Rick's b.log - entry 2024/10/05

A week in the making

I'm now doing eight hour days as it's our run-up to Christmas. So it's like an extra day per week and, well, I'm covering a lot more with the industrial washing up due to absences, illness, blah blah. Doesn't really matter why, it just matters that come the end of the day I don't really have much more energy than that required to listen to Epic Rock Radio and drinking a big mug of tea while thinking that I really ought to do this or that, but procrastination is easy isn't it?
That being said, on Thusday evening I did get the grass cut, so I'm pleased with that. Even more pleased the wheel didn't fall off.

Nine

My mark? A nine. 9.

Why nine?

Well, if you recall your binary, you'll know that the rightmost digit represents the ones, the next-to-right the twos, and doubling with each position to the left, like this:

So if you do your dates big-endian with the year at the start, the month and day is 10/01, which if we treat this as binary would be like this:

This means there's a one and an eight. Added together, this is nine.

But it gets even better. If you do your dates in little-endian format, then it's this:

A two and a four is six, which is a nine inverted.

Oh, and it'll even work for the American weird-endian dates, but the least said about that bizarreness, the better. ☺

Tidying up my mobile browser

So this is why it took forever to scroll the list...

I'd bet a good third were Google searches because it opens the result in a new tab, a third were things from TVTropes that I intended to read "later", and the other third were things from BoredPanda that, likewise, I was going to read "later".

Marte still working

Because of the wonky wheel, I was only planning to do a track down to my little furball and back, because the cold autumn mornings put a lot of dew on the grass.

And, well, the grass was starting to get a little out of hand down there around Anna, and the Western Wilderness was starting to look like it was thinking about being Wilderness again and...

Mowing and listening to "Symphony of Pain" by Mono Inc.

...two and a half hours later, everything except the potager had been done. The potager, the "veg garden" across from the house, is semi-wild to attract birds, and the trees and such make it rather complicated to cut. I might do it with the little mower some time vaguely soonish.

This picture makes the wonky wheel look deceptively normal.

Art becomes reality

Sadly, this isn't fiction. There was indeed a Satanic Panic back in the days of the King James Bible, helped along massively by the phrase "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" (Exodus 22:18), which in turn led to the creation of the Malleus Maleficarum (the "Hammer of Witches") and all of the nastiness that men perpetrated upon women.

For what it is worth, Exodus 22 has other nastiness, such as:

• Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.
• He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the LORD only, shall be utterly destroyed.

Then there's this lovely pair, also in Exodus 22:

• And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife.
• If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins.

Yes, folks, the bible says that you can go screw an unmarried girl then claim her as your wife, and if he father objects, he has to pay you.

The mind boggles.

Anyway, back to the witches. It's a real thing that happened and these days various academics think that it may have all been down to a mistranslation, that what was actually meant was "poisoner". You see, back in the ancient days (like Mesopotamia where all this religion stuff started), poisoners used herbal concoctions. As did women who were healers, so the words for each - based upon the use of herbs - is similar.
But then there is a certain category of men, colloquially known as Republicans, who believe that the only women worthy are the ones they dominate, and so it was a fairly easy link between a minor mistranslation of something that is almost jarringly out of context with the rest of the chapter, and screaming "WITCHES!!!!".

Thus, it has come to pass that a group of women in The Netherlands are campaigning for a national monument to "witches". The story in The Guardian, though I'm not sure I agree with calling these people "Dutch feminists". Is it really "feminist" to want to remember how some seventy thousand innocent women were murdered - mostly burned alive - in the years 1613-1614 at the height of the witch trials?

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this, for me, is that while the Bible absolutely condemns witches and sorcery, it is itself a massive tome of occult practices. The symbolism and numerology is off the scale, to the point where I just need to write "666" and you'll have an idea of what that refers to. There's divination, endless incantations (right down to "The Lord's Prayer"), prophecies, visions, the use of incense, candles, ridiculous amounts of astrology (and basing several religious events upon the movements of astrological bodies), not to mention those who go in for the transubstantiation.
In fact, one might see mass as a group ritual, a group of people gather together. They light candles, maybe some smelly stuff, and then read from an ancient book and chant specific proscribed words. How is this really that different to a coven where a group gathers to light candles, maybe some smelly stuff, and then read from an ancient book and chant specific proscribed words?
This is, of course, taken up to eleven with the Catholics who, as part of their elaborate ceremony, eat the flesh and drink the blood of Christ...or God...or... the Holy Trinity makes no sense.
Whatever, point is, the Bible describes a set of mystical magical practices that has the chutzpah to condemn mystical magical practices.

