On to 42

 Whee - more progress - hit level 42. And remembered to get a screenshot this time!

The challenges this time are:

• Earn five Platinum medals (already done)
• Catch five Legendary pokemon (easy - just need to open a Meltan box)
• Earn 100,000 stardust (part of the grind)
• Use 200 super effective charged attacks (ummm...)

The stardust I should just pick up as part of normal play. Need nine million XP for the next level so getting the stardust will just happen as I go along. The super effective charged attacks... well they'll depend on how many raids I do. Which normally isn't too many. Took a few months to get the 7.5M XP for this level, so I expect the 9M to take until around March or so, so no rush.

Kitten's latest game

 We have two new kittens, and it's endless fun watching them play.

They're now old enough (and big enough) that they can climb onto stuff, so we have the ongoing training of where they can and can't climb. One of the places we're trying to train them not to climb onto is the dining table.

So of course, they find it a great game to climb up there, run across the top and jump off before we can tell them off! Cheeky little kittens!

Epic battle

 Had a frustrating time on today's walk.

When I can, I take the doggos out for walks and I play Pokemon Go while I'm at it. There's a new gym nearby that's right next to a main road and I've noticed that it is highly contested - I just didn't realise how contested!

Was walking past it, there were four big ones on there already so I decided to take over the gym. Battle, battle, battle - took a bit of effort but managed to knock them all off. Tap on the gray gym (neutral), select my critter to drop down - nope! Got a "you can't put that there" message. Gym was now another colour as someone else had put their critter in before I put mine.

There's meant to be a 30 second or so window after winning a gym where the gym winner has priority to put their critter down, so I felt quite ripped off. What I assume happened was that they came along and joined in the last battle and we both "won", so she/he/they got to put theirs in.

So I started bashing theirs, I'd fought for that gym and had taken out the four big ones that were there before. "It's the principle of the thing". They may have still been in the area because they kept reviving their critter while I kept bashing it. So I used it as an excuse to help add hearts onto my Buddies and kept cycling through them. I managed to get through about eight before I managed to kick their usurper off (or they got distracted long enough to stop reviving theirs). On the plus side, the doggos got a good break in the shade - I think I was there about half an hour or so in total!

Having successfully vanquished an upstart but expecting them to circle back to kick mine off, I just chucked an average one on there and walked away. Got about a minute or three down the road and mine was returned after being kicked out, as expected. But I had a look at the gym on the map and it was actually a different team! There were three on there from the original team that I kicked off, but not sure if it was the same players or a different set that happened to be walking past.

Very high turnover, that gym.

41

 Yes! Hit level forty one and now can start doing the challenges.

Sleep diary

 At the request of my Dr, I've been keeping a sleep diary for the last two weeks. Got the appointment later today. It's a bit interesting seeing it all written down how many times I wake up during the night. We'll see what the Dr says, not sure how thorough other people are who need to do similar things.

40

 Hit level 40 - can now make submissions - whee!

More PoGo

 Mucking around trying to get more bonuses for my better half. :)

About to head back to the old town, which seems like a good opportunity to A) increase my count of unique pokestops visited (there's a tad few more in that CBD than in our local one!) and B) pick up a mess of interstate low-level mons to do transfers with and add on to that distance transfer medal.

Re-activated an old account, going to be trying to pick up a mess of mons down there while I'm in town, then transfer them to my main when I get back here. Not too sure if it still counts for a third stage transfer, if I was to pass one on to another account, if it'd still count towards the long distance transfer counts or not.

May have to do some experimenting.

In other non-news, this keyboard (or more likely, this keyboard position) is not very comfortable and I'm feeling stress in my wrists just from writing this short entry. If I want to give NaNoWriMo another go this year, I'm definitely going to need to try and improve my ergonomics or I'll stop by the end of the third day.

Aaaandd... first flat tyre

 Got back to the bike after work getting ready to go home and found the front tyre was flat.

   -_-

Rather than pulling the wheel apart straight away, I figured I'd have a go at just pumping some air into it. If it was a small hole with a slow leak, then I might be able to just ride home. Or ride part way, pump some more air in, ride some more, repeat as needed. Fortunately I made it home using this method without needing to pull the wheel apart - which was nice because it was raining, and I don't think the patches will hold if the rubber is wet when applied.

