Monday Mystery

Last weeks seems to have been more than a little difficult



was part of



my aroma diffuser. A few drops of lavender, honeysuckle (or whatever you fancy) fragrance oil in 200ml of water is slowly turned to a mist by ultrasonic vibrations. There are also colour changing LED lights. The paper towel is there to catch any condensation drops when the top is removed to top up the water level.

Will this weeks close up be any easier to identify?



Any guesses left in the comments will be revealed next Monday.

A Splash of Colour

Having updated the operating system in the MacBook I was culling some of the apps I never seem to use. One I had forgotten about was Color Strokes so I fired it up to remind me how it worked. It is a very easy to use program for converting a colour photo to grey scale and then manually picking out some areas to restore to their original colours, often termed colour popping.

A few examples











I was enjoying using the app so much I had to force myself to stop.

Monday Mystery

Many thanks to all who had a go at identifying



from last Monday. It was indeed a melon,



a Galia Melon which appears to have very similar markings to a Cantaloupe. That was the first I had tried as I had to give up my usual Honeydew (too high in Potassium for me). The Galia was lovely, juicy and slightly sweet - delicious. Now a firm, or should I say soft, favourite here.

Right, fancy trying this one? What is this part of?



Once again any guesses left in the comments will be held over until next Monday.

I'll Be Glad When September Is Over

What a month so far. I must make up a new rhyme to include the line 'September is full of woe'. Things started to go wrong near the start of the month. One of my 13A dual sockets included a couple of USB ports for charging phones, etc.. One of the 13A outlet switches had jammed in the on position so I decided to order a replacement. Looking through eBay I found a seller with a 100% reputation and ordered a replacement with a turbo charge USB outlet. After a couple of days a package duly arrived. On opening it I could see I had been sent an older version, not the one listed. Somewhat miffed I duly opened a 'item not as described' case on eBay and received a pre paid return label. Within an hour I had a profusely apologetic email from the seller promising an immediate refund on receipt of the return.

Next day (Friday 13th) I trundled off to the Post Office in the next village to post the offending item back. Just as I walked up to the P.O. counter a notice went up - Position Closed. The computer had gone down and refused to re-connect to the system so no business could be undertaken. How did we survive before the birth of Babbage or Bill Gates?  Back in the car I drove to another village where I had seen a P.O. in the past only to find it had closed down some time ago. That meant going in to Louth but as I hadn't any loose change for parking fees I couldn't go to the main Post Office. Anyway it was a market day so finding a parking space would have been a problem. Fortunately there was another branch P.O. in Louth and a quick look in Google Maps on the iPhone showed me where to find it. Fortunately, though it was on a narrow back street, I was able to find a parking space opposite. Their computer was working so the job was finally done. True to his word the seller did refund my money the day he received the returned item.

That was just the start. A few days later I had decided to order a new Internet Radio from Amazon. That arrived the following day. Unpacked it and set it up. Plugged in the wall wart power supply and switched on. Nothing. No life in the radio. No message on the screen. After checking the PSU was working properly I went on the laptop and contacted Amazon's technical department. After going through everything I had tried it was conclude the receiver was most likely dead on arrival. Another returns label issued and courier arranged to pick it up. Money was refunded within a couple of hours. As the radio had lots of good reviews I ordered a replacement once my money was returned to my account. Fortunately the replacement is behaving perfectly - so far.

Was that an end to September woes? Not yet. Last night I was watching a recording of an episode of Last of the Summer Wine on my FreeSat box. Half way through the screen went blank and the box became very sluggish in responding. When I eventually got to look at the list of available recordings it was blank. About 47 programs I had recorded had all disappeared. Tried the usual. Switch off, wait a bit, switch on. No joy. Still no recordings listed. I thought the hard drive had probably crashed.  Tried a few more things to no avail. As a last resort I found the menu item which could force the box to reset to factory settings. An anxious minute or two as it did its stuff and then had to go through all the set up instructions as though it was a new box. Finally it was back up and working properly and, joy on joy, all my recording were showing again.

Nine more days left to the month - will it throw any more spanners in the works?

Mowing

Not a deal of note hereabouts recently. The grass on the back lawn was getting far too high. As the Sun was shining and had dried most of the overnight dew I decided to give the ride-on mower an airing. It was so long since I last used it I nearly flattened the battery trying to engage the cutter. Every time I tried the motor cut out. Dumbo that I am. It has so many interlocking safety features I had forgotten that the cutter cannot be engaged unless the grass collector box is attached. Other features include a mico switch under the seat. Get off and the motor cuts out. I find the most difficult is the way I have to press two pedals to keep the cutter operating when reversing.  One of the pedals is very short and my shoe tends to slide off it.

