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Public Key

npub13t8xasqr2n9ke0py3dj6gcxxmt9gcd0p85392z38lhahgd2nh5kqw72ksn

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsg4nnwcqp4fjmvhsjgkedyvrrd4j5vxhsn6gj4pgnlm7m5x4fm6tqprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntqyqqrhfv80

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relay.momostr.pink

Last Notes

2026-09-08 21:22:51 CEST

Italian night dinner is spicy king prawn linguine with pan fried salmon.
Keeping it simple.
This uses our own passata (we are still going through the huge amount we made in 2025), garlic, chillies, and some fresh thyme and oregano.
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/237/039/938/547/747/original/0e1c806f27448883.jpg

2026-09-06 18:18:26 CEST

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Just decided to fully invest in depressing myself by looking at Cambridge area rentals. 😂

2026-09-06 18:01:19 CEST

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hard to say, I have only really ever lived in older rental houses here in the UK. The current place is actually relatively new by comparison (built in the 80s), but just as bad. But I cannot comment on the general state of new build houses, which I would hope are better I guess.
Definitely issues relating to layers upon layers of bodge jobs and bad maintenance in the typical houses I have seen in the UK rental market. British landlords seems to be much worse at maintaining houses than I recall from Sydney renting, but also in Sydney the houses just didn't seem to have so many inherent design issues in terms of either plumbing or electrics. (Not that they were exactly fantastic, just not as bad in some ways.)

2026-09-06 15:21:09 CEST

Speaking of brain breakage, I am now at least 5 distractions deep into "tidying the house" with no single task more than 10% done. I suspect I have forgotten whatever it might have been I started on 😂

2026-09-02 21:13:36 CEST

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in this case Evilzon because I am an impatient bugger.

2026-09-01 21:01:00 CEST

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I totally forgot to include the fucking point I started writing that post for lol:
> I feel like I am living in the plot to Severance.
It helps with that feeling that the input/output is pretty abstract to me. I mean, it isn't at all as abstract as in Severance... I grok the logic in a way, but it is all clinical stuff and I am not a trained clinician. I'm just kinda a compiler of clinical inputs to formal code.

2026-09-01 11:49:17 CEST

Thoughts from the weekend that pop unbidden into my mind when I'm trying to write code:
> Episode 7 of this new "Ghost in the Shell" series on Amazon is when the scriptwriters dropped acid.
*(Actually enjoying this rendition of GitS.)*

2026-08-31 21:19:19 CEST

I was supposed to go to the allotment today.
Instead I have been at the computer all day doing something else entirely.
Whist this is not *unproductive*, in its own way, all the same feel like a useless poop of a person as a result. In the battle of me versus myself, I can never win.
The map project is progressing. I now have the pieces of a Frankenmap in one SVG file that combines the counties of England with the NHS boards/trusts of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (they are stable in the latter three and in flux in England, so England is just gonna map az-gud-az-poss to counties, possibly some partial county-border "pixel-mapping" going on.) Map needs a lot of manual work to become the thing I want it to be.
I have one of my 3D printers currently spitting out the smallest county as a prototype. (Final project is supposed to be laser-cut, though just doing each county as an individual 3D print is a kinda fun thought... but it wouldn't look as slick as what I have in mind.)
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/191/708/255/659/788/original/5342859c22e86a19.jpg

2026-08-31 13:34:27 CEST

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Shetland?
*gone*

2026-08-30 17:17:01 CEST

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The haul.
I am a little miffed to find the buck converters which clearly have a 50V cap on the input side in the listing came with a 35V cap on both sides, also the output side is 100uf rather than 220. Grumble.
Not miffed enough to return them, because I just want to get on with shit and these will do the job OK in my case.... but miffed enough I will leave a disgruntled review! (These are advertised to accept up to 40V input, which is just not OK.)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B0FY34NK2K
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/185/111/650/921/093/original/44429309b0fe817a.jpg
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https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/185/067/264/248/209/original/433fb490e24e6347.jpg

2026-08-30 16:17:27 CEST

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EXCITE!
(Yes, I am a disgusting consumerist POS.)
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/184/883/676/419/338/original/be636b6dfd0c2223.jpg

2026-08-30 14:27:01 CEST

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Amazon delivery notifications for supporting parts for the project this addressable LED strip is for just landed.
Oh shit. I've started a project now haven't I.
Shit, did I really order all that shit yesterday?
Shit.

