Neither’s that. This is!

Our drive is long and steep. Riding home from work one (hot) day I got to the top, checked the post box, then took my helmet off and hung it on the bars so I could enjoy the breeze while coasting down the drive.

As I got to the bottom my two-year old was there, helping MrsH hang the washing out. He saw me on the bike without a helmet on and told me I was naughty and put me in a time-out! I had to sit at the edge of the lawn for 30 seconds, trying to keep a straight face while he berated me :|

Yeah, the name is from the recipe I used. Target ABV was 5.7%, but my refractometer was giving me some dodgy numbers so 4.2% is actually a bit of a guess. Post-boil gravity measured at 1.055 on the refractometer (which had previously been calibrated to zero using distilled water). Final gravity then measured 1.033 on the refractometer. The beer tasted like it had fermented out, or at least wasn’t as sweet as I’d expect at 1.033, so I checked using a hydrometer, which gave me 1.016 – still a touch higher than the target but good enough.

But I didn’t take a hydrometer reading post boil, so don’t have solid numbers to calculate the ABV. The brew was a bit of a cock-up anyway, as I had some problems with my urn cutting out during the boil – managed to bypass the cut-out and get it going again though. And I also realised mid-boil that the home-brew store hadn’t given me enough hops, so I had to change the hop schedule on the fly.

Anyway, the beer tastes awesome so none of the above matters, anyway. I’ll try this recipe again properly soon enough, and compare to this version. Who knows, the Black Pale Ale might even be better than the Black IPA!

A quick half to see if my Black IPA is properly carbonated yet…

2014-06-17 18.00.17-2 by W Hyde[/url], on Flickr
Yep :) (Don’t worry, it’s evening in this part of the world, I’m not having beer for breakfast.) Tastes great, a nice roasted bitterness from the malt goes great with the hoppiness. Might have to have another, just to make sure…

Unexpected custard

Is that a euphemism? 8O :twisted:

Bimbler – Member
Skálmöld & Sinfóníuhljómsveit Íslands – Kvaðning

Very reminiscent of Metallica’s S & M with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. From that album, my favourite tune is this:

I’m always disappointed at the end, I want it to go on and on getting louder and more intense until my ears explode…

Also, Love Bites by Halestorm. Starts off well – fast rock/metal-ish, with a female vocalist… all good so far. But then the chorus at 35s has you worried it’s all going to go a bit Avril Lavigne… but fear not. At 1:45 it goes just a little bit batshit mental, but in an awesome way that sends a shiver down my spine every time I hear it.

This is apparently a couple of years old but I’ve only just heard it:

And an awesome cover of Bad Company, by Five Finger Death Punch

I pretty much have these on loop at the moment :)

mugsys_m8, I’ve modified your brew day instructions, hopefully this will make sense. What John Drummer says above is spot on, but based on your questions, is perhaps a bit over you head in these early days of brewing (sorry, not meaning to sound condescending, I can only just follow it myself – but while his calcs appear correct, worrying too much about efficiency and the like is (IMHO) perhaps a bit too technical for your second brew!) and sorry JD, no offence intended :wink:

I don’t have a Massive kit, I just do regular 5-gallon BIABs with an assortment of kit cobbled together, but the principles are the same.

