zarniwhoop

Social Media considered harmful, #94 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-66523341

Got my car back after service, fixed warning light (turned out to be re exhaust gas re-circulation), new rear tyres, MOT. Also they've corrected my email, which was why I didn't get their messages when it was in last year. Actually, it was ready last thing last night - they emailed me 10 minutes before they closed but of course I couldn't get in in time and anyway I was too tired - went to bed after that, slept to midnight, mostly slept to 4a.m., got up for a little while at 6-something, then slept some more. In theory that means I'm now bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but not sure if that will last. Now I need to think about replacing my phone, it seems to lack enough power to do anything significant, such as logging in to my bank (not that I want to use the app for the bank, but somethings such as stopping standing orders seem to need that).

Interesting. Some time ago there was an article in the magazine of the (British) Diabetic Association promoting sweet potatoes, if I remember correctly that was because of the increased amounts of fibre, even though the amount of carbs per 100gm is higher than regular spuds (20gm for sweet potatoes, typically 18gm for floury, 15 or 16gm for some waxy spuds). For those of us who have to count the carbs ('DAFNE') (rather than those who have to restrict the carbs) that can make a difference. It always amuses me when recipes specify a certain number of potatoes, rather than a certain weight - has anyone ever seen a standard-sized potato ?

For diesels, I think it is those which need to use Ad-Blue from time to time that match the latest (Euro 6) standard. I bought mine in 2011 but it was the end of the old range and apparently (according to an RAC web page) only meets Euro 5, so will be expensive if I ever go in a ULEZ zone. But I remember reading that many petrol cars to recent standard produce a lot of tiny particles. And that is without taking account of the tyre particles which all cars produce.

I almost never use Duck Duck Go,when I do it is for a specific search term and usually returns very few results. I couldn't remember which small caps font I had been searching for, so I looked at one on my list. The first 4 gurgle results showed the font name including SC, the next did not show SC in the brief text example, but did not have any comment afterwards, and it was only after that when I found a "match" which had at the end 'Missing: SC ‎| Show results with: SC' (that match would have taken me to an Adobe site). The Duck had one result which mentioned S C, at the bottom of the first page - a bit above that were two images labelled as what I asked for (EB Garamond S C), but clearly they were NOT small caps. I don't think I'll be using the Duck any more often than I have been, while continuing to swear from time to time about the irrelevant results google gives me.🙂

I've recently been searching for specific screen fonts, to see if the versions I documented some years ago are still available at the sites I linked to, and seem to have the same content - I want to revise some of the items there, and to include some other fonts.. One font I had looked at in the past used to contain a small capitals ('S C') variant in the single package (regular, bold, italic, etc), but no longer does. Eventually found it at google fonts, but the first matches went to various sites, one in japanese which I cannot read, another where you had to register, and the blurb under the extracts mostly said something like "does not contain 'S C'" - but it is easy to skip over that part of the text. Part of the trouble is that sometimes we put in search terms trying to guess at what will produce some semi-useful results, and other times we know exactly what we are looking for and want it to match all the search terms.

Here, at the edge of Brighton, many roads are 20mph and while by definition most are not bus routes, a lot of them are. But the 20mph limits work reasonably well because many roads are full of parked cars, so the chances of consistently driving at nearly 30mph were long gone. On most of the main roads in the city there is a 30mph limit, with 40mph on the dual carriageway (the former A27) to the west of Portslade. I still find it annoying that the dual carriageway through Portslade and the first part of Hove has been limited to 30mph, but not as annoying as the people who drive at 30, often in the outer lane, in the 40mph part. Regrettably, we all have to get used to driving more slowly - in areas with children that is no bad thing. But I agree with all your comments about the effects on i/c vehicles - seems to tie in with the intention of moving to vehicles with batteries (and I guess that at low mph with both heating and aircon turned off they get a less-short range).

Saw the diabetes consultant this morning - feeling much happier now.

Finally finished skimming through the past few days. Belated happy birthday to @DaveF and commiserations to anybody I've overlooked. This thread is unmanageable.

