Julienning garlic and ginger. Oddly satisfying to produce little matchsticks of flavour.

SMP = Sea Master Professional

It looks like the Sean Penn documentary will be good

Just got my Canford back from Elliot Brown after a battery change. The original mineral crystal was scratched so I got them to fit a sapphire crystal that looks really nice in the flesh. My first “serious” watch,

Taking the bins out. It’s a running joke that it’s my favourite day of the week (Wednesday night for a Thursday collection).

Doing the washing and drying.

Emptying the dishwasher.

Removing hair from the bath plug hole. What hair I have is short (number 3 on the top, 2 on the sides) but I have a wife and two daughters so lots of long hair gets stuck in the plug hole. If I leave it too long it’s manky when I pull out the foot long mass.

That and cleaning the bath – is it too much to ask people who shave in the bath to rinse it down afterwards?

Timex Indiglo is genius, I had one rebadged as Eddie Bauer in the 90s, very practical, much better than lume if you have a quartz watch,

I’m intrigued by the Timex’s injection moulded stainless steel case…

A little bit of Google later, it looks like a pretty cool process and suited to a low volume product of this size.

https://sinotechltd.co.uk/metal_injection_moulding.html

Banking has changed massively for the better since the introduction of the Senior Managers Regime

Senior managers face fines and jail if they don’t do the right thing e.g. PPP mis-selling and the bank gets a massive fine and very intrusive monitoring for years. Amazingly, faced with jail time people take the rules a lot more seriously and make sure their staff do too.

I think something similar could work for NHS senior managers.

My mini lathe. The white plastic things in the foreground are the high speed /  low speed gears. I stripped a couple of teeth off one. To fix it you need to completely dismantle the lathe to remove the headstock, press out the spindle, press out the layshaft and reverse. I don’t have a press so I bought 2 pieces of steel plate and used 12mm studding to make a press. A bearing puller and new Thor aluminium / nylon faced 2lb hammer completed the job.

Along the way I found out just how badly the lathe had been assembled.

The white plastic bits have been replaced with steel ones, all the bearings replaced with brand name ones (including angular contact bearings for the spindle, top tip, check which way round they go before fitting them to avoid having to do the job twice). If something breaks now it’s likely to be the motor pulley or belt, they’re much easier to replace.

Thanks all, I’ll see how it goes. Luckily both the surgeons I’ve seen have been very good in terms of talking things through, I still have the option of asking for reconstruction in 3 months time after the physio.

Love the Accutron – my dad’s in front of me as I type. Really cool but required amazing tolerances to work.

Very nice as always WCA

What pocpoc said but with me and two daughters drinking coffee the water’s lucky to be a day old

Print a new gear?

I doubt PLA would be strong enough, in any case I splashed out on steel gears. That means that if anything strips it’ll be the change gears which are easy to get to.

3D printed stand for my very cheap safety razor (King Gillette, £10). It’s got hexagonal holes in the base with M12 nuts superglued in so is very stable. There’s also a small drain hole beneath the main hole.

I was going to make one from steel originally but I stripped the nylon gears on my mini lathe so printed this instead whilst I rebuild the lathe.

I can’t understand why when I buy something it hits my account immediately

Your “open to buy” is hit immediately by the authorisation (which is a promise by the card issuer to pay the acquirer in the future if they send the matching settlement information) but the account itself isn’t updated until the merchant submits a settlement file with the actual amount. (this is basically true in the UK which is still a dual message country but is pretty much true everywhere with different mechanisms for single message countries)

even a refund on to the same account cam take 3 or 4 days

Refunds are a really good way of doing fraud – dodgy merchant adds refunds on a pre-paid or other card held by their accomplice, card used to buy cigarettes, booze, vouchers using the refunds before the issuer notices the fraud. Card issuers include a delay to prevent this.

You’ll hit nails with a saw and blunt it.

Reciprocating saw demolition blades are designed to cut through nails, I’ve even used mine for cutting small bits of steel bar stock

Thanks, when my knee is better I’ll find something low and practice – a plank on the ground sounds my level of thrill at the moment!