1) 6.25 litres mash water heated to 72 degrees Celsius
2) Add 2.5kg maris otter in grain bags.
3) Leave for 1 hour maintaining 65 degrees Celsius. Easiest way is to make sure the hat is off (!) and wrap the pot in a big old beach towel or two for insulation. Don’t be tempted to keep opening it to check the temp, as you’ll just let the heat out.
4) Prepare 6.9 litres of sparge water at 80 degrees Celsius in FV
5) Take grain bags out of mash water and squeeze into mash water to get a fair amount of the water out. Put grain bags in plastic bucket. Put the mash water on the hob and start heating it.
6) Meanwhile… I assume the plastic bucket is your fermentation vessel (FV) doubling up as a sparge vessel? If possible, you might want to have the bag open with the top hooked over the rim of the FV all round, so the bottom of the bag is suspended off the bottom of the FV and you can pour water into the bag. This way the water can flow through the grains and fall into the FV. If the bag is just sitting in the bottom of the FV it will be fine though.
7) Slowly pour the sparge water over the grains in the FV. What you are doing here is getting all the sugars out of the grain that you can. Don’t let this sit for ages, once you have poured the sparge water through the grains, lift the bag and let as much drain out as possible.
8 ) Squeeze the bag into the FV. Put the grain bag in the sink, to be chucked away later on when you get a minute.
9) Add the liquid from the FV to the mash water in the pot, and bring the lot to the boil.
10) If you have a way of measuring the gravity, take a sample and do it now. If not, don’t worry.
11) Add 16g hops and start a stopwatch. This is the start of the boil, zero minutes.
12) At 45 mins add the immersion chiller.
13) At 55 mins Add 34g hops.
14) At 60 mins switch off the heat. Start the chiller. Chill to 20 degrees Celsius.
15) While it’s chilling, clean and sanitise your FV.
16) “Pour over hop bags into sterilised FV.” Not sure what you mean here – I think if the kit has a hop bag then you would put the hops in the hop bag and let the bag sit in the pot during the boil. Add more hops to the bag as required during the boil. This allows the water to flow around the hops, to get the flavour out, but means you can easily whip the bag out at the end of the boil and you have ‘clean’ wort, i.e. it’s not full of sludgey hops. Alternatively, if it’s a big straining bag then add the hops directly to the boil. Your wort will be full of sludgey hops, and you will pour it through the bag into the FV, basically using the bag as a sieve to strain the hops out of the liquid. I suspect it’s the first option, especially if the hop bag is smallish.
16) Add packet safale SF-05. Add the whole pack, the yeast is just going to multiply in the FV anyway, may as well give it a head start.

Also, note that during the mash the grain will soak up lots of water, so your 6.25L will end up as about 3.5L. Then you sparge and get most of your sparge water back (as the grain is already saturated so can’t soak up any more water), so you’ll end up with a little over 10L of wort in the pot for boiling. Allowing for say 1-2L of evaporation during the boil, and some further liquid being soaked up by the hops, you’ll end up with about 8L in the FV.

My wife and I moved to New Zealand a while back. As we’ve been here more than five years we are eligible to become citizens. As NZ is part of the Commonwealth this involves a ceremony where we have to swear allegiance to Her Majesty. This seems a bit weird to me, as we’re already British citizens. Our son, who was born in NZ, has dual citizenship by default and won’t have to swear allegiance to the queen at all. Very odd.

murf – Member
I can easily munch 4 cakes a day, plus extra if I find it in the house.
I seem to be some sort of genetic freak though as I’m 5ft10 and 10.5 stone. Been eating like this since mid teens and never gain weight. I’m active though and eat well other than my cake habit. Changed jobs last year and got a medical, blood sugar levels were fine.

Am I lucky or heading for disaster?
Same here, except 6’2 and 12.5 stone. I swear milk chocolate M&M’s are coated in crack or something, I trog through them like there’s no tomorrow. Or sometimes I’ll get a *big* bag of sour jellies from the pick’n’mix at the supermarket, I can just eat and eat and eat…

Apart from the sugar my diet is good – lots of fruit and veg, wholemeal this that and the other, lean meat etc. etc. But on top of that I eat loads of sweets.

I thought that the sugar/diabetes link was that a high-sugar diet is likely to make you fat, and being fat increases your chances of getting diabetes. So an indirect link, but a link nontheless. But I’m not at all fat, and have regular blood tests (due to other hereditary factors I need to keep an eye on, but a check for diabetes is included), my doc has no concerns about my diabetes risk.

