[Drezha]

Well, I’ve cancelled a meeting in Plymouth on Monday, so I’m all set to spend the weekend at home now, rather than 7 hours on a train on Sunday ?

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

We’ve got one of the Radfans in our front room. From a scientific and evidence based approach, I’m afraid I don’t have much of answer. However, it does push the heat out in to the room and doesn’t allow it behind the curtains (purely from standing in the window and looking out of the window). I’ve compared this against our bedroom (which doesn’t have one) to the front room (which does).

So from that point of view, it potentially works. I’m still suspect. I mean, the science behind it seems relatively sound, but as you say, the air flow is minimal (though you can feel the air movement).

I might consider the foil ones if we can fit one relatively easily.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

The Facebook pages are relatively easy to maintain – we maintain one for cadets (or well, did, as our squadron has just been closed and I’ve been posted to a new one).  They update and send metrics to you every week (which I always ignored – reach etc wasn’t a big deal with the cadet one, we just wanted it to be active to show the squadron was active).

 

When I was looking for a PT, I managed to find mine via a gym – not sure if he could do simialar and setup a repciproal deal?

 

(Spelling is poor tonight – not sure why Firefox spell check isn’t working!)

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

wasbit wrote:

Screwfix also require the card which was used to buy an item to be presented at the counter when collecting the goods.

I cant recall but is that because payment isn’t taken until you collect? I can’t remember – it’s been a while since I collected froma  Screwfix but I certainly recall putting my card in and my PIN. Maybe I just did a reserve and collect in store?

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

At the minute, I subscribe to King Of Shaves – £7 a month for four blades and I usually get just over a week from each one.

However, I’m waiting to get the bathroom redone so I can have some space on the sink so I can go back to my safety razor – the double edged kind. I prefer it on my skin and I get a better shave but requires some bathroom space for the aftershave, preshave and shaving cream!?

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Still play the Lotto – only through the work syndicate though. I consider the money gone as soon as it’s left. I’m not after the big win (as it’ll be split 20 ways lol).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I much prefer using card than cash – I keep far better track of the money I spend and budget on the card than I can with cash and that helps me a lot. I use YNAB for tracking my money (well, I use the older version of YNAB that runs on my computer to track my money, we use the cloud based system to track the joint account between me and my girlfriend).

We recently had Monzo cards (well, still do) for cheap payments abroad. However, they’re also cracking for showing real time spends etc. Now it’s a bank so I can use it for everything if I wanted – if it paid interest, I’d probably switch to it!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I’ve done GPS tracked activities around military bases. In fairness, I don’t think it’s the end of the world.

See below

Running around RAF Leeming. That data is no different to data that can be gained from Google Maps just by looking.

Issues may arise with bases that aren’t supposed to exist, but exist…

In terms of tracking, this is all done on GPS tracking and I read an article the last week on Reddit in the Geocaching subreddit about the Yanks blocking GPS signals this year for the Red Flag (Top Gun) exercises which would affect civilian devices as well. So if needs be and the MOD decides that it poses a threat, it can prevent GPS from working.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

TCBarrett wrote:

RSB wrote:

I am curious to what fellow forumites opinions are on these two questions. 1. How accurate are these pedometer apps for android. I installed one called pedometer step meter this morning and was just curious 2. This is an “How long is a piece of string question” what do you consider a daily healthy walking distance is?

Hi The pedometers are all inaccurate. However, they are consistent. Whatever your pedometer reports, use that as a baseline for improvement. Improvement is improvement ?

This. I read the DC Rainmaker blog and he reviews a lot of items like this. He states

“Next to last – the vast majority of activity trackers are roughly accurate. To that I meant that no activity tracker on the market is perfect. None. Instead, they are estimations – treat them as such. Each company tries to fine tune their algorithms for various use cases. Some might be better at guarding against false positives in the shower, but less so doing dishes. Others the inverse. What matters is that at the end of the day if your activity tracker said you only did 2,000 steps, and your goal was 10,000 steps – then you were…lazy. Meanwhile, if it says you did 9,782 steps and you think you really did 9,923 or 9,458 – just go walk around the block an extra time. It’s about tracking trends – not exacts.”

