Pyoor's excuse for not working

First up, our permit is signed off. While our house is no closer to completion than it was a week ago, when our house was signed off as legally complete by our permit inspector a huge weight lifted. We’re done with that part, and can move on to just finishing things that need finishing at our pace. Which had better speed up a bit.

That has meant that we’ve actually used our shower in anger. Well, actually, in pleasure. It’s rather nice. We’d held off using it after testing because, quite frankly, if it turns out there’s a problem we’d rather fix it in our own time than have our permit held up because we’re waiting to fix our shower. So we tested it – it worked – and we then waited… and waited… because other jobs to get us over that legally finished line took a lot of time.

And now? Now we can use it. And it works, and is really quite pleasant. Pleasing, even. The space is remarkably luxurious despite its small dimensions – in part thanks to the fancy floor/wall tiles in the shower area (the rest of the room is tiled in commodity porcelain large format tiles).

There is, however, the ever present trim around the door (and creation of the actual door step) to do:

Buuuuut, last week I also got the wood for the vast majority of the trim that’s left to do. I’d ordered it the week before, but it arrived last week. There’s, iirc, about 25 pieces to cut, shape and oil which doesn’t sound like a lot – and isn’t, really, but the shaping is tricky and takes a fair bit of time and effort. But it feels doable, and having the wood right there makes it harder to ignore or put off. If we can have some days where the weather is good to me, then we might actually make a fair bit of progress.

We have also, at long last, come up with a more affordable plan for the missing doors. It’s a lot of work, for sure, but it’s also something that we can do with the tools we have and which is waay less expensive than our previous plan. Although I still want the fancy tool for other jobs.

The thought is that we’ll get a whole bunch of reclaimed fir (it’s made from wood pilings from Lake Washington) that they have at a Seattle store. The blue staining apparently comes from the clay in the lake. Anyhow, we’ll get some of these and biscuit joint the whole lot together into a door.

That’ll get hung from the simplest barn-door hardware we can find. We really, really wanted something much more minimalist, but neither of us have succeeded in finding what we want – and certainly not ain a reasonable price-range. Anyhow, that’s on the cards… just need to work out where we put sixty bits of wood while we make them into doors(!)

We also have to make the doors for the hallway cupboard and the furnace cupboard – so that’s 7 doors to make. Hopefully they’ll work ‘okay’ with the other – rather fancier – doors that we’ve got. But we don’t want to fork out the roughly $4k it would be to get a matched set for all the doors.

And in final good news, at least, I think final for today our record deck has (re)entered service.

This ridiculous plays both sides, linear tracking record deck has been a complete mare to get working – even our local audio repair place won’t work on them at all because they’re too finicky to get working reliably. I won’t say that my repairs have quite hit perfection – it’s still occasionally got some speed variation which I don’t understand (unless there’s a bit of crud I somehow missed on the belt mating surface, but I was pretty thorough about cleaning that…I thought). It also is still fairly hopeless at identifying tracks on Side B, although Side A is fairly reliable. But since I usually listen to them as a straight-shot A-B it’s not a huge issue.

But it’s quite fun to have something where I can put on records while I do the washing up, and not need to dry up midway through to run and flip the record over. Also, it adds to my growing collection of hi-fi equipment that is ridiculously over complicated.

I’m still trying to lay my hands on a Slim Devices / Logitech Transporter – but if anything these seem to have got more expensive, despite being obsolete and barely supported. I’m starting to wonder if I should give in and just get a Cambridge Audio CXN… but I still really want the the twin VFD VU meters. I mean, I know it’s ridiculous nonsense, but I really want them.

But currently there’s some pillock selling a spares/repair incomplete one for $300! I mean…what now?

Never mind.

Today we started doing things again. I mean, not that we weren’t doing things. But the things we were doing were the things that are good for the soul that US society says have no value. Obviously they have value, and fuck that noise, but there are also things we need to get done which we allocated some time for on the last couple of days of our holiday. One of those was spending some time working on Kathryn’s studioshed.

So today we got out the circular saw and spent some time trimming bits of plywood. It’s coming along – I mean, it’s hardly phenomenally beautiful woodwork, but the walls are coming along nicely and I think we’re more than 3/4 done. There’s a narrow strip along the bottom of the west wall to do, and a full height board but only a short section – and that’ll be that wall done. Then there’s the north wall to do, and then it’s just getting the floor down.

We did, unfortunately, get some water ingress today. It seems like the door seals (in so far as they exist) aren’t really doing their job. I mean, they did sit a good 5 or so mm away from the door, which is a probably 1920s or 30s door frame.

It’s actually kept the water out until this past week, so far as I can tell, and it has been murderously wet these last few days. I mean, not untypical for the PNW, but it’s the full on winter “I’m just going to pour with rain every day until you’re not sure if you’re a duck or not”, which is not…my favourite thing. It certainly makes my run in the morning less fun (and more damp).

Anyhow there was some water that had clearly made its way in – not a ton, but enough to warrant investigation. And yeah, I’ve repositioned one of the door seals, but realistically they need replacing with new ones.

