In "Usotoki Rhetoric" a bright but impecunious detective Iwai Soma relies on cadging free meals off a nearby restaurant. One day he comes across a girl Urabe Kanoko collapsed from hunger who is cursed with an ability to know when people are lying. Being able to tell when people are lying is a useful ability for a detective so he hires her as an assistant. "Usotoki Rhetoric" is set in the early Showa era in Japan (the 1920s). Whether it's historically accurate I don't know but it's different and interesting. I'm a sucker for times past. The clothes are much prettier than modern day serials. The cases are varied, sometimes veering into the bizarre but often with uplifting outcomes. Kanoko grows through the eleven episodes. She comes to terms with her 'curse'. At points "Usotoki Rhetoric" does ask are there good lies and bad lies? As when the kind-hearted restaurant tries to organise a surprise Christmas do for Kanoko. As to whether the detective and his assistant ever get together - that is left a mystery.

BitWarden is now my password manager. I had been using 1Password and that worked well enough, 1Password has a better user interface in many ways than BitWarden. So why switch? BitWarden is cheaper, and has a free version which is pretty cheap! That in itself wouldn't have been a good enough reason. BitWarden I find easier to structure the hundreds of secure notes I have, one can have folders inside folders. That was a definite plus. It made it sensible to split up some of the secure notes I had. Switching did force me to prune out dead records, and reorganise what I have. I wouldn't have done that unless I had been switching. Some points with BitWarden. You have to notice which BitWarden area you're connecting to. Sometimes the user interface doesn't update as it should until you save again for instance when moving secure notes between folders.

"Elementary" is a transplanting of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes to New York, but in the transplanting Holmes has become a definitely troubled character. Dr Watson has become female, and the to and fro between her and Holmes is vital to the series. She gets involved with Holmes to help him recover from drug addiction. The deducting is interesting, and often twisty.

I upgraded to macOS Sequoia to try and fix an issue (which it didn't') but introduced some new issues. One of those issues was Apple now tried to stop some of my personal '.command' scripts from running. I found a recipe I on Apple Discussions which ran:

There was a Shaun the Sheep theme to our annual pilgrimage to Anglesey Abbey to see the snowdrops this year. There were nicely ornamented Shaun the Sheep statues scattered round the grounds, competing with the snowdrops this year for attention.

"Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney Investigations" is a repackaging of three investigation and courtroom games starring prosecutor Miles Edgeworth after he has a change of heart thanks to Phoenix Wright. Strangely there isn't any action in the courtroom rather Miles investigates crime scenes, interrogates witnesses, and indulges in games of Mind Chess to find out what people are hiding. Quirky characters, mysterious murders, tantalising turnabouts as Miles pursues the truth. Great fun!

Pagoda has been converted to use a Sqlite database internally rather than flat tab delimited files. This port leveraged the sqlite3 Ruby gem which worked well. This database is different to the database used on the website itself. There are several benefits from this conversion. Actions like modifying columns, or adhoc queries, can be done using SQL statements. It flushed out issues like non-unique values in columns I hadn't realised were present. All the data is now in a single file which could in theory be distributed.

I've started using CrossOver from CodeWeavers for playing Windows games on my Mac computers. I had been using Parallels but hit an issue playing Miles Edgeworth. All of a sudden the show stopped, complaining about "IL2CPP". Parallels had issues with some games (especially if they need "DX12" ) but it was impressive that it worked as well as it did. I haven't tried problematic games with CrossOver to see they work better. CrossOver is a little less friendly to employ. There are a number of options for running games, It did run Miles Edgeworth happily for me, I found enabling DXVK (the Vulkan backend for D3D11) seemed to cure some missing graphic textures. In the long run I may get a Windows box as graphically more demanding games are unlikely to perform - but I'll carry on with CrossOver for now.

I've moved my personal websites to a different hosting service to save money. There's quite a number of steps to take to achieve this so I maintain a checklist of what to do.

St Andrews Girton had a splendid display of Nativity scenes from all round the world. They were collected by Marjorie Carrier of Wyton in Cambridgeshire.

