Rick's b.log - entry 2025/05/25

Taxes

What I think has happened is that minimum wage rose a bit when the inflation went gonzo, but the tax allowance did not. I haven't suddenly come into money, the company I work for is actually doing about all it can to suppress our wages (quite a few of us are on straight statutory minimum now and there never was an annual negotiation in 2024 "because excuses" so we never got any reevaluation), so the only plausible explanation is minimum went up, tax thresholds did not.
The last time the SMIC went up (by 2%) was last November. The government does not currently have any plans for a further increase, preferring instead "to give employers the time to digest the most recent rise". Note that traditionally there is a bump in January and July.
Of course, as is often the way, a lot of this "digesting" is by putting prices up, meaning our “enhanced” (note the extremely snarky scare quotes) wages buy fewer things, and so inflation is still around and still a thing.

That's not to say that giving us more would change that, but I think everybody suppressing the poorly paid is an easy score but not necessarily a good solution. Properly dealing with the scourge of skrinkflation would do more. Taxing the wealthy with the same sort of percentages as they tax the rest of us would do even more.
That being said, it is worth noting that there are many people on the SMIC. And unlike me, they can vote. ☺

The "barème" (thresholds) for a single person are:

• Up to €11,497 - 0%
• €11,498 to €29,315 - 11%
• €29,316 to €83,824 - 30%
• €83,824 to €180,294 - 41%
• Over €180,294 - 45%

Minimum wage is €17,115 net per year. I make a little more because I qualify for a 13^th month. I also technically qualify for an ancienity benefit which is calulated as some percentage of my pay multiplied by the number of years I have worked there; but on the other hand I'm categorised OE3 and being paid straight minimum (like an OE1) so that would cancel out.

All the way along, my tax obligation has been "about five hundred-odd" which was offset by reduction for the distance travelled to work and back. This year the distance didn't cover the tax, so I have to throw a few pennies into Macron's pocket.

I'm not particularly concerned about paying tax. It works out to be about €8 a month. That's about the same as Netflix (for the moment!). Plus it means I can consider myself a law-abiding taxpayer. I mean, I was before but it's just a bit disconcerting when the taxation amount is a big fat nothing. And, anyway, what the CAF (social security) gives me each month will repay it. Yeah, France is a bit weird like that, I guess something has to justify the millions of paper shufflers.

Waste treatment audit

The visits are supposed to be every four years, but there was no way it's been four years since the last time it was checked. My blog, however, disagrees. In my defence, that was right in the middle of the Covid madness and we all know there's kind of a blank nothingness between March 2020 and sometime around the autumn of 2022.

He got out of his van, introduced himself, and then said he was going to get his gloves and a flashlight.
You won't be needing those, I said.
It is for examining your septic system.
You're a better man than I am if you can find such a thing.
The penny dropped.

So, yes, it is a grinder that spits out into the stream around back. The "grey water" (bath, washing machine, etc) is a drainage pipe, that also carries rain from the roofing, and passes under that brand new bigger pipe under the back driveway and into the tail end of what used to be the pond before the farmer neighbour cleaned his ditches in a thunderstorm and all the silt filled up what was a pond.

Highly non-conforming. As in "this must be fixed as soon as possible", but he did note that the local council wasn't militant about it, so they aren't going to start fining everybody just yet.
I pointed out that I work for the SMIC so exactly where am I supposed to come up with the ballpark-of-fifteen-grand just to be able to flush my toilet nicely, especially given who my neighbour is and the fact that in the flood a couple of years back the place was literally awash with pig poop. The man, like the previous man, understood both points but he was only here to check on my installation. He drew a very basic diagram, then got concerned when I told him all of the water was from a well. "You don't.... drink it?".
I might be a Brit but I'm not completely daft. It's only for washing - dishes, clothes, me. I sterilise everything with boiled cheap bottled water before use, and I have Volvic for tea (or Evian if I'm really pushing the boat out). So all of you who are derogatory about the use of bottled water, it is quite useful when the water that comes out of the tap is not safe to drink. Mmm, not that mains water around here is known for its quality.

He also explained that if I was selling the house, the new purchaser has one calendar year in order to install a conformant system, which means that any purchaser will likely require a deduction for this work. Let's see, the electrics are 'interesting', there's no heating, the windows are ancient, the insulation is non-existent. Unless something dramatic happens to the housing market or somebody discovers oil under the ground, I can't imagine anybody being in a hurry to buy this place for more than a couple of euros and a jar of Nutella as a sweetener.

