Our Roomba has been developing signs of what appears to be madcow: wandering vaguely, getting stuck, hooting mournfully; the final symptom being an inability to dock. The poor thing would approach in a decisive fashion and then, just as it hit the ramp, get confused and back off again, whirl a bit, and trundle off in the wrong direction.
Sunday, I stripped a beast long overdue for a full decoke, and not before time. It's been [mumble] since I cleaned out its geartrain and it was quite clear from the teeth that Insufficient Flossing has been taking place. Yuck. Much gunk elsewhere under the covers, of course, and I stripped the buffer assembly for the first time ever on the educated guess that close-range navigational difficulties might be down to sensor issues. What I found under there certainly seemed to support my hypothesis.
I couldn't help feeling that there were some sort of dodgy cross-species relationship issues with using the little hand-held vacuum to go suckety at the internals of the Roomba.
Reassembled, I pressed the button. Sadly, if anything, the thing was even more confused: it actually worked now, after a fashion, for some time but then got into a snit and decided it had an invisible (invisible to us anyhow: I expect the Tribe could see it) barrier in front of it, and reversed first one way, turned, reversed another way, turned again, and finally mounted the armchair base and stopped.
I finally got round to further investigation tonight. It was clear enough that the buffer sensors were the prime suspects; one of the microswitches sticking down intermittently would cause exactly the navigational symptoms that were now distilled into unambiguity in the newly cleansed machine. Sure enough, closer inspection showed that one end of the spring metal strip that the buffer acts against had come adrift from its little plastic entrapment: it's not obvious, as the strip was still in the right place and sproinged pretty much as it should to the touch, but the lack of proper location was enough to börk the fine balance of reality avoidance.
So, with the buffer assembly reassembled in a reverse of disassembly sort of way, a final trial. And with a metaphorical w00t! at least, the Roomba headed across the floor into Ron, then trundled under the armchair and with an air of insouciance over the base where it would normally get stuck; not just that, but lifted into the hallway and dock button pressed, the machine headed straight toward its power base, gave a little wiggle, and settled with a satisfied and melodious little toot.
Success! But a final note: if you're tempted into more and deeper surgery of your Roomba by this, please remember that the Roomba is mostly held together by screws into plastic. If you have any lack of mechanical empathy, or have a tendency to give screws just a little bit more torque to make sure they're properly tight, I respectfully suggest you leave well alone and find someone who's at least read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to do the job :)
[ crossposted from DreamWidth - please comment there via the wonders of OpenID if so inclined ]
Coo. After cleaning Mac's keyboard and persuading the library that giving me my reserved copy of Children of God last Friday meant that it's state should change from "reserved" to "borrowed", I nipped (or popped) out to the shops this afternoon, and found that my legs are a metric shitload stronger than hitherto. Hills stormed up without dropping gears, zooming away from everything at traffic lights, generally having huge fun in spite of the heat. Looks like going to Wales last Saturday was good for me after all.
I got most of the Things We Needed in spite of forgetting the list: koi sticks from Bedminster Down; muesli, malties, tamari, breadflour and juice from Gloucester Road, and, even better than that, a bunch of English asparagus. Just because. Forgot the crispbread, but I wouldn't have had space in my pack for it anyhow. I nearly came back with nowt, mind, as the card machine at Scoopaway was playing up and I was cash challenged; I certainly wasn't going to pay whatever gouging rate the Yorkshire currently chooses to charge for credit card cash withdrawals. All was well, though, and home beckoned.
Got surveiled by Sustrans acting for BCC (or possibly BCC acting for Sustrans) by the old railway bridge over the New Cut: hopefully that'll be one more datapoint against running buses over that bridge and up the chocolate path. Not that it'll help: the WOEP have the power of central government behind them, and I doubt that opposition to any of their plans, whether from councils or ordinary punters, will have any effect.
Time to stir fry that asparagus now. Nom.
[ crossposted from DreamWidth - please comment there via the wonders of OpenID if so inclined ]
I went shopping in St Werberghs yesterday, via Wales as you do. Only just Wales, mind; over the bridge to M48 J2 and back again, but it was still Forn Parts, and 45½ miles in all.
Down the Avon, up the Trym, and then balked at the Hallen railway bridge, which is still down; back to Henbury and detoured up to Catbrain and Hollywood Lane, thence to Easter Compton. I missed my turn after Pilning Station and ended up on the Tockington road, so another detour as I didn't realise until I hit the turn off at Awkley. So to the bridge, after an unexpected hill on Passage Road: what was that all about then, Ted?
