Yvan 🔜(ish) #40c3

Allotmenter, cooker, fermenter, tinkerer ("maker"?), hacker of things and code. Posts ebb and flow between all these, and more.

Generalist sorta Computer Scientist / "Software Engineer" to pay rent (spanning from C/C++ systems/networking to Python/PHP web malarkey.) Linux user since ~1998. GenAI/LLM critical, yet admit I use it in both work and non-work contexts (esp now web search is 🪦) — conflicted.

Grew up in South West Australia, on Wadandi Noongar land, but currently lives in England's West Norfolk fens… due to the oddness of life 🤷🏻‍♂️ … now somewhat anchored by an #allotment 🌱🍅🍆🌽🥔🥕🧄🫑

This is /var/log/yvan — here mainly for myself, for my own record.

CW: Yvan tends to be sweary (speaks En.Au), is haphazard with CWs, does his best with ALTs as time & energy permit, & can be bad at recognising sarcasm & rhetorical Qs. He has a tendancy towards pessimistic nihilism.

Ally 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🇵🇸🇺🇦

FOLLOWS: please have an avatar, bio text, and… y'know… maybe some actual posts.

#noindex #nobot

Public Key

npub18yxfxjyez4ddzdsls0rdrjaself2nuwctvzjt7lnt89fwf0rjlnspzv42y

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yvan@toot-ale-gd.mostr.pub

Profile Code

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npub18yxfxjyez4ddzdsls0rdrjaself2nuwctvzjt7lnt89fwf0rjlnspzv42y

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Published at

2026-10-30T18:40:43Z

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Last Notes

2026-10-25 13:13:14 UTC

Went to the local arts and crafts market and did some patronising.
Patronised some local photography, pen making, cyanotyping, copper foiling (stained glass), beading, and linocut printing. Credit card got a thorough workout.
Amongst those many other things obtained, I now possess a locally made (turned & assembled) fountain pen. Incredibly whimsical.
I now need to remember how to write. This is something I was never good at. Though in year 7 at school I did "win" at calligraphy class... though that required painstaking slowness to achieve.
This writing here was also very slow, just trying to recall each letter form.
My "coordination" when it comes to handwriting is abysmal, in normal circumstances I put doctors to shame. But I always found it easier to write with a fountain or felt tip pen, I need the drag, the friction of the point... ball point pens just run away with my hand.
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2026-10-24 19:05:35 UTC

The fucking fruit flies are a fucking menace this year.

2026-10-21 21:16:38 UTC

When you're #1 for all the wrong reasons...
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2026-10-16 15:47:16 UTC

Mega rainbow action going on over the office!!
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2026-10-03 12:12:55 UTC

Went to the Kings Lynn #SteamPunk Bazaar, at St Nicholas Chapel... found a "broken" computer. Fixed* the computer. Rejoice!
* touchscreen "clicked" the save-and-reboot reboot 😂
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2026-09-26 11:57:16 UTC

Pretty productive day so far.
It is almost as if I have something ReallyImportant® to do and thus have tapped into a rare seam of productivity to avoid the important thing for no good reason at all. 🤔
Kicked off by watering and feeding home planters.
Shopping all done, butcher, country stores, Tossco — weekly refuel including a tub of premium for the lawnmower.
Nice local pork ribs trimmed and have a rub on and in the fridge for a slow cook later. (Just an oven jobbie, probably cannot manage a smoker job on these. Hmmmm... actually... tempting. Side quest?)
Ribs will be "cheat night" dinner, hopefully enough left over for a work lunch.
Cleared out the freezer bone-bags and have a stock on. (Mainly chicken, some duck, maybe the odd pork bone.)
Got some quinces trimmed, now poaching in shaoxing, sugar, and star anise.
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2026-09-03 21:32:14 UTC

Looked at the news.
Mistake.*
In one article a UK minister is telling Brits to all become preppers because we're all gonna be fucked by the weather.
In another some OpenAI bozo is claiming to have created AGI.
🤪
* It always is.

2026-08-29 18:24:21 UTC

It is the classic Moosewood Cookbook "Cardamom Coffee Cake" time of the year. My favourite cake. Though I do double the cardamom and also add actual fine/powder ground coffee to the same amount.
Some day I need to buy myself a slightly bigger bundt style tin for this cake, because this one has always been a bit precarios. (It has, admittedly, baked the cake a couple of dozen times I think... with only a couple of bad spill-overs, probably cause by ovens running a bit hot.)
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2026-08-23 21:30:36 UTC

Today's #allotment harvest.
Under the tomatoes are gherkins, tomatillo and achocha too.
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2026-07-29 20:49:47 UTC

Life's a bit busy'n'all... chaos, time, energy...
The #allotment is either thriving on neglect, or dying of neglect. It is a survival of the toughest situation. The tomatoes seem to be doing OK, the chillies are mainly in the "thrive" category. We have a hosepipe ban in place, which isn't helping.
The raspberries are stewing on the canes. I kid you not, the whole area just smell like someone is cooking raspberry pie.
The area outside the polytunnel on that side of the plot is basically an arid wildlife garden now, not really any productivity unless you count parsnip & celeriac seeds.
The new side, the greenhouse side, is doing OK all things considered.
It has not turned out to be the organised & orderly plot year I had hoped for. Maybe we will get there... and then we will probably leave. Someone reminded me the other day that I could move to New Zealand. It is a tempting daydream. (But not plausible in the near future.)
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2026-07-11 08:36:18 UTC

Right. The old V70 is ready for #EMFCamp loading...
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2026-07-02 19:06:58 UTC

These Napolitana Basil leaves are ridiculous.
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2026-07-02 09:00:29 UTC

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@nprofile…cmq0 "life coaching" — a totally unregulated area which is mainly a scam feeding off of vulnerably stressed out and anxious people... IDK, maybe some folks get something out of it. Mostly it's just confidence scam trickery IMO.
Stupid headline, stupid "news", generally ridiculous all round.
Paying for Tesco value meals is why other millenials don't own homes. Obviously. (And avodados, lattes, etc of course.)

