Monday, January 03, 2022
Comments:
Steve: I was thinking of joining Twitter so I can pass on some of the gems in the Classic FM "Big book of Classical Music" - 1000 years of music in 366 days. (I got this free with the CDs)
A completely crap series of dates and facts thrown together that would not even get 1 star if I reviewed it.
Each day you get a quote, some anniversaries, a composer profile and a "Hall of Fame" hit to try.
An example anniversary would be Mozart completed this piece of music - big deal.
Yesterday had a corker: 1912 Composer Englebert Humperdinck suffers a stroke, resulting in the permanent paralysis of his left hand. It doesn't prevent him from continuing to compose for a further decade though.
The composer profile is just some stuff about the person, does not list birth or date.
I have learnt that Brahms was untidy though.
I'm assuming they gave the job of compiling this to a student with Internet access.
Unbelievable, but I'll soldier on, only 349 days to go...
nick: Didn't manage last night, Lesley's mum's here for a couple of days. Can probably do an evening this week if people are around?
How was your football match Tim?
nick: Lifesigns are playing at 1865 Southampton on 13-April. I've said I'll go with Tony, dunno if either of you might be interested
Tim: QPR game wasn't bad. In the first half, QPR were all over Rotherham, but somehow still 0-0 at half time. Second half, it was much more even and a better game, but still 0-0 at full time. The good news is that because there's a backlog of postponed football matches, it went to extra time instead of a replay. The game continued to get better and both sides scored. So then it went to penalties, QPR won.
We had a bit of train trouble on the way there (so I've submitted my delay repay), got there plenty before kick-off though, and then it finished nearly an hour later than expected so we came straight back after. So that was a bit unleisurely, we might have gone somewhere for something to eat/drink otherwise. still, nice to get out and about a bit.
Steve: Pass on the concert ta.
They are a prog band I have heard of and half thought would try at some point.
We are busy apart from Thursday or Sat/Sun.
nick: They are a prog band I have heard of and half thought would try at some point. yes - this was Tony's sugggestion: he looks out for prog stuff. I'd never heard of them, but some of them have been involved in bands I do know about.
I'll send a Zoom for Thursday
Steve: We could do a x-word Thursday, then maybe Sunday FYI.
On the music front, I do have 3(!) albums by prog outfit Sanguine Hum and play them loads. I could be tempted to get a fourth - they are on Bandcamp, but no Wikipedia page!
The guy has possibly a Marmite voice but the music and recording quality is right up there.
nick: I did get a couple of Mogwai albums since then and I quite like them but they are fairly similar. Wonder how loud they could be at an outdoor gig!
Tim: Mogwai did a remix of part of Max Richter's Sleep, which is a bit hard to imagine - except it probably sounds like Mogwai.
Steve: Just bung it through some effects pedals?
Bandcamp Friday back this week.
Just got D a new laptop so hours of fun setting it up...
nick: Blimey - they're touring again! Camel at O2 Guildhall in 2023. From the pic, they have Peter Jones (blind, multi-instrumentalist) in the lineup.
Good news: seated. Less good news: tickets range from £40-£74
Tim: Been there, done that, couldn't afford the t-shirt.
More seriously, it seems too far off to commit.
Steve: So what Hawkwind albums should I try?
I just bought Live Seventy Nine on CD and it sounds great, the Tim Blake section the best. I did try an LP but it was crackly, only had the cassette all those years ago.
I already have Astounding, Quark (love) and PXR5 (not massively impressed).
Bought and got rid of Space Ritual ages ago.
Tim's LPs are waiting to be spun up...
BTW did you know you can get 10% off at Hive being over 55 - easy to set up.
nick: I've got Live79 and Astounding. I used to have Levitation on vinyl (blue!) but never had the CD. Also have Crystal Machine and New Jerusalem by Tim Blake which I like. Let us know which are good!
Didn't know about the Hive thing thanks
nick: Dropped my bike off for a service today. He said he's never seen a chain ring so worn out and can't believe it's not skipping. Guess I'll have a new one then
Tim: I just had a look at the Hawkwind discog and as often happens I've only heard the first 1/8th of the albums there. Of those, the one you don't have that I seem to remember liking most is Astounding Sounds. Have you spun it yet?
nick: Bike update - the rear derailleur was solidly seized and he's broken the hanger for it trying to get it off (the hanger is a "sacrificial" part that's supposed to bend/break if you fall off, to save the frame) and he hasn't got a spare. So the bike won't be rideable today. He's going to lend me a bike - which may be an electric one - to get home. Hope I can fit my panniers on it!
Steve:
AFAIK there are a heck of a lot of hanger variations - don't think my Mercian has one.
I do have and like Astounding Sounds so am trying Warrior on the Edge of Time which seems pretty good and has the Moorcock input.
BTW TD tour with the guitarist from Marillion on some dates.
The soloing was one of the things I didn't like about their stuff.
Tim: Speaking of TD, I enjoyed listening to Recurring Dreams the other day.
Think of it as a live album, but recorded in the studio. Similar, then, to a lot of TD live albums.
nick: Just set up a new monitor at work and browsing my pictures to select a background got one that looked familiar of a field with a tree in it. Thought "I can't remember taking that one". Found it was in the stock "backgrounds" folder.
nick: Could do a zoom tomorrow (Friday) or Sunday night? Let me know if either is OK
I have made a "smart" music playlist which is generated from tracks that have a play count of at least 25, ordered so that the least recently played ones come first. It's a cracker: just about every track makes me think both "I've not heard this for a while" and "I like this!"
Steve: Ok like pumped water storage systems without the need for a lake.
Looks a bit hard to scale this up?
Tim: Meanwhile on the Fripp front it turns out I was still thinking of the last set, which was a mere 8cds of Sounsdscapes, whereas the new thing Steve mentioned (Exposures) turns out to be 25cds plus some dvds and blu-rays, of earlier stuff, lots of it Frippertronics. £160, groan.
Steve: Hmm gold vinyl... but the 3 long tracks have to be split across sides which must be painful to listen to.
And yeah the Fripp thing is massive and only covers a few years!
Played your KC Islands LP last night - interesting, might have to get it.
Not very KC-like at all.
Also played your USA and might need to get that at some point. Maybe you can't have too much live 73/74 stuff. Obvs the CD has a lot more on it.
Since getting the 40th anniversary of In the Court of... I play it loads. They did wonders with the mastering. But remember getting Poseidon and selling it as I hated it so much.
Tim: Islands is strange and a bit lovely. USA - the whole idea of a 40min live album seems a bit weird these days.
Hang on, what KC albums have you actually got??
Steve: The latest USA is about 70 mins which is more like it.
I only have their first, the 3 70s classics, 3 80s and some live albums.
Steve: Tim, have you ever managed to rip from Blu-ray?
I seem to remember you got a drive for some music you bought.
Reading online people say you need to decrypt the contents first, so it looks to be a faff.
Tim: So, went to see Lifespan yesterday, the others mostly seemed to like it but although it sounded very accomplished it just didn't grab me. The first half of the set was tracks off the first two albums - which I'd heard (once) on Bandcamp. The second half was off the new album which I hadn't heard - but it sounded just as familiar. As I said to Nick, I felt like I could almost sing along.
Similarly, I just played Pink Floyd's The Endless River, £3 from Magpie ebay so why not? On first listening it sounds fairly like Pink Floyd instrumentals. See if it improves at all.
nick: Randonnee next Sunday. I will be doing IoW but since I don't think I know anyone else doing it, I made a (shorter) route that takes in all 6 British Cycling Quest points on the island. Will do that in a clockwise direction so that I don't have to worry about chain ferry queues on the way back. This will nearly double the number of BCQ's I've already done
Tim: I heard on the radio that the floating bridge is back in service today so you might actually be in luck.
Tim: What's your plan for Sunday, do you want to park here and get breakfast and/or dinner, or are you training it?
nick: What's your plan for Sunday, do you want to park here and get breakfast and/or dinner, or are you training it?
Hadn't considered that - I'll do a bit of looking at railway times/tickets etc. Maybe I could train MIC->HDE then cycle to get ferry around 9am, come back and drop in for a chat on the way home before getting HDE->MIC in the evening
nick: Oh guess what, engineering works on Sunday. So there are. I wondered why my first search was returning stupid times.
I suppose I could drive down. Not sure I fancy cycling to Sotn and back as well as IoW
nick: Another option, since you're not actually doing the rando, would be to pick another day.
Yes that is a possibility. Ferry prices seem to have gone up again - its £20 for a day return as a foot passenger!
nick: Going to do IoW tomorrow, booked 9am ferry. If it's OK I'll park at Tim's and cycle from there? Maybe have a cuppa on the way back? Let me know if it's OK to park there
Tim: I've booked a couple of day trips, arriving 11am departing 7pm on Tue 10 and Fri 27 May. No plans yet, open to suggestions if anyone fancies joining in.
Tim: Luckily I'll be on the train home by then. (And anyway the last train back is still at 10pm midweek which is a bit tricky for evening stuff.)
nick: Luckily I'll be on the train home by then ah yes. Anything else going on in London on that day that might be of interest?
Tim: Thats your lot for d'Voxx afaik.
While I'm on, who can work out what this means?:
We won't know the results here in Scotland for a few hours, but there have been some interesting developments in England overnight.
And, unsurprisingly, there has been a lot of mentions by Conservative candidates about the impact of Partygate on their campaigns.
Independent pollster Mark Diffley tells the Good Morning Scotland programme it's difficult to underestimate the impact.
nick: Dreamachine sounds interesting - they also had a review of it on Radio4 "All in the Mind" but looks like it's sold out so I don't think we can do that on 27-May
Tim: OK so we can't do that, but if there's anything else you fancy doing and it happens not to be on the 27th I don't mind doing a different (additional for me) day - including evening concerts if the 10pm train looks doable.
