Rick's b.log - entry 2024/11/16

More frozen stuff

More fozen struff.

The chili cheese nuggets, which are fairly mild so I dip them in Heinz chili sauce, were on special offer so I got several packets. I also pushed out the boat and got some strawberry meringue ice cream. I don't know when I'll actually eat it, given that the temperature nosedived when the fog ended.

In the meat section is a big bag of chicken nuggets. Okay, it's 65% meat and 35% wrapping, and of the meat, 21% is chicken and 12% is turkey, which leaves 32% (the larger portion) as "don't read the ingredients too closely". But, then, there's something like fifty nuggets (a kilogram, if I remember correctly) and it was €5,79. Okay, it's not going to be the greatest for that price. In fact, it probably counts as "barely edible", but hey... a spin in the air fryer tiny-intense-convection-oven and dipped in chili sauce, they were okay.

On Thursay, I made British-style battered cod, chips, and chili cheese balls. I say "made", it was more "throw everything in the air fryer and shake a few times". With Sarsons and ketchup.

Yup, good old fish&chips.

Yesterday, sorry. Between coming home late (went shopping), then sorting out the rubbish and walking it up the lane (car was on charge) and working on Tea, I thought it was quarter past nine. It was quarter past ten. So I threw nuggets and cheese balls into the air fryer and fifteen minutes later all that was needed was a hearty squirt of chili sauce and I could go to bed and... I would like to say "watch Netflix" but pretty much after finishing that, I was like "stuff it" and went to bed.

Lame but quick.

You're probably wondering "where are the beans?" (actually, you're probably thinking "when did this turn into Instragram?" ☺) Well, it seems that something in Heinz beans is now causing a bad reaction. My mouth gets all prickly, and after a few hours it's painful to swallow as if my throat has swollen up. Now I can't see anything in the ingredients that would cause a problem, actually Heinz beans are surprisingly not full of additives. I wonder if there's something undisclosed in there to help keep the flavour while reducing the sugar, like stevia? I know I can't tolerate stevia. Anyway, it's weird given that I would describe myself as a "beans on toast" kind of person, and god knows that it was a large part of my childhood diet both at home and in places like The Little Chef. But, alas, I think I have to accept that beans and I are no longer compatible. <shrug>

And before anybody suggests it, no I have not tried a different brand. It's not like I can pop into a Waitrose and pick up a different sort of beans.

Mower bodge

I did take out the little mower, but the moment I squeezed the handle to go, the handle went limp and Pig refused to move.

The cable that pulled the lever that tightened the drive belt that made the mower move, had snapped. It was a recycled bicycle brake cable, as the original part gave up many years ago and I cobbled together a fix.
I didn't have a spare brake cable as I used it with Marte when the cable that pulled the level that tightened the belt that made the blades spin snapped.

It was chilly, I needed tea, and I wanted to get this done. So I bodged together something using an old piece of baling twine.

A mower bodge - handle end.

It's a bodge, but it's one that I'm quite proud of. By taking the twine and wrapping it around the end of the handle, if I grip the handle and the twine, it will tighten and pull the lever that tightens the drive belt that makes the mower move. And I can keep hold of both handles all the time.

But, alas, plastic baling twine that runs against metal is not going to last long. Here is the other end after mowing the driveway, about a kilometre all in and a straight run with no complications. Much more and it would have snapped (that's why there's so much around the handle, carrying extra).

A mower bodge - business end.

Never mind, it worked for as long as it needed to. Successful bodge.

Bread

I paid more attention to my bread this time around. The process is as follows:

• Wait - get up to working temperature
• First intense mix
• First rising
• Second intense mix, first half
• Beeping partway through for adding stuff like nuts or grains.
• Second intense mix, second half
• Second rising
• Brief pulse mix
• Beeping to tell the human that it's time to remove the paddles
• Third rising
• Baking
• Beeping to tell the human that it is done
• Keep-warm for an hour

The first and second risings don't do much. Maybe it's more to get everything up to working temperature?
When I remove the paddles, I rearrange the dough so it is a flat layer in the pan rather than a big lump around one of the paddles (or worse, smallers lumps around both paddles).
It seems that the third rising is the important one. That's where the bread stops being a squishy sticky mess and starts to look like actual bread. Maybe I should add another ten minutes to the rising time here? I've already added ten, so...

Bread.

