But yesterday when looking for suitable bolts etc. to finish off the dial gauge project I found some 6mm plastic threaded knobs that I could use instead of nuts for locking the mount onto the carrier. Unfortunately to use them I was going to need a bit more space around the slots for my fingers. I redesigned the mount to be 20mm wider.
And as I had a lengthy visit to the dentist planned for this morning I left it printing whilst I was out.
I think that’s now as good as it gets.
Sweetcorn, of course! It’s harvest time!
I used to have real problems growing sweetcorn, but since last year have started planting them in a block across two of my beds, three across the 1.2m ( 4′) bed. So I have three plants, a 60cm (2′) path then three more plants. This is worked very well. Along the beds I just keep planting until I run out of plants — usually somewhere around forty-eight plants. Depending on how things go, I also plant a few winter squashes around their feet.
A few usually get eaten before the main harvest though we try to finish any that are still frozen from the previous year first (if we have guests however, it’s always nice to have the freshest ones we can get and it’s fun to harvest and prep them together). Since I changed to growing this way we’ve always had plenty to harvest:
Including the occasional monster
Some of these will be eaten straight away, others frozen as soon as possible. They turn much more yellow than they are immediately the leaves are removed, but I’ve not been able to find out why so far. I assume it’s something to do with the beta-carotene, but I really don’t know.
Last week my wife and daughter started complaining that they were seeing quite poor performance from our Internet connection, but I couldn’t see anything wrong with it and from the desktop PC in my office I was not having a problem.
It took a while (I’ve been ill) but eventually it occurred to me that they must be connecting to the wifi router in the cellar instead of the one on the ground floor (lots of stone walls makes wifi fun to get working here). In fact, the wifi router on the ground floor was completely powered off despite being switched on. A quick test with the voltmeter showed that the power supply was only delivering 0.2V instead of the advertised 7.5V.
Fortunately getting hold of a suitable replacement wasn’t at all hard and it arrived today. Everything sprang back into life as soon as it was plugged in and the half of the family lacking a Y chromosome is now happy (at least with the Internet connection). The new PSU even has a USB charger socket which is bound to come in handy at some point.
Having replaced the power switch on my workshop vacuum it appears that there are other problems too. When run in “normal” mode it seems fine (other than the volume, which I’ll come to in a moment), but if I plug my chop saw into the power outlet and have it switched so the vacuum runs at the same time as the saw, the motor starts “pulsing”. I’m guessing there’s either some odd feedback thing going on with the power or there’s another fault somewhere else in the electronics. I’ll try on another piece of equipment tomorrow.
Had it appeared to work properly then I’d have thought about dealing with the noise issue, which I think is likely to be down to worn out bearings in the motor. I can’t seen the point in putting in the time and effort to deal with that if I can’t really use it the way I’d like however.
After an awful lot of rain again last night there was little chance to do anything much in the garden, so I have settled for putting my seed potatoes out to chit.
I’m only growing the variety “Charlotte” this year. Although I think they’re usually considered salad potatoes we found that they made excellent chips as well. I’ve given up growing maincrop potatoes because we always seem to get blight here, but the first and second earlies are out of the ground by the time blight becomes a problem. I would also grow “International Kidney”, but it seems to have been in very short supply over the last two or three years.
Usually I plant first and second earlies three across a 1.2m bed which is about the spacing commonly recommended, but I’m thinking of giving half of them a bit more space to see if they’ll produce larger tubers.
For the moment however, I’m back to waiting for the ground to be sufficiently dry to walk on.
Time to pick all the ripe tomatoes so those left on the vines have some change of getting ripe before the days become too short and cold.
Apero F1:
I think these are something like “Limoncello”, but I’m not sure. My wife just handed me the seed packet one day 😀
Costoluto di Fiorentino:
And Olivade F1:
Also in this tray, on the left, we have Garnet:
And this lot are all going to get roasted in the oven and turned into pasta/pizza sauce. Should last us most of the year 😀
Or doesn’t.
It actually belongs to my father-in-law and he’s had it many years. He even tried to throw it out once, before I recovered it, fixed it, mended the cable he’d cut off and started using it again. A while back however, it started playing up once again.
