Other What Makes Your Life, Meh?

Facebook marketplace ******s, I’ve had a set of alloys stored away in my parents garage since one got damaged and I replaced the set.

They’ve been badgering on at me to get rid so I chucked them on last night for basically nowt to get them gone. Bloke was super interested and said could pick up between 1-2 today. I said that was fine but needed a specific time so I could meet him there.

Radio silence now… he’s not got enough info to just turn up when he fancies so presumably unless he messages last minute it looks like a no show.

 

pc dead... again...

don't even have the mental wherewithal to have an emotional reaction to it...

 

Its hard to describe the agony of going back to work having had 6 weeks off.

First week has been ok, though we did have to sit in a field for 2 hours as the fire alarm went off and wouldn't reset...

 

(Re) Starting the job of moving our entire DVD (for now, Blu Rays to follow) from physical media and onto Plex.

Whilst encoding is super quick with Handbrake and ARC Quick Sync encoding (like 4 times faster than my 12700KF at the same preset..) the first stage of getting them off the disk is.... eurgh.

I have been messing around with MakeMKV to just do the initial "rip" stage which seems to work fine on Plex, but isn't really any faster than doing both stages in Handbrake (subtitles aside). Just the file size due to the bitrate is 3 times the size using just MakeMKV and after some initial tests I couldn't tell the difference.

No real right or wrong answer to either (I have 10TB of storage on my NAS so the extra file sizes are not really a problem, and I can always re-encode if I start to run out) as the main limiting factor is getting the data off the DVD in the first place.... and having to actually swap discs..

Just done the first season of Supernatural which has 6 discs... (it's also a bad example as its on Prime but then the whole point is to have our own collection so not reliant on streaming service deciding to remove content).

Just... 42 discs to go.... and then everything else to go through..

 

It's frustrating when one would rather go the legal route but internet speeds now vastly outnumber DVD read speeds. Radarr and Sonarr make a breeze of my media collection and organisation and it's automated, I can't imagine what hours I'd have to put in to back up my old blu-rays and DVDs!

 

There’s an easier solution, this:

Yep, 100%.

Automation tools like Radarr & Sonarr make this an absolute breeze, and if you’re prepared to pay a small amount for a few months of Usenet access (and an appropriate tracker) then you’ll almost certainly max out the speed of your connection. Most providers support end-to-end SSL encryption, basically eliminating the risk of nasty letters from ISPs. It’s a much much easier way of “backing up” your physical media, and you can run it all inside containers to avoid cluttering up your machine with a dozen different background services running constantly.

It’s not just a case of disc read speeds vs download speeds, it’s “rip disc manually, re-encode files manually, make sure file names conform to correct schema” vs “search for the title you want, click download, sit back and wait”.

You may find the odd one or two that isn’t available, or oddities like Firefly where the DVD order is different to the TV order used by metadata sites like TVDB, but you can always handle those manually as an exception.

 

Posted some 3 tyres on FB marketplace with plenty of details, the calibre of contact I'm getting is making me want to throw them away, I'm trying my best not to be sarcastic because I may have to meet someone to exchange.

 

"Your energy prices are going up on 1st October".

 

Yeah if that’s your first lesson… balls to that!!

Finding a good instructor can be a bit of a nightmare. It can also be difficult to assess as a learner because it’s very easy to misinterpret criticism and feedback as being a bad teaching style, patronising, harsh, unfair, etc. But if you can’t at least develop a rapport with an instructor in the first hour or two then you’re gonna have a miserable time no matter how good/bad an instructor they might be.

I got lucky with my instructor, he turned out to be quite personable, amiable, and very easy to get on with. It does help that he didn’t have to do very much to “teach” me, but ironically that also meant that he very nearly said no to taking me on as a client. When I first made contact I explained I’ve already got a bike license and now need a car license, so for me it was more about “getting used to a car” than “learning to drive”. I didn’t find out that he nearly said no until closer to the test date; the vast majority of his clients are starting from scratch, so he had no frame of reference for teaching someone who’s already an experienced motorcyclist.

Tangents aside, best of luck @The_Crapman . I’m sure you don’t need me telling you this, but take it at your own pace and don’t sweat the mistakes . You and everyone else on the road are always going to make mistakes, so what’s more important is planning for and dealing with those mistakes safely. And passing the test is only the start of “learning to drive”.

Coming to it later in life made me realise that I’ve had job interviews that were more stressful than the driving test!

 

I crashed my instructors Rover 200 into a gate post. Only lightly, but he was cool about it. I felt really bad though, but he used it as a lesson. Don't know why they buy really expensive cars for learners unless they are trying to attract those who want to race around and pose..

