yesterday i did a quick tally of my cycling this year, and it looks like i rode between 2700 and 4000km (26km 'standard trip', never less than twice a week but more commonly 3-4 times, all year round).

not too bad, considering my slacker nature...

The current wanking draft for HTML5, section 8.2.2.2 translates into the W3C saying 'standards are a good thing, but we are clairvoyant and know better than all of you, so fuck them standards and all the people actually relying on standards compliance!'

Dear W3C, when I label material as being encoded in iso-8859-1 then I MEAN ISO-8859-1 and not smart-shite-infested windows-1252, thank you very much.

Your oh-so-helpful labelling of this mess a 'willful violation, motivated by a desire for compatibility' motivates me to shoot you all on sight.

I've got these Ikea spice racks in my kitchen, and the way I installed them they needed to be fastened to the wall for stability. I didn't want to drill the tiles, however.

Once again my answer is "recycling": I habitually salvage the magnets from dead hard drives. The spice rack is coated steel, the magnets are pretty strong and so I simply glued a bunch of them onto the tiles. Silicone sealant makes a decent glue for operations like that, and it's removable if need be. Problem solved.

...doesn't have to be high tech. I've got a new toy that I really like: It's a Aristo 868 slide rule, and I find it pretty amazing how much you can do with it. Best of all: no batteries :-)

I'm obviously not against high tech, for example:

That's my trusty HP 28S, which I got in 1988 - RPN forever! But still there is a certain minimalistic appeal to the simple magic of sliding log scales...

I like gumtree quite a bit: it's free for private ads, no registration required, simple email-based access and best of all it works. When my nephew visited we needed a car seat for him, and the second ad I responded to worked out. Now that Emil is back in Vienna the seat is surplus. I posted an ad two days ago, had four responses within 24 hours and sold the seat today (for the same amount as I paid two months ago). Very nice.

I just hope ebay (who own gumtree via some subsidiary nowadays) don't stuff this service up...

One week ago: I detect a leaking hose under the bathroom wash basin. Fortunately it was only the fitting that needed to be screwed on a little tighter.

Sunday: the water filter (under-sink twin system, in the kitchen) is leaking badly. Repair attempts showed that the plastic filter housings had developed cracks and were about to start spraying water big-time.

Sunday, part 2: So I bunkered some 20l of filtered water in a plastic water bladder, just to tide me over until the filter was back in operation. However, the collapsible water canister has also suffered a puncture and leaked almost as badly as the filter.

Monday: I checked with the original supplier of the kit (7 years later, and the local company is still thriving, a good sign) and it turns out that the cheap filter housings that I ordered in 2004 should be replaced every 5 years or thereabouts. I ordered the (marginally pricier) premium housings on Tuesday, got them on Wednesday and all is well again.

I heartily endorse PSI Filters: they are local(-ish: Tasmanian), their prices are good, and their advice and customer service are great.