Tim: I'll probably go to the British Museum Stonehenge exhibition soon (amazing how they fitted it in), anybody else fancy it? £20.
nick: is the stonehenge thing a potential visit on 27-may, or are you thinking a different date? I'm interested ifs it's 27, potentially another date depending when
Steve: We are planning to finally do some flipping camping at least some of that week and following weekend so carry on without me.
Bothe negative here for a few days, but I still have a cough and am not 100%.
Not been cycling for 3 weeks.
nick: Bothe negative here for a few days, but I still have a cough and am not 100%.
Not been cycling for 3 weeks.
Sorry to hear that Steve. How's Deborah? Lesley is still not right either - has sporadic cold symptoms (cough/sore throat) and still getting very tired. I don't know how much that is down to covid, if at all - she always has been prone to catching colds very easily.
We looked after Spencer and Sia yesterday to give Ella some time to do prep for Spanish holiday (they're going for a week starting this Saturday). I took Spencer on the bike to Overton, then trained to BSK, then played in Eastrop park before catching bus back to Overton and cycling back to NW. Then took him to NW park. On the plus side, he managed yesterday to get the hang of pedalling forwards on his little bike (up until now he's always just pedalled backwards and doesn't understand the instructions "no, pedal forwards!". On the other hand I was more tired at the end of the day than I am when I cycle all the way to work and back. I have no idea how Lesley is going to manage when Ella goes back to work in June at which point Lesley will be looking after both of them three days a week. BTW it later emerged that 5 hours of Ella's "holiday prep" was getting her hair done, which feels excessive to me!
Steve: D has a slight dry cough is all so not too bad.
I'll try a ride this weekend but expect to do a lot of coughing.
No other news.
Tim: Nick, tickets are timed (although it's not busy so we could probably just turn up). Are you aiming for the same train, BSK 10:17?
Tim: Let's give ourselves 45 minutes for some tube stuffing-around and book a ticket each for 12 noon, OK? Waterloo and City line to Bank, Central to Liverpool St, Liz to Paddington and back to Tott Ct Rd.
Tim: Same here. Anything else you fancy doing we can. Otherwise we might end up looking at the free stuff in Tate Britain (can do that any time).
nick: Can see a couple of things I wouldn't mind going to but they all seem to be non-free stuff. Will keep looking
nick: Steve recommended "A Dangerous Fortune - Ken Follett". They don't have that in my online library app, but they do have a couple of other Follett books I've not read, so just now downloaded "Code to Zero" (12 hrs 40mins audiobook). Was tempted to get "Eye of the Needle" but thought it would be better to do something I've not read before. Nearly finished "Diana" by RF Delderfield which I did like, but was too long I think - there keep being extra bits of story. Wanted "To Serve Them All My Days" but library didn't have that either.
nick: Doesn't have to be free. yeah, I just assumed there would be a ton of free stuff, but when I checked the things that I've heard of lately they're all paid. Maybe worth trying one. Since Elizabeth Line goes roughly to Greenwich I asked my brothers what might be on. This was the first suggestion
Yes it's BorrowBox. They do have a fair amount of stuff although quite often if you're looking for something specific they don't have it. Bit like going in a bookshop!
Tim: Hmmm, they describe it as one of London's true icons so that's out of the question then.
While I'm moaning, SW Trains just sent me a link to their survey, first question is
How likely are you to recommend South Western Railway to a friend?
It seems obvious that the only possible answer is never! I mean, I might suggest going by train (and coincidentally they might have the monopoly on the route) but for some reason they're not asking that.
nick: How likely are you to recommend South Western Railway to a friend?
Was it multiple choice? I remember someone set up a survey when I was working at DEC in Basingstoke and there was a suggestion that the office get relocated to Reading. One question as "How bad would the effect of this move be for you?" and the options ranged from "somewhat" to "very significant". People who lived in Reading, and had up until that time had to commute to Basingstoke every day, struggled to find an appropriate box to tick.
Tim: To be fair, yes, there was a Not At All Likely option.
I found a way (by ticking that I'd used both) to indicate that their website is utter shite for buying tickets while Another Train Company was excellent. And there was a chance to complain about train frequency. But when it came to whining about the last train from London being 10pm I had to resort to a free-form text moan; can't imagine that getting any attention.
nick: Didn't know about the live album. Will give it a go
Phil suggests museum at Greenwich maritime museum, which was one of the things I noticed: they have a £10 exhibition on astronomy photographs which might be interesting (as well as anything else that's on there)
nick: The live album is the gig I went to
Ah yes, I forgot you saw them again. The two of us went in March 2015 to see Claudia.
Tim: I knew somebody went to see something like that at some point.
Astronomy looks OK and v handy for...the DLR. Bring your roller skates and we can recreate the PSB video near the Dome.
nick: Well I think I give up on Hebrides. The logistics of finding B&Bs has defeated me:the ones that do have online booking (which are not many) don't have availability for a series of consecutive dates that I can find; others need you to mail the place and wait for them to reply - I did get some dates off one of them but can't easily make them work with other island B&Bs after about 4 hours of mucking about. Probably should have sorted it earlier. Will have a go on the Isle of Man...
Tim: Well I'm enjoying the no-confidence situation. The Tories have condemned themselves to a period of purgatory, it's going to be great. The by-elections in two weeks time will be hilarious, the rubbish that some of them will have to spout afterwards. In a way it will be a shame if they fail to drag it out for a whole year.
nick: I have mixed feelings: on the one hand it's good to see the Tories in trouble, with the rebels now in a position to obstruct anything BJ tries by abstaining etc. but I worry that (a) if he stays in power he'll just try and push stupid policies like imperial measures and tax reductions on petrol, or (b) they'll get rid of him and install someone who's less ineffectual and may offer enough of a clean sheet to get them elected (at which point they can call an election)
Riding home last night one of the bolts that holds on my pannier/mudguard popped out. I did find it, but it wouldn't stay in because the thread inside the frame has gone (the bolt basically just slides in and out). At this stage I had ~30miles to go, so walking wouldn't have been an option: I only had one pannier but the rack wasn't stable enough to carry it. As luck would have it there was a discarded hefty bit of zip tie in the verge just where I stopped and I managed (eventually) to get that through the frame and fasten the mudgard/pannier back. This worked surprisingly well so I got home OK (albeit not until 10pm). This morning I fixed it "properly" by sticking a bolt through and screwing a nut on the other side. Had a bit of trouble finding a suitable bolt, because anything with too big a head would get in the way of the chain (it was on the derailleur side).
Someone at work suggests retapping the hole so it would fit a slightly larger bolt, but I think it's fairly secure at the moment. Have you ever done retapping Steve? I'd be worried about weakening the frame
Steve: Pretty certain the frame tube has a steel threaded insert banged into it, there is nothing to be re-threaded. Maybe a shop can put another one in, or get a 3rd frame from Whyte?
Frame is aluminium so too soft to take a thread.
I did of course tap threads at college but it needs to be into something solid.
What happened with your wheel that broke?
nick: yes, after Steve mentioned the threaded insert I did a bit of googling for ideas on threads being stripped on a bike frame and "rivnuts" and "helicoils" came up. As did the suggestion to just put a nut on the other end of the bolt (which is what I have done). I think I need to get to screw fix and get some more spare bolts so I can put them in my toolbag (I've already stuck some zip ties in there)
What happened with your wheel that broke?
I replaced it with a new one. Didn't hear anything back from Evans, and on checking the Mavic "2 year warranty" document saw that it is only for manufacturing defects, and specifically excludes wear-and-tear so I think I'd be out of luck with that - it was about 15 months old with 13,000 miles on it. Replacing the freewheel looked quite expensive (I couldn't quite work out which new one I needed but it was quite pricey and so I didn't think it would be worth it)
nick: twitter thread about and link to, a consultation document for businesses regarding re-introduction of imperial measures. Some of the questions are a bit "leading"
Tim: Re-records rather than re-composes.
Cheers for the consultation survey link, I'd seen the main consultation where they expect written responses mainly e.g. from companies, but not that one. I'll have a look, but mostly I'm thinking it's just meant as a distraction.
On the by-election front I'd had a look at the previous results for Tiverton and assumed the Tory would be safe but with a reduced majority - but I just found out that the bookies have LibDems as favourite, blimey. You can actually get 5-1 for the Cons, I'm tempted to hedge.
nick: On the cycle ride in this morning I listened to a podcast from the series "Fall of Civilisations" about Easter Island. Also available on youtube.
It was pretty interesting and (so far as I could tell) refuted the commonly-held (and espoused by Jared Diamond) story that the reason they came to a bad end was that they mucked up the island ecology by chopping all the trees down to move the statues around. Worth a listen if you have a couple of spare hours. Quite a lot about the moai statues which made me think of Tobago, although I think in the game you're not obliged to have the statues facing inland, which is what they did on Easter Island
Tim: Well no, they don't have to face inland exactly because they rotate, obviously. I bet they don't even mention that. But they cannot be on the shoreline, to ensure that they always face some land.
nick: I don't remember him saying that they chopped the trees down solely to move statues maybe not... although according to the podcast, Diamond seems to favour the explanation that it was down to the way the Easter Islanders exploited their environment (including using trees for statue rolling) which caused their downfall. And makes the case that this was an "attractive" idea because it chimes in with the idea that in the present day, we neglect the environment at our peril. But the reasons given in the podcast for the collapse are different, and in a way, more sad.
nick: Someone who was in the office on Monday was off sick yesterday and today reported positive COVID. I was sitting pretty near him so am particularly conscious now of a tickle in my throat. Hope I don't start feeling ill today because I have a 3 hour cycle ride home and not sure what state the trains might be in
nick: So... are you on your bike? I've ridden all the way to the office every day this week so far. Partly because my car's broken down (needs new engine oil seal, clutch bits, and flywheel thing) and partly because it's midsummer week with good weather. Enjoying not using the car (it's been out of action for over a week now) but feeling a bit tired.
Negative COVID test last night so back in the office again today
Tim: I signed up to Hampshire Library in order to try the Ogawa ebook. I automatically got issued a temporary login ID, and put a reservation on. A few days later I got an email with a permanent ID.
