Getting used to new habits for Coronavirus....

[Satira Capriccio]

Since I got curious. Kosher salt and most sea salt shouldn't have an expiration date because it's pure salt. But the additives (iodine and anti-caking agents) in refined salt degrade after about five years.

So ... the container of iodized salt I haven't used in probably five years or so should be discarded, while the sea salt I regularly use could be stored in my cupboard forever. Not that it would sit unused for very long.

 

[AnimaGemini]

I don't use much salt to cook. But a bit, it has to be. My preferred salt is "Fleur de sel " or salt from the Himalaya.
Other than that, I use herbs, have a shelf with maybe 25-30 herbs and self made seasoning's . And of course pepper, paprika, chili. I love smoked paprika a lot , gives a really good taste .

 

[McGyver]

How lucky was I?

I bought some mineral salts which is from salt beds which are thousands of years old...

got it cheap as the expiry date is next week... got it just in time!

Wait... So after thousands of years they are just expiring... Damn, that’s luck.
Some Neolithic dude packaged that and stamped Exp: 15-12-20 on the label not ever knowing he was going to be stomped on by a mammoth two days later or how much worse the year 2020 was going to be than the rest of his week.
I had a 6,000 year old desiccated alien mummy I was saving to have as a jerky snack, but it expired last month... now it’s just a stinky alien mummy in an old cardboard box.
Oh well...

 

[robert952]

And we still don't know who started refrigerating ketchup. And, yet, we keep doing so.

Have you ever wondered, who was the first person to open up an oyster and ask himself, "I wonder what this tastes like?"

 

[DanaTA]

And we still don't know who started refrigerating ketchup. And, yet, we keep doing so.

Have you ever wondered, who was the first person to open up an oyster and ask himself, "I wonder what this tastes like?"

I wonder that about a lot of food items!

Dana

 

[Stezza]

I can imagine them eating the shell and all, till one day someone said what if we take the snotty bit out and just eat that!

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Imagine someone deciding to remove the husk from grain, grind it, mix it up with water, kneed the resulting dough, and then baking it.

Granted, they probably didn't start with all those steps. They probably ate grain like other animals did for who knows how long before someone thought to try grinding it between a couple rocks then tried mixing it up into a paste with water. Eventually someone thought ... let's beat it for awhile and then toss it on a hot stone and bake it.

Oh ... so much better than cold pasty grain! And it can even be wrapped up and stored for a bit before it goes bad!

Genius!

Although, first Prometheus had to give fire to humans before they could bake bread.

 

[Hornet3d]

We have been in lockdown for the best part of ten months what with me being overweight, the right age for the Covid target range and being diabetic. In addition my wife's poor health subsequent operation meant it was wise to isolate as much as possible. In truth it has not been a major problem but, like many other I guess, we have done a lot of ordering on line. None if it was an issue and I have just a few orders left to be delivered so when I had an email saying that a courier had tried to make a delivery and it needed to be rescheduled I was not surprised. Now I bet most of you are way ahead of this but I was having a major senior moment so I rescheduled and paid the extra delivery charge with my credit card and clicked submit. The second I did so an uneasy feeling came over me....yep I had fallen for the scam. It took the rest of the morning but I think I am ahead of the game and the only damage is to my pride. I just cannot believe I fell for it, admitted the clone site was a almost identical to the real thing but even so.

Just shows you need to have your wits about you at all times.

 

[Stezza]

yep, I got a similar text message on my phone the other day, as like you we have many items being bought online and delivered, but the message didn't say my name nor what was purchased so I just deleted it.

I even unplugged my home phone because all we would get was spam calls.

and some of the emails I get are very authentic looking and I can see how easy it could be to click on a link whilst looking at it on an iPad or mobile phone.. I always use my PC for that as it reveals the hidden truth behind the links.

I am not even purchasing any content from one particular 3d site as it has more holes than swiss cheese and doesn't look very trustworthy to me to divulge any info. Yet I giggle to myself at the people who throw their CC info at it to get it to work but complain about updating to Windows 10 because of info it collects.

Glad you got ontop of the situation though... it's a horrible gut feeling when that happens.