I got myself a little bread bin from Lidl, so here's my fresh bread, sliced, in the bread bin. It's sitting on greaseproof paper, and the paper towel ball stuffed in on the right is to keep the bread closed and together. And, no, I don't much like crusts. So I've tweaked down the baking time in order to cook the bread but not so long that it started to make a hard crust.

Doing stupid things to doughnuts

Slicing a doughnut.

This is with the settings the same as the right hand side of the bread - a 9mm slice. As you can see, there's not a lot of jam in there. Jam austerity.

My next question, for the science of course, is how thin can one slice a doughnut? I was aided here in the doughnuts being industrial and shipped frozen, so it was about as far as possible from "light and fluffy".

Slicing a doughnut.

The answer is two millimetres using a domestic slicer from Lidl. It might be possible to go thinner with a sharper blade, faster rotation, frikkin' lasers, and so on. But with the equipment in hand, I could get it down to 2mm. Less than that, the pieces would tear.
And, yes, of course I rolled some up like pastrami. I bet you didn't expect to see that done to a doughnut today. ☺

Of course, it made an unholy mess, and needed some intensive cleaning to get jam out of awkward places. By intensive, I mean...

Slicer motor.

No, don't worry, I didn't get jam in the motor. But I had to undo that part in order to access a place where two bits of plastic met and jam oozed in between.
To be honest, that part of the design seems to be difficult to clean. I wonder how it would fare after repeated use slicing cheese, ham, etc.
That being said, I'm not sure that dinky motor is powerful enough to decently do ham. But bread? It slices bread nicely.

Medicine cabinet

Thankfully I found my old drill. This is a basic mains powered one. Zero frills, there's an on and off button, no speeds. But, but, it has a hammer function. This made light work of punching into the stuff covering the wall. Concrete, plaster, who knows. Maybe even into the rock, though I doubt that. At any rate, it was simple to make holes for the little plastic plugs.

The box, mounted on the wall.

Looking inside...

Inside the box.

No, I'm not addicted to paracetamol. Efferalgan is a type of paracetamol (500mg) that you put directly into your mouth and it dissolves. It's a pretty unpleasant taste, but far better than crunching a regular paracetamol tablet.
Why do I do that? As awful as headache pills are, I find the taste of water to be worse.

Why are there seven boxes of them? Fourteen tubes of eight? Sixteen, actually given the two in front? Or 128 headache pills, which is a massive life-ending 64g of paracetamol? [maximum permitted dose is 4g/day spaced out across a 24h period; above 10g and you're getting into toxicity levels that will need medical intervention]
The reason is simple. I'm very introvert. Since I take paracetamol (responsibly!) at work, I find it is better to stock up with a few boxes those few times I go to the chemist, and then I don't need to go back for a while. That which you see in the photos expires in December 2026. I can't tell you how long it'll last, but I would guess at least this time next year.
However, my job is a lot more physical and I am not getting any younger, so... bits ache. Headaches are mostly dealt with by stuffing in a Mars bar (balancing my sugar levels is better than masking the problem with a pill) and other pains are masked with the pill. Remember, paracetamol doesn't fix anything, it just makes the pain signal go away. The hurt bit is still hurt, you just feel it less.

Originally the woman in the chemist wasn't particularly willing to sell me more than a couple of boxes. Being the place we go, she knows my and mom's history, so I simply pointed out that if I wanted to do something stupid there's a lot more interesting stuff in the drawer under mom's bedside table. And, of course, there is.
But, don't worry, I don't have any plans to off myself. I'm quite well aware of mortality. I'm quite well aware that being alive is both a blessing and a joke of celestial proportions. My inner goth wants to see how this shitshow that passes for reality ends up. I mean, Trump, twice. Reality has really fallen off the rails.

A brief bit of politics

The fact is simple. Trump, as big an arsehole as he is, was peddling hope. Sure, to a lot of us over here on the right side of the ocean, "Make America Great Again" sounds unbelievably crass. But just pick any "small town America" in any location (east coast, west coast, or in the vast middle) and plonk peg guy down in Streetview and I guarantee you won't get far before finding a massive flag flying from the front of somebody's house. It may be a patriotism delusion, but it's one that resonates with a lot of people. And it's pretty clear to see that "America" is severely broken, even if nobody agrees on how exactly that is.
So the idea of making it great again speaks to people. They'll overlook that Trump is an actual felon. They'll overlook that the Republicans are stripping women's rights away (because it will affect poor women more and who cares about them in a sickly capitalist society). They'll overlook that Trump's VP is a complete nutter. They'll do all of that because he is making the sorts of promises that they want to hear. Less of this costly eco shit. Bringing manufacturing home. Slapping on duties to stem the flow of cheap foreign crap. Made In America F**k Yeah!

