I thought you were a Muppet ?

Only Kidding….. ;-)

I believe there’s a few who think so, but back on topic, I don’t think there are any I read incorrectly, I’ve always had good reading comprehension, I learned to read very young, and it served me particularly well when I started working in print and publishing – it’s a major prerequisite if you’re designing books and marking up manuscripts and proofreading.

Anything that involves figures or maths, on the other hand…

I do wish regular emojis would work, I can’t always find an appropriate one from my online resource.

A man walks into an office.

Man: Good morning, I’d like to have an argument, please.

Receptionist: Certainly, sir. Have you been here before?

Man: No, this is my first time.

Receptionist: I see, well we’ll see who’s free at the moment. Mr. Bakely’s free, but he’s a little bit concilliatory. No. Try Mr. Barnhart, room 12.

Man: Thank you.

He enters room 12.

Angry man: WHADDAYOU WANT?

Man: Well, Well, I was told outside that…

Angry man: DON’T GIVE ME THAT, YOU SNOTTY-FACED HEAP OF PARROT DROPPINGS!

Man: What?

A: SHUT YOUR FESTERING GOB, YOU TIT! YOUR TYPE MAKES ME PUKE! YOU VACUOUS STUFFY-NOSED MALODOROUS PERVERT!!!

M: Yes, but I came here for an argument!!

A: OH! Oh! I’m sorry! This is abuse!

M: Oh! Oh I see!

A: Aha! No, you want room 12A, next door.

M: Oh…Sorry…

A: Not at all!

A: (under his breath) stupid git.

royalmail.com suggests it is a small parcel, possibly with a counterfeit stamp

There was an issue with the new barcoded stamps a while ago, that was highlighted on BBC Watchdog, where people were being charged by RM for using bogus stamps, that had actually been purchased from RM counters, or legit businesses, like WHSmith. RM were insisting that the stamps were fake, although the issue seems to have sorted itself out now.

In a couple of instances, though, people had seen the printed serrated edge on the stamps, which is just part of the design, and torn the QR code part off! What can you do…?

Oh, and I regularly get emails with an order number or tracking number telling me that such-and-such courier company has a package for me, legit logos, etc, and they require me to pay for shipping or whatever; a quick tap on the email header will take me to the actual email address, which is inevitably a completely different email that’s been hacked and the address used as a mailout by scammers.

That does rather have the look of a dog having a crap…

Having said that, there are e-bikes that look like they fell from the very topmost branch of the world’s tallest ugly tree and hit every branch and leaf on the way down, so I could probably live with it…

Oh, to have the necessary knowledge, skills and space to be able to do something like this! My ideal car.

@ads678 – that box looks awfully like the tubs Royal Mail use for moving mail around in. The metal wheeled cages I used to move stacks of those around in would generate massive amounts of static electricity, the air would crackle and ll your hair would stand up when you walked past them; avoiding touching them was a good idea…

As I have a large bag in my car’s boot, with things like wellies and other stuff in, when I do shopping, like others have said, the bags go on the floor and/or the seats – I rarely have problems with them falling over.

Something else it’s worth having to help keep the bags upright, and in fact carrying them when loaded is a couple of these things, they’re brilliant and stop the handles cutting your fingers off!

That stretch of motorway carries over 4,000 vehicles every hour so local roads around me in north Bristol are going to be carnage this weekend.

Local roads around North Bristol can be carnage any time other than between 01.30 and 04.30…

Perhaps about twenty years late, but the potholes in my road are being fixed…

…properly! None of that spray some tar on and then some chippings, and hope it lasts the winter. We had geologists turning up checking the age of the strata in the road because of the depth of the potholes.

T’top. Barely room to swing a cat…

Barely enough room to swing a compass! Sorry, but bugger that! Various orifices were puckering up just looking at the photos.

