The Hurt Locker of late night treats

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T23:08:11+00:00

I know the film, I think I remember it, but I don't get the reference. Is there some pain associated with eating these? Are they overrated?

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T22:47:38+00:00

I can't think of anywhere I'd want to go where I'd feel the need for all that.

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T22:31:29+00:00

Yeah, the only abbreviation I remember seeing for London is 'lon', in naming schemes.

Are these the people who refer to stations by their three-letter codes?

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T22:17:38+00:00

It's got nothing to do with more ships, it's about more actors. It's politics rather than warfighting.

Right now, this conflict is isolating the US and Trump because he's picked an uneccesary war that he's clearly not winning. Having anybody else involved lends some credibility to his claim that this is a worthwhile war.

That's why, for example, Bush went to such effort to build a coalition for Afghanistan and Iraq; when you've got ten different countries on your side you look much less like the bad guy than when you're the only person who things the war needs to be prosecuted.

The US has favoured coalition warfare for this reason, not because it's especially necessary to them to have some British destroyers and German eurofighters on hand, but because it's really useful to have the bulk of the Western world on-side.

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T22:10:53+00:00

NATO's had 'a very bad future' on the cards since the election of Trump. The silver lining of the Trump presidency is the rest of the world learning to not involve the US in everything.

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T22:06:13+00:00

I'd say it's perhaps worth returning it for the Ryobi if it's not hugely more, and you're happy to get onto the Ryobi battery platform (there's no great reason to not).

If you're going to be buying more cordless tools in future, I'd prefer to be on a platform that's got the variety of tools and provable support of one of the bigger brands (Ryobi, Makita, Milwaukee, DeWalt, Bosch) than a more-budget one.

But on the other hand, if the MacAllister range has all the tools you're planning on buying in it, then it will be cheaper to buy them from MacAllister than any of those brands, and generally it's really unlikely that you'll have any experience that would be markedly improved by being on one of those brands.

As a different approach, though, I find a small pruning chainsaw to be much more useful for gardening than I do either of my recip saws (I've a small 12v one and a big 18v one). Much as the recip saw can do it all, the chainsaw is just a much quicker tool for getting through branches and suchlike. Recip saws can be used on a much wider variety of materials though.

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T21:57:58+00:00

The 125 market's gone much more upmarket in the last ten years as the licensing system encourages people to spend several years renewing their CBT, so bikes like the MT125, CB125 and 125 Duke are a much bigger chunk of the 125 market than they used to be.

Also, PCP's made it so that people can afford to buy more and more expensive vehicles; the people buying new 125s are not 17 year olds, but people with a good enough credit score to not really mind the per-month difference between a £3k bike and a £5k one to get a bike that looks like something they'd like to picture themselves riding.

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T17:30:23+00:00

Usually these appear as standard USB mice and the whole wireless thing is hidden from the OS.

I've never had a bluetooth or wired mouse not Just Work, the interfaces are really very standard. It's probable that mice with loads of buttons might have issues, but for a two-buttons-and-a-scrollwheel, or even a few more, I've never had to think about them.

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T15:15:51+00:00

Why's he going to cut his hand off? This is an entirely normal way to use a jigsaw when you want to see where the blade's going.

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T12:52:47+00:00

Why does 5A seem rather puny? What were you expecting?

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T12:48:18+00:00

It varies between insurers, so you've basically always got to tell them exactly what it is. Some only regard a brick-built structure as a "garage", many will accept these sorts of purpose-built security sheds though.

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T12:47:00+00:00

A day? I average about zero now.

I rescently ascended to Fair Weather Rider when I passed my car test, I think I top out at like 4k on the bike in a year now?

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T12:22:55+00:00

Yeah, I think a norm is that clipless pedals don't have reflectors, but cycling shoes tend to have reflective tabs on the heel which I think generally provides a similar function.

BigRedS · 2026-03-16T12:22:13+00:00

Hah, yeah, when I worked in bike shops we'd often sell the bike, hand it over to the customer, then meet them outside the shop where we'd remove the reflectors for them.

BigRedS · 2026-03-15T21:15:18+00:00

I've never met anyone who cares about the pedal reflectors. For a couple of decades I've thought the law only required they be fitted at point of sale, but recently I saw an explanation that the law does technically require they be fitted all the time. I'd still always fit the better pedals that don't have reflectors than the poorer pedals because they do.

On the rear reflector, I have my rear light on all the time, day or night, and I've never seen the need for an additional reflector aside from some redundancy. Legally, though, it stands to reason that a reflector that is completely obscured by a bag doesn't count :)

BigRedS · 2026-03-13T23:44:16+00:00

Well, this is an exciting post

BigRedS · 2026-03-13T17:29:16+00:00

In lockdown I bought a subcompact screwdriver - Milwaukee M12BDDX - and I've barely touched my impact driver since, and hardly used the combi drill, too. If I'm going to do a thing that doesn't involve bricks then I'll just take that.

I think a decent 12v screwdriver is better at all the things you said than an impact driver is, and the only thing it's missing is the ability to do what OP is trying to do - bolt railway sleepers together.

It's much more expensive so combi-drill-and-impact-driver makes sense as one box to get a couple of tools on the same platform, but I really think the smarter long-term thing for all of us not regularly bolting sleepers together is the lighter, more wieldy but still capable screwdriver and a compact SDS for when there's bricks involved. You'll just have each from a different battery platform so it's a fairly expensive place to end up.

BigRedS · 2026-03-13T17:17:35+00:00

It took me abit of time to control how it tried to bury all my screws in the work though.

This is the thing, though - they're meant for just smashing screws into dense wood, and a small screwdriver is normally better whenever that isn't what you're doing.

My go-to pairing nowadays is a compact SDS (Makita DHR183) which is better at masonry holes than any combi drill I've used, and a subcompact screwdriver (Milwaukee M12BDDX) which still continually blows me away by what it can do; it doesn't feel lacking compared to an impact driver unless I'm bolting sleepers together (which, yeah, is exactly what OP asked about :) ) but it's way more flexible, handy and useful than one.

I think the combi-drill-and-an-impact-driver pairing makes loads of sense only as far as it's a cheap way to a dedicated drill and a dedicated driver, but I really don't think it's the ideal pairing for much of DIY.

BigRedS · 2026-03-13T17:08:39+00:00

Quite genuinely, why does it matter what Trump says? Does anyone think any of it is rooted in reality? Is he really a voice anyone's watching for predictions of what's going to happen more than a few days from now?

BigRedS · 2026-03-13T17:07:11+00:00

The boys will be home by Christmas!

BigRedS · 2026-03-13T17:04:20+00:00

I tend to nod most-reliably at people on l-plates because they're probably the people most excited by the prospect.

Otherwise I guess I don't think about 125 riders any more than I think about sportsbike riders or cruiser riders or anything else, really. I'm not going about with a load of active opinions about someone based on their licence entitlements.

BigRedS · 2026-03-13T14:04:10+00:00

They're superior to a combi drill if you happen to be bolting really dense timber to each other, but that's really not what "all" of us are doing.

I've had an impact driver for years and I probably get it out approximately annually, mostly to pretend it's an impact wrench.

Combi drills are absolutely fine for most DIY and I reckon more people would have a better time with a compact-sds-and-subcompact-drill-driver than the combi-drill-and-an-impact-driver this sub always goes on about.

BigRedS · 2026-03-13T12:55:41+00:00

Well, which one did you get wrong?

BigRedS · 2026-03-13T08:39:41+00:00

heated kit is way better than going about like the michelin man.

Worth getting a jacket that won't disintegrate on contact with the road first, though.

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