This will be a personal thing but I personally don’t think the Denon stuff sounds that good. I have an earlier version of the DM41 that we use on our spare TV to get a better sound. It’s good (way better than the built-in speakers) but the sound quality just isn’t that great. Not likely to be improved with QA speakers either (not a big fan of them tbh). I would expect Yamaha to sound a lot better but it does depend on your budget and what you want to do. Another alternative might be to just go with some active or powered speakers. Edifier do some great sounding speakers that also do Bluetooth if you want to use your phone or a tablet to do the streaming bit. Not the greatest sound quality but (streaming over BT) but it might work well enough for you.

I think yesterday’s race was again one where Russell both drove very well and also got a bit of luck. He happened to be in the right place when Ricciardo and Sainz came together and then managed the rest of the race really well with some great driving. Hamilton was unlucky several times: Stuck in a DRS train and just when he had an opportunity to attack Gasley without DRS he had Max coming up behind him and a blue flag. Add to that his pit stop was messed up a bit which ended up sticking him back behind 2 drivers he would have otherwise been ahead of. Finally, watching the Merc car – it’s got what appears to be the worst of the porpoising effects of any of the cars. The Ferrari seems to bounce maybe more but doesn’t handle as badly with it. It was a chastening race for Hamilton but not sure there was an awful lot he could have done about it and it doesn’t detract at all from his standing in the sport. IMHO

It all comes down to personal experiences and the staff at the local store. On the whole, Specsavers have been pretty reasonable with me. Been flexible if I think I’ve got the wrong thing. For example, tried varifocals for glasses last time. Just didn’t work. They were happy to review what wasn’t working and try something different. In this case occupational glasses for working from home and regular lenses for the other pair. Refunded the difference between them. Having said that, the original chap that dealt with me was a bit pushy whereas the lass that dealt with me the second time was properly professional and customer focused. Wifey tried one of the local, independent opticians and they were, frankly, awful. Wong prescription and awkward to deal with. Not especially focused on sorting the problem out sympathetically. Consequently, she’s never been back to them and I had no interest in trying them.

Wordle 291 3/6

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Pulled that one out… :)

Thought I read recently that Merc have a number of upgrades they are bringing to Melbourne this weekend so I am expecting something better from them. They need to do something quickly to avoid the season running away from them hence not being surprised if they have brought some of those planned upgrades forward to Australia.

At a festival many years ago and the headline act for the last night were a band I’d never heard of. Wasn’t too bothered about seeing them but thought, as I’m here no harm in staying to listen. Oh my. What an absolutely fabulous set and atmosphere. They were awesome that night and still one of my favourite gigs largely because of the unexpected pleasure you get from being very pleasantly surprised. The band? Runrig.

Most disappointing band I’ve ever seen, after really looking forward to them, was Van Halen at The Monsters of Rock, Castle Donnington back in ’84.

Huh. I was at that one as well. Some striking memories from the day including the sky shimmering with bottles flying towards the stage when Gary Moore was on and the (hilarious at the time) fires breaking out at opposite sides of the stage when the fire crew turned up to put them out. :)

Agree, Van Halen weren’t especially inspiring but AC/DC were excellent. Enjoyed Gary Moore too although he was a bit grumpy. Mind you, I suppose I would be too if the stage was being rained on with bottles – half of them filled, or semi filled with piss

@Ewan Possibly still a bit early. My wife tested positive on the Thursday. We tried to be as socially distant in the house as possible. Started to feel a slight cold on the Sunday and was mild cold on Monday. Still tested negative. Tested positive Tuesday morning. Tested negative Wednesday morning. Positive PCR test on Wednesday afternoon. Been testing positive since then although the line was very faint today. Expecting to be negative tomorrow morning. So, could easily be another day or two before you test positive but it does sound like you probably do have it.

If I had spare cash to throw at it I would change our current gravel based driveway to resin. But it wouldn’t be cheap to do that

First one for a couple of weeks today..