Anyway here for your delectation is some security camera captures of me mowing the lawn. One of the few chances you will get to actually see me.

Monday Mystery

It's a long, long while since I posted a What's That? type of photo.
Here, at last, is a new one.



What was I photographing here?
Answer will be given next Monday.
Any guesses left in the comments will be hidden until then.

Weaver - Thank You

For what? Well, a few days ago The Weaver of Grass happened to mention cooking her meal in her Remoska. Remoska? I had never seen that name before so I was intrigued. I then spent that evening scouring the internet for information. First to find out what it is. An electric cooking pot with a low wattage heater in the lid.



Then to find out what people had to say about them. There seems to be a tremendous fan base and lots of recipes around to try out. I made my mind up and decided to buy a standard one. It duly arrived this afternoon.

Determined to try it out I threw together a few ingredients I fancied.

Four lamb steaks seared in shallow olive oil.
 

Some sliced potato and sliced carrots par-boiled


Half a chopped onion and half a sliced apple


All placed in the Remoska with a sprinkling of olive oil and some ground black pepper.


Cooked for about 15 minutes and then a stock made with an OXO lamb stock cube was added and cooking resumed for another 25 minutes. As you can probably guess, I was making it up as I went along.

Once done two dishes were served, one for me and one for the four legged boss.
    

What did Penny think of it?


I think it could have done with a bit longer cooking to tenderise the lamb more as they were quite thick steaks. Everything else was perfectly cooked. There is bound be be a learning curve with any new cooker.

It may (probably will) seem a weird mixture to some but I am limited as to my diet choices these days as I have to maintain a low potassium intake so I just put together the things I can eat safely and enjoy eating. There was too much for one meal so Penny has more cooked lamb waiting in the fridge for tomorrow.

I can see I am going to enjoy experimenting with this cooker.
Next will be a whole chicken which is waiting patiently in the fridge.

On the diet / potassium front, yesterday I spent the morning in the Nephrology department at Grimsby hospital. My first contact with a consultant. A very pleasant, patient, informative woman doctor who explained that at my age kidneys would normally be about 60% efficient but mine are down to 30%. The consultation lasted about twenty minutes and a lot of detail was discussed. After handing over the usual sample and a visit to the vampire dept to give some blood I was allowed home. An ultrasound scan is being arranged. The next meeting will be in about two months time. If the tests being made don't show up anything too nasty I will be discharged from hospital care. Also I have had some detailed information from the Dietician at Lincoln hospital. What I must avoid, what I should try to avoid and what I can tuck in to.

Common Darter

I can't remember a time when I have seen so many dragonflies. These past few days there have been dozens about. Hawkers down the end of the lane and Darters around my garden. There may well have been a lot but finding one still long enough to photograph was a different matter. This Common Darter was the only co-operative one I found.





These were crops from the original photos taken in RAW with the Canon M5.

As it was resting on a cut log at ground level I was on hands and knees trying to stealthily move round to get a head on view but it wasn't having any of that and flew away.

A Quick Fix

A problem had arisen with the 3D printer.
The table bed was lifting away from the heater element in one corner.

 

That was actually causing several problems while printing. The nearer the print head was to that corner the larger the chance of the nozzle scraping on the bed. Also without a small gap between the nozzle and the bed no material was being laid down. Lastly it also meant there would be significant changes in temperature across the bed which doesn't help with initial adhesion of the PLA. It wasn't really noticeable until I started printing the front panel for my weather displays. That used nearly the full width of the bed. This problem is not unknown and a 'temporary' fix was easily implemented. Measure the thickness of the bed and heater plate when they were properly touching and design a clamp to hold them in place. That is just what I did in Tinkercad:



Then I printed out four of them in case they were needed on all four corners of the bed.



As it happened I only needed to use two. Fitting one at the front left

 

caused the diagonally opposite corner to lift slightly so I put one there as well.



Job done and the next print session showed the problem was cured, for now anyway.
You may be thinking that the heat from the bed would cause the clamps to melt, or at least warp. Not so as the temperature used to melt the PLA in the nozzle is over 100 degrees hotter than the bed temperature.

Snow?

No, not yet, though the keen wind blowing today makes it feel like snowy weather.
Locally there are several gardens with Snowberry plants.  On one hedge the branches were hanging right over the footpath so I brought a bit home to photograph with the iPhone 6s:

Symphoricarpos albus  -  Common Snowberry

Though various mammals and birds eat the berries they can be poisonous to humans.