Hozelock adjustable long spray lance, absolutely unfit for purpose, disposable garbage that broke after 3 months.

Last refund was a nightmare as it was a purchase from Amazon and outside their 30 day window, so initially they did not want to accept the return and directed me to the manufacturer. Hozelock just refused to engage, and directed me back to Amazon, endless loop. After going round this loop I then complaining to Amazon for a solid 10 minutes and they eventually agreed to pay for pick up of the item then refund when it was picked up.

Replaced it with a more expensive Dramm lance that every part is user replaceable with available spare parts, and much less plastic components.

And that 16 year olds don’t want to date them. If they were having plenty of success they wouldn’t be moaning about the “competition”. They seem to be asking for parents to push their kids to date older men as it’s a better choice (which it isn’t).

You could set it to only manually download the shows, then you would go into the interface and click the manual search button. It will then aggregate the results for you into a single list and give you a single click to download, rename, and import the file to your library. You can even download a temporary lower quality version and then replace it later when a better one comes out if you wish.

I particularly like it for shows that often have a week or more of downtime as I often forget when they coming back and this saves me having to check when they back.

There is a few steps before then. We are currently at the stage of privatising previously state ran services within the NHS such as radiology and buying extra capacity from private business This is being done at a local level using existing budgets so it means money for actual services gets reduced or quality of service drops as no outsourcer works at a loss for very long.

Other step that happens is you can pay to jump the queue by paying the heavily subsidised private offerings in the UK. This is often the same person you would have seen via the NHS. There isnt this huge magical pool of extra doctors in the UK who only work private (outside cosmetic) so anybody you see privately will almost certainly have a NHS case load. More work private, less work NHS as there is only so many hours they can and will work.

Next stage is national privatisation of some of the bigger services, for example the recent agreement with Palantir that sells off our data for far less than its worth and without explicit patient permission.

I would imagine as that will increase costs it will then become optional to pay for the NHS and instead you can pay for private cover (rather than paying for both as we do currently if you want private cover). Once this happens its only a matter of time before the NHS becomes an empty shell as the middle earners who pay the most tax towards the NHS will simply stop paying. Then at that point does private start getting way more expensive and the exclusions start.

Usually some privatisation apologist will appear and say that we do not have to follow the American model, to which I always say what exactly about this government has ever given you the complete confidence that anything other than the shitest option will happen. Its nice to wish for unicorns but they are not going to happen here.

I had a smart watch when they first came out and the experience was miserable, poor battery and slow response times. I know that’s improved now but it didn’t offer enough over and above what I can do with a chest strap HRM for exercise, my strap doesn’t even need the phone when I go out as it has offline storage.

I have a few mechanical watches I wear as accessories when going out that I love for their function, these will last decades. This is my other problem with smart watches, the battery isn’t going to last forever and the specs are eventually going to fall too far behind. I’m not spending hundreds on a good smart watch when I can buy a mechanical watch for the same price that lasts 10 times longer.

Majority of people in Hong Kong at the time didn’t want to be part of China either, a lot of them left China already for a reason.

NVIDIA Shield with USB drive, and the Shield supports running Plex. Hook the Shield up to your main TV, share its content anywhere else you need it using Plex. You can even torrent directly on the Shield.

For music there is no bottleneck, it even properly supports external DACs via USB that almost everything else struggles with.

For video it’s only really missing AV1, which is only a pain for YouTube but not to the point it’s a real problem as I can still watch 4k on YouTube. It does support things like Dolby Vision, HDR10, TrueHD, etc.

For emulation it’s only going to struggle when you get to as recent consoles as the PS2, if modern emulation is what you are after you want a dedicated, powerful, and recent handheld emulator.

Why would you need newer and more powerful hardware for listening to music? Really doesn’t seem a good use for the money.

The existing shield has been THE longest android device ever and still has ample power to play back even reasonably high quality x265 4k hdr without issue (15gb per hour). Couple with it being one of the most flexible without having to jail break.

The WiiM Pro if you just want audio would be the only other device I would consider as it has Roon support. If you are serious about audio then Roon can be a game changer particularly for multi room audio and multi service audio. Yes you have to pay for Roon, but no FOSS is as easy to setup and use for the average user.

