Gaah: dishwasher just died on me! (There's a touch-sensor control panel and the START button decided to crap out.) As it's 12 years old, and they're designed for 3-5 years' life, I figure it's had enough. (Bosch, FWIW.) Replacement purchased, due to delivery (and removal of the old one) on Thursday. Wallet now lighter because I went for Miele …
Glasgow’s disastrous Wonka character inspires horror film
A villain devised for the catastrophic Willy’s Chocolate Experience, who makes sweets and lives in walls, is to become the subject of a new horror movie
Welp, woke up this morning, went downstairs, and suddenly my lower back is in agony! Guess I shouldn't have gone foodshopping and filled a backpack on two consecutive days.
@cstross I'm a few years ahead of you, and for me it was my right arm. It started hurting about this time last year, and I eventually went to the physio for a checkup.
It's just about stopped hurting, but the best part of a year has been a pain. Still no idea what caused it, but healing is a very slow process compared to one's teens and twenties
Speaking of Apple Pass shenanigans, has anyone discovered a way to make the QR code be physically larger? It would make scanning them at the door much easier. We often struggle with it.
I'm like 99% sure the answer is "you can't" but maybe someone has figured out a workaround using images or something that I haven't thought of.
E.g. in this picture I want the white box to be the full width of the phone:
@grumpygrimnir@jwz Yes. I've got a bunch of PDFs for train tickets for today, and I just zoom in to expand the code. If the Apple Pass doesn't permit that, it's broken
(Why yes, I have implemented QR Codes. Part of my testing used to be to read one across a room on a monitor)
@jwz I got the impression that you were unable to do that. If the complaint is that the code ought to fill the available width, I agree that would be nice. But the scanners really shouldn't be having any problem with this - what you showed is clear, and assuming the code is generated correctly, ought to be scannable when waved in the general direction of a scanner
@cstross FWIW I'm currently playing Baldur's Gate 3, as a Githyanki. One of the other current members of the party is Lae'zel, also a Githyanki, and we all have Illithid tadpoles in our brains
Why yes, it's part of the game that you can end up having sex with each other
Went to the GP surgery today for bloods (I have a regular diabetic check-up coming up in two weeks). First sample tube failed to fill, so the phlebotomist tried to draw from the back of my hand and JESUS FUCK apparently it's entirely possible to fill a blood tube from a pain nerve if you use a murder hornet's arse dagger for a needle OUCH (whimper).
Seriously, that was the most painful needle stab I've experienced in a couple of decades, including @Menhit's claws.
@cstross I got to go on the Portsmouth to IoW one once. One way, as the weather was too rough for it to run in the opposite direction so I had to take the ferry
I also did some hovercraft racing one time. They're a bugger to control as with no wheels, wings or keel, they carry on in the same direction until you've pushed enough thrust in the correct direction to compensate. Huge fun though
Thought for the day: Air Fryers are obviously the next instar (larval stage) of the venerable Instant Pot. They seem to have hatched from the 1980s Food Processor and they're on an ontological road to somewhere ... so what do they mature into next? Microwave ovens? Or something new and terrifying?
@cstross@stavvers We used to have the F-111s out of Upper Heyford climb out over us. Yeah, supersonic nuclear-bomb-capable F-111s, surely not a first strike target
Given how hard it is to keep track of one's own actual socials, why on earth would anyone want to sockpuppet? Just a whole lotta wasted time/effort that would be better spent ACTUALLY WRITING.
@lilithsaintcrow@cstross@soonleenz Yah. I can't imagine what the poor agent must have thought when they found out, but having one of your writers depth charge her career before it's really begun?
I can see a standard advice template being updated in a hurry
Welp, @Menhit has caught a mouse in my office but we now discover the inconvenient fact that she doesn't know how to kill a mouse, so when I startled her she let it go and it ran behind my bureau desk.
(This is the second confirmed mouse in the house since late 2007. Driven indoors by the weather, I guess, because only a madmouse would court her feline attention.)
On this day, in 1983, The Colour of Magic was published and the Discworld was unleashed on the Roundworld! What is your favourite thing about the Discworld and/or the best thing being a fan of the Discworld has done for you?
@cstross@dwcon I was at the Eastercon in Liverpool in 1988 - my first Eastercon and only my second con at all - and somehow I ended up buying this bearded guy a pint and he tried out some of the gags from Pyramids on me. I ended up finding a second hand copy of Carpet People on one of the stands and getting him to autograph it
Duck you, ducking winter storm at Amsterdam, good thing I packed a couple of extras days meds for this trip! (Flight home rebooked for tomorrow, hotel room secured for tonight.)
@cstross I'll do that. Coming home by train would be interesting (as in, you can get from Sicily to the Italian mainland by a train that fits on a ship), but it would take days longer
And I have an appointment at Addenbrookes on the Tuesday morning, for which today's MRI was preparation
So ... our 42" Panasonic TV (mostly used by @feorag) turns out to be over 12 years old and only does 1080p. We probably want a 4K screen in our near future, as a dumb display for the 4K Apple TV box. Can go to 55", maybe larger (we need to measure the niche). Won't touch Samsung, Sony, or anything that refuses to work without an internet connection. How are LG these days?
@cstross@feorag Not LG here but Toshiba Cosmos 65", and we use it entirely as a dumb TV. It's got WiFi and Ethernet settings, but the former isn't turned on, and the latter isn't connected
It's 2021 vintage, and it's an Android TV if you want those bells and whistles, but we don't use them