 

How do you race around and pose with a large L sticker on the hatch lid? It's like trying to look cool in school uniform by untucking your shirt and sticking the tie between the buttons. It's still a uniform. You're still a learner.

 

I learnt to drive in 1983 and my instructor’s car was a Nissan Sunny. Modestly sized, easy to drive and reliable, just what it needed to be.

As for my instructor, she was a big, lesbian rugby player and, the best instructor for miles around. I passed after 6 weeks…

 

Instructors often have quite new cars because their features make it easier for learners, and the improved fuel economy helps reduce fuel expenditure.

Being quicker off the mark means less chance of stalling the engine because learners aren’t giving the pedal enough beans. Automatic handbrakes give learners one less thing to concentrate and can usually be disabled when they’re more experienced. Hill start assist means less stalling and rolling backwards. Speed limiters can help ensure that complete noobs don’t accidentally slam the accelerator to the floor instead of the brake and send the car rocketing into a lamppost at warp speed - and, again, can usually be switched off when they’re more experienced. Even parking sensors and reversing cameras help learners judge how close they are to other vehicles while they learn the reference points to look out for and get used to how the mirrors distort the view.

I tried not to rely on the mod-cons when I was learning ‘cos knew that the car I’d be driving doesn’t have any. My car doesn’t even have parking sensors and I always struggle to judge how close I am to cars behind me; the wing mirrors make it look like I’m miles away, the rear view mirror makes it look like I’m already crunching a bumper, and when I get out and look I realise I’ve actually got tons of space to manoeuvre.

Plus, instructors earn their living in this car and spend hours a day in it. It’s probably a hell of a lot more preferable to be in a comfortable modern car with all its gadgets & gizmos than a rattly old tin can. They also do usually use that car as their car, not just a learner vehicle, so it’s nice to have nice things .

Of course there’s always a risk that a learner is going to stack it into a tree despite your best efforts and dual controls. But that risk is part & parcel of being an instructor

 

It's a bit of a complex question, which has changed drastically over the years. My first car didn't have ABS or power steering, which really changes the experience; for one you have a real sense of how heavy the car is, which makes you respect it more. I think the worst case would be someone learning to drive in a car full of features and then buy one that has none, imagine trying to do a hill start with a manual handbrake for the first time without L plates to warn the guy behind you? (not that anyone gives learners space, but that's a whole other thing).

I'm not even sure what the rules are on taking a test TBH, can you use the 360° camera instead of your mirrors? Would even having it up and not using it be a fail? Can I just hit the "self park" button and let the car do the work while I have a look about for pedestrians?

Everyone should learn to drive in a 1976 Land Rover, is what I'm trying to say. Like doing a maths exam with only pencil and paper.

@The_Crapman I had a bad instructor once, I ditched him and never looked back.

 

God i feel lucky , had a 2 hour lesson on the Saturday ( still high from Friday night ) put in a cancellation at the test Centre in Herne Bay and passed on the Tuesday. Think it cost me £58 all in.

 

My first car was a 1976 Mini, the only mod-cons were the wind-up windows, rather than the sliding ones on earlier Minis…

 

My wife's car is an '09 Fiat 500 manual, only "aide" is the hill start delay on the brake.

Both my kids had lots of professional lessons in modern cars then would complain that the Fiat was a tractor in comparison when I took them out in it. They would constantly stall it by not giving it enough gas (I reckon pro instructors up the idle speed on their cars).

I told them if they could drive the Fiat, they could drive anything.

They both passed first time.

 

I learned to drive in a 1.2l Vauxhall Nova. It was as base as a base model as you could get, no abs, no power steering, windy down windows, the lot.

Passed second time and then it was a year before I drive again as insurance was daft money for a newly passed 17/18 year old on the family car - a 1.8l Sierra. My first car after that period was a 1961 Land Rover S2a petrol and that meant a LOT of learning again.

It had no power steering, no servo assist on the brakes, which were all drums. It had no synchro on 1st and 2nd gear, the handbrake lever was on the floor and unreachable during normal driving. It had a backup starting handle to poke through the bumper to hand crank the engine if needed. There was a heater, but it was very much an afterthought and more moved air around rather than heating anything. The main beam switch was on the floor by the clutch pedal (loved that bit, wish that was still a thing).


But as I said, I had to relearn how to drive, I had to learn to slow using the gears, I had to learn to double declutch, none of which is really needed in our current Mini Cooper S, but still.