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

blacklion1725 wrote:

Thank you both – will have a nose. I’m only bothered about the SSD as she des like to turn things off (properly off!) at the drop of a hat. The NUC boots up in no time so just a bit worried that if the spinner takes a while to boot she’ll be less inclined to use it. I’ll have a look at all these options though – ta.

My gran was like that. Laptop took an age to boot and would then struggle as it tried to update everything. So she barely used it, which just increased the problem, which meant it was used less, ad infinitum.

My aunt and mum bought her an iPad and she’s not looked back since!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Ed P wrote:

Best smart watch I have is from the now defunct Pebble range. The e-ink screen means that one week between a fast charge is the normal minimum, and avoids the need to do without a watch overnight. It is also much thinner than typical klunky Android/Apple watches. I really do not understand why they became the ‘Betamax’ of smart watches.

Oh, I forgot I had one of those (a series 1 Pebble). That got me in to smartwatches. However, there was a limit to the apps I believe – only 10 installed at once? However, I didn’t have that many apps in the app store IIRC so I never really mad use of that space.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Sorry to hear the bad news, but as stated already, good news as well!

So I guess chin up and best of luck!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Richard wrote:

Thank you drezha, a very good, useful, educational (to me at least) response. I wondered what age the cars were that were tested as it is my impression that many current cars contain a range of highly combustible plastic materials such as wings and bumpers that do burn somewhat hotter than the metal on some older vehicles. The use of rust free but less fire resistant plastic fuel tanks is another variable that may or may not be relevant. Though to go against that, the original fire start vehicle was suggested to have been an older Land Rover. It is all guess work and speculation so its time for me to shut up.

In the study carried out by BRE, all vehicles were no more than 5 years old (that was one of the major criteria). (Some of these were sourced from the local police impound 😉 )

Duke – All of that is taken in to account in the calculations. The staircases are protected spaces. We assume two people per car (which is what guidance states). We assume worst case that all car park spaces are full and filled with people. The stair cases would be protected for 30 minutes, so someone getting in to one should be protected from fire and smoke for 30 minutes.

Srry for delay responding, I’m at RAFC Cranwell this week on my officers initial course.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I’ve been on the smart watch band wagon for a while now. I started off with the Garmin Vivoactive which was almost perfect. I at a later date moved to a Polar M400 to match my Polar V600 cycling GPS but whilst it was better at the sport aspect than the Garmin, the smart watch function was poor. I then went to the Apple Watch, before heading back to the Vivoactive. I tried to upgrade to the Vivoactive 2 but it was terrible – I hated the format (more strap than watch) and went back to Apple. However, I’ve recently gone to the Vivoactive 3 and it’s ideal. Only thing I’m missing is Apple Pay, but the Garmin version should be coming soon.

 

For a pure smart watch, the Apple Watch was good, but the daily charge was a PITA.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Well, in terms of the Liverpool car park fire – we tend to only consider that three cars are on fire. This has been backed up by testing by BRE – full scale tests were conducted that showed that fire started in one car and spread to the adjoining cars. Once it spread sideways to those cars, the initial car had dropped off and the effect from heat was negligible. Therefore, the peak was considered to be three cars. However, as the images at Liverpool show, there was somewhat more than 3 cars on fire! Open sided car parks only require 30 minutes fire protection to the structure (hence why the concrete was so badly spalled – there wasn’t a lot of it to start with!

General fire safety design is for life safety – get everyone out safely. It performed as it should have done in this case as no one was injured.

In terms of expertise, they’re looking at saying that only chartered engineers can do desktop studies. Which is ridiculous, because (as I’m almost chartered), I know I don’t have the experience to do that and wouldn’t. In fact, it’s part of my chartership to hold my hands up and say sorry, I can’t do that (to anything I know I cannot do)!

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Yeah, I was surprised at how much we used the Echo – I thought it would be a one trick pony, but it’s actually been quite handy. Linked in to IFTTT, it replaces Siri for some things (like adding to the shopping list!)

