If I pedal faster and feed it spinach, my robot barman might pull more pints Help me up, would you, luvvie? Like any child of the Sixties, I dreamt a future of spaceships and robots, not of fat-arsed celebs, whinging royals and the manipulation of the feeble-minded by nationalists whose wealth accumulates off-shore. After growing up, I looked back to realise I had been dreaming in sci-fi cloudland …
Dangerous thinking about the exercise bike , if you recall the Black Mirror episode "Fifty Million Merits".
But yes, unharnessed effort is a wonderful potential source of electricity generation. I'm a bit too reliant on a walking stick already due to arthritis linked to over exercising in previous decades. So I'd be looking at other potential sources. My best idea is the electricity generating bed. Compression and uncompression of mattress springs could be used to generate a current for device charging. Yes, you'd be working whilst you slept! And other more vigorous bed based activities would generate even more power.
If its not possible simultaneously prone, my knees won't be up to it*.
That doesn't mean we won't try-try-try, though.
Dabbsy, if you set your sights higher, you can get a motorised tracked chair with joystick-controlled miniguns and a basket for your and the lady's shopping.
Missus_C has found several ways to fool her FaTBITch watch.
Pre WFH days, she realised that hand gestures whilst chatting worked well. Walk the Walk or Talk the Talk, fatbitch still gives you steps.
She's also found that knitting vigorously can also fool it.
Hey Dabbsy, why don't you have a "Written by staff" badge for your account? Are they too cheap to let you have one? Did you piss someone off & your punishment is not getting one? Have the aliens abducted you & replaced you with a sack full of soggy whore durves? (Sorry, I never could spell that one correctly.)
I've upvoted you in hopes of showing a general desire for you to get your staff badge (back) and hope others will upvote you in solidarity.
Plus, I want a Gundam catalog in my mail, you lucky fart! =-)
I'm not staff.
He is Not a Number either. Though sometimes has aspirations for the Number 7
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My local French garden centre has come up with an interesting variant on "click&collect". Garden centres are allowed to open to sell essentials, presumably in case you have an urgent need to prune or kill something. This includes barbecue accessories though not, oddly, the barbecues themselves.
All the 'essentials' are on open sale, but the aisles with the deemed non-essential tat that such places also sell, such as candles, kitchenware, Christmas decor etc. are taped off. They do, however, all have a sign saying "if you see something you want, please do not take it. Order it from one of the sales staff, and it will be available for you to collect at the desk. Credit card payment only".
Buying non-essentials the French way
The rules state that you're still allowed to buy food (if there is a supermarket at <1km from your home), but that for everything else you are supposed to use Amazon (especially for your Christmas shopping).
It's an Amazon support measure, to help prevent the collapse of the french economy...
Best way to avoid looking like a rambler is to use the wrist straps properly ;)
https://www.mountaindesigns.com/field-notes/how-to-guides/how-to-use-hiking-pole-wrist-straps
They're there to transmit your arms' push without the need to grip them, not just to stop you loosing them
"started receiving the infamous Modern Man catalogue in my favourite new language"
For some reason that gave me flashbacks to the "Innovations" catalogue that used to periodically appear through the door or with some broadsheet newspapers. Glossy pictures of brilliant solutions to problems that didn't exist such as the ioniser to recreate the refreshing air found just after a storm.
Craig Ferguson (Scottish comedian nowadays best known as a late night chat show host in the US) did a sketch on this where James Bond was fitted out for a mission by Q with items from the catalogue, including a "wireless woodland creature".
Monoprix also sounds like a much more fun place to shop than the Co-Op that just opened near my house.
It's my own fault that I receive them as I unpeeled the ugly STOP PUB ("no junk mail") sticker from my letterbox when I moved in. In France you get heaps of printed junk stuffed in there almost every day, which Mme D was not too pleased about at first. However, some of it provides amusement and quite a lot of it comes with generous money-off vouchers to spend at all the highly competitive supermarkets nearby. Over the summer, I must have saved a good 200-300€ on my shopping just using freebies in my junk mail.
"It's my own fault that I receive them as I unpeeled the ugly STOP PUB ("no junk mail") sticker from my letterbox when I moved in. In France you get heaps of printed junk stuffed in there almost every day, which Mme D was not too pleased about at first. However, some of it provides amusement and quite a lot of it comes with generous money-off vouchers to spend at all the highly competitive supermarkets nearby. Over the summer, I must have saved a good 200-300€ on my shopping just using freebies in my junk mail."
Well, Dabsy, that was indeed in the principle a risky move, but fear not, "STOP PUB" only gets you only 50% of junk mail anyway. I take it you, like me, get it in bulk, by 2kg packs, yeah ?
