30 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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A Typical Scam

I’m not in regular contact with my Aunt, so it was unexpected to receive an email from her this lunchtime. Even more so because it claimed she had laryngitis and asked if I would therefore be available on email instead. That set my spidey sense tingling – not only does it make no sense to email someone to ask if you can email them because you aren’t able to speak to them but it has the unmistakeable scent of a scam.

I quickly fired off a message to my immediate family to warn them not to reply to the message and then used Facebook (different channel – less likely to be compromised) to contact both my Aunt and some of her children and other relatives who live near her. It turned out they were already on alert and the message probably came from a supposed “Microsoft” message which contained a link she had clicked on yesterday. Passwords have been changed on various accounts, including her email and I think that is the problem averted.

Typically I’d expect that the message she received was being used to hide the true origin and find out if any of her contacts were gullible enough to respond. If I’d emailed back before her account was secured, I would probably have got a quick reply asking if I’d be so kind as to buy her a gift card that she needed urgently but, with the laryngitis, couldn’t speak to me about: very similar scams have been seen before and the gift card thing is the payload of a whole range of stories that get spun (I had my fill working on the Oxford University computer emergency response helpdesk – most people just reported them but some had got led further along the path).

Treat anything online with caution and all the more so if someone you aren’t often in contact with drops you a line asking if you can quickly email them back.

29 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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Manifesto

Manifesto is Steve Lawson’s latest album, currently available to those who subscribe to his output on Bandcamp and due for general release in a few days. I wonder what the Steve Lawson who stepped out at the Troubadour with Nothing But the Bass the best part of 30 years ago make of this latest collection of music created with bass, electronics and signal processing? Listening to both albums back to back, I think young Steve would definitely recognise the handwriting: the tone, the musical sensibilities and the willingness to process some of the sounds to become unrecognisable as “just” an electric bass.

What do the intervening decades add? Setting aside the signal processing, which goes beyond what his early setup could achieve, I’m hearing more precision, clarity and confidence. I wonder if young Steve was sweating at the thought of slipping off the tightrope? Mature Steve sounds like someone who doesn’t fear slipping because he has learned to fly. There is also a much deeper sense of groove. With the early albums, I nod my head in an intellectual, jazz-cat way but Manifesto has tracks that make my whole body respond to the rhythm.

It’s a shame the two of them can’t get together for a duet but I’ll settle for following the ongoing journey.

28 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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Keep on Grinding Away

A safety feature of spice grinders and coffee grinders is an interlock tab, which means the motor will only run when the button is pressed and the lid is held down. It is a good idea because it means you don’t have the grindings flying out or fingers getting poked in. However, when the tab is a small nub sticking out of a transparent plastic lid, which gets more brittle over time, it also becomes a potential point of failure. We dropped our lid yesterday and the tab snapped so time for the bin… or for a 3D printed solution.

Interlock Ring - Russell Hobbs Coffee Grinder

I’ve designed a simple ring with an integrated tab that can sit underneath the lid, meaning we can keep the grinder in service. Printed in black, you can barely even see it in the photo above but you can see the ring on its own if you want. I’ve made the tab larger than the original to get as much strength as possible without messing around with print orientation and we’ll see how it lasts. I reckon it will do for a good while and, when it breaks or gets mislaid, I can print off another 4g or so of filament (cost ~5p… so much cheaper than trying to buy a replacement part).

As a safety note, there is a degree of additional risk as you could now run the motor without the lid on. Since we don’t have children running around, I’ll keep it as a loose accessory but it could be glued on for better safety but harder cleaning. The model is published on Makerworld if you need it or something similar; I’ve also uploaded the OpenSCAD file so you can adjust the parameters if you have a different grinder that works on similar lines.

27 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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Shed Relocation

Over the last week and a half, we’ve been disassembling a metal shed we had at home and, this weekend, we got it put back up at the allotment. It wasn’t the easiest of jobs but we’ve got it done.

One job done… and two more big jobs to follow up. Firstly is to get rid of the old wooden shed that was up there, which had reached a point where it would at least have required major repairs. Secondly to fabricate some storage inside the metal shed so I can make full use of the space. Given that there is some decent timber on the old shed, I think those two things will work together, with some of the old being repurposed into the new.

25 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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Rabbit-holing

In developing my webdev skills I do have a bit of a tendency for rabbit-holing – exploring tunnels where I scent something that may be of interest. That can be a bit of a time thief if left unchecked but I do like to allow a bit of space in my schedule. After all, it is the same tendency that got me into web development in the first place, discovering how to write HTML, how to publish it on a server and then a whole array of further skills gleaned over the years. It has also been the source of some nuggets of understanding that have allowed me to do things that have increased my productivity, like when I discovered the Vim editor while watching a programming demo at a trade show, which I’m still using almost daily over 20 years later.

Today I’ve allowed myself a bit of time to explore something called HTMX. It is a lightweight JavaScript framework that makes it easy to replace a subsection of a web page or perform other operations without having to reload the whole thing. That isn’t a new idea but I found myself watching a five minute video which gave me the scent of something that could be a useful addition to my toolkit.

