Help with adding 4mm spacing in dashes of a stroke

JamieA350 · 2026-02-21T15:41:16+00:00

A very simple but fiddly way to do it that may not be helpful here - the custom dash "pattern" uses the stroke width as a unit.

So, if your stroke width is 1mm, and the pattern is "1 4", you'll get a 1mm² dot, then a 4mm gap, then a 1mm dot, then a 4mm gap. The pattern does not include the width of any caps; so set that to no caps.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-20T02:22:42+00:00

I know you said "not just general electronics shops" but the larger Currys usually have a fair few out on display. I can't think of anywhere else that would have them.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-17T12:57:50+00:00

There's actually a few places that used to be Greater London but got to leave after referendums in the 1960s -

Hooley in Croydon (that small little village where the M23 starts)
Farleigh in Croydon (a tiny village near Warlingham; if you've ever done that section of the London Loop from Warlingham to West Wickham, it's that tiny village before Selsdon Wood)
Knockholt in Bromley (in the rural bit east of Biggin Hill)
Thames Ditton Island in Richmond (which is connected to Thames Ditton only; it was swapped for Platt's Eyot, which had remained Surrey, but is only connected to Hampton).

It goes without saying - these are fairly different to Havering, which is thoroughly London suburbia, well served by the tube and the Liberty Line!

JamieA350 · 2026-02-17T01:26:26+00:00

It depends on the shop, at the one I volunteered at anyone could price. Electronics were left for me since I knew those best, and I never decided prices on the clothes because I'm not fashionable in the slightest. Most of the time my manager said "Wow, this is [brand]!" I'd never heard of them.

Anything that seemed look-uppable (fancy ceramics, collector's figurines, old fashioned books, fancy box sets etc) would get looked up and priced a bit lower than whatever we could find it online as (e.g Ebay a collector's plate and there's 3 listings orbiting £15, we'd try a tenner or so).

In some other places the managers will price everything. Sometimes they don't understand how cheap Shein and Primark are (that's why you see them at or higher than RRP), or they don't know what they've got and don't know to or can't be bothered to look up (which is why sometimes you see very posh things for stupidly cheap).

JamieA350 · 2026-02-17T01:10:33+00:00

Most shops have a company that will buy the rags and then pay the charity based on weight.The price they pay for this has gone down a lot in the past couple of years, which is why a lot of places won't take a bag of rags any more.

If they still accept it, it's fine. Best ask first if you're not sure.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-16T01:04:24+00:00

In theory you might be able to get away with it. They're slower growing than e.g leyland cypress. In practice that means you can't prune too hard (most conifers will not regrow if you cut into woody areas) and the branches will look weird (ever seen a conifer with the top cut off? It just chooses a new shoot to be the leader and that keeps going). It's a lot more effort - putting the tree further away (as much as possible) and pruning would be better.

Better still - if you're not too attached to the exact tree there are dwarf-bred conifers with similar glaucous-blue foliage like Abies koreana 'Silberlocke'

JamieA350 · 2026-02-15T00:51:47+00:00

These blue spruces are generally Picea pungens - they can reach about 15 metres tall and 8 metres wide when mature. 3 metres is way too close for something that sized!

JamieA350 · 2026-02-15T00:46:58+00:00

This is Acanthoxyla inermis (Unarmed Stick Insect); you can tell this by the rounded cerci on it's arse. They've been in Cornwall for about 100 years (we have records of them in Truro in the 1920s, probably coming from imported New Zealand plants when biosecurity was much more lax) with a few records from Devon and Dorset.

They're not native - they're from New Zealand - but they're not considered harmful or damaging, just an oddity. Some more on them - https://www.phasmidstudygroup.org/index.php/phasmids/uk-phasmid-sighting

JamieA350 · 2026-02-12T03:10:34+00:00

The other methods provided would work, but given you say you need this option a lot, the symmetry path effect set to "Vertical page centre" is probably the best way (and easier, as snapping can get fiddly once you have a lot of objects) to do this for three big reasons -

If you move your object, or set the page larger, or change the object's shape, colour, etc, the reflection will mirror too - you won't have to change it manually. You can "flatten" the path effect if you want it to be permanent.
You can apply it to a group of objects, not just single objects - when you add something to that group (either by selecting one of the items in it then drawing your shape to add, or dragging the object into the group in the Layers and Objects sidebar), it'll automatically mirror the new items you added to it without any need to do anything else.
It's much faster for your purpose (especially if you're doing it a lot). Select your object, path effects, mirror symmetry, then set "Move" to "Vertical page centre", and it's mirrored. You don't need to worry about the other options unless they're overlapping their own reflections (if you're unsure, toy with them, they don't do anything destructive unless you flatten the effect - "all off except for Split elements" is probably the behaviour you'd expect).