Besides, I love it here. It's the only place I've ever been that I can actually feel myself change as I cross over the boundary. This. Is. Home. I'm not planning on selling up.

Mowing and hair

There is always mowing.

Next I made a lot of headway on getting rid of the mess around the base of the weeping willow. Here is a picture from 2020:

The willow from September 2020.

And here is looking underneath it now.

Under the willows now.

There are some old fence posts, some chicken wire (chicken wire? why!?), and a small dry stone wall that I built here in 1995 and completely forgot about until I ran into it. Back in those days the big willow on the right was but a twig, the willow in the middle was an annoying panpas grass, and none of the other trees existed.
That pile of junk is what needs to be sorted out. Behind the junk is the second well. And behind that, a post covered in ivy, is where I tried to build a little shed despite having no equipment, no tools, no clue, and the narcissitic prick doing what he could to sabotage it. More stuff that needs to be cleared, but I'm impressed that a post stayed up (more or less) for thirty years.
Not visible to the left (behind the centre willow) is a mass of brambles that is a section surrounded by wire fence and metal posts. This was to be the vegetable garden with 'minimal' rabbit proofing. This was also made back in... what was it... 1997? When none of those trees were there and this was a hot burnt bit of ground overlooking the field. Now it's a shady spot full of bramble and ivy so I'll need to pull down the fencing and deal with the posts. When all of that has been done, hopefully maintaining this area will simply be passing through with the ride-on from time to time.

Afterwards I washed my hair to remove the grass and bug bits. The usual routine of putting two kettlefuls of boiling water into a bucket of cold, then kneeling in the bath chucking it over myself with a small plastic jug. It's kind of the old fashioned way to do it, more specifically, it does not involve heating up a hundred litres of water when I can do what needs done with a tenth of that. Plus it takes about ten-fifteen minutes to prepare in the kettle (1.5L × 2 and 7L of cold; or in the winter refilling the kettle from the bucket for a third boil) which is a lot better than 4-5 hours at 2kW to heat far more water than I need. I mentioned in the past that having the old tank removed and a new one fitted was €€€ (likely more than I'd ever spend heating all that water unnecessarily) but since I've found that "the bucket method" is quick and requires little advance planning and there's enough water left over to do the rest of me... well, why not?

I came out with a soggy head and sat out with tea and cheesecake. But it was being annoying. My hair that is, not the cheesecake, one would have to struggle to make cheesecake annoying.

So I walked inside, grabbed a pair of scissors, and just started hacking bits of hair off. Then a quick poke to each side "does it feel the same?" No? Then cut off some and repeat. So it is now shorter, will dry more quickly and... nobody at work noticed. Or, at least, nobody at work pointed and laughed. So I guess that's a good thing.

Labour really are SCUM

It's not a political benefit you disgusting shitty Tory tribute act, it's a moral one. Which part of Labour do you arseholes fail to understand? If we wanted this nonsense we'd have all asked for another five years of Tory mismanagement.

You see, this is why I'm glad that LibDem is fairly strong in the Guildford area, I could vote with my conscience and not simply to try to unseat a Tory. Labour hasn't been right since Tony Blair...

A free microwave!

The big problem with my old microwave is that the design isn't great. After cooking anything more involved than a ready meal, it's sopping wet inside. I know microwaves often steam up inside but this one was water running down the walls. I used to have to mop up pools of water at the bottom when mom did jacket potatoes. So as you can imagine, the paint began to flake and then the rust became more of an issue and, well, it "functions" but I'm not sure for how much longer. The magnetron is fine, the bodywork is condemnable.

The thing is, all of my life I have used 800W ovens and it seemed that for some odd reason they're all 700W these days which is dumb and annoying. Food that requires three minutes at 800W is going to need about three and a half minutes at 700W. Both calculations basically add up to 2,400. It doesn't matter what that means, it matters that less energy means more time so that the actual amount of microwave energy dumped into the food is about the same. It's not like a vacuum cleaner where lower motor power can be offset by better seals and design. So it isn't as if it's saving energy or somehow being better for the environment. I just don't understand.

I found a microwave in the supermarket on special offer. It was 900W, which meant that it could do stuff just a little bit faster than I'm used to (3m at 800W is about 2²/³m at 900W) rather than longer. Better yet, I could pay for it using the money that has accrued on the loyalty card. Because unlike the Leclerc or Intermarché, the U actually does credit you with money-points for quite a range of purchases, and they have simply built up as it is not far from work so it's where I do most of my shopping. I think the last person to use the money-points was mom when she bought a book.

