Monday, 22 August 2022

Monday Mystery

Here we go then. Another week flashed by with nothing of note locally. Last week I showed:

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Everyone was on the right track in assuming it was something to do with keeping cool. I do have an aircon unit but this was just a

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fan unit as was correctly guessed by Wilma and Ragged Robin. I bought a couple of these some years ago when we last had a heatwave as it seemed to only way to get a flow of fresh air through the rooms. This one rotates and can 'pulse' the air flow by automatically changing between its three speed settings. My thanks to all who had a guess.

This week you have part of ...

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what? to identify. It's showing the ravages of time, like its owner. Not been used for at least fifty years. If you would like to make a guess please leave it in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.

Monday, 15 August 2022

Monday Mystery

Last week I showed:

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Which Adrian correctly worked out was:

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a spider's nest, an egg sac. It measured about 4mm in diameter. Dozens of tiny spiderlings will later emerge. This is the first time I have seen a blue coloured one. A bit further away was another

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which was the white colour I usually expect to see. So far I haven't managed to identify which type of spider it was.

I have moved indoors for this week's close view

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of what? If you would like to have a guess please leave it in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.

Wednesday, 10 August 2022

Re-purposing Things

Just over three years ago I wrote about a 3.5in TFT colour screen I had bought for use with the Arduino Mega. You can read about it HERE. The last thing I used it for was to try to show the minute changes in the Earth's magnetic field. That worked but the magnetometer (the bit of hardware which detects the changes) needed to be buried at least 3ft deep away from any other influences, like passing traffic as the metal vehicle body is enough to change the magnetic field.

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I gave up on that idea for now but when I bought the Airfryer I found myself forever looking up recipes, especially temperatures and cooking times, for various foods. I started to write them down and then a flash of inspiration! Re-purpose the display to show a list of the items of food I will be airfryijng. Well it rook a lot longer than I thought to get an Arduino sketch (program) to work as it was the first time I had worked with arrays which contained more than one character in each entry. As always it was my lack of understanding when and where to define static, unchanging, and changeable integers, arrays and character strings. After the best part of three days reading and testing I finally made it work as I wanted.

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Powered by two lithium rechargeable cells. The green and blue buttons on top allow me to scroll up and down through the list.

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Three days of muttering, reading, rewriting code seems a lot for what ended up as less that 100 lines of code but I learned quite a lot and am finding it a useful addition to the kitchen clutter.

Monday, 8 August 2022

Monday Mystery

Last Monday I showed:

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Yes Ellen D., it is some sort of cooker.

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Wilma was spot on in saying it is an Air Fryer. I've only had it a short while. My old deep fat fryer was past its best before date and I was going to replace it but then decided to give an air fryer a whirl. My thanks to any who had a look and had a go at guessing.

This week I have something I spotted yesterday.

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If you would like to have a guess as to what this little blue 'ball' is please leave it in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.

Monday, 1 August 2022

Monday Mystery

After it being 'one of those days' I have finally got round to writing this post. Then I find I haven't even transferred the new photo to the laptop. Oh well, all done and ready now (I hope). Last week I showed:

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To the best of my knowledge the correct answers were given by Wilma and Ragged Robin. As far as I can remember I have a couple of these which were advertised as containing tiny fossils of creatures which died in the seas millions of years ago. Thanks to all who had a go at guessing.

This week's close view may well be easier to work out.

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If you would like to have go at guessing please leave your guess in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.

Friday, 29 July 2022

Unidentified Bug

A group of dwarf marigolds needed dead heading. On one I spotted an insect I had not seen before today. For quite a while I thought it was a fly but looking at the poor photos I managed to get I think it may be more likely to be a weevil or similar.

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The greenish V shape on its back should have made it easy to identify but an hour or so scouring the 'net' has proved so far to be fruitless.

Monday, 25 July 2022

Monday Mystery

Last week's close view ...

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... didn't fool Kev Scott and Ragged Robin who both sussed out it was part of a cricket practice net.

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Well done to both and my thanks to all who had a guess.

Struggling to find something I was totally satisfied with for this week but here goes.

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What, in general terms, made the patterns in this rock? As always, if you would like to make a guess please leave it in the comments. They will be revealed, with the answer, next Monday.
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