This reinforces my idea that part of the repair kit needs to be a spare tube. Flat tyre? Swap out the tube, pump it up, patch the tube with the hole at home where it's easier and can get a better seal.

I know I've read about loads of riders who totally hate the slime, but I haven't seen too many giving the reasons why. The most common ones I've seen are that it can make a mess if it gets out of the tube (such as when doing larger repairs), it makes a patch not stick when you get a puncture larger than the slime can handle and it gums up the valve so you can't get air in.

The first two are easily solved with the spare tube, the last one may be fixable or may also just be a new tube solution. Either way, at the moment I'll keep using the slime as it seemed to work great on the old bike and see how it goes.

But not planning on going over to tubeless tyres. I prefer a tube that can be easily patched or swapped out.

First ride under 40m!

Wooooh, things went very well back on Wednesday. The ride to work was ok, but the ride home I was in the zone and pushing hard. Made it home in 39m 26sec - and that ain't too bad if I do say so myself!

My average speed over the whole ride was 15.9km/h, my slowest speed was 16.5km/h and my fastest speed was 30.1km/h. And this isn't peak speeds (my slowest would have been zero when I stopped for traffic), this is the average recorded over a kilometer by my tracking app. It doesn't record peak speeds, so there would have to have been either a flat bit of ground or a downhill section where I was pedaling hard across the whole km to record that best speed.

Pretty happy with that time, I thought it would take me longer to decrease my time from my original hour and a quarter times. I was quite happy with my first under an hour time, and then again for my first under 50 minute time. Now I've managed to break the 40 minute barrier, so quite chuffed about that.

Mind you, that was also pushing hard the whole time, my average ride time is still around the 50-55 minute mark, it'll be a while yet until I can consistently get sub-40 minute times.

Next major goal is to ride into the city - which is around the same distance, but this is to help out my better half who has this as her goal. Just takes a bit of time to get used to riding the bike - especially when it's been a few years since the last time riding any decent distance.

Straight edge razor

Nice, finally a non-bicycle post!

So, I've been thinking about getting a straight edge razor for ... at least fifteen if not twenty years. Not because it's "manly" or any of that slop, but it's something I've been thinking about for a long time. I've always been indecisive about it because the list of positives and negatives were about the same length, so it cancelled out.

With the price of my preferred cheap disposables going up, the price balance tipped over to making the straight edge a better option - when I'm not in a rush! Basically, buying double edge razors online in bulk (packs of like 100) and dividing them in half means that each shave would be about 4c or so. As opposed to getting close to a dollar for the decent disposables.

So I bought a cheapy off eBay, which uses the single-use straight edge razors. It's "stainless steel" (we'll see just how stainless $7.99 really is) and I figure it's so much better than a proper one. A good carbon steel shaver is around $300+ but needs stropping, sharpening, constant honing and maintenance and if you nick or roll the edge, it's either a write-off or an expensive repair! Much better to just replace the cutting edge.

Anyway, it arrived this week and today I gave it a go for the first time - very slow and cautious! Only cut myself four times, which I thought was a pretty good effort. Blade is good and sharp, three of the cuts nearly insta-healed, one was a good one that bled plenty and left a mark on my face.

And I can totally sympathise with Chaplin and Hitler going for that style of mo'. Trying to shave that spot under the nose? That's hard!

It's holding

 Rode to work and back today on the fixed flat. I swear it feels like the pressure is lower and gives more rolling resistance, but pressure gauge says it's holding. And I'm sure if it had a leak, I couldn't have done two 16km rides (there and back) without it getting noticeably low.

So I'm going to declare success and say it's holding. In my bag of tricks I'm now carrying a spare tube, so if I do get a flat on the way to / from work I can just swap out the whole tube and worry about repairing the one with the puncture when I'm at home.

In other non-bike news (it seems like all my posts recently have been about the bike) pretty much all my other hobbies are on hold. Not for any particular reason, but it seems like lately I haven't had any motivation to do any of my other creative outlets. It's like all I do when I get home or have some time off is sit and stare at my phone. Very not happy about that, almost getting to the point where I want to install some type of parental control app to reduce the amount of screen time I have. Or at least quantify it so I can have some hard numbers. Though "too much" should be all the data I need.

