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Wot I dun today: planted a tree! "During" and "after" photos attached. I then poured a nearly-full washing-up bowl of water onto it from one of the water butts. Hopefully I haven't drowned it - I'm sure I've read many times that you need to give plants a lot of water when you plant them out.
 

"Wot I dun", last Thursday's edition: I think I've found out why 8 consecutive keys on my late uncle's digital piano keyboard don't work. While following traces on one of they keyboard PCBs I brushed away what seemed like a bit of blue-green dirt, only to find a little gap in the track underneath. I think the "dirt" must have been a crystal of corroded copper! The 8 keys the trace connects to are the ones that don't work, so I may have found the problem. Now just need to solder a bit of wire on to fix it. (Not sure I'm even going to try just bridging the gap with solder because it's in an area with lots of very tiny tracks very close together and I can barely see the individual tracks without a loupe. But either side are sparser areas where I should be able to solder a wire without too much trouble.)

My aunt has lamented that she didn't know while my uncle was alive that it was something I'd be able to fix. I didn't even know while he was alive that there was something wrong with it that needed fixing - apparently he was good at playing tunes that avoided those particular keys.

 

Which reminds me, the car I grew up with looked almost exactly like this. Only differences I can immediately see were that my parents' one was right-hand drive, and I think the interior was a different colour. Otherwise, exactly the same.

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They eventually sold it a few years ago to someone who wanted to do it up, but they ended up finding it was so rusty it sadly wasn't worth doing much more than extracting a few spare parts from and then junking the rest. It had been sat in a garage so many years it had to be dragged out - the wheels wouldn't even turn.

 
And guess who ran over to visit when we got home. That's right, Not My Cat (the neighbour's cat). She comes and meows at my front door regularly and I have to go and make a fuss of her because… cat! Of course, this time as soon as I got my phone out to take some video she pretended she hadn't been interested and sat down to wash herself. She clearly wants attention, though, because she followed me round from the driveway to the front door. I've never fed her so it's not about food, just socialisation, which is nice. She also doesn't care what I'm wearing - opaque-visored motorbike gear is just as fine as Spidey suit or normal clothes. As she demonstrates in this video she's also quite capable of standing on two legs when necessary to get pettings.
 
Last weekend I Spideyed up a neighbouring village's fete! Not quite within walking distance, so my dad drove us both and we wandered around and looked at stalls and I got to high five and do photo ops for quite a few kids. There was one group of teenage girls who were trying to get the courage to do something, so I walked up behind them while they were looking at one of their phones and surprised them. Big scream! They got a photo with Spidey after that and they even ran over to me later on to show me some Spider-Man-related meme or something, heh. Someone, who was probably a fete organiser or something, asked me to take part in their hobby-horse race, but I really wasn't feeling it so I didn't say yes. (Didn't really say no either, but we kinda left before it started...) I wasn't really feeling very "into" the whole performance thing that day, too tired really, but still, it was fun enough and got us out of the house!
 
Today! (Well, yesterday as it's now well past midnight.) I achieved something! I've been meaning to do this for a while and it's been ages in the planning, but I got the physical work done in just a few hours on a single day. I've installed a hanging rail inside the under-the-stairs cupboard so we can hang our coats in there. We now have a proper Jeeves cupboard! And we no longer have to have the free-standing hanging rail cluttering up the hallway. Of course, now I need to find some other home for the ironing board, step ladders, clothes airers and such that won't fit any more now that there's a rail in the way! It was a simple matter of four screws (two into plasterboard, two into plasterboard-then-probably-breezeblock), plus a bunch of time making sure it was all as level and square as I could get it, and cutting the rail to length, but I'm kinda proud of myself. Just finding all the tools in the incredibly full garage was a challenge in itself. But it's done!
 
30 August: I got out on my bike! Having had some servicing done recently (11 August apparently! Oof, I'm really not getting out much) I really ought to get out on the roads more, but at least I got out on one day. This is a selfie in the mirrored doors of the hall wardrobe at the old house, so I must have visited there that day.
 
I think 12 August was about the sunniest day we've had since the solar panels got put on the roof. It's certainly the one with the best graph - it's nice and smooth and you can clearly see the "shoulders" in the morning and afternoon where the panels on the garage are shaded by the houses on either side; the couple of cloudy periods in the middle of the day are easy to ignore and don't prevent seeing the shape of the curve.
 

Content warning: CW: photo of a spider

 
Well, not *exactly* like that! But I've certainly met other spider-people with very similar suits (almost never absolutely identical though), and have been in reasonably big groups of spider-people, although in groups there usually end up being a lot of different suits.
 

Huh, an interesting little sculpture creator, Hero Forge. I assembled this beartaur. Pity I can't swap out the hooves for paws, or make the lower body a bit less horse-like, but at least they have bear tails available.


I had fun in Hero Forge and made a me!!! New profile pic for now :3 🩵🩵🩵🩵🩵

 

A few weeks ago I went to the local village fair in my new neighborhood. Of course, I Spideyed up the place. Got a card through the door the following day from my next-door neighbour… looks like I'm booked for next year! 😉

Inside the card: To [REDACTED] (and Spiderman). Thank you for coming down to the fete yesterday! The lads loved seeing Spiderman! From [REDACTED] (fete organiser). Next one 4/6/26!

