Pupdate

This was the month that he became a dog that likes to go for walks, which is great. He was pretty reluctant for the last few months – scared of traffic and meeting other people (and other dogs), and not keen on the cold wet weather. I’m glad we persevered, as he now seems so happy to be out and about :)

Lenny the Learner Lemon

$daughter0 is now old enough to start driving, so we got a Mini for her to learn in.

Officially that colour is Volcanic Orange, but we all think it’s yellow, hence the name she’s given to it.

It was a bit fraught buying a car during lockdown, when I wasn’t able to see it, and had to fork over £LOTS to somebody without being handed keys in return. I was very relieved when the delivery driver showed up.

Lockdown also massively impacts the ability to get out and about for driving lessons. Learners are allowed to drive on essential journeys (like grocery shopping), but she doesn’t really have the confidence to do those journeys yet. Things were much easier with $son0 when we could just take him to a quiet road and drive up and down until he was happy with the basics. On the positive side, being confined to going up and down the drive means that she is very good at hill starts, three point turns and parking.

Oven fix

When we had the kitchen refitted a few years ago we got a pair of identical Bosch single ovens. We use the left hand one (the ‘dirty’ oven) all the time, and the right hand one (which stays ‘clean’) hardly at all.

The left hand oven tripped its breaker, and next time it was used there was no heat :(

A bit of Googling around suggested that the element had probably failed, and this video gave me confidence that it was an easy job to replace it. In the end I was very happy to spend £25.99 on a replacement element, which took half an hour to fit, rather than having to buy a new oven.

Using OBS to record stuff

As we’ve used Microsoft Teams more at work it’s become more common to catch up on meetings be recording. But not everything happens on Teams.

I figured out that I can record anything I want using OBS – I just set it to capture my secondary screen, and put whatever I want to record onto that screen.

Pale Green Dot

The early weeks of the pandemic brought chaos to supply chains as demand that was previously split across grocery stores and restaurants got pushed out of its usual balance.

Pale Green Dot are one of the companies that made the best of a bad situation by taking veggies that would have gone to restaurants, and boxing them up for home delivery.

Recently they’ve added some new stuff that’s been great…

Valentine’s Dinner

I never like going to restaurants for Valentine’s, as it’s always an overpriced limited menu, and way too busy. So I usually cook instead.

This year was different, as Pale Green Dot offered packaged dinners, which turned out to be excellent.

I can only think of a couple of local restaurants that could produce similar quality food, so here’s hoping that they do similar stuff for other occasions.

Kimchee

We also got a Kimchee kit, which just went into the fridge today after fermenting, and is tasting really good. I’m looking forward to the ramyuns and jjigaes I’ll be making with this.

Lenovo X250

After over 5 years of faithful service it’s time to hand back my trusty Lenovo X250.

I’ve liked it so much that I’ve bought myself a reconditioned one on eBay, which now has the SSD and RAM upgrades I’d bought for my work one. The ‘new’ one doesn’t have a touch screen, but I never really used that.

Raspberry Pi Stuff

Maybe it’s because I have too many Arm (and other) dev boards, but I’ve not felt a huge urge to get the newly launched Raspberry Pi Pico.

I can however see that it’s growing a great ecosystem, and the tooling looks good too. If I do get one I’ll likely start with the Pimoroni Tiny 2040, which looks very cute.

Beating Beat Saber

I’ve not spent too much time doing VR workouts this month, so only a couple more levels Full Combo’d on Expert with the Green Day pack I got last month.