The only thing you’ll notice is that while you’ll get 500mbps to the back of the router, most of those megabits will leak out into the air between the router and your computer unless you confine them to a wire.

Wired: 516mbps
Wireless (literally sat next to the router): 350mbps.

Though I did go from about 50mbps to 500 so shan’t moan too much.

Having seen on many occasions the way Maple Manor employees drive their customers’ cars I wouldn’t entrust anything to their care, let alone a Polestar.

there is a small shop/post office in princetown which is only a couple of relatively easy miles from postbridge and open normal hours.

Me and you have very different definitions of a “couple of easy miles”. It’s about 6 miles between the two and uphill* all the way and the weather can be totally different at each end.

As others have said the food is good in The Prince of Wales or look at staying lower down in Moretonhampstead where there’s an abundance of pubs and a mini-supermarket.

(*I mean, it’s Dartmoor so it’s uphill on the way back too.)

I would happily destroy a tyre and wheel if it was a valid alternative to stopping on the hard shoulder (eg getting to a slip road or refuge). Way too many HGV drivers using the rumble strip as a lane-keeping aid while they cook dinner.

Booked an electrician to do £2,500 of work three weeks ago. 50% deposit paid, date arranged and confirmed, didn’t turn up. It’s not something they’re going to be able to do in an afternoon. And they’re not answering the phone. I guess this is the reason the Good Lord invented section 75 protection.

Pissed off. Had to turn down an offer to do something fun today in order to be in for the work, and stripped out all the old stuff to save time. Even bought extra biscuits for them.

As it is, it’s a tyre changing and tactics competition.

Entirely this. Would be far more entertaining to turn up at Kwik-Fit with a crate of beer and promise it to the team which finishes first. Points deducted if wheels fall off in the car park.

Boeing in the news again but not really it’s fault this time?

To be fair this isn’t a problem unique to Boeing. It got so bad on A320s that Airbus had to add a lock and a sensor to warn if the cowls weren’t latched completely.

Many people using the FoxESS system need to insulate their batteries over the winter. Fox used to say that it was a terrible idea but then released an insulated enclosure that combines the inverter and batteries together.

As a geriatric millennial I’m starting to see the side effects of long-term cardio exercise. A recent MRI showed mild dilation which the consultant has put down to athletic adaptation, which is leading to occasional and interesting arrhythmias.

I asked him whether the level of exercise was overall damaging to my heart and he was very much on the fence. There is some fibrosis caused by dilation, but there’s no empirical evidence to suggest that this actually has any long-term negative impact. Overall someone taking regular exercise regardless of intensity will almost certainly live a longer and healthier life than someone who doesn’t.

The biggest risk is atrial fibrillation and consequent stroke etc. He did say that many of the changes induced by exercise will revert to “normal” with a training break of 8 weeks, but that very few people who exercise regularly are prepared to do this.

Takes ages to bump the quality from “Blurry Mess” to “Marginally Acceptable” on my Philips TV with a 500mb internet connection. I think the app is just terrible (Android TV). The irony is that you could probably download the entire episode from a torrent site in full HD in less time than it takes to load the Channel 4 app, and that’s before the adverts.

Can we talk about the people who don’t bother to dip their full beam for walkers / cyclists / runners at night on dark roads?

1. It’s pretty bloody inconsiderate to ruin someone’s night vision on a country lane.

2. When you blind them they’re more likely to stumble or fall in front of your car.

3. When it’s narrow, dipping your lights is the ONLY indication that you’ve seem them. If you don’t want a convenient rock thrown at your car as a reminder that there’s pedestrian in the road, dip your beams.

Stories like this have actually led to me moving my untidy stack of batteries out from under the stairs and into a new and shiny metal tower into the garage. Not cheap to change (£2,500), but it did require a new inverter and fourth battery + DNO notification.

On the bright side I got a phone call from the installers asking if I’d be happy with the 6kW model as a free upgrade due to stock problems, so in the near future I can have Powerwall-style UPS for the house.