I’ve cycled up to 10,250’, 3,124m, and a last little push at the end had me very worried, pains in my chest, my vision started to go dark with sparkly lights flashing in my vision, but lots of deep inhaling got everything under control. It made me realise what is meant by high altitude effects, and low oxygen pressure. It didn’t help that the temperature dropped and it started to snow, and there was me in a cycling top and shorts! Going back down was much easier, and it was 70° in the village, everyone sitting around eating pizza.
This was in Vail, btw.

honeybadgerxFull Member
On an unrelated note, can anyone help? I appear to be trapped in some kind of brick enclosure, have been banging at a weak spot to try and get out for ages…

That made me laugh out loud, I hope next door couldn’t hear me, although the walls are 1930’s council house, and pretty solid, so unlikely. Very funny, though.

Dead Lions, by Mick Herron, the second of the Slow Horses books. Having become obsessed with the Apple TV series, and just finished watching season 4, I’m working my way through the books. It’s Gary Oldman’s voice I hear speaking Lamb’s dialogue in the book when I’m reading it.

Virtually new Continental all-climate tyres on the front, two year old, low mileage Michelin Cross Climates on the rear with significant amounts of tread left, I honestly don’t think my car will suddenly turn into an evil handling little monster. It didn’t when I replaced the OEM Goodyears on the front with the CC’s, a question of having to, with 1.6mm of tread left, leaving original Goodyears on the rear, which have only recently been replaced after five years.

I didn’t drive it like my gran, neither.

Weather conspiracy shit getting out of hand at a very sensitive time in the US. The irony is obvious to anyone with a functioning brain cell, but that’s not a prerequisite for voting.

It’s why the American ‘education’ system is so completely disfunctional, Republikkkans WANT poorly educated cult members who are easily led by the nose into voting for them, which then will give them the power through the House and Senate, and a loaded SCOTUS, to have a Putin in power, someone who basically rules for life. Project 2025, or whatever it’s called, is working on that, Diaper Don has stated that on winning in November, he’ll be a dictator on day one…

As far as a flat earth is concerned, if it was flat why aren’t there cats all along the edge, pushing everything off?

Re: the moon landings, the best live video footage got accidentally wiped, apparently, but the still film photos taken on the surface, which were taken with Hasselblad 6×6 cameras, which were left on the surface, but the rolls of film have fairly recently been taken from storage and new very high resolution scans have been taken of them, and it’s actually possible to see stars in the sky, one of the arguments against them having been taken on the moon’s surface. The fact is they were taken in daylight and you can’t see stars in daylight on earth, because the atmosphere scattering the light prevents it.
Without an atmosphere, away from the direct sunlight, it’s possible to see the very brightest stars.

Same as I can see most of the brightest stars from my garden with all the street lights on, I can even see the Milky Way on a very clear night. You wouldn’t be able to from a fully lit football stadium, though.

I wore multipoint varifocal lenses for some time, then went back to contacts, they were just easier to get on with and I could carry a pair of cheap reading glasses with me for any closeup work. I could also wear ordinary sunglasses which was cheaper. Ultimately I required cataract surgery in both eyes, I requested that both eyes be fixed for distance vision, but the reality is I only need glasses for very close-up purposes, I can actually read a book if the text isn’t too small. Having had to wear glasses from my very early twenties, having clear vision fifty-odd years on is bloody wonderful!

Despite the efforts of the landowner, this bit of the river is going to turn into an oxbow lake, and no amount of corrugated metal and rubble is going to stop it! One of the few things I remember from school.

The old waterwheel that powered the ragmill, that produced the raw material for the papermill where my grandad and great grandad worked. It finally closed in the 1960’s. The building behind was a brewery, now a beautiful house, very sensitively restored and owned by a very well known actor, who’s frequently seen on television.

I had a search on the webz last night, and found these on Amazon…

Also, Mountain Warehouse do what are almost a match to the Milspec Buffalo jackets, trousers with a Pertex-like outer and a thin fleece/pile lining, similar to Polarfleece 100, which would probably be all that’s needed through a British winter, about £35 I think, with thigh pockets and other pockets zipped. Next time I’m in Bath I’ll pop into their shop and have a look, they could be just the thing.

Wore my new black ex-military jacket out for a couple of hours today, it had turned a bit brisk, though not enough to stop me wearing shorts, but it was perfect with just a thin tee shirt underneath. I think it going to get a lot of use through the winter.

seems like a hairdryer is a worthwhile addition to the process.