2026-06-28 09:54:18 UTC

To think... 🤔 ...back in the days of Captain Planet we knew things were fucked up already, I mean, that's kinda the whole vibe of that cartoon. And not just Captain Planet, but I recall a 90s redolent with environmental messaging... back growing up in Western Australia at any rate, I cannot speak for the rest of the world. Songs like Rip Rip Woodchip are burnt into my subconscious.
Yet... my generation grew up and... just continued to fuck things up. 🤷🏻‍♂️
The harvest we reap from sowing the planet with poison is not going to be a pretty one.
@nprofile…0zw6 https://mastodon.world/@ombialik/116826202120969246

2026-06-10 18:30:06 UTC

Just WTF is going on with Amazon listings these days.
On the plus side it's probably driving people to find alternative options.
Like, how daft does all this look... where do they find all these midgets for the photoshoots?
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2026-06-03 13:26:56 UTC

A rare #work post from me, in the theme of #GetFediHired — with the caveat it is #Cambridge (UK) based, just outta town, in a beautiful spot in Comberton (4 days in office, Wednesday WfH and an annual allocation of ad-hoc WfH days.)
Our core work is #Python ( #django ) with #Typescript ( #solidjs ) at the front end, there's some #Rust floating about too (but it's not a big part of things).
#Job roles in #software, #physiotherapy, regulatory, and more : Flok Health Jobs
News: $12.5m Series A funding round
And for the Fedi audience: It says AI a lot, which has its uses... our core tech is not GenAI and isn't burning the planet down any more than tech in general. Our stuff just runs on a normal server, no GPUs!
As devs here we are under no pressure to use GenAI tools... though the option is there, with very careful safeguarding. (At core we have a regulated medical device, we do not play "vibe coding" games with this stuff.)
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2026-05-24 11:20:20 UTC

Kat just mentioned the humble chocolate eclair, a bog-standard bakery item back in Australia.
Are they a thing in the UK?
I refer to them as: a long skinny poof pumped full of custard. Back home profiteroles were always "poofs", I don't *think* this was in any sort of gay reference... but 80s/90s and all, it may well have been and just went over my head. It definitely isn't terminology I'd use directly in public these days, far too iffy.
We often had profiteroles on the menu and my mum is famous, locally back home, for her quokenbouch, must have made made many many thousands of profiteroles... I used to enjoy eating the gooey bit sometimes gutted out of them... that is the sort of reason I am more profiterole shaped than an eclaire. 😂

2026-05-23 16:38:30 UTC

"mow the grass" turned into three hours of garden fettling lol... I'm not quite sure how it is past 17:30 already either... must have been a later start than I thought I guess...
Having a sit-down and a ponder as to whether I should start doing work on the Fox. (Well, yes, I should but do I want to... I feel like what I want to is have a nice cold lager lol, but I've banned alcohol this weekend! What an asshole.)

2026-05-17 11:13:37 UTC

Well... that's not at all anxiety inducing 😬
(Have checked with Home Office website and both our visa statuses there are "settled" with all the rights, so hell knows what this is all about... 🤞🏻)
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2026-05-12 14:55:16 UTC

Staircase or moss garden?
#mosstodon
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2026-05-06 18:40:27 UTC

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@nprofile…x8t7 wait... what... I had assumed that was just some kinda dumb joke. 😐
reaches for the FreeBSD ISO he downloaded last month
Not entirely joking, "modern Linux " things like systemd is one reason I'm already looking at shifting some things to a BSD.
(Debian user since 1997, me...)

2026-05-03 20:14:43 UTC

Everything on YouTube, brought to you by Incogni... a few months ago it was SurfShark, wonder what Internet snake oil will come up next.

2026-04-26 16:22:34 UTC

Good news for us UK renters I guess. (I have some vague solar plans already, but that plan is to keep it isolated from the mains anyway.)
I love the photo in the linked news post with some bloke just casually drillling through the waterproof membrane on top of a flat roof building. Presumably he'll ensure his fixings on that are suitably waterproofed. I bet landlords seeing that are getting the heebie jeebies, but I am OK with that. 😅
Bloke is also about to trip over one of several things and go right over the edge of that building.
(Is this a real photo? The hands and wrists holding the drill look odd to me. Says its a Getty image tho.)
@nprofile…al9h https://mastodon.scot/@kim_harding/116471451236255763

2026-04-22 14:30:29 UTC

Big old watering WfH-Wednesday #allotment trip... things are really drying out fast right now... whilst I am a big fan of raised bed growing, it does bite a bit when it is dry. Watered some of the new outdoor plants/sowings today, and deep watered the asparagus.
There's still plenty of moisture deep in the soil though and our regular polytunnel/greenhouse watering has paid off in terms of soil moisture under cover. Pretty soon, maybe a fortnight away, we can start planing out the key covered crops.
Nice to see we have some ume fruit set again this year. Not sure how many, they're mainly still tiny nubs. This year, if they hold, I will need to find a way to protect them before the bastard birds dissapear them in the space of a day again.
Things are kicking along, as ever just never enough time... especially between All The Things that Need Doing.
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2026-04-17 20:56:52 UTC

Well, the last episode Dead Loch season two is pretty fucking intense.
That aside, its a good bit of Aussie comedy, if that's yer thing.