We also replaced the door lock – it’s largely ornamental in the sense that if someone’s come through our fence and is in our back yard then I suspect they’re not going to stop just because the door’s locked. But we didn’t have a key for the existing lock, and so we swapped it. Which I thought would be an easy five minute job… ha.

Because of course the lock isn’t a standard size. Of course not. So the new lock didn’t fit – and then I made a complete hash of enlarging the hole, which was quite disappointing. That will need either some filling or one of us to let in a small piece of wood to replace it. But – yay for progress.

The other thing that I randomly decided to make some progress on today was the CD ripping project. This endless delight that I’ve set myself of re-ripping to lossless FLAC all of my CDs – many of which were ripped to lowish bitrate MP3s waaay back in the day. Or not ripped at all… is a project which is both pleasing and also incredibly, mindbogglingly tedious.

It’s pleasing because oh hey, I have REM Green to listen to, which I’ve not heard in…uh, probably over a decade. Buuuut, also because a bunch of our CDs are not recognized by Max which leads me to spend a lot of time finding tracklists for obscure CDs – and also trying to track down album art for them too. Then, of course, there’s the endless joy of a lot of modern CDs having the bit set to say “you can’t rip this super quickly”. So instead of being ripped at 40x, they’re ripped at 7x.

I mean, try and push people towards downloading whydontcha…

Anyhow.

I’m nearly through the first – very overpacked but smaller DJ case. Then there’s the random disks in sleeves and the larger, I think better organized DJ case… so there’s a long old way to go. If CD rippers were more reliable about identifying album art and tracklists then I’d be tempted to build the CD ripping robot (which I do have plans for but haven’t printed because it’s so frequent that disks don’t auto-populate with information (thanks Amazon for not sharing), and it’s just easier for me to manually catch all the ones that don’t rather than having to somehow split out disks it recognizes and which have sufficiently good artwork from ones it doesn’t, or which only have some crappy little 200×200 image attached.

In other, other news, I’ve started looking at what I need to do to get Home Assistant running properly, which probably involves removing ChickenCam from the Chicken run… because the Raspberry Pi team fucked up spectacularly on social media – with a really frankly unpleasant response to fairly moderate criticism – and now I don’t want to buy any of their products. I hope that they’ll turn around and fix this, but right now there’s plenty of other things I can use in their place. However, for the moment Home Assistant comes as a prebuilt doohick for a Rpi, and since I’ve got one I might just use it. However, I’m also thinking that I might want to use the little touch screen display that I got for it, too. I don’t know much the RPi displays when running Home Assistant – I’ve only ever used the docker before. But… yeah, that’s another project for another rainy day. :)

The idea is to tie into our Mycroft – when it eventually gains some more skills (although it does currently have Home Assistant, which is the first thing). Although at the moment Mycroft is mainly hilariously terrible at answering questions and also appalling at sensing when its being called. It spends a lot of the time just randomly saying “I don’t understand what you mean” to no-one in particular because whatever its listening for it just…well, decided that “oh, do you want some cheese” meant “hey mycroft”. Given the busyness the rest of the day I decided to hold off on that for now.

The NHS is currently going all TERFy in the UK. The proposed clinical guidance for the new Children and Youth Gender Identity Clinic is, to use a phrase, a hot fucking mess. The comment period is open and I had some words…

Just in case they’re useful to others, they’re here:

To what extent do you agree with the four substantive changes to the service specification listed in the supporting documents?

a) Composition of the clinical team

Disagree
Share any further comments about this:

I am deeply concerned that the proposals as written will lead to increasing delays in a treatment system which already fails to meet the 18 week standard for treatment not merely by months but by years. As such, while more expertise could be welcomed, I’m deeply concerned that these proposals will lengthen, not shorten the wait for treatment. Further, that the addition of experts indicated within these proposals will be used to prevent individuals’ access to care rather than working to improve their access. I’m particularly concerned that neurodiverse people may find themselves completely barred from treatment.

Furthermore given the NHS’s lacklustre history of training clinicians in issues that impact the LGBTQIA community, I’m deeply concerned that the experts proposed will lack adequate training to successfully care for transgender and gender diverse individuals. The proposed experts must be adequately trained, and trained using clinical evidence, not the ideological bias that appears to pervade these proposals.

b) Clinical Leadership

Partially Disagree
Share any further comments about this::

While the proposal that a medically trained doctor is the clinical lead is, in and of itself, not necessarily bad the proposals continue to medicalise the care of, and pathologise the experiences of, transgender and gender diverse people.

