Dr Beckmann Stain and Stain & Odour removers get bazbt3’s seal of approval.
Pumpkin puppy (7 months) has no opinion.
Rug Doctor Urine Eliminator stands by, hopeful of action.
Stains and smells
Category: misc
Flash
A group of maybe 8 teenagers walked past the house a few minutes ago, one saying, “Oh my God, there’s a bloke ¹ sat in the dark on his phone!” That was me, that was, Mollie cat sat on one leg, Pumpkin puppy resting her head on the other. But the young people outside wouldn’t have seen how warm and comfortable we were.
The irony wasn’t lost on me as I looked up to see half of their faces illuminated by their screens, and one taking a photo of the front of the house – with flash. I’m not worried about my privacy, after all I was sat there with the curtains open, and from what I know about light, reflections and angles, there’s a better-than-good chance the photo would be one of a flash bounced back from the window.
But hey, maybe I got my 15 minutes of fame early this year?
So, teenagers walking past in the dark (we do have streetlights) and cold (hovering around freezing) and damp (the fine rain that wets you through), at this time of year‽ There must have been something pretty catastrophic happened this weekend to make that happen!
And unless the content creators to whom they owe their very lives are down today it’s not TikTok, this isn’t the USA after all (where the company’s self-enacted, political-points-scoring ban started this weekend).
So, I wonder what calamity sent them out today?‽!
¹ A British English word for man, guy, me in this case. (At least they didn’t say “old guy”).
Surf.social
(After spending time ‘testing’ I’ve added a few more notes in the addenda at the bottom. I’m likely to update this post as things progress… or ignore it entirely).
Well, the itch to try Surf.social (a new social and all-internet aggregator from the people who make Flipboard) became too great and I reached out to them. @marci@flipboard.social (internet royalty!) saw my plaintive cry and set me up with an invite code. Thanks Marci!
I’ve installed the beta app within the iOS TestFlight environment and signed in using my Mastodon credentials. Easy.
It took a while before the splash screen gave way to the intro (I succumbed to the urge to force-close it), and now I’m in!
Unstructured observations:
Adding sources to one’s Home feed or a custom feed using the built-in search page is fairly intuitive and quick. Just type something and a range of source types appear. Magic?
Me first, though I’m no narcissist. I hope. My Mastodon bio page is a bit truncated but it’s probably too big anyway.
The Feeds, Posts and Discuss tabs behave differently to each other.
- Feeds shows one’s feeds (Home and custom).
- Posts is a Flipboard-like flip interface with a limited number of one-at-a-time posts shown.
- Discuss has a free-scrolling list of the same posts, again a limited quantity.
Right now my Watch, Read and Look tabs don’t have any content, and because it’s a beta I can only see the top of the words “Nothing is here right now”, with no ability to scroll down. I’m using a beta of iOS 18.3 until the next public update, and on an iPhone XS.
Ah, it’s variable, I looked at another feed and can see the whole message now. A good thing I’m used to pretending I properly beta test stuff isn’t it!
Picking an individual account to follow in a feed either shows nothing for a Micro.blog user’s account (I guess it’ll take a while to populate) or, in the case of the RSS feed for xkcd.com, another Flipboard flip layout. Incidentally, I initially used Surf.social’s browser setting to open in an external app, not sure I like it so will change.
And the xkcd feed truncates the images, based as it is on their height not width; I’d prefer to see the whole thing previewed but maybe that’s just me?
I do like Surf.social’s search. It’s a world apart from Mastodon’s because it finds stuff. (I know Mastodon’s philosophy is to limit visibility and thus the likelihood of abuse; so this is not a complaint).
Whoever’s working the Surf.social account right now sent me this very useful reply:
“Here are two ideas to dive in:
- Start by surfing some of the great custom feeds we’re featuring in Home. Try tapping the Sources tab to get a sense of how these feeds are built.
- Tap “Create a New Feed” to get started making your own custom feed. Once you’ve done this, tapping the star icon will let you choose between adding a feed to home or other feeds you are making.
The email you got from us should have more suggestions!
Contact us at support@surf.social if you have any issues
Otherwise feedback@surf.social is welcome
Ride on… 🤙
And with that I’ll stop writing and just have a play for a bit.
Addenda
(Listed in the order found, feedback for some sent to the developer via the TestFlight app):
I’ve explored a bit more and thanks to Marci added a ‘Puppy training‘ feed container containing their ‘Dog Training. Help!‘ feed container. It’s a really cool concept and it just works. Feeds of feeds in feeds, oh yes.
