I want one. Though what will I backup onto it first?
https://www.techradar.com/pro/video-of-ceramic-storage-system-prototype-surfaces-online-10000tb-cartridges-bombarded-with-laser-rays-could-become-mainstream-by-2030-making-slow-hard-drives-and-tapes-obsolete

It's coming.
It's looking 😍

The official GTA 6 trailer dropped
https://youtu.be/QdBZY2fkU-0

Grumble.
I've often bemoaned the lack of people using the Mk1 computer & utilitiy companies ripping us off, but the latest e-mail leaves me scratching my head.

From 1 January based on your usage, what you pay (on average) for electricity per month will be changing from £3.29 to £3.37, and what you pay (on average) for gas will be changing from £23.94 to £24.83.
Your estimated cost for the next 12 months for electricity is £40.41. Your estimated cost for the next 12 months for gas is £297.96.
Your projected monthly energy usage is 6.50kWh for electricity and 205.75kWh for gas.

Based on the past quarter, my forecasted 12 month top up will be £1,344.00 & usage approx. £1.260 (electricity).
Haven't done the gas one as it's Winter & having the heating on during cold days, sends the usage high.
The Autumn/Winter bill is usually just over double of the Spring/Summer bill.
The last 12 months, topped up £392 with £369.64 used.
I'd love to know what planet these people think they're living on.

Not sure how it will work out now we have a diverter that takes energy from our solar to the hot water when we are producing an excess but till recently, we would use less gas in the winter than the summer because the 9KW wood stove provides more hot water than we need and most of our space heating via leaving the living room door open. The algorithm used by our supplier was completely unable to cope with our usage pattern being the reverse of normal. We have swapped to variable direct debit and now pay for what we use. (Month to 15th November £65 for gas and electric combined.) Winter fuel allowance that Richard referred to in a recent post has paid for what I think will be enough wood to have some left over for next winter. I also cut up a significant amount myself with a chainsaw.

Nice combined cost, ours for Nov was £130.
Topped up the gas on 6th & already noticed a hefty drop.
With the heating on for a couple of hours a day, was using £2.59 a day & it's already showing as £1.14 a day, we'll see the outcome when Winter is over.
So it looks like Oct cost is much lower than the previous costs this year
If correct, instead of running out next Sept (card topped up as soon as meter topped on 6th).
Looks like it'll be sometime in Oct.

Getting back to that e-mail.
£3.37 a month?
That's £0.02 a day leas than the current daily cost of £3.39.
Sheesh!

https://t.co/YpVQcYXvAF

December 31, 2023 will be the last day to submit your name to travel on board Europa Clipper as it journeys 1.8 billion miles to explore Europa Moon.

Grumble... wonder if this is happening to anyone else on Gmail or other mail systems???

For past 2 almost 3 weeks Gmail thinks emails from this website (https://boinc.berkeley.edu/) is s-p-a-m mail even if I have specifically added a filter to say it's NOT junk mail and belongs in main in-box.

I have to go to the s-p-a-m folder and flag the Berkeley emails as not junk every time.

Google does this every now and then, particularly to organisations with what it consoders to be large numbers of recipients. A real pain but the only way round this is to get the senfing organisation to prod Google to get de-black listed (again).

Grumble, blown power supply. Grumble everything closed for holiday.

Grumble... wonder if this is happening to anyone else on Gmail or other mail systems???

Guess why I am so late in responding to spam reports. ;-)

Merry Christmas all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx69pbFYDAY

1st grumble of 2024. :-(
There are some sad muppets in the world, but hey, it takes all sorts right.
Took a reading of the electric meter earlier this week, 1st as it was the regular one & 2nd, to check that it was using the previous costing rather than the increased one on 1/1/24.
No problem as it was using the previous costing, however there was a problem.
In Spring, Summer & early Autumn, no problem but in the Winter months if reading took after 4pm, need the light on in the meter cupboard.
No oops, need new bulb.
Nope, bulb had been nicked.
Replaced but it was too late to contact landlords.
The main issue with my cupboard is that it not only has my meters there but also the landlords meter for their electricity mainly for external lighting.
So there should be only 3 sets of access, Landlord, the maintenance crew & cleaners.
Only got off the phone a short while ago.
I wanted clarify a specific point.
Who is responsible for the cupboard light, tenant or landlord.
Got told tenant & asked why the question. Told them, they put me on hold.
Came back to me & said that no maintenance crew attended the property over the holidays, but I quickly replied, but the cleaners have (they have a power point to connect their hoovers).
I know we have an energy & cost of living crisis, but nicking a light bulb? Come on!

Windows 10 lovers, better watch out. Microsoft released an update which won't download and install, because it installs to the Windows Recovery partition, which is too small for the update. So Microsoft wants you - the end-user- to manually increase the size of your WinRE partition, even if your company has 1,000s of computers. No mentions of what could go wrong, no mentions of backing up your data. Best not do anything, let them fix it themselves. So, if you see KB5034441 sit there, don't worry. Don't do anything about it!