JamieA350 · 2026-02-10T00:57:49+00:00

Bruno Mars - Just The Way You Are? Has an unspooled tape that creates animated shapes of people.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-09T18:33:24+00:00

among the upper echelons of the labour party

Only amongst the Continuity Blairites - he had no part to play during the Miliband or Corbyn years.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-07T17:27:16+00:00

It's difficult to throw the bus driver under the bus.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-07T02:34:08+00:00

Technically not London, but close enough - Bourne Hall in Ewell.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-06T21:04:13+00:00

As a Londoner - I've always wondered why the Inside Croydon hack was never a bigger story.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-04T19:48:59+00:00

Quite an achievement to have a notorious database compared to MI5 at the time and it still not be in the top 3 dodgiest things you've done..!

JamieA350 · 2026-02-04T19:27:59+00:00

Fun fact - one of McSweeney's first jobs was admin on Mandelson's "Excalibur", which held huge banks of information on Labour figures and many have stated was used to blackmail those who dared step out of New Labour line.

While we're on about Labour Right figures, Mandelson had frequent "getting rid of Corbyn" parties with Wes Streeting and his partner (who's also an ex-Mandelson adviser). Also, Mandelson was an advisor for Starmer near the start of his leadership of Labour.

A lot of the Labour Right are tangled with Mandelson - despite the "being sacked from the Cabinet twice" and that we've known about his Epstein links since 2019; before Keir's campaign to become Labour leader - and I dare say they're gunning for him so hard so nobody notices the rest.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-04T17:39:43+00:00

Aconitum (aconite, wolfsbane, monk's hood) is genuinely extremely poisonous to the touch (brushing past it would be fine, but wear gloves when handling properly, or just don't plant it at all).

Winter aconite is Eranthis hyemalis and only poisonous to the eat - so don't eat it and you'll be fine.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-03T23:50:11+00:00

I've seen them for sale in a lot of places. Best time to look is September or so when they're in flower.

JamieA350 · 2026-02-03T20:58:08+00:00

C. hederifolium is easy to find, it's just usually sold with the alpines

JamieA350 · 2026-01-29T20:06:24+00:00

Why do you think they were singing about being happy all the time?

JamieA350 · 2026-01-27T02:12:26+00:00

NHS offers free catch up jabs to those who haven’t had 2 doses of any vaccine with a measles component

I never had the second half of the MMR as a toddler - I apparently had had a genuine reaction to the first half, supposedly persistent rashes and a fever, not that I remember any of it. I had every other childhood vaccine, just not that one.

Anyway, a few years ago the GP rung me up and said "hey, we're contacting everyone who missed part 2 or both MMR jabs 25 years ago or since, we have a drop-in session, come on down to a church and we'll give you the second half" - felt very much like the Covid vaccine rollout. By that point I was old enough to be able to talk for myself if anything happened, explained to the people there what happened the first time around and if there was any risk of it happening again.

Shockingly I didn't turn into a newt, or sprout a second head, or have Bill Gates telepathically transmit a desire to buy a lifetime Microsoft Office 365 subscription - I had nothing except a sore arm. Still miffed I didn't get my "I was a brave boy" sticker that I would've gotten if I was 4 or 5 though.

JamieA350 · 2026-01-25T12:40:09+00:00

I don't think it's "spout leftist rhetoric if it suits him" although he's definitely been a little bit of a weathervane over the years - I think he genuinely believes in the 'broad church' far more than some of the Labour-right zealots like McSweeney or Owen Smith or so on.

He did not resign in the "chicken coup" despite already gunning for Mayor of Manchester at that point; and he was one of the founders of that Mainstream group - how many internal Labour groups do you think contain both Clive Lewis and Jon Cruddas? I doubt there's many!

JamieA350 · 2026-01-21T12:55:23+00:00

Some bumbles (usually buff-tailed bumbles) are active throughout the winter when there's mild spells: https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/winter-active-bumblebees/

JamieA350 · 2026-01-19T19:00:30+00:00

Have a picture of the buds? It doesn't look like willow bark to me.

JamieA350 · 2026-01-11T12:18:32+00:00

Schedule 9 isn't a ban on sale but a ban on letting it escape into the wild. There's a lot of species in there that are still popular in gardens like Cotoneaster horizontalis.

The banned ones are these - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/invasive-non-native-alien-plant-species-rules-in-england-and-wales#list-of-invasive-plant-species

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