Yeah, absolutely. Or else do the waxing during the summer, when you can spread the jacket out on an old blanket, sheet or something outside, and let the sun warm it up while you’re rubbing the wax in, then you can put it on a coat hanger and hang it on the washing line and let it get nice and hot, then soak in. You could let it hang for a couple of really hot days, lets it go through a couple of cycles of heating the wax then cooling it, while you do nothing at all.
My pots of Renapur Wax turned up this evening, I realised the pot I had had very little left in the bottom, so this thread was a good prompt to get some more.

The nice thing about it is it doesn’t need melting, it’s all natural materials, and it can be used on leather, cloth, wood, all sorts of things. I’ve got some boots that could use a couple of coats, and my leather bike jackets haven’t been done for a year or two, so what with some wet days in the offing, I can set to work on those.

Uniqlo do a wide range of flannel shirts, mostly check patterns but a wide range of colours and type of check, also the weights vary a lot, from thin, almost office weight, up to really thick, snug ones that work well with something like a thick fleece or down gilet or denim jacket. I’ve got a flannel-lined Lee Storm Rider denim jacket, with a corduroy collar, that’s perfect with the Uniqlo flannel shirts I’ve got, and I’ve got a Uniqlo down gilet that’s ideal for wearing over the top. The shirts are all roughly £35-ish; I haven’t had any need to buy any for ages, I must have ten or more, ‘cos I seldom wear them through the summer.

I think Muskrat is allowed to play with toy rockets and look at all the whizzy equipment and gloat about his company, while being kept as far away from the real things that might fall down, go boom as is humanly possible!

The ability to actually catch a descending rocket stage, with what is effectively a giant pair of kitchen tongs is astonishing, certainly not something I ever expected to see happen. Synchronised rocket stages landing on a floating platform, hmm, maybe not beyond the realm of possibility, but using giant tweezers, nope!

So not suitable for waterproofing waxed cotton jackets, then? Asking for a friend…

Buffalo must be ace. The super 6 top is too hot for any activity for me.

Depends on how active you are – for several years I was doing vehicle logistics, ie moving vehicles around various storage locations outdoors, for ten hours or so a day, right through the winter, so physically not that active, but standard issue hi-viz ‘waterproof’ jackets are horrible things; boil-in-a-bag human situation. I wore a Special 6, with a Peter Storm £20 waterproof over the top in heavy rain, or else just a hi-viz vest for safety, and a Helly Lifa as a base layer. Absolutely brilliant combination, I was perfectly comfortable in most conditions, just keeping my fingers warm was tricky, because of needing to make notes on a tablet – gloves supposedly made for touch screens are shit!
My regular winter trousers, when it’s too cold for shorts, are ex-Danish Army tri-colour Flectarn combat trousers, wonderful things, beautifully made, very comfortable, and 3/4 lined, so more than warm enough for British winter conditions. Not waterproof, though, and now almost impossible to find for any reasonable price; their government changed the camo spec to Multicam, same as the British Army, and dumped the entire inventory onto the open market, I bought a field jacket and two pairs of trousers for £70, when previously you’d be lucky to get the trousers for that. Several months later, trousers were going for over £100/pair.

Must say, I hadn’t thought about Special 6 trousers, I might consider a pair of those, for crap weather – I have osteoarthritis in both knees now, left is worse, so they could be just the answer to being able to walk in colder weather. If anyone knows of a similar, but cheaper alternative, I’m open to suggestions!

I hope for sentience in his robots as they decide that Elon is a danger to humanity and rip his head off, or he can just drop dead from ketamine overdose.

Not fussed either way,

I’d rather see him locked inside a remote, luxury island establishment, with no contact to the outside world, and the only supplies available are those left at the last supply drop.

Yes, it’s a film, Perplexity has just told me it’s Ex Machina, so AI can be helpful, for someone like me whose memory is shambolic!

Bit of a difference between a 10,000’ mountain & Everest.

