+1 for Panasonic.

As for slicing bread, Victorinox pastry knife is incredible and under £30.

Lots of fee-paying schools are off for summer already. State schools mostly have another week to go.

Glad a bit of time (and Covid) haven’t changed the place too much.

I don’t have a problem with sweeteners existing (and I’m partial to a Coke Zero) but there’s massively more products using them since the government started fiddling with the laws and levies around sugar. Surprisingly difficult now to buy things like squash without sweeteners – there will still be some sugar but as they’ve reduced it they’ve added sweeteners to compensate.

I missed this a month ago but unless you’re desperate to build a kit then for hamfisted kids then get an FTX Tracer (also sold under various other brands). Pretty much unbreakable, there’s a speed dial on the controller so they can start slower, it’s big enough to run fine on grass but small and light enough that slamming into solid things at speed doesn’t break stuff. Regular is around £70, they do a brushless one now around £100. Has everything you need in the box, you might want a spare battery at £12ish but not essential. I put some cheap oil-filled shocks on my son’s one and it’s made the bounciness go away.

I love Tamiyas and they’re great if the kids are old enough to be into the building part but for just mucking about without fuss the FTX Tracers are brilliant.

Also ❤️ the Holiday Buggy – built mine in lockdown. I have a 540 motor and the hop-up CVA shocks to go on it when I get the time.

Kickr Core here too, I bought a refurb and the first was wonky but quickly replaced with another which has been perfect. If you don’t need to fold/carry it about then you’re not really missing much over the regular Kickr.

Wahoo often have a big sale across everything for a couple of days after the Tour de France ends. Although the Core has more than 20% off at Wiggle already right now.

Nice piece in the Guardian about the women at Hardline this year: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jul/14/not-just-for-the-boys-women-take-on-worlds-toughest-mountain-bike-track

Weather forecast not looking good, now thunder forecast for Saturday on top of the wind and rain.

I’m only worried about weird short-lived stuff like the boost QR141 hub spacing. If it’s something that is or was widely adopted then generally spares are no problem.

The 12v fridge compressors I’ve seen are considerably more expensive than a whole Alpicool or similar.

Alpicool are on offer on Amazon (if you have prime), the 20 litre we have is £140 and works great.

This is how I use up leftover pizza dough. Roll it out, whizz together some butter, sugar, cinnamon – spread over, roll it up, cut into slices, into the oven for 20 mins or so.

Depends how much you’ll drive in the zones. If you don’t live/work in one, if you’ll not visit one regularly in the van then just budget for the odd charge to go in them. You could do that 10 times a year for the cost of a pair of MTB tyres.

Agree on the (im)practicality of bikes and the typical SWB Transporter camper layouts. Not a problem if you don’t mind a tailgate/towbar rack though.

We’ve got a Eufy X8, it replaced a dumb one and it makes a massive difference having one that can map out the rooms and find its way around, it cleans in a fraction of the time (rather than randomly bouncing around) and we can exclude areas like the rat’s nest of cables under a cabinet.

You do need to go around picking up the toys, bits of lego, etc but I tend to clear a room, send it off to do that bit while I sort the rest.

Ours has the mop attachment but tbh it’s not worth having, effectively it’s lightly dragging a damp cloth around. I just let it hoover so I can run around quickly with a mop after. I don’t see huge value in the self-emptying, you still need to empty the base just a bit less often and you can’t hide it away under a sofa or cabinet so easily.

Had a quick look at what’s on amazon’s sale today and I’d pick the X8 again, just without the mop.

I’m too lazy to do sourdough. What I do for my ooni is roughly this recipe:

https://prohomecooks.com/blogs/recipes/a-master-class-in-neapolitan-pizza-making-full-breakdown

(video version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjsCEJ8CWlg

The overnight poolish doesn’t take up much space in the fridge (getting a full batch of dough in there is a challenge) and I just bung it all in the stand mixer rather than hand knead. Pizzas come out lovely.