2026-08-30 12:48:12 CEST

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hm, I should have said near-30 yers lol. My first Debian install was 1998! So more like 28 years. But... details. It has been a long old time, albeit with a slight Ubuntu dalliance on desktop for a bit.
The developer perspective is the hard one right now. LLM generated code is entering the "corpus" of knowledge whether we like that or not, whether we use the tools or not. Probably a majority of developers in the world are using it, with those of us uncomfortable with it being a small niche, and those who take the harder stance of not touching it being an even tinier niche.
It is simply no longer possible to guarantee anything is free of LLM content/influence unless you have 100% written it yourself with no non-textbook/fundamental reference material. (And given time even the books and core references will be tainted in many cases.)
There is no way to tag or otherwise identify a line of code as LLM tainted.

2026-08-30 03:52:34 CEST

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https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/181/956/288/724/823/original/0fea00f26bf626b0.jpg

2026-08-29 20:24:21 CEST

It is the classic Moosewood Cookbook "Cardamom Coffee Cake" time of the year. My favourite cake. Though I do double the cardamom and also add actually fine/powder ground coffee to the same amount.
Some day I need to buy myself a slightly bigger bundt style tin for this cake, because this one has always been a bit precariot. (It has, admittedly, baked the cake a couple of dozen times I think... with only a couple of bad spill-overs, probably cause by ovens running a bit hot.)
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/180/192/091/114/243/original/4321fabce58c9b9b.jpg

2026-08-29 17:33:49 CEST

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This is pretty much exactly what popped through my mind when I saw the word "fleshy".
I did not buy this bottle of wine.

2026-08-29 17:32:55 CEST

> "rich > *fleshy*> palate"
Hey, Shirl, this wine... it tastes kinda ... fleshy?
Oh, yeah, that'll be Bruce. Remember? 2024, Bruce lost his hand in the macerator.
Oh, yeah. It's a good year though. Well, not for Bruce I guess.
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/179/510/608/532/381/original/adc28883f5ef143c.jpg

2026-08-29 11:29:52 CEST

It is good "resistor sorting" weather.
Also a great activity if you really want to feel how old your eyeballs.
Where does one buy a handful of resistors these days anyway? I could do with a bunch in the low 100s range, I seem to be short on those. Like 100-470 ohms.
Back in the day I'd have headed down to Dick Smith lol. Looked into online ordering and it seems like an expensive way to get a few resistors. So likely I'd end up with 1000 assorted resistors lol. Could do with a few ceramic caps too.
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/178/064/863/962/275/original/3f8c0249b48c8c60.jpg

2026-08-28 15:28:10 CEST

Using Claude to review my logic makes me feel like I'm some kinda Dune universe mentat sometimes lol.
Mainly it finds no real errors. It likes to tell me how optimal my solutions are sometimes even.
Then the real moments are when it says it thinks something is wrong and I'm all like: OH NO NO NO, MR COMPUTER, YOU ARE THE WRONG ONE HERE TODAY. And it "acts" all apologetic, I imagine it bowing and scraping as it backs out of the room. (Anthropomorphising for shits and giggles.)
It's basically a game at this stage.
(Sometimes it does actually find errors, usually typos, sometimes the odd logic flip.)

2026-08-25 20:44:16 CEST

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Made this into a "tomato salad" — just add salt, basil, garlic, and a splash of red wine vinegar. Mix.
Scatter onto some bucatini, and pour around the tomato juices too.
Home made bolognese on top.
Top with more tomato and juice.
Super fresh & summery spaghetti bolognese for "Italian Night" with my leg-day ration of 100g dry-weight pasta. (Also grated on some parmesan after photo.)
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/117/157/599/579/504/891/original/6d45cdd064aebc2f.jpg

2026-08-20 23:09:12 CEST

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> Q5: What do you plan to make in the future? > [> #> MakersHour](https://toot.ale.gd/tags/MakersHour )
I actually have a decent answer for this question for a change!!
A map!!
This is kinda a work thing that came up today. The idea is a map of the UK broken down into regions. Each region will be ringed with internally facing addressable LED strips, so we can highlight the regions and chase lighting effects around their outlines to indicate particular stats and events.
This will utilise a decent sized laser cutter I now have access to at a new makespace nearby, plus my usual kinda microcontroller/electronics malarkey.
#MakersAfterHours
@npub1q3r…v6fy

2026-08-20 22:52:26 CEST

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> Q2: What is your favourite project so far? > [> #> MakersHour](https://toot.ale.gd/tags/MakersHour )
I don't think I have a favourite, many I fondly remember... but nothing stands out above others particularly.
@npub1q3r…v6fy

2026-08-19 18:28:39 CEST

I can say with absolute truth that I have basically spent almost my entire working day wrestling a pigeon.