Wordle 261 3/6

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And occasionally i hear some one refer to GIS software such as… well you probbaly don’t need help with that

Working with a customer where they were using this particular software. We had a lot of fun with this and the engineer from the company got to enjoy his title of “GIS man”. Even his female associate found all highly amusing…

I guess we will have to wait and see how this season starts to shake out. Still too many unknowns at the moment about who has aced their design and who has dropped a bollock. If there are two or three manufacturers who have aced the design then, combined with the driver line-up, then we may see some more robust defence against Verstappen’s driving. I would love to see that – although I’m not sure he is the sort of person who will recognise it as being down to him and won’t change. Which is likely to be good fun as it may mean he ends up throwing away potential championships. If he had driven a bit more sagely last season it wouldn’t have even come down to a final race shoot out – he’d have had the championship sown up several races earlier.

Our main sofa is an Ikea one and though we’ve had it a few years now it’s still holding up very well and suits us. We have also just bought another one from John Lewis. Long delivery time but was the size, shape and comfort that we wanted that we couldn’t really seem to find elsewhere. We found the Next range not too bad either – but in the end, couldn’t find one that we could agree on style wise. We try to avoid squishy and Chaise Longue style is really not us – never seen one that we feel is both practical or comfortable. but that’s why there are so many shops out there – because we all have different tastes, budgets and requirements. My daughter has a sofa (no idea where from) but it’s shit. Wasn’t desperately cheap but fabric stains easily, it’s now gone quite squishy and is just not very comfortable. And that’s only 3 years old or so. Our Ikea one, on the other hand, we must have had for over 10 years now.

To be honest, to start with I would sign up with someone like Specsavers for a Contact Lens trial. This allows you to try contacts out and get used to them as well as checking whether the prescription will work. I think they call them Toric lenses if they address astigmatism but as far as I am aware, the astigmatism corrections in contact lenses are less tailored than normal lenses. My astigmatism is quite mild and is not fixed through toric lenses. However, for the most part I can live with them. Gets a bit trickier when trying to read small print, read print in muted lighting or totally clear focus when using a computer. For general, day to day activities they are fine. Depending on the lenses, if you go for monthlies then they cost about £35 pr eye for 3 months of lenses through Specsavers. I could get them cheaper on line I imagine if I tried but for now it doesn’t seem wirth the hassle. I am also using their monthly plan which gives free eye tests and any adjustments as well as shipping the lenses to my door.
Like everything. I think most lenses are much of a muchness and it will come down to which ones suit your eyes. Specsavers rebadge most brands that they use so it will normally be during the trial that you will find the specific brand they will supply you with for your choice of lens – although I’m sure if you read the actual lens packaging closely enough you will find who the manufacturer is.

Confused now. Your script earlier was supposed to be looking for .txt files and now you talk about importing csv files? Not that I am going to be much help :)

Wordle 237 3/6

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For some of the third party / independents it’s worth checking what you get. For example, Tesco used to use O2 (I believe) but there were some features of the O2 network / service that Tesco Mobile users didn’t get. Quite possibly an edge case but I am pretty sure there was something similar with the Virgin Mobile deals as well. If you can afford it, buying the phone separately and leaving you with just a time / data deal to find means you can get some pretty good deals – plus it helps to get you off the “new phone every 2 years” treadmill. If that’s something that appeals to you

Watched the first episode this evening and really enjoyed it. Have read all of the books (apart from the first couple that I read out of sequence because Echo Burning was the first one I tried) in sequence. Personally, I really like them. They are not deep works of fiction and aren’t meant to be. They are lightweight stories with a bit of tongue in cheek humour. With a long running series there are going to be places where it falters and the recent books haven’t been as good as the early ones but I still like reading them. I thought the first film was pretty good (aside from the obvious casting issues) once I had decided to ignore the fact that it was supposed to be Reacher and just went with the flow. It helped that the film was also based on one of the best of the Reacher books. The second one suffered because the plot line was weak. Those that comment on the fuss made about the small things (Reacher’s height and the clothes etc) – as you haven’t read the books you are missing why they are important details. Sure, it’s not the biggest thing in the world but it’s those small details that make up who Reacher is and why he does what he does. Anyway, will see how the rest of the series goes but happy with it so far.

