Nick Fitzsimons

@nickfitz.bsky.social

324 Followers 559 Following

Software developer based in Leicester, UK.

Screenshot of Bluesky’s main navigation column (on the left in left-to-right languages) with the links outlined with dotted lines to show that by default, they extend to within about one character width of the timeline column.
Am Ordnance Survey 25-inch-to-the-mile scale map from circa 1914, showing that Blandford Street meets Baker Street some distance from the location that would be 221B under the modern numbering. The “narrow passage” mentioned in the story must be Blandford Mews, which runs along the backs of the buildings on Baker Street.
Screenshot of Google’s “My Maps” feature. The menu next to the map title has been opened, and includes the option “Export to KML/KMZ”.
The Guardian’s “100 best novels” survey entries 6 down to 1, but the titles are “Lilac, Burnt Umber, Orange, Light Green, Puce, Magenta”.
A page from “Introduction to Printing: The Craft of Letterpress” by Herbert Simon. The heading is “Appendix B” followed by “The type on this page enables the various body sizes from 72 point to 8 point to be readily identified. The column on the right sets out minimum weights that should be acquired in the various sizes.” Beneath this is a list with the first item in 72pt and the last in 8pt, spanning eleven font sizes. The first item can only fit “Erasmus” on the page, but from 18pt downwards the full sentence “Erasmus Darwin lived in Lichfield” fits into the available width.
A black-and-white drawing of a doctor of a previous era, perhaps the 1940s or 1950s. He’s wearing a suit and tie and has a receding hairline and glasses. He has a reassuring and informed expression as he addresses the reader: DOCTOR: “Beer is an appetite builder, often prescribed for convalescents. It's mild and wholesome... a beverage of moderate people. You're not likely to get yourself in trouble if you stick to beer.”
An old, white-haired gentleman looks towards the camera, sitting in a wheelchair and holding a walking stick, in an aircraft hangar. Next to him, behind a low railing, is a Westland Lysander Mk. IIIa, formerly of 161 Squadron RAF, painted in the black livery used for clandestine missions into Europe in World War II on behalf of the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
Looking from west to east through the Arch of Remembrance in Victoria Park, Leicester. The arch is of Portland stone and has four very thick legs on a square base. Inside each leg is what looks like a large flag on a dark staff with a gold finial, fixed to the wall at its base and sloping outwards a few degrees so the flag hangs from it in folds: the Union Flag, the White Ensign, the Red Ensign, and the Ensign of the Royal Air Force. In reality, these are carved and painted stone. Although the ground and the outer walls of the arch are damp with recent rain and the sky beyond the arch is grey, the colours of the flags are vivid and lustrous.
An old oak tree in Bradgate Park, Leicestershire, UK. The tree is rooted in a gap at the base of a tall outcrop of Precambrian volcanic rock, some of the oldest rock in Great Britain. The lowest five feet or so of the trunk are narrow to fit the gap, but then it bulges out, apparently having forced the rock apart with its growth. Near the top of the outcrop, which is ten to twelve feet tall, the tree is no longer constrained by the rock, and thick, twisted branches spread in all directions.
Black box with white text containing the following quote: "If it's genuinely hard for humans to wrap their heads around the idea that this is neither a robot nor a human but actually an entirely new entity, imagine how hard it is for the models themselves to understand it!" Amanda Askell a philosopher working at Anthropic At bottom right, the New Yorker logo.
Cover of “Swallows and Amazons” by Arthur Ransome. The dust jacket features the classic design featuring various of Ransome’s illustrations from the book arranged haphazardly over a light green background.
Cover of the UK edition. A young deer with four eyes, part of whose brain seems to be visible through its brow, stands on a rippling surface that has dark shades of blue, green, and grey; is it the sea? Behind, a huge, sullen red orb floats on the horizon against a strangely green and murky sky. The title of the book, all capitals in a heavy sans serif typeface, is in bright highlighter green, while the author’s name, lowercase in a stylised angular typeface, is in the same reddish orange as the glow spreading from the orb.
From an online order form, an option for “Morning delivery: delivery between 7am and 11:30am on your chosen date."
Screenshot of four films on the same row in my Apple TV movie library: “Before Midnight”, “Before Sunrise”, “Before Sunset”, and “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”.