2026-08-10 22:02:49 CEST

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I will try the chatbot again tomorrow, apparently it has knocked off work now or something.
The fallback is to go to a Currys store apparently.
What the fuck even is a Currys store, can I also get a Jalfreizi whilst I am there?

2026-08-10 21:40:47 CEST

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What I couldn't do via either the Three SIM or Tesco WiFi worked fine on home WiFi
You would think someone at Three has the braincells to realise that their fucking data connection needs to allow the banking traffic for people to make fucking transactions to set up the fucking service. It seems like a very solvable problem.

2026-08-08 12:09:39 CEST

Ah, lol, after 2 weeks running fine, new Mastodon server just OOM killed Postgres... I thought 4GB RAM was enough. (Will constrain down postgres memory needs and see if that helps...)

2026-08-02 20:20:32 CEST

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Great ideas. I struggle to deal with people in situations like this is likely an issue, not sure how I would handle a "car boot" scenario.
I am not super attached to the money value of stuff, my attachments are more psychological.
I do really need to seriously downsize and de-complicate my life. I reckon I probably want out of the UK in about 3 years. I have no idea how to go from now to achieving that though. 😂
Invest some of next year's annuals leave towards this perhaps (I have used all of this year's to go home).

2026-08-02 19:44:47 CEST

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I want a service that just takes everything away.
Sort of like a massive house fire. Just less destructive and polluting.
Where do you even start on getting rid of all the stuff? Why is there so much stuff? Why am I so attached to so much of it. A hard part is that "things" have a perceived value, this makes it hard to simply throw them in a skip. But, realistically, in a skip is where they belong, in a skip is where they will go when I die. I am really not a very good nihilist if I cannot just... let go of the stuff.
I need a blank slate.
It would be nice to reach the weekend and just not have things to worry about. Embrace hedonism, become laziness. (As opposed to doing a bunch of stuff, yet feeling like a useless lazy bastard anyway.)

2026-08-02 19:29:54 CEST

What is this crippling anxiety gnawing away at my core and making me nearly unable to function?
Why am I fighting to pedal uphill where there isn't actually a hill?
Oh, right. It is Sunday evening.
The TODO list is barely scratched. The productivity has been insufficient. The things are not done. The things are lined up in front of me, glaring, accusation in their eyes. I am crushed by the weight of it all. But this is just a regular part of the metamorphosis between dysfunctional weekend Yvan and functional human weekday Yvan. The price paid for the energy deficit.

2026-07-26 19:50:37 CEST

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Very much given up on the keys for today.
Said I'll have to use the angle grinder to get into the shed. Guess what.... the angle grinder is in the shed. 😂
Maybe the dremel (not in the shed) can do it.
TBF I could probably just rip the door of that shed with my bare hands.
I expect this week I will destructively grain entry.
THEN FIVE MINUTES AFTER I WILL FIND THE KEYS.

2026-07-26 13:10:57 CEST

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Anyway... instead of continuing the search I have decided to reblue my hair. 🤷🏻‍♂️

2026-07-26 12:48:44 CEST

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thanks! I read your bio and links, all very informative, and definitely got me thinking about the payment implants, will be researching those some more... very cool (but maybe a little spendy as a starting point). RFID/NFC (& of course gotta have a LED) seems a good place to start & I would like to have rfid for the EMF bar tills before 2028 (plenty of time, maybe... time flies.)
There are so many options on Dangerous Things that its a tad overwhelming. (I do know a bit, but not a lot, about RFID/NFC and have used both in my own projects before.)
I like the idea of the glow in the dark stuff too. (I am presently still enjoying my glow in dark fingernails I did for EMF, even at my age I am still weirdly amused by glowing things 😅)

2026-07-26 12:06:34 CEST

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I cannot even remember if I last had them on Tuesday or Wednesday... I blame EMF-lag.
I guess I am going to have to start the "deep search" phase of looking (which is basically a process of selectively trying to bring order to chaos, some may call that "tidying".) But where do I start...
Of course... as and when the keys are found it'll be somewhere entirely unrelated to where I am looking.