I have an Openreach DSL modem (HG612) sat in a drawer you’re welcome to have for nothing. They’re a useful intermediary because they let you use any router you want instead of being limited to DSL models or those supplied by the ISP.

You can fit a bike in without any trouble if you take the front wheel off. Mountain bike is probably easier because you can drop the seat post.

Bit of planning ahead needed if you fill the boot and then realise that you left something importing in the cavernous hole under the boot floor. The moral of the story is to store things like the charging cables in the froot.

Older Gridserve units only do 50kW but are cheaper.

Since November all the DC chargers have been 79p/kWh. With charging losses that’s close to £1/kWh, or 33p/mile on non-Teslas.

AC charging is marginally cheaper.

However, when you can charge at 34p on the Supercharger network it’s not good value. Arguably Tesla owners are maybe paying the difference in the up-front cost of the car, but ultimately we have Tesla and then a pseudo-cartel of Ionity/Gridserve/Instavolt/Applegreen, none of whom are going to be particularly interested in reducing prices when there’s already a shortage of chargers.

The humanitarian aid posters above the urinals in motorway services. Not because of the cause (which is important and valid and just) but because they use a first name as an example in “thousands of girls like Shahida”, but then tack a note on the bottom to say “Name has been changed to protect privacy”.

It’s a first name. If anything you’ve made it worse by making everyone who has the new first name the focus.

I appreciate this is an irrational and petty dislike, but that’s what this forum- uh, thread is for.

I wouldn’t be bothered provided the food hasn’t obviously defrosted.

Whenever the BBC prints an interview with one of these people, they should have to flag whether they voted for Brexit or not.

My suspicion is that all the people interviewed wanted to “take are country back”.

[blockquote] I’d say there will be very sound reasons for that, I can’t think of a scenario where running to destruction would be necessary. [/blockquote]

In this situation the choice would be between running the engine with intermittent loss of oil pressure or drifting into a rocky shoreline under a severe gale and losing the ship. I know which one I’d choose.

Snow bucketing down on Exmoor.

https://www.nsia.no/Marine/Published-reports/2024-05

Timely publication of the report on the loss of propulsion on the Viking Sky cruise ship, which nearly drifted onto rocks after all three available diesel generators shut down repeatedly in rough seas due to oil starvation.

While human factors related to ignoring oil level alarms are implicated, it’s interesting that their blackout drills never considered a situation where all diesel generators are unavailable, always assuming there’s at least one in standby.

Also of interest is no capability for the Chief Engineer to inhibit the automatic engine shut downs. When the blackout occurred, over a thousand separate alarm messages were generated, none of which were sorted by priority. Compare this to a modern passenger aircraft which identifies the problem and (usually) presents the appropriate steps to take automatically.

The report does praise the actions of the bridge crew who appeared to demonstrate exemplary decision making. And I learnt where the term “to the bitter end” originates.

I thought the £12k allowance was lost at £150k?

Nope, for every pound over £100k you lose a pound of your personal allowance, and I think it’s worse if you have children.

but if I’ve got it right, that’s £6,300 a year for three years

Might be worth it if it keeps his salary below £100k (nice problem to have admittedly but the tax situation is stupid).

May as well have a nice car or go part time for the same cost.

Yes, forgot to mention that I wouldn’t go anywhere near central USA in July. There’s no air conditioning on the public buses into the park, and the thermometer was showing 50C in the shade near Las Vegas.

It’s not too bad once you’re in the park itself as the climbs are relatively sheltered from the sun but July will be HOT. Best time to do the narrows, though, provided no thunderstorms forecast.

Not a plumber but have you checked that there isn’t any swarf or debris blocking the cartridge?

I’ve stayed in Utah to do Zion and the sleepy town of Springdale at the entrance to the park is good for a couple of days and gives easy access to the Virgin river for other activities. Other parks are only a couple of hours away in a car.

There are a couple of walks in the park that will take most of a day, and splashing up the narrows is a unique experience.

Fly in and out of Las Vegas (don’t bother with the dump that is the city itself) and you can do the Hoover Dam as well. Depending on how much you care about carbon emissions then internal flights in the US are comparable to trains here. Although cheaper and slightly more reliable.

