u/ProfessionalSky7899

https://preview.redd.it/00dye49u3fbh1.png?width=2473&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d9968edf6f63e25ae1a2e86bfadca74d16659e6

I lucked into a lot of outdoor 4x4, so after making a nice dovetail straight bench for the garden, the next obvious thing to try is a radial bench to sit on an old concrete pad. I've got the individual cutting lengths/angles for the radial pieces sorted, but I'm struggling to come up a way to support it on straight pieces. Any ideas?

500m of rainwater catch, treatement and diversion from sewer installed as a centerpiece of the high street!

Just watched the video, and while the work itself is mildly interesting (I don't live in a desert, so it's not personal for me), the psychology is really interesting: It's a person driven by stewardship and self-development, but coming out of a pay for play society.

He's a businessman, spent a lot of money getting the land, and is thinking about the work in times of outcomes and $ and hours spent. He's not a gardener, where the time spent is the purpose. He's engaging with the state, getting funding, and "learning on camera". I think the internal conflict is summed up by him describing the work as 'a mission'. Go in, do it, go home. And underneath is a slow burning drive to watch things grow and nurture the desert.

It's an interesting conflict to watch play out.

After a burst of enthusiasm I'm drifting out of S2e design again, so going to just write these class ideas up as seeds for anyone else. I tend to design classes as a central focus, with routes through them based on a secondary stat/skill. It's always intended for people to mix and match

• The Medici: a wis based non-magical healer. Starts with Battle Medicine, Stitch Flesh and Ward Medic. A generalist Medici might be able assess species for common weaknesses, lean on medical privilege to pull personal information from databases or summon emergency response drones in a city enviroment.
  • Three main routes are Druggist, Shrink and EMT.
  • Druggist can lean criminal dealer/ profit spinning, but builds on Craft Serum feat, treating/inflicting conditions, injectable weapon group, and an amount of forensics.
  • The Shrink supports the support. They aid, build on intimidation and manipulation feats, they can buff with temporary HP, and they have insight into what would make make someone flee or deescalate the situation.
  • The EMT is about emergency response. They get armour training, and stacking environmental training. They get a movement speed when hands are free, and a shield block / body block ability when next to an ally. They can 'surge' - trade later actions for bonus actions now, and pickup and move bodies effeciently.
• The Wrecker: a con skirmisher focused on pistol+blade type builds. They are augmented or mutated, frequently outcasts. They face the high tech elite of the galaxy, and drag them down.
  • Three main routes are SumpScum, GlitchFest and VoidWalker
  • Sumpscum knows the sewers, bottom of hives. They can walk through oil without slipping, through choke-gas without crying and sometimes make friends with sewer-beasts and their ilk. After all, they share similar tastes.
  • Glitchfest are a walking infohazard. In their paws, laser weapons become flickering viralzips. Their skin flakes clog comms ports. Heavy armour might seize up, or start mirroring the Glitchfest's movements.
  • Voidwalkers are heavily augmented from a young age. They are happy in vacuum, in cleaning up ship breaches, or carrying out a little smuggling around space port haulers and vents. Most have a integral harpoon, small toolkits, climbing claws and tentacles or tails. They move diagonally without penalty, and are effective at razing their way through ships.
• NecroThreader: The classic necromancer uses blood, bone and ghosts, but in the age of technological infospheres, some have moved onto mass, drive and dross. Like most INT based spell-casters, they work a free hand or a wand, and normally a pistol.
  • The three main routes are Inspecter, Pathosgen and Cystern
  • The Inspecter is driven by, and obsessed by the truth of the past. They can read the emotional resonance of the walls, take supernaturally guided shots and even let vengeful spirits reach out and grapple opponents.
  • The Pathosgen walks half in this world, half in the infosphere, where the number of accounts held by the dead far exceed the living. They can project layers and layers of these lived lives, providing overlapping fields of cover. They can sic semi-imaginary crowds of critics, griefers or a feeling of doom on those they oppose. Worst off all, this effect can be contagious, spreading and passing from enemy to enemy.
  • The Cystern is a pragmatic recycler of bodies. From ship reclamation systems, or dispenser feedstock, they can imbue that sludge with complexity, muscles, teeth and sometimes even rudimentary brains or wings.
• DispatcherExtreme: No cyberpunk game is complete without a fast moving courier, motorbike samurai or corpseTV-sponsored adrenaline junky. This DEX class is all about movement, dealing damage as you pass. You get Adrenaline as a type of Focus Points, and a buff+speed focused spell list.
  • The three main routes are Driver, Chaser and Tagger
  • The Driver has a focused pilot skill loop, and starts with a personal, stowable rigg - hoverboard, discboots, wingsuit or similar.
  • The Chaser has a focus on acrobatics and movement in combat. They excel in creating, triggering, evading and countering reaction strikes. The closer the blade passes to their skin, the bigger the grin they are wearing. Hit them with an AOE and you might just flick them to the edge of the effect, and they might use that momentum to bounce off the wall towards you.
  • The Tagger is more about stealth, and indirect area control. They set up graffitti tags which are then spell loci, tripwires and movement buffs for others in the party.