I've done another advent calendar for Virginia, this time with a cake theme.

We went to Wrest Park today to see a Narnia themed event there. We had lunch on the way, Virginia had booked a Toby Carvery and was looking forward to that, but we were disappointed on arrival. They had a problem with their kitchens so we had to repair to a nearby Harvester. Which was okay but not the promised carvery. My arithmetic went wrong when calculating the tip but I did mathematics at university. Google Maps found us Wrest Park okay, but we were taken aback by driving down a mud track to reach the damp grass we had to park on. We worried for our new Kia hybrid that it might get stuck. There was a certain paucity of signage there, we guessed (correctly) as to how to enter. Wrest Park as ex-stately homes go has a splendid vista from the house looking down an avenue to a far rotunda beyond a lake. There was a parterre and statues to admire. However the Narnia event was a little underwhelming. Perhaps one needed the imagination of a child to create magic out of thin air. I felt more could have been done - but what they could do was limited by the geometry of Wrest Park and their resources. We wandered round the grounds where roughly sketched Narnia images on 2D shapes had been dotted around, got as far as the lake, avoided a meagre funfair, then returned safely home.

"Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy" is a repackaging of three investigation and courtroom dramas starring defending counsel Phoenix Wright who saves his clients against the odds. Very funny with some wondrous moments like the bumbling policeman declaring his profession as "murderer"! Or the way the guilty parties break down when Phoenix gets his man. Plenty of quirky characters. Gameplay involves investigation at crime scenes and interviewing witnesses followed by courtroom battles with the prosecutor. Confession from me - I didn't realise to play the second and third games you have to go back to "New Game"!

A trip to New Zealand taking in the rich mixture of Malaysia, ruined temples like Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and a good-sized otter in Singapore.

Fifty years ago I went up to university in Cambridge. I went as a naive student who thought a career in academia beckoned. I left having discovered there were really bright people in the world and I wasn't one of them. And also having discovered I didn't know then how to discipline myself to get up in the mornings to get to lectures! And thinking I would never go back. But Trinity College bless them organised a special 50th celebration for those of us who matriculated in 1974. I had to go, to see where I studied and stayed once again, for Virginia to see those sacred halls of learning. It was a memorable experience, most pleasant for those who had established lasting friendships since those days. For Virginia and I there were long gaps between the rounds of drinks and speeches. We skived off before the bitter end. It was essential to go, but the time dragged.

Every year Virginia's family used to go Walton on the Naze for the annual Tufty Club outing. This year we went to that bit of Essex at the historic time to see the sea and Constable country.

A theatre trip into London to see stage adaptations of the classic Japanese film Spirited Away and Roald Dahl's book Matilda.

"The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story" is a big budget Japanese FMV game originally for consoles which I played in Windows 11 running under Parallels on an Apple M1 Macbook. It didn't run perfectly that way, the game is a little demanding performance wise. The plot of "A Shijima Story" concerns the Shijima family who have an old-fashioned estate close to Mount Fuji. A skeleton has been discovered buried beneath a cherry tree, your character Haruka Kagami is a crime author who gets invited to the estate to solve the mystery. Her friend Eiji acts as a technical advisor for her books, and he is a son of the Shijima family. The Shijima family have been cursed by a long sequence of mysterious murders. These murders seem related to the family's secret research into stopping aging, and a fabled Tokijiku fruit which is said to grant immortality. The game is set in three time periods: nowadays, fifty years ago, and a hundred years ago. Gameplay cycles between those three periods, and you have to solve different cases in each period. Investigation starts with watching long sequences of video clips. During these video clips there are clues you can find (the game will automatically regard you as having found them afterwards but you can rewatch the video clips as much as you like). Having watched a series of video clips you then play a matching game with shapes to derive hypotheses from those clues you could have spotted. When you've got enough hypotheses the game lets you proceed to an Agatha Christie style denouement where you denounce the guilty party in each case. If you denounce the wrong person you get to try again but this does take some time to get back to where you were. Useful comment: the game will let you proceed to the denouement when you haven't got enough hypotheses to identify the perpetrator. So I recommend matching everything in sight before you proceed, each time you get a new hypothesis you get another short B/W video clip to watch so you're missing out if you try to speed run. The game provides plenty of screens of information on how your investigation is going, room layouts and character sketches etc. The game autosaves but you can manually save as well, I didn't find out how to load games at first. The game is largely keyboard controlled, it was only during the matching clues part I used a mouse. The same actors play the roles in all three time periods which perhaps fits the idea of there being ageless people around. The acting is professionally done and restrained. The settings and costumes (including colourful kimonos) are up to feature film standards. The story is well-written and involving, there are a few plot holes but in real life there are plot holes. Japan has its own tradition of detective fiction, there was a writer and critic Edogawa Ranpo who was very important in the history of Japanese crime stories. He is mentioned in the game. The game's story could have been written by more modern Japanese crime authors like Higashino Keigo whose books have been much adapted for films and TV series. There are subtitles but the dialogue is dubbed in English, I wished there was an option to hear the spoken dialogue in Japanese.