2026-04-05 09:57:02 UTC

I kinda mostly stopped watching his utoob stuff a year or two ago*, but I still use this Charles Dowding 2023 calendar as a rough sowing guide. Shown here is April. It's a convenient physical format simple single page reference & lives next to the bed, though I do also regularly refer to other online sources. (I don't really like the popuar "what I am sowing this month" videos, I do watch some, preferably shorter simpler ones, more Plot 37 Jessie style than the OTT intensity of Outgrow Steve.)
This weekend I am planning to sow a pea gutter, a second set of broad beans in root trainers, cornflowers, nasturtiums, a tiny amount of lettuce, multi-sown spring onions and I'm hoping to get some carrot and radish direct sown down the #allotment tomorrow.
I am considering getting in early with the nasturtiums too, and maybe doing a top-up sowing of sunflowers as I had a few fails in the last round.
Better crack on I guess, the long weekend is well more than halfway gone. I have a lot to do.
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2026-03-22 22:27:28 UTC

And dinner was the last of that turkey jalfrezi we made last weekend. The garnish is sprouted fenugreek/methi seed ... which I had soaked prior to intending to plant them, but never got around to that, so they sprouted. Quite a nice little crunch to them actually.
It has been a hefty weekend, with two pre-8AM starts. Hopefully I can still drag myself up at 5AM tomorrow.
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2026-02-27 08:36:30 UTC

What is particularly striking to me is the turnout at the G&D by-election wasn't far below the turnout of the last general election.
So one can hope a key difference being made here, by the Greens especially, is mobilisation of the typically lazy and recalcitrant British voters. Sadly I suspect the "not them" is more motivating than other factors... and that's probably at least as much a "not Starmer" (and I do think it is him, specifically) as a "not the nazis"/reform.
Dunno of Burnham would have made enough difference to win it, but I suspect there's a big chunk of swing as a result of that... a big "north versus south" vibe. Though I think Hannah Spencer looks to have had winning potential even without these other factors and would have done well regardless.
Maybe the BBC will give the greens a bit more airtime now, rather than constantly waffling on about Farage's nazi party.

2026-02-20 23:11:41 UTC

Kat has taken it upon herself to try "beading" QR codes. Apparently it involves something called "square stitch".
Yes, this actually scans... though often not super speedy. Google (boo hiss) Lens scans it faster than Binary Eye seems to manage, the latter particularly struggles in low light.
Does anyone know where you can buy beads that are more square in dimension...?
Also, Kat is a software developer looking for a job. If you'd like to employ the sort of UK-based nerd who would try to make a QR code out of beads then look no further. 😅 She's starting to bead rude word QR codes now too.
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2025-12-29 19:18:12 UTC

Where, in the UK, do people buy distilled water?

2025-12-24 22:43:50 UTC

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@nprofile…fzsy dye bomb went off in the duffle bag of cash from the bank robbery it perpetrated earlier in the day.

2025-12-19 18:24:50 UTC

You know you're in England when...
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2025-12-17 21:29:51 UTC

Pumpkin scones!
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2025-11-16 22:08:20 UTC

I got lazy and this year it is just going to be all my bets placed on a single ferment.... I'm calling it "all the red ones"... well, almost all, kept a few back for other purposes - and also in went some yellow Trinidad Perfume. I don't really do rules. I am chaos. (You should see the state of my kitchen, or pigsty as some may consider it. I just don't know how people do things and also have tidy and clean spaces, there isn't enough time to even just do the things as it is.)
Anyway... the chillies in the mash are, in approx order of volume: thunder mountain long horn, unknown red chilli, naga morich, trinidad perfume, cc piri piri... probably some others snooked in too.
Slightly under 1kg of mash, 2.5% salt by weight.
Now it just needs to sit for a few weeks/months/until-i-can-be-arsed-with-it.
#allotment #gyo #fermenting #chillies #chilipeppers
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2025-11-15 15:12:33 UTC

Roughly hand crushed dried red seedless chilli flakes... a selection including piri piri, thunder mountain longhorn, kashmiri mirch, bishops crown, and a bunch of an unknown variety (bought as Scotch bonnet, definite wasn't!) The result is so much richer and tastier than any store bought flakes I have ever tried... though pretty much a whole dehydrator load of chillies results in just this ~90g of flakes in one small jar.
Now to remember to be careful where I am putting my hands for the next day or so. 😅
#allotment #chillies #gyo
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2025-10-11 11:49:52 UTC

Another big batch of passata on the go.
Also a focus on some favourite tomatoes.
After failing for many years to grow san marzanos here in the UK, even with the #allotment polytunnel, we have discovered some that work as good alternatives to form the bulk of our passata volume.
The darker/colourful fleshed ones are Jersey Giant, which we have entirely by chance… it was a freebie with a Fatalii Seeds chilli seed order early 2023, and I am hoping to keep it for the years to come by my own seed saving (last year's seeds have thankfully come true). These don't deliver a lot of fruit per plant, but the fruit are large and super tasty. My favourite tomato is either this or Black Brandywine.
The large fleshy red ones are Amish Paste from Real Seeds and these do a pretty good crop of large tomatoes per plant.
These two form the bulk of our passata batches, but we also throw in all other varietites including cherries. The cherries shown here are about to be prepped for dehydration.
#GYO
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2025-10-07 19:06:19 UTC

Not sure of this is #ThickTrunkTuesday or #DeadTrunkTuesday, or maybe the reanimating powers of Honey Fungus make it #UndeadTrunkTuesday.
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2025-10-04 20:59:26 UTC

That's 2.3kg of chopped quince just covered with water and simmered then double-milled and passed through a seive to yield about 2.3kg of pulp.
And the roast tomatoes have been double-milled into a rich passata.
Tomorrow the quince pulp will have sugar added and be boiled down to make a "quince cheese", and the passata will be packaged.
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2025-10-01 22:27:45 UTC

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@nprofile…eedx I have a plan to try combining some quince and chillies to make a lacto-fermemt hot-sauce.

2025-10-01 19:48:17 UTC

Managed to squeeze an #allotment harvesting visit in before it got dark today... and harvested ALL OF THE QUINCE... this is a mad harvest. Just the split/damaged ones I have off to the side here are more weight of quince than we had last year. I've not weighed these but there are several kilograms.
Also some tomatoes of course, plus a big of chard there.
The quince variety is "Vranja".
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2025-08-27 18:11:44 UTC

The question: Can you fit 28 ~800x1570 domestic solar panels in a 2004 Volvo V70?
The answer: NO!
But... what if we add "on" as well as "in" hey? 😄
I'm going to have to clean them up and test them in the sun. But even if "not all that" probably can't complain for £102.08...
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2025-06-12 18:44:53 UTC

Unexpected item in the #allotment harvest area!
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2025-06-08 13:16:11 UTC

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@nprofile…6md2 snap! Kat just said I have to make her carbonara with it 😂

