Swimming, 19th August 2021

Posted on August 19, 2021 by james

Today turned into a bit of a rush for no obvious good reason, but once into the pool it was at least fairly quiet. I felt as though I did fairly well today too, though I ended up having to skip a couple of 50m reps because I hadn’t recovered enough to even be able to start swimming again. I ran out of time for any more than eight 25m reps, but the first was at least one of my fastest times ever so I can’t be disappointed.

(50m) 43.81, 42.57, 43.59, 42.77, 42.72, 42.45, 43.00, 43.50, 43.80, skipped, 41.31, 42.75, 42.37, 42.63, 42.05, 42.58, 42.63, skipped, 41.75, 42.52

(25m) 17.67, 18.85, 18.82, 18.62, 18.50, 18.86, 18.63, 18.98

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New HP printer admin login failure

Posted on August 19, 2021 by james

I’ve just bought an LP laser printer (a 179 MFP), having got fed up of paying far too much for inkjet ink. The printer arrived yesterday and today I set it up and plugged it in. At one point during the setup I needed to connect to the printer via a web browser and log in as the admin user. And that’s where the problems started 🙁

The manuals say that the default username is “admin” and there is no password, as to HP’s support pages. But that didn’t work, and neither did many of the other combinations that I guessed at. Eventually after much grubbing about in search engines I discovered that there may actually be a password after all.

What I needed to do was go to the printer and get the menu display (the three dots on the menu keypad) and then go through the submenus selecting “Network”, “Wifi”, “WPS” and finally “PIN”. That displayed a string of eight digits in two groups of four separated by a dash, and a countdown timer starting from two minutes.

Before the countdown timer reached zero (I assume), I had to log in via the browser again, using “admin” as a username and the eight digits (without the dash) as a password. That worked fine and I’ve now changed the admin password to something sane, but what a palaver!

I do understand the need to set unique passwords for control of embedded systems and fully support it, but you’d think that an organisation as large as HP would at least be able to keep their documentation up-to-date in that respect.

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No dig diary, 17th August 2021 (part 2)

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

This evening I have taken cuttings from the red and green basil and each of the tomato varieties, putting them in water to see if they will produce roots. If the tomatoes do well then I’ll pot them up and perhaps try a few more, though I’m actually not sure where I’ll keep them over the winter just yet. The basil we’ll probably just eat over the winter if it survives, though I suspect it might need a warmer and brighter environment than we have to flourish.

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No dig diary, 17th August 2021

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

Yesterday and today I’ve planted out some more of the “emergency” brassicas. It’s possible I have the caterpillar issue under control for the moment as I’m not finding anywhere near as many now as I was a week ago, but there are still butterflies around so I can’t afford to relax just yet.

The sweetcorn look like some are very nearly ready to eat. I’m so looking forward to trying those. The courgettes really haven’t done well this year though, and one plant actually appears to be dying already 🙁 Fortunately we have lots more to choose from than we did last year.

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Swimming, 17th August 2021

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

There were only three of us in the fast lane today which was quite pleasant. In fact, for most of the session it was two, as the slowest swimmer decided he’d probably be better off in the medium lane (probably the right decision, to be honest, as we were ten to fifteen seconds per length faster than him).

It was still a struggle though and my times weren’t that great. The best I can really say is that I stuck with it…

(50m) 43.09, 42.99, 42.55, 42.44, 43.06, 43.80, 43.46, 43.37, 44.01, 43.47, 43.77, 43.24, 43.25, 43.45, 44.57, no time, 43.57, no time, 43.71, 42.23

(25m) 18.68, 19.51, 19.15, 19.39, 19.71, 19, 18.74, 19.21, 19.26, 18.9

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Swimming, 16th August 2021

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

Grump! Not a good start to the week. Because of other commitments I was very late to the pool leaving me only time to do the 50m set, and that wasn’t very good at all. I think perhaps I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind today.