The reality is he runs the risk of wrecking the fragile economy, severely harming international relations, and potentially setting the US on track to be increasingly less relevant in the world (something Britain is still in denial about post-Brexit). Prices will only go up, recession will hit, and so on.

But Trump made promises. Trump said an awful lot of bollocks, but it was patriotic bollocks. It was bollocks that people wanted to hear.

Harris, on the other hand, refused to distance herself from Biden, who by that point was far from popular. She was also fairly incapable of having anything that resembled a coherent policy or opinion. What's her stance on Gaza? <sounds of crickets> Okay, how about her stance on... oh, wait, is that tumbleweed blowing by?
Her stance on reproductive rights, however, was pretty clear. And, for the record, the only rational humane stance. But when the economy is a mess and people can't find work and...the less said about the disaster that is US healthcare the better...then oddly enough the rights of people to have an abortion are, well, just not at the top of the list for many voters. They want, you know, to eat, to have access to clean water, to not be bankrupted should they need to go to hospital. To be able to get a reliable job and not be abused by their employer, who being American, probably hates unions and will openly harrass anybody who tries to unionise. Oh, and they'd like their children to not get shot at school.
Like I said, a lot is broken in America. A lot needs fixed. Harris failed to convince that she had what it took. Trump... utterly does not have what it takes but amazingly that old orange sack of shit was a more credible candidate. Dangerous as hell both internally and internationally, but he talked a better game, he put on a better show, and he offered a better vision of hope.

For the Democrats to lose to somebody of his calibre twice. Once is embarrassing. Twice is nothing less than incompetence. Time for them to step away and let the adults into the room, assuming that there is even going to be a 2028 election. You never know with Trump, a beholden Republican Congress, and a beholden and blatantly corrupt right-wing Court. And look who he is lining his cabinet with.
You know those old black and white photos of Depression Era America? Well, maybe soon they'll be in colour...

The web today

• Work out how to decline cookies that might be set by hundreds and hundreds of scavengers.
• ...which includes turning off dozens of "Legitimate interest" options that are often on some sort of sub-page so you can't immediately see them. No, you are scum, you do not have legitimate anything to track me. Eff off or I'll legitimately put the pointy end of my pickaxe up your arses (cue that song by "Alestorm").
• Wait for the video advert to play before the video itself plays before there's the button to close the pop-up.
• ...of course, the first thing to have to do is find whatever it is that turns the damn sound off.
• Then close the widget that pops up telling you that the app is a better experience.
• ...and then switch to Desktop mode to stop the site degrading itself on purpose in order to push you to the app (Instagram is a big offender here, but then it's now owned by Meta which is run by the second biggest techwank after Leon...Lone...Olne...what's-his-name-let's-just-say-X)
• And then dismiss the widget begging for your email address so you can subscribe to even more never-ending crap.
• And then get rid of the AI widget that offers to help but can't understand the most basic questions.
• And then, finally, you get to look at the site only to discover that the rest is blurred out because <currency symbols>, usually in a "pay up or accept a total disrespect of privacy", so you pretty much wasted your time on that crap and you now hate the site with a renewed level of passion, until the next time and next site where you fall into this trap.

Some of this can be mitigated by using a browser with some decent add-ons. Firefox for Android (or a desktop machine) with Ghostery or UBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Consent-O-Matic, AdNauseum... and tweak the settings (no to third party cookies, etc).

But still, so much is tedious crap, and we all know that with or without permission, the bastards will still be tracking you. And since the EU is treacle-slow in getting anything done, more and more countries and more and more sites are now switching to a "pay up or say bye-bye to privacy" model, despite the EU courts ruling against that (namely, privacy is not for sale; yet all too often it totally is).

Of course, if you're using Chrome on Android, you're out of luck. It doesn't support add-ons, not to mention shenanigans like Manifest V3 which make it increasingly harder for content blockers to do their job.
But, then, this is what happens when one of the gatekeepers and technical developers of the modern internet makes money from advertising. Enshitification by design.

Christmas sweaters

Sweaters drying.