Tesla have superchargers (CCS only) and destination chargers (type 2) at places like hotels and restaurants. They usually have one or more that are Tesla only with a red sign and one or more that are for anyone with a white sign.

https://teslaowners.org.uk/guides/tesla-destination-chargers-explained

Yeah, I thought long and hard about the chademo thing (bought a new 62 last year) coming from a CCS car but can’t say I’ve wished I was on CCS instead in the last 18 months. Instavolt, MFG, Shell, Osprey and some others have been quietly rolling out loads of good sites with chademo on every unit. Used to avoid the motorway services because they were useless for CCS, now mostly avoid them because they get crowded, although even the new big hubs (Rugby, Exeter, Reading etc) aren’t badly catered for.

Having the bigger battery means I want to stop before the car does, on a long trip I can easily hit a good site rather than a lonely old BP unit in a pub carpark. More destination charging is great too, had a day at an office 175 miles away and made it there without charging, 7 hours on the office charger and I made it home without an extra charge too.

I’m planning to keep mine longer term, my hope is that in a few years there’ll be some more aftermarket conversion options (Muxsan have one but £££) and I can just swap to CCS.

Most of the Vitus Mach hybrid/urban bikes are half price – so from £200 SS to £400 Sora. £260 on this with a 3-speed Nexus hub and hydraulic discs is tempting me for a town/pub/schoolrun bike: https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/p/vitus-mach-1-three-nexus

£1500 Mega 290 looks excellent vfm too: https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/p/nukeproof-mega-290-comp-alloy-bike-deore

Keep an eye on https://www.hotukdeals.com/tag/tv for good deals. I don’t think you can go too wrong with the usual LG, Samsung, Sony, etc though.

Nothing has good sound these days, the cases are too slim to get speakers of any size inside. Even a cheap soundbar (Richer Sounds do a good one for £100) will be a massive improvement – or frequently there’s offers that get a nicer soundbar from the same brand at low cost with a new TV.

The electric T6.1 was a bit of a stopgap, VW shipped part-finished vans to ABT who fitted the running gear (loosely related to the egolf). It got them over the couple of years before the ID.Buzz and soon the Transitporter replacement for the T6.1 which will have a full EV version.

The range is limiting but absolutely fine for a lot of van users. I suspect the average plumber or electrician near me covers less than 25 miles a day tops.

Euro5 camper could be fine if you live outside the various zones and won’t visit them often, or if it’s purely a leisure vehicle and you’ll use another car for the zones. Even if you do a few times a year the cost to do so is way less than the premium for a Euro6 one now.

I suspect there’s quite a few in suburban London with owners hanging on to see if the expansion will be scrapped or just getting a last summer out of it before planning to sell later in the year.

Bought my Exodus roofbox a couple of years ago and there’s Thule text on various parts including the instructions, I think it’s an older design they make for Halfords. Good kit. Mine just sits in the garden on top of an old metal storage thing (with some heavy things inside so it doesn’t blow away), it gets leaves and stuff on it but always cleans up fine when we need it.

Square bars seem more prone to whistling/vibration at speed. I have wingbar evos on the everyday car that gets used with bike racks etc and hardly notice them – the family bus has square and at 70ish they’re making quite a bit of noise.

Yep, leave it in eco and don’t ride at the front.

Leased one for a couple of years, absolutely base spec.

The good:

– probably the most refined EV hatchback
– proper low driving position
– all very normal, intuitive controls – manual key, analogue dials, etc
– decent boot, room to fit a spacesaver spare under the floor and squeeze cables etc around it
– 75kg roof load rating
– excellent adaptive cruise, but not annoying lane assist. Probably the best combination of car tech
– preheat timing works well, including on battery away from home

The bad:

– range is pretty low, and no standard fit heat pump so motorway speeds is sub 100 miles if it’s cold.
– slow CCS charging – 43kW is about the best you’ll see.
– lack of any EV info – no battery % display (just the analogue fuel gauge), charging speed, etc
– terrible app
– it’s *very* nannying at low state of charge, forces eco with 25 or so miles left, get to 10 miles left and it’ll force the car into eco+ mode, no heating or AC and barely any throttle response.

Make sure you get a facelift (headlight have two kicked-up silver lines rather than one below) else it’s an even smaller battery.