First flat

 So I didn't ride in the last few days and I was walking past my bike in the shed, checked the wheels as I walked past and the front tyre was flat.

Dang!

No biggie, at home, so a good chance to see if I can change a tyre on the side of the road if I need to!

The good news is that I can change a tyre with the simple tools that I carry, and the bike pump I've got can put enough pressure in there to get me home. So if this happens on the ride to/from work, it won't totally stop me. Took just under 30 minutes to do the change, though if I was really smart, I'd just carry a spare tube and patch the holy one at home.

Edit: turns out the patch was no good. An hour later and the tyre was dead flat again. I think I know where I may have gone wrong, so I'll have another go at it.

Edit Monday morning: second attempt was still holding pressure in the morning, yes! I'll pull out the compressor this arvo and put it to full pressure.

Another big improvement

 Still going on about the bike riding!

So, on the weekend I was able to do some more modifications on the bike. I replaced the tyres (and tubes) which were ... I have no idea how old. At least ten, possibly up to fifteen years old I think. Old and cracked rubber, the sides were breaking and I could see the reinforcement starting to poke through. Definitely on the way out, and the last thing I'd want is a tyre bursting on the way to work. A puncture I could fix, a failed tyre would be impossible. The original tubes seemed ok, so I'll hang on to those as emergency backups.

I also picked up a new (to me, got it from a second hand shop) bike seat post that was longer, so now I have the seat up a lot higher. Now I can actually extend my leg when pedaling! Much less stress on the knees, able to put much more power down and able to use higher gears. Instantly noticeable difference.

My first ride was about 1 hour 10 minutes each way (or so), my old best time was 55 minutes or so, today's ride was 44 minutes (and a few seconds). A ten minute improvement! Not sure how much of that was attributable to the tyres and how much to raising the seat, but it's good to see improvements.

New "personal best"

Ride in to work today, time was 59 minutes flat. Nice improvement over last weeks 1 hour 7 seconds....

But, today I "cheated" and had my id ready. All my previous rides I'd had it in my bag, as it gave me an excuse to stop and get off the bike, rummage around in my bag and fish it out. Then drink some water as well. To me it felt like I was stopping from 2 up to 5 minutes there - something I didn't need to do on the way out which gave my rides home a few minutes bonus.

This morning I prepped and put my id in my pocket instead, so as I approached I was able to pull it out and was waved through almost without stopping. Assuming that was the only difference between my last ride and this morning, I saved 67 seconds by having it ready. Guess the pause just felt longer when I'd stop to rest.

I think it'll be a while before I beat 59 minutes, but it's good that I'm now under an hour. And already shaved 15 minutes off my first ride!

New personal best

 Nice! Rode to work again today (didn't yesterday) and managed to get there in one hour and seven seconds. I thought it would take me longer to get my times down.

First day's ride was 1h11m / 1h/18m, second day was 1h14m both ways. So from an average of 1h14m down to a hair over an hour, that's a big improvement! I had made it a goal to get my time down under an hour, but didn't think I'd be able to do it this soon! Pretty sure the alterations I've been making to the bike helped - still want to get the seat higher.

The ride home was a bit slower - 1h8m. But that's a Friday afternoon in the heat with the extra traffic plus some extra humidity due to the afternoon rains we'd had.

The padding, it did nah-thing!

So, I rode to work and back yesterday and again today. Covered 63km in two days - not too bad for an old codger who hasn't done a bike ride longer than a few km since I was in my 20's!

However, I made a pretty big mistake yesterday setting up the bike - I didn't test!

I put the new seat on with the taller post, added an old t-short for padding and oiled the chain and gears. The bike ran better, the increased height helped but needed to be higher. Biggest issue? The new seat is smaller, narrower and worst of all - made of a harder compound than the original! I didn't realise because I didn't test yesterday, but I realised my mistake before I even reached the end of our driveway - and it's a short driveway! The t-shirt basically did nothing for me.

Rode in to work, scrounged around afterwards for anything else I could use for padding and wrapped it on with tape. It didn't help much, but was a slight improvement for the ride home.

