andrewducker: (Teddy of Borg)
[personal profile] andrewducker
About a month ago Gideon watched a bunch of videos about Minecraft, asked if he could play it on her tablet, got a few pointers from me to get him going and then dove in and started building stuff. At an impressive rate considering that he can't read any word more than 4 letters long.

Yesterday I mentioned Minecraft to Sophia, and she showed interest, so I set her up on my desktop and she got stuck in. She's asked for more help than Gideon has, but has been happily building herself an underground house. And just now I wanderd into my office to see her on the desktop and Gideon sitting on the floor with his tablet, with the two of them intermittently showing each other cool things that they'd found.

So tonight, after they're asleep, I'm going to set them both up for online play, and rent a realm*, so that they can be in the same world with each other.



*I am totally willing to pay £3.99 per month to not have to maintain my own server.

Timeline of a new phase in my life.

Dec. 11th, 2025 07:12 pm
andrewducker: (Unless I'm wrong)
[personal profile] andrewducker
About two months ago, I had a nasty respiratory infection. And while I was lying awake one night, I could hear my heart beating quite loudly.

Having had multiple friends go to the doctor to check on something and then have the doctor tell them that they urgently needed medication before their high blood pressure did them serious damage/killed them, I thought I should pop in to the doctor for a chat.

They checked me on the spot, said my blood pressure was a little high, but nothing terrible, and told me to join the queue to borrow a blood pressure device. [personal profile] danieldwilliam gave me his old one, and I spent a couple of weeks taking results. Which mostly showed that my pressure is fine in the morning, but that after I've spent 90 minutes shouting at Gideon to stop bloody well mucking about and go to sleep, it's a fair chunk higher than it should be. They also sent me for an ECG (which showed I have Right Bundle Branch Block, a harmless and untreatable condition that affects 15% of the population), an eye test (which found nothing), and a fasting blood test (which showed I'm still not diabetic, even though I can't have sugar in my diet even slightly any more).

They then had a phone call with me to chat it through, said that I'm a little high (on average), and a little young for it to be a major worry, but if I was up for it they could put me on some pills for hypertension.. I agreed that it sounded sensible, and the doctor sounded positively relieved that she hadn't had to bully me into it.

The weird feeling is that this is the first time I've been put on to a medicine that I will have to take for the rest of my life. There is now "The time I didn't have to take medicine every day" and "The time where I had to take medicine every day". Which definitely feels like an inflection point in my life. (Endless sympathy, of course, for people I know who have to take much worse things than a tiny tasteless pill with very few side-effects.)

So all-in-all, nothing major. Just the next step. I'm just very glad for the existence of modern medicine.

Mudlarking 69 - Ginger beer

Dec. 5th, 2025 03:17 pm
squirmelia: (Default)
[personal profile] squirmelia
I went to Chelsea, down the steps by the boats and walked between Battersea Bridge and Albert Bridge, on the north side of the river. From the bus, I could see rainbows on the river, caused by the reflection of windows.

I spoke to a person on the foreshore and asked them what they'd found and they had found a ring, although a modern one.

I found a chunk of a stoneware ginger beer bottle - Clayton’s. It would have said on it:
Clayton’s
Old English
Stone
Ginger Beer
London and Kingston-on-Thames

I found two buttons.

The bus stop was still there, as well as a Lime bike.

A crisp packet floated by.

I found two stickers, one of which was a festive bauble.

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

Mudlarking finds - 69

Mudlarking finds - 69
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
Opening up my YouTube Recap so I can find out what nonsense Gideon has been watching this year.

(Sophia is on her own account, but for technical reasons Gideon can't be yet.)

Mudlarking 68 - Rain and Empires

Dec. 1st, 2025 05:58 pm
squirmelia: (Default)
[personal profile] squirmelia
It was raining so I went for a coffee while waiting for the rain to stop. It eventually did and I walked down onto Ernie’s Beach. It started raining again and I hid underneath Waterloo Bridge for a while. Not pleasant conditions for mudlarking.

Finds included:

Two pieces of Empire Ware. Empire Porcelain Co were based in Hanley and active from 1896 to 1967. https://www.thepotteries.org/allpotters/389.htm
One of these pieces is from the 1930s as Empire conveniently stamped their pottery with the month and year around that time. The 3 is quite visible.

Three pieces of Express Dairies.

It seems it was the river’s birthday. Happy birthday, River Thames!

A lid from something? Or a holder of something. It looks quite new somehow, so could be some kind of religious offering.

Mudlarking finds - 68

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

Mudlarking 67 - comb

Nov. 30th, 2025 10:25 am
squirmelia: (Default)
[personal profile] squirmelia
A lunchtime lark and I found some bits of Westerwald, and what looks like a bit of a comb, with nit comb on one side, possibly bone.

Mudlarking finds - 67

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore)

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