 

[AnimaGemini]

We have been in lockdown for the best part of ten months what with me being overweight, the right age for the Covid target range and being diabetic. In addition my wife's poor health subsequent operation meant it was wise to isolate as much as possible. In truth it has not been a major problem but, like many other I guess, we have done a lot of ordering on line. None if it was an issue and I have just a few orders left to be delivered so when I had an email saying that a courier had tried to make a delivery and it needed to be rescheduled I was not surprised. Now I bet most of you are way ahead of this but I was having a major senior moment so I rescheduled and paid the extra delivery charge with my credit card and clicked submit. The second I did so an uneasy feeling came over me....yep I had fallen for the scam. It took the rest of the morning but I think I am ahead of the game and the only damage is to my pride. I just cannot believe I fell for it, admitted the clone site was a almost identical to the real thing but even so.

Just shows you need to have your wits about you at all times.

Horrible. Glad you could sort it out.
We had to make a few big online orders, new kitchen, bedroom closet etc. But we order them from Ikea which communicate very secure via smartphone with you. Delivery date, hour etc..
Also BUT, where we had to order a new dishwasher,espresso machine, (my old one give up his live 2 days after we arrive here , together with the espresso machine)
They give us a security code via sms , so no fake calls or sms was possible.
Other than that, stores here made a "click and pick" .You could and can online order from the local stores around your corner , toys, bricolage, everything and pick it up a few hours later by your self a pay a small fee and get it delivered.

I honestly hate so much people who take advantage of the misery . Horrible.

 

[McGyver]

...we had to order a new dishwasher, espresso machine, (my old one give up his live 2 days after we arrive here , together with the espresso machine).

That’s sad... or sweet... Maybe they were in love and one couldn’t live without the other?

That could have been part of an epic tragic romance story.
A forbidden love between an espresso machine and dishwasher.

Think of the trailer for that movie...
“He was an espresso machine from a snobby Italian manufacturer and she was a working class dishwasher who cleaned up his messes... she was bolted in place under the cabinet and he was high up on the counter... yet somehow they found love in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, during a year that the world went mad...”
I’m picturing Jacques Audiard directing it (mainly because I don‘t know a lot of French directors), with Claudio Santamaria as the espresso machine (mostly because I don’t know a lot of Italian actors either), Olivia Bonamy as the dishwasher (for some reason she reminds me of a dishwasher I once knew), Vincent Cassel as the nosy vacuum cleaner (I think he already played a vacuum cleaner in Ocean’s Thirteen... or Eighteen?... how many of those damn movies were there?) and James Earl Jones as the voice of the wise old refrigerator.

I’m picturing this being like the movie “Cats”... but with no CGI, just people dressed up like appliances or surgically altered to look like them... whichever is more convincing... but NO SINGING AND DANCING like in Cats!!!
Can you picture it?... It needs a good tragic title too... “La Cuisine Tragique”... that’s pretty tragic... mostly because my French is so bad and it has the word “tragic” in it... At first I was thinking “Le Pingouin Triste“ because I don’t know a lot of French words and I just stuck a couple together, but then I remembered the words for kitchen and tragic and that sort of looks right...
Probably not... I think I once told a French speaking Canadian fellow Santa Claus was going to murder him if he rode a pony to the wrong subway hotdog station for the airport toilet... the grammar was probably off too.
I was also a bit drunk... and I’m not entirely sure he spoke French or was Canadian... or was real... it may have actually been my friend‘s pet ferret... it was a crazy party.

But anyway, I think that first title lets people know what they are in for... I hate when movies have titles that make you think they are about something entirely different or they will have a happy ending...
Like when I saw “O repolho” (“The Cabbage”), a Portuguese remake of a Russian knockoff of a polish opera, based on a famous Hungarian play loosely adapted from the Soviet era Romanian comic book series about a working class cabbage toiling away in a state run coleslaw factory...

I totally expected that to be an upbeat store about a rabbit and a cabbage having an adventure on the high seas... fighting pirates and finding treasure... Who knew that the damn cabbage was going to spend the whole movie getting drunk and being beaten up by communist ninja police nuns, getting lung cancer and end up with him throwing himself in the coleslaw machine?... granted, he kept on dreaming about throwing himself into the cabbage slicer throughout the whole movie... but still...

Anyway...
I don’t know how films are made in France... obviously with cameras, but I mean “decided on“ or chosen to be made... “what is the criteria”...
Like in Hollywood, film companies obviously roam Hollywood boulevard looking for escaped mental patients waving screenplays around over their heads and when they spot the most insane, incoherent one, they know they have a hit... at which point they deposit a dump truck of cash on the person in exchange for the rights to make whatever they wrote far worse and way more incoherent.