Interestingly, my time kind of improved. Yesterday the ride there was 1 hour 11 minutes in the morning, then 1 hour 18 minutes on the way home (hotter, more humid and more traffic to deal with). Plus there is one nice long downhill stretch on the way to work, which translates into a horrible uphill stretch on the way home - so a longer time on the return journey is expected. The interesting part is today my time was 1 hour 14 minutes there (bit longer, with the harder and more uncomfortable seat, plus the wear on the body from not recovering from the previous day's ride) but my time home was also 1 hour 14 minutes. Which means that after three previous rides I was able to shave four minutes off my return journey, even with the uncomfortable seat.

After I got home I did another swap - kept the new taller post (and increased the height again), put the original wider seat back on and added two layers of foam padding, with a layer of plastic to try and keep the sweat off and help the foam last a bit longer. This time I took it for a test ride after completing the adjustments and it feels a lot better.

Not "good", but better. Might need to look into gel padded seats or something in the future, depending on what is available in my budget range. Tomorrow morning's ride should be enlightening. Is the new padding sufficient, or is it still too hard?

Ride to work!

First time riding the bicycle to work today. Just under 32km round trip, and was quite hot in the afternoon on the ride home.

Sore. Very, very sore - especially the knees. Bike wasn't set up properly, had the seat as high as it would go but was still only half knee extensions. So it was putting a lot of stress on there, especially on the uphill stretches.

Made some modifications after I got home, including swapping the seat out for one from another bike with a longer metal support so now I can get my legs almost to fully straight when pedaling. Should help with the knees. Also added a bit of padding to the seat by way of an old t-shirt taped on. I don't think it'll be adequate, but better than the cheap plastic seat that's on there, which should help with my butt.

Going to ride to work again tomorrow. I must be  masochist...

Tomorrow is going to hurt

 Short version: car is in at the mechanic's for a while getting repaired, the few people I have that I can bum lifts off to work and back are all busy on other schedules or at other locations and I won't have a way to get to work.

Bike it is! It's actually been a while since I rode a bike at all, and many years since I've done a long ride... so it'll be interesting.

Marathons

 When I was younger, I used to think that "marathon" just mean any long race, or long thing. I had my main exposure to marathons by way of midnight movie marathons at the cinema. I have a very vague impression of marathons at school - though knowing primary schools they probably just called two laps of the oval a marathon for the athletics carnival.

A few years ago I found out that a marathon is actually a race of a specific length. Forty two point one nine five kilometers to be exact. And a few days ago I was watching some random YouTube videos and saw one of a dude that ran a marathon for his 42nd birthday.

So of course I thought - hey, I should do that! I can already run (okay, jog) 10km in about an hour, so allowing for slowing down over time I ought to be able to cover 40km or so in about six hours. An average adult can do it in five hours, four with a bit of training.

Then I remembered - I'm already over 42.

Dang.

Finally beat Cliff

 The title may be a little misleading if you're not a Pokemon Go player, but the short version is that there are the standard critters to catch, and also some enemies in the form of Team Rocket players to beat. It's set up slightly differently to how it goes down in the cartoon series, but the short version is that there are low level enemies referred to as "grunts", mid level ones referred to as leaders and big ones labled as Boss.

(There may be higher level ones, but i haven't encountered them yet).

In order to get to the Boss, one needs to first beat a few leaders - and the first few I was able to beat relatively easily. Today I was able to beat the last of them, after having battled a bunch of times and getting smushed into the ground each time.

It may only be a game, but nice to have a bit of sweet, sweet victory. 

eighteen point five seven

Woooh, big day for walking today!

First thig in the morning, took the dogs out for a walk. Covered 4.38km. Afterwards, I went out for a jog which accidentally went a bit further than I intended. Covered 7.89km. And then in the afternoon, my awesome wife and I went out for a stroll for exercise, get some air and catch some Pokemon. Covered 6.3km.

Grand total of 18.57km for the day. Needless to say, I sweated a bit. Though no idea how many steps I took.

Hate online testing!

Grr, get so mad having to do these stupid online assessments for work.

No, that's a lie, I don't really have an issue with online tests. It's poorly made online tests that I have a problem with! I detest having to do mandatory, "must get 100% to pass" tests with poorly worded questions, ambiguous answers and answers that are flat out wrong!

Okay, rant over. I'll go back in my box now.

