Rick's b.log - entry 2024/09/07

When tastes can be difficult

The truth is twofold. Firstly, I don't eat much jam. The "bread" here is either stuff like baguettes and sliced "boules", all of which have a shelf life measured in hours, or a sort of bread-like concoction (Harry's) that has a shelf life of two or three weeks. There is, as far as I can determine, no functional equivalent to a Hovis loaf. But, then, with French culture being what it is, maybe that sort of bread just doesn't figure and Harry's makes an adequate replacement?
Thing is, Harry's is to bread what UHT is to milk. So it is pretty grim for putting jam on. Uusually I either toast it and cover it in marge, or I toast it and drop beans or soy noodles on top. Either way, it usually involves toasting.

And secondly, taken from my vast experience of eating yoghurts... how do I explain to somebody that strawberry is just about passable, raspberry is nice, but blackberry is horrible? Yes, I know, there's not a lot of difference between raspberry and blackberry. Except to me there is. It's not a taste thing, I don't think. More a texture thing.
Likewise, peach is a "grit your teeth and bear it" while apricot is lovely. But it's not the taste as sometimes I eat tinned peaches but have yet to try tinned apricot (no, I don't know why I've never tried). Maybe the combination of yoghurt and peach is offputting? Maybe in that combination it's too sweet even for me? I don't know.

As for jellies? Smooth and gloopy. Not unlike the snot that runs down the back of your throat when the allergies pop in to say hello.

As for pasta sauces... my usual approach is "just don't". I'm not overly keen on tomatoes, but there is a sauce I like that is chicken bolognaise. Something I used to appreciate was that it was one of the few sauces that didn't have tomato skins inside. Sadly, as the economy has turned to suck, this has changed and now the sauce has skins. Which means I eat less of it than I used to, what you see in the photo below will do me for a good long time.
I also quite like the consistency and taste of carbonara sauce. I wish I had the skills to make my own because then I wouldn't waste time pulling out those awful pig bits. I could just make it without.
For these reasons, my usual way of serving myself pasta is "tossed in butter and some black pepper", or "no sauce".

Pasta sauces.

For other sauces (and ready meals), let's just say that green/yellow/red bell peppers are an instant turn-off. And courgettes. I quite like Mexican, but I eat very little as the stuff in the shops is usually stuffed with red pepper pieces. Just... NO.

For somebody who likes chocolate, and has to take psychological steps (usually looking at the price is enough!) to avoid purchasing Maltesers lest the packet disappear during the course of one movie, and who regularly buys multipacks of Mars...

...it might surprise you to know that I really do not like strong hot chocolate. For me, the perfect hot chocolate is hot milk with enough of a hint of chocolate as to be unmistakably chocolate. But not a drop more than that.

This is why it doesn't bother me to buy this product.

Expensive designer hot chocolate.

Running to a fiver for a box of ten sticks, it's an expensive product. But since I can get three or four (depending on whim and how much attention I'm paying) from a single stick, it's a much better proposition.
Now clearly the obvious answer is to buy a tub of the stuff. Well, they don't appear to do salted caramel flavour in tubs.

When I was younger, I used to get packs of instant noodles. I would open them up and toss the flavour sachets in the bin - nasty chemical concoctions. Then I would eat the noodles.
Dry. Like, straight out of the pack.
People would be like "no! you can't do that!". Why? It tastes like a slightly salty water biscuit with a pleasingly ruffled texture.

Oh, oops. The temptation was too much.

As you can see, this pack didn't survive the short temporal distance between being opened and being photographed. And beside me now as I write this...is an empty paper plate.
Don't worry about the "but it'll swell up in your tummy" that mom told me plenty of times. There is, of course, a mug of tea right here with me. And the possibility of the worms swelling up is more than enough justification for another cuppa.

Not that tea needs any more justification, mind you, than "it exists therefore...". ☺

The new drain

He will be bringing a generator with him, as he asked me if I had an accessible outside plug. I said no, they're only three phase. Afterwards I remembered that there's the extension lead that I hook my car into, but then I'm doing the washing right now so I don't know if I'll have the lead plugged in when he comes.
You see, it's a short (two metre) extension lead with a massive 16A plug on one end, and a regular 16A socket on the other (picture about halfway down). This was originally for the washing machine, but is now also shared with the car, that's via a secondary 10 metre 16A extension lead.
As the car draws 2.2kW and the washing machine maybe 2.5kW (heater plus motor), the whole setup has been made to cater for 3.6kW (that is to say, 16A × 230V), which means there's plenty of headroom.

Anyway, no use if not plugged in. So better he brings his own means of running the cement mixer. I'm sure he'll have lots of fun with the outside tap getting the water. Let's just say that the water pressure is low enough that I often have to go and press the "Start" button on the washing machine when it tries to tell me it isn't filling. Yeah, it is, but really slowly.

Here are some photos.

The new drain, as seen from the house.

The new drain, as seen from the outflow end.

A tidied ditch to carry the water to the pond/stream/swamp.

My new "art installation", a huge slab of concrete.

I have told him to go ahead and make the concrete flush with the driveway surface. I had planned to use the "goudron a froid" (cold bitumin?) as a final layer so it would look less concretey and more like a driveway repair, but given that the stuff is something like thirty euros for a 20kg tub that does not provide much coverage, we're looking at, well, a lot in order to resolve an issue that is purely aesthetic. If it really bothers me, I'm sure I can throw together a scree out of cement with maybe some sort of colouring in it and paint that on top...