I took the microwave to the checkout and asked if I could pay with my loyalty card. She just shrugged, she's a bit like that, and waved my card in front of the till. Two wide eyes and a gasp later (yes, it's nearly €200 in points!) and she asked me to enter the card PIN. Oh... oh... um... what number would mom have picked? Oh, hang on, this is the shop that didn't kick up a fuss about changing it to my name, so it'll be one of two numbers (no, not 1973!). Tappedy-tap-tap - yup, got it on the first guess.

And I walked out with a brand new 900W microwave that cost me exactly €0.

It is, however, a monster. The box says it has a 25 litre capacity, though I can't get my head around using litres to measure the inside of a microwave. What size pizza fits, wouldn't that be a better judge?

It is rather sizeable.

It is also really quite complex. Custom cooking times (press the cooking time button and enter the digits in order, they'll move right to left), custom power levels (nine of them), defrost by time or by weight. You see those six presets? Press for 1, 2, or 3 items (like potatoes) and it'll pick settings for doing that many of that item. There is also - somewhere - three programmable options that can do multistage cooking (like 3m at 100% then 5m at 50%).

More usefully for me, the buttons 1 to 6, when used by themselves, will immediately start full power cooking from 1 to 6 minutes, and prodding the start button while the machine is operating will add thirty seconds. Since I pretty much cook all ready meals for 3 minutes (whatever it says on the pack) I rather imagine the '3' button will be the most used one.

I am going to studiously ignore the "Beverage" button. The fact that Americans frequently heat water in a microwave because their lame-arse 110V doesn't give enough amps to make a useful kettle irritates me in ways that I cannot articulate in words. For example, as I write this the kettle, the three kilowatt (*) kettle is heating for a cuppa. Using a microwave is... ugh.

* - actually more like 2.8kW because it's ~225V around here, or around 12½ amps (which would be something like 25A 🔥 in USian terms!).

How do I feel?

My social battery.

It is solid metal with that sort of melted-enamel stuff for the colours. Two pins on the back to hold it in place. Even the needle is enamelled metal, though it looks a bit fragile. The badge part is actually really decently made. Okay, it's a bit odd being green-blue-green but that's just me. I don't know how they can make and sell this for eighty centimes (plus about twice that for the postage).

Since I'm an introvert, a good day is yellow. A normal day is orange. I was upper yellow after the dopamine hit of getting a free microwave, rising to light green on my way home for the weekend.
Weekend? Well, I did the mowing that I planned to do on Saturday on Tuesday afternoon so there was nothing planned. It's a bit breezy but the sun is out (more or less) and I'm totally alone, so right over max scale on the greeny-right. ☺

RPCEmu

Unfortunately the simple networking, the NAT one, isn't compatible with ShareFS so I can't hook into my existing machines to copy over stuff that I might need. That being said, it is mostly an exercise in "can I?" because it is really rather slow. It fetched and rendered my most recent blog article (last Saturday's Eurovision) in 21.2 seconds. To put this into context, my Pi 3B+ does it in 0.8 seconds. So... maybe it's about the speed of an authentic RiscPC? ☺ Since I'm pretty sure my RiscPC has succumbed to battery rot, I have pretty much left that era behind.

RISC OS 5...on Linux.

I created a custom screen mode 1360×688 to mostly fit my display, as you can see. My screen is actually 1366 pixels wide, but nothing was going to get a non-screwed-up display at that size. Is VIDC2 limited to display widths that are multiples of eight?
The ModeFile that I used (which may fail on actual hardware?) is:

  x_res:1360
  y_res:688
  pixel_rate:80000
  h_timings:122,98,0,1360,62,0
  v_timings:10,78,10,688,10,10

The height is intentionally reduced to I can see the icon bar (mostly) despite the Linux icon bar and the window title bar and the omnipresent menu bar.

I did manage to get ShareView running on RISC OS alongside my home directory being shared, but since the native ShareFS uses UDP broadcasts, this isn't currently supported. It took longer than it should have to realise that the SMB user/password was something entirely different to my machine user/password and needed to be added separately. But once that was done, I could connect

Tea v0.21

SimpleSeq v0.30

Pulsed notes for extra expression.