This medicalisation bias is very clear through the structure of the proposals despite the WHO and WPATH providing clear evidence that a move away from this old-fashioned, harmful and outdated approach to the care of gender diverse and transgender individuals is necessary. It is therefore vital that any doctor in a clinical leadership role is an expert in the care of transgender and gender diverse children and young people, and that the expertise must include up-to-date knowledge from beyond the boundaries of the United Kingdom.

c) Collaboration with referrers and local services

Partially Disagree
Share any further comments about this::

While this proposal includes elements that have the potential to be positive – better local service integration and better support to those on the waiting list – there are significant concerning aspects.
– The assumption that people will be on the waiting list for a long period seems baked into this proposal and indicates the complete failure of the NHS to adequately address the elephant in the room – that self-ID with adequately trained GPs providing non-surgical care (access to puberty blockers and as patients demonstrate Gillick competence, hormones), and acting as a point of referral for other treatments would be the more clinically appropriate and financially prudent approach.
– A pre-referral consultation may further delay treatment in a system that is already substantially failing, may place further barriers to access, and may push more people to start treatment without medical care.
– The pre-referral consultation assumes the presence of a supportive GP. There is significant evidence that GPs in the UK lack the training and knowledge to perform this role – and multiple studies have indicated that GPs often act to prevent individuals receiving treatment in contravention of the existing guidelines. For them to fulfill this role will require more training and very clear rules and expectations which have disciplinary force available as recourse for those GPs unwilling to engage.
– The proposals appear to indicate that the new service will not accept new referrals until a large proportion of the existing waiting list has been seen. This leaves many children and young people in an unacceptable state where there is nowhere for them to be referred to (and later sections are coercive about preventing them seeking treatment elsewhere in the interim, a particularly unpleasant catch 22).
– The proposals do not indicate how an individual who has, per their local consultation, ‘not met the access criteria’ would move to obtain a second opinion, lodge an appeal, or whether it is possible for that to occur. This is simply unacceptable.

– Again, this proposal fails to indicate any way in which the service could come into compliance with the 18 week standard.

d) Referral sources

Disagree
Share any further comments about this:

This guidance is simply inadequate. The implication seems to be that only an individual’s GP or NHS professionals can refer. It does not define who an NHS professional is, and in what capacity it would be appropriate for a non-doctor / nurse practitioner to refer, and in what circumstances those referrals would be accepted. Given the lack of training provided to doctors in the UK on gender related issues, and the lack of support that many transgender and gender diverse youth cite, self referral, or referral through other support networks (teachers, social workers, youth workers) would be appropriate.

Given that many GPs fail to follow the existing guidance for referral, profess a lack of knowledge on how or when to refer, or simply refuse to refer this additional step is particularly concerning.

Furthermore, it continues to build in an unnecessary medicalisation of treatment for transgender and gender diverse children.

To what extent do you agree that the interim service specification provides sufficient clarity about approaches towards social transition?

Disagree

Please expand further:

This section is completely inappropriate. Social transition is not a medical process and there is simply no possible valid reason for it to be controlled by medical practitioners. The evidence is very, very clear that social transition improves psychological outcomes and reduces suicidality for gender diverse and transgender children and youth. Placing barriers in the way of this is simply unconscionable and speaks to an appalling lack of knowledge or research on the part of the authorial team for this section.

“Watchful Waiting” is an outdated and harmful model that simply exists to improve the comfort of those who oppose evidence based treatment for transgender people. It is espoused by those ideologically opposed to the very existence of transgender people in society and must be removed from future guidance. It is ‘supported’ (and I use that term loosely) in this document using a citation from the Endocrine Society’s guidance which, in turn uses Steensma et al. (2013) as its basis. This study is widely understood to have been based on outdated terminology and assessment and has been superseded by much more up-to-date research that completely undermines the findings of Steensma et al. (2013).

Because it is one of few faintly modern ‘studies’ that supports an anti-transgender / anti-supportive treatment ideology (although, by research standards, it would not make it into most metaanalysis at nearly a decade old), Steensma et al. (2013) seems to find its way into a lot of studies despite its many failings and lack of congruence with modern research findings in the same area.

As a clinician I am appalled that these abhorrently harmful practices are being suggested by the NHS and urge that the following (rather more modern) research and guidelines are included in a complete and thorough rewrite of at the very least this section (although frankly, a rewrite of the entire proposal would be more appropriate):

– Durwood et al. “Mental Health and Self-Worth in Socially Transitioned Transgender Youth.” Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2016.10.016
– Durwood et al. “Social support and internalizing psychopathology in transgender youth.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2021, https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01391-y
– Olson et al. “Mental health of transgender children who are supported in their identities.” Pediatrics, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2015-3223
– Olson, K. R., Gülgöz, S., 2018. “Early findings from the TransYouth Project: Gender development in transgender children.” Child Development Perspectives, 2018, 12, 93–97. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12268
– Gibson, D. J., Glazier, J. J., Olson, K. R. “Evaluation of anxiety and depression in a community sample of transgender youth.” JAMA Network Open, 2021, 4, e214739.
https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4739
– World Professional Association for Transgender Health. “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8.” International Journal of Transgender Health, 2022, p. S75. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644.
– World Professional Association for Transgender Health. “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8.” International Journal of Transgender Health, 2022, p. S53. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644.
– Memorandum of Understanding group. “Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK (Version 2).” BACP, 1 Mar. 2022, www.bacp.co.uk/media/14985/memorandum-of-understanding-on-conversion-therapy-in-the-uk-march-2022.pdf.
– Ehrensaft et al. “Prepubertal social gender transitions: What we know; what we can learn—A view from a gender affirmative lens.” International Journal of Transgenderism, 2018, 19(2), 251–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2017.1414649

To what extent do you agree with the approach to the management of patients accessing prescriptions from un-regulated sources?