Screenshot of a web browser. The URL in the location bar is “downdetector.co.uk”. The title bar reads “500 Internal Server Error” and the only content on the page again says “500 Internal Server Error” followed by a horizontal line, beneath which is the single word “cloudflare” in lowercase. The page is rendered in the default font, Times New Roman.
Screenshot of a tweet. The content is: Nick Fitzsimons @NickFitz Aug 19, 2024 A Friday night on Channel 4 in 1999: 9:00pm Friends 9:30pm Smack the Pony 10:00pm Frasier 10:30pm So Graham Norton 11:10pm King of the Hill We didn’t know how lucky we were to live in such times 🙂
Part of a scanned page of issue 68 of “The Micro User,” a 1980s magazine for Acorn computer users: Cymraeg Dataun Crewr Datadau Geiriad Pedwar Saesneg Meistr Hyffor Use BBC Basic, but program in Welsh. This amazing utility will allow you to translate your existing Basic 1, 2 or 4 into Welsh by producing a sideways rom image of the Welsh version. From then on, use the Welsh Basic keywords as listed in the dictionaries Geiriad and Saesneg.
View up a steep grassy slope leading into a pasture. At the top of the slope and some distance away, a stone cattle trough is silhouetted against the sky. The field stretches out on either side of it, ridged and uneven from ploughing in mediæval times. To the left are a couple of distant trees, almost bare of leaves Above, the sky is almost completely covered by low stratocumulus clouds that seem to sweep in a curve towards the viewer, with just a few patches of blue sky visible. In the top right, the ends of a couple of branches of a nearby ash tree bear clusters of seed pods.
Cartoon by H.M. Bateman. A man is asking a waitress for something in an ornate room. She is recoiling from him in shock; all the other people seated in the room are turning to stare at him, or staring at each other, with expressions of incredulity, anger, and contempt. The original caption is "The man who asked for a double Scotch in the grand pump room at Bath."
A Digital Equipment Corporation PDP8/e minicomputer. The front panel is in shades of light and dark orange on a black background. There are several rows of twelve lights with a rotary switch with six labelled positions. Along the centre bottom of the fascia is a row of twelve large toggle switches, alternating colours in sets of three. To the left, a key in a lock has three labelled positions. To the right, more switches: a group of two, a group of five, and one on its own.
A clipping from an old print publication. At top, a black & white drawing of a doctor, identifiable by his stethoscope, balding head, spectacles, and suit & tie. The style suggests it's from the 1940s. Beneath, the caption: DOCTOR: "Beer is an appetite builder, often prescribed for convalescents. It's mild and wholesome... a beverage of moderate people. You're not likely to get yourself in trouble if you stick to beer."
Card with the heading "Heavenly Host Logistical Solutions". The body of the card reads: "We came to rapture you but you were out. To arrange salvation, please call 0909 8790666 (Premium rates apply) or enter your deliverance code (overleaf) at loser.heavenly-host.god".
Street View screenshot of a house faced with stone blocks in Montpellier Terrace, Cheltenham. Engraved in large letters in the stone, between the ground floor windows, are the words "Edward Adrian Wilson, Antarctic explorer. Born here 1872. Died with Scott 1912."
Back of a box of twelve Oxo vegetable stock cubes showing a Best Before date of Jan 06.
Bottom of the jar of Sainsbury's own brand herbes de Provence. The "best before" date has been printed on the glass with a dot matrix device, along with a couple of batch numbers. The date is either "Nov 2010" or "Nov 2018" but the printing is slightly distorted at that point, possibly by the curvature of the glass towards the edge of the base, so it's hard to be sure which.
Cover of Scarlett & Sophie Rickard's new graphic novel based on “This Slavery” by Ethel Carnie Holdsworth. The cover illustration depicts two women in the centre, standing back to back in the middle of a cobbled street, with terraced houses on each side. They are both turning their heads to face the reader. The woman on the left has long blonde hair, and wears an orange-brown shawl wrapped around her shoulders over a long, light blue dress. She has a violin and bow, clasped in front of her. The woman on the right has long brown curly hair and is wearing a thick, dark overcoat with the collar turned up, over a blue dress with a pattern reminiscent of tartan. Around her neck, a large mortice lock key hangs on a length of cord. A small white and brown terrier peeps out from behind her with a curious but amiable expression. Behind the women, the street of terraced houses stretches away, built of stone blocks in a style typical of certain industrial areas of northern England. From one of the houses on the left, a working man looks down towards the women; he has a red neckerchief, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up his brawny arms, a brown waistcoat, and a flat cap. In the background, the tall chimneys of numerous factories rise into the sky against a backdrop of distant hills. Smoke pours from them and is blown across the sky to the right. The sky immediately above the hills is red and orange; higher, there are dark clouds massing, though their tops are catching some rays of light from the unseen sun.