Seven hundred

 This'll be the 700th post on this blog. Woo! Or maybe not so woo, as I've been doing it for over 15 years, so that averages out to about 45 odd posts per year. But 3.75 posts per month sounds better, as that would imply about one per week.

The actual numbers are quite different, as nearly all my years are below average, with my lowest being 2014 when I only did five posts for the whole year. Not surprising considering what I was doing that year! My average is pushed up by two good years, 2008 and 2015 which both had over a hundred posts (101 and 116 respectively). Followed closely by 2009 (75) and 2007 (69, lol).

Is this good or bad? I don't think raw numbers really matter, as I could easily post 365 times a year by setting up an automatic script that publishes a randomly generated post each day but doesn't actually say anything. I like not feeling obligated to post "filler" posts to make up numbers.

To avoid this being a filler post (or worse, a maths post!) here's this weekends' project: get sunburnt! Actually, the project was help clean up the garden, the catalyst was not putting on sunscreen, so the result was burnt shoulders and back of neck. Dang.

This post brought to you by aloe vera gel, which I'm liberally applying to my sunburn in an effort to reduce the damage.

On this day

In 2009, I got my motorcycle L plates in WA. Didn't get any lessons, didn't have a few grand for a bike (and the all important safety gear) and after a year it lapsed.

I've always liked the idea of riding motorbikes, but my sense of self preservation is too strong. I much prefer a car which is wrapped around me, rather than a bike where I'm wrapped around it. Plus there's nowhere to put a decent stereo and sub woofer on a bike!

Those poor boys were lied to

 

Allegedly, this is a screenshot from a Russian soldiers' phone, presumably either captured or killed in Ukraine. Rough translation is a discussion between the soldier and his parents, with the parents asking how the training is going and where they can send a care package. He replies with his frustration that it's not an exercise, it's an actual invasion.

No wonder the Russians are doing "stupid" things like going to local police stations asking for fuel. They were told it is a training exercise, not an actual invasion.

So many lives lost, so many families broken for no damn good reason.

Liquid stone?

 I wonder if there is such a product as liquid stone?

Similar to plaster or cement, which can be mixed and poured at room temperature but not as crumbly. Cement is great for shoe-box size or larger projects, not so good for fiddly little watch or coin sized projects. Plaster is way too fragile, would just crumble.

Epoxy resin is pretty close - mix two liquids and pour, But it's too physically light, doesn't have that "mass" that I'd like. 3D printing is good because you can get all these weird shapes, but a decent printer that does small detail is big dollars. And again - lacks that solid feeling of weight in small projects.

There's a variety of different alloys available which melt at low temperatures, they're good for casting small one-off projects but "low temperature" is a relative term. Plus lead-free alloys are quite pricey - not just to buy, but also in postage. Aluminum would be good as it is easy to save a bunch of cans and off cuts to have "free" raw stock to melt down, but the gases to get the place hot enough to melt and building the furnace (and molds!) is a tad out of my price range.

A material that is a liquid at room temperature, that can be poured into a mold and ends up with the feel and density / mass of a rock or metal would be brilliant. There probably is such a product out there, and it'll be $100 per litre or something stupid.

Low on energy

 Getting pulled in all directions at work, constantly playing catch up. I'm getting very annoyed with myself to be just vegging out on the phone and not doing anything creative. But I just don't have the energy to get up and get going. I have a few ideas on things I want to do and they are all achievable (without spending a buttload of money). But it's the energy that's running low.

Sucking at something is the first step to getting good at something - but need to start first!

Ditto!

 I've posted before that I started playing Pokemon Go a while back. A bit late to the party compared to all the other PoGo players who have been in it since it launched back in mid '16. I never watched the show, played the games or collected the cards but I've picked up a few bits of the lore.

One of the characters is called a Ditto, because it mimics the look of others. I'd caught one not long after I started playing but it was a really piddly little one. Then I got a challenge to catch one. I think that was maybe two months ago? So of course I didn't see another one.

Then about a month or so ago I got another challenge to catch a Ditto. Those two tasks were sitting there teasing me for weeks and weeks. It's not like I could go actively hunting for one. So it  was just a "wait and see".

