zarniwhoop

An article on Monday on the short timescales for updates [https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/16/smart_device_software_support/?td=rt-3a]

Apropos food, I was brought up on conventional British food (my mum would cook lamb's liver for herself and me, but not for my dad who hated it). School food was very variable. For the latter part of my childhood Mum worked part-time afternoon shifts as a nurse and I had to initially warm pre-prepared dinner and later moved on to cooking a lot of it when she was out. Before I left for Uni she gave me a 'cooking in a bedsit' book. ISTR that the first night at uni (Lancaster) we ate in the dining room of the college (liver and bacon seems to come to mind, with a memory that the bacon was not crisp and was in the gravy) - we'd mostly arrived about 5pm or 6pm when the chartered busses from London pulled in. After that, for the first year I mostly either ate in the colleges' cafés (usual British café food and stuff which probably inspired CMOT Dibbler), or cooked in the kitchen/dining area (that was for about 30 of us, we weren't usually all there at the same time!). Got in to eating wholefoods (starting with field beans) from a wholefood store in the city. For the next two years I was living in flats in sunny Morecambe, mostly trying local food when I wasn't on campus (various fish and shrimp dishes, or roast beef sandwiches in a local pub), or trying out recipes (including tripe a few times, decided it wasn't worth the effort) and bread baking, and increasingly using veggie recipes. Also discovered I loved mushrooms (my dad hated them). A bit later I decided that people eating less meat and fish would improve food supply for the world (in those days I was idealistic) and I could do my bit by becoming veggie. I still eat eggs, but have never really enthused about them. Anyway, after that far too long prologue - porridge it has to have salt and be cooked in water, a little cold milk could be added afterwards to cool it down, or a little plain yoghurt if convenient (the pots no longer come with lids, so now rarely convenient). Those with a sweet tooth could add sugar, or jam as has been mentioned. But in recent years I only eat porridge if it is cold, otherwise I tend to get too hot. Had some for a few days a couple of weeks ago, I expect I'll be eating porridge again this week. 🥶 Good to see the first blood oranges ('moro' - 'blush oranges' in waitrose-speak because the colour is often very little) are available, and so far mine have been nicely coloured despite the skin colour often being very pale. Hope the supplies continue.🙂 ĸen

Finally caught up. Scrolling to the top seems to happen a lot for me. Just did it when I tried to start this reply. Often happens when I click on NEXT at the end of a page, and sometimes when I try to rate a page. For me, the up arrow is at bottom left. Anyway, had a most helpful phone conversation with a diabetes nurse - apparently everyone gets overwhelmed by the amount of information when switching to this sensor, so I've stopped my "why is this only affecting me?" worrying after the video workshop made it seem so easy. And apparently having to use a lot more glucose/dextrose to stave off the hypo warnings is a common side-effect: I've got suggestions for changing my amounts and ratios, so hoping that helps. Back to trying to work out how to build and test a piece of software (for those to whom it is not TMI, the latest rust compiler, building from source). About 3 days ago I thought I'd cracked it, then 'colleagues' in USA and France asked questions and looked at the test results. Since then a *lot* has changed, still trying to put it all together. Edit: took two attempts to post this!

Was going to agree, until you mentioned vegetarians tagging along with this. I loathe almost all the manufactured vegan alternative foods. I suppose that tofu is technically manufactured - I like smoked tofu - and if vegetarian haggis is vegan (not sure, but probably) I like that, also vegetarian samosas which are probably vegan. Can cope with soy mince as a backup, and those morrocan pasties are ok-ish. Some vegans here have always been like that.

I got the "use up a large part of the right-hand side with thread info" again today. Checked that premium theme was still set (it was), then used View -> Zoom In (firefox). That gets rid of it. I've just opened a new thread to check - display remained like that, but when I changed to 'Zoom out' the stuff at the right-hand side was still present.

I've received post today! Christmas cards, several magazines from December, various other things. For the past month I've received a maximum of one item of post per week (3 items all told). I guess this means one of the main offices, probably Gatwick area, is sorting through their backlog.

