Rick's b.log - entry 2022/06/05

Weather?

...it was a mixture of sun (a little) and cloud (mostly) here. Somewhat breezy, and about 23°C.

I had a shower and washed my hair, which has reacted by exploding into a mess that is like Johnson's hair taken up to eleven. I ran the washing machine and put the clothes out to dry.

For about three hours, I had the front and back doors open, a good change of air in the house, get rid of any old damp smells. Not that I can smell anything. Since yesterday my nose has been clogged up. My teeth hurt, though it's not my teeth, it's a side effect of blocked sinuses. A moderate headache. There's no fever or sore throat. So this isn't Covid, it's just... what's started making pollen recently? Some sort of grass?

Indexing the larder

I got just over two pages of output from Google Sheets.

Printout preview.

As a spreadsheet, it's more like this.

Spreadsheet.

It will highlight in dark red things that have expired, and in bright bold red things that expire within a week. I guess I'll be eating instant Udon tomorrow. ☺

I'll have to try really hard to keep this up to date. My previous attempt at this failed because it was just a pain in the arse to edit all the time. But now that I'm using Google Sheets so literally have access to it from whatever phone or tablet I happen to be using.... less excuse. Well, that's the theory.

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David Pilling, 6th June 2022, 13:31

Been unusually cold here this Spring.  Good luck keeping the inventory up to date. Bar code reader? Scan in and scan out. Be better if RFID had come to be widely used and then you could scan it all in place.  Some supermarkets email you a list of what you've bought (at the checkout, clearly home delivery is all documented), well that's a list of inputs. You'd only then have to document what you've used.

J.G.Harston, 6th June 2022, 18:46

My Mum's husband died a couple of years ago, and I've been carefully cataloguing all his books and maps in a spreadsheet. :)    The next task is to feed them through eBay to sell them, keeping the more interesting ones. 1898 edition of Through the Yangtse Gorges. :)

Rick, 6th June 2022, 18:47

Well, I've just eaten the two udon and updated the data, so it's a good start I guess. ;)    Barcode reader wouldn't be useful, I don't think it would integrate with Sheets, and there's no encoding for use by dates.    RFID might have been better, except that I would imagine that any such information would be some proprietary nonsense, such is the world today.  Your Samsung fridge can tell you how good your milk is and if you're drinking it quickly enough, but your Laden fridge doesn't have the licence so can't... that sort of nonsense.    My supermarket sends me the till rolls as a PDF (to a spam drop address). Not only do they use weird codes, but no dates. Probably simpler to just enter it than try to figure out the information.    Just looked at a recent receipt:  CEREALES BIO CHERRIOS 375G  P.100% MIE NAT.GT.HARRYS 500G  TOM.KET.HEINZ"TOP DOWN"BIO580G    Some of the encodings are weird word salad. And they misspelled Cheerios! 😂

Rick, 6th June 2022, 18:50

You sell through eBay? I've heard from various sources that eBay is, these days, somewhat hostile towards sellers and that their dispute resolution is farcical.  I don't know how Amazon might compare (it's the obvious place to go for books). Alternatively, is there a local version of eBay?  Here in France a popular site is leboncoin.fr.

J.G.Harston, 6th June 2022, 18:51

As for keeping your food data up to date, I'd recommend doing what I do with my weight and my car petrol. When I weigh myself (buy petrol) I don't update my spreadsheet, I update a paper notebook in the bathroom (car). Every now and then that is copied into my spreadsheet.    This is a similar method I instituted for a stockroom database - the hassle of having to sign out half a dozen 50k resisters was so much bother that people didn't bother. Letting people just scribble down a note and leave it in a box in the stockroom, that somebody fed into the real system every few days was much more effective.

Rick, 6th June 2022, 18:55

I've not looked at mom's many books. One day I might take them to a vide grenier to sell (I read for enjoyment, so I rarely read French, mom was much better at that; and I don't know enough Spanish and zero Greek to deal with the other stuff).    I've left all those books for now. Doing nothing is easier.  Plus, if I offer them at some silly price like €0,50 each, I just know a load of people will offer less and I would imagine that pointing to the price label with "can't you f...ing read?" would not make me popular.  But, a few hours of it and that might be pretty much my response...