It's being built right now, and using conventional techniques, so a lot of concrete and hard engineering. So not very solarpunk. Lots of bank habitat needed!

BUT I do like the idea of canal freight corridors. They are wider than rail freight, so much more expensive to build, but they are quiet, locally cooling, and also allow water movement between regions. Do you see a role for them in your stories?

Farmers around the world struggle to maintain high nutrient levels in their soil – a prerequisite for stable crop yields. The problem is especially pronounced in the periods between harvest and sowing, when fields are left bare – fallow periods – and winter rains wash nutrients out of the soil.

Research shows that these periods are a key source of nutrient loss, greenhouse-gas emissions and declining biodiversity. To counter this, farmers sow cover crops to retain nutrients when no wheat, barley or oats is growing in the fields.

But the solution is far from ideal. Farmers must invest both time and money in sowing cover crops without any direct financial return, and the effect varies widely depending on weather conditions and timing. As a result, many farmers do not use them unless required to do so, and uptake often depends heavily on policy requirements and subsidy schemes.

“In Denmark, planting cover crops to reduce nutrient leaching is mandatory – and to be honest, it is a real nuisance for farmers,” says Virginia Anne Nichols, Assistant Professor at the Department of Agroecology of Aarhus University in Denmark.

There is a long line of attempts to address this problem, from perennial crops to drone-based sowing and permanent ground cover. All have shown promise but also clear limitations. There may, however, be another way that several research groups around the world are now beginning to explore.

The idea is to use failed attempts at perennial crops directly in the field instead of sowing separate cover crops. These plants can cover the soil on their own, potentially saving farmers significant work.

The mechanism is simple: after grain harvest, the plants regrow from growth points and roots already established in the soil – a phenomenon known as post-harvest regrowth. Instead of starting from scratch with new seeds, the plants continue to take up nutrients during the period when the soil would otherwise be bare.

“Here we propose an alternative solution in which farmers simply leave the harvested plants in the field,” says Virginia Anne Nichols.

My local makerspace has a standard cell tester, that you pop it into and takes the battery through and discharge and recharge cycle, integrating the curve and giving the capacity result.

But it can't handle the np-fw50 multi-cell batteries I'd like to check, and I'd like something I can take to repair cafes for the various battery powered devices we are seeing coming in now.

So it needs to be able to handle multi-cell batteries, and batteries with a +,- and control wires. That's hard.

heavy duty hacking and rewiring of a the worst example of designed obsolesce I've ever seen: a eletric bike were you need an app to turn on the headlights...

and then they stopped supporting the app...

• I'm a volunteer at repair cafe wales. This means I'm covered by insurance, have received PAT training and ( i think) count as a 'professional repairer' in that context.
• A double induction hob came in. One half works fine, the other half appears to need a new mainboard.
• In case it matters, in this specific case the product owner is a charity group and not an individual consumer (they give cookery lessons).
• The device is out of warranty
• The product is still available for sale from the manufacturers website. I have saved a copy of the website page.
• I have been unable to find spares from the usual resellers, and the company does not (yet) offer spare parts through its website. I believe they are legally obliged to support professional repair due to THE ECODESIGN FOR ENERGY-RELATED PRODUCTS AND ENERGY INFORMATION REGULATIONS 2021 Update: this particular legislation does not apply to induction hobs. - any thing else I could use?
• I have approached the company by email, and been told they do not offer spares.
• I have replied, reminding them of (what I think are) their legal duties under the 2021 act.
• UPDATE: I have confirmed this model isn't available in France, so i cannot use the stronger french regs.
• UPDATE: they have responded "we do not supply parts which require the appliance being dismantled as this is health and safety"[sic].

What are my next steps in chivvying them?
Business Ombudsman? Instruct a lawyer's letter (on what basis?)? Small claims court (on what basis?)?

I'm looking for a fairly cheap and repeatable approach, ideally one that works with businesses and individual owners. I currently see maybe 3-4 devices a year that are out of warranty but post 2021 and therefore should be supported (and in fairness the big brands do).

UPDATE: do I have ANY legal basis to push them on, or do i just shame them on linkedin?

Been eating minimal meat for a while. but with a drop off in the amount of sport and cycling I'm doing, and a slight increase in stress and hours worked/stationary, I've picked up 10kg and a bit more fat around my waist then i'd like.

Obviously, portion control is the first step (not getting through 200g of nuts and 2 pints of milk a day). Second is getting (only) the right snacky food available in the house.

Any recommendations for alternative protein sources that are environmentally clean? (and not too fat or carb heavy for the g protein)