“Nah, the text on the sign is reacting to the UV, it’s supposed to do that”

Sounds like your mate is talking about fluorescence, in this case the sign material (many signs have fluorescent properties these days) absorbs non-visible radiation (UV) and then transmits it as visible radiation (light). Same as why a yellow fluoro hi-viz vest seems to ‘glow’ yellow in daylight but indoors or under normal car headlights/street lights at night (when there is pretty much zero UV about) it’s just regular yellow.

If modern bulbs are emitting UV, it’s invisible to the eye, and won’t light anything up, but will be reflected as visible light by the fluorescent material.

My wife and I first met at work about a year after I’d finished uni. Turns out we had both been at the same uni together, both doing engineering degrees (different disciplines, one year year apart), and shared a number of mutual friends. I had even been round to her house a few times (visiting my mates, who were her housemates) but we’d never laid eyes on each other until working together later on.

In addition to TiRed’s suggestion, every character in these films is spot on, but especially Buzz.

Shibboleth – Member
Bizarrely, the overwhelming majority of humans – myself included – lose our loved ones

Ooh ooh me, me. I’m in the the overwhelming minority. A mate I hung out with at secondary school died a few years back, but by then we’d lost contact for quite a few years, I heard about his death through my sister a while afterwards. But that’s it. I can’t think of anyone who was more than a passing acquaintance in my life, dying. Every family member I’ve ever known since I was a child is still alive. I’m 35 now. Never been to a funeral.

Statistically, I guess people are going to start dropping like flies around me sooner or later, but I’m pretty certain I won’t be posting anything on Faceache about it…

My son’s not quite 2 and a half, I use a Yepp Maxi seat on an Xtracycle Free Radical (search the forum for previous posts on kid carrying, Stoner has the same set-up and has posted pics).

I carry his rucksack on my back, my bag (pannier) on the back, plus I usually have his scooter or balance bike strapped on behind the Yepp seat.

I also have a trailer, but never liked it. It doesn’t weigh that much but adds a huge ‘drag’ feeling to the bike, like I’m towing way more weight than I actually am. Having the boy on the bike still feels heavy, but way, way easier than the trailer. I also don’t like the width of the trailer, I feel like cars are more likely to hit it than just the bike, as they have to pull out more. I know you could argue that it’s similar to owning the lane, but I just don’t like it. plus there’s storage of the trailer – can you leave it at the daycare? Can you store it at work?

As for weather… we cycle every day, regardless of the weather. It never snows here but does get down to 1 or 2 degrees C, so chilly enough for a kid on the back. For the wet/cold days he just has a waterproof all-in-one suit with an appropriate amount of layers underneath, and wellies on with the suit legs over the top which are effectively water- and draft-proof. Hood up, helmet over the top, toasty as. Sunnies on all year round, they keep the sun and rain out. He’s never complained about the wind, cold or rain.

vinnyeh – Member
Had a Sikh work colleague lovely bloke, Guardian reading liberal etc etc but…

Was quite worried one of his daughters was possibly going off the rails (in his eyes) at uni, dating English boys, and hoping that nothing would come of it. All came good in the end though, she ended up being ‘introduced’ to a nice Sikh lad from a good family, with good prospects, they married, ended up emigrating to Seattle. Taxi driver line above reminded me of this.

However, my friend was a bit pissed one night while the daughter was still running wild, and he confessed that, in his eyes there was a definite hierarchy of suitable partners for his daughter, with Blacks and Untouchables being at the bottom-marriage to either would sadly mean the end of contact with his daughter.

He had no prejudices that I saw with regard to working with people of any race, or drinking with them, just didn’t want his kids getting married to someone outside his own race and caste. Unsure whether this is racial discrimination or not.