Disagree

Please expand further:

This section seems to be unclear on the difference between “unregulated” and “private practice providers”. Private healthcare providers are a legal and appropriate means of providing healthcare, whether based in the UK or elsewhere. Given the NHS’s woeful inability to meet the 18 week standard, and this proposal’s abrogation of any attempt to do so, it is an absolute farce to suggest that individuals effectively denied treatment by a system that – in this reworking will obviously continue to fail – should not seek treatment elsewhere in the interim.

Worse, this proposal suggests that those providers outside the NHS who actually are providing a standard of care concordant with current international guidelines should be subject to safeguarding referrals. This is simply unacceptable.

1) Accessing treatment regardless of its source MUST NOT be a safeguarding concern
2) Accessing treatment regardless of its source MUST NOT be a barrier to receiving NHS treatment at a later date.
3) The NHS absolutely should provide a safe transition to medically supervised medication prescription and management for those individuals who’ve sought treatment from sources outside traditional heathcare (mainly, I suspect, teens who’ve been failed by the NHS so far and in desperation have obtained tablets from friends or ‘off the internet’).

This proposal as a whole, as has been repeatedly pointed out will fail to bring the NHS into line with its own standard and requirements. It will not make the NHS meet its 18 week timeline for treatment, and will fail to do so because it is designed to fail to do so.

The Coercive nature of this particular service specification is likely to be felt as a threat with a punishment, furthermore, it will contradict Domain 5 of the NHS outcomes as it is likely to prevent families seeking other support from their GPs. It is, simply put, unethical.

Are there any other changes or additions to the interim service specification that should be considered in order to support Phase 1 services to effectively deliver this service?

Please expand further:

For reasons that are not explained, this proposal suggests the use of GnRHa blockers is experimental. It’s not; it’s well documented both in the care of transgender and gender diverse youth (see WPATH’s “Standards of
Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version
8.” International Journal of Transgender Health, 2022, p. S64, S123.

https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2022.2100644″;) but also for youth with a number of other healthcare conditions. In those conditions it’s considered safe, but for some reason this document ignores that large evidence base.

This proposal also ties GnRHa blockers to an unethical requirement to be enrolled in a research program. Best practice guidelines require that any provision of (transgender) healthcare is also available in a manner that is ‘explicitly independent of research participation’, as informed consent must be ‘without coercion or undue influence’.

Therefore, this section needs to be clarified to indicate that:
– GnRHa blockers are an appropriate and safe treatment.
– No research program participation is required for their prescription.

It also needs revision to include the following:
– To reference and recommend referrals to local endocrine services and fertility preservation services
– To clarify prescribing responsibility for cross sex hormones (and again, this should be the GP following self ID at a point of Gillick competency)
– To clarify how and when reviews of this system will occur
– To acknowledge that not all families / carers will be supportive, and that a lack of support is is correlated with worse outcomes for transgender and gender diverse children and youths.
– To acknowledge that in a situation where a child is not Gillick competent, but continues to express a gender diverse or transgender identity, and the family are not supportive, GnRHa blockers may be appropriate to allow the child time to reach Gillick competency without undergoing a potentially traumatic and avoidable puberty, regardless of parental or guardian’s support.
– There is no reference to patient and public involvement in service development. This is contrary to pretty much every part of the modern NHS’s development and must be rectified.

To what extent do you agree that the Equality and Health Inequalities Impact Assessment reflects the potential impact on health inequalities which might arise as a result of the proposed changes?

Disagree

Please expand further:
To put it at its most simple, the EHIIA does not reflect potential impacts on health inequalities.

It is a disingenuous section which is predicated on this statement:
“The interim service specification sets out more clearly that the clinical approach in regard to pre-pubertal children will reflect evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence”

As I’ve pointed out in previous answers this is simply based on outdated and incorrect information. It reflects a seemingly wilful lack of research or desire to listen to those with expertise and instead places an ideological bias that is not supported by current research at the center of NHS proposals. This will lead to clear and avoidable harms which this section then go to great lengths to excuse by denying that those seeking treatment for GIDS would be covered under the 2010 Equality Act’s protected characteristic of “gender reassignment”.

The authors of this proposal seem unwilling to read the current massive body of literature which indicates that gender affirming treatment is vital, that the very small percentage of people who desist in seeking gender affirming treatment often do so because of negative and harmful experiences from family, society, or medical providers, and often seek treatment again later when they are in a more supportive environment. And so the authors of this proposal appear to be using just the 2013 ‘study’ as a crutch to instead support something that will instead open the NHS up to repeated legal challenges.

It is clear that even despite the NHS denying and delaying treatment, these individuals will still meet the protected characteristic requirement.

The EHIIA must account for how this ‘interim service’ will avoid discrimination in access to care for this subpopulation of children and young people, and in particular those from BAME groups (which evidence suggests are more likely to be the subject of discrimination), those with disabilities, and those who have families who are unsupportive.

I note the EHIIA also states that the NHS has not (bothered?) to consult with anyone about how to reduce inequalities. This is another abject failure in these proposals.

I stick the squeezebox on random…and it plays a song. And even when it’s not right – not right for the era I’m transported back to that period where, for a hot minute I was a DJ at university.