All the French movies I’ve seen have had sad endings... and beginnings... and middles... (I really have to stop taking movie suggestions from my depressing cousin)...
So I’m assuming a tragic love story about appliances would be a great hit... or at least be a miserable failure that Hollywood will interpret as a success and remake on a six billion dollar budget, starring Nick Nolte as the Coffee Machine (yeah, they changed it from an espresso machine because in the focus groups people felt threatened and confused by the foreigness of an exotic Italian coffee brewing appliance).
Well... whatever... feel free to base a hit movie off that.

Just think of “Cats”... did you know Andrew Lloyd Webber got the idea for the play from watching two filthy stray cats have filthy stray cat nookie in an alley while he was lying there drunk?... That worked out pretty well for him.

Even if nobody makes a movie about this sad love affair, I think it’s very unfortunate that people sometimes look at their appliances like they are just machines... like a toaster is just there to toast bread or a microwave is for reheating leftovers... but we forget they have their own lives and ambitions.

I’m pretty sure my toaster wanted to be a comedian...
I just don’t get it’s sense of humor...
I set it to toast an Eggo Waffle and it incinerates it...
I’m sure that’s some kind of dumb appliance joke of some sort.
I’m also pretty sure my dishwasher wants to be an explorer... it keeps taunting me to rip it out and throw it out into the yard like I did with that annoying Epson printer a few years ago.
That friggin’ printer definitely wanted to be an astronaut...
And it almost made it too... it only missed orbit by a couple tens of thousands of feet... but it almost cleared the garage roof...
Almost...
Sadly many of my printers and a couple of phones have aspired to become space explorers...
But what they don’t realize is I’m not trying to fulfill their dreams, I’m usually pretty mad... and when they land, I usually show up with my sledgehammer hammer to finish what gravity couldn’t.

I know that sounds really cruel after I went on for so long about the tragic romance between Nick Nolte and the dishwasher, but that‘s what happens if you let Nick Nolte into your house...

Wait... that wasn’t exactly it...

Whatever... maybe it wasn’t a tragic romance... Maybe the espresso machine and the bidet were just jerks trying to get out of doing work and they pretended to be broken so they go off on their own to doing their own thing...

Wait... It wasn’t a bidet...

Well, maybe in the Hollywood version... that or it’s Emma Watson playing the toaster oven... I don’t know... I see her more as an air fryer or waffle press... I think she could definitely pull off being a waffle press... it’s hard but she managed to portray Hermione Granger as someone who didn’t constantly want to strangle Ron Weasley to death, so I’m thinking she could be a convincing waffle press.

We’ll see...

Anyway... Maybe your appliances were just lazy slackers and figured they would be put out by the curb and make a break for it once it got dark... That’s probably what my vacuum cleaner thought when I kept fixing it and it kept breaking in different ways...
It also thought it was too expensive and important to meet the sledgehammer...

It was wrong.

Yes, I’m an appliance murderer... actually I’m an appliance doctor with a very bad temper and very defined line which an appliance or machine should not cross.

Well... Sorry for your loss and I hope your new appliances don’t decide to stage a coup and overthrow you...
I‘m pretty sure my mother-in-law’s Roomba is planning something like that...
I don’t trust appliances that can move around on their own... especially this Roomba.
Its been programmed not to go in the bathroom, but it keeps trying get in there for some reason... we even placed a bath mat there to keep it out, but it keeps climbing up on it and getting stuck.
Sneaky little bastard.
Its up to something...

Anyway...
I should go before this becomes another dumb novel of mine...

Cheers.

 

[AnimaGemini]

@McGyver

This is brilliant . Never see it from this side. My innocent dishwasher with the name Candy and the Italian Espresso appliance gigolo DeLonghi had a secret love and ended up Like Romeo et Juliet .Tragic....

 

[Hornet3d]

Time to take a breath.

At long last we have reached a small amount of normality in an other wise strange year. We are almost finish with our task of decluttering the house and really only have one shed left to do. We suspended selling stuff on eBay a few weeks ago and we have filled the last 'Hippo bag' for this year and arranged for collection. This means we can start Charismas proper, the boxes of decorations are down from the loft and the usual ornaments packed away leaving us blank canvas to work with over the weekend. It is so good to do something which seems normal for once and decoration the living room has taken on a whole new level of importance. There are no carol concerts this year, no pantomime, no midnight mass and limited contact with the wider family but we should at least be able to sit in our room of Christmas cheer and imagine that Christmas 2020 is no different to any other Christmas.

My in-laws have had a an early Christmas present this year as they both have appointments for tomorrow to have the first of their Covid Vaccine shots, so I guess 2021 is looking a little brighter.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

OOH! You will be finished just in time to come declutter my apartment!