Today I got an email saying my reservation is available to download. Logged on - no sign of anything on my permanent ID. Tried the temporary ID: Your library account has expired or has been blocked.
So that worked well. Now I've made a reservation on the new ID. Just have to wait a couple of weeks for the current loan to expire.
Tim: A bit of fun on BBC news this morning. The 7:30 post-by-election Tory interview was due to be with Oliver Dowden, but he's quit. They were told Dominic B'Stard would fill in, but no show and they're waiting for some replacement. So meanwhile they fitted in a Boris-sceptic (Roger Gale) who duly slagged Boris off.
nick: I got my first e-book loan (all the others have been audiobooks) from the library to see what it was like. It is not in any way convertible to Kindle: the book is readable inside the Borrowbox app, with no way (I could see) of exporting it.
Now I've made a reservation on the new ID. Just have to wait a couple of weeks for the current loan to expire. Sometimes when it has said "available on " I've put a reservation in only to have it appear much sooner "Good news! your book became available early" and your loan starts then, which isn't always convenient in terms of planning your reading itinerary. OTOH I've renewed loans a couple of times and never been told "sorry you can't renew because someone else has reserved this book" which I did used to have happen with physical books. I don't know if that's because I was lucky or because they have some other mechanism to decide how many e-copies can be out at once
nick: On the kindle front... maybe I won't bother with borrowbox after all then. yeah... it's not as convenient as having it on kindle. Also, it Borrowbox doesn't sync up your reading progress: I have the app on my iphone and iPad, and so I downloaded my book on both devices. But it doesn't sync your reading progress between different devices.
With Kindle (which I also have an app for on iphone and iPad and laptop, as well as the kindle itself), I can open the book on any of my devices, then when I open it on a different device it says "you're on page X but you most recently were reading page Y on your , do you want to go there?" I realised I use that a fair bit e.g. when I'm out and about without the kindle, but have a couple of minutes spare, I can open the book on the phone and continue reading from where I left off.
Tim: Another tech nightmare you steered me into Nick, was that I thought I could listen to that podcast on the Pi (volumio). There's a soundcloud plugin, ace. To get the plugin, SSH onto the Pi and 'git clone' the plugin from github. Credentials?!? It's a public repository, what are you on about? Much fruitless googling later I resorted to downloading the stuff to my PC (trivial), copying it to the pi SD (in the area where FLACs go) and then using my ninja bash skillz to copy it to the right place eventually (not sure where the other copies went). Success after a mere couple of days.
I've heard about half the podcast so far, and it's highly interesting, but it's a familiar problem that it's presented as an argument. Half the stuff I've heard is what he doesn't think, and I'm don't entirely remember which is which.
nick: I'm surprised that podcasts aren't more straightforward on the Volumio but I can imagine there may be tons of different plugins you can use. I listened to another in the series today about The Songhai Empire which was OK but not as good I thought.
My car is (still) not back - as well as the oil seal/clutch bits, it needed a "dual mass flywheel". He's had it for two weeks now (said it should be done yesterday but when I got home from cycling all the way to work and back it still wasn't there, so I cycled in again today). Ella broke down on Sunday - turns out her clutch has gone - and Lesley had a flat yesterday which hasn't yet been addressed. So the only working car in our household is Ryan's. I'm saving a lot of money in diesel, but may not be quite enough to pay for the flywheel
nick: Got car back yesterday and drove/cycled to work today. When driving it was quite hard to change gear which I put down to the new clutch thing and assumed it would get better. Got home this evening and tried to put it in the drive and couldn't get it into reverse at all. So another call to mechanic. I hope he doesn't say it needs a new gearbox
nick: Mechanic came to take the car again today. Says the problem is the self-adjusting clutch(?) hasn't adjusted itself properly so he needs to take something apart to fix it. Hopefully back Saturday. Working from home today, will cycle in tomorrow. I should probably enrol on Going Car Free for July
Tim: Also on the car front we finally got rid of the Astra, the 208 doesn't have a cd player so I need to sort out some ents for my 5-minute drives to Asda. Plan A: it has a usb socket I can shove a stick in with music files on and it'll read them. Stuck one in and the Sources menu now has a USB item, hurrah. Select that and... nothing happens (stays on DAB. Of course the hopeless manual doesn't actually tell you what should happen or anything). A bit of googling suggests it needs to be FAT32, max 32GB, great I can fix that. No, it turns out that's exactly what it is already. Due to no further info being available I might be approaching Plan B already.
Tim: Progress! I found an ancient USB stick and gave it a try on the offchance and it worked. Tip: never throw anything away. The downside is that it's so old it's only 128 MB, smaller than most flac albums. So it's got mp3 on there instead, maybe that's the difference (manual says flac ok too...)
nick: Has the car stereo got a "bluetooth" mode? in which case you could pair your phone into it (although that means you have to have the music on the phone). I don't have bluetooth in my car but plug one of these dongles into it, which pairs with my phone - that works really well.
But.. hang on... 5 minute drives to Asda? why do you need to drive??!?
Tim: Er, to transport loads of heavy shopping 2 miles.
Bluetooth is Plan B.
But I made a schoolboy error. The manual doesn't mention flac after all! That was in an otherwise identical paragraph I read online from the manual for a different Peugeot. So the only problem I've got is that 98% of my music is in an unsuitable format. Should have bought a 2008 (208 on stilts).
nick: aha - I know what to get you for your birthday
Is it just FLAC that's the issue then? rather than the size of the memory stick?
So maybe you need some utility that would be able to create MP3 versions of all the FLAC files on your USB stick, i.e. create a "mp3" directory sibling to your "flac" directory
Tim: Can I tow it with the car then?
Yes, the mp3 copied to the first stick is fine after all.
Sox can probably do it, but it seems a bit overkill. All I used to do is grab a recent CD (which is a dwindling fraction of my music purchases) and go. Perhaps I'll just maintain a stick with a few recent albums, converted to mp3 or wav.
Tim: Aaargh, looking again my manual (pdf) does list flac in one place, but not in another. Seems to be a badly glued together bunch of docs, towards the end there are chunks about "Connect Nav" and "Connect Radio" which have a lot of copy pasta and tend to look the same. If we had satnav I'd be able to play flac music???
Tim: Right. I can dump flac files onto my phone, and once connected with Bluetooth the car can play them. Obv.
nick: Does the car have wifi? If you're only going to the local Asda you can probably maintain a connection to your home network and listen to stuff direct from the Pi
Tim: I must have bought the wrong kind of wifi, or you think I'm a really slow driver.
I have vaguely thought of battery-powering the pi to make a walkman out of it (which I don't actually need), maybe that would help... somehow.
nick: I thought this was a good thing to say, and to bear in mind if I'm having a disagreement/discussion with someone "I did say to Jolene, let’s not fall out about anything. It’s just my opinions, I’m not saying it’s true."
nick: Youtube recommends Scarlatti stuff to me and quite often it's ones I've not heard before (it's lovely to think I've still got loads to discover). This one came up a few days ago and I keep going back to it. The instructions on it say "play as fast as possible" but she said when she did that it was just too much. Still quite fast though.
I can't help feeling that he was really in the zone when he was writing, and just churned out loads of amazing stuff, and that he was laughing out loud when doing this one (the pianist seems not to be able to stop smiling too)
Tim: And I can recommend the recent DiN album by Polypores for anyone fancying some quality genre-free electronic music.
Tim: And (2) thanks to your link I finally got to hear the legendary Worship The Glitch, which I somehow never got around to buying. Saved a tenner there then. To be fair it's probably better than a lot of stuff I did buy, but it's not really my cuppa - too fragmentary.
nick: Tim did you watch any of the women' (women's?) football tournament? Last time I watched female football they were comically poor but maybe they're better now?
Steve: "Comically poor" - the sort of thing I would say!
Lots of people seemed to watch it which I can't get my head around.
If you compare with women's tennis - they are really good at that and it's watchable, if not as "gripping" as men's.
I saw a small amount for curiosity and apart from being far worse than men, they seem to be doing the same rolling around on the floor and spitting that men do which is er disappointing?
And I find that the commentators don't make any negative comments when clearly there has been a catastrophic error perpetrated. PC gone mad ha ha!
Pretty sure the BBC hypes it as they have so little sport left to show these days.
Thanks for the cards.
I now have the xPropaganda studio album which sounds lovely but is not making much impression.
I think I just need Susanne Freytag to do a talking book.
CD prices seem to be shooting up. For example KC CD/DVD-A is £20 at Burningshed when it was £13 last time I looked.
Tim: I saw a few games, and it seems there are a few half-decent teams such that if two of them are playing each other then it's fairly entertaining, otherwise it still seems terrible. Especially, players are allowed far too much time unchallenged. But on Saturday I went to my first home game of the season, and Lincoln's plan was to defend from the front, challenge everything instantly. The high press. It worked, there were no goals, hardly any chances, it was a really dull game. So that was no fun either.
Steve, don't forget a lot of people watched it only if/because it was England and they were doing well. Many wouldn't have watched the final otherwise, I reckon.
nick: Cycled part way this morning (from Chobham) because I can't get panniers on the bike and was using a rucksack. The bike felt a bit lighter but I felt a lot heavier (rucksack had my laptop in it as well as clothes, and I had my heavy waistbelt lock thing on).
Went to the bike shop in Hampton on the way in; they said they thought they could drill out the bolt but not until Wednesday next week, so it's booked in for then.
Might try cycling all the way tomorrow, leaving the laptop and lock here this evening so I shouldn't be so heavy
nick: Cycled all the way yesterday and today. The rucksack feels a bit uncomfortable when you first put it on, but doesn't get any worse through the ride (maybe I just wriggle about to the right position). The back of the bike feels very nimble without rack/panniers. I've been leaving the laptop in the office (it's straining rucksack capacity to include it as well as towel/shampoo/clothes/lunch).