Absolutely love Pembrokeshire. In general, I prefer the North (well, North of Pembroke) but there are so many fabulous places. Love Whitesands beach (just outside St Davids) and last summer the fish and chips from the cafe were unexpectedly awesome. Great coastal walks all along. If you are South though, there’s a nice little cafe at Angle Bay and Pembroke Castle is worth a visit.

St Davids is great to visit (love the ice creams from The Bench) and worth visiting the Bishop’s Palace as well as a walk around the city itself. Boat trip from St David’s (well, likely to be from St Justinians or, depending on the tides, Whitesands beach) around Ramsey Island. Used to like eating at the Sloop Inn at Porthgain although these days it’s only really standard pub fare but a nice village and you can have a gander in the galleries. Some nice walks around the coast near Solva and there’s a great little cafe down on the Quay. Parking at the car park by Pebbles Cafe at Newgale gives you the option of going on the beach there or walking along the coast to Druidstone. Sand and Stone in Broad Haven is meant to be do excellent burgers. The old Quay at Fishguard is quaint with a nice cafe at the end of it. Dinas Head is a good walk and then you have the Preshelli Hills to walk in, Newport is a pretty little village with The Parrog being a great place to have a walk from. There is a lovely coastal walk from there heading south although you can always start on the other side and walk north along the coast. Had a nice cake at the Pavillion Cafe near Moylegrove. Venture a bit further and there are a few things to do around Cardigan (a couple of excellent cake shops!) and then just beyond Cardigan there is a gorgeous little beach at Llangranog. And that’s just scratching the surface. Beautiful place and, as a family, we have spent many summer holidays in the area.

Watched the first episode and thought MF did a great job. IT was dark and a bit gritty yet, for some reason, not a particularly enjoyable watch. So we didn’t bother to watch the remainder of the episodes as we just didn’t connect with it enough to be interested in doing so

We’ve got a VM bundle and to me it has got a bit out of hand. Kind of got used to the telly channels though and the ease of access to Prime, Netflix and other apps (ITV hub, iPlayer etc) and the ability to record HD content. Hardly use the phone these days so could drop that. But that VM algorithm is probably quite smart as it feels like it would be awkward to move – hence we haven’t for a good few years now. The move to VM was easy enough as, at the time, we only really had BT for the phone and EE broadband (provided by work). More complicated now but if I try going down the “we’re leaving” route I need to have a (proper) plan B in case they call my bluff. :)

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Most of mine seem to be 3 or 4.

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I’ll take that :)

Maybe a lucky guess today but nailed it in 3

4 for me again today. Spent far too long thinking about it but I guess it paid off in the end :)

One of the things that distracts is the sounds they use for cars. WTF can’t thy record the actual car and tailor it what the car is doing? Classic one last night (well, several) while watching “Stay Close” (despite the earlier poster feeling it was a pile of shite, we have been enjoying it. It’s a drama and you ignore most of the stuff that’s been described above because we all know it’s not real life): Car pulls out of the drive, sound department provide car noise (wrong car) or car accelerating away, despite the act that the car barely accelerates and pulls over to the side of the road to stop.

Oh, and mortal humans (well, the heroic lead) that can evade fully automatic weapons firing straight at them yet can pick off a baddy several hundred feet away with a single shot from a pistol.