2025-06-08 12:51:32 UTC

Couldn't resist something in the Polish supermarket that appeared to be called Peasant Bacon in Romanian (slaninuta taraneasca / slăninuță țărănească... bacon (usually fat/belly) & "peasant" or "country style"). I got home and took a closer look and realised it is basically half a kilo of guanciale for a fiver. Salted, herbed, hot smoked pig cheek. The details on the packet rear are apparently "Limburgish" according to Lens, rather than Romanian, but it has a "Produs in Romania" label on the front, made by S.C. Marcel S.R.L.
I just fried some, and it is very very evil-good...
So, basically, I have found a budget source of decent guanciale and now I need to dig up some Italian cook books for reminders on what to do with this. IIRC, In the past I have mainly used guanciale as a sort of fattier pancetta.
#meat #bacon #food
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2025-06-06 20:12:33 UTC

Anyone here able to recommend an air filter from their own experience?
Single room HEPA type thing.
No, I don't want to build my own out of a bunch of filters, a fan, and some duct tape.

2025-06-01 20:00:01 UTC

Not a bad day all in all, as ever not quite as much done as hoped... but stuff got done. First beans in toilet-roll-tube "root trainers" at home, some planting in the small home courtyard, and Kat got Swan River Daisies pricked out.
Down at the #allotment I finished securing the greenhouse roof, finished the polytunnel-side greenhouse wall (two walls and a door left!), and got the pallets cleared out of the way on the inside. Burnt some crappy pallet. Strimmed. Cut the crappy old IBC in half (still not sure what to do with this). Cleared the back of the new plot a bit, stacked the IBCs. Kat, meanwhile, did a lot of weeding and cleared woodchip off the back "three sisters bed", we got a layer of municipal compost over it, and have planted sweetcorn and tomatillos into the bed already. 🎉 (Poor corn isn't the happiest.)
Now home, charcoal getting good to go in the BBQ... Barnsley Chops in the fridge. 🤤
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2025-05-26 10:02:07 UTC

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@nprofile…2ye5 @nprofile…4w0g so it was actually published... but it's a made up story someone else submitted pretending to be the author? Someone's going to be having a shit day! (The story itself felt plausible enough, but like some feckless web content editor I haven't had my coffee yet 😅)

2025-05-20 19:38:13 UTC

SANZA order arrived!! 🎉🇦🇺🌏🪃🦘🐨🧂🍫⚫
Inspired by a desire for Rum & Raisin chocolate, though very overdue a Promite indulgence (I allow myself about 8 jars a year), and we've just run out of chicken salt — timely! Gone a whole 1.5kg bulk bag of it this time. The little cardboard tubes just go soggy in the English dampness.
Mostly the rest is shitz and gigglez, though 100s ans 1000s really are my favourite Australian biscuit (well, slightly after the salty cheese ones with sweet filling I don't think they make any more.)
Going to do me some good old Aussie "curried egg sandwiches".
Mint sauce for the nostalgia? Mainly curiosity. (Now I need to get me a jollly jumbuck in me tuckerbag!)
Licorice becuase... licorice, andI want to side-by-side allsorts. Allsorts roadtest? Mango for the Kat.
Don't even think about the "air miles"… I'm going to greenie Hell, but the fact is we all are, and it's Hell on Earth.
#AustralianFood #AussieAussieAussie #Food #PromiteIsTheBestMite
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2025-05-18 18:39:10 UTC

Well, it's a bit of a write-off of a weekend for #allotment progress... as predicted... we did potter around a bit down there this afternoon but my knee kept trying to bend the wrong way and I decided to call it quits, hopefully before undoing any progress from the previous day mainly off my feet.
The main thing done today is that I got some bed layout thought out... which isn't non-useful.
The plan is to have the pallet-collar-hinge based raised beds on the left in front of the greenhouse, and then have two large walk-through type "pumpkin patch" beds on the left with a bean-arch between them. We're also sometimes referring to these as the "three sisters" beds as that's sort of the concept going on there. Corn, pumpkins, beans... but I'm not sure we'll do it in the real traditional style as I don't think our climate here is amenable to beans growing up corn. So bean arch and wigwams.
Kat got more chip down around the greenhouse door-end and a rough lay-out for the "patio" fire-pit.
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2025-05-11 21:09:40 UTC

The colour of this peony bloom seemingly oversaturates my camera or phone screen. It looks a bit mad, but in real life it is a super rich deep coloured bloom. A beaut welcome onto the new plot.
This is one Kat rescued from the new #allotment plot before we want all scorched earth on its ass. It is certainly showing its gratefulness, in spades.
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2025-05-10 11:09:22 UTC

Our #allotment and #GYO jobs for the weekend:
Water, water, water
Finish the new plot greenhouse glazing
It is time: clear the polytunnel!
Plant out tomatoes & friends?
Pot-on cucurbits
Work through some of the seed sowing backlog (content of the "to sow" box on my desk is the photo) ... and time to sow beans!
Get a first coat of paint on pallet collar hinges
Get something planted in the home raised bed
Weed/tidy the rear bed near the greenhouse at home
Well, it's gone past midday Saturday already so better get cracking.
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2025-05-04 20:37:50 UTC

Well, was one of the more unpleasant #allotment trips in a while. No shelter from the wind in these flatlands. Hated it, but just want this greenhouse done. Was too late a start really, but got a bunch of stuff done at home... so not a useless day, was just reluctant to venture outside. It has gone all winter again.
Got all the rubber strip in place on the frame and then got a start at putting the poly and glass in.
I don't like the poly at all and wonder if I have enough glass to fully replace it. The poly has been retrofitted to replace glass and doesn't really fit properly because it is thicker than greenhouse glass, it doesn't slot into the slots per se... probably just have to live with that. Cannot complain too much about a free greenhouse.
Kat got some more woodchip down whilst I swore at the cold and the greenhouse.
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2025-05-02 16:13:59 UTC

UK Based Question: What loam based peat-free compost are people recommending these days. Not the cheap fluffy "potting compost" crap at B&Q that is full of wood and barely retains water!
Something soil/loam based.
Few of the usual retailers spec the stuff properly!
(I am being consulted on specifying the bits to buy to put some salad planters in at work.)
#GYO #GrowYourOwn #Vegetables #Gardening #Allotment

2025-04-30 16:56:41 UTC

Ah, Australian fauna and flora...
How should I prepare these seeds for planting?
POUR ON BOILING WATER
Seeds must be brutalised before they will grow: https://www.australianseed.com/shop/item/swainsona-stenodonta

2025-04-24 22:58:55 UTC

From the tech trenches: This week I have discovered jq — a command line tool for querying and manipulating JSON data, and it is rather cool.