Where did you read that as they are still available to buy?

https://store.nvidia.com/en-gb/shield/

Shield and an external DAC would be my pick. My lounge is hooked up to a Marantz SR7011 and the one in my office to a RME DAC 2 as I want a really good headphone amp

He was also significantly over weight during this period with little exercise and, in a high stress job (not that it stopped him from his afternoon naps).

He also caught COVID quite early on (Late March), which was no surprise as he liked to attend parties when all this was going on, and was hospitalised for one on one care early for preventative care including oxygen back when oxygen was being restricted for preventative care.

I am not suggesting the PM shouldn’t have had the best care available, more that hes proven to lack empathy of anything he hasn’t experienced himself, so is highly unlikely to understand just how overloaded the NHS was at this point and that his experience was anything other than privileged.

For Buffy they recut the shot often using the raw footage, and they did so very cheaply so film equipment was often visible. They also didn’t address how bad the make up looked in HD, but then soft focus face filters are also garbage.

The Simpsons when they tried they cut the frame, which is just laughably bad as it removed information and the context for scenes.

When the Wire was done they got David Simon back to work on the conversion, he considers it a completely different cut of the show. I think this is the only way to do it as it means re framing the shot, this is a decision for the director, editor, and DP IMO

AI making shit up to add to the frame removes the context for the shot. Nothing wrong with black bars for me, I just want good colour balance and upscaling.

Another fan of pikvm, love mine. I have it plugged into a HDMI switcher so I can control four boxes from one pikvm. It does use some pins so if you wanted to control the power switches you have to do some extra work.

Worth considering if you want to get a UPS at the same time for the NAS, pikvm and any networking you have. Will all last longer with one to avoid random power cuts or surges.

If you need to access it remotely I would strongly suggest getting wireguard or some other reliable VPN setup rather than exposing the web interface to pikvm directly to the internet.

23 plate Hyundai Ioniq 5 Premium Long Range.

Likes:

Getting 4 to 4.5 miles to kwh out of what is quite a large car by European standards. Costs approx. 9p a kw in the UK on an EV tariff so it costs a fraction of what an ICE car would cost to run.

350kw charging, I rarely wait longer than 20 minutes to charge from 20% to 80%

Tons of space.

Single pedal driving is awesome

Tows my 1400kg caravan with ease due to 100% of torque from 0 rpm and weighing 2 ton (more the car weighs compared to the trailer the better towing is, assuming enough torque). Even big Range Rovers aren’t as smooth towing from stand still.

Same trait means its quick when driving round town or from a standstill. Above UK legal speeds its average for its price point.

Its also much much quieter than its ICE competitors.

Comfy on a long journey, like driving round sitting on a sofa.

Dislikes

Weighs 2 tons. Car it replaced was 1500kg and similar external size. Would like it to weigh less, but all new cars the same size, even ICE, are pretty fat these days. A brand new ICE 3 Series is also almost 2 ton with a few options on it and comparable usable space/purchase price.

Handling when hustling is compromised by the car being aimed at comfort and how fat it is. If you want handling buy the new performance model, its also stupid fast as it has 640bhp.

UK spec for this year has no heat pump for the battery even as an option, would be useful for improving winter mileage. Irish version of the same car has it as standard (at least for my model year and trim level), despite Ireland being warmer during the winter than the UK. Heat pump is now available as an option.

UK spec Premium cannot have memory seats, have to upgrade to a much more expensive trim level that has a ton of stuff I do not want or need. Same with the 360 cameras, I only get rear camera. Locking stuff behind a much more expensive trim level is a dick move.

People mix up duty cycle with build quality and functionality when talking about business vs. high end enthusiast gear.

Take a (random) example of an espresso machine or coffee grinder made for a coffee shop that can do 1000s of shots day in, day out, they tend to cost a small fortune. Compare that to a similarly priced home machine and the home machine cannot do that number of shots, just a hundred or so day in, day out, but will have way more functionality that an enthusiast will get value out of. Does a home espresso machine need to be able to do 1000s of shots per day over a 5 to 10 year period? Does it fuck.

Another example would be the duty cycle on a high end NAS or SAN drive that is designed for 1000x more reads and writes, never being turned off, etc. vs. a high performance enthusiast drive.

Buy the duty cycle you actually need.