@grumpybozo@toad.social2025-12-28 00:08:11
For the past week or so I’ve been following @… posts about the events at this years “Ashes” cricket series.
I am enjoying being quite mystified by the terminology. I know very little about the game beyond it being a distant relative of baseball with a much harder ball and wickets with little baubles on top instead of a strike zone judged by an umpire. I have concluded that …
@cellfourteen@social.petertoushkov.eu2025-10-25 10:17:07
Arriving at Act I, The Alters is quite engaging. It's a video game, in case you are reaching for your favourite search engine. So far, the sci-fi aspect has that structured feeling of the Eastern European/Soviet branch of the genre, mixed up with the post-Soviet era shift of values and cultural trends -- still kind of bland, but looking at the Western guilty thrill of the dystopian. It's a damn good, well-made game. I hope it holds up in that way until the end.
@pre@boing.world2025-12-22 17:18:37
The mechanics sorted out filling the adblue tank.
The warnings have stopped beeping and the 10 l bottle that was in the back is gone, so presumably I can trust it's in the tank now.
Sounds like much of what I have paid for was for them doing what I did: Looking all around the car for an ad-blue tank hole and taking things apart trying to find it.
But none of that is the correct solution, which is to put it up on the ramp and clamber underneath to find the tank which has some sort of lowering mechanism, to then lower it and fill it and raise it again.
Not a job for me then. Next time it'll maybe be cheaper coz of them knowing what to do now and not spending half a day trying to figure it out.
Apparently there is a second emissions reduction mechanism which doesn't take a wattery bottle of urea, but instead needs a pouch of oily tar stuff.
This is more likely to empty and need replacing next, rather than the piss bottle.
And even for normal cars that haven't been screwed up for wheelchair access this is a mechanics job anyway. And the garage will have to order in the tar pouch especially.
Back in the 90s, my first car cost about 200 quid. Today I paid 200 quid to get someone to fill it up with purified piss for emissions reduction. Oh how things change. 😆
@pre@boing.world2025-12-19 13:02:42
So my car has been complaining I should put some exhaust emissions neutralizing fluid in it. A thing they call AdBlue I believe.
Bought a big 10l drum of the stuff ready to fill up.
But when I look at where I expect to find the hole for filling it, I just find a capped off tube and a warning sticker "See the GM Citreon Berlingo Blaze manual" for the adblue refilling hole.
Only user manual I have is the one telling me to expect it there.
The car was converted for wheelchair access at some point in its life. I think they are referring to the wheelchair-adaption manual, which the seller did not give me.
🤔
Have been looking around the car as much as I can for a couple of hours this morning to no avail. Where have they hidden this hole to fill up adblue?
Maybe it's under the engine or something now and you have to put the thing on stilts to find it?
🤷
Asked my mechanic about it and he says to bring it in on Monday. Gonna be a pain if I have to rip up the floorboards or something every year to refill that.
#mechanic #car #diesel
@hikingdude@mastodon.social2025-10-05 07:50:30
One reason why we chose #Baiersbronn for our last vacation was the #Landesgartenschau (#Garden show?).
It would have been a gem for flower and garden
@arXiv_physicsoptics_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-10-03 08:20:51
A Path towards Thresholdless Colloidal Quantum Dot Lasers by Solving Decades of Mythology on Optical Gain
Davide Zenatti, Patanjali Kambhampati
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01199 …