I headed in an Austerly direction on the way back, but turned back (for fear of what I might encounter) for Olveston and an appointment at the Post Office with a couple of cereal bars. All this had consequences for this badger of little and occasional exercise: I ground to a halt on Washingpool Hill and had to push the bike up to the A38, and my leg muscles went into spasm on the rise into Filton past BAe on Gloucester Road North. Most unpleasant; I has to sit on my crossbar until things calmed down, and I could push again up to the crest. Thankfully, things were mostly flat or downhill thereafter (Muller Road! Wheee!!11!).
Farm Pub Path to St Werberghs, and washing up liquid, nettle shampoo, Greens cheddar and Cornish brie, then home through St Pauls, the Centre and the North side of the Floating Harbour.
Today, I'm still aching, but biked down to the farm shop for bacon, chipolatas, Axbridge strawberries and cream, so I don't think I've broken myself. Big Grease for brunch, then grass cutting and gardening this afternoon.
So, how was your Solstice?
[ crossposted from DreamWidth - please comment there via the wonders of OpenID if so inclined ]
A week ago last Friday was 29th May, and the tenth anniversary of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
ramtops' and my wedding; the start of a marriage that nobody (and least of all ourselves :) expected to last over a year. TWOTY+10 was both an arbitrary date and yet a milestone; we were planning to have a major celebration: Boston, to echo the start of our honeymoon, or a weekend in Paris. The TSA stopped the first, and lack of funds really scuppered anything remotely exotic, so we just took the day off work and headed to the Exmoor falconry (a favourite place we first visited just before our 5th anniversary) and points nearby.
We stopped for a greasy spoon breakfast in Burnham on Sea, then headed on to Porlock (stopping and buying some asparagus, with some anticipation, at a farm shop along the way). We had a wander, then tea and scones in Porlock, before finding our way through the mesh of country lanes to the Falconry. Two flight displays - buzzard, vulture, owl and hawk, then after a break, an eagle - in the blazing sun. One day, we'll book ourselves a day there working with the birds.
We drove on to Porlock Weir in the late afternoon and had a wander on the beach and around the village before beer and (excellent) fish pie at the pub, before finally heading home.
A very good day indeed.
[ crossposted from DreamWidth - please comment there via the wonders of OpenID if so inclined ]
So. Not only did Ron bring in a pigeon on Friday, and (when finally induced to drop it) left it such a state that I had no real choice but to break its neck - not one of my favourite things to do - but, on Friday night as I was drifting into sleep, I heard screaming from downstairs.
It wasn't quite the full high-pitched horror of a trapped frog and, indeed, when I tracked down the source by the front door, it turned out Henry had caught himself a toad. Truly, Spring has come to us with the start of May. The toad I deposited by the pnod in the hope that it escape to croak in life rather than death for a while longer yet.
Yesterday, I finished the initial clearing of the garage. It's by no means finished, but there's a lot more space; specifically for both bikes to be accessible through the main door. Mac has ordered hooks, bikes, for the hanging of: when they arrive they'll be installed, one set on each side, to further improve matters.
Later in the afternoon, I went out for a short bike ride. Well; I intended it to be short, but kind of got carried away in an it's-only-a-bit-further-to sort of way for 32.6 miles. I felt like a bit of hill-climbing practice (look at the elevation profile on that Bikely link), so up Wild Country Lane and Hobbs Lane to the A38, finding I'd forgotten just how steep Hobbs Lane actually was. Having climbed that far, I thought I'd just go a bit higher up to the Airport perimeter, which was High Enough, so straight back downhill-all-the-way to Brockley and the A370, which would be a lovely run if it weren't for the appalling state of the road surface. Thence via Chelvey to Nailsea West End, and having got as far as the Blue Flame, there seemed little point in not going the extra few miles to Clevedon.
This is where things went a bit awry: I thought I might take the coast path to Portishead, something I've wanted to walk for a least a dozen years now. Was fine for the first few miles; a bit narrow, but no problem to cycle along. Later, it got narrower, and rougher, and (occasionally) steeper, culminating in a sense of balance error and investigation of the attributes that gorse bushes share with kittin extremities. I have a lovely collection of scratches along the length of my left arm now, including down-not-across my wrist and a goodly few punctures in my hands. Thereafter I showed greater respect for the lack in capability of my road tyres, and pushed (occasionally carried) the bike where the track was less than flat and clear.
All this, of course, ended up taking several times as long as I had expected. No problems thereafter, though: I stopped to phone Mac with an I-aten't-ded phone call on my way out of Portishead and then via Sheepway, Portbury, Pill, Ham Green and the Avon cycle path to home, with my end point coincident with my start point but (by Bikely's/Google's calculations) 13' lower down. Long Ashton is Sinking: I fear the Belgians down there may be digging again.
Today I am mostly aching.
[ crossposted from DreamWidth - please comment there via the wonders of OpenID if so inclined ]
I'm currently waiting on my LJ entries and comments being imported into DreamWidth; not sure yet how I'll be organising my rare and otherwise erratic posting, but it'll probably be DW mirrored to LJ with comments enabled in one place only, likely DW. Or something.
