Showing posts with label Random stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Random stuff. Show all posts

Monday, August 23, 2010

For Want of a Switch


The dishwasher has broken. The start button no longer works and it is embedded within a control unit, the cost of which is over £180.

I dismantled it (having nothing to lose) and discovered that the switch is a surface mounted microswitch, which is activated by a flexing plastic rod (the lower two linked circles above). The plastic rod has broken from its mounting (the upper two linked circles).

So, for the sake of a small plastic mounting costing pennies, a £180+ dishwasher is junk.

However, I think I've discovered a way of activating the microswitch with a chopstick.

Marvellous.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Fish

I dreamt about celeriac last night. Maybe it is a side effect of taking Imigran.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

I am a Husband

1] What's the old fool on about now? I've known that for ages.

2] Huh? He never said: the git.

3] So what? I've heard that one before...

I wonder which of those choices was your reaction to the title of this post.

Actually, there is a fourth option. I am a comedy husband, represented in many an advertisement for air freshener, shampoo, washing up liquid, and numerous other household products.

Myn is away for the weekend, being a highly skilled practitioner of her First Aid craft at the Sugar Hill festival, leaving me to cause all kinds of havoc at home.

Homebrew continues apace. I bottled the "Pacific Quartet": a blend of white grapes from (guess where?) the Pacific coast of the USA, and started off a Chilean Carmenere / Carbernet Sauvignon. So far so good. However, I used a combination of screwtop, cork and sherry bottles. It always seems a waste to bottle and cork some wine, only to uncork it a few days (or hours) later, so some "easy access" bottles seem to make sense. The problem came shortly after I put the bottles in the winerack.

One of the sherry bottles rejected its cork, spilling about 2/3rds of its content on the hall cupboard floor. I discovered this in the evening and spent a fun hour or so trying to extract as much wine from the carpet as possible. I left a fan running overnight, to try and dry it out further, but was woken this morning by the sound of running water. Wine, as it turned out. Two further bottles, in fact, with a third about to go the same way. I have spent more time today drying out the same carpet again.

If that weren't enough, I managed to break the door off the washing machine this evening. While cooking dinner, I bent down to look through the oven door, and somehow managed to sit on the open washing machine door, pulling it off its hinges.

What will I do next?

Monday, August 18, 2008

Used and New


I'm quite a fan of the "used and new" feature on amazon: you sometimes get some good bargains, and it's very useful if the book you're after is out of stock.


However, I think this is one case where I wouldn't go for it.

Friday, August 15, 2008

The 'what have I eaten' meme

Yet another meme, this time taken from the Belingman

You know the pack drill:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Strike out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Added by me: italicise the ones you can't identify

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes (I quite likely have, but I'm not specifically aware of it)
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans (I'm assuming the Tex-mex combo here)
25. Brawn or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche in ice cream
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float (eugh! Root beer is horrible.)
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (Except by accident)
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal (though I never would these days)
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini (Dislike peach. Waste of good champagne)
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Gosh: that's quite a lot, isn't it? Now, where's my bowl of epoisses?

Friday, August 8, 2008

Large Hadron Collider goes Torchwood


The BBC news website contains the following story:


"A vast physics experiment - the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - reaches a key
milestone this weekend ahead of an official start-up on 10 September."

It goes on to describe in laymans terms roughly what is going on at CERN with the LHC, what's happening this weekend and what will happen in September. The article ends with this paragraph:

"BBC Radio 4 will broadcast live from Cern on 10 September. The Big Bang Day
starts in the LHC control room at 0830 BST for the official start-up, and then
continues through the day with related programmes, from indepth discussions
about particle physics to a special one-off radio version of the popular TV
drama Torchwood."
Oh dear.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Dolphins make me cry*

A new story about the Mekong River Dolphins that we went to see in Kratie. They're still endangered and there are still efforts being made to save them.


* A song by Martyn Joseph. It's not bad.