Not at all uncommon, I believe. Back at uni I had a Sikh girlfriend for over a year. We were both living overseas at the time, away from our respective families, so she got away with it. She was honest about long term prospects the minute it looked like it was getting serious, said that there was no way we could be a couple back in the UK as her family would disown her. To be fair, it was just her dad. She actually told her sister about me, and reckons her mum suspected something but never asked. But she said her dad would basically disown her and the rest of her family would have gone along with it out of respect, or tradition, or whatever you’d call it.

Apparently I was about mid-way down the pecking order of offensiveness, as far as suitors for his daughter were concerned – Muslims were top of the list, then black guys, then ol’ whitey here, then I think it was Hindus. It was a strange mix of religions and ethnicities, anyway!

ninfan – it seems to me that most people who bash homeopathy (myself included) see it this way: why does homeopathy exist in parallel with placebos, when they are essentially the same thing? The placebo effect is well-established, and is generally recognised as a small part of the wide range of treatment options available to genuine medical practitioners. It can and should be offered where appropriate.

The thing is, that it should be considered alongside – for want of a better phrase – proper medicine, i.e. drugs or other proven treatments. In real life, however, homeopathy is touted as being outside of medicine, an alternative medicine. People with little or no medical training are prescribing it to naive or ignorant patients who believe they are getting genuine medical assistance.

Clearly, in many cases, had they gone to a GP these people may very well have been prescribed a placebo by a trained medical practitioner, and so receiving homeopathy will be the exact same thing, and will work just as well. This is why there is loads of anecdotal evidence of homeopathy working. In some cases, however, and as outlined in the OP, people who are in need of real, non-placebo medicine, just get the sugar pills and suffer or die because of it.

That’s why people have a problem with it. If homeopathy practitioners would just be honest and say “hey folks, these are just placebos, but science has shown that they are effective in certain situations” then I think we could all be happy. We could then drop the name homeopathy – I believe it was Tim Minchin who said that there’s a name for alternative medicine that’s been proven to work. It’s….. ‘medicine’.

The problem is compounded that homeopaths sell this stuff for way more than a proper placebo would cost, due to the ridiculous lengths they go to to ensure that there’s nothing of substance in the pills. No-one likes getting ripped off.

Reminds me of the one and only time I went to Ireland. Flew into Limerick, and got the bus to my friend’s place. There were two black guys on the bus talking away in broad west-coast Irish accents, it really struck me as surreal at the time. Sheltered upbringing I guess!

Or

A butcher shop in So CA. Slogan went. You can’t beat Pete’s meat. He was made to remove it.

No such PC nonsense here in NZ – there’s a national chain of butchers, The Mad Butcher. His radio ads have the jingle:
You just can’t beat
the Mad Butcher’s meat
I think it appears on printed media too. Probably helps that he’s a Kiwi, a self-made millionaire and big-time philanthropist.

Organise myself and the boy sufficiently to get out of the house on time in the mornings…

choppersquad – Member
Putting a screen protector on a mobile phone without getting dust under it!

Always used to until I looked it up on youtube. The answer is to run the little cloth that comes with it under the tap, then use it to wipe down the screen. Peel side 1 from the screen protector, run it under the tap too and shake most of the water off. Now, both the screen and the protector have lots of tiny tiny beads of water on them. Apply the screen protector as normal, you will get a few ‘bubbles’ under it but they are water filled and are 1000x easier to remove than air bubbles, you just rub a finger over them and push them to the edge of the screen. Any stubborn ones will just evaporate eventually (the plastic must be ever so slightly permeable or something).

I watch US Netflix from New Zealand, my ISP recently unblocked it but prior to that I was using Hola on Chrome, which worked well on the PC, and also used the Hola app on my android phone, which then made the Netflix app magically appear in the Play store so I could run it on my phone too. Hola’s pretty straightforward to use.

Another vote for the Yepp mini, it’s excellent. I liked it so much I got a Yepp Maxi after my son got too tall for the mini. I had a Weeride prior to the Yepp, and found the Yepp sits further forwards and interferes with my knees less, although as it’s mounted on the steerer your head angle will be important, as per eyerideit’s post.