And….. :)

I’ve got one of those little Cambridge Minx X201s as well. My preference would have been BK Electronics. Seem to be very well regarded by the hi fi community (loved dearly on av forums) and hit the value for money point as well. However, it was a bit too big for Mes BC so, at the time, the Minx was it. And it’s ok. As others have said, you only really notice it when there are big bass rumbly things happening and it’s blindingly obvious that the sub is active or when it’s switched off and you become aware of its absence. Only have one on my “home cinema” set up though, not on the hifi

Childish, I know, but these threads bring tears to my eyes…

I’d have to rewatch it too, I think, but my recollection is that Hamilton was the jam in a sandwich and pretty much had nowhere to go. Too many incidents to accurately recall, though 😂

That’s very much how I recall it. Ham didn’t have anywhere to go as MV “stuck it up the inside” and Occon was trying to go round the outside so he was the jam in an uncomfortable sandwich. I personally felt that MV’s move on that restart was reckless and would require the other drivers to take evasive action to prevent a collision – a favoured tactic of Max. Which Horner seems perfectly happy with when it’s Max doing it and getting away with it but is decidedly unhappy when other drivers do it to Max and he comes off worse.
I also agree that Max should have had the title all sealed and delivered by now. However, he does seem to not grasp the concept of playing the long game. Over the course of the season he has driven superbly well for a lot of the time however, when the action gets tight and tense he tends to be quite aggressive and, for me, has frequently over-stepped the mark between hard racing and dangerous / reckless driving. It’s races like yesterday and Brazil that make me hope Ham wins it next week. On balance, if Max wins the race he will have deserved to win the championship – but there is still a sour taste to it. If Ham wins the race it will also be both an incredible achievement in the context of the sport (8 times WDC) as well as the season for him and Merc.

As Zippy said – at least he looks about the right size! Probably a bit more chiselled than Reacher is (in the books) but I suppose this is “Hollywood”. Again, not sure he’s quite nailed the character but could be good to watch. Love the books so it will be interesting to see how they tackle it. Are they doing the books, a book per episode or are they mixing books with newly created content?

I’ve already eaten 3 boxes of mince pies. In my defence a) I’ve been taste testing them (so far Mr Kipling’s winning) and b) they were all best before end of November.

So, last year’s mince pies then? ;)

One, potentially delicious, option is that somehow Lewis wins this year’s WDC title and MV goes on to be “the greatest driver never to win a WDC”. With the regulation changes next season and George Russell coming into Merc this may turn into the season that was the best chance MV had to win one.

Sure, being realistic about it, the chances are good that MV will win multiple championships but I’m not sure he will get to 7 or 8.

That certainly was an exciting race to watch. And a sublime drive by Hamilton. He was helped a bit by the safety car but I feel that only brought the inevitable a bit closer. I admit, I do have a soft spot for Hamilton so am conscious to try not to let that cloud my view of the race. I do think that MV is quite the bully on track and feel that the thin line between “hard racing” and “gamesmanship / bullying” is one he crosses more often and easily than others do. The second overtake that Lewis pulled on him you could sense that MV was going to let the car drift wide and Hamilton would do the sensible thing of not fighting it. So I could see him going off track, but then, when the camera panned out and we could see how far off the track both Hamilton and MV had gone I find it staggering that the stewards didn’t give a penalty. The weaving was pretty bad but I’m not sure that Hamilton as close enough for it to prevent him overtaking, but it did smack a lot of desperation and intimidation. On the whole, it really does seem as though Merc were treated quiet harshly this weekend and I am quite chuffed that they came through it with the win. Interesting that apparently Horner was on the blower to race control as soon as MV had pushed Hamilton wide saying “this is just hard racing, let them race”.
On the other hand, I’m liking Vettel more and more this season. He seems to have grown through the arrogant stuff from his latter days at Red Bull and the clearly troublesome times at Ferrari and is a lot more relaxed and funny. Found his radio commentary about “touching Hamiltons rear wing” quite amusing.

