[Dave Rice]

I’m afraid that might have to happen for people to wake up. I don’t see so much excuse making for the Govt as I did at the start. You know, Germany has a lower rate because its rural, that sort of thing.

Boris is all for levelling up, “I believe in building people up, giving everyone growing up in this country the opportunity they need, whoever you are, whatever your ethnicity, whatever your background.” then  presides over a system that penalises or boosts you depending on where you live and what school you went to. So much for championing the individual.

Like Trump, when the governing gets too hard just bluster your way through it and double down. After all it’s 4 years until the next election. Plenty of time to rewrite history.

[Dave Rice]

I agree with everything you’ve both said, especially the Cat 6 comment. Cat 6 is a total PITA because of the internal plastic X brace that keeps the pairs apart. It gives you a bend radius of an oil tanker.

You can use any old Cat 5e, especially if it’s going in trunking, but the proper stuff has and ED says UV and a tougher jacket. If just done an Amazon search on external Cat 5e, take your pick. You don’t need to spend a fortune on a Krone punch down tool, around a fiver. I’d look for a deal with a cable stripper and / or a cable tester, like this. Follow the ‘B’ pattern you’ll see on the socket, plugs are wire up like this

Cable testers, the basic ones are basically battery and lamp and will show connectivity but not if you’ve screwed the pairs up or if there’s a break in the cable. This one will flash the pairs up in sequence so you can see if the same number flashes at the same time on the remote (you’ll need the Mrs to help here).  I use this one myself, but I have 8 remotes so I can test a lot in one location.

EDIT – the only time we use Cat 6 is on MOD jobs because they insist on it, even for a 5mbps CCTV camera. It also has a very high grade jacket to cut down on smoke and particles in a fire. Costs >£200 a box and we can’t get it form our suppliers so they get it for us! Typical MOD decision making, you won’t be fired by going for the highest spec. In this case it’s the second highest as no-one in the world makes the highest!

[Dave Rice]

Problem is detecting phones proximity to each other. GPS and Bluetooth just aren’t accurate enough.

I’m not sure there will be anything better, plus it needs a large majority to join in. Faith in this Govt isn’t exactly high, it’s becoming clear they just cannot think things through, even the bleeding obvious.

[Dave Rice]

Looks dodgy to me. Another thumbs up for My Memory, I’ve used them for years. If it’s coming from Switzerland it takes a few days but lately it’s been very quick, I think they have a depot somewhere like Jersey now. IIRC it was not long after the Brexit vote.

[Dave Rice]

What are they iGlasses? :wacko:

[Dave Rice]

Pound shop glasses are for reading and they’re OK for that to a point, it’s how I started. As your eyes get worse, which they will, then you’ll find the difference in a proper pair of specs is amazing, especially if one eye is different to the other. Mine seem to deteriorate by +0.5 every test.

Now mine are over +2 I’ve found I need the lens to be constructed differently to readers so that I can use the same pair for reading the kindle and using the laptop. I believe they are known as intermediates.

[Dave Rice]

It seems they’re all going nowhere 

Brexit: Boris Johnson’s promise of lucrative trade deals in trouble, study warns
PM vowed to ‘take back control’ – but dithering has handed advantage to countries on other side of the table, Institute for Government says.

All this was going to be so easy wasn’t it? As people pointed out we have no experience of doing these deals. The idea that everyone would bend to our will and they would be queuing up to do deals because “they get more from us than we get from them”. Well there’s another way to right that imbalance, ask Trump.

I’m afraid this has gone further than any of the pseudo economic crap that was peddled and into Charge of the Light Brigade territory. If there is no deal I don’t think it will hit the headlines much but the fall out will, a lot of which will be blamed on Coronavirus.

They’d better get holidays to Spain and France sorted out too. Wait until people have to start paying for Green Cards again, or forget and get fined the moment they drive out of the port.

[Dave Rice]

I get mine from Glasses Direct and they are better than the Vision Express ones in all respects.

I discovered them when the mother-in-law lost her £300 boots varifocals and there was a TV ad at the right time. They really do have an optician check everything, m-i-l prescription didn’t contain eyeball separation distance so they had me take a photo of her with a credit card on her forehead for reference. The glasses arrived and they were perfect, despite going for every coating and a transition tint they were £132 comapred to £300.