I started off trying to remake an earlier game which had stopped working, probably due to PHP issues. However the effort mutated into a set of quotes from Shakespeare (or Marlowe if you want) with disturbed pictures of castles and stately homes and gardens as backdrops. By clicking on words in a quote one can go to other quotes. If there is a puzzle then it is to see how far you can walk through Shakespeare. To play the game go to Stepping Through Shakespeare.

"Geneforge 2: Infestation" is another masterful remastering of an older game from Spiderweb Games. A huge world to explore, many NPCs to have dealings with, well balanced game, and a big thrill for me when I cast high level spells and see enemies obliterated. It's just a game. The plot carries on from the first Geneforge game. Dangerous technology has been secreted from Sucia Island and different factions in the DryPeak mountains seek to use it against the all powerful Shapers. You as a trainee Shaper have to choose what path to follow as you investigate. This is a game where taking careful notes is almost a must, something I don't habitually do. So for instance I should have noted down stores where you can buy and sell things. Also be careful how you use the living tools you can collect which open doors. I almost didn't have enough for a critical part of the game. Depending on the choices you make not everything will be possible for your character. I wasted time on reducing hit points to 1 for foes which refused to die.

A vibrant parody of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps film with just four actors playing over 150 roles. Very inventive with moments of genius. Patrick Barlow rewrote an earlier 1996 version of the play. The plot follows the film pretty closely but the play breaks the fourth wall in delightful ways. In a way only having four actors is a strength not a weakness. A shadow of Hitchcock even appears at one point.

A second holiday on the Isle of Wight returning to see Roman villas and dinosaur islands.

The Park and Ride bus PR3 (in fact buses) were crammed for our journey from Trumpington P&R into town. It being the end of school spring holidays perhaps not so surprising. What was surprising was Virginia and I saw someone we knew on the bus - Brenda's Kate but I didn't believe it was her because she lives in Luton and what would she be doing in Cambridge? To start with she was seeing the Botanical Gardens like we were. We managed to exchange a few words in the busy cafe there besides wander round the gardens in search of flowers. Virginia spotted jade vines with a splendid shade of green in the greenhouses which she knew from South Africa. Relaxing after being in a bus crawling along thanks to the never ending roadworks in Cambridge.

"Telling Lies" is a game where you choose different video clips to watch from a faux Government security database based on keywords. Each video clip you watch may give you more keywords to search on. I spent an hour doing this until I got bored. As a game experience it was different to my normal fare. That's a positive. I gathered a little about some of the characters. Enough to make a good guess as to what was going on. But on the minus front I was none the wiser what the game thought the object was, how I was doing in progressing towards that. Perhaps that was the point of this 'game'.