When I took it apart this time I initially thought that there must be a broken wire, but I later discovered that it was the actual power switch that wasn’t working, in that applying power to the centre pins of the switch didn’t result in a voltage appearing on any of the outer pins.
It’s a double pole switch because the vacuum has a power outlet. In “normal” mode the vacuum just switches on. In the other mode it comes on when power is drawn from the power outlet, so I can have it come on when I start the chopsaw for instance.
I thought I’d pull the switch apart and have a look inside to see what was going on. Mostly what as going on was that it had filled up with sawdust 🙁 Obviously this isn’t great from the point of view of operating the switch, but it’s not great from a safety point of view either: sawdust in the presence of a spark has all sorts of opportunities not to end well.
The obvious place that sawdust might be getting in is around the ends of the switch rocker, so I think I’m going to reassemble the vacuum and fix some clear polythene over the top of the switch with insulting tape so the dust is kept out.
My last 3D-printed bracket gits my dial gauge!
It’s a lovely snug fit for mine and there’s no chance of the gauge moving during use, though the channel for the probe is actually not as high as it ideally ought to be.
I’ve corrected that in the design itself now, though I’ve not actually tested this one out. Unless I need to print another I’ll live with the inaccuracy.
I’ll upload the FreeCAD and stl files for these later in case anyone else finds them useful.
I’m still struggling with the lurgy, but really couldn’t face achieving nothing with the day so this afternoon forced myself outside to rake a couple of barrows of mixed council green waste and home-made compost over a couple of metre or so of vegetable bed and planted out my broad beans. I’m still thinking it’s a bit on the early side given the recent weather, but the roots were coming through the bottom of their pots and they really needed more space, so now it’s done.
Thirty-six plants planted in all and I have saved the two smallest left over to cover losses during transplanting.
I watered them in well, though I’m not sure there was a need as we’re forecast another eight hours of heavy rain tomorrow.
Or get someone to clumsily manipulate an image for you?
Of course I’m taking about the Mother’s Day photo issued by Kensington Palace. I looked at the photo having read the news that the image had been pulled by various agencies and it screams “fake” to me. Not just for the weirdness of Princess Charlotte’s left hand that has had the most attention, but there are a whole load of other issues too. What doesn’t worry me that much is the lack of a wedding ring. People who have been ill often remove rings because they’re uncomfortable if their fingers become swollen due to the illness or drugs that they’re prescribed, so I don’t see that as necessarily a big deal.
What I do find odd are other details:
The pattern on the shoulder of the jumper worn by the younger prince (I don’t know their names, I have to admit — the royal family aren’t normally a big thing for me) is messed up.
The same pattern is in sharp focus, but the hand around his side is in very poor focus as is the area around it.
The shadow on the back of the elder prince’s wrist from Kate’s hair just doesn’t look right. In fact her hair at that point looks completely wrong too and the quality of lighting on his sleeve doesn’t convince me either.
The elder prince’s left thumb looks very skinny and weird, as does the little finger on the same hand, in fact. I’m not saying it’s an AI-created image, but I know people who have worked on AI image-creation software who say fingers are one of the things that are hard to get right.
Charlotte’s skirt is doing something quite odd in front of the little finger knuckle of the same hand and the ribbing on her cardigan seems to have completely disappeared.
Other things I question but am less sure about:
The blurring on the zip of Kate’s jacket. In places the individual teeth are visible and then they aren’t.
I’m sure it’s warmer where they are than it is here, but there seem to be an awful lot more green leaves on the plant growing up the wall in the background than there are on any trees I’ve seen around here.
The hair on the right side of Kate’s face appears blurry, whilst that on the left is much better defined.
Something odd appears to be going on with the ankle of the boot on Kate’s left foot. There’s a piece that appears to be sticking out of the back.
Either the elder prince is standing with his feet unusually close together, or his left foot has gone missing.
So, I’m convinced it’s a fake, whether generated by AI or patched together in something like Photoshop. Which raises a couple more questions. Firstly why do it in the first place? I don’t imagine anyone would have batted an eyelid if they’d not released a photo. After all, that’s apparently Kate’s thing (I’ve got to admit I don’t actually know that and just read it in a news article) and she’s been ill (that much I was aware of). The second is, if you’ve decided to release a fake, why make such a poor job of it?
