Pupdate

Sadly Milo’s cancer is back, which I touched on the the relapse diary post. At least we caught it early with a scan, so he’s not actually been ill; and like the last time the chemo doesn’t seem to be denting his enthusiasm. The end of the month also marked the anniversary of when he first got ill, which seems like a significant milestone to get past.

It’s got cold now (with some light snow even), so the boys are back to wearing their fleeces on walks.

Whisky

I typically go for a tasting, or just drinks with friends, at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society every 6 weeks or so. But this month brought more than the usual visits, and the first one was pretty special, a tasting of Royal Brackla.

It’s not a distillery I’d heard of before, which is hardly surprising as their output is fairly small, and most of it has previously gone into blends. The tasting opened with their 18yo, which was delightful, and probably the best of what we had (even though older and more expensive varieties followed).

Much was made of the award winning streak of Dewar’s master blender Stephanie Macleod who oversees production at Royal Bracka, and that was enough to get me to buy a few Dewar’s bottles during the Black Friday sales. Their 12yo is a brilliant example of what a blended whisky should be.

The Bacardi/Dewar’s/Royal Brackla team brought along some ‘new make’ from the distillery, which is spirit straight from the stills before any ageing in wood. At this stage it’s emphatically not whisky as it hasn’t had the mandatory 3 years minimum maturation. I thought it tasted a little like grappa. It definitely wasn’t just tasteless pure ethanol and water, and it was interesting to find those same flavours in a 12yo society bottling from the distillery that was also featured in the tasting.

Many thanks to India from the Barcardi team for her excellent overview and willingness to answer questions.

Solar Diary

This November was much the same as the last overall.

New home lab server savings

It’s looking like the new ‘server’ consumes about 22.5kWh per month less than the old one, which will save me around £75/yr giving a payback (just on energy) of around 3y. Not bad considering how much more speedy and capable it is versus the previous kit.

Beating Beat Saber – Quest 3

Apparently I wasn’t alone having controller tracking issues with my Quest 3. After reading my October post a friend sent me a link to The Verge: “Meta is investigating Quest 3 issues after controller tracking complaints”. Thankfully it wasn’t long before reports emerged that Meta Just Fixed the Quest 3’s Big Controller-Tracking Problem. I’m not sure that it’s entirely fixed, as I’ve had one more episode of a saber wandering off on its own, but it certainly seems better.

My new corrective lenses also arrived, so I’ve been able to play without the bother of getting the headset on whilst wearing glasses :)

I’m not blown away by the Quest 3. It even seems to stutter in the same place on levels that could be problematic on the Quest 1; though maybe that’s a game issue rather than hardware.

Although I’m still not impressed with the head band, at least I didn’t buy the fancy expensive one with an additional battery as reports are now emerging of charging issues.