Yeah, well, I’ve cycled to the top of a 10,000’ mountain! I was writing postcards at the top, saying “Dear oxygen, having a wonderful time, wish you were here”, but still…

10,250’, IIRC.

Bagging 14er’s in the States is like bagging Monroes here, they’re a gentle stroll, apart from how thin the atmosphere is, which is what makes them dangerous to the inexperienced, then you add the danger of sudden weather changes.

I remember the rush to register a forum name after the great Christmas hack and the period of changing your username to match the point you were making on the thread.

*sigh* I have clear memories of that, and I still wish I’d stuck with the username that I’d changed to during that time. I’m rather bored with the one I stuck with, in fact I was bored with it then, but there were some issues using different name, so I stuck with one that seemed to work better, wish I hadn’t now. *shrugs*

as Billy Connolly said, “this man has his finger on the nuclear button. He’s the same age as my grandfather and we can’t trust him with the TV remote.”

That sounds remarkably familiar…

an American presidential candidate who seems to have early onset dementia…  *raised eyebrows *

When are we going to get back the ability to show emoji’s? Honestly, how difficult can it be?

Rumour has it they have a live data feed back to Mercedes F1 in Brackley who analyse the data and then give feedback re the foils. Bonkers!

It’s not a rumour, they have live data feed to and from Mercedes HQ, so they get actual analysis on the fly, which is borderline voodoo, from a competition sailing pov!

As they’re built by Mercedes, I’d not be too concerned about mechanical parts, Smart cars are still in production, although the Roadster isn’t, parts are common. The Roaster’s a lot of fun to drive, but too low to the ground for me to cope with now, but I’d happily buy a fourtwo of that sort of age, just as a cheap runabout, and do motorway miles in one, having done so in the past.

Dead easy to do, although having a bit of space handy helps – I’ve done it with the jacket/coat spread over my lap on the couch. I’ve used Renapur Wax and Mink Oil, Renapur is very good for cloth and leather, I’ve got a decades old biker jacket that was very stiff and dry, a couple of sessions with Renapur, using a piece of old tee shirt wrapped around a pad of cotton wool works very well, you can keep using the same pad, it soaks up the wax quite nicely. The tubs come with pieces of foam, which work ok, but they do start to break down over time.

I’ve got an old Dickies waxed cotton coat that must be nearly forty years old, it was a light tan with dark brown corduroy collar, brass zip and press studs, with wool lining, repeated treatments of wax have turned it a quite dark tan now, and it’s a nice comfy coat to wear in shitty cold weather.
Probably time I gave both another coating, and time I got another pot of wax, too.

https://renapur.com/

I’ve got a wooden board I’ve had for years, a mate used to work in the packing shed at Westinghouse Brake & Signals, they had lots of quality hardwood available for packing the high-end equipment. My board is a chunk of European Beech; it’s 20” long, just shy of 12” wide, and 1 1/4” thick – it’s not something you’d want to drop on your foot!

I’ve got another smaller square one made from cubes of end-grain bamboo, which is handy, and a couple of thick plastic boards from IKEA, which could do with replacing, really. It’ll give me an excuse to have a trip around the Bristol branch, get lost in the maze and try the meatballs in the café.

Apart from anything else, a big, solid wood board is a very good thing to put dishes and pans on that are straight from the oven; not really something you’d want to do with plastic ones… *raised eyebrow emoji*

Wipers are for clearing water, not for cleaning the glass, so wouldn’t wear the glass in any significant way, I wouldn’t think.

No, they don’t, but

all that muck and rock salt kicked up at 70mph I imagine creates quite a good grinding paste, and you don’t have the option of not using your wipers to clear it.

is what does the damage – sand, which gets blown onto roads, as well as spread from trucks carrying it, is quartz, and is remarkably effective at scratching glass, which is made from quartz/sand.

Headlight lenses are mostly plastic, which is why they go cloudy and yellow, and they can be polished.

Having seen a remarkable number of car screens with cracks in while working in logistics, I asked an Autoglass fitter who was replacing a screen and re-calibrating the sensors and cameras about modern screens, and he confirmed my suspicions that modern screens are a fair bit thinner than a couple of decades ago, basically to save weight, and to cause less distortion to the sensors mounted on the back, which is why they crack for very little reason sometimes.

