Aveton Gifford Coronation Street Party
Like many other communities, we arranged a street party to celebrate the coronation. Whatever your opinions about the monarchy, the event brought people together, and everyone had a good time.
Here are some photos.
That was a productive couple of hours at the allotment. The runner bean sticks are up and ready for planting 🌱
Currently listening to … The Clockwork Saga from Gandalf’s Fist.
This album is available on Bandcamp as a combined 5 act adventure, encompassing all songs from “The Clockwork Fable” (2016) and “The Clockwork Prologue” (2019) Albums in full narrative order. Links open in Spotify.
My friend that lives in Spain has gifted me his “Green Goddess,” a 1995 MX-5 (Miata) Mk1 in British Racing Green. If all goes well with the MoT test, she’ll be with us in a couple of weeks, ready for some top-down motoring this summer. I’m already thinking about upgrades… 🚗
Who thought that swearing allegiance to the king is something we’d be told to do in 2023? I can’t believe how out of touch these people are.
Currently listening to … First Two Pages of Frankenstein by The National.
This is the first proper album from The National since 2017’s Sleep Well Beast. It’s worth a close listen. Listen on Spotify 🎶
Misty morning dog walk.
iPhone 11, Lightroom app, processed in Lightroom Classic 📷
If you live in the UK, you will have noticed the increased level of interest in the discharge of sewage into our rivers and seas. The government is concerned about the impact of this on the upcoming local elections and is talking tough but doing nothing.
The situation with raw sewage also affects businesses. For instance, we live in South Devon, where we are fortunate to have access to some of the best beaches in the UK. One of which, Blackpool Sands was voted the “best beach in Britain,” according to the blurb on the website:
Nature’s golden beach, set in an unspoilt, sheltered bay, lapped by clear blue water and surrounded by magnificent evergreens and pines. Blackpool Sands is the ideal family beach to relax, swim or sail. But don’t just take our word for it – come and see for yourself! Relax or play; it’s South Devon’s most beautiful beach any day!
The owners of Blackpool Sands have invested a lot of money over the winter in new and upgraded facilities. I can’t imagine how they feel learning that, according to the Independent newspaper, Blackpool Sands ranks the worst for seaside sewage spillage as shown in the following graphic.
Since privatisation in 1989, private water companies in England* have underinvested in pollution prevention to boost profits*.
They’ve built a debt mountain of £53bn, while giving shareholders £72bn!
Attempts to regulate them have failed. Under privatisation, it clearly pays to pollute.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The UK’s most trusted utility company is publicly owned Scottish Water. They’ve spent £72 more per household per year than English water companies. That’s equivalent to an extra £28 billion being invested in England’s water network!
Send the Government a clear message: stop privatisation, stop the sewage.
You can help by signing the petition organised by We Own It here
In case you’re still wondering who to vote for in this May’s local elections, here’s a list of Tory achievements during the last thirteen years:
It’s not all bad news, though. Although inflation is at a 40-year high, at least corporate profits are at 70-year record levels, so that’s good.
PS - here’s a tip for any grovelling Tory apologists. Save time and brain-ache by selecting one or more of the following responses:
Option 1 response “None of this is true”
Option 2 response “It’s all true, but it’s Labour’s fault”
Option 3 response “More leftie nonsense”
Option 4 response “Labour would have been worse”
Currently listening to … Fuse by Everything But The Girl.
This is the first album from EBTG in 24 years - it was worth the wait! Listen on Spotify 🎶
Despite it raining in Devon almost every day since we moved here in October last year, South West Water is imposing a hosepipe ban on us from 25th April.
Since last summer, our region has been in drought. Low rainfall and high demand have stopped our reservoirs from recovering to levels we would usually see going into the summer. Roadford Lake, our main reservoir in Devon, remains around 27% lower than this time last year, despite the recent rain. To see our latest reservoir levels, please visit our website here.
We must rethink how our utilities are run, as these companies have a monopoly over the consumer. We have no choice over who supplies our water, so they can charge what they like and impose restrictions on the service.
This made me chuckle. Read the A-Z of Tory sleaze here
We need to check the tide times when walking the dog, as it’s easy to get caught on the wrong side of the causeway if we get it wrong.
iPhone 11, Lightroom app, processed in Lightroom Classic 📷
Currently listening to … Multitudes from Feist.
Why invest in Roon when Apple’s Music (the app, not the service) and Spotify are “free?”
I wanted to use Apple Music to bring all my music into one place, consisting of over 2,000 albums I’ve ripped or purchased that sat on a Synology NAS and music from Apple’s streaming service. Unfortunately, this approach didn’t work because Apple struggled to match my albums with the versions on its servers.
After days spent watching Apple Music processing & uploading, I gave up. The workaround was to have two Apple Music libraries, one for digital files and another for streaming music, which wasn’t an elegant or practical solution.
I own a Naim Uniti Atom, which supports Apple’s service via AirPlay, but Spotify, Tidal and Qobuz are better integrated. I’ve used Spotify for many years and still have a free account, but the continued lack of high-res content left me looking for another provider. I tried Tidal but grew tired of the way they push music I don’t like at me. Ultimately, I settled on Qobuz, and bought a 12-month subscription.
I still didn’t have all of my music in one place. After some research during the Christmas break, I signed up for a 14-day trial of Roon.
As a test, I installed Roon on my MacBook Air, pointed it at a subset of my music collection, added my Qobuz subscription, sat back whilst Roon scanned my music and installed the mobile app on my iPhone and iPad.
Roon must always be on and connected to the Internet to work correctly, so using my MacBook as the Roon server wasn’t a long-term solution. I couldn’t use my Synology NAS as it was in storage between houses, and the spec was too low to support Roon.
As an interim solution, I bought a “previously enjoyed” NUC from eBay. I installed Roon ROCK, which is a dedicated operating system and Roon core with the music files located on an external SSD drive. It’s a relatively old i5 model but came with 16Gb RAM. It sits in the kitchen, next to the router and has never missed a beat.
It manages almost 30,000 tracks across my music and what I’ve saved as favourites in Qobuz.
*Screenshot of my Roon home page, showing the zones where I have Roon-capable devices.*
Use this link for a free 30-day trial, but be warned—it’s addictive.
In Part 2, I’ll talk about some of the benefits of using Roon.