@AndyIncarnate oh cool! Well, we were in Milnsbridge the other day so I can report that it is still there!

@AndyIncarnate yes! And that's how we settled on pronouncing it too. Those posher than us say "Slath wait".

Are you nearby? Or have you been?

Just a reminder that some people are sensibly trying to avoid the news and use filters for that, so a reminder to try tag even your meta-commentary in some useful way is something they'd appreciate!

#uspol

All the snow melted yesterday and then froze around here last night, but at least the gritters are out!

For the last of the summer wine mastodon fans, that is the road they crashed their tin bath cart on.

(photo and LOTSW factoid credit to Andrew Hall from the local Facebook group).

#slaithwaite #yorkshire

@awfulwoman argh I avoid posting about this stuff generally but I agree that even metaposting isn't great (especially as I worded it). Sorry. Will do.

*reads the news*

What a time to be alive for now!

#uspol

@ifixcoinops I use ZigBee and I can set the colour temperature of my burning toilet flame.

Every time someone posts about a ZigBee problem in Home Assistant someone will say this wouldn't happen if you used Z-Wave like me and every time someone posts about a Z-Wave related problem someone will say if you'd used ZigBee like me then it would've been fine, and they always say it so smugly, and you look behind them and see their toilet is on fire and you just nod

@ifixcoinops I use ZigBee and I can set the colour temperature of my burning toilet flame.

@ifixcoinops @jpm I have an air quality monitor rule to detect if I've died and started decomposing which dims the lights, plays somber music and calls the mortuary but sometimes the cats pooping in the trays triggers it so I have a button I can press to cancel the mortician. They know me now anyway so they don't rush out.

@rahoulb oh man, so sorry about your dad :(

Anyone know if these air quality meters could detect a cat poo? Be nice to turn on a fan when a cat uses the litter tray!

#homeautomation #cats

Went for a walk on #Marsden moor (March Haigh/Eastergate for anyone interested) in the glorious sunshine before we possibly get snowed in.

There was beautiful but impossible to photograph mist in the hills but we still got to see some fun things: a frozen puddle that looked (to me) like a cartoon fish skeleton and down towards the canal, a kingfisher. It was a brave bird - let us get surprisingly close compared to normal - and didn't seem too perturbed by Rosey or even the cat in a nearby tree!

I run https://www.newssniffer.co.uk/ which parses various news websites and tracks changes in articles, so I periodically take a close look at the HTML of these news organisations and have been doing for over a decade. It obviously all started out as an unparseable mess - I had to parse it with regexps!

Eventually they got good. Modern semantic tags, and meaningful css style names. Even good accessibility features. Which all helped parsing!

It's getting crap again now. Such a shame.

Looked at a heat pump forum on Facebook and every single post by a heat pump owner asking technical questions is inundated with men telling them to remove their heat pump and go back to gas. Over and over, bashing heat pumps. It's some kind of weird religion at this point isn't it.

Almost wondering if it's some kind of bot net funded by fossil fuel companies.

#heatpump

Lovely New Year - eve and day - hanging with my bestie for life, @johnl.

Yesterday, Manchester for supplies (& mandatory dog walks) and accidental dim sum; yesterday evening, sushi making & consumption, and board games; then at midnight, we walked up the nearest big hill to watch the fireworks and home to sleep on the sofa with the dog & cats 😻

Today, a walk along the canal from Slaithwaite to Marsden, then dinner at a bistro in Huddersfield.

Not the wildest new year but very very nice 😁

Went round the neighbours for a light boxing day dinner, one dish of which was brain and tongue. I am not really a fan.

Enjoyed the lemon meringue pie much more!

Excellent gumtree ad for a "musical instrument". Only £65! The description elaborates only enough to say "good condition".

I've always wanted to learn the musical instrument. If I get good enough maybe I could join a musical instrument orchestra and one day become first musical instrument.

Had a lovely walk around the Meltham way then fitted a new, very quiet, extractor fan in the bathroom. How have we tolerated the old very loud fan for SO LONG?! Major quality of life improvement. Now sat in front of stove with the dog, awaiting NACHOS!

@wj but maybe they could be? iirc they go well with cheese. might need to be tried.