So rucksack does seem fairly good, except for relatively limited capacity.
Got a few days off now (Thu/Fri/Tue) but planning on cycling to Exeter (with rucksack) on Friday. Probably coming back Monday but if I do come back in time for Sunday zoom I'll give you a shout.
nick: After 8 miles this morning, my shoe felt loose on the pedal and I couldn't twist it out. Managed to stop and get my foot out of the shoe, leaving it clipped in: one of the bolts holding the cleat had got lost, and so when you twisted the shoe it just was just spinning round. So I span it round by hand until the bolt was completely unscrewed, leaving the cleat and bolt in the pedal and the cleat less shoe in my hand.
I couldn't get the cleat out of the pedal at all, so had to ride the rest of the way in with no cleat. Felt a bit dodgy - I could only use the side of the pedal with the cleat in it because the bolt was sticking out and gave my shoe something to grip on: the other side of the pedal was much too slippy
Went to the bike shop near work and he said he could get the cleat out. He had a special cleat-removal tool, aka mole grips, which he used to twist it until it came out. And then he gave me some spare bolts, result! So I should be fine for the way home
nick: Having re-arranged my PC delivery for today, I had a message from DPD "Your driver Norman will be delivering your package between 10.13 and 11.13 today". Great.
At 10.40, another message "Sorry, we missed you! We'll try again tomorrow". There are 10 of us in the office today and none of us heard the doorbell ring.
So I updated delivery details with a photo of our front door, buzzer circled with red. Let's hope Norman is on better form tomorrow
nick: pc delivery update: after failed delivery monday, and message from them saying they'd do it again on Tuesday, I had a message on Tuesday saying the package had been delayed "due to an unexpected issue" and would be delivered on Wednesday. On Wednesday they said "parcel has been delayed in transit" and would be delivered on Thursday.
On Thursday at 7.05am I had a message saying it would be delivered between 7.57am and 8.57am. I wasn't sure whether anyone would be in the office at 7.57am, so asked for the delivery to be delayed. It's now DEFINITELY due to be delivered tomorrow.
nick: Success! PC got delivered this morning. Will have a go at installing today. I hope it works with Ubuntu
nick: Not success! PC won't power on. When you plug it in, the LED on the USB mouse comes on, so some power is getting through, but clicking the on/off button has no effect. Opened it up and can't see any obvious loose connections, so now waiting to see what PC specialist say
Steve: So the new induction hob...
I investigate how to install it - circuit size etc.
I bought what I thought was a 16A hob and the Currys description talks about a 16A dedicated circuit. But hang on, it has a 13A plug on it!
The serial number label says 3700W and 3700/240 = 15.4A so over 13A.
Zilch in the installation manual apart from wire colours.
So I spend as long as Nick did trying to find someone who knows what's going on.
I'm passed between Installation and Support a few times.
After a few attempts I get through to a nice British lady at Bosch.
She puts me on hold and comes back and she can't hear me.
BUT I hear her say that this can happen after users have been on hold so she tells me the answer assuming I can hear her.
The load is configured on the settings menu and I can cut off the plug and hardwire if I want to up it to full wattage.
Sure enough this setting is buried in the User Manual but there is no explanation on circuits to accompany it.
This saves me a huge messy job of installing a new cable, I just hope 16A is powerful enough for Deborah.
nick: She puts me on hold and comes back and she can't hear me.
BUT I hear her say that this can happen after users have been on hold so she tells me the answer assuming I can hear her.
That is infuriating! What on earth kind of phone system does that so often that the call handling staff need to do this? Must be the same one that e.on use.
I had a call from Scottish and Southern Electric yesterday saying they've booked us in for the "shrouding" on 1-Nov. He left a voicemail which was really clear and detailed, and also sent me a text message. I've been really impressed with them (although this is the regional office; the main call centre told me it was nothing to do with them and to go to e.on, who said no, it wasn't them, but they found me the number of the regional SSEN place). So there are good support centre staff out there.
My PC still won't turn on, even after following the advice of really turning it off and on and unplugging/plugging etc., and I had a mail from PC Specialist today asking me to return it via DPD
nick: tramline are offering 3 year senior railcard for £47 although it's new customers only. I think I may not count as a new customer but I'll give it a go next time I'm about to buy a train ticket
nick: I'd not heard of this one before. One for Tim to solve?
Two envelopes problem
Two people, equally rich, meet to compare the contents of their wallets. Each is ignorant of the contents of the two wallets. The game is as follows: whoever has the least money receives the contents of the wallet of the other (in the case where the amounts are equal, nothing happens). One of the two men can reason: "I have the amount A in my wallet. That's the maximum that I could lose. If I win (probability 0.5), the amount that I'll have in my possession at the end of the game will be more than 2A. Therefore the game is favourable to me." The other man can reason in exactly the same way. In fact, by symmetry, the game is fair. Where is the mistake in the reasoning of each man?
Tim: Aha, just remembered to look in here, first time for a week. Glad to hear you're both delighted customers.
I've read the question about 4 times and now I understand it. So could take a while to think about it.
Tim: Nick, I found the asterisk on the Trainline page:
*To use the discount code, you must be a new customer, which means you have not transacted with Trainline in the past and you must have, or create a Trainline account.
nick: *To use the discount code, you must be a new customer, which means you have not transacted with Trainline in the past and you must have, or create a Trainline account.
yes... I don't think I have a trainline account, unless it got created automatically and tied to my apple ID when I used the app on my phone. If it's just a matter of registering with an email address it is fairly easy to create a new one, but if it uses the apple id associated with my phone it's more difficult. I guess I'll find out when I come to buy a ticket, which might be soon: planning on doing part of the way to East Prawle (holiday at the end of the month) on the train
nick: hmm.. although when I use the app there is a "Sign in" button which asks me to sign in, or create an account, so I'm obviously not signed in by default simply as a result of running the app. So maybe it'll be ok
Tim: Having made slight progress maybe with the two wallets problem, I read the first part of the two envelopes wiki. Realised that I still hadn't understood the question after all (forgot the bit about not knowing the contents of either wallet). Back to square one.
nick: Apparently my new PC which was DOA had a faulty motherboard, so they've replaced that, ran stress tests overnight which passed, and are going to send it back to me now.
nick: A reader comment to a Guardian article about one-hit wonders:
Surely the definitive comment on Mouldy Old Dough came from the Guardian itself
"....sounds like pop music made by people who have never actually heard pop music, but have had it described to them by someone who didn’t really know what they were talking about"
Tim: Anyone thought about ditching their landline yet?
Plusnet now do full fibre (the only kind of fibre we can get) so I'm thinking of switching. That would make our landline almost redundant, and a waste of money.
The main thing that's lacking, I think, is we're so used to DECT phones that it would be weird having to keep our mobiles handy as we move around the house. Seems there are a few DECT phones that can bluetooth pair to a mobile (or two mobiles) so that you can receive/make mobile calls from the DECT phone. Just need to be in the habit of leaving the mobiles on/charging in a spot within bluetooth range of the phone base.
So that probably covers it. But...is there some other strategy I'm missing or some product I haven't thought of?
nick: I'm not sure if we can get full fibre but probably would get rid of landline if I could. We hardly ever get calls on the landline and most of the ones we do get are spam. We only have one wired handset (no cordless).
The only reason I might keep a landline is that it still works if there's a power cut, but I believe that the exchanges are going to change shortly so that landlines will no longer work when the mains goes off.
I think pretty much all mobile contracts are unlimited minutes/texts now? So no reason to have a landline to make/receive calls any more.
nick: Went to Totton last Friday to see a magic show with Tony. Cycled to BSK, then trained to Totton and cycled to arts centre. Because of some kind of fault on the electric rail, trains were all mucked up and the outward one was 45 mins late, and rammed. Pretty uncomfortable (for others) with my bike jammed into the corridor. Return train was 30 mins late, so I've submitted two "delay repay" claims. I am not hopeful of getting anything but worth a try. Presumably you've had experience of this type of claim Steve? I sort of supposed it's only valid for peak time trains and that my cheapy evening return on a railcard wouldn't be eligible.
nick: woohoo, both my claims for delay-repay were approved. Not sure yet how to update my "railcard savings so far this year" spreadsheet to reflect this
Steve: I have done claims before but remember one getting rejected - it had 2 trains and I couldn't exactly remember both time.
Kev had recent ticket trouble - bought a ticket from a person with a portable machine in a station. The guy's machine could not print so he was told to get to the back of the other queue but he had definitely cancelled the transaction.
Of course he gets 2 credit card deductions.
Station can't handle the claim - go online... online only valid for tickets bought online.
So he's having to do a chargeback. This country is crap.
nick: Just received 2 payments for £2.30 each from delay+repay, which works out at 50% of the cost of the return ticket.
Tim: I went in HMV yesterday. And bought a CD. Yes! It's JMJarre's latest, Oxymore (=oxymoron). On first listening sounds a bit rackety.
Steve: Hmm 70 doesn't sound very old as you approach it.
I kept meaning to get E2-E4 but it was always over the amount I wanted to pay for it!
Not going to get any cheaper now is it?
nick: As it happens I was listening to Assassin by Mark Shreeve RIP when I saw this. Yes, 70 seems pretty close: I'd assumed that the members of Ash Ra temple were decades older than me
Tim: As it happens (2) I currently have the first ART album on loan from Neil. Worth a listen, but pretty unsurprising, and not something I'd be keen to buy. Made me think I could try lending him an early KS album, Moondawn perhaps, mainly for the retroness. Trouble is, I only have them on vinyl in Steve's garage, up until Body Love. Wouldn't mind just a one-off listen myself too, darn. Hang on though - I've got copies of Steve's rips! Perfect, cheers.
Tim: I just listened to Moondawn. Even more of a racket than I expected. Maybe the racketiest KS album?
Tim: Next up was Picture Music, I couldn't actually remember what to expect for that one. Also quite rackety, as it turns out, esp. side 1. Side 2 a bit more Timewindy perhaps.
