Tidying up the home page

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I’ve done some tidying up of this site. I’ve got rid of the word cloud thing, which served only to remind me that I’ve written lots of posts about things that no longer exist. In its place I’ve put some links to things that are ongoing and folks might find interesting.

If you think there are other things I could do which would improve “The Rob Miles on-line experience” please let me know in the comments.

Update: I’ve put the tag cloud back. You can now find it on the top menu. I’ve also added a “Bad Jokes” link.

Current Flow

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You know that feeling when you put a teacake in the toaster, push down the lever and everything goes out. I do. It happened at teatime today. Turned out that a wayward raisin had bridged the gap between the element and the case of the toaster causing a current flow (yay!) which tripped the circuit breaker. It took me three goes to fix it, but now I can make toast again.

Sci-Fi Scarborough is great fun

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We went to Scarborough today to visit Sci-Fi Scarborough. It was super. I took the big camera and grabbed some pictures.

What a welcome committee

The town was looking good too

They had some amazing film props and costumes

The spa is a great place

They had stuff for sale, authors, illustrators, props, cosplay, talks and tabletop gaming. We had lunch at the restaurant at the Spa and it was superb. Pro tip - have the fish and chips.

The event is open tomorrow (Sunday 27th). You really should go..

Get to sleep using your kitchens

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If you are having bother getting to sleep, spend some time walking down memory lane thinking about kitchens. Works for me. Thinking about stuff that hasn’t happened yet gets the brain whizzing with plans and things to do. But thinking about stuff in the past is quite different (at least for me). So at the moment I’m working my way through the various kitchens we’ve had over the years. The memories are all good ones - like when we used to have a high chair and baby food all over the floor.

if you’re having trouble getting to sleep think about something that you liked doing in he past and see if it works for you..

Mad Software

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For the last six weeks the car has been asking me to accept a change in terms and conditions covering the software in it. A cheery reminder pops up after five minutes of driving. But it won’t let me see the conditions of course. Because I’m driving.

So today I waited for the reminder in the car outside the house before I set off. There were several pages to be gone through and I didn’t read any of it. Mainly because I wanted to drive somewhere. I just clicked on OK and NEXT to get me through to the end and out. I’m pretty sure that the changes are so that when I drive past a Starbucks the car can tell me that latte is on offer at the moment.

I’m not sure how we got to this place, but something tells me it is not a place I want to be in.

Daleks can't see red

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The invisible dalek?

Back in the sixties I was reading a Dr. Who annual, as you do, and I happened upon the “Dalek Defence Guide” which gave helpful tips for surviving a Dalek invasion. Daleks were the number one science fiction baddy of the time, so I reckoned these tips were worth taking seriously. One of them was that, since Daleks can’t see the colour red, you should wear red clothes and hide behind a red post box if you see a Dalek going past.

This caused me all kinds of problems. If they can’t see red, how does this work? Does red appear black (in which Daleks would see you as black) or transparent (in which case the Dalek would see what was behind you). If they see red as transparent, how does the view of what is behind get through you for the Dalek to see. And how does the universe know to show the world behind you to the dalek, and not you behind the red thing?

Yep, I started over thinking things pretty early in life….

Update:

Thanks to the wonders of the internet I’ve found the original reference. You can read the entire Dalek World from 1965 here. I actually think the description makes a kind of sense. It’s not that red stuff is hidden, just that the dalek brain does not notice it as such. But I might be overthinking again….

Plumbing the depths

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I don’t usually wake up and think “Perhaps I’ll do some plumbing today”. But this morning the decision was taken out of my hands, what with the water cascading down the side of the house and all. I had a pretty good idea what the problem was, and a trip into the loft confirmed it. The float valve on the water tank had failed. The split pin that holds the ball cock had rusted through and the whole assembly had broken free, leading the valve to fill the tank forever. The good news was that the overflow was working perfectly, and all the excess water was being directed out of the house. The bad news was that I had to fix it.

I’ve been here before, around twenty years ago when pretty much the same thing happened. That time I didn’t have the luxury of a tap to turn off the water supply. Well, actually I did have a tap, it’s just that when I turned it the top came off in my hand. On that occasion (and I’m rather proud of this) I came home from work in my lunch hour, turned on all the cold-water taps, flushed the toilets and then managed to swap the broken assembly while the water pressure was reduced. I hardly made any mess. Then I ate a bag of crisps and went back to work. But of course, I was much younger then.

Today I turned the water off and then headed off to ToolStation to get a replacement (£7.98). Fun fact. If you search for ToolStation the first hit you get is for ScrewFix. And if you search for ScrewFix the first hit you get is ToolStation.

ScrewFix and ToolStation are competing building supply companies in the UK. In Hull their depots are actually next to each other. I have this idea that on Christmas Eve, when all is peace and goodwill, the staff from the two depots meet in the car park for a football match while someone plays the mouth organ and all talk is of “When will this war all be over….”. But I digress.

The fixing process was actually quite painless. Fortunately I’ve kept my big spanners. For me the worst part was seeing the corroded and aged part and remembering back to when I fitted it as a brand new shiny one. I don’t think I’ll be replacing this the next time it wears out.

Anyhoo, we now have running water in all the right places.

I found this awesome sticker on my toolbox…

Loft Computing

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My loft is now officially the place that things to to break. As part of the “digital back kissing frogs project” today I had a need for a computer running Windows XP. “No problem” I thought. “I’ve got one in the loft”. Well, that was true - sort of. I have a computer up there which I last used around 20 years ago. Unfortunately it doesn’t work. I set it up in the loft and got the result you see above.

Once it got as far as the Windows XP loading screen before collapsing with the blue screen of death. So it is now staying in the loft pending a trip to the tip. This is probably a blessing in disguise though, as I’m not completely sure I remember the login password……

Coffee Tasting Fun

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Tasting in progress

I’m not really a coffee connoisseur. I can work up strong feelings about films and lenses, but not coffee. However, today I took part in a coffee tasting event and it was great fun. It was organised and presented by James Hoffmann from the Decaff Project. Number one son set it up. He ordered the packs of coffee beans which contained “fully caffeinated” beans and three others which had had their caffeine removed by different processes. Then, at 3:00 pm today we sat down and watched a live broadcast of the tasting process, had a go ourselves and filled in our notes. The aim was to determine whether taking caffeine out of coffee also removes all the flavour, and whether the caffeine removal process used makes a difference.

The results were interesting, at least for me. Two things stood out. Firstly, I think that my palette needs a bit of work. I could tell the difference between the samples, but not well enough to be able to reliably identify a particular one. Secondly, I think that decaf coffee is not a second class citizen where flavour is concerned. I would enjoy a decaf blend as much as the “proper coffee”.

It would be nice to think that decaf will end up a “first class citizen” where coffee is concerned, rather than the blend that they add on the end of the list to satisfy those who would prefer to avoid the caffeine hit.