During the recent Windies and Sri Lanka ODI and T20 tours here in NZ, a local brewery was offering $100,000 to anyone who caught a six – you had to have bought one of their promo T-shirts and lanyards at the gate though, and be wearing them when you took the catch. They weren’t expensive, $10 or something. A couple of people won the prize, both one-handed catches, can’t remember if that was a rule or not.

There were several near misses too, one girl almost got one but was in one of the stands with seats (as opposed to the grass banks where the winners were taken) and couldn’t scramble across the seats fast enough.

Also, to appease the neighbours a lick of paint will do wonders. Our neighbour has one for storage, it used to be maroon and rust, and stuck out like the proverbial dog’s plums. He painted it a sort of grey/beige, which sounds horrendous but actually works really well to make it disappear into its surroundings. You may need to pick a more appropriate colour for your location, but with a bit of effort and not much cost you can make it look a lot less offensive.

Well, there was Miss Young, GCSE geography…

Academically though, Mr Whitney (maths) was a great teacher, he somehow managed to inject humour into maths which kept it interesting. He was good at drawing perfect-looking circles on the board, and every now and again would accept challenges from one of the students to see if we could do better. He drew some geometric shapes on the board one day towards the end of GCSEs, said it was a joke, and that he’d tell the punchline to the A-level maths class. I’m sure the reason about half of the class went on to do A-level maths was to find out the punchline. He was also a cricket fan and would turn a blind eye to one or more of the lads sneakily listening to TMS in class as long as they periodically called out the scores.

And then there was Mr Barnet, our GCSE science and A-level physics teacher. He looked like the offspring of Wurzel Gummage and Einstein, always wore the same black suit (covered in random chalky fingerprints and chemical burns), fluoro yellow & lime green striped tie and a white shirt. Always. He could throw a tiny piece of chalk at an errant pupil with such force that it would scratch the workbench. To demonstrate inertia and momentum he used to take four pupils at a time to do laps of the car park in his car at speed and doing random emergency stops. When he retired he didn’t show up at his own retirement party. Someone even set up a web page dedicated to him, back in the very early days of the web. Prior to exam time at the end of the year, when most teachers would end the last class by saying good luck, or similar, he used to say “I don’t wish you luck, I wish you justice”.

I suspect that those who think recreational drugs should be legalised are not suggesting that we just legalise them overnight. Obviously a number of frameworks would need to be set up first – supply chain, distribution, monitoring, support etc. etc. Some of these are already in place, although perhaps on a smaller scale, such as the availability of most of these drugs for medical purposes.

So yes, if you could magically revoke the current laws overnight and make everything legal from tomorrow, then there would be chaos. But that’s quite clearly not what anyone (sensible) is suggesting.

There’s no reason why, given time to get the right mechanisms in place, this can’t happen.

Legionnaire by Simon Murray – autobiography of an English guy who joined the French Foreign Legion, out of boredom more than anything else, and had a wild time running round the desert blowing stuff up. Also, read Spike Millgan’s ”Rommel? Gunner Who?”, similar stuff but absolutely hilarious.

In Search of Captain Zero by Allan Weisbecker – autobiography of a surfer who went on a road trip to find his mate who has disappeared in Central America, and did some drug running along the way.

Vulcan 607 by Rowland White – entirely true but still unbelievable stuff about getting a Vulcan down to the Falklands.

Why not get some foam pipe lagging and cover the bars? Doesn’t need to be outrageously thick, just enough to soften any impact.

For something with a bit more bite… Deap Valley:

And the lovely Lzzy Hale:

If all their stuff was like this they could take over the world, unfortunately they also do some navel-gazing dross. But this song ^^^ is possibly my favourite track of all time.

The American.

What a load of navel-gazing drivel.

I blame wrightyson!