Steve: I'm surprised you didn't get those CDs.
Moondawn is one of my favourites with the pebbly beach sound.
Picture Music's Totem seems to be well regarded.
I'll bung a picture up.
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Steve: I was thinking of joining Twitter so I can pass on some of the gems in the Classic FM "Big book of Classical Music" - 1000 years of music in 366 days. (I got this free with the CDs)A completely crap series of dates and facts thrown together that would not even get 1 star if I reviewed it.
Each day you get a quote, some anniversaries, a composer profile and a "Hall of Fame" hit to try.
An example anniversary would be Mozart completed this piece of music - big deal.
Yesterday had a corker: 1912 Composer Englebert Humperdinck suffers a stroke, resulting in the permanent paralysis of his left hand. It doesn't prevent him from continuing to compose for a further decade though.
The composer profile is just some stuff about the person, does not list birth or date.
I have learnt that Brahms was untidy though.
I'm assuming they gave the job of compiling this to a student with Internet access.
Unbelievable, but I'll soldier on, only 349 days to go...
nick: Didn't manage last night, Lesley's mum's here for a couple of days. Can probably do an evening this week if people are around?How was your football match Tim?
nick: Lifesigns are playing at 1865 Southampton on 13-April. I've said I'll go with Tony, dunno if either of you might be interested Tim: QPR game wasn't bad. In the first half, QPR were all over Rotherham, but somehow still 0-0 at half time. Second half, it was much more even and a better game, but still 0-0 at full time. The good news is that because there's a backlog of postponed football matches, it went to extra time instead of a replay. The game continued to get better and both sides scored. So then it went to penalties, QPR won.We had a bit of train trouble on the way there (so I've submitted my delay repay), got there plenty before kick-off though, and then it finished nearly an hour later than expected so we came straight back after. So that was a bit unleisurely, we might have gone somewhere for something to eat/drink otherwise. still, nice to get out and about a bit.
Steve: Pass on the concert ta.They are a prog band I have heard of and half thought would try at some point.
We are busy apart from Thursday or Sat/Sun.
nick: They are a prog band I have heard of and half thought would try at some point. yes - this was Tony's sugggestion: he looks out for prog stuff. I'd never heard of them, but some of them have been involved in bands I do know about.I'll send a Zoom for Thursday
Steve: We could do a x-word Thursday, then maybe Sunday FYI.On the music front, I do have 3(!) albums by prog outfit Sanguine Hum and play them loads. I could be tempted to get a fourth - they are on Bandcamp, but no Wikipedia page!
The guy has possibly a Marmite voice but the music and recording quality is right up there.
nick: I did get a couple of Mogwai albums since then and I quite like them but they are fairly similar. Wonder how loud they could be at an outdoor gig! Tim: Mogwai did a remix of part of Max Richter's Sleep, which is a bit hard to imagine - except it probably sounds like Mogwai. Steve: Just bung it through some effects pedals?Bandcamp Friday back this week.
Just got D a new laptop so hours of fun setting it up...
nick: Blimey - they're touring again! Camel at O2 Guildhall in 2023. From the pic, they have Peter Jones (blind, multi-instrumentalist) in the lineup.Good news: seated. Less good news: tickets range from £40-£74
Tim: Been there, done that, couldn't afford the t-shirt.More seriously, it seems too far off to commit.
Steve: So what Hawkwind albums should I try?I just bought Live Seventy Nine on CD and it sounds great, the Tim Blake section the best. I did try an LP but it was crackly, only had the cassette all those years ago.
I already have Astounding, Quark (love) and PXR5 (not massively impressed).
Bought and got rid of Space Ritual ages ago.
Tim's LPs are waiting to be spun up...
BTW did you know you can get 10% off at Hive being over 55 - easy to set up.
nick: I've got Live79 and Astounding. I used to have Levitation on vinyl (blue!) but never had the CD. Also have Crystal Machine and New Jerusalem by Tim Blake which I like. Let us know which are good!Didn't know about the Hive thing thanks
nick: Dropped my bike off for a service today. He said he's never seen a chain ring so worn out and can't believe it's not skipping. Guess I'll have a new one then Tim: I just had a look at the Hawkwind discog and as often happens I've only heard the first 1/8th of the albums there. Of those, the one you don't have that I seem to remember liking most is Astounding Sounds. Have you spun it yet? nick: Bike update - the rear derailleur was solidly seized and he's broken the hanger for it trying to get it off (the hanger is a "sacrificial" part that's supposed to bend/break if you fall off, to save the frame) and he hasn't got a spare. So the bike won't be rideable today. He's going to lend me a bike - which may be an electric one - to get home. Hope I can fit my panniers on it! Steve: AFAIK there are a heck of a lot of hanger variations - don't think my Mercian has one.
I do have and like Astounding Sounds so am trying Warrior on the Edge of Time which seems pretty good and has the Moorcock input.
BTW TD tour with the guitarist from Marillion on some dates.
The soloing was one of the things I didn't like about their stuff.
Tim: Speaking of TD, I enjoyed listening to Recurring Dreams the other day.Think of it as a live album, but recorded in the studio. Similar, then, to a lot of TD live albums.
nick: Just set up a new monitor at work and browsing my pictures to select a background got one that looked familiar of a field with a tree in it. Thought "I can't remember taking that one". Found it was in the stock "backgrounds" folder. nick: Could do a zoom tomorrow (Friday) or Sunday night? Let me know if either is OKI have made a "smart" music playlist which is generated from tracks that have a play count of at least 25, ordered so that the least recently played ones come first. It's a cracker: just about every track makes me think both "I've not heard this for a while" and "I like this!"
Steve: Ok like pumped water storage systems without the need for a lake.Looks a bit hard to scale this up?
Tim: Meanwhile on the Fripp front it turns out I was still thinking of the last set, which was a mere 8cds of Sounsdscapes, whereas the new thing Steve mentioned (Exposures) turns out to be 25cds plus some dvds and blu-rays, of earlier stuff, lots of it Frippertronics. £160, groan. Steve: Hmm gold vinyl... but the 3 long tracks have to be split across sides which must be painful to listen to.And yeah the Fripp thing is massive and only covers a few years!
Played your KC Islands LP last night - interesting, might have to get it.
Not very KC-like at all.
Also played your USA and might need to get that at some point. Maybe you can't have too much live 73/74 stuff. Obvs the CD has a lot more on it.
Since getting the 40th anniversary of In the Court of... I play it loads. They did wonders with the mastering. But remember getting Poseidon and selling it as I hated it so much.
Tim: Islands is strange and a bit lovely. USA - the whole idea of a 40min live album seems a bit weird these days.Hang on, what KC albums have you actually got??
Steve: The latest USA is about 70 mins which is more like it.I only have their first, the 3 70s classics, 3 80s and some live albums.
Steve: Tim, have you ever managed to rip from Blu-ray?I seem to remember you got a drive for some music you bought.
Reading online people say you need to decrypt the contents first, so it looks to be a faff.
Tim: So, went to see Lifespan yesterday, the others mostly seemed to like it but although it sounded very accomplished it just didn't grab me. The first half of the set was tracks off the first two albums - which I'd heard (once) on Bandcamp. The second half was off the new album which I hadn't heard - but it sounded just as familiar. As I said to Nick, I felt like I could almost sing along.Similarly, I just played Pink Floyd's The Endless River, £3 from Magpie ebay so why not? On first listening it sounds fairly like Pink Floyd instrumentals. See if it improves at all.
nick: Randonnee next Sunday. I will be doing IoW but since I don't think I know anyone else doing it, I made a (shorter) route that takes in all 6 British Cycling Quest points on the island. Will do that in a clockwise direction so that I don't have to worry about chain ferry queues on the way back. This will nearly double the number of BCQ's I've already done Tim: I heard on the radio that the floating bridge is back in service today so you might actually be in luck. Tim: What's your plan for Sunday, do you want to park here and get breakfast and/or dinner, or are you training it? nick: What's your plan for Sunday, do you want to park here and get breakfast and/or dinner, or are you training it?Hadn't considered that - I'll do a bit of looking at railway times/tickets etc. Maybe I could train MIC->HDE then cycle to get ferry around 9am, come back and drop in for a chat on the way home before getting HDE->MIC in the evening
nick: Oh guess what, engineering works on Sunday. So there are. I wondered why my first search was returning stupid times.I suppose I could drive down. Not sure I fancy cycling to Sotn and back as well as IoW
nick: Another option, since you're not actually doing the rando, would be to pick another day.Yes that is a possibility. Ferry prices seem to have gone up again - its £20 for a day return as a foot passenger!
nick: Going to do IoW tomorrow, booked 9am ferry. If it's OK I'll park at Tim's and cycle from there? Maybe have a cuppa on the way back? Let me know if it's OK to park there Tim: I've booked a couple of day trips, arriving 11am departing 7pm on Tue 10 and Fri 27 May. No plans yet, open to suggestions if anyone fancies joining in. Tim: Luckily I'll be on the train home by then. (And anyway the last train back is still at 10pm midweek which is a bit tricky for evening stuff.) nick: Luckily I'll be on the train home by then ah yes. Anything else going on in London on that day that might be of interest? Tim: Thats your lot for d'Voxx afaik.While I'm on, who can work out what this means?:
We won't know the results here in Scotland for a few hours, but there have been some interesting developments in England overnight.
And, unsurprisingly, there has been a lot of mentions by Conservative candidates about the impact of Partygate on their campaigns.
Independent pollster Mark Diffley tells the Good Morning Scotland programme it's difficult to underestimate the impact.
nick: Dreamachine sounds interesting - they also had a review of it on Radio4 "All in the Mind" but looks like it's sold out so I don't think we can do that on 27-May Tim: OK so we can't do that, but if there's anything else you fancy doing and it happens not to be on the 27th I don't mind doing a different (additional for me) day - including evening concerts if the 10pm train looks doable.