Since everyone is mentioning bins: I've got a regular size green one for rubbish (weekly) and a large grey one for recycling (cans, cardboard, paper, plastic bottles - fortnightly). Those sit between my garage door and my front door. I've also got a couple of black boxes for glass. I don't do gardening any more, so no bin for that (and no space). when my late mum was still alive and the recycling first came in, she contacted them and got them to pick up my rubbish (maybe bags in those days) and recycling (the two black boxes) from the foot of my steps - I was not able to drag the boxes to beside the pavement if it was windy. Eventually the bins came in, mine just-about fit in the available space between the handrail and the garage wall, Everyone else seems to keep their bins in their garages - at least we have space on this side of the street where bins and boxes will not obstruct the pavement - the other side of the street is fences for back gardens, so the people there that to put the bins or boxes on the pavement. It always amuses me that if you report a missed collection the form asks what time the bin was put out on the day - at times we've been first on the route and collected just after 6pm, but I can't see many people in this area would actually get up early to do that.

You were possibly right first time - I think fraggle rock was the southern end of the (norse) kingdom of the isles, but the vikings had occupied dublin, and from the little I've read on wikipedia the (long extinct) gaelic of galloway was much closer to (ulster) irish in terms of the few recorded words than to the other scots gaelic dialects.

I think the accuracy of weather forecasts, except in settled periods (of a week or more) is no better than it has ever been. But now they add coloured warnings of anything they think might happen, to avoid people complaining "why didn't they warn us about this wind / this torrential rain and flooding / whatever". Certainly, these days I pay a lot more attention to the warnings - but those are often overstated when looked at afterwards.

That is what I would have expected. Lentils have long been used in this country, although not necessarily as a large part of most people's meals, but chickpeas definitely have a mediterranean or indian background,

I thought about replying to some food-related posts over the past few days, but by the time I read them they were old. Meanwhile I'm keeping my usual erratic hours (on Saturday I really was an early riser by my standards - just after 1 p.m. after maybe 5 hours sleep 😁 but had to go to bed for a few hours later) So for food items (oh, hope they weren't on TNM) I've been veggie for about 46 years - I did accidentally bite a fishy snack at a hindu wedding in the 80s or 90s, but other than that my only deviations from proper vegetarianism have been non-veggie cheeses (a few when on holiday, or when remembering what I ate on holiday, and of course in the last few years it's almost impossible to get veggie (non-rennet) cheeses in supermarkets). Hmm, not sure if roquefort is veggie or non-veggie - did Ewe see what I did there ? Anyway - for the discussion on manufactured vegan foods I agree they are rubbish. I will offend some people by saying that I eat ginster's pasties (cheese and onion, or moroccan, or quorn), but so be it. Quorn, of course, is a fungus - but so are mushrooms and yeast, and where would we be without fungi ? The other change in my eating in recent years (was it the pandemic that started it, or was it the B word ?) has been a reduction in eating tofu - supermarkets currently have weird and wonderful permutations, but the blocks mostly occupy a large space (not very dense) and do not keep for more than a day or two once started. It used to be that I could get a smoked tofu in waitrose which was very dense, with edges and a square pattern on the top - delicious, and once opened the part that was left kept for several days in the fridge.. The brand is still in production, but they now package it with tomato and herbs instead of smoking it. Strangely, in today's grauniad (the comments on the big house and one or two commentators, e.g. on the post office scandal first exposed by private eye, mostly agree with my own prejudices, the rest tends to be rubbish but it's always useful to have newspaper if liquids spill on the kitchen floor) there are reports of a growth in allergies including people allergic to chickpeas and lentils, supposedly as result of adding foreign foods to our diet. Qué ? But finally (at last, you say!) a question - a lot of the time when I'm lying in bed it seems to me that I'm half-awake or half-asleep - I see images in front of my eyes (one recently appeared to be chinese or japanese ideograms - probably related to a file of japanese vertical typesetting I've recently been playing with on my computer) and I seem to spend a lot of time thinking, or dreaming about, issues I'm currently encountering on my computers (compiling software, creating test files). Is this normal, or just 'normal for me' ?

The first pic makes me think of Crocodile Dundee - "call that a big dinosaur?", the second makes me think of the flintstones. Hence the 'funny' rating.