In A Kind Of Spark, Addie got her wish. I hope these women get theirs too.

Concrete

But...

Smooth concrete.

More smooth concrete.

Looks good, doesn't it? So when that has fully set (he said I can't drive on it until Monday) the drain work will be complete.
Of course, the downside is I'll need to pay him the outstanding... what was it, about €650ish? Meaning the whole thing cost me around 2.5K, but it's done. It's sorted. And that huge pipe looks like it ought to cope with whatever sudden cloudburst arrives.

Actually, the primary reason that the cave flooded is because the previous drain was blocked. Even though silly amounts of water were pouring across from the neighbour's land drains, it didn't back up as far as the house. The flooding is because loads spilled up along the driveway and since that part is lower than the level of the driveway, it had nowhere to go.
With this new pipe, that shouldn't be an issue, it'll just go through to the other side and away.

So in the myriad of soucis (worries), this is a box that I can tick as completed.

Car running costs

My two-month bills used to be around €65 or so. Slightly more in winter, less in summer. Unfortunately EDF were asleep at the wheel so the whammies of Covid and the gas crisis with Russia and the ensuing inflation have caused prices to skyrocket, which is rather inexcusable given that they claim something like 80% nuclear. However, it turns out that rather too many nuclear stations were closed for cleaning or fixing or whatever. I'm sure it's the usual excuse that the higher level managers preferred bonuses rather than investing in infrastructure because, meh, what could go wrong?
Well, since 2020, a lot. And now we're looking at the possibility of a major conflict in the Middle East. World Wars have kicked off over less.

The government applied a price cap of 4%, but thanks to various excuses, this simply wasn't respected, I think my bill has gone up by a third in the last year alone.
Unfortunately, pay hasn't gone up that much so in real terms we're a lot worse off (in what our money can buy) compared to 2019. And now Israel might drop ordinance on some of Iran's oil refineries. Like that won't have effects on oil barrel prices...

Electricity use over the past year.

As you can see, my car adds around 40 units (compared to the same time last year). This makes sense, as a rough rule of thumb is that it takes an hour to charge a quarter of the battery, which roughly equates as a day's commute; and each hour of charge consumes two units.
This isn't exact as the charge is 2.2kW and it takes a little less than an hour, but it's close enough to work as an approximation.
There are about 19-21 working days in the month depending on where the weekends fall, so assume 20.
Twenty charges times two kilowatts is... forty. Which is more or less what can be seen from the above diagram.

Which means that with the average price per unit of €0,38/kWh (that's what I pay, calculated as bill divided by units used), "fuelling" my car costs about €15 a month.
That's rather less than the diesel that I was dumping in, which at the end (those price rises I was talking about) would be around €18ish every ten (working) days, or about twice what it costs to run electric.

This will, of course, change in the winter months. Because on a combustion engine, all of the heating is free as a side effect of the cooling system, but in an electric car the heater runs from the main battery and takes quite a lot of power - potentially more than the motor. I had the heater on for about five minutes at the start and another couple of minutes mid-journey and the effect of less than ten minutes of heating was... evident in battery consumption. It was 3.5°C that morning. When winter comes along, I may need to heat for longer, if no reason other than to keep the windscreen clear. The heater is reasonably capable, but... power hungry. If I need to heat the entire journey (I hope not!), then it could easily double consumption, which would remove the difference between electric and combustion.

You know, there are apparently models with air conditioning. I can't even imagine...

More bramble whacking

This is what I decided to do.

Brambles. It's always brambles.

Which became this.

Eat dirt, Rubus scum!

I would have liked to go further back, but there were traps and tripwires. I've propped one up so I can see it. Two more (at least) run along ground level, and I'm not sure where they're going so...

Can you see the tripwire?

The Joy of Pasta

Well, basically it's because I'm me and I'm weird.

☺

Let's look at some pasta meals I've made recently.

Generally they start in the same way. There's an assortment of pasta. I pretty much exclusively use Barilla pasta because it has a pleasing set of textures and it tastes nice. Yes, pasta has a taste. If you disagree, you're either drowning it in sauce or you're using some cheap crap brand made from terrible quality flour.

How many types can you see?

This goes into water and gets boiled. Often there's a chicken stew stock cube added for a little bit of pizazz.
It's supposed to be vigorously boilede in loads of water. This is horrific in terms of energy and water use, so I tend to cook in a much smaller amount of water, so that there's little to strain off at the end. I believe this is known as the "Neapolitan method" but Googling that only shows me lots of recipies for Neapolitan sauce. This little-water method works a lot better if you're adding flavours to the pasta, such as stock cubes or herbs, as more is absorbed into the pasta.