I went from hiding in my room at parties, being the “DJ” and playing tracks to keep everyone moving to being in the box in the only student run social center off campus.

I hopped from track to track following a gut instinct of what would make people dance. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

Then I’d hand over the decks to Richard – way more experienced, way more professional, way more skilled. And I’d go out onto that dance floor.

I’d feel the press of hot bodies, the smell of drink in the clammy hot air, the sweat literally streaming down the walls of the building.

And for an hour or two, with the benefit of some alcohol – often quite a lot of alcohol – I could wash away the body I hated. I could feel the music coursing through me (pretty much literally, Rich was an epic engineer and it was LOUD).

I could feel my long hair brushing my neck, I could dance with my friends and forget who society kept telling me I was. I would scream along with the female leads with my voice cracking and breaking as they tore from me.

I would dance my fucking soul out.

And music can take me back to that moment. But it’s better… not it’s fucking phenomenal now, because I can enjoy my body. I don’t have to run. I don’t need the alcohol to forget. I can fucking be me, and throw myself around the (kitchen) dancefloor and it’s fucking epic.

So the en-suite. We were all ready to seal it… and then.

When we installed the toilet, we installed it and used it for months without a problem. Before the rest of the bathroom was even finished, we were using it. Before the shower was installed, we were using it. Hell, before the sink was installed…we were using it.

It was just fine.

Then I installed the bidet – it’s a sprayer with a tee off from the toilet fill connector. It seemed fine for ages.

Then suddenly there’s water coming from under the toilet. Not unpleasant, dirty water. No. This – so far as I can tell is clean water. Initially I thought it was water from Kathryn and I cleaning the tiles. It was just a liiiiiiittle tiny trickle of mostly dried up water. So I mopped it up.

And it continued.

And it continued.

And so I hunted around – the tee valve that connects the bidet is dry. The connection from the wall is dry. The tiles around the toilet are dry. The run of pipe between the toilet and the quarter-turn valve on the wall is dry. The run of pipe between the tee and the bidet is dry. The dry doesn’t have any drips on it. Running my hand all over the inside of the back of the toilet is dry.

I do not understand where this f’kin water is coming from.

I have turned off the water supply to the toilet. It still creeps out, so it’s ooozing out from either the cistern (which we flushed, but which still has about an inch of water in the bottom), or the bowl. Of course – being a single piece toilet it shouldn’t be able to leak from in-between.

So where the hell is it coming from?

So now we’re just waiting to see – when it does finally stop – which bit is empty. If it stops and the cistern still has water in then…we have a significant problem. Although we can unmount the toilet, but because it hadn’t leaked we sealed around the back edge of the cistern…so it’s going to be a spectacular pain in the arse to get it moved.

Anyhow, so there’s that.

We have, however, spent some time at the weekend cutting…the fire doors for the attic! These, plus the bathroom being functional* are what are required for permit sign-off, and they’re done! Well, they’re cut:

We also cut the pantry door, which is a bit more of a complex beast. I’m going to need to run around the edge of that with the trim router, which I should do before we oil it.

Then, in a spurt of unexpected productivity today – I cut some more skirting boards.

Quite a lot of skirting boards… and other random trim pieces.

I have, in fact, finally hit the point where I need to get more wood. Which is pleasing, because this stuff has sat here for nearly a year. Possibly more than a year. I also – almost – got up the enthusiasm to do some work on the kitchen shelf. Although for that I need a 2 x 12″ board, which I don’t have yet. But the thought did actually enter my head, which it hasn’t until now.

But, yes. I spent a lot of time today measuring and cutting – and working out what bits I could do without other bits. But now I need to get the wood for the trim around the en-suite bathroom door which is a bit of a complex beast. That and the bathroom (main) also needs trim. BUT – I’ve realised I do, in fact, have a rabbet bit – which is something I didn’t think I had – which will suit (I think) the trim that has to overlap the tiles. The whole trim-thing continues to be a total mare because to get stuff to fit the plaster – I had to plane the backs of the trim that’s around the doors. That means it’s a weird thickness…

Which means that the skirting boards need to have some sort of finishing corner on them to make them not look stoopid.

We won’t talk about the other corners, because the part of me that knows I should round off the cut end with the 1/8″ rounding bit is shouting louder and more incessantly.

I keep telling it to shush, and that no-one… *no one* but us will care. But it keeps whining about it. It’s most upsetting and means I’ll probably have to do that too on Saturday, before we can oil these bits of wood.

But it’s quite exciting. There’s quite a few bits left to go, but the stuff we had in the garage has made a big dent in the remaining complicated bits of skirting. After this it’s the bedrooms which are a mare because they’re full of stuff, but less of a mare because they’re mainly just two or three straight walls. A single cut-to-length, then oil, then install.

In other-other news, I finally replaced the temporary wire that ran to our second charger with a new correctly rated wire (the old one was…suboptimal and running near capacity). I also buried it to the proper depth, which was a bit of a mission:

I also *finally* got around to changing the faulty breaker…for another faulty one. Irritatingly, it turns out that the used breaker I got to replace the breaker turned out to be faulty, and the person selling it declined to take it back (which was only an issue because COVID meant I spent 2 weeks not changing it and went outside the return period). I gave up and… y’know what, I bought a brand new one. From Amazon. Because… well, in other expensive news, it turns out my aged phone is no longer getting security updates.

