay attention to this before I made the composites!

A composite image made of a grid of 4 x 4 photos taken over several days between 11th March and 18th April, showing leaf and flower buds gradually opening in March and then really blossoming in April.

Last year the famous row of cherry trees (I have learned that they are Prunus serrulata var Pink Perfection, a variety of multi-petalled kanzan blossoms) properly bloomed on 12 April but were looking pretty imminent by 6th. I wonder if it will be the same this year. Get your predictions in ;)

While I'm sad not to be at Ronnie Scott's (upstairs) tonight to hear from film composer David Arnold (am coughing lots) I have just cheered myself up by remembering there's another episode of AI Confidential on BBC 2 at 9, followed by Small Prophets at 10pm.

Give the people what they want :-)

Not read the article myself but it's a good thread on the keenness for some TV producers to prioritise the wrong kind of adversarial discussion. I'd not enjoy being on television in the first place and definitely wouldn't do any better with additional stresses.

Purple sweet violet plant with purple flowers. Sun is shining on the plant.

Sweet violet enjoying a bit of spring sunshine a couple of days ago. #wildflowerhour

Thanks for posting your blooms :-)

@davidarnold.bsky.social Alas I am not terribly well (not ill ill, just coughing [not Covid/flu]) so not at your event tonight :( Plus I think me sitting there with a mask on coughing away will just make everyone else a bit ill-at-ease ;) I hope it all goes brilliantly though!

Can we describe this as a Clactoning?

Clactoning: a no show, to be absent or unavailable

Close-up of 3 fully open white flowers with others in bud on a lichen-covered branch, with the background softly blurred

Blackthorn, Prunus spinosa, just starting to flower in our garden hedgerow this week
#SignsOfSpring #BlackthornBlossom #WildflowerHour @wildflowerhour.bsky.social @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Everyone is very angry at Timothee Chalamet over on Threads, because he was mean about opera and ballet, and I feel like that’s the sort of scandal we were meant to be having in the President Kamala timeline

Two different trees with white cherry blossom type flowers. I don't know if they're cherry trees or plums or something else from within the Prunus genus. One has brownish-orange leves and the other has green leaves. The stamen bases on the brown leafed tree look pinker and the ones on the green leafed tree look pinkish but less so, bit more yellow overall. On both pictures there's a smaller inset photo showing the petal drop below. The brown-leaed tree seems to shed petals.

Testing the theory that the brown-leafed Prunus* sp (left) loses flowers and the green-leafed one on the right loses petals.

*It will be some time before I learn which is which, possibly not a cherry tree (could be plum, blackthorn).

A bee enjoying some "cherry blossom"* in Blackheath on 4 March 2026 when the sun came out.

Note this is a different speces of blossom-producing tree from the famous ones in Greenwich Park which bloom much later.

*Prunus spp.
There are ~340 Prunus species (apricots, plums, cherries, almonds)

Much better 👇🏼 I'd also like to nominate "SPECS OFFENDERS". Thank you, I yield my time.

How Words Shape Your Body Podcast Episode · The Rest Is Science · 5 March · 50m

The Rest is Science podcast episode on whether you can build a Turing machine out of bees is fun and I think @cs4fn.bsky.social will enjoy it. Relevant bit is from about 8mins, the listener question comes at 57s, here podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/h... (login not required as far as I can see).

Good title!

Missed call scams If you receive a missed call on your mobile phone from a number you don't recognise, think twice before calling it back.

Aha, my number was spoofed to try and spam the other person. They rang ('them') back (so it came to me) and I got their missed call. All the makings of a rom-com surely ;)
www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-b...