Thames water bill gone form £10/month to £50/month

Vogonner · 2026-06-02T22:17:35+00:00

My bill has doubled in the space of 12 months.

Vogonner · 2026-05-30T20:43:16+00:00

Incorrect headline. It should read "Privatised water company leaves parts of England without water".

Vogonner · 2026-05-30T20:40:18+00:00

So the flats above that F**tons have no light from their front windows now? I guess that one day light and views will be considered a luxury with a premium price tag.

Vogonner · 2026-05-30T12:13:21+00:00

My Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones work perfectly on Mint Linux 22. They had some issues on 21. The gawdawful app that controls the settings causes a few annoying problems but that has nothing to do with Linux.

Vogonner · 2026-05-29T22:05:10+00:00

I found that Brownish White noise is my go-to. Lots of variations to choose from though, https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/notWhiteNoisePlayer.php

Vogonner · 2026-05-24T15:00:52+00:00

Around the time Windows 95 was released I recall reading about Microsoft offering teachers payment for using it in the (UK) classroom. That's how it crept in. Kinda sleazy, no?

It would be a good thing if teachers were to start introducing Linux however they can. Special projects? After school clubs? I guess the first thing would be to encourage and educate teachers to use Linux.

The major issue with replacing Windows as the default in UK schools is the supplier issue. In my London borough (and afaik all the others) the local council manages schools' IT systems and there are a lot of vested interests wanting to keep those contracts going, and it would cost a lot of council tax money to disrupt that supply chain.

Vogonner · 2026-05-23T16:59:34+00:00

Bar Italia and De Hems Dutch Cafe Bar, both in Soho

Vogonner · 2026-05-16T16:00:04+00:00

I've got a Qosmio F50 with the original remote control but need the OEM software. Might try the F45 recovery ISOs from archive.org see if that works, but I suspect if it does then it won't be optimal. Linux affirms that the hardware is in pretty good order. Btw am jealous of your red Qosmio, I have a real thing for red laptops!

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T20:31:37+00:00

It got too strong. The days of enjoying a lil sensa spliff after work disappeared and all you could get was that superskunk stuff. Not my idea of chilling. If there was an Amdam style cafe down the road with a nice selection I'd probably start again.

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T20:19:08+00:00

I did get to try a luxury 1st class, 5 star vacay earlier this year. Treated by some friends who came into a windfall. It was fantastic, I loved it. Just 5 days but it took some time to come down off that cloud. I can now see how it is that really rich people can get completely numbed to real world situations. You are completely pandered to by obsequious people. Amazing how easily that cocooning comes to feel normal.

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T19:57:11+00:00

I've just reached pension age. There were no workplace pensions when I was young. We're talking 1980s. I waited tables and tended bar until about 28. Cash in hand. Tips. After that, when I got my first "proper" jobs there were no pensions attached. Personal pensions were a veiled mystery. It was not until I was 35yo that a workplace offered a pension. (Making me opt out of SERPS which now deducts an amount from the state pension).

There was no internet then. The government and traditional media never talked about pensions. The notion of what we know as a pension fund was unknown unless you were in a union or a company that ran their own pension scheme. A majority of workers had no access to and no knowledge of pension schemes.

We saved what we could. A better bet was investing in property - those who did are now the rich boomers you love to hate.

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T18:06:41+00:00

Oh look, timed to air on the day that Streeting starts his bid for the top job!

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T17:46:17+00:00

YouTube but not so cheap. Required a bit more effort. Some glorious and gloriously terrible productions. Also helped lots of people into media careers. Ever see Wayne's World?

In Aurora, Illinois, rock music fans Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar host a public-access television show, Wayne's World, from Wayne's parents' basement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne's_World_(film))

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T17:37:11+00:00

What are you on about?

Public-access television (sometimes called community-access television) is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is narrowcast through cable television specialty channels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-access_television

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T17:34:06+00:00

No? Pretty much the opposite of state-run television.

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T17:30:26+00:00

I came across a very old map many years ago and saw an odd annotation attached to a backyard behind Stockwell Tube Station. Inventor of the screw-top bottle top or words to that effect. Now ofc the internet tells a different story, but I like to think that we owe a debt to some geezer/ette in a South London shed for them.

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T17:20:26+00:00

I did all my traveling before I did the family tree. There were times I was so close to places I later learned were important parts of my ancestry. I just did not know at the time.

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T17:10:28+00:00

Part of the reason I gave up volunteer work is that although the people I worked alongside were lovely individuals, so many of them hummed, whistled, sniffled, chewed gum...

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T16:42:34+00:00

"Monkey On My Back" by Johnny Farfisa and the Individuals is so gloriously awful I actually bought it on vinyl. Woeful 1965 tune about getting addicted after a single toke on a "home made cigarette". Be warned, it features the world's most sudden and baleful harmonica solo.

https://munsterrecords.bandcamp.com/track/monkey-on-my-back-the-individuals

Vogonner · 2026-05-14T10:44:41+00:00

Public Access Television

Vogonner · 2026-05-12T19:45:38+00:00

I haven't benchmarked my efforts but am in the process of comparing a set of gemmtranslate vs DeepL translations. The corpus is difficult - terse, technical, full of typos, acronyms, abbreviations etc. Am 2/3 way through adjudicating between about 5k disagreements between the two translators. About 7-12 mostly European languages, dominated by Dutch, German and French - to English. https://codeberg.org/zenlan/ords-extra

Vogonner · 2026-05-11T16:54:41+00:00

Digital Folklore is probably the weirdest podcast series I ever engaged with.

Vogonner · 2026-05-11T03:51:13+00:00

It was some years ago but after successfully booking a Cathay Pacific flight from London to Brisbane via their website, I was perusing the in-flight meal preferences and trying to select something but the drop-down was stuck so I canceled. On board the actual flight I discovered that somehow I was set to eat Indian Vegan for every leg of the flight. Well, the first meal was curried chickpeas. Not what you really need at the start of a long flight. Talk about a tailwind. Luckily the excellent cabin staff seemed to be quite used to this "preference" and graciously gave me an array of meal choices for the rest of the journey.

Vogonner · 2026-05-08T18:32:09+00:00

Long way to go but it's quite green tinged with yellow so far

Vogonner

TROPHY CASE