It’s about 6 years old, and I’m rather peeved to have to replace it because it still seems to be fast enough and works really well. But – I do use it for my job, and so it’s pretty handy to have something with a really good camera. The OnePlus 6 has done incredibly well – producing some astonishingly useful footage since it manages pretty good 4K with stabilization. But… yeah, it’s time with no security updates coming.

So… I took the plunge, and now I wait for the shiny expensive object to arrive. Meh.

* ish

We had a plan. It was a solid plan. The two new chickens (Thelma and Louise) were ready for their next step in flock integration. In where they can interact with – but not actually get to our other chickens.

1. We would take the temporary run in which they’ve been acclimatising down – it’s made with roughly 4×6 panels (of ABS pipe with chicken wire zip-tied to it… we’re fancy here). We’d move the panels into the main run.
2. We’d also move Thelma and Louise’s little portable coop into the main run, inside the newly erected fence panels.
3. Thelma and Louise, being more tractable than our older chickens would be allowed to roam free while this happened and then we’d catch them and pop them in their kind of sub-run.
4. We’d move their water and food in with them too.

Simple.

And it went flawlessly, until as we carried their water in it became apparent that while the easy-to-catch Thelma and Louise were now safely ensconced in their sub-run, Astrid and Pippi were enjoying the excitement of the garden having found an escape route through a previously unknown hole in the fence.

Astrid and Pippi are not tractable chickens. They do not crouch to be picked up. They sprint rapidly around the garden.

Apparently the average top speed of a human is 8 miles per hour. A chicken? About 9 miles per hour.

We did eventually herd Astrid back in, and Pippi – I caught her but with my arms wrapped around a shrub, which meant that Kathryn had to come and grab her from me in a careful chicken hand-off.

Our final day in the Lakes we thought we’d relax, take a nice short walk, something not too taxing and without too much height. That went about as well as usual, as we wandered up Muncaster Fell. Our map made us think that it was about a 600 ft climb, iirc, and then a faaaairly flat walk across the top – maybe losing a hundred feet, before climbing up, skirting the summit and then wandering down to a stop on the Ratty which would take us back home.

It turned out that the paths have shifted a bit, they now basically go to the top of the two peaky-bits (I mean, it’s not a very pointy fell), then wander most of the way down between the two, making the upy-downyness much greater. We made it longer trying to avoid the inevitable, and then when we had the chance to skip the highest point, we didn’t, because having come so far we thought it’d be nice to actually see the view from the trig point. It was.

The next day was, leaving the Lakes super early and driving. And driving. And charging. And driving. And Driving. And Charging. And Driving. AND DRIVING. AND CHARGING.

Yeah, renting a shortish range slow charging EV may not have been the best choice. But, it did it, we did it. And we made it to Brizzle where we caught up with one half of a couple of wonderful friends and their kids. We chatted and caused child-related-ink-chaos (one of their kids discovered that the pen we gave them allowed them to draw not just on paper, but also on themselves! Awesome!), drank tea, ate cake and then piled back in the car to drive the last few hours down to my mum’s.

She had persuaded my sister to stay an extra night, kipping on the camp beds in the study which meant that we got to see my sis and her husband as well. It’s been at least as long since I saw her as it has since we saw my mother, so it was a really lovely surprise and lovely to catch up. They stayed that night and so the next morning we got to have a bit more of a catch up before they headed off to the beach and then home. We – Kathryn, my mum and her husband and me, obviously, then went for a long wander on one of my mum’s favourite walks at the moment. One where a wild flower and grass meadow she walks through has turned almost red as the seeds have reached readiness…

The next few days were chatting, eating and walking for the most part… Enjoying the Cornish countryside, taking in some of my mum’s favourite places. We headed over to the Dutchy of Cornwall nursery where we, of course, partook in a cream tea. My mum also got some lovely plants, because – well – otherwise they’d get lonely. And we got some really nice ideas for plants for us to get for our front garden. That evening we headed out on a bat walk – as the light fades, the bats come out from the trees on the rural roads near my mum’s house, and as you walk along they’ll flit around above your head. It’s a wonderful experience that we couldn’t safely have here in the US (‘cos, no rabies in the UK).

That next day the rain was intermittent and we mainly hung out at home, just heading out with my mum for a brisk walk and some pony petting. I took a bit of the afternoon as the weather cleared up to film the drive review for the car we’d rented, having promised Nikki I’d try and review it since it’s a car we can’t get in the US.

We grabbed our swimming cossies the next day and headed out to the coast. We first headed out to Hollywell, which is a popular beach for both surfers and swimmers – first having a bit of a walk down the head before turning around and coming back having realised that we would run out of time before lunch. Paramito, my mum and me had a quick paddle while Kathryn guarded stuff and did some drawing – the timing didn’t quite work out so Kathryn didn’t get a swim there (sadface), and we headed back to the pub for fish and chips. After lunch we headed over to Cubert Commons – and walked down to Poly Joke beach, where after some lovely paddling I was attacked by a Weaver Fish.

