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And the the day after that I finally got on my motorbike and did that trip to the south coast I've been threatening to do for weeks now. Finally made it, stopping at Littlehampton and getting a few pics on the beach, albeit after dark. *sigh* Oh well, at least I made it. Went back to the old house afterwards, sorted a few network things out and brought some routers I needed back to the new house.
(6 pics below; if you can't see them all, look on the origin instance.)
My Halloween: my sisters acquired a cute inflatable monster and a reflective witch picture for me to stick on the front of my house, and I acquired a bowl of sweets to leave out. My parents and I then visited my sisters for the afternoon/evening and when we got back about ⅔ of the sweets had gone! By my calculations that means at least 20 people took one. (Or more likely fewer people took multiple ones. 😛) And it didn't look like any local wildlife had had a go at them either, so that was good.
I went for a little spidey-walk too. Saw a few decorated houses, said happy halloween to a few people. 🙂
I should probably post my bread. Maybe if I use hashtags something interesting will happen.
#breadPost #baking #bread #breadmaking #bakersOfMastodon #breadiverse #breadstodon
We are still using up these little packets of jam that my parents bought a catering pack of many years ago for their self-catering rental house (back when they started they used to leave a full cooked meal ready for guests when they arrived, later on it was just milk, bread, butter, and some cereals and jams).
They are now quite a few years out of date and thus getting a bit rubbery, but my dad won't throw them away. But every time I look at them I remember the old "Fly Fishing by J R Hartley" Yellow Pages TV advert (which I see they have since updated and remade).
Can anyone confirm what this is? It's attached inside the fitting for a 6-foot fluourescent light tube in my garage. I thought it was the starter at first, but all the starters I've been able to find are much much smaller and have a bayonet fitting at the end. The marking saying "8·4 µF" leads me to think it may just be a *very* chunky capacitor, and the ballast (which is very identifiable because it says "S.R.S. ballast for 1x 6ft. 85 watt tube" on its label) might be a type that doesn't need a separate starter, perhaps.
Not that it really matters now; I've since decided, rather than trying to replace the starter (which doesn't seem to exist) I'm going to replace both whole light fittings and their delicate and malfunctioning fluourescent tubes with four LED light fixtures. Going to add another light switch next to the garage's side door too, because when it's dark it's annoying to have to stumble through the whole garage to/from the only switch which is next to the front doors.
Several days ago my sister sent me a text suggesting I look outside and north to see the aurora in action. She said she's barely been able to see it, but a photo made it quite visible. I wasn't able to get much at all, just a vaguely redish or greenish tinge to the sky. In the end I had more fun doing long exposure photos of the road to get those "streaky" car light trails! (Pics 4, 5 and 6 below.)
I did get a fairly decent picture of ursa major though (pics 2 and 3 below) without much camera shake, even.
Last Thursday night I got home (to the new house, having visited the old house) really late, actually so late it was Friday morning. 2:30am, to be precise. The motorcycle ride back was annoying because I had a lot of trouble keeping my visor clear enough to see where I was going. I had to stop and clean everything half way and it wasn't obvious whether it was my glasses steaming up, visor steaming up, pinlock coming away from the visor and steaming up between the two, or just damp on the outside of the visor! In the end it was probably a combo of all those.
Once I got back and took my helmet off I could see just how wet the air is - I even got this bit of video clearly showing droplets just hanging in the beam of my headlights and streaming around in the breeze!
I went for my first Spidey-walk around my new neighbourhood.
Several pretty nice encounters with locals. A group outside the local club wanted photos (although only one of them actually stood next to me to be photographed!), a couple wanted pictures to show a young relative who, apparently, would be astounded that they'd met the real Spidey. A family with two young boys was just getting into their car after after presumably visiting relatives and the family seemed to like seeing me, although the boys themselves seemed not bold enough to interact. A guy told me he'd just "walked out" of work (not sure if he'd quit or just left for the day) after his manager had sworn at him and said just seeing me lifted his mood and made his day.
And all this just from my first 30 minute, 1½ mile walk. Gotta spend a bit more time out in suit in this area! 🙂
(Below, eight selfies of me as classic Spider-Man with my web backpack, one indoors before I went out, the others taken on a path beside a green part way along my route.)
When I got home today, after a couple of days at the old house, I parked the bike on the driveway and a couple of small fluffy persons came to say hello. Or, more precisely, one of them came to say hello, while the other one nearly did but then hid under a bush for ages, coming out only very briefly to tell the other one off and then go and hide again. I do like how they don't care that I'm in a full set of leathers, gloves, boots, with a blank black visor and no face, they just care if they get pettings. I do hope someday someone happens to walk past while this is happening and gets a surreptitious photo of a scary biker being affectionate to cats.
Also, I was busy yesterday and made four whole loaves of bread. Then I eated some.
The deed was do'ed (last Thursday).
Now my mum seems to not recognise me more often than previously (although that might just be progression of her dementia), and my sister's dog, Comet, who was fine the first time he met me after the dehairification, growled at me this evening when he saw me in bike gear and bare-headed. Took him a while to grudgingly accept me again.
On the whole, I think I like it though. 🤷♂️
@Ghost The new house has very non-smart meters, presumably unchanged since the place was built in 1989. They are "digital" only in the sense that they have digits displayed on the front…
I found images of, I think, the same models of meter. If not they are *very* close.
Hmm, I think the risk from remote-off is probably negligible (unless someone was motivated enough to hack the things and turn it off maliciously, but that also seems very unlikely, unless they did so in bulk, indiscriminately). I'd guess the benefit of a slightly under-reading meter is probably offset by the benefit of being able to see your usage in real time, have time-of-day-variable tariffs, and things like that.
This just smells so scammy. But they have the planned activation date and the second half of the postcode correct, and the phone number matches one on openreach's web site, so… presumably it's genuine?
I think it's a "proceed with extreme caution" situation.
I have a bunch of favourites and I don't know that I can choose! Some are more comfortable than others, but all of them make me feel better about how I appear to everyone around me, even if they don't help me feel better physically! They even help when I'm alone, because I like to look like I want to look even if there's no one to see.
(8 pictures attached, in case your fedi node doesn't show them all.)