I've also slumped into that twittering thing for any demented person who might be interested, though there will be no sign (beyond this post) of that spilling over to LJ/DW.
Right now, I've got to go and deal with the skyrat that Ron has just brought into the house. It's not dead. Yet.
Still here, as them bastards at DW still haven't graced my OpenID login with an invite. Just because I've only just registered it. No excuse. Feh.
» Last night, I dreamed and (a rare thing) remembered what I dreamed. Possibly because it was odd even by my standards: I was in crevette's kitchen (someone I know only through reading her LJ, so why I was there I have no idea; there were no clues in the dream either). She was cooking some sort of stew or gumbo in a huge cauldron-like pan on a range at the right end of the far wall, and asked me to add the lamprey like carnivorous sucking fish things by me to the mix. I grabbed one and it turned out to be alive, squirming, and fairly vexed at its intended fate; it squiggled round in a muscly, slimy fashion and attached its mouthparts to my arm. Another one of the things leaped up and went for me too.
After a struggle, I got the fuckers off: they swung round to each other and attached, one to the other, tail to tail, leaving their gaping round maws free to meld with any available human protoplasm. I hurled them away, and they cartwheeled across the kitchen onto the red curtains in the window at the far end of the left wall. crevette detached them with professional ease and threw them in the stew. And that's where it ended, or at least as much as I remember.
No, I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to speculate.
» Yesterday, I rebuilt the pond filter that had been out of action since the end of last week when I managed to break the quartz tube that enrobes the UV bulb. Can see fishes again now, and they seem a lot happier, unsurprisingly.
» Yesterday morning, at 4:30, I was woken by a yell from Mac in the bathroom. Turns out that Lilith was in there well over half way through consuming a skyrat, the feathers and sundry gore of which was spread over the entire floor. Which also contained Henry and Ron, positively thrumming as they witnessed Lily ravening. Cleaning that lot up wasn't what I wanted to do at that time of the night. Or ever, frankly.
» On Monday, I planted rhubarb on Aliss' grave. It'll either thrive, or wither and die; I've no idea which yet.
» On Sunday, I biked from home to the Bath end of the railway path and back: 40 miles end-to-end, near as damnit. Sore bum when I got home, and pretty tired pedalling from Bristol Self-Store to here; I was expecting my legs to be crippled Monday, but I slept better that night than I have for a long time, and my legs have actually felt better since. Maybe I'm not quite as unfit as I thought.
That's far enough back now, I think. Time to make a pot of tea.
I imagine anyone reading this already knows about Amazon's latest piece of idiocy. If not, you can read more from Hanne Blank or libertango, amongst many others.
Hal usefully provides a link to an online petition; my additional comment on signing was:
It's odd how the only people whose sensibilities ever seem to need protecting are those in denial about the diversity and variety of human relationships. Amazon will not be getting any orders or new referrals from me for as long as this egregious policy remains in place.Unlike petitions to government, this might even have some small effect upon Amazon, if they realise they stand to lose more income and shareholder value through keeping this policy than reversing it.
naamah_darling links to this somewhat derailed thread at amazon.com.
Ursula Vernon has posted the best counter to pseudo-anthropologically based human self-delusion and self-justification I've read in a while. Wholeheartedly recommended.
And, an added bonus, from this thread in the comments; I can think of worse things to taste like than spicy chicken :)
Quiz created by Recipe Star
There's a new widget on my web site, until the weekend. Can't put it here, as it's a mixture of Javascript and Flash, but it's a neat little reminder for turning off your light on Earth Hour: click on the pendulum, and you get a countdown clock on your page.
You can get your own (or just paste the code below into a web page), if you've anywhere to put it.
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.wwf.org.uk/earthhour/e
HTT to Qwghlm for the link.
Not a bad weekend for the start of Spring. I went shopping in Easton on Saturday morning, bike and trailer, which is far more civilised than loading stuff up on my back as I usually do. Having your load on wheels behind you means that there's really very little extra strain: you use go more slowly uphill (not that there are any to speak of on that journey) and more gears, but as long as you don't run out of the latter, you can just enjoy the perfect weather and trundle on. Downside was that, by the time I got home, one of the trailer tyres was as flat as a thing.
Turns out the trailer, for some unknown reason, has tubeless tyres which is a PITA. Also: stupid, as the wheels are spoked and, on investigating, I find that the spoke ends have punched through the rubber seal strip round the rim in several places, which is likely my problem. I'm wondering if I'd get away with rubber solution and patches over the offending bits, which would save a lot of hassle.
Afternoon, Mac and I collaborated on a vat of chilli, beans having been on soak and boiled previously. It ended up in the slow cooker for the evening sans beans, those going in before we went to bed (after a rare evening just sitting and listening to what the Roku pulled out of the library). Torture through the night, of course; the smell was… extraordinary… when I went to the loo sometime in the early hours.