2026-07-26 11:40:26 CEST

I have done a very Yvan thing. Sometime earlier this week I had the bundle of keys for the shed, garage, and summerhouse.
I put these keys down somewhere...
So far over an hour of searching has yet to yield keys.
Sometimes I wish I lived one of those lives with a pristine clear surfaced house of clenliness and order. But that is not me. I have only chaos, I am chaos.

2026-07-26 01:42:14 CEST

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The second turn-of is: why the ABSOLUTE *FUCK* is your fancy text editor over a fucking *GIGABYTE* download. WTF people.

2026-07-25 16:34:35 CEST

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FWIW I am only moving Mastodon to a Hetzner VPS... which will be backup/sync'd to home storage...
All my core/critical stuff is very much staying with Beasts.

2026-07-13 12:55:14 CEST

Turns out you can do this, kinda.
Albeit the Macbook does say "more than 10 hours until fully charged" lol... I don't think its getting quite break-even out of this setup, but discharge rate so far is 2% in an hour so kinda close.
The adaptor, found on Amazon, says 22.5W(max).
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/116/912/289/371/282/878/original/77de5cf3da55ac6c.jpg

2026-07-12 14:34:15 CEST

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Very important final items time! 🐔🧂
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/116/907/023/256/545/352/original/3b12b9ac8ddd6c63.jpg

2026-07-11 11:40:07 CEST

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I assume think it is similar rules to driving vans, which I always stuck to anyway, and TBH are a good default for car driving anyway. Max 50 on single carriageway, 60 on dual... not sure if 70 is permitted on motorways or not? [@greg_harvey](https://tooting.ch/@greg_harvey )

2026-07-06 10:58:34 CEST

Have been wishing I had time for #EMFCamp projects, I'm not short of ideas... just short of time, as ever. But it's fun to vicariously enjoy the projects, exasperations, and hints from others here... and I'll get to enjoy the fruits of these labours next week. So soon. Argh.

2026-07-05 14:46:38 CEST

Phew! What happend to Sunday morning?
I got started on one thing (making ricotta) and... since the oven was on... have ended up with a pile of gingerbread dicks, and a cake in the oven. Now it is mearly 2pm, and somehow the kitchen is slightly tidier than it was before I started (mainly because the kitchen was fucking atrocious to start with.)
Time for a sit-down.
Might eat a dick.
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/116/867/433/530/525/116/original/c642db8977c72521.jpg

2026-06-29 21:10:03 CEST

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I am considering this at the moment: https://www.tentspares.co.uk/products/universal-11mm-tough-durable-fiberglass-pole-section-with-ferrule
I measure this pole at 10.7-10.8mm outer dia, which is maybe "close enough"... actually just measured and there is more variance than that inc >11mm so worth a try I think.

2026-06-29 20:36:25 CEST

A bit last minute ahead of #EMFCamp — any thoughts on how best to repair a tent pole split like this? Will a glue hold? What glue?
This is for our Coleman Rocky Mountain 5 XL... it kinda sorta works with the split pole in a very misshapen way, as the pole bends more severely at the split section.
#repair #tent maybe adjacent to #makershour types!
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/116/834/836/699/496/847/original/d25ef303fcfc1a36.jpg

2026-06-28 23:08:10 CEST

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we couldn't water peas fast enough to keep them alive. The earlier heatwave & dry followed by some big rains knocked a lot of garlic out, but it was still havestable, it kinda destroyed our shallot crop.
We seem to have some tomato issues we haven't had before, a little concerned by that but hopefully most plants pull through.
But we soldier on! With what time & resources we can muster.

2026-06-28 22:38:26 CEST

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Then had to get home and do the mowing and stuff anyway, as dilly dallying around the allotment when I shouldn't be because there are Things That Must Be Done... and not sat down until after 8pm. Cold leftovers from the fridge for very late lunch. Bushed.