Overall I really liked it. As a commuter car / runabout doing less than 70 miles a day (50 if pre-facelift) it’s brilliant and I’d have another for that. I did do some big long trips in it but the limited range and slow charging make that a bit tedious.

I bought one of these a few months ago for my dad to replace a really old NUC. Super impressed for the money, and blazes through the usual browsing and office stuff. Even cheaper now at £120 after voucher. Celeron N5095 won’t set the world on fire but 4 cores that can burst to 2.9Ghz is plenty for most people.

edit: silly link processing. Trying in quotes or search “TRIGKEY Micro Computer Intel 11th Generation Processors N5095 Mini PC W11, 8G DDR4 256G M.2 SSD 2280 Green G3 Desktop PC, Support Micro PC W10 Pro Dual 4K@60Hz HDMI/WiFi 5/BT 4.0/W11” on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B41NZVRJ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

The E7000 seems to be a bit more reliable than the EP8 too! I’ve got one in my Vitus and it doesn’t feel underpowered, I hardly ever use boost anyway.

fwiw, FaceID isn’t a photo as such, it’s projecting thousands of little IR dots and using the camera to pick them up and make a depth map of your face. It’s why a photo of you won’t unlock your phone. It works well, it’s a really good idea to have some kind of authentication on your phone and it’s the least faff option especially if you wear gloves a lot.

iCloud free tier gives you 5GB, if you’re not dumping photos on there then it’s plenty – just handy to have backups of any reminders, calendar, contacts, app settings, etc. It makes switching to a new phone really easy, just sign in and restore a backup and everything is back how you want it.

If you really want to keep a home button / touchID then the only choice really is the SE, second gen (2020) or later. Anything else won’t be getting future OS updates. They’re fine if you just want a newer version of what you have.

But really, the faceID / swipey interactions way is the better one, you adjust to it very quickly and then the old home-button way feels really clunky in comparison. iPhone 11 or maybe 12 if you can get it would be perfect. Pro is worth considering if you can find in budget just for the better camera.

Chap I worked with had his astra in baby poo brown as a way of sticking two fingers up at the leasing company we had to use.

The first car I leased (BMW M135i) included metallic paint so I had Valencia Orange, it was ace.

The few after any paint was extra so I did have a nice flat red Golf R wagon before the default colours went grey. The egolf was Urano Grey which is pretty dismal one, not an on-trend lighter primer grey, not a deep metallic, just meh.

First car I’ve bought with my own money for a while (Leaf) I went for gunmetal grey – the free flat red was fine except for the blue bits of trim which it clashes awfully with. No other interesting colours (there’s a “Sunset Drift” metallic orange, but only in other markets) so grey it was.

They look OK, quite “industrial” like the early Ooni (uuni) ovens. TBH I don’t think you can get the design too wrong, a gas burner (or wood/pellet chamber), a stone and a double-walled/insulated box around it. As long as it puts out enough heat it’ll get the stone and air hot enough. Only concern of mine really would be spares if you were to break a stone, although it’s probably close enough in size to other ovens that you could find something suitable. Would still totally recommend gas over wood or pellets.

Got a Koda 16 for my birthday last week, it’s really nice. Making the same size pizzas for now but so much easier to cook with a bit more space. Naan tomorrow!

I guess it’s possible on the Sunday but Taylor Swift has got dates in Dublin already for Fri/Sat 28/29th June, and if Glastonbury was the earlier weekend then she’s got 21/22 June in Wembley. There’s not less than 4 days between locations on this tour, it takes a while to set up.

The 2020 booking was part of a much smaller tour of European festivals, with simpler staging.

LDR was 75% through an absolutely amazing set when she got cut off by the other stage curfew. I know it was her fault but really Glastonbury? GnR we’re still performing so it can hardly have been noise!

Stage curfew times are all agreed as part of the licence, along the with the process/procedure for overruns. They’re not needing to apply every year any more but the 10 year licence is up next year. She got the extra 15 mins right up to the hard cutoff, they should have just adjusted the setlist and aimed to have got the hits out before the end.

I think there’s far more going on than her hair, her last two performances at festivals in Brazil in the last month were also cut short due to starting late then hitting curfews.

re: the MX jersey, he has for years.

