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Always read the label ...

A mathematical teaser ...

Having a lovely home cooked Sunday roast dinner with my wife (with a bottle of wine) to celebrate having paid off our mortgage this week, 6 years early. Plus having it seemed, finally sorted a rattle in my Seat Ateca that has been driving me mad for months 🙂

Further to a Queen theme, it's a kind of magic ...

Following a bit of an off-road-edge incident, reports from partner of symptoms that sound a bit wheel-balancey...

Ah. This is a subject very close to my heart. I had a similar experience 2-3 years ago. Hit what I thought was a pothole in the dark. Turned out when I doubled back and waited for daylight to arrive a very short time afterwards (after having swapped out the offending wheel for the spare), that it was a sunken manhole cover I'd hit. I parked up and took several pictures of the street location, GPS coordinates, road layout, offending manhole etc, plus the physical damage to 1 wrecked tyre, and mangled alloy wheel... I then tracked down the council responsible for that stretch of highway. Went on their Website and filled in an on-line vehicle damage claims form, detailing my incident and the indicated cost of repairs in the form of quotes. ( In my case 1 x knackered tyre, 1 x mangled Alloy, new wishbone, suspension alignment, and labour charges. What I received back from the council was a dismissive, (default) email quoting chapter & verse, the Highways act Section xyz and how they maintain their section of the public highway. I decided to dig my heels in out of principle and submitted a freedom of information request relating to when the offending manhole was last inspected AND for details of any other pothole claims made for that same manhole cover on that particular day.... Their 2nd response? Very different.. This time they pointed out that they would agree to pay my costs in this instance, but that this was in no way and admission of negligence on their part for the upkeep of the highway.... Now there's a thing... Sometimes perseverance and bloody mindedness does pay off. Just be prepared to dig your heels in. I hope this long, and maybe boring message helps someone else 😊

Squirrel watching the above

We're stopping in an Airbnb this weekend and the heating is via a nest thermostat that appears to be locked at 20 degrees meaning the heating isn't coming on in the lounge which is only about 18 degrees and a tad cool. I've there done a temporary hack with an ice pack...

People who don't turn out to vote can hardly complain at a result they dislike.

Spring is here

Travelling Africa with an EV ...

7825008-6bbd8c4de1c03dc60020bc43642ddf30.mp4

The buttons on Gandalf's main key fob were getting "lethargic" after almost 7 yrs of service. So I decided to fix it by transplanting the buttons from my unused 3rd key fob. The button presses r much better now. I decided to make a video and share it for anyone that may need to "repair" their key fob. The same process applies to the Kodiaq MK2 and Passat B8 key fobs, with KESSY.

Hello everyone, let me introduce James The Superb, our Superb Estate L&K 206/280, colour Raspberry Red. Ordered 08/2023 and delivered 12/2023. Immediately after the delivery I got it wrapped in Xpel PPF to protect the paint as well as underbody rust protected with Dinitrol. It also has a clear protective film applied on the windshield. I'd like to keep it long term so I decided to spend this additional money for the protection (already got a few nasty rocks hit the windshield on the motorway and so far it's holding). After the warranty expires I am looking into a few upgrades like ECU & TCU tune and Bilstein shocks.

Some expletives

I have had all of them pretty much continuously since I stepped off the ride in 2004, as I type this I can hear the Little Owl (Athene Noctua) screeching above my caravan. There are many things that I don't have but I don't miss them in the slightest, I have what is really important and nobody can take it away.

"We need to talk" ...

Chiffchaff in the garden

I just came this on another site, and it makes you think about how things are today. Kids just don't know what it was like for us older generation 😁 CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL BORN IN 1930's, 1940's, 50's, 60's, 70's and Early 80's !!! First, you survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a tin, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, your baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints. You had no childproof lids on medicine ..medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when you rode your bikes, you had no helmets, not to mention, the risks you took hitch-hiking .. As children, you would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a van - loose - was always great fun. You drank water from the garden hosepipe and NOT from a bottle. You shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. You ate cakes, white bread and real butter and drank pop with sugar in it, but you weren't overweight because...... YOU WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!! You would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach you all day. And you were OK. You would spend hours building your go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out you forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, you learned to solve the problem . You did not have Play stations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no text messaging, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms..........YOU HAD FRIENDS and you went outside and found them! You fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents you played with worms(well most boys did) and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. You made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although you were told it would happen, you did not poke out any eyes. You rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them! Local teams had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing you out if you broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. You had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and you learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! And YOU are one of them! CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

I'm inclined to say that the owner was partly at fault, tor taking a decent car to Halfrauds for service!

Seeing as it's late on Friday evening, here are some topless chicks to entertain ... PG [partial nudity]

Same the world over... They get promoted to the point of incompetence then move on before the trail of destruction they leave behind gets noticed... Whilst the rest of the good ones who know what they are doing get overlooked and kept out of senior positions in case they identify the incompetence of the people above them. Cynical.. me??? Hell yes!!!

Sad just watching the apparently deaf dumb and blind highly paid senior people that were heading the Post Office or Royal Mail or department or divisions of them Anyone that now employ them maybe need to consider are they fit for purpose in any position they hold. I do hope that come time some might face investigation into any criminality eventually from within the management.

Car's just passed its MOT today with no advisories 👍 Interestingly the front brakes didn't even get a mention, despite the VW Main Dealer 'strongly advising' that they needed changing this time last year 🙄 (8k miles ago - I did check them at the 5k mark a week before our trip up to York 'coz I didn't want them needing changing while we were away, and they were fine then). Think that'll be the last time the MD sees my car as upselling switches me right off. Gaz Edit: Just picked it up. Chap at the garage said my GTI was 'spot on', and added '.. they're good cars, yours is a lovely one.' Aww, shucks!

Any landing you can walk away from...

Let the bun begin: For Andy 👍 Gaz

Interesting road signs ...

To follow this up I have this working quite well now using this set of instructions. https://core-electronics.com.au/guides/detect-speed-raspberry-pi/ I did upgrade to a Pi 4b with more memory. It's taken some tweaking but it is producing pretty reliable results now. In contact with the community council initially to see what can be done with the data. One of our regular little neds - The red box is the detection area. The green box is the object detected. the green box doesn't always surround the car sometimes it picks up on a part, or lights for instance. the system doesn't detect cars as such, it detects moving objects and tracks the object through the detection area comparing frames. It has some known values taken from a reference calibration image which it useses to calculate the speed.

I've just seen my first swallows and house martins of the year 😎 Always cheers me up - harbingers of better weather 👍 Gaz

All the candidates standing in Lancashire local elections 2024 This is the headline for an article in the Lancashire newswire where it talks up the various aspirants for the forthcoming elections. The article contains the obligatory picture - a larger-than-life sculpture, set high above the landscape, and which makes harmonious noises when the wind blows through its substantially empty structure. Quite appropriate for an article on politicians ... Original article if of interest - but watch out for the ads and popups.