I have also been doing a few bits with the transcription. The current method simply steps along each part of the music, each column on the grid, and notes which keys have been pressed or released in that interval. It mostly works, but since it is an absolute cutoff, there can be numerous off-by-one errors in how the music is recorded. At 120BPM, each column represents 12.5 centiseconds, or an eighth of a second. I am wondering what could be done - if anything - to help minimise these occurences.

That being said, the recent ability to move/alter notes can help tidy things up. Here is something my talentless fingers bashed out.

Some music entered in realtime from a piano.

Editing the notes.

Fixing the wrong bits.

And the finished result.

All better now.

Note that you can also use the Beatify filter, but be aware that the filter makes everything be multiples of a crotchet in length. You can see this here, specifically the first two notes.

Much quicker but doesn't do the shorter notes.

Oh, and you can now insert/delete an arbitrary number of columns for the current channel or all. This will let you expand/contract certain parts. Note that if you add, say, five columns then from that point on all of the music will be off sync from that part on (as you just inserted a beat and a quarter at 4/4 time). You'll need to further adjust (adding or deleting) where relevant to get back on sync.

Your comments:

Please note that while I check this page every so often, I am not able to control what users write; therefore I disclaim all liability for unpleasant and/or infringing and/or defamatory material. Undesired content will be removed as soon as it is noticed. By leaving a comment, you agree not to post material that is illegal or in bad taste, and you should be aware that the time and your IP address are both recorded, should it be necessary to find out who you are. Oh, and don't bother trying to inline HTML. I'm not that stupid! ☺
As of February 2025, commenting is no longer available to UK residents, following the implementation of the vague and overly broad Online Safety Act. You must tick the box below to verify that you are not a UK resident, and you expressly agree if you are in fact a UK resident that you will indemnify me (Richard Murray), as well as the person maintaining my site (Rob O'Donnell), the hosting providers, and so on. It's a shitty law, complain to your MP.
It's not that I don't want to hear from my British friends, it's because your country makes stupid laws.
 
You can now follow comment additions with the comment RSS feed. This is distinct from the b.log RSS feed, so you can subscribe to one or both as you wish.

C Ferris, 26th May 2025, 08:50

Hi Rick - have you thought about using 'Linux RO' on your fresh machine?

jgh, 26th May 2025, 13:57

People are living longer, being old is getting more expensive, so people are naturally saving more for their old age, so what is Labour's response? Nick their pensions by taxing their pension pot.

C Ferris, 26th May 2025, 21:37

That would be - some people are living long :-(    Not quite the tale politicians keep telling us - they just don't to pay out!

A tree-dwelling mammal, 27th May 2025, 22:23

Labour are scum.    The Tories were scum.    Lib Dems are just ineffectual.    UKIP are racists.    Reform are just UKIP by another name.    Really, what choice do we have?

A tree-dwelling mammal, 27th May 2025, 22:30

Now, microwaves...    I had a green Daewoo one from 1997 to 2012, which just sort of stopped working. It went through the motions but no microwaves were coming out of the magnetron. It might just be a fuse, but as a qualified electrician there are some things you just don't mess with.    I bought a Panasonic one back in 2012 to replace it. Think it was about £70. Still going. If this one ever fails I'll probably stick with Panasonic, it's never let me down and has great build quality. The only niggle is that the clock is 12hr and can't be switched to 24hr, and it doesn't have the "press Start for a 30 second blast" or the presets (the 'hot drink' one was very useful) that the old one had. But I can live without them.    A few months back my girlfriend managed to blow up her microwave (don't ask, AOL stopped sending out CDs years back!). She found one for £25 on Facebook Marketplace, the guy said she could have it for £15 when it turned out she actually wanted it rather than being a timewaster (yes, it happens). I took her down to get it, loaned her the cash, we get there, she gave him the cash and the chap then said "and here's £15 to take your boyfriend to KFC". (So basically a free microwave.) Restored my faith in humanity, seems there are still some decent people about.    And yes, I did get back the £15 I'd loaned her to buy it!

A tree-dwelling mammal, 27th May 2025, 22:33

PS: The "Beverage" button on the microwave isn't to boil water, it's meant for heating a mug full of milk. Boiling water is a task best left to an electric kettle.

Add a comment (v0.12) [help?] . . . try the comment feed!
		Your name
		Your email	(optional)
		Validation	Are you real? Please type 41953 backwards.
		UK resident	Check to verify that you are NOT a UK resident.
		Your comment