Why does James Cameron wear a motocross jersey literally everywhere?

Mate had one from Beast Sheds. Configure online exactly what you want, layout, windows, framing/cladding thickness etc. He’s very happy with it.

The Serial 1 bikes that Leisure Lakes have on offer look good. Bonkers at near £5k rrp, nice at £2k. Guards, front and rear racks, integrated lights, neat CVT gearing and a gates belt drive.

https://www.leisurelakesbikes.com/bikes/electric-bikes/serial-1-rush-city-step-through-electric-bike-blackblack__399771

They do a white version and one with a crossbar rather than step-through.

There’ll still be Ford dealers but across Europe they’re moving from wholesale (buy the car at x, decide how much margin you want to give away as discount to win a sale) to agency direct sales (take a % on a fixed price to facilitate a sale). They are reducing the number too, you just don’t need a franchised dealer in every town and there’s lots of places where you have half a dozen within a 10 mile radius. They had the biggest dealer network in the UK but are far from the biggest brand.

This isn’t just Ford, most of the brands already have (like Mercedes) or will in the next couple of years.

SUV / crossover things as the default family car has been a trend for decades – we’re almost at 20 years of Qashqai and 30 of RAV4/CRV. People want them, manufacturers like them because they’re generally higher margin. The trad hatch, estate, MPV have been on borrowed time for ages.

Some weird camera placements for Leogang – why was the only shot they had of this crucial corner a drone/wire/chairlift shot from way up high with a tree in the way? Loads of space to stick a camera on the inside.

Some of the woods shots could have been better too – they clearly picked a spot where they could catch them coming off the boardwalk then down and to the right but would have been much better at the bottom of that section roughly where the photographer was standing.

Hopefully they’re getting a feel for what works, the drone shots on the motorway were great but I suspect very little along there made any difference to the result.

Osmo is great (far more resistant to water/stains/etc) but as said, easy to put on too much and then it goes sticky and takes an age to dry. It’s literally put on a little and spread out as far as you can before adding any more, you don’t want any pooling on the surface.

Matt Estlea did a couple of good videos on exactly this a few years back.

Yeah, they’re ace, loved them when I was a kid and he’d put some rough versions on his website ages ago but the AI remastered/upscaled ones are lovely. He’s recorded some extra bits at the end of each one too.

His recent “Secret Life of Components” videos are worth a watch as well.

It’s a ballache in many houses, particularly if you’re not wanting to ruin decor in the process. If you’re rewiring or redecorating then much easier to get done.

I told myself when I had my own place I’d be running cables all over, been here 8 years and I just have a run from the fibre ONT to under the stairs (where equipment lives) and up the side of the stairs to power an access point in the ground floor ceiling. Oh, and a security camera but that just goes straight out into the garage and along the wall.

I really want a run up to the converted attic (wife and I work from there) but just too much faff and the wifi is fine. Think it’ll have to go in a pipe down the outside of the house if I ever get to it.

How much space are you using? 4TB SSDs are under £200 each now and would make the disk noise completely go away.

And fwiw, my 2-bay Synology is living in a cupboard, on top of quite a warm PoE switch, it’s been OK so far.

I’ve got the Fohn 40l backpack – did well even with a heavy laptop and loads of other bits in. On offer at the moment as it tends to be – https://www.wiggle.com/p/fohn-40l-travel-carry-on-backpack

Compressor fridges are a lot more affordable now – Alpicool, Mobicool and many other chinese brands do them. Have had an Alpicool C20 for a few years, it gets used loads for camping, days out and overflow at home. Set a temp (down to -20) and it’ll stick to it.

Congrats!

It works for MX bikes, right? Most of the criticism I see of mullet is the extra slackness making climbing a bit harder and that’s not an issue on ebikes.

The motor does eat into chainstay space a bit. Comparing my Vitus e-Sommet with the non-e Sommet it’s about the same chainstay length for the mullet e as the 29er non-e.

Conservatism? I think ebike buyers are probably more inclined to try the latest thing wheras non-e buyers might stick with what they know.