 
Saw the Flying Scotsman at Bridgnorth yesterday. An impressive machine, from an era before on/off switches were invented.
 
@Shadow Cheetah @Pride-Flag Wavin' Gneech This reminds me of "have you tried turning it off and on again":
 

Moving a few papers in my office, I came across a print of this image from a long, long time ago. I dug it up on one of my computers — the file is timestamped January 2003!

The second image is the file I originally downloaded (but a reverse image search comes up with nothing so I have no idea where it's from any more), and the first is what I printed out to put on my wall after I edited the stripes a bit.

I've had this up on the wall for literally decades but only really noticed it again after taking it all down to move house. It's sitting in a pile of other prints, waiting for me to get round to finding some way to display them all again.

Of course I came across another few nice zebrataurs while trying to find the origin of this one!

https://www.deviantart.com/drjavi/art/Zebrataur-913619568
https://www.deviantart.com/valkenkuart/art/Cyberpunk-Zebrataur-Commission-1073199466
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/22812918/
https://www.deviantart.com/larkitrope/art/Zebra-Centaur-663372093

 
Two weeks ago my dad and I went back to our old town, to the residents' association's summer social. The chair-chap stood up and spoke a bit to everyone about my mum and how she'd been really helpful and done lots of stuff for the association, and presented us with a plant (and a bottle) in her memory. It's a dappled willow (if I remember correctly), and is actually more like a small tree or shrub, so we're going to have to find a good position in the garden to plant it, I think!
 
Ecch, even with the windows wide open (and letting bugs in). Computers are the worst.
 
I have a little sack trolley that folds down flat (looks very much like this) and has been useful at the last few ConFuzzleds to get things between car and room. I've also taken to packing into plastic boxes which stack nicely, I can see what's inside them, are easy enough to move on the sack trolley and can remain stacked to save space in the room (the rooms there aren't at all spacious). So yeah, good call, I think!
 

Could technology just leave me alone for a bit? Please?

Also, why, Google, did you send this to an email address I didn't use when buying the phone, didn't use when setting it up, but added to the phone only to be able to access some spreadsheets I needed to access a while back? Huh? I have no idea which of zillions of Google things I need to poke to change where these type of emails go.

 

I did a cooking. (Admittedly all I did was follow the instructions on the sauce jar, but still - it came out okay!)

(Actually I do a cooking most days, but this time was just slightly less straightforward than the "remove packaging, place in oven at temperature X for time Y, remove, eat" that I normally do.)

 
Oh hey, it's Douglas Reynholm, but in Harry Hill's typical outfit.
 
Also, this isn't funny, batteries only do this when they are in extreme distress.
 
This is not a happy 12V battery. No wonder runtime was just a bit short!
 

So, what did I do today?

(6 photos, you may have to click through to the original instance to see them all.)

 
Still feeling like this far too much of the time. Gromit and I both need hugs.
 
It's more likely than you think.
 
A while back I noticed the hygienist at the dentist I used to go to had a saddle stool, which looked really neat and I kinda want one now. I got the impression it was good for being manoeverable and getting at my teeth from whatever angle she needed!
 
The spring is sprung, the grass is rizz. I wonder where them bikers is?
 
@Twig @Ysengrin Blackpaw 🔜 AnthrOhio Oh gosh, yes, also his (Furvan's) Falstaff. I had this photo of Falstaff on my bedroom wall for many many years. I even spent the time to mask him out and make the background greyscale before printing so he'd stand out better!
 

Content warning: re: uspol

 

Well, I've completed watching Disenchantment. Really really good — I need to watch it again. (And I'm not just saying that because of Jasper.)

Derek, a light-blue-skinned amphibian-boy with stubble and a coronet, has one hand on Jasper's head, holding him back.  Jasper is a smaller anthropomorphic bear-boy who is growling and trying to claw at Derek. A frame of 2D hand-drawn animation.

 
Ohhhhhhhhh. Having not noticed any fees being tacked on at checkout (I now find they have been added to the listed price, as with VAT) I just put two and two together and realised why prices on ebay all seem to have jumped somewhat higher, by a strangely non-round amount, in the last few weeks. It's particularly obvious for things have been repeatedly relisted:
 

I've been meaning to make these photos for a solid month, and last night I finally got round to it. Far too many days I've meant to suit up and take the pic, but then suddenly it's evening and I'm too tired and I never get round to it. Well, last night it was 3am+ and could have gone the same way, but I decided it would happen and I finally got there!

This was one of my Christmas presents from my family and I'm finding it weird how much I like it. I mean, it's just a mug and I have too many mugs already.

 

SNERRR. SO MUCH SNERRRRRR.

#uksnow GU35 2/10

Actually it's rain now, I think. Snow will probably be gone well before morning.

 
Oh hello, you. It's been a while.
 

Me, this morning. I thought I'd try to have a break before I had to get working. #twoFeet

The dishwasher needed loaading, though!

 

For some reason I can't see the words "Game of Life" without it making me think of Conway's Game of Life first of all.

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Turns out I don't need a medal to tell me I'm a good guy. Coz if that little kid likes me… how bad can I be?
 
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