zarniwhoop

I've heard a story, which may or may not be true, about somebody playing silly beggars in front of a landrover. In the end, the landrover driver shunted the car off the road. Later, the police turned up at the landrover driver's house on suspicion of failing to stop after an accident, but there was not a mark on the landrover, so nothing to prove the allegation.

Forgot to add that I tried them, experienced my bad leg starting to fold up while in the supermarket - fortunately I was able to steady myself on a shelf. After discussion with my GP I reduced the amount, then stopped them and raised an adverse reaction report with the nhs. Ther were was another side effect which I have forgotten about, maybe the statins were what started by ongoing sleep problems, not sure. I will not be taking any again. That would be 17 or 18 years ago. But my diabetes consultant again mentioned them when I saw him earlier this year.

Yeah, as a Type 1 it has been like that for years (well, for over 50s). As you say, bolleaux.

Great news for those who will be alive decades from now (assuming, of course, that anyone is). Me, I'm still in the "if I wanted to go there, I wouldn't start from here" camp. Nothing against combatting global warming, but severely p155ed off by the musk fan bois (he was described re his destruction of another company as Xitler, with X pronounced as 'sh') and those who think that one size fits all, or who want to limit everyone's mobility. For myself, when I had a passport I could drive (in summer) from home, via the motorways, to the chunnel, and then either to Luxembourg or to Burgundy before I needed to fill up my diesel. But I have to stop every 2 hours to check my blood sugar (a condition of having a licence while being an insulin user). If I tried to combine that with electric chargers, probably every 200 miles, I would never go anywhere distant. The links to various Grauniad articles a few hours ago included one to a letter in Saturday's paper - from somebody who has a leccy car but suffers range anxiety because for a lot of chargers he has to pre-register with the company and by the sound of it make an initial payment and have other data recorded. And don't get me started on the needs for new HV cabling, or for charging points. In the californian gold rush the main winners were those who supplied the picks and shovels. For EVs, those who can provide the HV cables will probably be the ones who make money out of it.

Any chance we could persuade our own EV fans to sample the delights of all that available solar power ?

Interesting, but needs a warning for arachnophobes!

I looked out Wednesday night about 9pm, clear sky. Went out just before midnight (a bit early, I know), total cloud cover. This evening it's been cloudy. Still, I did get to see the perseids a few years ago, I expect they still look much the same.

Only since I started reading this thread 🤣 Yes, I get a *lot* of strange dreams. The worst are when I'm half-asleep (typically on days I need to get up, and am reluctant to fall into deep sleep in case I sleep through the alarm) - I think I'm awake, then get thoughts out of nowhere, but the thoughts progress in nonsensical ways - I think of something and suddenly I'm thinking a non-sequitur, or else I cannot remember what the previous thought was. On nights like that I would happily swear that I'd only slept momentarily, if it were not for occasional brief memories of dreams. But I've never had a dream that I can remember in any detail after I've woken, although I seem to have recurring dreams from time to time, often months apart, e.g. walking through what I know is the town I used to work in (Worthing), except the physical layout is completely different. And now I cast my mind back I can recall that I in the dreams I sometimes walked a different route back to work - a road I knew well in real life, but in the dreams it passed a factory or warehouse with a narrow-gauge railway that eventually (in only a few miles) ended at one of the Porthmadog termini. Hmm, bits of it are coming back to me - driving a car to shunt tracks or wagons at the factory or warehouse - I think it was some sort of Peugeot, but in the days when I could walk into Worthing from work I did drive a Peugeot. The unconscious mind is a strange thing.

Ah, I can remember years ago (perhaps nearly 30 years) when I first had a rear fog light (I guess probably only one at that time) - it was easy to turn on, with a nicely visible light as a reminder. Possibly it wasn't linked to sidelights at that time, not sure. But over the years the interlinking has got worse - on my current (2011) car fog lights require you to be using sidelights, no chance to put just the rear on when in heavy spray that needs wipers on full and where sidelights are useless.

Went for a (short) drive earlier, just to go somewhere different - turned off the London road towards Hurstpierpoint, but then left at the junction towards Shaves Thatch and then on towards Henfield - was going to take the cutoff to Small Dole instead of going to the edge of Henfield, but it was signed 'flood' so thought better of it (no signs for flood at what I think was the other end of that road as I got to Small Dole). I used to cycle those roads regularly, but I think I've only been along that part from the London road (A23) two or three times in the last 20 years now that I only drive. Then some food shopping, and got some Monsooned Malabar coffee beans - I used to get some every few months for 'best' espresso (rather than for 'wake me up' espresso) but until today I hadn't seen the beans since covid, although I've seen ground (for filters, etc) once or twice. So my coffee grinder is back in use - nowadays I mostly just drink Lavazza rosso. rahter than faff about grinding. But I'm puzzled by prices for fizz in Waitrose (lots of offers on fizz and wines at the moment). How come fairly ordinary English fizz (not necessarily the classic grape varieties) is dearer than champagne from recognizable names ?