I’d really like to be able to add RSS feeds by URL but it doesn’t look to be possible, at least not yet. For instance I have feeds for a couple of subreddits I moderate; I’m sent either new posts or new comments in those subreddits, and I get my post submissions, saved links and incoming messages from across the network. I’ve a couple of custom Google News searches running too. When RSS feeds arrive I’ll be happier.
I recently signed up to the Bluesky.social network to follow accounts that primarily exist (or until recently) existed on Twitter – and do not exist on Mastodon, not yet. Now I’ve not looked in Twitter for a while. Whilst my timelines there aren’t as ‘polluted’ as some I’ve heard about I’m just opposed to using it since elmo bought the place. I’ve been careful who I follow to maintain a degree of sanity. However, Mastodon is where I want to be, and that’s why – for me – Bluesky isn’t comfortable. Using Surf.social removes the need to check Bluesky – and so I can focus on what I’m interested in without necessarily seeing any discussion.
Mastodon polls don’t show the available options, only the supporting text.
Update: I thought at first there was no ‘proper’ method to remove a source from a custom feed – that one must select it, add and then select the feed from which it must be removed. The dialogue then shows the operation’s success. And so I said “Early days yet.” However I found what’s likely to be the intended method of removing a feed – select the ‘…’ menu at the top of the feed and choose the option to remove from there.
Viewing a Mastodon thread a post is linked to still sends me out of the app despite me deselecting the ‘Use External Browser’ option in Settings.
A feed’s Watch (videos), Read (articles) Listen (new to me, no content yet) and Look (somehow different to Read) tabs now have content. Too granular?
The Listen tab is probably a placeholder for me because I haven’t added any podcasts yet.
Bug, or just my ineptitude: Attempting to add Jeremy Cherfas’ excellent food series ‘Eat This Podcast’ by searching first for his name brings it up in the Podcasts section (complete with familiar icon and description) but then attempts to add a ‘November Learning’ feed. Searching by its title instead simply fails to find the podcast feed in the Podcasts section or anywhere else.
Update: I really really do like the way the feed ‘containers’ work. I’ve setup 4 so far:
- ‘Puppy training’ (containing Marci’s feed),
- ‘Quotes’ (quotations),
- ‘bazbt3’s feeds’ (unoriginal I know),
- And one called ‘All’, containing the preceding 3.
So I’ve gone 3 levels deep.
Ok, quite a lot of the feed items don’t render particularly pleasingly, and I should probably turn off auto-starting videos (if there’s an option to), and I still don’t really understand why there are so many tabs and what they’re used for. But the app has promise, and I can see why the Flipboard team decided to make it, it’s kind-of… liberating.
Fleas
The area of Mollie cat’s back immediately ahead of her tail has always been sensitive. I recently noticed it had become ‘crusty’ under her fur – as-if she had a bad case of lumpy dandruff, and what I’d term hyper-sensitive (I am not a nurse/doctor).
We got home from the vet earlier. It’s fleas. The vet ran a fine-toothed comb through the fur, rolled the flakes/flecks, whatever they were, in a paper towel and found leftover blood. Flea poo.
So Mollie got a flea and worming treatment, a steroid injection for the sensitivity to touch (she licks and bites when it happens), and I signed her up to the vet’s health plan to reduce ongoing bills.
She’s 15 and I’m, er… a few multiples of that. It’s my very first experience of fleas, aside from the amateur nit nurse in primary school mistaking my dandruff for tiny organisms. My mum resented the implication and marched down to school to confront the errant lady, despite what we now know about the link between nits and good cleanliness. (Anyone, at any time, with clean or dirty hair it matters not, can get head lice and nits, and it’s not difficult to get rid of them).
Anyway, Pumpkin puppy already had her treatment on plan so I just need to get Stella cat’s done, and get her signed up to the plan.
And some flea spray for the house. And wash yet more bedding and…
…maybe get the girls to mention it to their friends, some of whom might be mature enough to not judge…
And only now, as I write this, has my skin started to…
AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!
Biodegradable
We have a local authority-issued kitchen waste ‘caddy’, a bin just large enough for food scraps and peelings. The local authority supplies biodegradable liners on demand – actioned by us tying a yellow ‘flag’ to the main food and garden waste bin and waiting for the collection crew to drop a new roll of bags at the front door.
It doesn’t happen like that. The flag is tied and ignored for a few weeks. There’s a web form to complete which should spur the crew into action, but doesn’t on the next collection day.
So there’s an email address to, er… email. So I did that yesterday with this subject line:
“[my address] – food caddy bags not left”
I got a reply today:
“Good morning, | Thank you for your email | Please provide your address and postal code so I can look into this for you. | Apologies for the inconvenience.”
(I’ve thrown the response all onto one line for speed of posting).