2025-04-19 18:47:50 UTC

Managed to get some stuff done down the #allotment... it isn't panning out as the mega-productive long-weekend I'd hoped for down there... but there are still two more days!!
We got some planting done. And now our current outdoor beds are full. We need to get more beds sorted soon. That's mutisown beetroot, onions, and spring onions in - plus chards, cabbages and lettuces.
The polytunnel is a jungle... but we'll just let it do its thing, harvest as we need, and clear it when it's time to put the tomatoes, chillies, etc, in (which will be circa 2nd week of May.)
Got the greenhouse base fully secured and started trenching one side for plastic lining (because creosotey sleepers) but the plastic we had was short so I'm going to check if we have longer plastic in storage before using the short stuff.
Harvested some mustard greens to go with tonight's dinner of gumbo and mashed potato.
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2025-04-19 13:50:04 UTC

That's yesterday's wild garlic harvest processed... soaked for a bit, rinsed twice, lightly spun, chopped roughly, and spun harder... after that we got 352 grammes of slightly damp leaf, plus a few flower buds. We split the leaf 50/50 and did one 176g of leaves with 250g of salted butter, and the other 176g of leaf with 200g of local extra-virgin-rapeseed-oil. Now in an ice-cube tray to freeze.
Mostly we like to use this in a simple pasta, just melt one or two "cubes" into the pasta and add a bit of black pepper and some fresh parsley or basil. But a buttery one is also excellent melted on top of a grilled steak.
The wild garlic flower buds have been put into a small bottle of white wine vinegar.
#WildGarlic #Ramsoms #Food #Cooking #Foraging
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2025-04-19 11:01:05 UTC

The simple little Wacom tablet I bought for Kat circa 20 years ago finally gave up the ghost. 😢
But wait!!
All that has happened is the wire has broken at a stress-point... #WeCanFixIt!
If you ever wondered what the guts of an early 2000s Wacom tablet look like... now you know. (More photos to come...)
I don't really know how this stuff works but I assume it's something capacitive, some field-effect... inductive? I could web search that I guess.
#electronics #repair
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2025-04-14 19:57:53 UTC

Balls salad.
Kat in the kitchen today, I wasn't back from work until 8pm due to a late start (part sleeping in, part new car faff... battery was a bit knackered, didn't like the cold morning, so had to boost it. Something to monitor.)
Mushroom risotto arancini, cheese centred, on polytunnel greens salad.
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2025-04-10 20:32:09 UTC

The ~hour commute is a bit of a drag, make for a long old day... but it is cool that quite close to the work end and not much of a detour away is our old #WildGarlic stomping ground. It's a bit of a walk from the road but in 35 mins from car parked to back on the road I was able to gather a nice bunch of leaves.
Most of the ground level greenery in these photos is wild garlic!
It's a bit young still, but still a good harvest to be had.
At home now and I've made a nice batch of wild garlic, EVOO, and cashew "pesto", with a touch of salt and lemon juice. A large dollop of this mixed through orecchiette will be dinner. (With bonus #vegan points.)
#ramsons #foraging
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2025-04-10 11:33:06 UTC

What is the most recommended #PasswordManager amongst the #OpenSource and #InfoSec worlda at present, for users primarily on #Linux and #Android.
Anything I can self-host the backend/data of?
#OSS #security

2025-04-01 12:10:54 UTC

Just wrote the sentence "I've worked* alongside Kat for over 20 years"... yikes... for over 2 decades she's been putting up with my bullshit.
On the topic... anyone hiring a remote role for a good full-stack web developer (PHP, Python, usual front-end crap, phone app dev too, but of Java in that context). UK based, full rights to work in UK, etc. (I expect approximately 1 million Fedi users are seeking full-stack web-dev work based on what I see here lol 🙄)
https://kit.belista.id.au/#skills (full CV available on request tho)
* not directly mind, just alongside in a more literal sense lol...
#GetFediHired

2025-03-31 19:22:40 UTC

What is this weed? Dug out of a Norfolk UK allotment bed.
We saw these little fuzzy leaves poking out of the ground in the middle of our asparagus bed. I dug around them trying to get as much out as possible and my little trowel hit something that went crunch... I dug out this large root/rhizome/tuber... clearly not all of it either. It's huge!
I've no idea what this is.
Edit: as identified by @nprofile…5cw4 this is a bryony of some sort ... we actually had this weed growing amongst the asparagus last year and thought it might be some sort of cucumber, but then it had red berries. Turns out it's related to cucumber! I assumed it was some annual, not something with a huge tuber! No we know.
#GrowYourOwn #Weed #allotment #GYO
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2025-03-30 19:10:45 UTC

All hail BST! I wish we had UTC+01:00 all year round to be honest.
Anyway, got some useful stuff done at home and then a late arvo into the evening of #allotment work has happened.
I progressed much further than I expected with the old compost bays at the back of the new plot. I thought I'd just get them emptied, maybe partially deconstructed... but no, they're entirely gone now and I have done the bulk of the earthwork to terrace the rear edge of the plot as well.
The bulk of the material from out of them is now in the greenhouse area. It's a sort of a soil-y dry compost mix with a lot of twig but some definite biomass. I think it'll be a good substrate as part of raising up the ground level inside the greenhouse.
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2025-03-29 09:28:27 UTC

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@nprofile…qfh3 lol.
As in I do find myself saying lol out loud, as a single syllable word ("lol" as opposed to "ell oh ell"). Usually nobody is lol-ing, and I'm saying it in response to some bad joke, sort of a sarcastic lol.