Screenshot from S1E1 of "The Thick of It". Closeup of Ollie in the back of the car taking the Secretary of State to make an important announcement to the media during a visit to a school, which 10 Downing Street has now told him not to do. The subtitles say "What if the announcement is… there's no big announcement."
Cover of LP of "The Planets" by Gustav Holst, recorded by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by James Loughran, and released on the Classics for Pleasure label. The cover image shows a starfield with a large transparent circle in the centre whose circumference transitions through the colours of the spectrum of visible light.
Six freshly baked sausage rolls resting on baking parchment on a baking tray. The egg-washed puff pastry is glistening and golden, while juices from the sausage meat have oozed out of the ends and browned. The top of each one has three diagonal slashes that allowed steam to escape during baking. Each one is between four and five inches (10 - 13 cm) in length. They look absolutely delicious.
"Two red buttons" meme. Frame 1: a white-gloved finger hesitates between two red buttons. The left button is labelled "Post on BlueSky that I will never use AI for anything." The right button is labelled "Use the facial age recognition AI so I can post on BlueSky." Frame 2: The owner of the hesitating finger mops sweat from his brow, his face contorted with indecision.
Question: "Are towels and hairdryer available in each apartment? Thanks." Answer: "There is a lift." Below, a link to "See 6 answers" with the additional text "5 years ago."
The light of the rising Summer Solstice sun bursts through a trilithon at Stonehenge. In the lower foreground, barely visible in the glare of sunlight, are the heads of a dense crowd of people.
A new, open book. On the verso page is a drawing of a child flying a butterfly kite, with the caption "To Bea and Duncan, who fill my heart with joy." At the top of the recto, title page: "Miranda Keeling". Below: "Illustrations by Adam Beer". Centre: The title "The place I'm in" with subtitle "What I see when I stop to notice". Beneath that, Miranda's autograph written in pen. Foot of page: logo of Leaping Hare Press. At the top right, also written in pen: 2/200.
The last US military parade was held by President George HW Bush in June 1991, celebrating the US-led victory in the Gulf War. A crowd of 200,000 people attended the parade to cheer on veterans, peaking at 800,000 who watched the fireworks display, the LA Times reported at the time. The numbers at Saturday's event was well below that, partly due to wet conditions and the forecast of heavy rain.
Image in three tiers. The first tier shows dinosaurs with an arrow pointing to a chicken. The second shows the same chicken with an arrow pointing to diced chicken meat. The third shows the chicken meat with an arrow pointing to chicken meat formed into dinosaur shapes and coated in breadcrumbs. The caption, split across the first and third tiers, reads "And yet a trace of the true self exists in the false self."
Four ring-bound notebooks, two A4 and two A5. The front covers bear a design showing the Pennine Tower at Forton Services, viewed from across the M6. The style uses flat colours in shades of grey and grey-blue, with a large yellow-brown sun at top right.
Text message reading "Hello, I am Jennifer from the TikTok Human Resources Department. We have reviewed your resume, and it aligns perfectly with our requirements. We are pleased to invite you to become our part-time partner, with a salary of £300-£800 per day. Please contact me for job details: {dodgy link}".
Ceramic nameplate for mounting on a bedroom door. It bears a drawing of a red vintage Austin car, and the words "Nicholas' Room" in a fancy typeface. The edges of it have mustard brushstrokes intruding here and there.
Cover of “Story of a Murder: The Wives, The Mistress and Doctor Crippen” by Hallie Rubenhold.
The middle of a Sainsbury's superstore. In the background are empty shelves with a sign above saying "Eggs" while in the foreground, a special display is piled high with cases of a dozen bottles of Mexican beer Corona, which a red promotional label announces are only £10 each. It appears that many cases have already been sold.
Screenshot of the iPhone stocks app open at the one day chart for TSLA. A red line descends steeply at the left, most of the chart being empty as trading has only just begun. It’s down 10.31.