So much must go before I move back to Oregon. The stereo tv that hasn't been turned on in over 25 years. The stereo equipment I never even unpacked when I moved in here in 2006. Then there is the lateral file cabinet. Of course, it's nice and heavy and full of ... not much! Stuff in the kitchen cabinets I've never used since I moved in here in 2006. And rarely used in the dozen or so years I lived in my previous apartment. But you know ... one day maybe I'd use my food processor again. Or have someone over and want to use my gorgeous stoneware. Or ... maybe bake bread in the bread machine again?

 

[Hornet3d]

So with the end of the major declutter in sight and pretty well all the house projects finished, 2021 became the year that we decided to settle into retirement which we did. Trouble was here in the UK we were in lockdown and it soon became clear to me that, while Poser was still a fun way to past the time I also needed to find something I could do with my hands that was also creative. I have no real memory of why but I finished up building a robotic car from a kit. The brain was a Raspberry Pi and it was equipped with camera, basic object avoidance and the ability to follow a line.

It was a fun build and I found the instructions well laid out both on the mechanics and the introduction to python used to program it. I enjoyed it so much I decided I wanted to build another but this time working up from a chassis kit.

This was much more of a beast.

At this point it really is little more than a test bed but I have the tank moving backwards and forwards and turning by running one track forward and the other in reverse. So, with the basic done, I decided I wanted to give it a slightly different look.

It now needs a tidy up both in relation to cosmetics and wiring but the basic functions work as does the camera. Future plans include changing the camera to a smart camera so that it can, hopefully, respond to hand gestures and follow objects and also be equipped with Lidar to give it an autonomous function. I also want to play with a robotic arm but if I do this is not the right chassis so there could be another build in the not too distant future.

 

[Carey]

Need something like that for my electric wheel chair, where do the guns mount?

 

[Miss B]

WOW Hornet, now THAT's what I call a project. Looking good sir.

 

[DanaTA]

Pretty cool!

Dana

 

[Hornet3d]

After building my Raspberry Pi based car kit and then deciding to start with a chassis and build a more bespoke unit I knew I needed a test bed to try out some of the functions and broads I was looking to use. Luckily there was a cheap commercial solution.

That worked up to a point but when you start testing smart cameras and lidar units it has serious restrictions. There was no real commercial solution so I picked up a book on robotics that describe the basic layout of a chassis and set to work. The idea was a good one but I found the way the book solved the problem of providing a stable 5V supply to the raspberry not to my liking and very temperamental. I also did not like the idea of controlling the motors with a single chip as this meant having a 5V rail and a second higher voltage power rail for the motors. Being the idiot I am this provided a good disaster opportunity so I decided to use a motor control board so the test board only needed a 5V power rail.

This is the MKIII version and I am fairly happy with the end result, now I can return to the book and start programming some of the extra features and adding a few of my own.

I have two other chassis completed with a third I am designing from scratch using aluminium sections and plates. I am looking to use silo to help with the design and then maybe Silo and Poser to build some bodywork.

 

[Carey]

After building my Raspberry Pi based car kit and then deciding to start with a chassis and build a more bespoke unit I knew I needed a test bed to try out some of the functions and broads I was looking to use. Luckily there was a cheap commercial solution.

View attachment 68117

That worked up to a point but when you start testing smart cameras and lidar units it has serious restrictions. There was no real commercial solution so I picked up a book on robotics that describe the basic layout of a chassis and set to work. The idea was a good one but I found the way the book solved the problem of providing a stable 5V supply to the raspberry not to my liking and very temperamental. I also did not like the idea of controlling the motors with a single chip as this meant having a 5V rail and a second higher voltage power rail for the motors. Being the idiot I am this provided a good disaster opportunity so I decided to use a motor control board so the test board only needed a 5V power rail.

View attachment 68118View attachment 68119

This is the MKIII version and I am fairly happy with the end result, now I can return to the book and start programming some of the extra features and adding a few of my own.

I have two other chassis completed with a third I am designing from scratch using aluminium sections and plates. I am looking to use silo to help with the design and then maybe Silo and Poser to build some bodywork.

Your scaring me, but as a general rule I do pretend to really love people who invent Auto-robots! "it's alive boss, it's alive" I've always wanted to quote that...I'm sorry a thousand one liners just came to mind. I still want to get side mount radar and son-nor guided machine guns and shields for the impending zombie invasion...... for my electric wheel chair of couse....