2025-03-23 21:51:22 UTC

Weather just got more and more rubbish through the day... so ended up doing an 8 hour shift of potting on and seed sowing!
That's 74 #chillies potted on, across 26 varieties!!🤪 We'd better get cracking with finishing that #allotment greenhouse build, the polytunnel isn't going to be enough this year.
I've pricked out overgrown lettuces and badly etiolated chard, did the best I can with them. It's not something we need loads of though, hopefully some will make it.
Did some multisown mixed radish and four varieties of beetroot.
In the flower department: swan river daisy, "black" hollyhocks, chamomile from tea bags, and tobacco.
Plus herbs: 4 varieties of basil, and some old shiso seed which may or may not be viable!
And have popped this year's tomatoes and tomatillos into chamomile, they'll go in soil tomorrow (? maybe, lol.)
#peppers #gyo #growyourown
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2025-03-19 17:41:31 UTC

Nice three hour arvo down the #allotment in the sun. Got our own compost spread over the two long raised beds, it made a better layer than I expected, and then there was enough municipal compost to cover one of them with an OK layer. This was mostly Kat's work. The beds are looking mighty fine now! Only took us 4 years.
I started moving the other two compost bays into the now spare bay, but there is too much fibrous stuff in there to use the spade, let alone shovel, so we'll need to take the fork to the plot for that.
I hoed the middle of the greenhouse space ahead of moving the content of the old new plot compost bays into there. That's the plan. Got a ramp in place.
And I have bunged both the buddleia and the lilac into holes either side of the back of the hexoctagonal shed, watered in well, covered in chip. They may live, they may die, but I've given them a chance at least.
Harvested mustard leaf, volunteer rocket, and radishes to go with our dinner tonight.
#growyourown
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2025-03-19 17:22:38 UTC

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@nprofile…ssav yeah, I was surprised there weren't examples for this use case - and I expect there must be code out there that does this sort of thing already, but I couldn't find it.
With the caveat that I am a complete amateur Rust developer (with a whole ~6 days experience) I have documented my efforts here and previous posts, but really this is more my own rambling notes: https://yvan.seth.id.au/rusty-pico-w-co2-ppm-sensor.html
And the code as it stands is on GitHub: https://github.com/YvanSeth/scd40-rusty-pi
There is at least one bug, which causes it to stop servicing HTTP connections - and possibly still some sort of mutex/locking race which locks up the whole thing (I need to get a proper debugging connection sorted out.)

2025-03-16 22:34:14 UTC

FUCKING A!
I have a #Rust programme on my #RaspberryPi #PicoW that reads data (an u16) from a sensor and you can then get that data from a web request. HUGE ACHIEVEMENT.
It has taken me like… a large chunk of three days… To get to this point from having code that reads the sensor and serves web requests. 😂 I feel like a moron. But hey, I've only been coding Rust for ~5 days. Probably taking the hard path by going straight into embedded with no::std…
It has taken so many attempts to get to grips with scopes, mutables, Rust's bloody intense syntax, etc, etc… but in the end I've worked out a way to pass a u16 to both spawned workers via some sort of a Mutex. I think I might have an extra level of indirection I don't need… but fuck it, I'll take that I can do this at all as a win.
Now I can take it outside (i.e. not USB-tethered) and see what it reads as an outdoor CO2 PPM measurement.
(I could have had this working in C++ in… minutes, but no, I'm a masochist.)
#embedded #embassy

2025-03-12 12:41:02 UTC

Previous boost: SEE ALL REPLIES!! 🎉 🥳
Very nice work. What I see as one of the key day to day issues with Mastodon has an approved solution: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/32615#discussion_r1988985131
Well worth reading that if you're interested in #Mastodon / #ActivityPub implementation trivia.
No more having to click to go to the remote instance to see more replies and then try and reply there and remember you're not on your own instance, then have to copy-paste the URI of the reply you want to reply to to your own instance search to get to it to reply to? 🤞🏻
Time to update my instance soon I think. (This isn't in a released Masto version yet, but hopefully coming to an instance near you soon.)

2025-03-08 17:46:12 UTC

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@nprofile…scv2 it's a good idea!
I've got some old foam insulation I could maybe apply in some way too.
I was pondering cutting it in half and using it as two raised beds, possibly one damp or water bed for kamg kong or just cress.
We don't really need as an IBC, I have four good ones already!

2025-03-02 18:56:34 UTC

Kat did some serious woodchip haulin' down the #allotment today!
This: https://toot.ale.gd/@yvan/114059443163016503
Has become this:
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2025-02-28 11:08:58 UTC

Anyone here who has done UK software engineering work (C/C++/Python non-web application/software dev) on a contract basis able to answer a couple of questions for me about rates and structure?
Any general hints and tips also welcome.

2025-02-20 20:18:25 UTC

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@nprofile…dplv nice!
I did this sort of by mistake this year. I give my chilli seeds a 24 hour mild camomile tea soak, but I didn't really have the spoons to pot them up after taking them out so I just kept them damp under covers on some paper-towel. Many of them sprouted. And they grew fast and fine when that prompted me to pop them into some soil!

2025-02-11 03:16:08 UTC

Heh, have just discovered that the RGB flasher LEDs on this kinda toy hexagonal board I have have a range of different effects based on voltage. I don't really think this is a designed-in feature mind. The board is designed to take 5V... but if I turn the voltage down the voltage gets too low for the blue channel first, and then the green, leaving only the red. But the flashing does maintain, so you get a spectrum of interesting results.
This in fact makes the toy more interesting, more useful perhaps, to me... because at 5V it's just too damn bright and "party mode"... the slow red, and red with a little green, are more my usual vibe.
Only discovered by mistake as hooked up to bench supply rather than the 5V supply I was using before.
Now I need to make it a little variable-voltage controller... something with an ESP32 I reckon, want to have more of a play with them some time.
This is why I'm up past 3AM? No, that's just because I'm broken.
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2025-02-09 17:42:47 UTC