NHS guide consisting of a series of captioned images showing how to wash your hands thoroughly. In this version, every caption is the word "Koyaanisqatsi".
Cover: in the foreground a man in a space suit on his knees reaches towards us, while a large yellow sun glows low in the sky behind him.
Cover of the book with the title in huge Helvetica Bold hyphenated across three lines, above a partial photograph of the ugly South African scumbag looking even more fatuous than usual.
Cover of the book, featuring a woodcut-style design of planets around the sun incorporating aspects of the visual language used by the aliens in the film "Arrival".
Screenshot of the stats metadata at the bottom of the original post. On the line reading "93 reposts 1.1K quotes 683 likes" the "1.1K quotes" is highlighted.
Screenshot of a paragraph in the article: “First of all, I’m not the one filing the contract. It’s the people at SpaceX or something,” said Musk, the founder, chief executive, chief engineer and chair of SpaceX.
Front cover of Viz, with Roger Melly attempting to do a washing powder commercial and accidentally saying "without fucking up the environment… Oh bollocks!". Top of page says "Special Green Issue, printed on 100% recycled trees." Stories within include: "SECRETS OF THE STREET: Behind the scenes drama of Britain's favourite soap", "STARS ON THE JOB: You won't believe your eyes!", "MY DRUG HELL: Confessions of a fallen star", and "Cabinet minister had sex with dolphin."
Left: A photo of convicted felon Donald Trump above the headline "Live: Trump says US tariffs on EU will happen, but tells BBC a UK deal 'could be worked out'." Right: a stock photo of a dejected person sitting on stairs above the headline "Coercive control now to be treated like other domestic abuse offences."
Cover of "Colditz: Prisoners of the Castle". The upper part of the cover shows a wartime photograph of Schloss Colditz, while the lower part shows a photograph[h of the first six British PoWs to be sent there, standing in the inner courtyard of the castle.
Cover of "Apollo 13". It depicts the full moon seven times in two columns, representing the Apollo lunar missions from Apollo 11 to Apollo 17; the third image (second down in the first column) is dark, unlike the others, with the title of the book across it.
Cover of Uwe Wittstock's "February 1933: the Winter of Literature" bearing a photograph of people in a snow-covered park, playing with toboggans and walking among tall trees.
Cover of Michael Moorcock's book "Behold the Man". It includes a quote from Brian Aldiss: "The Time Machine as Wells would never have dreamed it."
A typewritten letter on a creased and slightly torn piece of paper. It reads: FROM: THE BURSAR, BEDFORD SCHOOL Bursar's Office 10 Glebe Road Bedford 18th October 1974 Dear Sir/Madam, You will, I hope, be aware that your son has volunteered to be a film extra for Two Roads Productions (U.K.) Ltd., who have been given permission by the Head Master to shoot some sequences for the film "Royal Flash", which I believe will be completed next year. The boys will be required for filming purposes between 9 am and approximately 2.30 pm on Sunday 27th October 1974. They should assemble at the School in the Great Hall at 8.45 am on that day. They must be dressed in normal School uniform. Each boy will be paid a fee of £1 and given lunch free under arrangements to be made by the film company. I shall be grateful if you will kindly complete and return to me the certificate at the bottom of this letter. Yours faithfully, D. R.MANTELL
Screenshot of the Wikipedia page for Truro Cathedral. The final sentence of the first paragraph starts "It is the only cathedral in England with four spires [2]" and hovering the mouse pointer over "[2]" has revealed a popup citation linking to Jay's newsletter: "Church Climbing: Truro Cathedral 12 January 2025".
A view from a high window of a cedar tree, a couple of conifers, and a chestnut tree. All are covered in frost and blurred by fog. More distant trees and houses are almost invisible, just blurred grey shapes. Low in the foreground are smaller trees and tiled roofs of a couple of outbuildings, also covered in frost.
Photograph of manager Viktor Bryukhanov, deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov, and chief engineer Nikolai Fomin at their trial for causing the Chernobyl disaster.
A Quality Street "purple one" sits, unwrapped, on the lid of the tin. It has a circular base with a spiral groove coming up the sides and ending in the centre of the domed top.
Golden, glistening sausage rolls, freshly baked and cooling on a wire tray.
Screenshot of a Bluesky user promoting kiwifarms.net, a notorious source of online harassment and transphobia, who I have blocked after they tried to follow me.