In my own case Vision Direct’s latest proved OK for reading but useless for the laptop. Told I needed intermediate ones instead and they would be full price despite them admitting they knew my occupation and laptop use. So sent the prescription off to GD to find there was again missing information, soon sorted out with a quick chat about the current pair and distances involved. Two pairs, one “designer”, with three coatings £114 and it’s the cheap ones I wear most.

I will be going to them all the time from now on, next test due in about a year from now. Think I’m going to need distance ones too so it may be varifocal time.

[Dave Rice]

Beat me to it. Window cleaners don’t use ladders any more.

[Dave Rice]

Can you spot when I changed over?

[Dave Rice]

Shit the bed! Is that your inner Johnny Depp calling?

[Dave Rice]

24 hours on TT, set it to every 10 minutes in the end.

The dramatic speed drops are on the hour which makes me think it’s something going on on the Pi rather than TT. Can’t be arsed to work out how to make Cron go off at say 3 minutes past the hour then every 10 minutes.

4G next.

[Dave Rice]

Looks like the first explosion was something to do with a fireworks store by the flashes going off, then after a while boom! That also explains why so many caught it on camera.

The aftermath reminds me of the photos of Hiroshima.

[Dave Rice]

Odds on it’s birds not mice.

I had a mouse problem at work when we moved into a new build on a rural site. The comms room had a false floor and that’s where the little buggers were. If you can get a pencil in a hole a mouse can get through it so the entry can be very hard to spot even when it’s in front of you.

Nolan’s idea of a phone is a good one but what about the lighting? Trail cameras aren’t silly money these days. This one looks fine for £40 on Amazon

[Dave Rice]

Saw it on the news, looks like it’s an explosives warehouse.

[Dave Rice]

My son’s PhD was on the same subject but measuring prescription drug traces, so why are we so behind? Bath University has been involved for 5 years, since the inception of the idea, so why is it Bangor Uni who weren’t part of the EU wide project?

[Dave Rice]

My new Panasonic is very fast at Netflix or iPlayer etc, the same as the Mk1 Amazon TV box.

New project for the Pi: internet speed monitor

Intended to properly measure the Three 4G service but tested on the TalkTalk FTTC 40 / 10 which is a lot more up and down than I expected.

Set to poll every 30 minutes, you can set whatever interval you want though. It uses the speedtest.net api, InfluxDB and Grafana to display the data via a browser. Neat.

 

[Dave Rice]

Thought I’ll be back to more boxes under the TV, however the Apple TV does Disney, Netflix and Amazon Prime and 4K too.

Even with a brand new “smart” TV it seems separate boxes and remotes are unavoidable.

[Dave Rice]

OK, so they’ll be thinking we’ll do this place then off to #17…

[Dave Rice]

Just looked at my TalkTalk contract and it’s out at the end of this month :yahoo: The 4G trial has fallen on it’s arse after lock down, it’s just not reliable enough. I would imagine our estate is stuffed full of home workers looking at the cars that are parked up 24 / 7 now. I think it will take 5G but God knows when that will be now.

I looked on the BT site and I can get FTTP (that explains all the work they’ve been doing) but I decided that FTTC speeds are fast enough plus I want to make sure I can keep my Draytek router.

The cost difference of >40mbps is now so small I’m going faster, if only to get the quicker upload speeds. I cannot wean the Mrs off the landline (and her family, they all have mobiles!) so I need a calls package.

Ended up with Vodaphone Superfast 2 Extra – 63/20 unlimited everything plus a free Apple TV and a years subscription. The Apple TV didn’t seal the deal it was the cost saving plus faster speeds and I know they have no issues with Openreach approved 3rd party routers – because unlike a lot of others they say so!

There’s also no cost increases plus the end of contract price is only £1 more, unlike a lot of others.

The TT subscription ends on the 31st but Vodaphone can only switch Mon – Fri so the 28th it is. TT have just told me they’ll be charging my 84 pence to leave early. FFS, I’ll be glad to be rid of them. Just working out how much renewing with them would cost was a nightmare, they hide costs like the phone package – which they are quite upfront about doing!

 

 

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