Tim: I'll probably go to the British Museum Stonehenge exhibition soon (amazing how they fitted it in), anybody else fancy it? £20. nick: is the stonehenge thing a potential visit on 27-may, or are you thinking a different date? I'm interested ifs it's 27, potentially another date depending when Steve: We are planning to finally do some flipping camping at least some of that week and following weekend so carry on without me.Bothe negative here for a few days, but I still have a cough and am not 100%.
Not been cycling for 3 weeks.
nick: Bothe negative here for a few days, but I still have a cough and am not 100%.Not been cycling for 3 weeks.
Sorry to hear that Steve. How's Deborah? Lesley is still not right either - has sporadic cold symptoms (cough/sore throat) and still getting very tired. I don't know how much that is down to covid, if at all - she always has been prone to catching colds very easily.
We looked after Spencer and Sia yesterday to give Ella some time to do prep for Spanish holiday (they're going for a week starting this Saturday). I took Spencer on the bike to Overton, then trained to BSK, then played in Eastrop park before catching bus back to Overton and cycling back to NW. Then took him to NW park. On the plus side, he managed yesterday to get the hang of pedalling forwards on his little bike (up until now he's always just pedalled backwards and doesn't understand the instructions "no, pedal forwards!". On the other hand I was more tired at the end of the day than I am when I cycle all the way to work and back. I have no idea how Lesley is going to manage when Ella goes back to work in June at which point Lesley will be looking after both of them three days a week. BTW it later emerged that 5 hours of Ella's "holiday prep" was getting her hair done, which feels excessive to me!
Steve: D has a slight dry cough is all so not too bad.I'll try a ride this weekend but expect to do a lot of coughing.
No other news.
Tim: Nick, tickets are timed (although it's not busy so we could probably just turn up). Are you aiming for the same train, BSK 10:17? Tim: Let's give ourselves 45 minutes for some tube stuffing-around and book a ticket each for 12 noon, OK? Waterloo and City line to Bank, Central to Liverpool St, Liz to Paddington and back to Tott Ct Rd. Tim: Same here. Anything else you fancy doing we can. Otherwise we might end up looking at the free stuff in Tate Britain (can do that any time). nick: Can see a couple of things I wouldn't mind going to but they all seem to be non-free stuff. Will keep looking nick: Steve recommended "A Dangerous Fortune - Ken Follett". They don't have that in my online library app, but they do have a couple of other Follett books I've not read, so just now downloaded "Code to Zero" (12 hrs 40mins audiobook). Was tempted to get "Eye of the Needle" but thought it would be better to do something I've not read before. Nearly finished "Diana" by RF Delderfield which I did like, but was too long I think - there keep being extra bits of story. Wanted "To Serve Them All My Days" but library didn't have that either. nick: Doesn't have to be free. yeah, I just assumed there would be a ton of free stuff, but when I checked the things that I've heard of lately they're all paid. Maybe worth trying one. Since Elizabeth Line goes roughly to Greenwich I asked my brothers what might be on. This was the first suggestionYes it's BorrowBox. They do have a fair amount of stuff although quite often if you're looking for something specific they don't have it. Bit like going in a bookshop!
Tim: Hmmm, they describe it as one of London's true icons so that's out of the question then.While I'm moaning, SW Trains just sent me a link to their survey, first question is
How likely are you to recommend South Western Railway to a friend?
It seems obvious that the only possible answer is never! I mean, I might suggest going by train (and coincidentally they might have the monopoly on the route) but for some reason they're not asking that.
nick: How likely are you to recommend South Western Railway to a friend?Was it multiple choice? I remember someone set up a survey when I was working at DEC in Basingstoke and there was a suggestion that the office get relocated to Reading. One question as "How bad would the effect of this move be for you?" and the options ranged from "somewhat" to "very significant". People who lived in Reading, and had up until that time had to commute to Basingstoke every day, struggled to find an appropriate box to tick.
Tim: To be fair, yes, there was a Not At All Likely option.I found a way (by ticking that I'd used both) to indicate that their website is utter shite for buying tickets while Another Train Company was excellent. And there was a chance to complain about train frequency. But when it came to whining about the last train from London being 10pm I had to resort to a free-form text moan; can't imagine that getting any attention.
nick: Didn't know about the live album. Will give it a goPhil suggests museum at Greenwich maritime museum, which was one of the things I noticed: they have a £10 exhibition on astronomy photographs which might be interesting (as well as anything else that's on there)
nick: The live album is the gig I went toAh yes, I forgot you saw them again. The two of us went in March 2015 to see Claudia.
Tim: I knew somebody went to see something like that at some point.Astronomy looks OK and v handy for...the DLR. Bring your roller skates and we can recreate the PSB video near the Dome.
nick: Well I think I give up on Hebrides. The logistics of finding B&Bs has defeated me:the ones that do have online booking (which are not many) don't have availability for a series of consecutive dates that I can find; others need you to mail the place and wait for them to reply - I did get some dates off one of them but can't easily make them work with other island B&Bs after about 4 hours of mucking about. Probably should have sorted it earlier. Will have a go on the Isle of Man... Tim: Well I'm enjoying the no-confidence situation. The Tories have condemned themselves to a period of purgatory, it's going to be great. The by-elections in two weeks time will be hilarious, the rubbish that some of them will have to spout afterwards. In a way it will be a shame if they fail to drag it out for a whole year. nick: I have mixed feelings: on the one hand it's good to see the Tories in trouble, with the rebels now in a position to obstruct anything BJ tries by abstaining etc. but I worry that (a) if he stays in power he'll just try and push stupid policies like imperial measures and tax reductions on petrol, or (b) they'll get rid of him and install someone who's less ineffectual and may offer enough of a clean sheet to get them elected (at which point they can call an election)Riding home last night one of the bolts that holds on my pannier/mudguard popped out. I did find it, but it wouldn't stay in because the thread inside the frame has gone (the bolt basically just slides in and out). At this stage I had ~30miles to go, so walking wouldn't have been an option: I only had one pannier but the rack wasn't stable enough to carry it. As luck would have it there was a discarded hefty bit of zip tie in the verge just where I stopped and I managed (eventually) to get that through the frame and fasten the mudgard/pannier back. This worked surprisingly well so I got home OK (albeit not until 10pm). This morning I fixed it "properly" by sticking a bolt through and screwing a nut on the other side. Had a bit of trouble finding a suitable bolt, because anything with too big a head would get in the way of the chain (it was on the derailleur side).
Someone at work suggests retapping the hole so it would fit a slightly larger bolt, but I think it's fairly secure at the moment. Have you ever done retapping Steve? I'd be worried about weakening the frame
Steve: Pretty certain the frame tube has a steel threaded insert banged into it, there is nothing to be re-threaded. Maybe a shop can put another one in, or get a 3rd frame from Whyte?Frame is aluminium so too soft to take a thread.
I did of course tap threads at college but it needs to be into something solid.
What happened with your wheel that broke?
nick: yes, after Steve mentioned the threaded insert I did a bit of googling for ideas on threads being stripped on a bike frame and "rivnuts" and "helicoils" came up. As did the suggestion to just put a nut on the other end of the bolt (which is what I have done). I think I need to get to screw fix and get some more spare bolts so I can put them in my toolbag (I've already stuck some zip ties in there)What happened with your wheel that broke?
I replaced it with a new one. Didn't hear anything back from Evans, and on checking the Mavic "2 year warranty" document saw that it is only for manufacturing defects, and specifically excludes wear-and-tear so I think I'd be out of luck with that - it was about 15 months old with 13,000 miles on it. Replacing the freewheel looked quite expensive (I couldn't quite work out which new one I needed but it was quite pricey and so I didn't think it would be worth it)
nick: twitter thread about and link to, a consultation document for businesses regarding re-introduction of imperial measures. Some of the questions are a bit "leading" Tim: Re-records rather than re-composes.Cheers for the consultation survey link, I'd seen the main consultation where they expect written responses mainly e.g. from companies, but not that one. I'll have a look, but mostly I'm thinking it's just meant as a distraction.
On the by-election front I'd had a look at the previous results for Tiverton and assumed the Tory would be safe but with a reduced majority - but I just found out that the bookies have LibDems as favourite, blimey. You can actually get 5-1 for the Cons, I'm tempted to hedge.
nick: On the cycle ride in this morning I listened to a podcast from the series "Fall of Civilisations" about Easter Island. Also available on youtube.It was pretty interesting and (so far as I could tell) refuted the commonly-held (and espoused by Jared Diamond) story that the reason they came to a bad end was that they mucked up the island ecology by chopping all the trees down to move the statues around. Worth a listen if you have a couple of spare hours. Quite a lot about the moai statues which made me think of Tobago, although I think in the game you're not obliged to have the statues facing inland, which is what they did on Easter Island
Tim: Well no, they don't have to face inland exactly because they rotate, obviously. I bet they don't even mention that. But they cannot be on the shoreline, to ensure that they always face some land. nick: I don't remember him saying that they chopped the trees down solely to move statues maybe not... although according to the podcast, Diamond seems to favour the explanation that it was down to the way the Easter Islanders exploited their environment (including using trees for statue rolling) which caused their downfall. And makes the case that this was an "attractive" idea because it chimes in with the idea that in the present day, we neglect the environment at our peril. But the reasons given in the podcast for the collapse are different, and in a way, more sad. nick: Someone who was in the office on Monday was off sick yesterday and today reported positive COVID. I was sitting pretty near him so am particularly conscious now of a tickle in my throat. Hope I don't start feeling ill today because I have a 3 hour cycle ride home and not sure what state the trains might be in nick: So... are you on your bike? I've ridden all the way to the office every day this week so far. Partly because my car's broken down (needs new engine oil seal, clutch bits, and flywheel thing) and partly because it's midsummer week with good weather. Enjoying not using the car (it's been out of action for over a week now) but feeling a bit tired.Negative COVID test last night so back in the office again today
Tim: I signed up to Hampshire Library in order to try the Ogawa ebook. I automatically got issued a temporary login ID, and put a reservation on. A few days later I got an email with a permanent ID.Today I got an email saying my reservation is available to download. Logged on - no sign of anything on my permanent ID. Tried the temporary ID: Your library account has expired or has been blocked.
