Ask UK

Wife was home with me for the week, nice to have company while I work. Finally set her up with my old laptop, hers was getting a bit long in the tooth - and now we're officially a Windows-free house. Some issues getting Anki to run properly on Mint, but it was a learning experience. Have also been getting games figured out in Linux recently. Trying to do PS4 and XBox 360 emulation, that's a work in progress. Finally did sort out how to get a few other games running well though. Nice to have Shadow of Mordor and Mad Max working again, but the real excitement has been Mina the Hollower.

Showed my kid Princess Mononoke, hadn't seen it in decades. I'd forgotten a lot of it, so well worth the time.

Had a go at plumbing for the first time in 10 years, converting an indoor tap into an outside one.

I still don't trust how a tiny curved piece of metal can stop water from leaking through ("olive seal"), but seems so. The current state of the art tech are "push fittings" (read: plastic joining doo-hickeys), but I opted for the old fashion olive+nut compression fittings.

Cut the indoor 15mm pipe, fitted a 15mm --> 1/2" flexible connector with isolation to it. Drilled a 20mm hole to the outside. Slotted in the outside tap plate with 15mm copper stem. Cut the stem. Silicone'd the eff out of any gaps (because that's what the british seem to do for everything...). Elbow compression fitting on the other side. Add the 1/2" connector to the elbow. Turn the water back on, and hey presto, no leaks!

I now have an outside tap to water the plants, which might be a bit late given the heatwave has gone and my plants are either fried or tired, but I'm ready for the next one.

Next step is erecting a sun shade. No point in having a garden if you can't go in it

hot.

Wife and I had a brilliant long weekend in Belfast. Def Leppard and Extreme on Friday at Belsonic, and live blues rock performances all around the city centre throughout the weekend. We visited the Titanic museum, which was very interesting, and sampled a good few pubs too.

How was your week?

Man, working from home is great and all until you need the aircon...

31°C in there... and a deskfan does not cool a small room.

No breeze until Friday...

But, apart from that, it was all good thanks... even got the shed painted over the weekend. It'll survive another rainy winter.

And what about the blackn1ght household? All good?

I got to have medicinal pizza this week because of the ridiculous heat. By Friday I woke up feeling a little shaky and wobbly. Eventually I worked out I was probably salt deficient given all the sweating I'd done this week so pizza was had and I felt much better afterwards, I didn't even wake up feeling thirsty so I definitely needed the salt. Not something I've ever really had to worry about before now.

This weekend has been really good, especially today with the cooler weather. Good dog walks early morning and plenty of video games.