Rick's b.log - entry 2022/02/03

Taking stuff apart

So I have an energy saving bulb, one of those LED ones. It's a nice 100W bulb, takes about 10W to run. I wanted to put it in the outside bulb holder.

So I set up the ladder, unscrew the glass shield around the bulb, and take the bits down.
Back up the ladder to ease out the 75W incandescent bulb.

The first problem is that the LED bulb doesn't want to go into the bulb holder. This holder is from the sixties, so I wonder if the base of bayonet bulbs were a slightly different size back then?
I hold the holder firmly and press it into place.

Down the ladder, flip the switch. Nothing.

Oh balls.

Back up the ladder, and one of the wires has broken away from the mounting. It's that horrible fabric and rubber stuff, with the rubber crumbling away.

I shut down the Pi, and hit the Big Switch. It looks like the holder was put in place by wiring it all up and then pulling the cable from the other end of the mounting. There's no possible way this was done in place. The wires bend ninety degrees to go into a metal fixing, with the tightening screws on top (and about an inch of space to work in).
Which means it's not possible to fix. I'm not getting a screwdriver in there.

I grab ahold of the wire that is still attached with a thing pair of pliers, and wobble the holder until the metal breaks. Leaving me with two bare wires that must be moved as little as possible, and wondering why I ever bothered...

In the kitchen I have the old bulb holder that I patched into place when the fluo tube failed, and removed when fitting the new LED light. But it was too big. So using metal cutters, I clip both sides to remove a section that served no purpose that I can remember. Turns out the holder was some sort of bakelite. It actually broke apart exactly as I wanted. I was expecting it to shatter.

Back up the ladder, this holder helpfully had the wires going directly into it and the screws on the side. This meant I could gently straighten the ends of the wires, then carefully slip them into the holder and then tighten the screws from the side. Easy to access.
So don't complain if I don't like throwing old crap out. You never know when some old thing will be exactly what is needed.

The bulb went in without any problem. I went down, turned the switch on, and then carefully poked the Big Switch, expecting to hear a loud click as the trip threw and a pop as the fuse blew. Yes, our light switches are fused, the plugs are not. Don't think about that too much...

Then a fundamental problem occurred. The 100W LED bulb is larger than a regular bulb. It's about a millimetre too big to fit the glass shield around it.

So, bright bulb removed, and a regular bulb inserted, and everything screwed back into place.

It is dimmer outside now. The old tungsten bulb was 75W. The LED bulb is equivalent to 60W. But it is only drawing 6W, so it's an improvement.

Fixed front light.
(night mode can make any light look bright!)

All is not lost, however. The end of the barn where the mowers and tools live was lit with a 60W tungsten bulb. I've put the 100W-equivalent LED in there, and it's a big difference.

"Workshop" light.
(this one is NOT night mode!)

Nearly being crashed into by a white van man

A weird little experiment

The common type is called "Clemenvilla". I got a pack of organic mandarines from Spain.
Turning up a little later in the season is "Nadorcott", also from Spain. Non-organic.
Finally, the third type we get is "Orri" from Israel, also non-organic.

So... I looked in the supermarket for little plastic bottles and found nothing. I looked on Amazon and found a pack of five sample bottles. A little pricey, but I wonder what sort of reaction it'll get seeing as these are the things you're supposed to pee into (as indicated by the labels affixed to the bottles having places to write name, doctor, ward, and date/time).

Labelling the samples.

I used my labeller to create some simple labels to tell which is which. These labels have been all cut to the same size, and affixed to the bottom. So it'll be a blind test.

Mandarines were cut and passed through a manual juicer, getting spray all over the place. ☺

The created samples.

The three bottles are in the fridge. I'll take them to work with me tomorrow to do the taste test while I'm on break.

And... uh... they do kinda look like pee, don't they? <smirk>

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