As far as I know there are only 2 locations with my street’s name in the country and only one has a street number as high as mine, and there’s definitely only one in the very town to which I addressed my…
(big sighs)
My reply back was polite.
“[Preamble | my address] (as the subject line), [postcode] | name]”
Flush
Our toilet cistern developed a fault just before Christmas, luckily only leaking into the bowl. Not a major thing, but we have metered water so it was costing money. The cistern is a low-profile type with limited flush volume to save water, and aside from the one repair a few years ago has handled everything we threw at it, if you know what I mean.
Visit 1
Anyway, a plumber came, looked at it and wanted to break through the tiles around it instead of extracting it after lifting the button bezel. No.
Anyway, I asked if he could confer with his office to query what happened during the previous repair. He agreed, closed the isolating valve to save us money and water ¹, and left.
Incidentally, it has a special seal not carried routinely by the national network of plumbers we used.
So I had to rebook.
Visit 2
Instead of ordering the part or the seal based on prior information, during the second visit the cistern was looked at and a part ordered for delivery to our home. So I had to rebook.
Visit 3
The part arrived on Monday, I rebooked immediately, and the plumber completed the work earlier today. Success! No leak, and we have a working flush.
And here is the one the plumber removed.
What a waste.
¹ We have another toilet, we’re posh we are.
Decorations
Public service announcement.
The evening of January 6th is known as Twelfth Night, 12 days after Christmas Day. According to tradition one should take down all decorations around the home or workplace.
The thing to note is that it’s supposedly unlucky to leave them up past this date.
There’s only one way to avoid the misfortune that will surely follow after not taking them down, and that’s to instead wait until February 2nd, Candlemas, the official end of Christmas in mediaeval England, 40 days after Christmas Day.
Your choice.
But I’ve a question. Which one of you reprobates is leaving your decorations up every year and getting possessed by goblins‽
Link:
Twelfth Night: When should you take down your Christmas decorations? (BBC Newsround).
Micro.blog initial issues
I’ve had a few fairly fundamental issues since setting up my custom domain on Micro.blog. Though my username is discoverable on Mastodon (Appdot.net) and the blog works at bt3.com with all links looking good, quite a few are concerning me.
I’ve asked for help via help@micro.blog, when they can spare the time, and I’ve posted this here not to whinge about it but so I remember how things started before I start messing about with CSS, styling my blog. 😱
Ok, the list:
- Posts no longer automatically appear in my Micro.blog timeline.
- Neither blog posts nor RSS feeds automatically crosspost to Mastodon, I have either to crosspost from ‘Pages’ or refresh feeds manually on the ‘Sources/Feeds’ page.
- The comments box under posts is completely absent.
- None of the comments made by me and others on Micro.blog or Mastodon before or after I set up the domain are visibly linked below the posts. They’re in the timeline though.
- My custom 404 page does not display when I test by creating a non-existent URL. It’s the same for both the 404.html and the page at layouts/404.html – in a custom theme based under ‘Marfa’ or others, and edited wholly from the ‘Design’ page. Here’s the design I’ve used on both: https://bt3.com/404.html/ (a work in progress).
I’ve checked through the Help pages too, and this isn’t unusual.
2025
I’m somewhat hesitant to wish everyone a “Happy New Year!”, leaning instead towards “All my very best wishes for a peaceful and fun 2025.”
Now 2024 wasn’t the best from personal and health perspectives.
Our beloved Ruby dog passed away at the end of June, just 3 weeks before we went on a holiday close to Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland. We scattered her ashes at Warkworth beach, I believe her favourite place on earth – it’s certainly the place we first let her run free.
The girls are doing well, the oldest on her final year of 6th form college before university, and the youngest in the first year of GCSE studies in high school. We’re so proud of both.
Our matriarch Mollie cat is 15-ish now and showing some signs of slowing down, whereas Stella cat who joined us last year is flourishing – so much so that maybe we do need to follow the vet’s advice and reduce her food intake.
My wife is getting progressively more tired of the ineptitude and absence of care shown by her work managers, and her health isn’t great – as I mentioned in another post.
Me, I’m still getting over the covid from 2023 and the whooping cough from earlier in 2024. And the blood pressure meds mean I can’t eat grapefruit or the juice. No great loss there then.
All that remains then, all my very best wishes for a peaceful and fun 2025; life’s what you make it, right?
January credit card bill
Ouch, how the heck did that happen‽ Lots of relatively small payments added together, that’s how it happened.
And 2 lots of vets bills for Pumpkin puppy’s squitty tummy definitely contributed.
Look, she’s worth every penny of course, but we really do need to be thinking seriously of pet insurance.
The great thing about the size of the bill is it gives me the ability to focus on my New Year’s resolutions for 2025, but more on that another time.