In "River" a remote traditional inn in a sometimes snowy area of Japan becomes trapped in a 2-minute time loop. A film in which nothing yet everything happens. The time loop ripples through the lives on those inside and outside the inn, as they restart every 2 minutes with the memory of what happened before. No dazzling American special effects but yet it all feels refreshingly inventive and fulfilling and complex. The characters search for why the time loop happened, and how to stop it. Who was to blame? Was it me each character asks? How big an area does the time loop affect? There's only so much that can be done in 2 minutes before the time loop resets everyone back to where they started. The same people as behind the director's previous time loop film "Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes". Each 2-minute section is shot in one take. The ending is off the wall yet fits. (Image from third window films ).

"Rose and Lotus: Petals of Memories" is a point and click Adventure escape the house game based on a traditional Korean fairy tale. The evil stepmother from the fairy tale is now a psychiatrist after money. You play the elder sister and try to escape the house with the younger sister before the stepmother turns you into ghosts. In the original Korean fairy tale the sisters are ghosts, as to whether you're really playing a ghost in this game I'm not sure. Escaping the house involves a lot of finding combinations to locks, and keys to safes etc. It will require careful observation (and at times guesswork for me). There is a slider puzzle, sigh. Though you gradually gain access to more of the house the solutions to puzzles are typically in the same room as the puzzle. Sometimes applying the solution is tricky. The game saves automatically as you play, you either continue or start a new game from the main menu. The music was suitable, I would have missed it if it wasn't present but otherwise my mind just backgrounds the background music. The graphic style I found very pleasing, simple but effective. I found the game involving if frustrating at points.

"Baldur's Gate 3" is a turn-based RPG set in the Forgotten Realms fantasy world. It is set a hundred years after the first "Baldur's Gate" game and builds on that game's history and characters. Your party of heroes start off infected with Mind Flayer parasites and have to find a cure and stop the bad guys destroying the city of "Baldur's Gate" itself. "Baldur's Gate 3" is a very rich game. There are 100s of books to read, 100s of characters to converse with, 100s of locations to visit. In my first playthrough I only experienced a quarter to a third of the game! It is a great looking game. Exotically different locales and magical cutscenes like a boat ride in the Underdark. The cutscenes reflect the characters you have in your party and their equipment. Conversations are fully voiced and full screen. There is a wide range of battles to be fought. At the start of the game I felt magic wielders were at a disadvantage but at the end of the game they were a force to be reckoned with. The right tactics will see you through each skirmish but finding those tactics for me took many reloads. You have a roster of playable characters to choose four from to go about in the game world. I'd prefer not having that choice, it feels more realistic. There are bugs still being resolved. But this is a top notch game for me.

Zizzis is a chain of Italianate restaurants in the UK. There's one very close to the Arts Theatre Cambridge where a few times each year we go to see plays. "Zizzis" is popular but we've always managed to get seated there, and get fed in time for the show. The one close to the Arts Theatre is in an interesting building which used to be part of a bank if I remember correctly. One can see the kitchen being busy, it's reassuring as you wait for your food. There's plenty of staff rushing around. I normally have a pepperoni pizza which comes with a less mechanical shape than other pizza places. There's a good range of desserts too. Reliable.

The Forum House is a Chinese restaurant in Great Shelford, Cambridge. It's a little tricky parking, the first time we went I parked behind it only to find that wasn't public parking! The next time we tried a public car park along Woollards Lane which was full but there was space in a nearby street. Virginia and I miss the Phoenix a lot, it was a good Chinese restaurant local to us which had nice views over our village green. The Forum House may not be as close, and seeing a street isn't as nice as seeing a green, but the ambience inside is cosy and we liked the food. Being boring we tend to go for a set meal. This saves thinking too hard which we don't want to do on special occasions. The staff were attentive, one didn't feel rushed. We got our crispy fried duck the highlight (for me) of our Chinese special meals.

"Mallorca Files" is similar to Death in Paradise in that it's a cross between an advert for a holiday in Mallorca and a police investigation. Miranda Blake is almost a female version of Inspector Poole from "Death in Paradise", an unwilling visitor to Mallorca with culture shock. But while there are some clever and unexpected twists in the plots it's not as Agatha Christie like as "Death in Paradise". The episodes don't end with all the suspects gathered together for the big reveal. A pleasant blend of comedy and serious investigation.