When I was about 13, my family moved into a house where the previous owners had had 3 cats and 2 dogs who were locked in the house all day*. We thought it was just a bit smelly but when we removed the carpets and underlay, the floorboards underneath were all soaked too, the stink was ingrained. We spent days on hands and knees working through the rooms scrubbing the floorboards with Jeyes Fluid. It seemed to kill the smell fairly quickly, even friends visiting the house for the first time couldn’t smell it (and could be trusted not to be “polite” about it if they could smell anything!).

* it was a good shape house, but in utterly horrible condition. As well as their animal neglect, we found soiled pants stuffed down the back of radiators, a chip pan fat fire in the kitchen had just been painted over, the attic and garage were left full of all kinds of rusting, rotting, mouldy junk. It took months to clear everything out, it was a lot of work but I’m guessing it’s the reason my parents got a relatively big house for a far-too-cheap price.

@NewRetroTom, good job I’m not a tax adviser! My business is retail so VAT in and out is 20%, I haven’t had to dabble in this stuff but have heard of it from freelance friends (developers, writers, etc.)

But:

Example

You bill a customer for £1,000, adding VAT at 20% to make £1,200 in total.

You’re a photographer, so the VAT flat rate for your business is 11%.

Your flat rate payment will be 11% of £1,200, or £132.

As I understand the flat rate scheme, in the above example you’d bill for £200 VAT but only have to pay £132 of it. Granted that’s not the same as I thought it was when I wrote my previous message.

If you’re going to be doing lots of stuff where you won’t need to buy much (i.e. writing, compared to retail), it might be worth investigating registering for VAT anyway, under one of the reduced VAT (flat rate) schemes. It will enable you to claim back all the VAT you’ve paid for purchases (e.g. if you need a new laptop for work) but you only have to pay a lower rate of VAT on the money you receive.
https://www.gov.uk/vat-flat-rate-scheme/how-much-you-pay
IANATaxAdviser, but as far as I know there’s no lower limit on how much you need to earn through self employment to become VAT registered, but it does become mandatory if you earn above a certain amount.

I hesitate to recommend this, because it’s definitely not for everyone, but if you want to STOP drinking alcohol, not just cut down for a bit, listen to this audiobook in full:
https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Fastest-Way-to-Stop-Drinking-Guaranteed-Audiobook/B00OQPJ8GM

(You should be able to listen to it free of charge if you try an Audible subscription, which you can then cancel)

It’s by a Brit, it’s very non-judgemental and it’s easy to listen to.

It’s definitely worth trying not drinking for a while. I gave up for 2019, mostly to see if I could and what it would be like, started again in 2020, drank too much too often during lockdown (like many of us) and stopped again in March this year.

It’s odd, especially if you’ve got used to drinking. Once you step away from it, you see how alcohol is EVERYWHERE. And I definitely get it, I’ve been at social situations where I’ve thought “if I was drinking, I’d probably end up finding this entertaining” but have made the sober, sensible decision to make my excuses and leave.

But off the booze I sleep better, find I have more energy, have lost some body fat, enjoy weekend mornings as I’ve got a son and a dog, and proper friends have adapted to me not drinking. I definitely don’t judge anyone else for drinking, if people have asked why I’m not drinking I just say I’m stopping for a while.

A curious number of people will try and justify their own drinking to me. This sometimes happens later in an evening, but friends telling me _they_ don’t have a drinking problem, _they_ don’t need to stop drinking, _they_ can drink in moderation… always without me asking, always without prompting. I’ve never judged anyone for drinking or for not drinking, my choice was only concerning me, but some people feel personally attacked by your choice. I’m sure some people like that will pop up on this thread – like they find the idea offensive that one person might make a decision for themselves alone to stop drinking.

Like with anything else, if you want to give up, give up. And remind yourself that you want to give up. Like on the stopping smoking thread, as long as you keep telling yourself that you’re missing out on something, that you’re burning up your will power fighting the urge to partake in something enjoyable, you’re going to fail. But if you actually want to stop for a while, and you remind yourself that, it’s way easier to just stop for a while.

I’ve had a down sleeping bag cleaned very well by Classic Clean of Harrogate, as recommended by PHD.