Well we did drag ourselves down to the #allotment earlier... trudging through town, Kat wielding a spade, me lugging a sledgehammer... like we're extras on a zombie apocalypse set.
Just a bit of fencing done. Rear box end wire in place, and we now have top and bottom strainer wires done on the dividing fence line, plus a high wire to deter the munties.
Next job will be to put in the simple upright stakes down the line and then I need to find my U nails and nail the wires in place before we can then finally clip on the mesh fence.
It was all a bit unpleasant, very grey, rather harsh easterly biting into us, and the odd wave of spitty rain. Whilst I am glad of the bit of extra progress, I'm not sure we should have subjected ourselves to it (my allotment policy is it is NOT supposed to be a nasty chore). On the bright side I could definitely do with more of the 2 miles walking thing, my health is just a bit dire really.
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2025-01-30 22:22:17 UTC

A bit of a delayed sowing for the #chillies, but it's still January! Plus these seeds got a head start, too much so in some cases perhaps. Hopefully they'll be OK.
Compost is seived and microwaved to 70°C and then needs to cool.
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2025-01-30 12:32:23 UTC

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@nprofile…efxf people don't listen, no matter what stats you show them.
I can show with actual stats/numbers that it makes absolutely no measurable difference if delivery drivers do 60 or 70 on the motorways on regional delivery routes. None, it's pretty much random dependent on traffic conditions. In the most ideal of conditions it makes a small difference.
But they still drive at 70...
The same for 50 versus 60 on single carriageway. I mean, they're not permitted to do 60 in a 3.5t van but they do anyway...
Back when I had the business I had to fire a guy because despite being told all this he kept doing 70-80 when he should have been doing 50. "Because it gets me there faster." Nope.. it gets you to the next traffic queue faster. (He was let go mainly because his driving resulted in points on his license which he didn't disclose, despite regular queries, so was thus effectively driving uninsured. Only person I ever fired and it still weighs on me. It was a final straw situation.)

2025-01-28 18:18:53 UTC

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@nprofile…x759 ah, I should have looked at Shelly options as I've got a bunch of Shelly relays in the system already and like how their stuff works.

2025-01-28 18:09:27 UTC

Righty, before one of us takes an actual axe to a Google device, and I think it might be Kat before it is me... anyone here have recommendations for some "button" device that works well with #HomeAssistant.
I am aware there may be some things don't even need batteries in the buttons/switches, which will talk to a hub... so something like that that HA can grok would be nice so we can just have a physical button that I can set up to toggle lights/etc in HA. Buttons that could be stuck to the wall, or just sat on desks, etc.
Cheap too, ideally cheap. Don't want much do I? 😅
(I don't have the time right now to be trying to work out the alternative voice recognition stuff, it'll happen... but right now I want a trivial solution to prevent a Googlcide... not that I am against Googlcide, we have a long term plan/hope to fully eliminate it.)
#HomeAutomation

2025-01-28 01:40:48 UTC

On the "AI" topic, I cannot find it right now, but I saw something pass by in the feed where a developer was basically claiming "AI" writes all their code. Something about being a "10x developer" but dependent on AI.
Is that a thing now? As in "AI" can generate code well enough that it is super-productive to just let "AI" write code and all you do is kinda "drive" it with prompts/queries? (I don't know about the lingo here, I know nothing practical about uses of LLM "AI".)
Maybe it's best if I just give up on ever being a software engineer again... just go stack Tesco shelves or something. It all seems a bit pointless really.

2025-01-27 11:46:19 UTC

So... what do we do with 12 (and a bit) rolls of toilet paper we cannot flush down the loo because it clogs drains? Seems like a question for #MakersHour perhaps?
Kat had the bright idea of putting some in a jar of water. The 'A' sample is a standard Andrex product, the 'B' sample is the Bamboo TP. This was done about 3 days ago, the day after I had to jet the drains.
The 'A' sample disintegrated to a sludgy particulate on just one shake, pretty much immediately.
The 'B' sample has actually had more violent shaking, more so than it'd get in being flushed, but contiguous pieces of paper remain.
If there is a standard for how bogroll dissolves then I suspect this product fails to meet it.
TP Science! LOL... this TP is not for bunghole.
We'll stick to known/usual brands now I guess.
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2025-01-25 11:25:50 UTC

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@nprofile…qfh3 ah, useful... I've been pondering where to move my HA to, currently it's running via Docker on a local machine but I wanted to move to HAOS* due to the limitations the Docker version seems to have. I've been wondering why everyone is so dead set on RPi for this use case when it just doesn't really seem like the right solution to me.
* Though I also tend towards your preference of having a known base OS. Is there any feature limitation on a "supervised" service? Or I could install HAOS in a VM I guess.
Those little ThinkCentre boxes look great, will have to look out for them.

2025-01-20 19:50:18 UTC

It's kinda cool to be able to just wander outside, stick a garden fork in the ground, and hoik out some dinner.
Some of these Jerusalem Artichokes (Sunchokes) will be making their way into dinner. A "wild" mushroom and caramelised fartichoke risotto.
Definitely one of our lowest maintenance crops. They have their own bed at home. Each year in early spring I sift through it and make sure only a light distribution of tubers remain (as much as possible, I'll never locate every tuber). And then we let them grow.
The only major problem with them is they grow so big and tall that they start to blow over in the wind.
Of course there's also the whole issue if the effect they can have on the gut... go cautiously I say. 😂
Sadly we're yet to actually see ours flower, which was part of the hope we had for them.
#GrowYourOwn #allotment #gardening
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2025-01-18 20:26:06 UTC

Did manage that #allotment trip earlier, not until after 14:30 but got a good couple of hours down there... can already feel the evening light extending that little bit longer. The allotment really puts one in touch with the boundaries of the day... well, in our late-bed/risers case more so the latter boundary than the earlier lol.
Got the IBC and other crap the workers had turfed out of the ditch into our plot out of the way.
They'd knocked my aligned slabs around badly but thankfully only broken a temporary plank.
I re-set all the slabs, got a fourth one in, wedged them fairly firmly with inherited brick bits, and have popped a loose/sandy mortar along the bases to help hold them.
Tomorrow we'll work on flattening the plot area and getting the shed onto some plinths.
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2025-01-16 11:41:36 UTC

