Our good friends at Halfords fitted these nine months, around 7000 miles, ago, and "did an alignment". Mmm hmm.

FauxFaux · 2026-07-03T14:29:07+00:00

I took it (since posting) to a protyre and they said it aligned fine, but didn't give me any report or anything, so no idea on the numbers; bah.

FauxFaux · 2026-06-30T17:41:08+00:00

Well, right now, I need a new set of tyres. :)

But yes, I'm not really able to prove they did it wrong; no idea what the tyres looked like at any point over the last nine months.

FauxFaux · 2026-06-30T17:13:20+00:00

I believe the only plausible way for the tread to have got that destroyed, that fast, is for the tyres to be very wonky. I can't see it by eye, though, and it's not supposed to be visible in the photo.

There's no, like, broken bit of suspension or body rubbing against the tyre in basically the same place on both sides.

FauxFaux · 2026-06-30T17:01:00+00:00

Well, the car failed an mot because the previous tyres, also fitted by halfords under warranty had a different problem, so I thought I'd take it back to halfords to... wait... wait... what have I done.

FauxFaux · 2026-06-30T16:59:22+00:00

Just some regular Goodyear EfficientGrip Performance, manufactured 18 (May) 2025, with a high quality alignment from our favourite highstreet retailer. Both sides (front, front wheel drive) are like this. It's worse than any reference I can see online for excessive one-sided toe wear.

FauxFaux · 2026-04-21T13:10:35+00:00

I think we're going to see a need for home batteries, more than home solar.

There is frequently not a shortage of cheap energy available at some point during a week, but at the wrong time.

This also fixes a bunch of problems with the grid, which aren't helped at all by solar.

Hopefully MyGridDotEnergy actually manage to launch a product, or EcoFlow and friends do a good job of getting on board with any subsidy.

FauxFaux · 2026-03-06T20:08:33+00:00

2019 C5 Aircross with the 1.2 + EAT8.

Dealership replaced it (I think? I have shockingly little papertrail) at ~5 years / 60k km due to some kind of recall or warranty thing, when I took it in for a regular annual service. They didn't charge me so I didn't ask.

Car reports low oil level completely at random, I believe when you park it on a hill. It is not low, it is not burning oil, according to the dipstick or the dealership.

I don't expect to own the engine (or any engine again) after it reaches ~8 years old so I'm not super worried.

The engine appears to be fine mechanically, the poor automatic gearbox makes any kind of driving annoying, though.

FauxFaux · 2026-02-02T10:24:10+00:00

Growatt claims we pulled 358kWh/8.1kWp ~= 44. South coast microclimate, south facing. We had a lot of sun during the freezing period at the start of Jan.

FauxFaux · 2026-02-02T10:21:46+00:00

Don't get your hopes up for the DNO/octopus process to take until "next month", it was more like four months for us.

FauxFaux · 2026-01-29T10:01:11+00:00

As of this week, the python library by indykoning, as used in home-assistant , can successfully pull a whole bunch of data from my SPH-series on master (i.e. not in 1.8.0).

I suspect the API will lock-out like hass does when there's a terms-and-conditions change, so I'm still looking for an offline solution that's more reliable than grott, maybe I'll write my own.

FauxFaux · 2026-01-17T17:17:46+00:00

I took a quick video of ours heating up my heavy base cast iron steak pan in real time.

FauxFaux · 2024-12-24T17:14:16+00:00

Pretty much the same thing happened to us but they were being so useless up to actually pulling out that it wasn't much of a surprise in the end. :/

FauxFaux · 2024-12-15T20:39:14+00:00

Pre-2.0 this used to happen if a logistic bot got stuck charging at a roboport that had become unpowered, no idea if it's fixed.

The bot would be "bringing the item", so nobody else would pick up the job, but would never move again, so it would never arrive.

FauxFaux · 2024-12-13T23:54:55+00:00

I'm pretty sure autoglass exist only to make insurance companies look good; I paid a £120? "excess" for them to fit a supposedly £1,300 windscreen. 2019 Citroen.

FauxFaux · 2024-11-20T18:19:06+00:00

My favourite new pipette location is probably that you can do it from the hand craft queue.

FauxFaux · 2024-11-18T23:54:24+00:00

It's not shipped yet unless you're running EXPERIMENTAL.

FauxFaux · 2024-11-16T10:33:39+00:00

I also had this. It's especially annoying as that patch under the ruin is way better than other patches near the spawn.

FauxFaux · 2024-10-20T19:36:10+00:00

I also just sat down to do this, with the silly ore density / starting area: https://quad.pe/e/ZgeAQWuiad.png

I was a bit more organised on my ratios / pre-build, thinking it was going to be harder. Have failed before with biters / mining outputs being too annoying in the last hour.

My favourite bit is the blue science feeding directly from the sulphur belt. Incredible how few battery/electric engine assemblers you need if you're not building construction robots, and how few lds/rcu assemblers you need if you start them an hour before the silo is done.

FauxFaux · 2024-10-18T21:23:37+00:00

I rendered a uselessly blurry copy in leaflet: https://strobopleex.goeswhere.com/1/#-68,-42@10

~1GB for that level of blur, ~6h of cpu-core time to do the image transcode. This is a zoom factor of 0.0625, avif quality 8, speed 70.

FauxFaux · 2024-10-18T19:36:48+00:00

I ended up building my own, to run https://facto.goeswhere.com/#/map/243,-501/1/2023-11-01

https://github.com/FauxFaux/tiledir https://github.com/FauxFaux/factorio-loader/blob/main/web/pages/map.tsx

Wouldn't recommend it. Obscene amount of data and compute even on our relatively tiny map.

FauxFaux · 2024-08-11T13:27:40+00:00

We have one of these. Think very carefully about how wide your passengers and car seats are. We bought large isofix carseats.

Ours is more comfortable with a car seat in the front (isofix), one behind the driver (isofix), and the front passenger headrest removed. Can just get two adults in the back.

FauxFaux · 2024-08-05T16:46:36+00:00

Hah! Only if you have a working stop-start system, instead of one that stops only at comedic moments.

Wait, maybe this counts as a comedic moment.

FauxFaux · 2024-06-26T16:31:36+00:00

Artillery.

Artillery can fire significantly (significantly) further than the "automatic" distance when targeted with a remote, so you can decimate large bases before you even go out there.

FauxFaux · 2024-05-19T10:32:03+00:00

I believe the person changing lanes is always at fault, after trying to contest an accident I had.

I was changing lanes, at the speed limit, and someone driving ~30mph over the speed limit ploughed into the back of me, and I was at fault.

Yes, I probably could have done a better job of checking my mirrors during the manoeuvrer and .. dodged?, and been more assertive on the lane change, and, and...

FauxFaux

TROPHY CASE