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Auto upload is built in to the DS Photo app, you just have to switch it on when you set the app up and that works fine. Note that DS Photo will only save it to it’s own little folder, it won’t let you play nicely with an existing location (i.e. I store Photos in my home folder under Pictures >My Photos>Year>Month and DS Photo wants it stored in it’s own location). However, that isn’t a deal breaker for me and I just duplicate the photos!

Yes, DS Photo will allow access from anywhere and you can view them all.

The DS 115j should be fine. When you upload the photos to the NAS it creates thumbnails – the 115j might be a bit slower (hence why Synology offer a photo uploader tool on it’s website that allows you to create all the thumbnails etc on the machine that you’re uploading from which will do it quicker). That’s how we backed up my girlfriends parents photos and it was much quicker. Then , unless you’re uploading GB’s at a time, the rest of the time it should be relatively painless and quick.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

I have a DS116 at home and a DS115j at my girlfriends parents house. The DS116 is faster – it has more RAM and a faster CPU, so I find it better as a power user of all the features (backup, DS Audio so I can stream music, DS Photo to backup my photos, Resilio Sync installed, Cloud Sync running). Mine is also multi user though my girlfriend uses it less often so it’s never always streaming to both of us.

The DS115j is a lot slower, in terms of downloading updates etc. Noticeably so when on the access page – but this is possibly also due to it being located in rural Ireland! However, for the backing up of photos to it and the backup of the single home PC to it, (and then overnight backup to my NAS) is ideal for her parents use.

USB2 or 3 is not really an issue – I have a USB drive hooked up to mine permenantly to back up the main NAS drive every 4 hours, but after the first time, it doesn’t really take that long so it wouldn’t be to much of a pain to use a USB2 drive. I don’t really move files direclty on and off it that much to make it issue and I don’t share the data on the connected USB drive.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Well the tests are carried out by UKAS accredited testing houses – in the UK that would be Exova Warrington or BRE (of which, I used to work for BRE, though not on the testing side). As far as I am aware, no Building Control in the country would accept a self certified test, hence one of the above two has to test this. If it passes a BS test,then it is accredited to that BS. However, it doesn’t have to be tested at a later date – I think it is ISO tests that continue to test the materials/item over the course of it’s manufacturing lifetime (i.e. five years later, the product is tested again to ensure that it is still being manufactured the same).

The self accreditation thing perhaps comes in to play where the architect/contractor can request a desktop study of an item. This is where a build up of materials (so in the case of the external walls, a BS 8414 test) has passed a British Standard fire test. This test has tested this exact build up – so everything has to be the same to comply with the BS, including the external finish etc. The desktop study then takes this initial test and compares what the architect wants to change. You might have a combustible panel as part of this build up, but if it has passed the BS test with that panel in place, it is compliant.

So take an example where an architect wants to use a combustible panel behind a terracotta tiled panel. This might be a tested system and is therefore safe. Someone else wants to use a slate tile on the front. The desktop study allows for an engineer to turn around and say that slate is anon combustible material like terracota and as the terracotta panel passed, then this one should pass as well and you don’t have to pay £25,000 for the test to be undertaken. Some Building Controls have accepted that in the past thought personally, that’s a grey area (as I don’t know enough about materials science to say with certainity that it’ll perform the same!)

I think that’s what you mean.

Other areas of the Building Regs can be self certified, like plumbing and extensions etc I believe (though I don’t deal with many domestic properties so couldn’t say for sure).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[Drezha]

Well, the plasterboard rule of pink = fire rated isn’t always true because British Gypsum offer different plasterboard to other manufacturers and there isn’t a common standard.

Current rules (which I don’t imagine will change) are that you do not have to comply with the existing Building Regulations, unless your refurbishment works make anything worse. In this case, that isn’t the case. Current Building Regs are 2010 (and the house building guidance to meet that, ADB Volume 1, was updated in 2013 IIRC – certainly was for non-domestic premises).

Gluing plasterboard on to Kingspan or Celotex would be permitted – a building of 18m or less (including a house) can be made of fully combustible materials (but is required to have the escape routes lined in fire rated materials).

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

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