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jgh, 16th November 2024, 21:17

I've been trying to find a flight to Japan for Christmas. I last went in 2018, and I have no memories of it being hard to book a flight online. Now, I have to fight past popups, hints, pre-filled options, other crap, website just. Stopping. for no reason. I even ended up not just ising different browsers, but different frikking computers.    I am so sure than in 2018 I used a website that let you drag departure dates back and forth and drag return dates back and forth and it would recalculate available flight prices. I can't find anything comperable, I have to manually search options for a pair of dates, make notes, try another pair of dates, make notes, forget which website the earlier notes were from, go back, try again. ARGH!!!

A tree-dwelling mammal, 17th November 2024, 19:41

The latest desktop versions of Firefox are making a big thing about how cookies are 'sandboxed' by default. In other words Firefox will only accept first-party cookies from the site you're currently viewing, and won't share information across sites.    It's had this option for some time in the settings, "Block third-party cookies", but it's now on by default and can be disabled on a per-site basis for brain-dead sites that won't function without.    Not sure about Firefox for Android, but I switched to Firefox on my phone as soon as I got it (upgraded earlier this year). And make uBlock Origin one of the first things you install. All ads gone, dead.

A tree-dwelling mammal, 18th November 2024, 12:34

It's not just web sites. I have a "legit" version of Nero Burning ROM (I use the word "legit" very loosely, it has a valid serial number and is the full product, I'm saying no more than that.)    Recently, every few days, I've come to my computer (both desktop and laptop) to be confronted by a pop-up advert down by the clock asking me if I want to upgrade to the latest Nero, or buy some other Nero-branded software. Considering that (as far as Nero are concerned) the version of Nero I have on the PC is bought and 'paid for' (lol!) I find this a bit insulting, and extremely annoying.    Fortunately there's a cure; just go into Task Scheduler and disable the "Nero Info" task that runs every 48 hours and is responsible for these pop-ups. But you shouldn't have to do that. Come on, this is a piece of commercial software that you (apparently) purchased, stop spamming us!

Rick, 18th November 2024, 14:23

But but but you bought something Nero, look at all the other crap you could buy... Look! Look dammit, LOOK!

A tree-dwelling mammal, 18th November 2024, 16:17

Rick - pretty much. You've bought the product so now they'll spam you for upgrades and add-ons etc. Fortunately (as I pointed out) there's a simple way to stop it.    And yes, I do use Nero in preference to the built-in CD burning function on Windows (I'm using Windows 11 now but I believe it's been there since Windows XP). Several reasons:    * As far as I can tell, Windows only allows you to write a DVD-ROM in UDF format, not ISO. Not sure about CDs, I think it'll do UDF or ISO, but won't put both file systems onto the one disc like Nero can.    * Nero can write multi-format discs (known as "CD Extra") where the first session consists of audio tracks, then a second sessions features a data track. I used to use this feature a lot. For example you can write audio tracks to a disc which will play in a normal CD player, then burn a bunch of MP3 files to the data session which will be seen when you put the disc into a PC or Mac. (No idea if RISC OS's CDFS could handle this, I don't have a working RO machine with CD drive set up any more!)    * Nero allows "overburning", required for discs longer than 80 minutes. I have some 90-min / 800MB CD-Rs kicking around, useful in certain situations, eg I was able to burn a single audio CD of ABBA's "The Singles - The First Ten Years" which came on two CDs / LPs / cassettes - by ripping the discs and burning back to a 90-min blank CD I could have it as one disc for the car (back when I used audio CDs in the car). Similarly in data mode it meant I could get the whole of "Now 100 Hits Forgotten 80s" on a single MP3 CD-ROM [1] at the maximum encoder quality settings [2].    [1] 100 tracks at an average bitrate of 280kBit - won't quite fit on an 80min / 700MB disc    [2] -V0 -q0 -b32 -mj if you're interested:    -V0 - VBR at insanely high quality. The -V0 option disables the low-pass filter (which is what causes most of the artefacts that are audible on MP3 encoding)    -q0 - Use most accurate (but slowest) psychoacoustic model    -b32 - Allow bitrate to drop to 32kBit if content allows (basically removes the lower bitrate limit). Can result in slightly smaller files without losing quality.    -mj - Use joint-stereo mode. Analyses each frame and determines whether to encode using LR or MS (mid-side) encoding, selecting the most efficient method for any given frame.    Anyway, gone off at a bit of a tangent there. Must be all those audiophile-quality MP3s I'm listening to. ;)

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