Just catching up, so belated birthday wishes to GDB. Gwiwer's comments about a wood burner reminded me that if there had been problems with it, they could have sat around a candle. If it then got really cold, they could light the candle. Some say the old ones are the best, but others tell the truth.

Anyone else using natwest and having repeated problems logging in via computer ? This is now the third time it's happened to me - enter the customer number, key requested digits of the pin and requested letters or numbers from the password, get told something was incorrect and I'll lose access if I keep entering wrong items. Try again (sometimes I've had 2 repeated attempts), then give up. On each previous attempt it has worked when I tried again a day or two later.

On the one occasion I had flammekueche in Alsace the base was described as bread dough. I do not recall much about the base, but it certainly wasnit ultra-thin pastry. As a veggie I asked for the onion variety without lardons, and only had a few pieces to pick off.

If @iL Dottore has friends there, they would not be able to organise the proverbial in a brewery, so @polybear would have no worries. Dream on, with whatever work supplies you have been testing. 😄

Talking of phones - anyone got any recommendations for phones which work plugged into virgin media superhubs ?

Couldn't you use an airbrush ? 🙂 But seriously, for spraying cooking oils I use those shake-and-spray things from the supermarkets - 'fry light' and similar (and yes, I know the oil is emulsified with water, so not always a great idea). For other stove-top uses I just pour a little oil - if it was for the top of something, I guess tipping the oil into a spoon first would work. Then I thought "why not?" Tried gurgling, got an offer at £1.79 with free shipping. Needed email, phone, and address which doesn't seem an excess of data. Of course it isn't very big, if you need to spray a lot it might be inadequate. But for the black friday price I'll give it a try.

Oh Waily Waily!

I knew the seasons were getting a bit variable or out of kilter, but when I was in Saint's buries this afternoon they had (individual) blood oranges. Not idea of the variety, nor the country of origin (the label only said blood oranges). I only bought 3 because they looked to be on the point of turning and just about at the stage apparently beloved of the hooligans at Basel karnival for throwing at people. So, not so much Christmas comes early as February/March comes early. Weird. Google thinks they might be at the beginning of the season in the USA at the moment, but usually I have to wait until January.

As long as they don't sell deodorants. https://youtu.be/iS2N1mBsEdM?si=ls3Dki7nVSi-EeX5

Sounds like descriptions of places occupied by the lords and ladies in Sir Pterry's Tiffany Aching books.

Oh, to hull with it, yes I will post this. Had an afternoon appointment today at the HQ of the local diabetes care setup in Moulescombe - turned out it was only to check my two hooves [1]. Checked the website, found I could park at the leisure centre. What the map doesn't show is that it's a steep uphill from the car park. Just about made it, but my set ankle was at its limits and I knew I wouldn't be able to get down without falling. Fortunately, the nurse was helpful - future appointments will be at my GP's (very local), and she offered to walk me back to the car park (makes me feel like Private Pike). I suggested the fire escape at the rear would be easier, if allowed. After a few minutes delay she led me through the staff area and down the fire escape. That counts as a result, and if I get a follow-up asking me to rate the experience I'll be full of praise for the fire escape (and the nurse). Now back to alternately banging my head with texlive, with inline html markup, and with fontconfig. 1. Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name.

I'd completely forgotten about the clocks - normally I notice something in the newspaper, but I guess I'm reading much less of it with the current state of the world. Up to around 2-ish playing down the rabbit hole of fonts (so, not late), looked at my librelink app to check the blood sugar reading, noticed an odd blue clock logo on the history. Changed the times on the oven and the lounge clock, still got to do the heating/water timer - but if the on/off tmes were adequate yesterday then it'll be ok today. Also got to do the car clock - normally takes me several goes to get to the right place in the options and to then adjust the time rather than move to the next option. For those who keep regular hours, I think Simone Lia's cartoon in today's observer probably summed it up. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/ng-interactive/2023/oct/29/simone-lia-light-cartoon

Got this year's covid jab - weather dry at the time. Later, got drenched wheeling trolley from Tess' back to where I'd been able to park in their car park. Nearly dry now, apart from my hair (apologies to the non-hirsuite, no offense intended). Barely time to read this site any more - I fell into a rabbit hole (updating my website about TTF/OTF fonts), and went further down looking at coverage of small caps and coverage of italics. Looks like I'm weeks away from getting to the next stage (updating CJK fonts and reworking my 'lorem ipsum' text for real Japanese and Chinese dummy text). Oh well, I might learn a little more for using xelatex/lualatex. It's the trying, and failing, to use helpful suggestions from academics who understand this stuff that really wears me out! Oh, and still got to review recent changes about preferred fonts in fontconfig (a linux/'nix tool for picking a font to render a codepoint that the chosen font doesn't include). But at least it keeps me safe from the awl ;-).