I’ve also washed a few smaller down items myself in the washing machine with dedicated down wash. As others have mentioned, make sure the drawer is clean and / or run an empty boil wash in the machine beforehand (not a bad idea to do this every now and then to kill off all the smell-causing bacteria that can build up).

Be prepared for it to come out of the washing machine looking like it’s ruined. I took my stuff to a launderette with a big tumble dryer and put it in with a couple of (clean) tennis balls, IIRC it took about £8 of tumble drying time but on the last cycle it all came out fluffy and re-lofted.

It’s possibly been mentioned somewhere in the previous 71 pages but I haven’t found anything useful with the search function: does anyone have any experience of, or links to, homebrew electric conversions? There’s bound to be a bunch of hobbyists tinkering with this stuff and I know of a couple of companies who take the usable bits of scrapped Teslas, for example, and transplant them into classic cars.

I’ve got a vague idea for a DIY project on an old car and I’m just wondering whether it’s going to be a) feasible, b) expensive, c) worth it and / or d) a colossal ballache and waste of time. There are quite a few online resources for the petrolv version, but I’m debating finding one without an engine and making it a bit different. And more future-friendly.

Stephen Hawking used to regularly attend St Andrew the Great church in Cambridge.

How can someone that believes a god specifically created this virus and then released mutations when we developed vaccines effectively vaccinate people?

Do you think belief in a god changes the effectiveness of the vaccine administered by that person?
Does it matter what someone believes, if they practice evidence-based medicine?

I think a binary belief that “facts” exist, that something is entirely right or entirely wrong, is harmful and naive.

What actually can you measure via your a-hole other than temperature, that the anal probe would er probe ?

FWIW, one of my lecturers at med school used to say that, once you knew what you were looking for, sticking your finger up a patient’s bum could be one of the most quickly-informative things you could do. He claimed you could in a couple of seconds estimate their pulse, their blood pressure, the state of their digestive system, their gut health, their hydration level and their overall pain level (as evinced by muscle tension). It was just that most patients didn’t like you doing it to them!

…not sure what that’s got to do with aliens though. Doubt they’d care much about that sort of stuff. But the number of UFO sightings has dramatically dropped since people have reliable cameras readily to hand – as ever, there’s an XKCD about it:

I was thinking about this earlier today. I reckon we could do most of our workshop work using head torches if necessary. The bummer will be our cloud-based EPOS system and the card machine, both of which rely on a working secure internet connection. If the power goes out, I don’t know whether we’ll still have mobile signal, so I can’t plan to rely on a mobile hotspot if necessary.
Time to return to the barter system? We exchanged a bike service for a sack of potatoes during lockdown. ;)

If anyone on here has an old square G-Shock, a factory refurb may be of interest to you.

I’ve got a GW-5600 and although I replaced the bracelet with a composite clasp bracelet when the original broke (a big improvement btw), I quite like the scuffs and scratches it’s picked up. It’s Seen Some Things in the last 15 years or so, and I like the story it tells.

We’ve got Hyperoptic at home (which is flippin’ awesome, FWIW!) but we’ve still got a BT wire coming into the house connected to a box with a socket on the wall. It just doesn’t do anything any more.

As others have said, there’s no reason the old wire and box should need removing, but BT might ask for their old router (and phone handset?) back if the tenant is ending the contract with them.

Well done. After a while you lose the taste for it, which actually makes it easier – I still find the smell appealing at times, especially at the right distance on a cold day, but the few times I’ve tried a drag on someone else’s cigarette it’s tasted like the first time I tried it: absolutely vile!

One of the things in the Allen Carr book is remembering how your first drag on a cigarette tasted and smelt. I challenge ANYONE to say they actually enjoyed it.

The midges / mosquitoes are one of my main problems with bivvying, I love the idea of finding a scenic mountain top spot like I see on instagram but usually end up just crashing out at the end of a day in the first convenient comfortable out-of-the-way place I can find. But there are definitely bivvies available with midge netting, if you’re happy being fully-enclosed. I’m waiting to try out my new purchase, a Borah Ultralight which I took a punt on – https://borahgear.com/ultralightbivy.html – which seems astonishingly too-good-to-be-true light. I’ll almost certainly use it with a tarp if in soggy conditions.

