Yes Ian, all is going well. Today of all mornings Mrs M said that one of the hinges on our front gates is damaged, presumably due to the high wind today. She left the gates open and of course our Bobby never misses a chance to go for a wee walk by himself. So I had to grab his lead and hobble off searching for him, slowly I might add. All ended well as we know his usual route.
Martin.
Yesterday I had a burglar alarm fitted at my new(ish) house. I set it to night setting (all of downstairs and upstairs windows active) last night, popped to the loo at about 11pm to find that the settings weren’t right. Frantic scramble to turn off the alarm before I became the most hate person in the street.
Ouch
2nd shingles jab. Took all of 1 min in and out.
… and a beautiful picture!
Went online last night to attempt and reschedule my MoT. The earliest available slot for Larne was 2nd April. 
Got up early this morning and tried just after 8am. Got a cancellation for this afternoon. Spent the morning cleaning the car, lying on the driveway, removing all shorts of horse/cow/sheep sh1t from the underside with a pressure washer. Remind me next time I buy a car to get one that requires MoT in the summer. More ground clearance would also be an idea.
Passed with flying colours.
I’m still trying to thaw out.
Willy.
I played bowling for the first time in my life, with my companion, her two sons and their girlfriends. It was huge fun, although the music was loud and horrible and some youngsters did karaoke with no sense of decency and a lot of bravery. I ended up last but one. The Tiny Lebowski!
That’s what I do too, just book the nearest appointment, get the car in decent condition and then go for a cancellation. It’s the only way to do it.
Interestingly, one time I didn’t bother looking for a cancellation and just went on the original appointment date (October) and I was surprised to see that the renewal date on the new MOT certificate was the following October. I didn’t take any chances with it and got it renewed on the proper date for the car the next time. However if it’s legal and legitimate that might be an option for you? Those 3 or 4 months will take you into the better weather!! 
Martin.
Well done Pete! I hope you enjoy it (I’m sure that you will.)
Ran a Stanley Rabinowitz Pi algorithm in COBOL. It’s much larger and slower than the Fortran version. This is my code so I can post it without needing permission. 
IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. PiCalc.
AUTHOR Guinnless.
DATE-WRITTEN 06-02-2026.
ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.
CONFIGURATION SECTION.
SOURCE-COMPUTER. Raspi-3B.
OBJECT-COMPUTER. Raspi-3B.
INPUT-OUTPUT SECTION.
DATA DIVISION.
WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
01 INTEGERS.
03 NDIGIT PIC 9(10) VALUE 10000.
03 M-INT PIC 9(10).
03 A-INT PIC 9(10).
03 D-INT PIC 9(10).
03 E-INT PIC 9(10) VALUE 0.
03 L-INT PIC 9(10) VALUE 2.
01 STRINGS.
03 FMT PIC X(14).
03 STD-OUT PIC X(10).
01 COUNTERS.
03 J-CNT PIC 9(7).
03 I-CNT PIC 9(7).
03 B-CNT PIC 9(7).
01 TABLES.
03 B-ARRAY PIC 9(7) OCCURS 17 TO 65536 TIMES DEPENDING ON NDIGIT.
77 NEXT-DIGIT PIC 9(10).
77 NEXT-DIGIT-TRUNC PIC 9(1).
77 OFFSET PIC 9(1).
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
SUBTRACT 3 FROM NDIGIT.
COMPUTE M-INT = ((NDIGIT/4 + 1) * 14).
*> LOAD ARRAY WITH 20S
PERFORM VARYING B-CNT FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL B-CNT > M-INT
MOVE 20 TO B-ARRAY(B-CNT)
CONTINUE
END-PERFORM.
PERFORM VARYING I-CNT FROM M-INT BY -7 UNTIL I-CNT <= 14
MOVE 0 TO D-INT
COMPUTE A-INT = (I-CNT * 2 - 1)
PERFORM VARYING J-CNT FROM I-CNT BY -1 UNTIL J-CNT = 1
COMPUTE D-INT = (D-INT * J-CNT + B-ARRAY(J-CNT) * 100)
MOVE FUNCTION MOD(D-INT A-INT) TO B-ARRAY(J-CNT)
DIVIDE A-INT INTO D-INT
SUBTRACT 2 FROM A-INT
CONTINUE
END-PERFORM
IF (D-INT = 99) THEN
COMPUTE E-INT = (E-INT * 100 + D-INT)
ADD 2 TO L-INT
ELSE IF (I-CNT = M-INT) THEN
COMPUTE NEXT-DIGIT = ((D-INT / 100) / 10.0)
MOVE NEXT-DIGIT TO NEXT-DIGIT-TRUNC
DISPLAY "3." NEXT-DIGIT-TRUNC WITH NO ADVANCING
COMPUTE E-INT = FUNCTION MOD(D-INT, 100)
ELSE
COMPUTE NEXT-DIGIT = (E-INT + D-INT / 100)
COMPUTE OFFSET = (10 - L-INT + 1)
MOVE NEXT-DIGIT(OFFSET:) TO STD-OUT
DISPLAY FUNCTION TRIM(STD-OUT) WITH NO ADVANCING
MOVE FUNCTION MOD(D-INT 100) TO E-INT
MOVE 2 TO L-INT
END-IF
CONTINUE
END-PERFORM.
DISPLAY " ".
STOP RUN.
Never used COBOL but it looks very readable.
I believe it was designed to be readable to make for faster coding at the time. I wrote some XML to database code a decade ago with it otherwise I’ve never used it either. 
I learned COBOL (“C-65” I think) at Uni in 1973. Never used since the end-of- second-year exams!
I have no idea what any of that means 
I remember having to write a program in Pascal that would calculate a quadratic equation, when I was a student. I changed course soon after which was one of my better decisions.
I loved coding as a student, I remember taking courses on Pascal, C, Modula2 and Occam plus a small amount of assembly.
In my professional life I used C for various bits of data processing up until about 30 years ago when I moved towards working on international standards and then management.
I tried to pickup Java about 15 years ago but seem to have lost the knack, a shame really.
Computers are so much nicer to deal with than people
I tend to swear at both. Lol.
Back in 77, we had to use Fortran code on punch cards to work out the Second Moment of Inertia for an I Beam. I seem to recall 60+ punch cards. As we were first year Engineering students, we were allowed to use the uni main frame for one hour later on a Thursday evening. I lost count how many weeks of getting rejected punch cards. Finally one of the class managed to get the right answer. He lived off free beers for quite some time after. 
Never used Fortran again.
‘2nd moment of inertia of an I beam’. That rings a very distant bell !
With those punched cards, after punching them you would check the order carefully, put a rubber band around them and then hand in to computer centre admin to run off-peak as a batch job. Every possibility that a couple of days later you would get a blank sheet of teletype printout and the suspiscion that cards were either missing or in wrong order or both.
‘Kids today…’ etc etc. 