Hey, this thread doesn't get any fewer posts, does it ? Saw the 4a.m. posts when I was going to bed Saturday morning, 60+ when I got back to this PC, loads more that I've just read. Mostly MIA (trying to sleep in between the spasms, checking the CGM sensor, sleeping, wondering why I felt so tired until I could be arrased to check the sensor, then waiting, and waiting, for sensor readings to drop before I felt safe to eat. Intermittently watching Le Tour, eating Alsace-influenced meals for this day when it headed into Alsace (pommes frites avev sauerkraut, tarte aux myrtilles) and trying to beat my texlive test scripts into shape. I keep finding things I thought I'd fixed, and then they bite me again. I think I ought to give that up, but then what would I do ? For those in my personal timezone: Night Awl.

Belatedly, Happy Birthday to Baz

So parts of the disputed sea area are claimed by both, and parts by neither? Sounds as if there is scope for third parties in the parts nobody claims.

Apropos spreadsheets - I first encountered excel when we were outsourced to [$oneglobalfirm, which later divested itself of the parent accountancy part after enron] and a project manager was brought in for the system we were developing, providing a plan of how things should go: just a way of drawing a grid with things in it! Nowadays I use libreoffice writer to keep my accounts, but I also use it as a grid for keeping track of my backups (text and dates in cells, delete and post to move things higher). «Plus la change, plus c'est la même chose» Normally I don't mention my day to day activities - went to be early (4am) on Tuesday, at 8am-ish I noticed a light on my phone and found that Parcel Force were scheduled to deliver a replacement diabetes sensor between 14:30 and 15:30. Didn't sleep much, but was up in time for that and sat by the door when he knocked. But I'd planned to go out this afternoon to get some food shopping, and after the delivery I was just too tired and eventually went back to bed. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow ... I've now caught up with Le Tour (a short time trial, I don't think I really needed 5+ hours of coverage although an hour of highlights would have been too short). But (with apologies to Tigger and Grizz) - "bluddy danes!" 😢

I saw when looking at news reports on my phone that a Tesla parked at the kerbside in Islington apparently self-combusted. It was in the Daily Fail so I won't link to it.

Obviously an acquired taste ;-) I used to drink it at student union meetings at uni (take a can in, fit in with everyone else). It has always seemed perfectly acceptable to me - not as marmite as certain past canned ales, and not too strong.

Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Serriffe but that was in the Grauniad. Thanks for the reminder - I'm intermittently struggling with some TeX stuff (the computerised typesetting system invented by Knuth), in particular with how faint the default original fonts are when viewed onscreen, I'll now think more kindly of him (the last item above 'See Also' on that wikipedia page.

The usual aluminium (aluminum where you are) cans, the sort you can easily squash when empty (unlike 25cl wine cans which are harder to crush). I think I've had another punctured can in the last year or so. In this case the only thing holding the cans together was some cardboard at the top with four can-sized holes and a central thumb hole. That had come off by the time I discovered the leak.

An interesting day - I'd hoped to get out to the local Saints' buries yestereen but the dry spells were too short (spent a couple of minutes longer than planned in getting ready, then saw I could not see out). In view of today's yellow warning of wind I didn't expect to get out (walking with two sticks I have problems with gusty winds at the best of times). Got out after 6pm while it was sunny, but walking from the car park to the store (and back afterwards) I had to keep stopping every time the wind gusted. A lady offered to help me when I stopped on the way out (the gusts were catching the trolley unless I stopped), but it would have taken me as long to get to my car without the trolley so I declined. Got indoors safely, but I'd put the bag down several times on the concrete outside and at the bottom were some cans of McEwan's Export. Unfortunately they were on their sides and one of them had punctured. Turdy curses is I think the correct expression. Now cleaned up, and my copy of Private Eye has now dried out. Will be going back to finishing my recording of today's TdF stage (eurosport - the full stage). Wishing you all stay safe if the weather is bad where you are.

On my virgin-based email I get several a week warning about problems with my mailbox or bill and inviting me to click the link. Fortunately I use a plain text mail client on that account so I can immediately see where the mail claims to have come from (and can look more closely if it looks possibly genuine). Unfortunately, virgin have their own spam filters which only stop random good mailing-list emails. On my gmail account spam blocking is 99% effective, with a few false positives each month, but I hear of problems where google plays silly boogers with mailing lists.