We’re debating trying to squeeze a trip to the Alps (Morzine) between Christmas and the start of term, but Christmas falls on a Sunday this year so lots of places seem to be taking Christmas / Boxing Day bookings and not whole-week bookings. Or offering whole-week bookings Tuesday – Tuesday. We’d be driving via Eurotunnel so travel itself isn’t a huge problem, just the logistics of time off work… or possibly bunking off school if we opt for 31st Dec / first week of Jan.

You can do this, @gnusmas. I hope you find plenty of support on here.

Another thing that may help is preparing yourself mentally for situations where you’d normally reach for the cig packet. I gave up back when smoking was still a thing in pubs, and it felt VERY odd not lighting up when everyone else was doing so.

Think about how you’ll respond at other times when you’d normally smoke – waiting for a bus, morning coffee, getting stressful news etc. – and if you’ve prepared yourself for it to feel a little weird, you’ll be better at making sure you remember you don’t need that cigarette.

Although if it comes to it, just remember, as one of my friends succinctly said “the key to not smoking, is not smoking.”

Oh, and worth knowing that it might take you a couple of days to get back into pooing normally – nicotine triggers both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and one of the few times your body naturally does that is when you’re preparing to evacuate your bowels. Without the usual nicotine trigger, it will take a couple of days for your body to adapt to doing it itself, but drink plenty of water and it will happen. ;)

Good luck with it! You _can_ do it, if you want to.

I’m sure others will have used other methods, but I found Alan Carr’s Easy Way book genuinely worked. It works by gradually convincing you that there is no benefit to you from smoking. And it’s that simple.

He – and others – talk about a “big monster” and a “little monster” in addiction. The little monster is the physical addiction, the cravings, the come-down, from whatever the addiction is. That’s easy to kill off, it just takes a bit of time – actually only about 24-48 hours for nicotine until your body’s flushed it out of your system.

The “big monster” is the part of you that feels like you’re missing out on something good, like you’re “giving up” something rather than just not doing it any more because you don’t want to. If you can deal with the part of you that still thinks you _want_ to smoke, or drink, or eat sugar, or take class As, or whatever, then you’re not addicted any more.

And it’s dealing with the “big monster” that’s the hard part and takes thought and consideration, stepping back and seeing what harm the addiction is doing you and why you’re better off without it. Addiction counsellors often say “there’s no power in will power.” You can’t give up forever by will power alone, without forever feeling like you’re missing out on something you really enjoy or want to do – and usually the same will power that you’re trying to use to give up, is the same will power that will say go back to it anyway!

But you can give up anything by removing the desire to do it. Alan Carr’s book was great for me by gradually breaking down all the reasons I told myself I liked smoking, and replacing them with reasons I found smoking horrible and smelly and expensive and antisocial and unhealthy and all the stuff I already knew anyway. And I’m not giving away the book’s secret, because it’s not a secret, but it takes time to read and think through all the stuff, to change your thinking. “Without thinking, there’s no change.”

Sorry about the rant, I hope it helps in some way. Well done on quitting smoking, it’s a positive choice and you’ll improve your life by leaving it behind. :)

More Mark O’Toole, Frankie live on The Tube:

Couldn’t see whether we’d had this one before. Breeders – Cannonball:

And I know it’s cheesy pop, but pretty much any Duran Duran song is worth listening to the bass track alone. And Frankie Goes To Hollywood live showcases Mark O’Toole’s lovely bass playing:

@ayjaydoubleyou I hear you. My dad (in his 80s) keeps the colossal 4R25-battery-powered torch next to the back door, that dimly hints at the way to the garage if the battery’s not running out. I pulled out the tiny Nitecore TIP SE keyring torch from my coat pocket and it was practically a floodlight in comparison.

Fab, thank you – have registered, will browse and maybe advertise! :)

Thanks @gurnster75 – apparently the .177 was the standard, the .22s are relatively rare. I’ll check those out. :)

@StirlingCrispin that’s superb. If I lived anywhere other than near(ish) the middle of London I’d love to do that. I suspect the area around here is pretty well-covered…

On the “why go and see them?” question, sometimes it’s about a tribute act reliving a particular moment of a band’s history instead of always being obliged to play the new stuff or newer versions of classic songs. Sometimes it’s simply because a good tribute singer / musician can do a very good impersonation of a band member who’s now died / lost their abilities.