Well, that might be an overstatement. I was stung. My first thought was that I’d been cut by a sharp shell, and I started walking out of the water…then the pain just kept escalating. It crescendoed and then I decided to have a little lie down for a second as I felt a weeny bit faint as the pain eased. After a couple of minutes I stood up and we decided that maybe we should head back to the car because it might be a sting that needed checking – since I really had no idea what it was.

As we neared the top of the beach we checked my toe and it had gone unnervingly white, with the rest of my foot swelling a bit – before mostly resolving by the time we got back to the car. To be honest it’s still not 100% now, but it shows no signs of infection and there’s no pain when I apply pressure. It just feels a little teeny bit off. Anyhow, we think it’s a Weaver fish sting based on the symptoms… next time I’ll be wearing shoes.

On the 2nd we popped around town grabbing some of the things we miss that we can’t easily get in the UK. KP Skips, Eccles cakes, chocolate digestives… We also picked up some bits and bobs for friends and family here in the US. Then in the afternoon I made good on my commitment to film – with Kathryn helping as camera person (lucky, because the wind was fierce) I rattled off the walk around from the car and rapidly shot some more B-roll to drop in the review. I’ve rough cut that today and it’s…surprisingly not terrible.

That next day we spent a chunk of the day – the morning – playing a fun packing game. I repacked the lawnmower I bought so it might make the flight intact, and we played an entertaining game of shuffle the item. Our pre-purchasing things weighing of the cases suggested that we had tons of space. Our post-purchasing of snacks and treats meant that we had to shuffle things very carefully between them to get them under the weight limit. It took much longer than we’d hoped, but we still managed to get out in the afternoon to Goliatha Falls which we’d not been to before and which is very, very beautiful. Unfortunately for us it was super busy that day, but my mum got to clamber about all over the rocks and utterly terrify me.

Then our last full day we headed up to Cotele to see the gardens. While not the biggest or grandest gardens, they were definitely some of my favourites – being as they’re much more informal in their planting and the location provides for some really lovely views. On top of that it’s a rare National Trust property that I really would rather like to live in. Not all of it, that’d be far too much – but maybe a wing. NT – call me? ;)

We went with my mum and her husband out for a wander in the evening and during it, he pointed out something that we’d never noticed before. Kathryn had spotted that a slab of stone currently being used as a footbridge over a little beck looks like it was once carved with patterns, and we were chatting about whether it might once have been part of a grander building – maybe a church or an abbey that disappeared in the dissolution of the monasteries in 1530, or perhaps from some other grand building. And as we made our way up the hill, my mum’s husband pointed out that one of the dry stone walls on the walk was almost certainly part of something more… grand. While some of the wall looks like regular old Cornish dry stone wall, two sides and this particular corner are made up of much higher quality stonework, and the corner in particular is gently, but very evenly curved in the manner of the base of a tower or somesuch.

It’s fascinating because we’ve walked past it a bunch of times and had never noticed… we had noticed that the farm barn a little bit further down does feature at least one window that clearly came from something – maybe a clerestory window?

The next morning bright and revoltingly early we started our trek back across the country to the airport… it was, despite COVID a remarkably okay flight and we made it into bed about 24 hours after we got up tired and weary but glad to be back in our own home.

Tomorrow we’re planning a longer walk, so today we planned a more relaxed day of not walking.

Which meant that we didn’t walk as much, and also didn’t wear appropriate shoes for walking. Which may have been an error. At any rate we went to check out Ravenglass, where there stands the highest Roman wall in England. Part of what was once a Roman bathhouse, adjacent to what was a fort, although the evidence for that is mainly underground (and indeed under a railway line) – although a plaque conveniently tells of its existence and of the 1976-1978 excavation that revealed a little more of its secrets.

As it often is, it’s amazing to stand in these places that feel so human and so recognizable, and yet are so far distant in time from us. The stone arch way and block work making spaces that feel very relatable, despite the many centuries that have passed since it was constructed.

From there we headed up to Muncaster castle, a seemingly slightly tired attraction (well, some of the less popular bits). We watched them flying some birds of prey from their hawk and prey bird center, something I’ve never seen before which really drove home the beauty of these animals. They explained how poachers in various parts of Africa are poisoning corpses to posion the vultures, because the flocks of vultures reveal the poachers activity. That is a terrible side effect of poaching which is driving the vulchers to extinction — vultures, incidentally are incredibly beautiful. Anyhow, they explained about their breeding programs (hey, it’s okay that we’ve got animals in captivity! We’re doing good things! (Which was actually good to hear)).

The rest of the gardens were pleasant, but mostly seemed to be rewilding themselves. The old orchard looked like they’d put new trees in a few years back but now seemed to be unmaintained, and the gorgeous collections of Rhody’s are gradually disappearing into a more native woodland.

…except for the bamboo, which seems to be as per usual on a rampage.

Having meandered all over the grounds we headed to the church of St Mary’s in Gosforth. Home to a number of Norse artefacts (a Nordic cross with pagan imagery on the side, one free leaflet inside went to great lengths to explain how this was most deffo in celebration of the one true God — although several other leaflets in the church (which weren’t free and for which we sadly did not have money on hand) seemed to have a more measured tone that explored the presence of pagan and Norse religions.

