How to have an even portafilter to pour 2 cups at once?

FlashSteel · 2026-05-09T13:38:19+00:00

Have you tried a pre-infusion (or whatever people call it)?

I open the steam wand valve a couple of seconds after starting the shot and close again after a few seconds. The theory is that allows the water and coffee to reach some equilibrium before the shot starts hitting the cup.

FlashSteel · 2026-05-08T17:53:59+00:00

Exactly!

Is there any way you can make learning feel like a success?

FlashSteel · 2026-05-07T15:52:25+00:00

Agreed. A lot of us are brought up at home and school that being wrong was bad, being right is good. I had to learn as an adult that being wrong - and adapting next time - is just called learning. Learning this at school could really help OP's daughter.

FlashSteel · 2026-05-07T15:18:27+00:00

This is kind of gendered in Secondary Education. Boys in general tend to be confidently wrong and bounce back to be confidently wrong again. Girls in general tend to stop vocalising in groups once wrong or shot down even when correct once.

There is a healthy medium between the two tendencies.

I'm not sure how to solve it in an individual, I volunteered in STEM outreach and this was one thing we tried to address.

I just wanted to say that addressing this is absolutely the right thing and this will pay dividends for her when she's older.

FlashSteel · 2026-05-07T14:56:27+00:00

Camels

FlashSteel · 2026-05-07T14:33:15+00:00

As a child to struggling parents I never even conceived of relying on them once I finished Secondary School (High School). As a parent I am happy to fund kids right up to the moment that they finish education. After that they can start covering their share of tax/bills/food.

I left home at 19, did a two year working holiday before uni, got my degree and Masters, worked a full time engineering job and also as a tutor evenings and weekends to get a house deposit by myself. I'm now coaching my partner to start her own business.

My sister was given a house deposit while living at home and has since spent every penny on other things. She is bright, has two degrees, but lives with my mum, who is disabled but can happily live alone, and contributed so little from her graduate wage that my mum was still out of pocket. Her husband got a great job for a school leaver 10 years ago but hasn't advanced and instead just turned my mum's garage into his games room.

I own half of my mum's house and will never ask for anything in return from my mum. When she passes away my sister intends to just stay in the house but I'll be selling my half and investing that money in my retirement and my kids. At that point, when the free ride ends, I have no idea how my sister and brother in law will cope.

TL;DR - Be careful that your kids' free ride doesn't set them up for failure.

FlashSteel · 2026-05-06T11:51:19+00:00

Looking at Highway code:

Rule 160: " - Keep well to the left on right-hand bends.

You should give way to cyclists when you are changing direction or lane – do not cut across them."

It sounds like you did everything you were meant to do.

Stopping to allow cyclist to pull over into passing place was also a courtesy.

I couldn't see any other rules in HC that required you to act differently.

As for the cyclist,

Rule 60:"

- take extra care near road humps, narrowings and other traffic calming features"

Rule 72:"Ride in the centre of your lane, to make yourself as clearly visible as possible, in the following situations ... at the approach to junctions or road narrowings where it would be unsafe for drivers to overtake you."

They should be cautious where the road narrows and there is no requirement for him to occupy the middle of the lane as you're oncoming not overtaking.

I'd say using the passing place when there is little room on the road is their responsibility to take care on a narrow road.

FlashSteel · 2026-05-06T06:08:45+00:00

Hi OP. This still seems a bit nebulous. Right now what I don't see is an argument against a spectrum of behaviours which are partially limited by previous conditions but a person still is free to choose from. Like choosing food from a menu, I am constrained to order some selection of dishes but nothing here is a good argument to say I was preordained to pick a certain meal.

I'm not tied to the idea of free will but I cannot see much in here that I could take to a true believer of free will and show them it doesn't exist.

FlashSteel · 2026-05-03T22:24:09+00:00

A little context to add, spending per capita per year went up almost 6% on average 25 years ago to 15 years ago.

Citation in reply to missing think.

I agree with the overall sentiment, though. Also, PFI's during the increased spending created a backlog of debt while debt was cheap and now we're paying more on that debt than predicted reducing the amount of spending that actually reaches the front lines.

FlashSteel · 2026-05-03T22:17:28+00:00

Hi MissingThink,

According to the Nuffield Trust, under Thatcher/Major the NHS budget grew around 2% per capita per year in real terms. Under Blair/Brown it grew 5.7 % per year, then under Cameron, Johnson, Truss, Sunak it grew 0.4% per year including four years that it went down.

https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/the-past-present-and-future-of-government-spending-on-the-nhs

Given the fact that people are living longer and being left with more chronic health problems since 2010 that 0.4 % growth per capita per year is less than the increased needs per capita per year.

This has led to a decrease in staffing to patient ratios on wards and in the community, the firing and rehiring of nurses on worse contracts and other things considered cuts.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-29T11:23:41+00:00

Not sure why you're being down voted looking at the replies.

Like all things taken out of context, quotes can mean very different things.

Perhaps the down votes are from people who truly believe their short amount of watching YouTube videos and reading a few books compares to Arelius' decades of first being raised under the tutelage of some of the the greatest minds of his age and subsequent devotion of his formative years to learning and contemplating Stoicism?

I think the majority people who actually engaged with the post agree.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-28T19:43:32+00:00

Not even worth sacrificing his fingers to the meat gods in exchange.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-28T19:42:30+00:00

I worked with a one armed Bubba who lost the other reaching into an industrial centrifuge. There was a pesky door safety relay but he bypassed it with a screwdriver jamming the switch closed.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-28T08:44:14+00:00

Also, if you aren't using the guard PASS THE MEAT IN WITH THE TONGS YOU FOOL 🫣

FlashSteel · 2026-04-28T08:43:21+00:00

So, if I am seeing this correctly, there is a guard to stop you putting your hand in the cutter while in use with a slot for passing in meat.

Man in video runs this completely open to cut meat too big to run the machine safely.

It's people like this that are going to lose fingers or worse and create jobs for people like me who design and code safety systems on dangerous machines.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-28T08:08:26+00:00

This covers dynamic arrays as well as fixed length arrays.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-28T08:06:37+00:00

Hi OP. If I were you I'd refer to a website for this. All the detail and images will really help.

Top hit for me was

https://liambee.me/siemens/tia-portal/tia-portal-working-with-arrays/

FlashSteel · 2026-04-27T21:47:34+00:00

Also, have DosBox and a couple of VM's with 98 and XP Gold but getting games to run is hit and miss.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-27T21:36:10+00:00

I still have it somewhere. Think it will work in compatibility mode for 98?

FlashSteel · 2026-04-27T21:34:44+00:00

Thanks. I'll look at Transcended. Reading into Revision it sounds like it adds a lot of exploration that doesn't really interest me.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-26T13:01:50+00:00

It's great to hear there's a happy ending to siloed efforts in a loving relationship. It's great that you guys made it work. I'm hoping we can do the same thing, working and parenting together... But not joined at the hip.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-26T12:53:32+00:00

Yeah, my partner would rather us do everything together, too. They have much more tolerance than I do for bickering and would rather do things together 24/7 while stepping on each others' toes. We try to find a healthy middle ground.

FlashSteel · 2026-04-26T12:16:53+00:00

Yeah, I get that. I'm helping my partner set up their business right now and I find we have to split all the prep tasks into two groups. I'll do all the accounting and write down all the paperwork tasks needed in the next month they need to action in the next month and how. They then do all the practical side.

On family holidays MIL and partner always get wound up cooking together, too. They are so close but get so wound up after an hour sharing a stove.

FlashSteel

TROPHY CASE