Having been to see actual Genesis live in March this year, I’d rather see a more youthful tribute act playing the songs in the right key with a charismatic singer who can actually hit all the notes, if I get a chance.

@thelawman G-LOC training?

Thanks @relapsed_mandalorian et al, that looks like the badger. I’m impressed by how quiet it was, maybe practicing some sort of glide landing…

Incidentally, does anyone know anything about an aircraft like a C-130 with *eight* engines? We were driving back from Thetford last Friday and something the size of a C-130 flew over us, pretty much silently (although we had the car windows closed), coming in to land at Mildenhall I assume.

I didn’t get a lot of chance to look at it, although was surprised I hadn’t heard it, but it had the standard two engines per wing, with what looked like an extra two slightly smaller engines per wing as well, possibly mounted above the wing.

Thanks for the link to the judgement, @multi21, definitely the most informative thing I’ve read.

It sounds like this has long since stopped being about the poor kid involved. And without any mention of online challenges or even the kid’s browsing history, I guess only an inquest will discover what might have motivated him to hang himself.

I hope the parents find peace.

Just catching up with the thread… holy cow Poopscoop, you’ve had a hell of a ride so far!

Well done on dealing with it all so far. There’s a lot more to unpack and handle, but it sounds like you’re pretty experienced getting to grips with large packages. ;)

Best wishes mate.

Mrs Pierre was not a fan of the winner’s catsuit, said it didn’t actually look like it fitted very well on the top half and if the model had raised her arms then her boobs would have come out of the top. She was quite miffed that nobody seemed to mention this.

@TheFlyingOx that’s lovely. It’s pretty much top of my “watches I’d like to own” list.

Probably my favourite joke over all:

What’s the difference between roast beef and pea soup?
Anyone can roast beef.

I’ve used RideWithGPS quite a lot for planning routes, I’ve found it relatively easy to use and now pay for the basic subscription, mainly so I can re-plot middle sections of routes and use the “Undo” button! It does make some funny routing choices every now and then, perhaps because odd sections of map that look route-able have a glitch that prevents the algorithm routing through them. Switching between auto-routing for cycling, driving, and drawing straight lines usually bypasses this.

I haven’t used Komoot’s routing function much, it doesn’t seem quite as click-and-select intuitive but if yours is routing as the crow flies then you may need to select a different option as your “sport” for routing, in the top-left corner of the screen.

On the whole, Komoot seems to be a prettier, i.e. more decorative, interface, whereas I quite like RwGPS’ relatively basic functional interface – but that may be just what I’ve got used to.

@csb I haven’t been before, but a couple of friends went to the last one and said it was amazing. I’m really looking forward to it! And taking the weirdest combination of stuff I’ve ever taken to a festival…!

I’ll be spending the weekend hacking stuff in a field.

One point I’d add about the International Shipping Programme is there are weight and size limits on the parcels you’re allowed to ship. But you have to dig around eBay’s help pages to find them, and eBay won’t tell you if your package has a declared size that’s too big. So with wheels and bike frames I’ve had eBay members from other countries contacting me to ask why they can’t bid – it’s because eBay will show them the listing because I’d allowed international bidders, but it won’t let them bid because the parcel would be too big for the ISP. Took me a while to figure this out.

It’s also massively infuriating that they’re moving CBBC online – it’s currently “linear TV”, i.e. kids sit and watch one programme after another. For my 9-year-old this is quite calming, and also introduces programmes he wouldn’t otherwise seek out which often broaden his interests and literally inform, educate and entertain.

Everything online has algorithm-driven suggestions and tends to funnel viewers (especially kids?) into just watching a limited range of shows, and encourages watching one episode after another, after another. CBBC is currently carefully scheduled to be varied.

This is a really terrible choice for CBBC.

Thanks @nickc, that Aliza Luft article is fascinating (the Roots of Evil one requires purchase / subscription).

@molgrips don’t underestimate the wind in the Netherlands, it’s why they have so many windmills. A ride up the coast might be 3 hours out, 1 hour back, it’s just like riding up a hill!