So that worked well. Now I've made a reservation on the new ID. Just have to wait a couple of weeks for the current loan to expire.
Tim: A bit of fun on BBC news this morning. The 7:30 post-by-election Tory interview was due to be with Oliver Dowden, but he's quit. They were told Dominic B'Stard would fill in, but no show and they're waiting for some replacement. So meanwhile they fitted in a Boris-sceptic (Roger Gale) who duly slagged Boris off. nick: I got my first e-book loan (all the others have been audiobooks) from the library to see what it was like. It is not in any way convertible to Kindle: the book is readable inside the Borrowbox app, with no way (I could see) of exporting it.Now I've made a reservation on the new ID. Just have to wait a couple of weeks for the current loan to expire. Sometimes when it has said "available on " I've put a reservation in only to have it appear much sooner "Good news! your book became available early" and your loan starts then, which isn't always convenient in terms of planning your reading itinerary. OTOH I've renewed loans a couple of times and never been told "sorry you can't renew because someone else has reserved this book" which I did used to have happen with physical books. I don't know if that's because I was lucky or because they have some other mechanism to decide how many e-copies can be out at once
nick: On the kindle front... maybe I won't bother with borrowbox after all then. yeah... it's not as convenient as having it on kindle. Also, it Borrowbox doesn't sync up your reading progress: I have the app on my iphone and iPad, and so I downloaded my book on both devices. But it doesn't sync your reading progress between different devices.With Kindle (which I also have an app for on iphone and iPad and laptop, as well as the kindle itself), I can open the book on any of my devices, then when I open it on a different device it says "you're on page X but you most recently were reading page Y on your , do you want to go there?" I realised I use that a fair bit e.g. when I'm out and about without the kindle, but have a couple of minutes spare, I can open the book on the phone and continue reading from where I left off.
Tim: Another tech nightmare you steered me into Nick, was that I thought I could listen to that podcast on the Pi (volumio). There's a soundcloud plugin, ace. To get the plugin, SSH onto the Pi and 'git clone' the plugin from github. Credentials?!? It's a public repository, what are you on about? Much fruitless googling later I resorted to downloading the stuff to my PC (trivial), copying it to the pi SD (in the area where FLACs go) and then using my ninja bash skillz to copy it to the right place eventually (not sure where the other copies went). Success after a mere couple of days.I've heard about half the podcast so far, and it's highly interesting, but it's a familiar problem that it's presented as an argument. Half the stuff I've heard is what he doesn't think, and I'm don't entirely remember which is which.
nick: I'm surprised that podcasts aren't more straightforward on the Volumio but I can imagine there may be tons of different plugins you can use. I listened to another in the series today about The Songhai Empire which was OK but not as good I thought.My car is (still) not back - as well as the oil seal/clutch bits, it needed a "dual mass flywheel". He's had it for two weeks now (said it should be done yesterday but when I got home from cycling all the way to work and back it still wasn't there, so I cycled in again today). Ella broke down on Sunday - turns out her clutch has gone - and Lesley had a flat yesterday which hasn't yet been addressed. So the only working car in our household is Ryan's. I'm saving a lot of money in diesel, but may not be quite enough to pay for the flywheel
nick: Got car back yesterday and drove/cycled to work today. When driving it was quite hard to change gear which I put down to the new clutch thing and assumed it would get better. Got home this evening and tried to put it in the drive and couldn't get it into reverse at all. So another call to mechanic. I hope he doesn't say it needs a new gearbox nick: Mechanic came to take the car again today. Says the problem is the self-adjusting clutch(?) hasn't adjusted itself properly so he needs to take something apart to fix it. Hopefully back Saturday. Working from home today, will cycle in tomorrow. I should probably enrol on Going Car Free for July Tim: Also on the car front we finally got rid of the Astra, the 208 doesn't have a cd player so I need to sort out some ents for my 5-minute drives to Asda. Plan A: it has a usb socket I can shove a stick in with music files on and it'll read them. Stuck one in and the Sources menu now has a USB item, hurrah. Select that and... nothing happens (stays on DAB. Of course the hopeless manual doesn't actually tell you what should happen or anything). A bit of googling suggests it needs to be FAT32, max 32GB, great I can fix that. No, it turns out that's exactly what it is already. Due to no further info being available I might be approaching Plan B already. Tim: Progress! I found an ancient USB stick and gave it a try on the offchance and it worked. Tip: never throw anything away. The downside is that it's so old it's only 128 MB, smaller than most flac albums. So it's got mp3 on there instead, maybe that's the difference (manual says flac ok too...) nick: Has the car stereo got a "bluetooth" mode? in which case you could pair your phone into it (although that means you have to have the music on the phone). I don't have bluetooth in my car but plug one of these dongles into it, which pairs with my phone - that works really well.But.. hang on... 5 minute drives to Asda? why do you need to drive??!?
Tim: Er, to transport loads of heavy shopping 2 miles.Bluetooth is Plan B.
But I made a schoolboy error. The manual doesn't mention flac after all! That was in an otherwise identical paragraph I read online from the manual for a different Peugeot. So the only problem I've got is that 98% of my music is in an unsuitable format. Should have bought a 2008 (208 on stilts).
nick: aha - I know what to get you for your birthdayIs it just FLAC that's the issue then? rather than the size of the memory stick?
So maybe you need some utility that would be able to create MP3 versions of all the FLAC files on your USB stick, i.e. create a "mp3" directory sibling to your "flac" directory
Tim: Can I tow it with the car then?Yes, the mp3 copied to the first stick is fine after all.
Sox can probably do it, but it seems a bit overkill. All I used to do is grab a recent CD (which is a dwindling fraction of my music purchases) and go. Perhaps I'll just maintain a stick with a few recent albums, converted to mp3 or wav.
Tim: Aaargh, looking again my manual (pdf) does list flac in one place, but not in another. Seems to be a badly glued together bunch of docs, towards the end there are chunks about "Connect Nav" and "Connect Radio" which have a lot of copy pasta and tend to look the same. If we had satnav I'd be able to play flac music??? Tim: Right. I can dump flac files onto my phone, and once connected with Bluetooth the car can play them. Obv. nick: Does the car have wifi? If you're only going to the local Asda you can probably maintain a connection to your home network and listen to stuff direct from the Pi Tim: I must have bought the wrong kind of wifi, or you think I'm a really slow driver.I have vaguely thought of battery-powering the pi to make a walkman out of it (which I don't actually need), maybe that would help... somehow.
nick: I thought this was a good thing to say, and to bear in mind if I'm having a disagreement/discussion with someone "I did say to Jolene, let’s not fall out about anything. It’s just my opinions, I’m not saying it’s true." nick: Youtube recommends Scarlatti stuff to me and quite often it's ones I've not heard before (it's lovely to think I've still got loads to discover). This one came up a few days ago and I keep going back to it. The instructions on it say "play as fast as possible" but she said when she did that it was just too much. Still quite fast though.I can't help feeling that he was really in the zone when he was writing, and just churned out loads of amazing stuff, and that he was laughing out loud when doing this one (the pianist seems not to be able to stop smiling too)
Tim: And I can recommend the recent DiN album by Polypores for anyone fancying some quality genre-free electronic music. Tim: And (2) thanks to your link I finally got to hear the legendary Worship The Glitch, which I somehow never got around to buying. Saved a tenner there then. To be fair it's probably better than a lot of stuff I did buy, but it's not really my cuppa - too fragmentary. nick: Tim did you watch any of the women' (women's?) football tournament? Last time I watched female football they were comically poor but maybe they're better now? Steve: "Comically poor" - the sort of thing I would say!Lots of people seemed to watch it which I can't get my head around.
If you compare with women's tennis - they are really good at that and it's watchable, if not as "gripping" as men's.
I saw a small amount for curiosity and apart from being far worse than men, they seem to be doing the same rolling around on the floor and spitting that men do which is er disappointing?
And I find that the commentators don't make any negative comments when clearly there has been a catastrophic error perpetrated. PC gone mad ha ha!
Pretty sure the BBC hypes it as they have so little sport left to show these days.
Thanks for the cards.
I now have the xPropaganda studio album which sounds lovely but is not making much impression.
I think I just need Susanne Freytag to do a talking book.
CD prices seem to be shooting up. For example KC CD/DVD-A is £20 at Burningshed when it was £13 last time I looked.
Tim: I saw a few games, and it seems there are a few half-decent teams such that if two of them are playing each other then it's fairly entertaining, otherwise it still seems terrible. Especially, players are allowed far too much time unchallenged. But on Saturday I went to my first home game of the season, and Lincoln's plan was to defend from the front, challenge everything instantly. The high press. It worked, there were no goals, hardly any chances, it was a really dull game. So that was no fun either.Steve, don't forget a lot of people watched it only if/because it was England and they were doing well. Many wouldn't have watched the final otherwise, I reckon.
nick: Cycled part way this morning (from Chobham) because I can't get panniers on the bike and was using a rucksack. The bike felt a bit lighter but I felt a lot heavier (rucksack had my laptop in it as well as clothes, and I had my heavy waistbelt lock thing on). Went to the bike shop in Hampton on the way in; they said they thought they could drill out the bolt but not until Wednesday next week, so it's booked in for then.
Might try cycling all the way tomorrow, leaving the laptop and lock here this evening so I shouldn't be so heavy
nick: Cycled all the way yesterday and today. The rucksack feels a bit uncomfortable when you first put it on, but doesn't get any worse through the ride (maybe I just wriggle about to the right position). The back of the bike feels very nimble without rack/panniers. I've been leaving the laptop in the office (it's straining rucksack capacity to include it as well as towel/shampoo/clothes/lunch). So rucksack does seem fairly good, except for relatively limited capacity.