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@nprofile…jewr heya, the link to the security issue at the top of the release notes is a 404 error. (Sorry, probably 10 dozen people typing this same reply right now 😂)

2025-01-12 00:09:33 UTC

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@nprofile…eedx too many would be defined by not having anywhere to plant them out... I'm sure it could happen, too many seedlings isn't unheard of! Most years I have too many tomatoes and chillies. But it's good to have spares! Too many is better than too few? Sadly some must then become child sacrifices to to the compost gods.
A lot this year will be contingent on us getting beds good to go in the new plot. 🤞🏻

2025-01-11 21:21:37 UTC

An #allotment video that was a bit too much stuff to stick in the last "postcard": microwave sterilising soil for sowing, trial sowings to check seed viability, and sowing our first onions of 2025 (our first seed sowing of the season!)
It's a bit rambling!
https://youtu.be/GTLd_nn1nXI

2025-01-11 12:18:11 UTC

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@nprofile…qfh3 PoE hat! I didn't know that existed. Had no idea a PoE hat that can take power from the existing ethernet port was possible. That's cool.
I've often vaguely wondered why they don't do a pi that can be PoE powered, but figure it is possibly too niche and not worth the BOM addition in the general case. But I see a PoE hat is an official thing so I guess they actually thought of that already and I've just not been paying attention.

2025-01-09 20:16:47 UTC

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#MakersHour A2)
Not sure, don’t really want to put anyone on the spot so to speak - but I see some good stuff monitoring these hashtags/etc, so check them out for other makers - and also maybe that’ll attract some more folks to #MakersHour?
#3DPrinting / @nprofile…26sn
#CNC
#FreeCAD
#WoodWorking
#MetalWorking
You know you can “follow” hashtags on Fedi right? ;) Click on the hashtag and click the “follow hashtag” button (well, that’s how it works using the Mastodon UI).
@nprofile…pmzk

2024-12-29 01:13:29 UTC

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@nprofile…6md2 I can imagine. I've enjoyed the snow I've seen since moving to the UK, but it's never more than a few days worth. The whole country grinds to a halt it seems (in the south/England), as it's not worth designing the infrastructure to handle such a small amount of "real" winter.
But new things are fun! 😂
Ask me 20 years ago if I missed 40°C summers in Australia and I'd have scoffed, now I miss them.

2024-12-29 01:00:51 UTC

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@nprofile…6md2 I can understand the desire to see those glimpses of better seasons, and I think there could be a blend of the two. But there is very little relevant to the "now" here in most of the UK, like we should all be in hibernation in a Dickensian winter.
Of course for those of us living in a winter wonderland that's a bit different! I kind of envy your snow. We've not even had a decent freeze yet here in Norfolk. But there are quite a few weeks of winter ahead so we shall see.

2024-12-29 00:39:43 UTC

The winter Gardeners' World is always a little dissatisfying in that the content is clearly mostly filmed out of season. There's plenty they could be talking about doing through this time of year I reckon, but I guess "the people" (viewers, ratings...) prefer glimpses of the fancier seasons.

2024-12-25 20:00:30 UTC

Huh... lol... I've never felt any real desire to give Wikipedia money until today. (I mean, mainly because they apparently have plenty of the moolah already, and I have none to spare anyway.)
Does Wikipedia publish donation stats? It'd be interesting to see if the Muskrat's bullshit has had any visible impact either way.

2024-12-25 17:18:22 UTC

That's the last of our #allotment potatoes. Late planting plus the garbage summer/autumn means tiny potatoes. Got a few potatoes salads here I reckon!
Each pile is from a ~30 litre tub. I think these are Red Duke of York and Yukon Gold.
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2024-12-25 16:49:09 UTC

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@nprofile…32kp ah, same folks as Proton Mail I see... I like the cut of their jib: "You should be free to work on drafts without your data being collected, scanned, and abused for profit." I'm OK with a free cloud option I can trust if that brings ease of use!

2024-12-25 13:09:46 UTC

Right, one of the next steps in my de-Google is to yeet Google office stuff.
I'm no longer a heavy user since the death of the business. But I have a couple of use-cases I need to consider alternatives for.
Random notes: I fire up a Google Doc any time I want to just make some random notes, it's a convenient formattable searchable note-making-space. This can be anything from a password reminder for some new service to a shopping list, and also if I just need to print a label/etc. What's a good replacement for this? I need to be able to get to it when mobile on the phone as well as when sat at my desk. Maybe 2 apps: 1 for the notes, 1 for the formatted print-an-A4-thing?
Spreadsheets: is there a viable online spreadsheet alternative that isn't going to be like kicking myself in the head to use?
In both cases my first desire is self-hosted, followed by some other "cloud" offer.
Sure, I can Google^WDuck Duck Go this, but I'm curious about personal experiences.
#DeGoogle #SelfHost

2024-12-23 16:40:19 UTC

Got our deferred #allotment trip in, despite the oppressive change from forecast sunshine to solid grey skies.
Can report the coniferous woodchip compost cube experiment has risen in internal temperature to a toasty 47C.
All our snowdrop and crocus bulbs are now in under the two ume trees and in the front bed.
A little polytunnel-watering and general tidying done, but that was it for today.
Like many things our rhubarb seems a bit confused.
Managed to head home before dusk, the local butcher was open, got some bits including warm(ish) sausage rolls which we had with home-made tomato sauce when we got home.
Now to see how quickly I can bash together a vlog video.
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2024-12-21 11:52:26 UTC

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@nprofile…98e3 I think a lot of the autocarrot crap is implemented via the keyboard app, which you can replace... I am using "gboard" with more benign settings. The default Samsung keyboard app on my phone is aggravating and was one of the first things to go.

2024-12-19 20:41:58 UTC

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#MakersHour A4
Do it.
Don’t fret the gaps in your knowledge and experience. Don’t get too bogged down in research, you only need a framework of an idea to begin execution and you learn as you go, there will be failures and these are normal, and even good.
Do. It.
I’m not very good at this myself and need to regularly give myself a good kick up the arse, which is anatomically difficult.
@nprofile…pmzk