Weighing cameras

Spent this afternoon weighing camera bags to help me decide which to take to Comicon tomorrow. Which is in no way sad.

AS an added bonus, the mole wrench is now very easy to find.

A while back I mentioned my sinking feeling, caused by a failing gas support in my chair. The chair company have sent me a replacement, which is nice of them. However, it has proved to be impossible to fit, what with the broken part having welded itself into position. I’ve come up with a solution though. My chair now holds its position perfectly.

Spelling with Alexa?

Our Alexa device keeps trying new things to get us to interact with it. Today it came up with a display which said something along the lines of “Try asking me how to spell exfoliate (or whatever the word was)”. This struck me as a strange thing to do, what with the word I wanted to know about being spelled out right in front of my eyes.

New Beatles Song

They’ve just released a “new” Beatles song created, of course, with the help of AI. It is said that if you listen very, very, carefully to the track you can hear in the background the sound of the bottom of a barrel being scraped….

Curse you British Summer Time

You’ll never guess where I bought this

The good news is that my Agile Octopus Tariff Display (which tells us how much electricity will cost us each day) handled the clock change yesterday with aplomb. It just worked. The bad news is that one of my clocks can’t be adjusted because the little knob that you turn to move the hands has broken. So I’ve taken the battery out for an hour.

In March next year I’ll have to take the battery out for 11 hours. Perhaps I should make a “time corrector” device. You plug it into the clock in place of the battery, tell the “time corrector” the time the clock is showing and over the next day it makes the clock correct.

Back in the saddle...

I’m going back to university. Just a little bit. I’m helping out with a MEng project. It will be nice to be back in the hallowed halls of learning once again. And the best thing is that, what with the turnover in students over the years, none of them have heard any of my jokes yet….

Network isolation

I hate it when hardware manufacturers spoil their products by skimping on one, crucial component. Take NetGear for example. They make quite good network hardware, but then they add the cheapest possible power supplies they can find. This means (for me at least) that every few years I have to buy a new 12 volt power supply to replace the one that just went pop.

I’ve just had to do it again. One of the routers in my network failed. The good news is that when this happens my eero network converts one of the Wi-Fi repeaters into a network receiver and so the network keeps going - just a lot slower than it used to. It can take me a while to discover that the network is broken in this way, I usually discover things are not right when I have to do an update to Microsoft Flight Simulator.

York Trip

AT least the rain didn’t put out his torches

Got to use my bus pass today for the first time. I expected the driver to salute or something, but he just shrugged and dropped a fiver off the ticket price. Which is what counts I suppose. York was looking nice, even in the rain.

Stalked by tractors.. again

This might be the same picture as last time..

A while back I got a completely unrequested tractor matchy-matchy game. I filled in a web form and sent a message asking why I’d received them. Today (of course) I received another copy of the game. I think that their standard response to a question about an order is just to send another one (although they probably don’t do this with real tractors). At any rate, I’m not going to bother them again.

Got my burger back

I’m actually quite proud of this

A while back I did some pottery painting in Leeds. I thought you might like to see the result.

Car cleaning

Spent a chunk of today car cleaning. Some bits required the use of a toothbrush. Not that the car has any teeth.

Mysterious Tractor Matchy-Matchy

The game is quite fun though….

Every now and then something happens that makes your world rock slightly on its axis. I had one such moment last week when a courier turned up with a large box. Which contained a tiny deck of cards adorned with pictures of tractors. It’s a very nice implementation of the pelmanism game. Only one thing wrong really. I’ve never ordered such a game. In fact I don’t even own a tractor (or have any plans to get one). I’ve carefully checked the order. My name and address are all properly entered. I’m not sure where this has come from. I’ve contacted the supplier to try and find out what is going on. Most strange.

That sinking feeling

I was sitting at my desk today and it started to rise up underneath my hands. Turns out that the gas strut thing in my new chair is leaking causing my chair to descend down to the lower levels. I’ve been in touch with the supplier and they are being helpful, which is nice.

Driffield Steam Fair

There were loads of engines like this

Last week we couldn’t make our annual trip to the Whitby Steam Fair because bad weather got in the way. So today it was excellent to be able to go down to the Driffield Steam Fair and look for some traction action (sorry).

I was worried that the Driffield event might be smaller than the Whitby one, but it turned out (at least to me) to be a bit bigger. There were loads of engines, large and small bustling about the showground. There was a funfair, pizza and amazing bubble waffles. The weather had a little go at spoiling this show too, but there were only a couple of showers during the four hours we were on site. It was great. I’m definitely going again next year.

Bus Pass

This is almost exactly what buses look like around here..

Well, that’s another rite of passage out of the way. I’ve applied for my bus pass. It will mean I’ll be able to go up town and visit Hull Makerspace for free. Yay!

Nearly a real-life hole in one

All that practice Must be paying off

We were playing Walkabout Golf last week and noted that it was unfortunate that virtual golf skills don’t translate very well into the real world. Then, today we were doing some golf at Hornsea Mere (lovely place) and I very nearly got a hole in one. It really was that close. So perhaps I’ve picked up something from VR after all.

Painting Pottery for fun

We spent a very happy couple of hours today at Jack Rabbit Pottery in Leeds. They supply the “blanks” and you get to paint them. Then they take away what you’ve done and do pottery type things to turn it into a finished, glazed object. I really hope it works. I’m rather looking forward to seeing how mine turns out…

Fun with Invisible Tape

A rare photograph of invisible tape

I bought a roll of invisible tape today. Such fun. As I was paying for it I wanted to ask questions like “How do you know when you’ve run out of invisible tape” and “Do you do this in different invisible colours?”. But I didn’t. I’ve a horrible feeling I might be growing up.

Day off photography

I spent today writing code and didn’t take a single photograph.

Happy Birthday Me

It’s a lovely little device

It’s my birthday today. Yay! Above you can see my present to myself. It’s a Minox daylight developing tank. It lets me take film from my tiny spy camera and develop it without needing a darkroom. You put the film cassette inside the tank and the film is pulled out into the developing spiral. Then you add tiny amounts of developer and fixer and then you get your strip of developed negatives. At least, that’s the theory. I’m looking forward to trying it for real.

My birthday was great. Lots of cards and presents. And chocolates. And cake. Good times.