As for the absurd french regulations (even the german have now shockingly discovered humour by calling France "Absurdistan", by now). The priceless part was: ski stations are open. But no ski lifts, bars nor restaurants. Enjoy going up by feet if you're not into cross country skiing or "ski de randonnée", which is 99.8% of skiers. And if you are into cross country, no worries, no-one will prepare tracks, anyway, given the huge costs and no income, so enjoy bogging down in fresh snow ! And eat a wet sandwich by -10C in the wind.
But welcome to Absurdistan, Dabsy !
Good thing the Gendarmes only stopped you to make fun of your hairband and leg-warmers and not to beat the shit out of you...
I was not that impressed with the Mate site, they seemed more interested in obtaining my details than giving any real info about the gadget, including the price.
In my experience having at one time been a person with purchasing power for a large organisation, any sales wonk who won't give you an up front price, (even as a guide should discounts apply if you buy more) is usually trying to screw you.
Which brings me to the name. one letter away from a well known brand of condoms, ironic considering the 'appliance' aids in shoulder action but nothing for the wrist.
I must say I am a little disappointed at not receiving modern man type catalogues as someone close to 70, maybe it's because I never share my details including my address.
As far as walking sticks go, I have been making and selling rustic sticks for decades, fortunately, they are not a necessity for walking but handy for balance when strolling in the local mountains.
The Pope eye thing was based on two problems: One was that they got the decimal point in the wrong place in the iron content measurement and the other is that the iron in cruciferous vegetables is fully bio-available to us. It isn’t. For a start it gets chelated by stuff in the leaves so your digestion can’t get at the iron and secondly it’s ferrous iron which is absorbed an order of magnitude less than haem iron from the muscles, liver or blood sausage of a dead herbivore (or omnivore in the case of the pig).
The good news is that haem iron potentiates the uptake of ferrous iron. So eat some bacon, liver or black pud with your spinach.
Speaking as someone who brews his own beer I’m alarmed. It’s one step from a robot barman to a robot brewer. I brew with buckets and big pans and plastic pressure barrels and bottles. I can spend up big and buy a stainless steel widget which mashes, sparges, boils and cools your brew at the press of a button (after you have filled it with the necessaries). It seems to take the craft out of craft brew in my mind.
My latest is a clone of Wadworth’s finest 6X a brew I’m rather fond of but is hard to find here in Dundee. I have to make do with the excellent Hobgoblin instead. it’s just been barrelled. Will be ready on Xmas day. Xmas cheer in a barrel.
I rediscovered the joys of 6X in the dank depths of a Birmingham Goth Club a couple of years ago, wonderful beer (that I thought had disappeared in the 80's at some point!)... Great to see the homebrew crowd making beer with flavour instead of insipid lagers these days!
When a robo-barman offers the same sympathetic head nodding and budget therapy my regular bar jockeys provide I'll pay attention.
I like the sound of the French attestation form and wonder why we in the UK haven't come up with something similar? After all it doesn't appear to do anything other than show Le Plod what time you've nipped out for an escargot baguette. It should fit right in with our easy-to-understand tier system.
I think to be on the safe side I'll print one of the French forms out just in case Boris announces a mid-Saturday afternoon change of pillockry, sorry, policy.
How many pieces of paper can you carry?
"I went for my run at 12.05pm"
"I went for my run at 12.10pm"
"I went...." etc.
Still, if you're going to be honest filling those things in, there's being too honest: https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/23/french-man-fined-for-leaving-home-during-lockdown-to-beat-someone-up
You will look back in fondness at those when you hit sixty and are greeted by an NHS letter suggesting you might want to get yourself checked out for arse cancer and other delights.
I appreciate the seriousness of the issues, the screening they do, and I am certain they mean well and it's nice they care - but their timing could be better. Not even a "happy birthday" - just "shit on this set of sticks". It all puts quite a downer on 'Yay! Sixty!".
Some years back Mrs Coward used to get discounted medical insurance, providing she walked a certain (largish) number of steps. It was a good deal. And she did walk more. Just not that much more. Sitting, instead, agitating the device that recorded her "steps " while watching Eastenders seemed so much more errr efficient use of time.
AC to protect the guilty.
I want a proper La-Z-Boy chair. Those huge ones with a built-in fridge, for beer. My version would have a decent sound system, a large unfoldable screen like a better version of an airliner bulkhead seat tray table, and it would be fully connected.
It would have motors, so it could take me to wherever I want to go - probably the pub. And Google/Alexa would complete the deal. OK, Google, take me you know where.
I'd never leave the chair, and would have no need, ever, for walking frames or for sticks, other than to clout those who try to ponce a beer off of me.
In public or private sectors, technocrats are very, very good at creating stupid rules. COVID is a blessing for them, they can show how creative they can be.
If something doesn't change through times, it's bureaucracy. I expect it to be still in place in 2200 - if there are still humans, that is.
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