Love Springsteen and have done for many years. Probably my favourite album is Wrecking Ball with most of the remaining albums having high spots for me. Hard to decide on a favourite song but it’s probably Cadillac Ranch. Always loved that song and it was a joy when I saw him finally play it live. But Thunder Road, Jungleland, From small things (for a long time I had only ever heard the Dave Edmunds version which, funnily enough, I still think is the best one), Mary’s Place, Glory Days, Land of hope and dreams, badlands, American Land… there’s just so many. Wembley, a couple of years ago, when he played the whole Darkness album in one section – Racing in the streets was utterly sublime. To hear the piano ringing out across Wembley stadium as the sun was setting was just a magical moment.

Also, from the post ^^ – I was at that Coventry gig too! :)

I gave “This is going to hurt” to my dad last year – still waiting to borrow it to read as I liked what I saw of it.

Finished reading this a few weeks ago. Interesting book which I thought was very readable and raised a lot of thought provoking ideas. As a historian, it seems that he was a bit off the mark on some the technical / detail elements but as a whole, really enjoyed reading it.

Just finished this one – and it is important to read them in order. Loved the series and the way they written. Not sure the TV drama did them justice. It was watchable but, as with most things that are adapted from books, a lot of stuff gets missed out.

And currently reading this – given it as a birthday present. It’s an interesting read but it does feel more like a PR exercise for the company than a proper autobiography.

For me, I think it would be a bad idea to cast a female actress as James Bond because, well, James Bond is an established character. However, as they did with this film, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with creating other “00” agents that can be any gender and they can have their own back stories, their own style, their own vulnerabilities and their own character. They sort of did that with the Jeremy Renner “Bourne” film. Just a tad disappointing that they rode off the back of the Bourne name which felt a bit misleading but you can see what they were doing. Although, at the end of the day, these are just films / stories so not worth getting too worked up about it. :)

I thought it was a great film although, as it is a work of fiction, there are always going to be things that jar slightly. Whether that be plot holes, the usual nonsense with car chases, almost impossible travel etc. The final notice at the end of the credits though suggests this is not the end of Bond….. Just remains to be seen whether the next films start with a ludicrous escape from destruction or whether the future Bond films are historic ie missions that happened while he was still alive.

Slightly tangential to this thread but I always seem to struggle with finding decent waterproof and breathable jackets. Only seem to last a couple of years before they start to leak and stop doing their waterproof job. Makes me hesitant to spend too much on a decent jacket yet most of the cheaper jackets don’t really seem to be very waterproof either. Rather catch 22!

Probably wouldn’t work anyway as Bottas doesn’t have a great track record of being very effective in those sort of roles. To be fair to him, the times he has been asked to back the race leader up his tyres have been past their best but even so, the last two or three occasions when he was being asked / expected to do that he has more or less caved in at the first time of asking. Not sure Hamilton would want it either.

Much as I like Bottas, he doesn’t have that mysterious “x factor” that distinguishes the truly great racers from the very good. Which will be partly why, despite being in the best car for the past 5 seasons he has still only managed to win 9 races. During which time Hamilton has won 44.

Most of these cheap versions are not legit. So it will come down to your moral compass and how you feel about it. The software may well work but there will be no guarantees, as mentioned above. Microsoft 365 Personal is currently £60 per year. It is a subscription model so if you go that route you will be on the treadmill as the software will more or less be disabled when your subscription expires. There also seems to be a lot of misunderstanding around about Microsoft 365 as well. Yes, it is a subscription model and yes Microsoft offers cloud services but the M365 Office products are still downloaded and installed locally on your machine. They are not “cloud” versions.

Also, going for older versions: Yes, they will still work but no, you won’t get any patches or updates for them as they will be outside the support lifecycle. Again, your choice. They will work just fine but be aware that any security issue that hasn’t already been identified and fixed, won’t get fixed.

The other option can be dependent on your work situation or whether you have one or more students in the house. There is usually a very good student deal for Office that will better the M 365 Personal option. Or, if your work has an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft they may well also have home use rights which would allow you to download and install the Office products for about £20. And that is a legit way of getting the software. :)