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-10-kb5034441-security-update-fails-with-0x80070643-errors/
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5028997-instructions-to-manually-resize-your-partition-to-install-the-winre-update-400faa27-9343-461c-ada9-24c8229763bf
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5034957-updating-the-winre-partition-on-deployed-devices-to-address-security-vulnerabilities-in-cve-2024-20666-0190331b-1ca3-42d8-8a55-7fc406910c10
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1947we0/windows_10_kb5034441_security_update_fails_with/

I see those complaining about M$ & their dismissal of 99% of their QA testers.
That's rubbish, they have millions...

...Us.

I see those complaining about M$ & their dismissal of 99% of their QA testers.
That's rubbish, they have millions...

...Us.

Not me! I defenestrated over 20 years ago now. (Actually I have Tiny10 running in a VM but it is a cut down version of Win10 that will only do any updates if I look for them and do them manually.

Glory.
A surprising one that became a double one this evening.
On 16th, ordered 2 items. One was scheduled for delivery on 19th & the other 24-26th.
Fri morning received 1st item, a hand sized package.
No way was this the 2nd item so opened it - DVD box set which was supposed to arrive from 24th onward.
Checked on Amazon & found 2nd will be delivered that day.
Checking on both, found that 1st item was delivered by Royal Mail. Wow.
As for the second item, that impressed me after 24 hours in use so ordered a 2nd Sat morning along with another 2 items.
They were scheduled for Tuesday delivery, they arrived this evening.

The 2nd item on Fri was a domestic portable dehumidifier.
Before actually ordering anything, always check the reviews.
Many reviews of the more expensive units were not to my liking, but this unit had favourable ones, so much I found it difficult to believe 100%, but ordered one (£60).
But wow, I was impressed especially after seeing after 24 hour use.
I never knew that there was so much moisture in the air we breathe.
Had 2 great nights sleep since.

I never knew that there was so much moisture in the air we breathe.

They make a massive difference to the speed of drying clothes in a room.

Found that out over the weekend. Also, found that a review was true as well.
They help the radiators to heat up quicker, which should mean that the heating will be off an hour earlier than usual.
That should also reduce the gas bill, but will need a bit more time to see how true that will be.

Also, the manufacturer states that it only uses 47 watts so over 24 hours that'll be 1.128 kw.
If so, at the price currently paying (0.274 per kw) equates to 0.309 a day. (£2.16 pw) (that's if energy supplier uses 1000 as a kilo.).
As I got in the habit of taking a reading every 3 days, the next will be on the 24th (took a reading on 21st but didn't get the unit until 17:30 Fri so not a full 3 day reading with the unit running).

Another thing I'm going to be checking out is power consumption as the unit provides 2 modes, Strong or sleep.
Also it has led lighting which rotates through 7 colours but settled on a nice soothing blue (can lock the light to whatever 1 of the 7 one likes).
When in sleep mode, the fan is reduced, so going to use unit 12 hours on strong & 12 hours in sleep with the light off (light automatically switches off when changing mode).

Hoping that it would reduce power consumption as that would be another bonus.
Edited to correct spelling errors.

Strange, what is Amazon up to?
The order on 20th received the following evening, not the 1st time that has occurred.
Ordered 4 products on 22nd am & a further order for 3 products (4 items) later that day.
All for free delivery in 5 working days.
Received 1 item from 1st order of 22nd, furniture & delivered by Amazon around 6pm Wed.
Checked on Amazon to see when the rest would be delivered & expecting them to be in 2 packages as 2 separate orders.
Still on track for delivery on 25th, however both lots to be delivered by Royal Mail, really?

Checked via the tracking details & see items picked up & arrived at Warrington Superhub.
That's a new one on me, so googled it. It opened in 2022.
It's a new 24/7 distribution centre for Royal Mail who dispatched it to Peterborough DO.
Delivery around 10:15 this morning in one parcel, an Amazon Prime box.

What else I found surprising was that the delivery was marked as delivered, now that is a 1st for Royal Mail with Amazon.

Anyway...
TBC

Glory & it looks like to end up 3 in 1.
The clothes drying over the weekend wasn't really a full test as they were already drying for 2 days, used to take approx. 2.5 days.
Did a full wash yesterday & put the washed laundry in a upright oblong basket.
That normally takes 1.5 racks worth to dry.
On the 1st rack load was a bath towel & we all know what they are like after washing.
Dry within 12 hours & the other load dry within 14.

In the past it has taken approx. 15 minutes for the radiators to heat up fully, that's now down to 8.
Also, with the air being dryer it's warmed up quicker mading the rooms too warm at times so able to cut back on heating.

Now for the big bonus, for several years now been suffering from a persistent cough, runny nose & respiratory problems.
Seeing a recent BBC report regarding councils & damp, made me look into it.

I originally put those issues down to being a long time smoker, & a weaker immune system due to old age.
In the 6.5 days of running the dehumidifier, runny nose stopped, breathing much better & coughing no longer persistent.
Nice!

The 1st unit has now been running for 5.5 days continuously & tank nearly full.
Not going to empty yet.
Just waiting for the water to push up the floater & activating auto shut down.
Then I'll know whether or not the stated capacity of 1800ml (3.16 pints) is the full capacity or the total to auto shut down.
Seriously considering getting a 3rd unit & use it as a portable between kitchen & bathroom.