ink_13: (juggler)
ink_13 ([personal profile] ink_13) wrote2025-07-06 10:58 pm

Reunited

My Saturday plans cancelled on me, so instead I took an Uber up to the parents' place, had dinner with them, and then after retrieved my road bike Chief Brodie from the basement. A pump-up of the tires was all it needed, and then I rode the 16km home.

In the good:

  • Clipless pedals are still fabulous for getting good power out of mediocre legs
    • Clipped in the whole way and I didn't fall over on stops!
  • Rides smooth and silent
  • The lowest gears will get me up the worst hills still
  • I found the lock/lights/panniers!

In the bad:

  • I bought the Chief in 2013 and it's starting to show: the plastic over the shift indexes is noticeably yellow, for example.
  • The right interrupter is starting to stick
  • The bar tape needs redoing
  • The setup is really aggressive, with a lot of weight on the arms whether I'm on the horns or the flats, to the point I find myself wondering if the Chief has always been the wrong size
  • The lights were all dead

My enjoyment of the ride was also strongly coloured by desperately needing a shit for the last 5km. It seems Friday's tacos, er, came home to roost. So I spent the last 20 minutes or so convincing myself I was only 10 minutes from home. I did make it, but having a highly distracting podcast on the bone conduction headphones certainly helped.

I'm going to ride the Chief around the neighbourhood (5-6km at the most) a few times this week and see how I feel about things now that I have it back. But first impressions are that while the Mundo can be unwieldy...maybe I prefer it in all scenarios anyway? It does have a more upright riding position and the electric assist. The Chief is just easier to park.

andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-07-04 02:49 am
Entry tags:

Photo cross-post


Got halfway to the bus stop to go to the pool and realised I didn't have my shoulder bag. Sprinted home, got it, and made it to the bus.

Got off the bus at the other end, realised Sophia's bag didn't have her swimming costume in it. Got a bus home, grabbed it, now in a taxi.

Fingers crossed that nothing else comes between me and drop-off and work!
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

ink_13: (texture)
ink_13 ([personal profile] ink_13) wrote2025-07-03 10:11 pm
Entry tags:

Food volume

I always buy my deli meats by weight, but I make sandwiches by volume. Does this mean that I should take the density of the sausage into account? Should I make my sandwiches with the aid of a scale? Well, maybe if I cared more about how caloric they are.


Trying a new thing where I make a single serving of pasta at a time. 75g was too much orecchiette, 60g was maybe the right amount, but a sauce made from two strips of bacon reduced to lardons, half an onion, and then a about a third cup each of ricotta and passata was probably too much sauce. Was tasty, though.


I still have some Italian-style meatballs (about 100g each) so I took one, put it into a ripping hot cast iron, then squished it with my pressy-downy thingum. When a nice crust had developed, I painted the uncooked side with a little dijon, flipped it, pressed it again, and then when it seemed safe, put a slice of mozzarella on it, covered briefly, and then served it on an Ace Bakery roll with more dijon and some jarred roasted red peppers.

My theory was that by treating it like a burger should have been good, and it was, mostly. While mustard-grilling beef patties works well, I don't think I would do that to ground pork again. Also, I'm using cheese pre-sliced for sandwiches, and I might double up if I do that again.

Which I probably will, since I still have one sausage ball left, and those don't keep. Maybe a little passata on the bun? I've got that, too.

andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-07-02 10:20 am
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Time marches on

As of this morning (2nd of July), we are now closer to 2050 than 2000.
andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-07-01 01:58 pm
Entry tags:

Photo cross-post


"Sophia, will you pose with your brother for a photo?"

"I will, but I'm very angry about it!"
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

ink_13: (Default)
ink_13 ([personal profile] ink_13) wrote2025-06-30 05:31 pm
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Extremely short movie reviews

Equilibrium edition.

Whoever came up with their "gun kata" has no idea how guns (or, indeed, fighting) actually works. The plot is largely pastiche of grimdark fascist dystopias that came before (1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, The Giver), from the brutalism to the "underground resistance that has colours" to the "bad guys have British accents" trope.

I will complement the tailoring, however, because it's not easy to get jackets with mandarin collars to fit like that, plus they actually had an excellent execution of frogmouth lapels (on the miniboss), which is pretty rare.

2/4. The whole aesthetic is still very heavily 90s, which I guess makes sense because principal photography was done in late 2000 (despite the film coming out in late 2002).

alierak: (Default)
alierak ([personal profile] alierak) wrote in [site community profile] dw_maintenance2025-06-30 03:18 pm

Rebuilding journal search again

We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.
andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-06-29 04:31 pm
Entry tags:

Photo cross-post


We had a nice day on the beach in North Berwick. A few of Sophia's old nursery friends, getting back together, with a few siblings thrown in. They got on like it wasn't mostly a year since they last saw each other, and they had a ball digging holes, wading through seaweed and climbing on rocks. The weather was just as fabulous as it looks here.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

andrewducker: (lesbian tea)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2025-06-28 10:49 am
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A complaint about modern life.

When I am Emperor anyone selling bowls, plates, etc will have to certify whether you can microwave food in them without them getting hotter than the food.

Is microwave transparency really too much to ask?