I’ve got a WiFi enabled tumble dryer. I get a message when the clothes are dry and can WhatsApp my children to empty it before I get home. Annoying teenagers is a killer app!

One of the drone types that Ukraine has used previously is the UJ22 – published range is 800km autonomous flight, cruise speed 120km. Kiev to Moscow is 870km, optimising the drone for range sounds easier to me than smuggling lots of UAVs into Russia.

Hitting the same building twice is quite a feat. I wonder if they have spotters for terminal guidance – or perhaps someone’s doing something clever with hijacked security cameras or using cell tower triangulation? I’d have assumed that GPS and Glosnass are being degraded by the Russians in Moscow but perhaps they’re only doing so around The Kremlin. If GPS is available you get 5m accuracy without a lot of effort, sufficient to hit a building.

I presume these drones can’t be flying 400+ miles into russia

The Ukrainians appear to be using large numbers of low flying, slow, cheap piston engined drones. I can imagine that they’re hard to spot with radars that are optimised for fast jets and missiles. They’ll be in the ground clutter and slow speed may even mean they’re filtered out – you don’t want your air defence radar being triggered by speeding trucks and cars.

@DT78, Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media section (i.e. propaganda) according to Twitter

I think that’s great – stupid and pointless but great

And chalk aquifer extraction in the South East, usually from the deep chalk aquifer so typically below 30m.

I’m naive, perhaps they’ve realised it’s a crap idea?

Danish dough whisk to do the mixing then knead by hand – much better than a wooden spoon

Though for the Day – 5 minutes of poor sermonising followed by a contrived link to a prayer. Prayer for the Day (the early morning one) is much better in my atheist opinion.

Brodie Holeshot ti, sold to get a full suspension bike.

Honda VFR750, lovely bike but 10 years commuting all year meant it was a bit tatty. Engine was still perfect.

@timba – excellent news. Expansion of ammunition production is happening in lots of countries now, the idea that any war would be over in days or weeks is dead.

Now all we need is artillery that’s not near end of life and sufficient spares including barrels to fire all the shells.

Has anyone got one of those cheap Timex field watches?

Lorus are pretty good for the money – Seiko’s budget range. I used to have a titanium version, it was fine.

The advantage of Timex is Indiglo but now that everyone carries a phone all the time it’s less of an advantage.

I wonder when the mainstream news will start to pick up on this?

The Daily Mirror has

From this site

The payment of the fine and / or costs can be made by international bank transfer in local bank partner of ANSR and IGCP, depending on the country of residence, as indicated in the instructions list.

The infraction number must be referenced in the description of the transfer after the IBAN as mentioned in the instructions list.

The documents proving the transfer should be sent to (indicating the number(s) of infraction(s) in the subject):​

EMAIL: receita@ansr.pt​​

MAIL ADDRESS:
National Authority for Road Safety (ANSR)
Tagus Park- Av.ª Casal Cabanas
Urbanização Cabanas Golf nº 1
2743-507 Barcarena

​EMAIL: mail@ansr.pt

Looks like Thames Water is going bust

So it’ll be a public sector problem fairly soon. With the upcoming costs to sort the s1ht out I doubt it’ll be sold again without a giant sweetener….

Wot TJ said. The organisation I work for has outsourced HR. I needed to ask for a change of working arrangements for a staff member who had suddenly had to take on care of a close family member. I was expecting a fight but they were great and also referred the staff member on to paid for counselling.

Quick question – what’s the home charge point of choice today? Tesla Model Y incoming!

I’d happily knock one up on my mini lathe for you but the speed potentiometer is broken so I can’t do it until the new one turns up.

Don’t you need 2 pieces rather than the 1 in your diagram?

Any suggestions on decent replacements?

Feather blades have a good reputation (and are made in Japan so no guilt in buying Russian), I’m just trying a wide variety.

I’ve just got a Gillette King too. The supplied blades aren’t very aggressive. I’m using King of Shaves shaving oil and shaving once with the grain and then against. The shave is noticeably closer than with a Gillette Fusion.

BTW, the blades are from Russia – all the P&G brands seem to be made in St Petersburg. You can get non-Russian blades e.g. Personna, Tatra and Tiger.