On Sunday there was more domesticity: I fixed up the spicing on the chilli, Mac made a load of Coriander Chicken, laundry was perpetrated, and I assisted in the construction of a pear and ginger crumble, half of which we ate (after a fifth of the chilli, and brown rice) in the evening while ranting at the attitudes of the Great British reality TV voting public who once again (on the dubious assumption that the whole thing isn't actually fixed up by the production company) voted out the competent, confident, unapologetic woman on Dancing on Ice as they have done so often (along with disposing of the Coloured Chaps don'tcha know) earlier in the series.
Now, Monday, and back to werk.
Uncle (of all elephants) linked me to this appalling state of affairs.
under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense.Why does it not surprise me that a microscopic risk of lead poisoning should be treated as reason enough to destroy books, and even more to the point, prevent children from reading them? What the fuckity FUCK McFUCK sort of person thinks this, with all its repercussions, is a good thing to do? Presumably the sort of person who thinks children shouldn't be doing anything as subversive as reading in the first place.
From Vowles the Green, a link to a petition to #10, to suspend regional housing targets determined through the Regional Spatial Strategy, that will eventually receive a patronising token response, and then be totally ignored.
From Craig Murray, an indication of the respect with which the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights treats communications from the general public.
Oh, but I forgot, you don't want to know about this: don't want to have to think about irrelevant abstractions with no impact on your life, like freedom, democracy, government accountability and so on. Just carry on, then, carry on. As for us, we still have the tail end of Red Nose Day to watch on the Tivo: I'm sure the BBC will have sneaked in a showing of the Gaza Appeal video in there somewhere.
I have just sent the following email to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, prompted by Craig Murray's blog post today:
I would like to urge the Honourable members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights to accept evidence from Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, on the matter of government knowledge of (and potential complicity in) rendition and torture of prisoners, and in usage of intelligence so obtained.I would urge anybody reading this to do the same (in your own words :) - as Craig writes, even a one-liner will do.
For public trust in the processes of government and parliament to be maintained, there can be no question of expert evidence on so important a matter being ignored or suppressed; it is vital that all available data be examined and considered by your committee, with full public disclosure. Any pressure from the government to prevent this, even where it misrepresents its own potential embarrassment as a threat to national security, must be resisted.
I'm currently reading The Sparrow. I'm not sure this post counts as a spoiler (and the book is 12 years old), but cut just in case.
( part-read commentary )
ramtops a sweetener refill packet. A distressing phone call along the way: Mac told me that the duck (quack) that we were planning to have that evening had gone terminally off. Lessons Have Been Learned (ie. don't keep ducks complete with giblets past their useby in the fridge), and it was Time To Move On to a tub of emergency beef and orange from the freezer.ed_dirt).Also, my default userpic is blanked out for the next week, as a protest at and witnessing of New Zealand's imminent guilt upon accusation law, that manages to go further than anything than the European Commission has (yet) attempted to impose upon us still basking in the ever-ebbing tide of freedom in Europe.
Of course, the protest is slightly misdirected - it's not so much that anyone sharing their internet connection shouldn't be treated like as ISP (though they shouldn't), but that ISPs shouldn't be treated that way either.
Thanks to ramtops for the link
I'll emerge briefly from my miasma of non-communicativeness to urge all who read this to sign the petition from the Blair War Crimes Foundation calling for Tony Blair to be indicted for his war crimes.
It won't happen, of course, but what joy and celebration there would be in the world if that ratfelching hypocritical monster ended up in the dock in The Hague. Oh yes.
HTT Craig Murray for the link.
My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 6.85, Libertarian: 5.83
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -8.88
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Culture War Stance
Score: -9.04
Political Spectrum Quiz
ETA: my results on the 2005 UK survey. as linked to by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
theyorkshergob - bucking at least one trend as I self-classified as "fairly left wing" and turn out to be (in their terms) "very left wing".
I just noticed that "Orange" has vanished from my 6310i's display; ramtops has rung me and, lo!, the pre-loved E65 she's bought me announced itself with the old Radio Tirana ident that burkesworks was kind enough to send me.
I've been on Orange since (I think) 1995, for no particularly good reason other than inertia in this era of PAC codes. All telecoms providers are rat felchers (a tradition or old charter ensures this, as I understand it, although "why?" continues to baffle), but Orange had become worse than most and, more to the point, ludicrously expensive once my number was left alone on the contract (Mac switched hers to O2 a while back, for some odd reason). 3 PAYG makes a lot more sense - and if it stops doing so, the phone can always be unlocked.
As you'll gather, my number is unchanged, for those of you who have it. Not that anybody but Mac ever rings me on the thing anyhow :)