Just catching up with this thread. When I came back to the hobby I liked the prospect that Southern RTR EMUs would be appearing. But at that time they were distant. Some kits, mostly beyond my skills, existed - but very little. So I started looking for drawings and eventually found someone who sold some (photocopied paper). Over the years I discovered that there were many significant inaccuracies, the sort you could spot by looking at the body side from a few feet away if a model was true to the"plan". So I can understand some of "don't trust scale drawings". Since then I've bought a hard-bound book with descriptons, photos, and drawings that I consider ok (although some people have picked holes in them). But if I only went by photos I would have to reject many Hornby 2-BILs : I can live with what I think was a loo-window issue that the late Colin Parks commented on in his 2-BIL thread, but the ventilator placement on the roof is only accurate for a subset of 2-BILs. Since I'll be happy to run on 4'1½" gauge I'm going to live with that.

“YOU ARE NOT AFRAID? 'Not yet. But, er...which way to the egress, please?' There was a pause. Then Death said, in a puzzled voice: ISN'T THAT A FEMALE EAGLE?” (Sir PTerry, A Hat Full Of Sky)

Probably gold members are exempt from the advertising. I did have to confirm cookie settings the other day, but I too normally have some open rmweb tabs in firefox.

Agree totally, except that I am a Premium member and I've also got the problem. My main monitor is 1920x1200, I estimate firefox is using about 1400-1500x1000 with the rubric of thread activity, followed by top posters and the sad popular posts taking up more than the height of firefox's window and about 30% of its width. If I temporarily maximise firefox, the width of that content remains the same (now perhaps only 25% of the fullscreen window) and it occupies the whole height. On the front page of the forum the space is wasted for me by a BRM advert and the first of hte status updates - I need to scroll down a looong way to get past those. ĸen

Hi Russell, I cannot parse what you are asking. I think you are saying that there is something on the yellow sheet that you would only expect to find when the van is in a blue livery ? Details of what sort of things the extra options contain, please ? (I don't have the Modelmasters decals). ĸen

I imagine you can boil toast (i.e. expel steam from bread, so that it browns) in the micro-wavee. I can heat a croissant in mine (NOT at full heat) for a short time, then leave it a while and it crisps up, or leave it a bit too long and it is very crisp and the lower part of the interior is brown or brty dark brown. For toast you can probably get smoke too, just like proper well-done toast.😂

As expected, the Isle of Jura ('Journey' - I think that might be the 'basic' variant) was fine. Tested some more to be sure.😄 The Val Dobbiadene only merited 'ok' (a lack of decent-sized bubbles, but at least it wasn't sickly sweet like most prosecco.) Fortunately, only a half bottle so none is now left. Will have to quality check some Crémant de Bourgogne today. Hic! Hic!

I really don't make resolutions any more - they are just another thing to feel guilty about if [ when ] I fail. But for this year I *hope* to work out an acceptable (to me) plan for a roundy-roundy Ybbstalbahn layout that I can actually fit into the available temporary space (small - no chance of the double-headed 15-coach Christmas train I saw on youtube) - at the moment I can't get my head around the "needs to partly run alongside a road, needs a bridge over some water, needs to sensibly fit the side-of-a-valley landscape" desiderata. Oh, and have another go at trying to produce prototype parts for a station building (vaguely Bramber, Southwater, Partridge Green style) and a prototype for the matching platform (did I mention I get obsessional about brick bonds and the faces of platforms and the need in this case for proud courses at the top and bricks at the edge rather than overhanging paving ?) OK, it's only been 5 years so far for that last one, maybe I'll get a round tuit one day. ĸen