Got a few days off now (Thu/Fri/Tue) but planning on cycling to Exeter (with rucksack) on Friday. Probably coming back Monday but if I do come back in time for Sunday zoom I'll give you a shout.
nick: After 8 miles this morning, my shoe felt loose on the pedal and I couldn't twist it out. Managed to stop and get my foot out of the shoe, leaving it clipped in: one of the bolts holding the cleat had got lost, and so when you twisted the shoe it just was just spinning round. So I span it round by hand until the bolt was completely unscrewed, leaving the cleat and bolt in the pedal and the cleat less shoe in my hand.I couldn't get the cleat out of the pedal at all, so had to ride the rest of the way in with no cleat. Felt a bit dodgy - I could only use the side of the pedal with the cleat in it because the bolt was sticking out and gave my shoe something to grip on: the other side of the pedal was much too slippy
Went to the bike shop near work and he said he could get the cleat out. He had a special cleat-removal tool, aka mole grips, which he used to twist it until it came out. And then he gave me some spare bolts, result! So I should be fine for the way home
nick: Having re-arranged my PC delivery for today, I had a message from DPD "Your driver Norman will be delivering your package between 10.13 and 11.13 today". Great.At 10.40, another message "Sorry, we missed you! We'll try again tomorrow". There are 10 of us in the office today and none of us heard the doorbell ring.
So I updated delivery details with a photo of our front door, buzzer circled with red. Let's hope Norman is on better form tomorrow
nick: pc delivery update: after failed delivery monday, and message from them saying they'd do it again on Tuesday, I had a message on Tuesday saying the package had been delayed "due to an unexpected issue" and would be delivered on Wednesday. On Wednesday they said "parcel has been delayed in transit" and would be delivered on Thursday.On Thursday at 7.05am I had a message saying it would be delivered between 7.57am and 8.57am. I wasn't sure whether anyone would be in the office at 7.57am, so asked for the delivery to be delayed. It's now DEFINITELY due to be delivered tomorrow.
nick: Success! PC got delivered this morning. Will have a go at installing today. I hope it works with Ubuntu nick: Not success! PC won't power on. When you plug it in, the LED on the USB mouse comes on, so some power is getting through, but clicking the on/off button has no effect. Opened it up and can't see any obvious loose connections, so now waiting to see what PC specialist say Steve: So the new induction hob...I investigate how to install it - circuit size etc.
I bought what I thought was a 16A hob and the Currys description talks about a 16A dedicated circuit. But hang on, it has a 13A plug on it!
The serial number label says 3700W and 3700/240 = 15.4A so over 13A.
Zilch in the installation manual apart from wire colours.
So I spend as long as Nick did trying to find someone who knows what's going on.
I'm passed between Installation and Support a few times.
After a few attempts I get through to a nice British lady at Bosch.
She puts me on hold and comes back and she can't hear me.
BUT I hear her say that this can happen after users have been on hold so she tells me the answer assuming I can hear her.
The load is configured on the settings menu and I can cut off the plug and hardwire if I want to up it to full wattage.
Sure enough this setting is buried in the User Manual but there is no explanation on circuits to accompany it.
This saves me a huge messy job of installing a new cable, I just hope 16A is powerful enough for Deborah.
nick: She puts me on hold and comes back and she can't hear me.BUT I hear her say that this can happen after users have been on hold so she tells me the answer assuming I can hear her.
That is infuriating! What on earth kind of phone system does that so often that the call handling staff need to do this? Must be the same one that e.on use.
I had a call from Scottish and Southern Electric yesterday saying they've booked us in for the "shrouding" on 1-Nov. He left a voicemail which was really clear and detailed, and also sent me a text message. I've been really impressed with them (although this is the regional office; the main call centre told me it was nothing to do with them and to go to e.on, who said no, it wasn't them, but they found me the number of the regional SSEN place). So there are good support centre staff out there.
My PC still won't turn on, even after following the advice of really turning it off and on and unplugging/plugging etc., and I had a mail from PC Specialist today asking me to return it via DPD
nick: tramline are offering 3 year senior railcard for £47 although it's new customers only. I think I may not count as a new customer but I'll give it a go next time I'm about to buy a train ticket nick: I'd not heard of this one before. One for Tim to solve?Two envelopes problem
Two people, equally rich, meet to compare the contents of their wallets. Each is ignorant of the contents of the two wallets. The game is as follows: whoever has the least money receives the contents of the wallet of the other (in the case where the amounts are equal, nothing happens). One of the two men can reason: "I have the amount A in my wallet. That's the maximum that I could lose. If I win (probability 0.5), the amount that I'll have in my possession at the end of the game will be more than 2A. Therefore the game is favourable to me." The other man can reason in exactly the same way. In fact, by symmetry, the game is fair. Where is the mistake in the reasoning of each man?
Tim: Aha, just remembered to look in here, first time for a week. Glad to hear you're both delighted customers.I've read the question about 4 times and now I understand it. So could take a while to think about it.
Tim: Nick, I found the asterisk on the Trainline page:*To use the discount code, you must be a new customer, which means you have not transacted with Trainline in the past and you must have, or create a Trainline account.
nick: *To use the discount code, you must be a new customer, which means you have not transacted with Trainline in the past and you must have, or create a Trainline account.yes... I don't think I have a trainline account, unless it got created automatically and tied to my apple ID when I used the app on my phone. If it's just a matter of registering with an email address it is fairly easy to create a new one, but if it uses the apple id associated with my phone it's more difficult. I guess I'll find out when I come to buy a ticket, which might be soon: planning on doing part of the way to East Prawle (holiday at the end of the month) on the train
nick: hmm.. although when I use the app there is a "Sign in" button which asks me to sign in, or create an account, so I'm obviously not signed in by default simply as a result of running the app. So maybe it'll be ok Tim: Having made slight progress maybe with the two wallets problem, I read the first part of the two envelopes wiki. Realised that I still hadn't understood the question after all (forgot the bit about not knowing the contents of either wallet). Back to square one. nick: Apparently my new PC which was DOA had a faulty motherboard, so they've replaced that, ran stress tests overnight which passed, and are going to send it back to me now. nick: A reader comment to a Guardian article about one-hit wonders:Surely the definitive comment on Mouldy Old Dough came from the Guardian itself
"....sounds like pop music made by people who have never actually heard pop music, but have had it described to them by someone who didn’t really know what they were talking about"
Tim: Anyone thought about ditching their landline yet?Plusnet now do full fibre (the only kind of fibre we can get) so I'm thinking of switching. That would make our landline almost redundant, and a waste of money.
The main thing that's lacking, I think, is we're so used to DECT phones that it would be weird having to keep our mobiles handy as we move around the house. Seems there are a few DECT phones that can bluetooth pair to a mobile (or two mobiles) so that you can receive/make mobile calls from the DECT phone. Just need to be in the habit of leaving the mobiles on/charging in a spot within bluetooth range of the phone base.
So that probably covers it. But...is there some other strategy I'm missing or some product I haven't thought of?
nick: I'm not sure if we can get full fibre but probably would get rid of landline if I could. We hardly ever get calls on the landline and most of the ones we do get are spam. We only have one wired handset (no cordless). The only reason I might keep a landline is that it still works if there's a power cut, but I believe that the exchanges are going to change shortly so that landlines will no longer work when the mains goes off.
I think pretty much all mobile contracts are unlimited minutes/texts now? So no reason to have a landline to make/receive calls any more.
nick: Went to Totton last Friday to see a magic show with Tony. Cycled to BSK, then trained to Totton and cycled to arts centre. Because of some kind of fault on the electric rail, trains were all mucked up and the outward one was 45 mins late, and rammed. Pretty uncomfortable (for others) with my bike jammed into the corridor. Return train was 30 mins late, so I've submitted two "delay repay" claims. I am not hopeful of getting anything but worth a try. Presumably you've had experience of this type of claim Steve? I sort of supposed it's only valid for peak time trains and that my cheapy evening return on a railcard wouldn't be eligible. nick: woohoo, both my claims for delay-repay were approved. Not sure yet how to update my "railcard savings so far this year" spreadsheet to reflect this Steve: I have done claims before but remember one getting rejected - it had 2 trains and I couldn't exactly remember both time.Kev had recent ticket trouble - bought a ticket from a person with a portable machine in a station. The guy's machine could not print so he was told to get to the back of the other queue but he had definitely cancelled the transaction.
Of course he gets 2 credit card deductions.
Station can't handle the claim - go online... online only valid for tickets bought online.
So he's having to do a chargeback. This country is crap.
nick: Just received 2 payments for £2.30 each from delay+repay, which works out at 50% of the cost of the return ticket. Tim: I went in HMV yesterday. And bought a CD. Yes! It's JMJarre's latest, Oxymore (=oxymoron). On first listening sounds a bit rackety. Steve: Hmm 70 doesn't sound very old as you approach it.I kept meaning to get E2-E4 but it was always over the amount I wanted to pay for it!
Not going to get any cheaper now is it?
nick: As it happens I was listening to Assassin by Mark Shreeve RIP when I saw this. Yes, 70 seems pretty close: I'd assumed that the members of Ash Ra temple were decades older than me Tim: As it happens (2) I currently have the first ART album on loan from Neil. Worth a listen, but pretty unsurprising, and not something I'd be keen to buy. Made me think I could try lending him an early KS album, Moondawn perhaps, mainly for the retroness. Trouble is, I only have them on vinyl in Steve's garage, up until Body Love. Wouldn't mind just a one-off listen myself too, darn. Hang on though - I've got copies of Steve's rips! Perfect, cheers. Tim: I just listened to Moondawn. Even more of a racket than I expected. Maybe the racketiest KS album? Tim: Next up was Picture Music, I couldn't actually remember what to expect for that one. Also quite rackety, as it turns out, esp. side 1. Side 2 a bit more Timewindy perhaps. Steve: I'm surprised you didn't get those CDs.Moondawn is one of my favourites with the pebbly beach sound.
Picture Music's Totem seems to be well regarded.
I'll bung a picture up.
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