As for the repair stuff? I used one bucket for repairs. Actually, I used pretty much an entire bucket on this one repair.

Foot for scale, because I don't have a banana handy.

The other bucket I'm keeping as, well, I think the above repair may need a second layer. But you can't put too much down at once. Plus, of course, there are other places that need to be patched up.

Health and Safety GONE MAD!

At work we use "veterinary gloves". These are single-use disposable plastic (polyethylene) gloves that cover not only the hands, but also most of the arm (85cm). They are good for putting on to mix up chocolate cream and the like, because when you're talking tens of litres, a whisk isn't going to be any use. You need to chuck and arm in there and give it some effort.
Obviously that's a euphemism, as severing the arms of employees to throw into the preparation is an entirely different set of health and safety issues.

For this, we have a product from Bobet Materiel, a French company that does all sorts of work equipment for the food processing industry.

The packaging of the long gloves has changed, and now there are extra little pictograms on the pack.

This is a joke, right?

Bearing in mind that these are disposable plastic gloves, let's look at those odd little symbols from left to right:

• Do not wash.
• Do not bleach.
• Do not tumble dry.
• Do not iron.
• Do not dry clean.
• Flammable

Do. Not. Iron. Do. Not. Freaking. Iron. It's a plastic glove!

If people are so damned stupid they need to be told not to iron a disposable plastic glove, shouldn't there be a "do not eat" symbol somewhere? Choking hazard? Keep out of reach of children and impressionable adults? Do not use for kinky sex? Do not use as a strangulation device? Is not an inflatable banana. Etc etc...

What goes on in my head

Musk, never one for overstating anything, is quoted as having said "Maybe in five years from now, we might be at a megabit, faster than any human could possibly communicate by typing or speaking.".

The article then says According to Musk, the technology could vastly increase the bandwidth of human-to-human communication?assuming, of course, the humans in question had received the Neuralink implant.

In the comments, I said this:

the technology could vastly increase the bandwidth of human-to-human communication
 
No, absolutely not. There's a ridiculous amount of shit that goes on in my brain, and thankfully the slowness of speech (or typing) allows it to fall into something vaguely resembling order.
 
If you're neurotypical, direct communication with a neurodivergent will be like watching a movie at the wrong speed with the entire movie randomly and frequently switching to something else that might not be in the same language. It may even be movies in the plural going on concurrently.
 
And God help you if you connect to my brain when I'm trying to go to sleep. My stupid lump of grey matter takes that time to try to think of everything at the same time, how I wish I was one of those people that could look at a pillow or count sheep and be asleep in minutes, not hours. Assuming it's not one of those nights where I just stare at where the wall would be (in the dark) all bloody night...
 
Us neurodivergents will DDoS you hard. We won't mean to, that's just how our (I hope it's not just me!) brains function. We're used to the chaos. You.....really won't be.
 
So please allow me to apologise in advance. Go pop the kettle on, dear, we'll both need copious amounts of tea afterwards to get over the shock.

In a reply to that, Anon the mouse said:

ND to ND communication at high speed will make those turns in conversation so rapid that the NTs won't have a chance of understanding what's going on after a few seconds.
 
I'd love to see them struggle to comprehend what's happening when the bandwidth increase allows effective info dumping in seconds instead of 20+ minutes. They'll think matrix "I know kung fu", when in reality it's more like "I know the mating habits of Atlantic deep sea creatures that live near volcanoes"

He gets it.

So if you wonder why I start projects that you never hear about again, or stuff doesn't get done, or... that's what it's like in my head. It's a wonder I'm even able to function as a passable approximation of a human being.

The thunder is getting a little close, so I'm going to upload this, then go put the kettle on.

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A tree-dwelling mammal, 7th September 2024, 19:15

As I type this on the laptop, I'm actually watching a David Attenborough documentary about the mating habits of Atlantic deep sea creatures. Not sure if they live neear volcanoes or not, but a few minutes before he was in Iceland standing in front of an erupting volcano.

David Pilling, 8th September 2024, 01:28

Apricots - fresh ones are bland. Cooked (as in jam) they have a lot of flavour. Tinned are in the middle.  I always thought jam (UK)== jelly (USA) and jelly (UK) == jello (USA).  Episode of Poirot where a clue is that all varieties of English potted meat taste the same.

Gavin Wraith, 8th September 2024, 13:05

Poor Rick. Your food hangups are on a par with mine, though different. For me too texture is as important as taste. I dislike 'squirge': mayonnaise, mustard, custard, most sauces. I dislike the taste of dill, balsamic whatever, and garlic, especially the puree'd variety, impossible to avoid in supermarket ready-to-eat goods. I like rice, but it has to be grain-separate, as in a good biryani, not squirgy like risotto. I used to love Indian food, but it has changed since my youth - too much yoghurty squirge. I suppose my tastes were formed when I was young and have not changed, but the world has. Going out to restaurants is an ordeal, unless they are swish enough to cater to my whims.

jgh, 8th September 2024, 13:56

Mmmmm blackberries. 'Tis the season. I've had almost 3kg foraging in the brambles in the last few weeks. Just yesterday I got the last 120g from the bushes at the bottom of the garden. Though I sometimes get odd looks from people when I'm balanced on a wall with a bucket clasped in my teeth and grabbing branches with my finglogerer.

Rick, 8th September 2024, 20:57

Well, lucky I got the drain sorted.    Yesterday, a thunderstorm and relentless heavy rain from around 4pm until midnight. 🥺    Then it settled down to "just raining". It's still going... 😐

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