Happy New Year, and may you receive whatever you wish for! I've been watching BBC1 Scotland (the land of my fathers 🤣), nice fireworks - I'm recording the Ceilidh from BBC Alba and will catch up with that in a wee while. Nice fireworks from Edinbugh ( I suppose, the piper certainly was but do they have what looks like the London Eye ?) and although we had some distant rockets here at 20:25 I think most people started theirs at midnight and some are still going off. Commiserations to those caring for animals at this time. Gotta go, do some quality control on Isle of Jura and real Val Dobbiadene 'secco. ĸen

For some prescription items (not drugs) you can't now find out what they cost, or at least not easily. One of my targets for trialling a continuous glucose monitor is to reduce the number of blood test strips I'm prescribed - I've been thinking about changing my meter and my finger-prickers, but I could not discover how much the various brands/variants cost. I did find out how much the continuous monitor costs (they are available to purchase) and that looks like money for old rope - or should I say money for frayed rope (you might guess I'm not enamoured with it so far). When I bought my current test meter a few years ago I picked one where I could get test strips in a local-ish chemist, and at one point I could get them in a big Tess'Co if I was running short (useful if away from home). But nowadays it's all "try this free, and then get your GP to prescribe the strips".

I hope they will have some sort of lamination or reinforcement so that you can put the ladder against them.

I'm not talking about colour blindness, but about the point at which an individual decides that a shade (e.g. somewhere in the cyans) is blue or green. I can tell blue from green. Oh, and in Scots Gaelic the colour of grass is 'gorm' (blue).

It all depends on your personal interpretation of colours, and also on how your screen is set. To me, the shed in the original photo looks an almost-white shade of grey, with a hint of blue. To me, there is no green in sight except for the trees at the left and top left of the original picture. My screen is set so that it seems to give reasonable colour rendition without hurting my eyes when looking at white backgrounds. I've got a second tab of this thread opened beside this reply to quickly switch back and forth: to me the green in the second photo helped me understand the question but looks nothing like the photo. Similarly, for me the grey samples @isw offered just above this reply are a lot darker than the main colour of the shed. For the screen I'm using I found an online 'greyscale' image which has 13 shades from black to white - I cannot distinguish the two darkest or the two lightest, but all the others are distinct, so people who have calibrated their system might well see things differently from what I'm seeing. Edit: I forgot to add that when my parents first got a colour TV a football match was on: I asked why the (real) grass of hte pitch looked blue - to them it looked green.

Well, the TV this evening was a lot less bad. Tribute to Robbie Coltrane on BBC4, followed by a 'grumpy old man' reminiscing about the Tutti Frutti series in which they both appeared, and then the first two episodes. Don't think I ever saw it before, but adequate for this time of year. Then I switched to channel 5 and watched most of the Stones in Hyde Park - of course, for all you larks that was definitely past your bed time. 😊

I thought it would be a 'Chef Bear' creation. 🤣

Wearing my pastafarian hat [1], 'Happy Holidays!' to all pastafarians [2]. For anyone else, may the day be good. Meanwhile, I've finished watching Patsy and Edina in Champagne on BBC and am now attempting do the same. 🥳 ĸen 1. Metaphorically speaking - my only colander is plastic, which is probably not 'sanctified', and in any case it's too big to fit on my bonce. 2. I think it was Wikipedia which said that 'Happy Holidays' is the officieal Pastafarian greeting for this time of year, but everyone known that what is written in wikipedia is often bar-locks.

My impression of French 'pain complet', and similarly of the Italian 'pane integrale' is that it contains some wholemeal flour, and I would guess 50% or more ? I read in a bread book that 'pain de seigle' (rye bread) must contain at least 50% rye, but I've seen nothing about requirements for 'complet'.

I suspect @iL Dottore actually knew that, and knowing what medical people come across was why he asked if it was suitable to mention on a family forum. e.g. medics come across things such as https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/12/21/hospital-evacuated-80-year-old-man-has-first-world-war-removed/ 🤣

LOL, found one set after posting this - not the stupidly long white set, and not actually white (or magnolia ?) - alternate pale orange and mauve, they slowly all light up then slowly go out. That's my decorations sorted for this year. 😊