Cooking pasta isn't an interesting picture, is it?

The pasta is then gently tossed in butter (specifically President Doux), some black pepper is added, and some parmesan sprinkled on top... but I need to be in the mood for parmesan.

Niiiiice.

Here is a meal I sometimes do when I'm being lazy. It is two pieces of salmon in a white onion sauce (frozen, ten minutes in the microwave) on a plate with a pouch of Ebly on one side and pouch of little macaroni on the other (both together, two minutes in the microwave). The macaroni isn't as good as making it fresh, but it's a lot quicker. Ebly is... like boiled wheat pieces, so I think of this as a sort of "before and after" meal. Ebly is what wheat is before it is ground to flour, the flour that one makes pasta from.

Passable...just.

Here's keeping it simple, just a bowl of buttered penne rigate.

Penne, butter, pepper.

Here's another. These are not the same meal.

Penne, butter, pepper. Again.

This is what happens when penne is mixed with the contents of a Mississippi Belle Macaroni Cheese pack to bulk it out (as I'm a pig). This isn't ideal, because the little macaroni and the penne cook at different speeds, so the macaroni is overdone by the time the penne is ready. I'll need to fiddle around the next time I make it to get the timing right.

We all live in a yellow penne piece...

Here are the salmon pieces and their sauce on top of a mixture of penne, mafaldine, and trigetelli. Plenty of pleasing textures there.

This is a nice combination.

Here are the salmon pieces (yes, I get these a lot - and specifically it is Pacific salmon (wild), not Atlantic (farmed) salmon, so it has a mild taste) on a bed of farfalle. This was wonderful to eat, but a bit of a pain in the arse chasing the farfalle around the plate.

It's the bow ties!

The other day, I said I had settled on lamb and linguine. Here it is.

It took forever to nicely cook the lamb.

Since this is basically just pasta porn by this point, let's have a totally gratuitous look at the linguine. This is my idea of perfect comfort food, and it's making me hungry to the point where this is exactly what I'm going to cook once I've written this. A nice plate of linguine, just like this one, only without the meat as I didn't buy any - always a solid reason.

Linguine FTFW!

Analysis of textures in a meal

How many different types can you spot?

Just take a moment to appreciate the reflections from the gentle buttering. This is so sublime it hurts, and that dusting of pepper, oh my effing god! I can quite literally smell, taste, and feel that just looking at the picture. I'm hungry, this is self-inflicted cruelty.

The first thing, the spectacularly obvious piece of farfalle.
Farfalle has a ridged edge, with a tucked middle that is just lovely to poke apart with the tongue. For added bonus, the middle is harder than the sides, making for a great piece of pasta to eat. This is like the New Zealand of pasta pieces.

Farfalle.

Next is the penne, firm and with a deeply ridged outside. The word "penne" comes from the Latin for feather, because the pasta is cut diagonally like a quill, and "rigate" means ridged. Exactly what this is, and it's a real tongue fascinator turning this over before chewing.

Penne rigate.

Then we come to the complex shape of the trigatelli. This is a type designed by Barilla that, sadly, does not appear to be available in the UK (it's not listed on the UK version of their website). Being rough-drawn through a bronze mould, it has the same deep ridging as the penne and a shape that's a real tongue teaser. Take a moment to appreciate how well it is holding the melted butter.

Trigatelli.

Now we come to the long pieces. The first of these is mafaldine, which is like a wide tagliatelli with ruffled edges. Because it is fairly thin, this is slightly overcooked when done like this. This is not a bad thing.

Mafaldine.

The reason that it is okay that the mafaldine is slightly overcooked is because the linguine is cooked to al dente perfection and it is lovely and firm and is the perfect texture combination with the mafaldine.

Linguine.

Alternating what I choose (no specific order) gives both my mouth and my eyes plenty of sensory information to enjoy. The shapes, the design, the textures. I hope this description has given a hint at the sheer joy that this brings to my life. Screw chocolate. Screw sex. Screw driving a fast car. Just give me a plate of pasta shapes and I'll be more than satisfied. Just don't ruin it by drowning it in tomato slime.