I think you’ll find that approximately 78% of the UK’s concrete use last year was due to footflaps’ shed foundations.

We ended up with a second-hand Phil&Ted Metro. Took wee fatty along to the shop (second-hand shop for kids’ gear, bargains galore) and tested out about half a dozen with him in it. Some were terrible, some ok, some seemed great, but it’s worth trying a few on with the kid aboard to see how they sit.

I recently signed up the US Netflix (via hola, as I live in NZ – and also primarily for Breaking Bad (late to the party, yeah I know) but we watch loads of stuff on it). I think I picked the ‘one screen’ option, as it’s unlikely that me and the mrs will want to watch two things simultaneously. But there were options for up to 4 screens IIRC, cost was about US$1 per month per screen extra, or something. Not sure if you can upgrade and down-grade at will, though.

And none of what we watch goes on Facebook. My Facebook details were never entered, I think you could opt to sign up for Netflix via your Facebook login – which would probably default to it reporting what you watch, unless you adjust your security settings – I just set up a new, unlinked Netflix account from scratch.

You don’t need to attach a length of wood along the entire shed, just a block at each gutter attachment point would be fine.

Guttering is reasonably stiff so would be self-supporting for the foot or so that it extends out under the ‘porch’ bit, assuming a single length of half-pipe which has an attachment/support on the corner of the shed. The downpipe would normally be attached to the wall of the shed so wouldn’t be supported by the guttering, in your case it looks like it’ll be too far from the wall to attach, so would have to be supported at the point where it enters the water butt.

Other options would be to put the downpipe at the corner of the shed, it doesn’t have to be right at the end of the run of guttering. A bit like this:

Or the outlet from the half-pipe could be at the end, and then a couple of angles could direct the downpipe back to the wall for support, a bit like this (use some imagination, I CBA googling an image of the exact layout…):

Either of the above would be preferable to just running a downpipe vertically from the end of the gutter into a butt.

My 25-month-old was up at 1.30 this morning, crying. I went in to find him sitting up in bed, when I gave him a cuddle he stopped crying and said “Fishes are getting me,” and promptly lay down and went back to sleep. Little bar steward!

mogrim – Member
Give him a plastic sword

This is my plan for if things get worse, or perhaps the idea of a magic (i.e. invisible) monster-killing sword that he can use to fight them off. Maybe with light-sabre type noises to make it more fun, although then I suppose I’ll be woken up by him making light-sabre noises instead…

I’m actually quite disappointed not to get higher than 33%…

Do you need to have a ‘solid’ top to your wood burner, i.e. a thick cast-iron top or similar? We have one of these:

which has a grille top which sits about 2″ above the top of the fire box. I’m guessing it’s to keep the surface temp down a bit (although that would perhaps defeat the object slightly…). Anyway, this grille gets just about too hot to touch, but I’ve never measured the temp. Would an eco-fan work with this type of wood burner?

Also, it’s almost summer in this neck of the woods so it’ll be six months before we use it next, so can’t check operating temp for a while…

This was the bathroom of an hotel where I stayed in Khartoum…. notice the handy electrical socket up there on the right. Would you want to die in a place like that?

I’ll see your socket near the shower and raise you an electric shower:

In a hotel room in Tanzania. Needless to say, we just washed at the sink…

yunki – Member
I’m not buying any of this ‘oh my hat’s jolly practical’ guff.. you wear a hat because you believe that it makes you look dapper..

fact
Go on then, I’ll bite… I wear a hat on a regular basis because my skin, with it’s Celtic heritage, does not get on particularly well with the UV levels here in New Zealand. I look like a twazzock while wearing it (more of a twazzock than usual, if you were being unkind) and I know it. I have one of those heads that does not and cannot ‘carry off a hat’ to nick that expression up there ^. A hat means I can get away with less sunscreen (I dislike sunscreen more than I dislike hats).

No amount of millinery could make me look dapper :( .