Michael Tyler

Not so many pigs at the pig place, no more than a handful of small porkers and a skeleton staff to run the day-t0-day business nowadays.

The owners no longer live there, as they used to on ‘narrowboat Acres’, and run the farm and campsite. It’s up to the moorers, who no doubt do it as part of their rental arrangement to stay.

The weather be hot

The weather has turned somewhat HOT.

There’s a few things you can do to mitigate the heat on the boat:

1. Open the windows on shaded side
2. Draw the curtains on the sunny side, open on the shaded side
3. Moor under trees
4. Open the front and rear doors
5. Turn the fans on
6. Take your clothes off

This is usually enough to be cool enough that you don’t take all your clothes off, and warm enough that you’re able to eat breakfast on the stern with hardly any clothes on.

The breeze has a much greater impact as it blows across the cool surface of the water than it might do blowing in through the windows of a house, say.

By the time the sun has set, and it’s become dark, things get cooler still.

I don’t think I’ve had one heat affected night of sleep in any of the days of heatwave this year or any other year.

Pictured is where I spent the ‘RED’ heatwave alert. The sun doesn’t get round from the tree until 11am, so that’s a few hours mitigated.

Below is where I am at the moment. It’s only shaded until mid morning, but it’s enough not to be uncomfortable during the hottest parts of the day.

Tofte Manor – Sasha and Digweed

Old School stalwarts Sasha and Digweed do what is now an annual summertime bash about 40 miles away in Bedfordshire.

Continue reading “Pig place and Aynho Wharf on the Oxford Canal”

Or Tarvers Lock, as some people call it.

What counts as a CRT ‘move’

Two stops within two CRT assets, (a bridge and an overflow), meaning as CRT logs things, this counts as a ‘move’.

It’s less than a mile, and no doubt, if you spent a whole year doing short hops…, the powers that be would deem this to be against the spirit of the ‘Continuous Cruiser’ aspect of a licence.

Since this time last year, I’ve probably done 3-400 miles.

Nowadays, that makes little difference. If your movement gets ‘flagged’ by the computer, you’ll be getting a communication.

Moving more than one ‘asset’ means that you’ve ‘moved’.

I see boats here that have been here since I last visited in May last year.

Continue reading “Twyford and near Twyford”

Or it seems that way. Because it’s a little bit out of town it’s a little less popular and people tend to squeeze and extra week or so out of it. I like it. And that’s what important.

In the winter it can be very muddy. It’s not winter anymore. Today is set to be the hottest May day ever, so not much mud.

It’s a nice spot. The reservoir is over the field at the back. It’s about a mile to walk around the perimeter. If I fancy a walk during the day, I go over there.

The devil will find work

For idle hands to do. I haven’t. Found work that is. There’s been at least 3 instances where I’ve been offered paid work after an interview, then the people haven’t got back to me. I’ve got to assume this is normal, as it has been in the past.

I’ve had to find alternative areas of pursuit to spend my day. I don’t have to claim JSA anymore. That only lasts 6 months. The government means test and currently I have too much savings to be eligible for any help. At all. It just means I don’t have to apply for dead end jobs I don’t really want to do. That used to take some time, but was fruitless, in the end.

I’ve been programming an offshoot of my site using AI, namely (Gemini and Claude Code). The level of knowledge and expertise at your fingertips is undoubtedly game changing from a programming perspective. I’ve been programming in PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript. Previously, I’ve worked with all but Javascript which I found to be complex and unwieldy to the eye. The level of complexity is way in excess of what I’ve been able to program myself in the past and simply has the effect of making sites seem intuitive, light and functional.

There are some caveats: AI isn’t always correct. There have been numerous times where it’s removed hours, even days worth of code in the name of making a page render, or ‘work’. It continuously forgets what tasks it’s performed in the past on your behalf.

Sometimes, AI just flat gets it wrong and starts looping through the incorrect set of conclusions over and over again. That’s why I use 2, Gemini and Claude Code. Claude Code is possibly a bit better, but has certain drawbacks like a very stingy usage limit for non-paying customers.

Programming AI is a little like teaching, if it doesn’t understand what you’re saying, you need to give it the same information but phrased in a different way. A way it can understand. Phrasing and re-phrasing until it comes up with the correct answer.

Perhaps you can have a look at a preliminary program I’ve made.

It’s for a tablet game I play called Forge of Empires.

If you play this game you’ve be familiar with the concept, pretty meaningless if you don’t. It runs on a database and some very simple queries that run to parse a page uploaded by a user.

I actually need to do some re-jigging of my environment, (in-game), and whilst I’m on the dole, I’ve decided to build an AI tool to do it for me.

Once it’s up and running, I’ll post it on here and you can have a look at it.

I enjoy programming. It takes patience, attention to detail, creativity, plus it gives a great sense of achievement – when you get things working!

Boat moving

Between Cropredy and Banbury.

Some nice person has left some knitwear on the locks.

Continue reading “Banbury long stay moorings”