What about fresh pasta? I don't make it myself as it's too much bother. I did look at the Philips pasta maker machine, which looks really nifty, but a combination of high price and seemingly being somewhat fragile plus a real bastard to clean, put me off. I could make the dough in the bread maker and pass the pasta through my roller-cutter thing, but again it's a labourious process. If I didn't have a job taking huge chunks of my life, I might mess around with making pasta (though the roller is only capable of doing two widths, you'd need an extruder for actual shapes).
I do sometimes buy a bag of premade fresh tagliatelle from the supermarket. Here is a bag of it that was reaching expiry date, and I had some cheese slices that also needed to be used or discarded. Solution? Cook the pasta and melty-melty the cheese on top. Why not?

Cheddar, of course.

A closer look at fresh pasta.

Here's a final picture.

Ahhhh.... <sigh>

Yes, you just looked at twenty photos of pasta. Now I'm off to make some to not only look at, but consume. Oh, yes.

PS: Apparently every autistic person is supposed to have this peculiar interest that they won't shut up about. I think we might have just found mine. It's more practical and useful than the mating habits of Atlantic deep sea creatures that live near volcanoes. ☺

Update: This is what I've just gone and made. This, this right here, this is peak happiness.

Bon app, y'all!

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David Pilling, 5th October 2024, 23:34

soucis I thought they were mice, a worry all the same.  Did you pick the berries before wacking the brambles.  ordinance is sometimes confused with ordnance  concrete pipe looks good  Interesting to read about the economics of the ev - I guess more people will be working them out. You can optimise things, like turn off the heater when near the destination. Warm up the car on ground power - although that would cost you as much in the above way of looking at things.  EU tariffs on evs (upto 45%), which regardless of the arguments about who pays tariffs and if they do any good (depriving people of cheap goods) will push up ev prices. Your car may be gaining in value.    According to the BBC, average ev price in the UK is £48K (!). ev sales in the EU fell by 43% since last year.

Rick, 6th October 2024, 09:24

Ordnance - yes 🤦🏻‍♀️    Unfortunately it's not my car. It belongs to Aixam Finance which is a division of CA Auto Bank.    I can't help but think that high prices and the overall lack of range may be contributing factors. For an ICE car driving to Cornwall on holiday from, say, London or thereabouts is not a difficult journey, just zip along the M3 until near Andover, then the A303/A30 the rest of the way.  Alternatively M4 to Bristol, M5 to Exeter, then pick up the A30 for the rest (but that's a crappy boring route). About 250 miles.    It is also a particular concern when power cycling the battery (that is to say, giving it a full charge rather than top ups) is necessary. If you don't normally drive that far, then your car will have less and less potential range until the battery is low enough to warrant the full charge.    Add to this the fact that the batteries are wearing out, it's a natural fact of the technology, which may present issues in the future (far reduced range, cost of replacement) which may have an effect on selling the car as used.  I don't think the used EV market is mature enough to be able to say.   Likewise, I don't think the EV market in general is mature enough to say what effect it will have on the environment compared to the known effects of ICE ones. I can foresee new and replacement batteries soon carrying a stiff premium to help cover the costs of stripping down used batteries for material recycling.    Unless we're willing to give up the relative freedoms that we currently enjoy (which would mean a far far better public transport service, especially in neglected rural areas), a hybrid vehicle may be the better option at the current time.    Certainly I think the plans to get rid of combustion engines "real soon now" are both misguided and miscalculated. Far too premature for the state of EV technology and the expense of the cars in general.    As to why sales fell? I can think of two reasons. The first is that the early adopters already have EVs and those who aren't convinced still aren't convinced. The second reason is the extraordinary lead times. I did not get the car I ordered because they weren't sure if could even deliver it this year. Now it might have been a wheeze to shift an older model, but it is perfectly believable when Citroën told me, regarding the Ami, order now and it'll be available in about a year and a half. A woman it work has an EV and she had to wait several months (more than predicted) for it. So people who might be thinking but not sure will be "screw this, I'll just get a regular car that's here right now".    In other words, not so much a burst bubble as a simple failure to meet demand. But, then, one can keep a petrol car on the forecourt and if it isn't driven for a few months, no big deal (so long as the battery is disconnected or the radio/locking will eventually run it down), but an electric car? It'll need periodic charging to keep the battery in good condition. This is likely why EVs are made to order rather than being stocked, but life can be unpredictable, few are going to want to put down money on a car that *may* be available in *random* months from now.

David Pilling, 6th October 2024, 12:25

I looked at local Vauxhall dealer, handful of nearly new evs available right now, cost just over 20K. Range 200 miles - which makes your point about 250 miles. Laws are coming to force people to buy evs, if they want a new car.  But I have encountered people who have had to wait a long time to get the ev they wanted. Probly the same if you want an IC car of a particular spec. like colour.

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