Notices by Stuart :progress_pride: (slowe@mastodon.me.uk)

Managed to find ways to reduce the size of someone's webpage from 89MB to 25MB. It is still ridiculous but not quite so much.

Call 555-1352 to get a cab in Cabot Cove.

Someone must have compiled a list of all the 555 numbers used in US film and TV, surely?

A lot of people talk about "tolerance" as if that should be an aim. Someone just "tolerating" someone else's existence feels threatening to me. It feels precarious and most likely removed at any point their mood happens to change. Someone having never considered me is better than them "tolerating" my existence. Better would be enthusiastic "acceptance". Or "celebration". Let's stop setting the bar as low as "tolerance", please. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/10/despite-appearances-britons-are-more-tolerant-than-ever

Leeds Pride 2024. #Pride

@thomasfuchs Sorry for being slow. I finally wrote up our gluten-free pizza recipe https://strudel.org.uk/blog/stuart/000011.html

@thomasfuchs It is still not as good as the homemade gluten dough we used to do but it is the best of all the recipes we've tried. We've also had non-GF friends just think it was a normal pizza. I keep meaning to write a blog post about it. It came from a pizza recipe book although that recipe involved buying 5 different flours. We've found that Freee's GF flour does a good job of replacing all those and is cheaper (and simpler).

@thomasfuchs Once I write it up I'll let you know.

@kissane I use my IR thermometer to check the water is the right temperature for the yeast when making gluten free pizza.

But language follows use. And all those uses are now very common.

I get a little bit sad when people refer to a wallpaper that doesn't save their screen as a "screensaver". I get a little bit sad when people refer to any bit of audio/video put on a website as a "podcast" rather than that being the word for a series released with a feed. I get a little bit sad when people say they "wrote a blog" to refer to an individual post on a blog in a way they wouldn't say "I published a newspaper" if they wrote one article in a newspaper.

I like that this Mastodon server isn't too big, that I know who the admins/moderators are, and that I can check the finances openly. And it isn't selling our data to fund it; it is funded by 227 of us. Thanks to all those who've chipped in.

Royal Mail delivers post.
The US Postal Service delivers mail.

My dad had a bunch of slides in his stuff. Some of them seem to be 120 medium format (I think). I've been trying to work out cheap ways to digitise them that doesn't have a risk from sending them away. I tried a flatbed scanner with an illuminated corner box on top but it lost the colour for some reason. So I'm just trying taking pictures with a camera.

I find it so frustrating that a local council homepage can go from being ~2 MB to over 15 MB and nobody at the council notices or cares. https://open-innovations.github.io/council-website-emissions/areas/E07000076.html

The BBC pushing me to be logged in to read their website. Uggh.

(For the reply guys, I don't need advice on creating a throwaway BBC account. I also know that things like Instagram etc do this already. Uggh to them too. I'm complaining about the BBC copying the pattern.)

A positive thing: it is good to see places like the BBC finally start to do this rather than just directly embed other websites which will track you.

The Luvly electric car definitely does a few of the things I've been wanting for years including:
* smaller/lighter which means less energy use, reduces road space, and would likely reduce tyre pollution
* removable battery which makes it possible for people like me to be able to charge at home and can give more range.
https://www.luvly.se/feature/simple

Easily removable standardised batteries across electric vehicles would be a very quick win to convert petrol station business models. They could charge batteries offline and then, at a "petrol" station, you'd just have to switch over your battery to a fully charged one. It'd save people sitting waiting to charge on long trips. And the "petrol stations" could charge them using cheaper/greener times on the grid.

Anyway none of this will happen. It doesn't matter about technical difficulties of doing the switch over (that is solvable). The main issue would be car manufacturers because they behave like computer manufacturers and want/need to make their systems incompatible as much as they can get away with.