This evening, I’ve put a bit of time into watching another video or two, looking over the documentation and, with some help from Cursor (practising another newish set of skills), building a useful new feature for one of the websites I maintain as a development playground. Fellow members of my church worship team can now update the key of a song included in a set at will (previously that required me to have access to the database to update a set). Last week in the pre-service practise, a key was changed at short notice and it would have been useful. I’m not at the service tomorrow (preaching at St Theo’s again) but they are out in the park and I anticipate that the guitarist who is leading a couple of songs may want to adjust the keys for the outside setting, where voice projection requires more than getting close to a microphone.

Key changing isn’t entirely new to the application but the previous version didn’t work with the set view and got undone if you changed the key of another song on the page where it was available so this is definitely an enhancement and, although the codebase is continuing to bloat at them moment, the fact I’ve had to create a system to return the code representing a single song means I can tidy up all the places I show songs by ensuring they use the same approach.

So, within time boundaries, I’ll be continuing to go rabbit-holing from time to time.

24 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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Speaking of Squash

Courgettes are part of the curcubit family and one of the group known as summer squash. Those fruit in the summer and the fruits are best picked and eaten young. There is another group called winter squash, normally picked later and suitable for storing over long periods. I’m growing a winter squash variety called Jumbo Pink Banana from the Real Seed Company. In theory, I should wait until the vines die down in the autumn but I had to bring one back from the allotment today – it was so large that it was causing the vine to collapse. At about 1.6kg, that’s a decent harvest all in itself and there are several more fruit forming both on that vine and others. Hopefully some will last until the autumn!

23 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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Try Again

I’m having a good year with a courgette variety called ‘Golden Griller’. I got the seeds last year but had a disappointing yield – about 200g from the allotment and another 130g or so from the ones I grew at home (4 courgettes in total). I can’t remember how much the seeds cost but I’m pretty sure that didn’t cover the cost of the packet. This year though, I’ve had 8 courgettes so far comping to over 1kg and there might be another one I’ve not added to my database yet.

Even just on this year, I think I’ve recouped the costs and more. When it comes to seeds, it’s always worth trying again if you have some left – there are so many variables, including the climate ones that are outside of your control that you might get lucky. Of course, sometimes you can influence that “luck” – I’ve been much more successful with growing chillies from seed this year but that was by dint of germinating and growing the seedlings in a warm, temperature controlled environment. So perhaps a mix of luck and the knowledge gained through experience.

22 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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Air Fryer Rolls

One of the things I’d wanted to try in an air fryer was baking bread and my experiment yesterday turned out a success. Having reviewed a number of recipes, I decided to stick with the set of ratios I’ve been using for years but to work from a base of 200g flour rather than the 500g / 600g I normally start with. Once I’d mixed the dough, I put it in a silicon bread tray in one of the drawers to prove. It looked like it was intending to to heat it to 70°C on the default prove setting but I was able to adjust it down to a more reasonable 35°C. Next time, I’ll probably set it like that again but give it a short operation time; the dough can continue to sit in what will be a relatively warm environment but it will minimise the energy use.

An hour or so later, I shaped the dough into four rolls and put two in each draw on a parchment paper base. I didn’t start cooking straight away but left them in there to prove some more without additional heat.

Finally (and probably getting on for another hour later) I did the actual cooking. I think I went for 12 minutes at 200C, then ten minutes at 180C and, after flipping upside down, a final ten minutes at that same temperature. The results were very satisfactory although I am going to do some more experiments – I suspect I cooked these longer than they actually required. I’ll try getting the time down and then figure out how much power the process is using compared to making a larger batch in the oven.

21 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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Check Your Prices

Having been reading and watching a lot of air fryer content since the weekend, I decided I ought to get some silicon tipped tongs to try and avoid damaging the surfaces inside our new cooking machine. Looking them up on Amazon, prices varied but it was typically around £10 for one or two pairs of tongs, often including a shorter one as well as the 30cm length I was after.

Since we needed to pick up some petrol, we popped into Morrisons to have a look at their household aisle and found a pair of Nutmeg-branded 30cm silicon tipped tongs for a mere £3. That wasn’t even a sale price! They also look very similar to the design used by the vast majority of the online offerings. Normally I’d expect online prices to be a bit lower although bumped up if you don’t find a way to avoid delivery charges. Maybe I’ll have to start evaluating those online prices a bit more critically?

Even with the bass I picked up at the start of June, I didn’t lose out much if at all compared to the online price of the same bass and a similar looking gig bag. I did have to pay for the petrol to get to Nottingham and back but I’m not sure the online store would necessarily have provided free shipping. I certainly wouldn’t have got the chance to evaluate a number of instruments before making my decision.

For things I can pick up in person, I’ll be paying extra attention to what it costs. I don’t mind paying a bit more in return for keeping those local businesses going and, if it turns out they are now no more expensive than the online offerings, I’ll be delighted!

20 July 2026
by wpAdmin
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Spool Reuse

3D printing is great for producing useful things that meet all sorts of needs. However, there is a certain amount of plastic waste that gets generated: failed prints, the “printer poop” (extrusions for priming the nozzle, etc) and, often overlooked, the empty spools. I can tell that I’ve run over 5kg of plastic through my printer because I’ve got five empty spools waiting for me to find something clever to do with them.

Today I’ve printed some drawers that turn one of my old Sunlu spools into a six-section storage unit. It is from this design on Makerworld and it is too early to say how practical it will turn out to be in extended use but went together easily and I’m anticipating that I might end up running off a few more.

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