(50m) 43.57, 43.25, 43.50, 43.56, 43.26, 43.48, 44.45, 44.15, 44.32, 44.56, 43.04, 43.38, 44.87, 44.82, 44.33, 44.17, 43.71, 44.01, 45.29, 43.51

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No dig diary, 15th August 2021

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

It’s been a frustrating day here if you want to be outdoors. Every time I went outside it seemed to start raining 🙁

I did manage to get some sowing done though — lettuces, spinach and spring onions. I was out of compost, so a couple of days back I sieved some of the green waste compost that we had delivered this year through a 6mm-ish sieve. It has quite a different texture to the green waste compost from last year, with more small twiggy bits. I think that might actually be a good thing when it comes to spreading it on the beds. Anyhow, from a wheelbarrow full of compost I got about two thirds of a dustbin of sieved compost and a third of coarser material that I’ll probably just throw in with the rest when I spread it on the beds later this year.

I also planted out some of my “emergency kale” that I re-sowed after the butterflies got to my first batch. I don’t know if I’ll actually need it, but at least this lot looks healthy and is under mesh.

What’s the plural of chrysalis? Anyhow, I found four more of them on the basil in the greenhouse, so evicted them although obviously the damage is already done. We’ve already harvested a lot of leaves and frozen them, but I’m tempted to try taking cuttings from the existing plants and keeping them indoors over the winter to see if they’ll survive. Apparently they’ll root from the stems quite easily in a container of water, at which point they can be potted on.

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No dig diary, 14th August 2021

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

Whilst my plans were for today to be a sowing seeds day, as it happens it turned into a bit of a compost-making day.

The hedges around part of our orchard were once traditional west country “earth bank” hedges, but over the years they have mostly succumbed to invasion by sycamore, which has now got so big that the lower branches are encroaching on the fruit trees (and in fact really get in the way when I’m trying to mow the orchard). To day I decided they absolutely had to be pruned back, so this morning I got out the chainsaw onna stick and gave them a fairly serious trim. Then I got out the new chipper and spent the afternoon feeding the prunings into it. I had to leave a few branches that were too contorted to fit in the chute (I’ll get to those with the normal chainsaw in the next couple of days to make them fit), but I had enough chipped wood to fill four and a half dumpy bags and to mix fair bit into the compost bins with the grass clippings from some mowing my father-in-law did today. Some of what I kept back will be used on the paths in the veggie plot.

But that wasn’t the end of it. It’s a moveable feast, but traditional amongst those who have received their GCSE results: the destruction of all the notes and paperwork no longer needed for subjects that will never be studied again.

I believe a bonfire is a common method, but we’re not having any of that kind of wasteful behaviour here! My daughter got to work with the office shredder and generated several dustbin loads of shredded course notes which have also gone into the compost.

In fact, we finished filling the second bin:

And started on the third:

There’ll be more grass to go in that one tomorrow, I think. Hopefully it’s going to shrink down fairly quickly or we’re going to need more space 🙂

In non compost-related news, I noticed these as I was shutting the chickens in for the night:

Not plums, but damsons. Still hard as bullets, but looking quite promising for a few weeks time I reckon.

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Swimming, 13th August 2021

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

Last swim of the week again, and obviously it brought out something good in me. My 50s weren’t bad at all and the 25s were the fastest I’ve done since I got the new stopwatch (again), though I did miss the time for one when I didn’t work the watch correctly. I shan’t be complaining about the performance overall though.

(50m) 42.18, 43.16, 44.50, 42.71, 43.05, 43.06, 42.05, 42.07, 43.81, 42.87, 42.49, 42.79, 42.51, 43.21, 42.86, 43.40, 42.49, 42.14, 42.80, 40.92

(25m) 18.15, no time , 18.42, 18.46, 18.13, 18.46, 18.46, 19, 18.13, 18.7

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Swimming, 12th August 2021

Posted on August 17, 2021 by james

Failed to take the times off my stopwatch again today. Doh! Unlike two days ago however, they were nothing special 🙁

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