Rick's b.log - entry 2024/09/15

Larder v0.06

• Both the Exit program and Restart machine options accept the '.' key for alternative behaviour. This is to say:
  • Exit the program, or exit and restart the program
  • Restart the machine, or shutdown the machine
  
• As can be seen from the above, and below, screenshots, the submenus no longer toss you back to the main menu. You'll stay in the submenu until you press 0 to return to whence you came.
• There have also been some changes to the wording of some of the menu items for clarity.
  
• If, after entering a barcode and ending up at the Add/Delete/Inventory choice, you start to type in a date (any number), it will be assumed that you are adding a new item. This is because I habitually (bordering on pathologically) forget to press + first, and it's easier to fix the software than my brain. ☺
• When importing articles from the CSV file (barcodes/csv), if the article already exists then the name given will be compared with the current name, and if it is different then the name will be updated.
  This allows for an easy way to edit the article names - the software only allows 29 characters (a line of input) if entered as adding a new article, while the names can be up to 63 characters. It isn't recommended to make them too long, but sometimes an extra couple of characters, or editing typos, is useful.

Winter is coming

Yup, we're definitely on the arse-end of the year.

There is one good thing though. I was absentmindedly scrolling through stuff on Shein, to take a break from absentmindedly scrolling through stuff on BoredPanda, which itself was a break from absentmindedly scrolling through stuff on The Guardian...
...when I found a Halloween t-shirt that is absolutely me.

Like, boo, maybe?

Dead dehumidifier

Nothing.

I checked the power supply block, logical first thing to do. 9.35V. When the device is turned on, this drops and then comes back up. Okay, that's... odd.

Obviously this means screwdrivers will be involved.

The Peltier Effect device.

The dehumidifier worked when the Peltier block was disconnected, but not when it was connected. So I removed the heatsink from the thing and, well, it looks fine. Nothing burnt out, no signs of damage...

I hooked the block directly to the power supply and the voltage dropped to barely half a volt. Which is not fine.

The power supply is 9V at 2.5A. Not something I happen to have around. The best I could manage was 12V at 2A for running the previous Livebox.

Running fine from the other power supply.

I didn't want to run it for long, overvoltage and undercurrent, but the fan started and the Peltier block got notably colder, which pointed to the power supply being faulty.

More fool me for taking this apart in the kitchen, it shed crap all over the place so I stripped it right down and washed the casing. The constant passage of air makes it rather mucky, though astonishingly it wasn't that dirty inside.

The power brick is exactly 16:9 proportion.

The inside of the power brick was some icky glue-gunk. Sorry, life is too short to want to deal with that.
I ordered a multi-voltage power brick from Amazon that has a 3A capacity and various sorts of connector. One type of connector is two little screw terminals, so I can cut the cord off of the original power supply and wire it up to the replacement.

That dehumidifier is not available any more. There are other models, but they seem to be more expensive and/or more powerful. One says "Low energy consumption: <1kW". Seriously? I don't call that low!

I also noticed one claiming to be a wireless dehumidifier. Well, technically correct, it was a plastic box into which you put one of those bags of silica granules.

I think the capacity of mine is... hang on, let me actually go measure... half a litre. When the temperature in here is good, which is from late spring to late autumn, it can fill that in two days.
Unfortunately, I can't run the dehumidifier in the winter when it needs it, since it is cold in the house, something that drops 15-20 degrees... well... it freezes up.

Videos

I'm now going to go make myself some chicken tikka on rice. Rice from a packet, tikka from a jar, and chicken from, well, a chicken - but cleverly disguised as a squishy sand/caramel/fawn lump within a persian blue pack so you can disassociate from the fact that it is chunks of flesh from a dead bird.
The tikka sauce, Pataks, looks to be a lovely sienna umber.
And I trust you know what white colour rice is. Clue in the name. Yes! That's right. It's "rice". ☺ No, seriously, that's an actual colour name. It's sort of between baby powder and merino. Or... rice coloured. It's doubly amusing in that the basmati that I'll be eating is quite close to white, jasmine rice is darker, parboiled long grain (think Uncle Ben's) is almost goldenrod but the semi-translucent shininess reminds me more of tooth enamel, and then there's red (more like cinnamon), black (which isn't, it's closer to dark chocolate), and wild (slightly darker than 'black' so maybe espresso?).

Sorry... got a bit carried away there. The kettle boiled many minutes ago, so I'd better toddle off and make this happen...

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A tree-dwelling mammal, 17th September 2024, 20:57

It's getting chilly here in the mornings too. For the last few days my heating has been coming on for half an hour, at least until the sun comes up and warms everything up again, then it turns off.    You can't call it "Uncle Ben's" any more. It's now "Ben's Original". Because apparently "Uncle Ben's" isn't woke enough. (I still call it Uncle Ben's and balls to wokery.)

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