Finally got one earlier today! Woooh, two tasks down with one catch! Admittedly, it was also another puny one, but I'll hang on to it in case there is a task to evolve one or trade one or something. They don't seem to come up too often.

Just about gave myself a heart attack!

 Earlier today I was driving home after work, windows down, not a care in the world. I looked in the rear view mirror to see what was behind me, went back to watching the road. So I knew there was nobody in the car with me. Suddenly, someone slaps me on the back of the head!

Lucky I tend to under-react, could have freaked out and swerved off the road or into a car or something! Didn't have any issues with the driving, but took me a moment to realise that it was a hat that hangs behind the drivers' seat on the hand grip which had started flapping around with the wind of the open windows and the peak was what had swatted the back of my head.

Had a bit of a laugh at myself, but for a moment - dang, nearly freaked out that there was someone skulking in the back of the car and I hadn't noticed them!

Got the laptop reconfigured

 I currently have two laptops - one is my shiny new main one which my awesome wife got for me a year or so ago. The other is my previous old one which I've had ... for a long time. I think I had it before I got married, so I've had it for a while. It's an older one with the extended keyboard so it's kinda chunky and the battery on it has gone, so it only runs when it's plugged in.

I figured I'd reconfigure it to extend the life on it, so I swapped out the hdd and installed a Linux OS on it. This makes it a bit faster and helps to run more modern functions on the older hardware. The good news is that the old drive is a 1TB drive which will fit in my new laptop - bonus memory! The new one has one of those teeny tiny M8 memory modules as its main SSD and it's nice and fast - but it's only 120Gb. Okay for average laptop use but I prefer to have more memory. It does have an empty 2.5" bay, so I'll be able to drop in the old 1TB drive and effectively upgrade both laptops.

Nice! Now I just need a reason to use the old laptop. *puts on thinking cap*

Just over thirteen

Not a bad day's effort. Between taking the dogs for a walk this morning, going for a multi-kilometre jog earlier today and doing a walk around the city collecting Pokemon - managed to cover just over thirteen kilometres today.

Going to be feeling it in the morning, but pretty happy with that distance.

Happy two's-day!

Sorry, this is the internet. Had to make the lame joke, it's in the rules.

2nd day of 2nd month of 22nd year of 2000. Not going to stay awake until half past ten though (22:22 in 24 hour time).

Let's just claim we did. :D

Time test part two

Posting this 2030 in the evening, Monday 31 Jan. Intheory, should come up same day as part one earlier today. Let's see what the result was....

Time test part one

Posting this 0542 in the morning, Monday 31 January to see how it gets time stamped on the server. Not sure if Blogger automatically converts and shows local device time, server time or timezone in settings time. Fingers crossed I remember to do part two this evening!

Completed projects

Overall, not a bad weekend. Didn't do as much as I would have liked (still spending way too much time on my phone - need to work on that), but I did get two projects finished.

One was replacing the cigarette socket in the car. The old one had a plastic shroud on it which had decayed and caused the old one to fall out. Needed to make a new blanking plate as the new cigarette socket was smaller than the old hole. Managed to do that with the Dremel - the gift that keeps on giving. <3

The other was my current cross stitch project. The stitching is now complete, need to frame it and get it ready for display.  Can't say too much about this one yet, might be able to share some photos soon.

No progress on any other fronts, trying not to start any other projects yet until I can get a few others finished.

Guess what, it's "next year"

 Here we are in 2022! Still scattered around, still planning loads of things, still not getting things done. Dang. I still have that puppet idea rolling around in my head. Probably because it'd be relatively easy to do - up to a point. And then we hit a wall - what's the point? Having a puppet would make video creation easier - just record in real time. Much easier than digital animation, and way less effort than stop motion animation (trying to do stop-mo in a house with cats [plural] is an exercise in masochism). But there isn't much reason to be creating video content if I don't have something to say.

That might be the biggest holdback on some of my creative endeavors. I tried writing, drawing, animation and a video production over the years and the biggest issue I have is that I'm trying to create content for the sake of creating content. Not because I am trying to say something, or because I'm passionate about it. Most of "the greats" in the various art forms became great because they were both passionate and had something they wanted to say. There are many people who have fantastic technical skills on different art forms but who's projects are very "meh" because they're just ticking boxes.

I'd like to avoid ending up in that camp.