Anyhow, that was a brief visit since the leaflets were something we only discovered after wandering around and looking at the objects which seemed to have little information attached, so we were just admiring them for their naieve beauty :)

Tomorrow is the day we’ve currently scheduled for our long walk. There’s been some debate, but we’re both tempted by one of Wainwright’s suggestions. Risky because we’re neither of us terribly fit. But it looks quite, quite stunning.

So we’ll see how that goes.

So I decided that it would be nice to check the chickens aren’t hanging out on the ladder, stuck, if the automatic door closes early, which has happened before.

I’d like a second camera that shows a more wideangle view, and frankly, a third camera that is inside the coop. All of which are possible (although the power demands may be…pushing it a bit).

So, I thought, I’ll install a nice fresh OS on my Raspberry Pi 2B which is sat around collecting cruft, and I’ll pop my old USB webcam on it (because the PiCam I got draws too much power which is why this hasn’t happened ’til now). Easy.

Only no.

It’s taken most of my spare time from two days.

First up, the venerable Pi2 doesn’t have on-board WiFi. Easy, I thought. I’d already got a plan for this – I had a USB WiFi dongle. Only…when I added it, it didn’t work. After combining multiple things, and trying a wide variety of configurations (basically you need to configure both the network and wpa_supplicant and then fuck around for ages and) eventually it randomly seemed to work.

It survived several reboots including a power-cycle so I declared it okay. Then I installed Motion. That went okay. Except that for some reason with this camera, when it first starts if it’s in the boot process, the image is corrupt. If you stop the service and restart it it’s fine. If you start manually it after booting, it’s fine. But if you start it as a service – it doesn’t work.

After about an hour of trying to work out what was going on or find something that would work, I gave up and decided that maybe I should just install motioneye which is what Nikki uses. Unfortunately, when I imaged the SD card…I actually imaged the SD card reader.

I didn’t realize, because I’m a pillock, so then I nuked the card to install MotionEye, which it turns out doesn’t talk to WiFi dongles. Doesn’t even give you a chance to configure a WiFi dongle. Just endlessly reboots.

So then I tried to put the stuff I’d done back on the card – and discovered that lo, I’m an arse. So then I started again this morning (after epically failing to get it working last night). After several hours of failure it randomly started working – and seemed to be working…and then I installed Motion, and it stopped working. Then it stopped detecting the USB WiFi. Then it would detect it but not connect to the network (which is what it was doing before).

After an hour or so of swearing at it I decided that maybe the WiFi dongle was faulty, and off I went to get a new dongle. I did a bunch of other errands, came home, and discovered that no, the WiFi dongle isn’t faulty.

Eventually I gave up and decided to pull apart my Mycroft prototype to yank its Pi3. That has *on board* WiFi.

Yay, I thought. I have a solution – only, yeah, it did work better. Configuring it through the raspi-config did work in the end. Getting Motion up and running was the same – and ended at the same point. It would be corrupt when it started.

Eventually my ‘solution’ to this (if you can call it that) was to add a script which starts motion, stops motion, then starts it again. Yes, it’s very very stupid.

However, it works.

Then I threw it into some food boxes. I have done some pretty ropey prototypes over the years, but this may take the biscuit. Or possibly the hummus and microgreens.

But when all’s said and done, it is working.

The chickens are, still, refusing to eat food from the feeder though, which is frustrating and concerning.

The B-side record scanning is still… unreliable. It sometimes seem to add its own vibrato to records just for shits and giggles*, but it’s playing records again – which it wasn’t capable of at all when it arrived.

I’m not really sure how it’d been so abused, I mean, I get how the belt turned to goop, but how it ended up with a broken stylus on one of the heads (I mean, it’s inside a box!), how it ended up with the draw position sensor bent out of all recognition (that might have been me disassembling, but I don’t… think so).

And now, just as if I time travelled back to medieval times (assuming I could avoid being burned as a witch straight away), then, if I arrived in the 80s, or early 90s, I’d look bloody flash.

I mean, the CD player was nearly a grand new (I got it for under a ton). And these dual sided record decks were produced at the very end of the first life of record decks as a common hifi appliance. They were trying to compete with the first run of CD players, and yeah, were surprisingly good…

I mean, they’re no high end thing, but the sound output is reasonable, and it’s great for when I’m doing the dishes or whathaveyou. It pleases me greatly that the only thing that was bought functional in that pile was the amplifier. Everything else has been repaired by me or my lovely friend John.

Anyhow, this post was really useful in getting it going, although mine interestingly has the STY-144/STY-145 stylus, not the 133 or the 147 suggested elsewhere.

In other news, I have had a bit of a day – with 3 hours spent at Les Schwab for them to do a tyre swap (I have never missed Bristol’s little indie tyre place I used to use quite so much). It kinda blew the rest of my day’s plans out of the water.

But hey, I finally got that bit of adulting done. And I’ve ordered the belt I just discovered I should get.

* Apparently the belt might be the wrong size, the replacement commonly sold for it is apparently 20″ instead of 21.4″, and puts too much drag on the platter. So I get to take it apart again! And check the speed again!