J.G.Harston, 6th June 2022, 18:58

I've listed the first 100 or so books, I'll see how it goes. I need a site where I can list-and-forget. When I first started eBay selling, you had to renew a listing every ten days until it sold, which destroyed its usability. I need to be able to list something and then just leave it forever until somebody finds it and choses to buy it.    I did an initial scout around of sites, but my initial search only found sites where you had to pay through the nose to sell anything. I can't remember the details, but Amazon seemed to go out of their way to make it difficult to sell anything. There must be a market for some sort of book-selling-agglomeriser site thingy.    I've got another 28 boxes to go, averaging 40 books in each box.

Rick, 6th June 2022, 19:20

The way I see it, sites where you have to pay a lot to *list* an article are to be avoided. If they need to hit you for upfront fees, it suggests that the sale conversion rates are poor, or that the site owners are greedy.

Rick, 6th June 2022, 19:27

Speaking of greedy, Google - who aren't lacking for money - has recently decided to enforce wanting their 30% cut for all digital purchases made via apps.    In response, you can no longer purchase Kindle books or music MP3s via the Amazon store app; nor the dedicated (Amazon Music/Kindle reader) apps. You have to buy from the website and then use the apps to retrieve your purchase.    So for an infrastructure that Amazon owns and operates, Google thinks that an in-app purchase entitles them to grab 30%... which is, I'm sure, several times more than the song's performer ever sees.  I'm surprised nobody has sued them yet. I'm also surprised that, having built a massive ecosystem as the non-walled alternative to Apple, they're so intent on shooting themselves in the foot.  I could sort of understand them wanting a cut if the download was using their servers, but to want a cut simply because "it's a digital download"? WTF?  That's a serious chunk of in-app purchasing that's just been killed.  (and if they can do that and get away with it, how long until they try asking for a cut of all in-app purchases?)

David Pilling, 6th June 2022, 23:30

DIY checkouts know the weight of everything, so put the larder on springs and it can work out what you've removed.    There are new shops with visual recognition, go in, pick up stuff at random, and it knows what you've got. No checkout.

J.G.Harston, 7th June 2022, 12:33

Werrrllll, the government gets a cut whenever you use the government supported financial structures to purchase something. It's called VAT. ;)

Rick, 7th June 2022, 20:50

True. And when I go into a French shop and buy a croissant from a French person using French money...in France...    ...the British government gets exactly nothing.    See the parallel?    Note that Google's desired 30% for doing nothing in this scenario is about three times what the performer typically gets from a sale of a track as a download.

J.G.Harston, 8th June 2022, 01:22

My typical argument is: if you don't like the bread in Aldi, buy bread in Lidl or Netto or Asda or Tesco or etc. But my understanding is these companies somehow stop people buying stuff in other outlets. To me, that's clear restriction of trade. If I don't like how much Waterstones is charging for Guards Guards they shouldn't have the power to stop me buying Guards Guards in Dillons^W dammit Blackwells^W dammit Foyles^W dammit Smiths.

Rob, 9th June 2022, 01:28

Books... I started cataloguing some of my dad's a couple of years back. It's hard work. As for where to sell. Hard one. Abe Books might be worth a try. Other book seller sites are available..    I'll have a lot more to do soon - mum's on palliative care and not expecting to be here much longer :(

Tedd, 9th June 2022, 20:50

</i></b></big><script>alert("who lied to you that your site dosen't have backdoors!")</script>

Rick, 9th June 2022, 21:06

Did you not read the boring small text above the comment box? Inlining HTML won't work. ;)  Inlining script in HTML won't work.    Oh, and I'll save you the trouble...    ); 'DROP TABLE ' + QUOTENAME(name) + ';'    (or whatever that's supposed to be, I don't speak SQL)

tedd , 9th June 2022, 21:09

I'm lazy and board that's all. I'm sorry

Tedd, 9th June 2022, 21:11

bored**

Rick, 9th June 2022, 21:19

Yeah, it's been one of those decades, hasn't it... 😪

Tedd, 9th June 2022, 21:24

Sure, why don't you use Twitter fb ... who still using blogs! I will dive into your blogs

Mick , 10th June 2022, 11:23

Hope that last suggestion has been filed appropriately ;-)

Rick, 10th June 2022, 22:54

I don't bother answering that any more. People who ask why I'm not on FB or T simply won't understand why I eschew such social liabilities.    Additionally, a blog is a place where a person can go into as much detail as they feel like writing. FB and T are aimed at mindless soundbites and "sharing" pointless nuggets like your most recent Wordle score. So while there is overlap (both are things intended to communicate with an audience), they are in essence quite different. Like comparing "Panorama" with "You've Been Framed".

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