A replacement screen for my Ford is around £1000, because it’s heated – I make sure it’s covered under the insurance. A panoramic glass roof, which can be cracked when loading a roof rack or carrier, or even something dropping from a tree, that’s £12-1500. An LED headlight unit? About the same, £12-1500.

Personally, I ignore small marks on my screen, there’s one or two tiny chips, but they’re no more noticeable than the heating element in the glass, usually – very low level sunlight will show them up, but regular applications of RainX are the best thing.

I’d forgotten Strange Days, good film that, saw it at the cinema. There’s a SF film called Wraith, which I saw several decades ago, which I remember enjoying, but it probably hasn’t aged well. I haven’t seen Diva on telly or any of the streamers either, which is a shame, wonderful film.

The Cotswolds cover a huge area, from Bath up almost to Warwick, and across to Woodstock. Take your pick.

Is this a bad thing? They’re the TV equivalent of Asda.

So you clearly only ever shop at Waitrose and Fortnum & Mason, then? *rolls eyes*

Popped out to B&M earlier to pick up some bits and pieces, and picked up a pair of these:

Men’s fleece snuggle slippers, they cost £3. They’re very soft and snug, and for £3? Who cares!
One other small detail, they’ve got grippy silicone bobbles on the bottom, which is a good thing.

Where there’s a will, etc…

There’s a road that leads up to Lyneham from Chippenham, and which switchbacks up a pretty steep scarp from the flat lower land along the River Avon. The road has always been… uneven, shall we say, and could get quite exciting for the unaware driving up or down it.

Several years ago, somewhat inadvisedly, someone dumped about a thousand tons of topsoil on the land at the top, to level it for exercising horses. It then rained. A lot. The significant extra weight added to the ground above the road, forcing the road to slide down the hillside, which it carried on doing for months.
Wiltshire County Council are now just starting reconstruction work on the road, which isn’t a main road, but is a major inconvenience for a lot of locals, and it’s going to cost around £5 million!

It’s going to take more than a couple of blokes with shovels…

Having said that, these reflective ones with a proper heel strap would be good, with a decent fleece liner…

https://crocsbr.vtexassets.com/arquivos/ids/368535/208795_7724_101.jpg?v=638210499132070000

Furry lined crocs. Ideal for popping out to the bin and tremendous for indoor slipper duties.

I wear whatever cheap Croc-analogues happen to be around, which is a pair I bought years ago from one of the cheap shoe retailers in town.
The only problem I’ve found with them is that after I’ve been trimming the hedges out front, the thorns go right through the sole! Easy to find and pull out, though. I’m getting another pair this year, and I’m definitely getting some fleece liners for them.

The Merrell versions look fantastic, but I’m not spending £90 on a pair, £9 is more like it, plus about the same for the liner.

Who’d want to be a meteorologist in America, when the fascist Right want to kill you because you’re causing the hurricanes?

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/hurricane-milton-misinformation-meteorlogist-death-threats-1235130352/

There’s currently a USAF Super Hercules sitting a couple of thousand feet above the NOAA P-3, I’m wondering if it’s there on a just-in- case basis…

Madness’, it must be love, was written by Labi Siffre. As in, something inside so strong, Labi Siffre.

I thought everyone knew that…

Maybe it’s just I’m old enough to be able to remember most of the original songs first time around… *shrugs*.

Alexander Darwall, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager, who has been pursuing the matter through the courts as he does not want people on his land without his permission.

I’ve made a small correction which I think shows more clearly the thinking behind what’s happening here. I don’t know how to do underscoring on here anymore, the appropriate button seems to have gone the same place as emojis.

Should I happen to find myself on ‘his’ patch of Dartmoor, I’d sit wherever I want, in order to enjoy the view, have a snack, rest my arthritic knees, and should I be approached by some obnoxious, self-important asshole demanding that I move, I’d tell them no, I’ll move when I’m good and ready, and if they don’t like it, then call the police. Any other action on their part I will consider to be common assault.