2026-06-28 22:19:07 CEST

Phew... well, today didn't go as planned so much 😅
Got down the allotment before 1pm, ostensibly to drop Kat off so she can just do some plant feeding/watering. But I didn't want to leave. So didn't leave until 6pm. Oops.
But Stuff Got Done™️
In the polytunnel replaced two dead tomatoes with fresh(ish) seedlings, also finally planted out long overdue melons and watermelons... maybe they'll do something, maybe they won't.
(Sorry, not got any decent alt text in me right now.)
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/116/829/537/828/054/111/original/ffe84d595b0c2143.jpg
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2026-06-05 20:31:05 CEST

Ah... a weekend? Even after some time I'm still not really used to them, and it is weird being at a beer event and not working. (Only my third beer fest visit in two years.)
I have a Kernel "London Porter". It is in fine condition. Hitchin beer festival has a legacy of great cellaring, and I like to think I played a role in that evolution.
I don't actually drink beer all that much any more, but I still enjoy the stuff. (I don't drink much in general any more, seems sensible after 10 years in the industry, despite my supposed tip top "liver function" 😅)
Also amused to stand here and watch people form a queue at the bar. Why do people do this? 🤔 The smart ones walk straight to the bar and get served quicker.
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/116/698/889/288/558/292/original/c3c22c9a0153fa8d.jpg

2026-06-01 14:45:27 CEST

First work BBQ lunch of carb-free(ish) June. (Well, my weekday lunches/daytimes have been generally carb free for over a month already.)
(Not some keto bullshit really, not extremely anyway, lots of veg.... carby dinners remain for "leg days" twice a week. Whey and cassein mank to keep the protein up. Here beings a cycle of "cutting"/"maintaining" calendar months. Next phase of The Plan. I.e. a seemingly-complicated (but actually necessarily highly regimented) approach to losing weight, the only approach that has ever worked for me.)
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/116/674/840/473/059/892/original/b1d273d6541fc55e.jpg

2026-05-24 17:28:56 CEST

My "shortlist" of the 32 tomato plants I want to grow in polytunnel space where I grow 22 tomatoes normally 🤪
Tempted to squeeze them in a little closer. Then I reckon I can maybe do 26.
My stamdard is that I grow two of each plant, plus extra for the "core sauce" toms. I can slim things down somewhat I reckon. Just one for a couple of more experiential/new varieties. It's a slight pity as I like to give new varieties the better chance of judging them i
on two plants.
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/116/630/247/622/845/363/original/c738698aa430518f.jpg

2026-05-19 15:08:21 CEST

Yeah, thanks for that claude...
> You're right to flag that — I was hallucinating a specific URL there. Sorry about that.
Kinda like Google Search was in the 2000s, except it simply lies sometimes.

2026-05-17 16:04:50 CEST

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Of course the plane is delayed... by a good half hour, (it hasn't even landed at Stansted from its previous route yet), and we are at the airport safely early for the correct time... so probably an hour or more before the RyanAir desk opens.

2026-02-26 11:38:15 CET

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yeah, I never had time to try and analyse them... that one is actually still up the top of a pole on the house.
I have also tried these ones: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bingfu-Outdoor-Waterproof-Vodafone-Cellular/dp/B086J9NBQ8/
But I am struggling to remember if I ever confirmed how well they worked. I vaguely recall they may have done something, but I never properly tested it and the site those ones were on had pretty much 100% reliable wired Internet so I don't think we ever had to use the failover.

2026-02-26 11:32:28 CET

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there has gotta be cheaper options than that that'll work...
In actual fact I should have that one in storage somewhere I think. I'm tempted to crack it open and see what kind of bullshit is inside. (I cracked open the one that didn't work and IIRC it was just a PCB with some dubious "antenna" traces on it.)

2025-08-16 13:35:36 CEST

w00t! Once again we are Smegging Smegheads!
Thanks to Freecycle... they claimed this oven was working fine, but it intermittently tripped out our RCD. So I suspect it was on Freecycle for... alterior motives (easy disposal). It *appears* to be the case that the fault was simply this dead bulb jammed in the socket with bent pins... we replaced it and the oven has now successfully heated to 200°C and maintained that whilst opening and closing doors without the RCD tripping. 💡 I am not yet 100% convinced as the fault was intermittent and I have too little data to be sure.
We shall test it out with a couple of simple bakes today, probably oven chips 🍟 and maybe this zucchini recipe recently posted by @npub1fqf…ajkk : https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/scarpaccia-italian-zucchini-tart-recipe
If it passes then perhaps tomorrow we shall celebrate with a pizza night. This oven even has a pizza mode. 🍕
https://toot.ale.gd/system/media_attachments/files/115/038/206/239/252/504/original/ddeef1d779beb41e.jpg
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2024-06-17 20:56:41 CEST

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oh, yeah, we noticed this recently in Cambridge too - similarly we used PJ's because of the anchovy option (given Dominoes stopped doing them ages ago.) No more Hawaiian pizza with anchovies for me :(