Some odd and ends

We have had a few brushes with the parking app RingGo this year, as noticed, for example at reference 1. But BH, whose telephone remains firmly in the smart box it came in, was not best pleased to find that they had arrived at the small but useful car park at Fair Green, a couple of hundred yards short of the town centre. For the moment one can still use coin of the realm, but for how long is that going to last?

Then over lunch, we took delivery of a rather cheap flier from some people called the Holiday Property Bond, to be found at reference 2 and promoted by no less a luminary than Sue Barker, celebrity of tennis court and television studio - although, to be fair, while I had heard of her, I did have to ask Bing about her claim to celebrity. It seems that the deal on offer is that you give them £5,000 (or preferably a lot more), then they give you points every year which you can spend on a stay one of their holiday properties - 1,400 stunning holiday properties spread over 30 breathtaking locations. That is to say an average of around 50 to to the location, so presumably clusters of chalets or apartments, possibly in tower blocks. There is also a modest annual service charge. BH once knew a couple which went in for all this and it seems that, depending on the amount of stunning & breathtaking you go for, you might have to accumulate a few years' worth of points to get your week away.

It might well be a perfectly reasonably proposition, but not one which appeals. It's Island Holiday Homes of reference 3 and Brading for us!

Last but not least, this afternoon, I was wondering about what happens when you play two different sounds very close together. Perhaps 100ms apart, perhaps 10ms apart. Poking around, Bing turned up all kinds of Java code to do this sort thing by hand, which was not very helpful. But then the SOS people at reference 4, of Bar Hill near Cambridge, last visited, as it happens, just last month. A place which I first knew when it was little more than a fancy hotel and a large Tesco's out in the middle of nowhere, perhaps fifty years ago now. Whereas now they are graced with some very fine roads, with traffic to match.

And SOS had some very decent tutorial material on this very matter. I stumped up the 89p asked for a download and found that that came with a pointer to a whole of of audio examples, more than a hundred of them, which meant that you could hear what they were talking about. Audio examples which I was able to play, once I moved off the Apple version, which came in the same zip file. Which was very helpful and I might well take another look tomorrow.

The day closed with a spot of GW, Green Label variety. Very good it was too. Not to be confused with the Green Spot from the other island, favoured by some whisky buffs.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/western-closure.html.

Reference 2: https://www.hpb.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://island-holiday-homes.net/.

Reference 4: https://www.soundonsound.com/.