Vodafone when you call for a billing query: “Please enter the 17 digit account number we gave you once, by email, three years ago into your telephone keypad.”

*jabs number into phone, pausing to memorise the next grouping about half way through*

“Sorry, that number is not recognised. We will now end the call”.

*many hours later when you finally get through*

“Hi. Can I start by taking your account number?”

Also WH Smith, because they’re backwards exploitative predatory price-fixing bastards.

You can get a voltage indicator for £20 from Toolstation. For DIY use it’ll be fine, as you can prove it on a working socket or similar. 230v shocks hurt even if through your hand. It also requires vigilance, as shocks are mainly due to complacency despite the person having the requisite test gear in their bag but not using it.

The reason neon screwdrivers are considered dangerous is not because of the neon (the concept is safe in principle), but because they’re vulnerable to water ingress. You don’t notice this, put it against the live conductor, and short directly to ground through your body.

Edit: £10.99 from Screwfix. Not enamoured by exposed probes but it’s £11..
https://www.screwfix.com/p/lap-ac-dc-2-pole-voltage-tester-with-rcd-400v/669HY?

If you need to replace it then maybe take advantage of the £7,500 heat pump grant? It might not be as bad as others say here. You could try running it during the day with the flow temperature down at around 40 degrees. This might be the last chance this year to test this before it warms up properly.

*gazes angrily at sleet*

Old switches can damage LED lamps (especially IKEA ones). I had to change multiple switches that were 15 years old because they kept zapping the lamps they were connected to.

Curious about Agile Octopus – presumably this requires active monitoring and the ability to decide to charge at relatively random times?

I only charge fully three to four times a month but Intelligent Octopus works much better for me than Agile. Whenever the car gets a charging slot the house battery refills at the same time, so over the last six months my overall average unit price is 7.6p/kWh.

Always friction.

I use intervals.icu now for training related stats.

It was a fairly petty thing that led me to not renew the Strava subscription (well, apart from the price increase…) and that was the fact that it appeared unable to accept that people do easy rides.

No, Strava, this wasn’t a “weaker effort than usual”. While I don’t want it to be the riding equivalent of sports day at St Barnabas’, it’s too much of a blunt instrument.

I’m thinking of seeing if I can cut the Geography department off, leave it to succeed of die and take a £5,500 pay cut.

Where do the kids- sorry, stakeholders, come into this if the geography department is excommunicated from the wider humanities?

Presumably you report to someone. Make it their problem, and it will be if they get the hint that they might lose their head of department to another school, although from what others say this won’t be a unique problem and may require an adjustment to management style.

Have you thought about asking them what they think the problem is, and how they might fix it? If they can’t offer a suggestion then explain that they need to implement your instructions instead of going behind your back to cause problems. And for your own benefit have a witness and minute it.

Also Omrom user here, same one used by my doctor. It’s called an Evolv. They seem to be stupidly expensive on Amazon but I only paid about £30 at Boots.

The private sector props nothing up.

It’s a drain when it comes to essential services.

It’s more nuanced than that. For example, I was able to take advantage of private healthcare to deal with a recent health issue, which managed to get appointments with two specialists and multiple scans within the space of a month.

On the NHS I’d have been waiting for a year or more, and would have lost my job, and at that point I’d still need the NHS to cover the cost of the diagnosis and treatment.

Not sure what the cost to the NHS is of, say, an MRI scan, but I remember thinking that it was actually quite good value for money when I saw the invoice after spending more than an hour in the thing.

Not in the slightest bit bothered.

I’m quite enjoying it, though it does help that I’ve read the book several times. I can imagine it would be a bit confusing without reading the book first. Rationing it to one episode a week.

I would b ut the more Ive looked over it the more chips and imperfections I have found,

To be fair, it is 7 years old with 84,000 miles on the clock. I’d just touch in any chips to stop them rusting.

rather than lose the 300gb a month that currently costs me nothing.

I’m not an expert but I can see exactly why the network this SIM connects to is unhappy with a portable router connected to it.