Rick's b.log - 2023/05/15
It is the 1st of May 2024 You are 3.149.254.35, pleased to meet you!

Vide grenier

...and returned at twenty to eleven, and put €100 back into piggy.

To say that the vide grenier was lousy would be quite the understatement.

Things of potential interest. There was a little generator, around 600W or so. I heard the guy asking a hundred euros. Really? Twenty euros more can get you a new one from Amazon.
There was also a Philips bread maker (not unlike this) but the vent holes were full of crap. I just walked on, I don't want to know how it got in that state, and it's rather a surprise that the owner didn't think to clean it.

I remember this vide grenier well. It was a nice day last year (though a fair bit warmer, 26°C) so I decided that I'd take a drive to Big Town to get a burger.
It didn't go well.
So it's now been a year since my last dose of fast food.

I did get something. I found a DVD pack of Killing Zoe, which I sort of remember as a weird bank-heist-goes-horribly-wrong that I watched ages ago on, I think, Channel 4.

So I picked up the DVD.
Ten euros.
I put it back. The guy starts telling me that it is "rare". Everything old is "rare" these days. I rolled my eyes and told him I could download it.
He asked why don't I. So I told him my internet is slow, it's a hassle, and I don't need to watch this film that badly. It's just something I remember from when I was a teenager (actually, I think I'd have been 20 or 21 when it was released (mmm, Julie Delpy...), but this guy was annoying me so I thought I'd rub it in as he was a fair bit older than me).
Okay, eight, then.
No thank you.
What then?.
I shrugged and said I'll give you a fiver.
Putain de merde! (beat) Alright then, five.

Killing Zoe DVD set.

I had all the power in that negotiation as I was interested, but not that interested. Walking away wouldn't bother me.
It also helps to be an introvert with little in the way of emotional response when going to vide greniers. It's harder to read somebody whose default (and pretty much only) setting is somewhere between "meh" and "whatever".

There are three discs. The film, the "Director's Cut", and a bunch of supplements. The internet tells me the Director's Cut runs exactly 157 seconds longer, and it's just some of the violence and drug use tamed down to avoid an R rating in America because wah.
For example, at 92m02s-92m03s, it is described as "Zoe screams a bit longer" (duration: 1 sec). 🤦

Beans!

Sowing the beans.

Actually, I placed one bean every foot-length along, and then went back and filled in between each. You don't think I'm actually going to mess around measuring 7cm do you? Life's too short. It's "close enough".

The first things sown.

The two lines are the two rows of beans. I wasn't counting how many beans were actually sown, I'm just going to pluck a figure out of my arse and say "25 or so" in each row.

The wet patch to the left, I found some of my shallots starting to sprout in the bag they were stored in, so, okay, I'll whack some into the ground and see what happens.
I mean, what's the worst that could happen?

Well... I guess if the shallots become sentient and start crawling around in the night poking a poison stinger into people to kill them... that might be "the worst", especially if it means that I am responsible for the extinction of humanity rather than, say, the 45^th and 47^th POTUS...
However, given that sentient psycho shallots are more alliteration than reality, I don't think I need to lose sleep over this scenario.

The sunny part to the back has been left for the tomatoes as it gets more sun and tomatoes kind of appreciate the big glowing cancer-ball.
And the part in the foreground has been left for now. I have nothing planned, but might think of something. It's also a weedier patch, having been turned less than the rest (it's where the big fence posts were until I got around to removing them and the bits of barbed wire).

Washing the car

Step one: Lather up.

The instructions for the car say that you should not use a pressure washer. That's probably because parts of the bodywork are pieces of plastic glued in place. So I'm doing everything very delicately.

The soap, by the way, is lemon dishwashing liquid diluted 50% with water. It's what I always use, as I figure if it's good for stuff like Teflon pans, it'll be okay on a car. Plus it's a decent degreaser to get the crap off the windscreen.

Step two: Scrub well.

I am showing you the brush as it's probably more interesting than a picture of me using it. The outer ring of bristles doesn't move. A jet of water (from the handle) sprays against a ring of plastic paddles. This causes the ring to rotate, and it's connected via gears to the inner set of bristles that rotate. The inner set doesn't rotate particularly quickly, but there's enough torque behind them that they can be used to clean a car. The ring won't stall at the slightest provocation.

Step three: Rinse.

The next step is to rinse well. Because of the "no pressure washer" thing, I am basically spraying a mist at my car.

Which leads to the final step...

Step four: Dry.

All in all, it was a good result. Setting up the pressure washer was fiddly, but once that was done, I felt that the brush did a better job than prior (using a big sponge). Also the use of a brush that spat out water and the final rinse prevented the formation of "drying marks" that would happen between passing the sponge and rinsing when doing it manually.
Finally, I feel that ultimately I actually used less water than when doing it by hand. Certainly, there seemed to be less on the ground.

Washing the rock

Washing the rock.

Everybody washes their rock...don't they? ☺

Transfer reasons

Does this count as trolling?

Lockwood & Co.

Your comments:

David Pilling, 17th May 2023, 12:45

TV antique programs, of which there are many insist on showing haggling - favourite is the one where they say "OK we'll toss for it, heads I'll pay you 5, tails 10".    On the generator, to quote Amazon:    maximum power: 780W, rated power 650W  NOTE: Do not connect electronic devices  Use: ‎Amateur    Still very good value.

Rick, 17th May 2023, 15:04

Yes, the power quoted in the blurb is usually "the thing can do this for a few microseconds without catching fire". A bit like the tortured maths to make my amplifier "800W" (my favourite part, they managed to get to 400W, then doubled it 'cos it's stereo!).    The note about electronic devices suggests to me that the engine is actually running a 12V alternator, and something solid state is stepping this up to ~240V, but doing so in a way that is decidedly not even remotely a sine wave.

David Pilling, 21st May 2023, 16:15

Rick - I agree with you, but the opposite can be true. Inverter-generators produce a cleaner sine wave than pure electro-mechanical ones.