This week the scones are from 'Killerton' and, aptly, these scones are to die for.

Bake

For these scones we thought we would, and should, finish up the lacto-free milk we have in the fridge instead of just pouring it down the sink. So we used that instead of plant-based milks (though we know they're just as effective).

Results

The bake went well but there was a significant problem in that the time given for the bake was 10-15 minutes, so we took the scones out at 10 minute mark and realsied they weren't as “springy” as expected and popped htem back in for another 5 minutes. They came out springy and golden. The 3 scones that didn't fit onto the tray were in next and they went in for 15 solid minutes, they were taller and were springier.

Perhaps the over wasn't warm enough overall? Needed more warming time. The result was no less delicious!

Next week

We have Cheese Scones from Stourhead (Wilstshire). I think we will run an experiment then too; lacto-free cheese and a vegan cheese. We're still requiring eggs, so they're not fully vegan which is a shame but there we are, gotta follow the recipe as closely as we can.

#50Scones50Weeks #TheSconjuring

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Most of the scones will be made in the order that they are written, the exceptions being the scones for festive periods like Christmas, Easter, etc., they will be made at the appropriate time. The main, and significant, difference is we will have to make all scones without lactose owing to dietary requirements, this is often going to be a simple swap but the consequences may not.

Bake

To kick things off we started with the Plain Scone of Tintagel Old Post Office.

For the Plain Scone, and as it was our 1st attempt at the challenge, we decided to run a back-to-back bake; one with lacto-free milk and one with soya milk to see how they turned out.

Oddly, the recipe for this plain scone requires lard as well as butter, odd but we carry on. It turned out to be a simple bake and it took a quick 15 minutes in the oven to be ready. We quickly whipped up the soya batch after the lacto-free milk batch and let them cool.

Results

After cooling we tried them in a side-by-side test. Both were very light scones, neutral in flavour and texturally similar. The difference, only difference really, was that the milk ones did have a creamier after-taste but not whilst eating them. The milky ones were also more golden in colour when finished.

Next...

Fruit Scones of KIllerton, I'll write another post next week.

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Flower of Scotland, less about the flower and more about a 700 year old battle. It's embarrassing imo. Sounds amazing in a stadium though.

Scotland the Brave and Highland Cathedral, nice on the pipes and drums buuuut yeah, shite.

Scots Wha Hae and Caledonia, don't have that anthemic feel.

Majority of these are surprisingly, to me anyway, recent songs and I think a more modern one could be written that has a feel of Flower of Scotland in the stadium but without the historic middle-finger.

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Racing

Racing looked normal or slightly improved (Specifically RUS vs LEC) compared to previous years. My fondness for the racing associated with the ground-effect era waned as the cars became increasingly likely to be in a Trulli-train.

Overtaking games are excellent to watch in my opinion. It seems the drivers can choose to limit corners to advantage other corners. Merc doesn't appear to red-flash harvest as often as Ferrari.

It is good to see reliability back as a factor in F1. We've been spoilt with amazing reliability. I know this will irk many fans but it's been a staple of F1 since forever and I like its return, the cars will get more reliable with time.

Some things never change; Ferrari strategy blunder at the 1st VSC 🥴

Production

The on-board graphics, this year, are really rubbish. Somehow less reactive than in previous years (gears and rev range massively out of synch) and more cluttered with less intuitive information. It's a mess and it would not surprise me if it's slop-code.

* “Deploy” and “Recharge” are shaped vertically like they've used brackets as the alignment. They're both blue with white text. The only help is deploy is beside the green acceleration graphic and recharge is beside the red brake graphic. * Centrally speed (both in mph and kph) exist either side of “Boost” and “Overtake”, with a graphic of a battery to show state of charge 🔋 at the bottom. * The gears are to the right, disconnected to speed and connected to the “active aero” text and graphic. * On the left is the position relative to a driver and also the turn number. * Obviously every country can speak/read English and has a 4K screen to see the text with ease.

For the season

If this race is anything to go by, this year could have an excellent title fight between Ferrari and Mercedes. Probable podiums for Hamilton, which will be amazing to see (he also needs to confidence of that possibility).

I think the FIA need to increase fuel-flow or something to allow the cars to have more energy later on the straights, perhaps more fuel-flow for harvesting? With that in mind, it will be interesting to see how the teams develop over the season, I will be especially interested to compare laps at pre-season testing, race and end-season testing from Barcelona. I expect significantly less super-clipping, faster laps and more predictable laps by the end-of-season test.

As always the cars have it in F1.

My thoughts

I quite enjoyed the race. I especially enjoyed the battle early on with Russell and LeClerc. It bodes well for the season. The rest of the race felt kind of normal and the super-clipping etc doesn't negatively impact “the spectacle”, except in qualifying, that seemed less on the ragged edge than I had hoped. I love that Audi did well and that Cadillac had 1 car finish was so very good for them. Not a aprticular fan that so many cars got lapped but then, it's F1 and that's a return to how it used to be so it's kind of meh in terms of outrage. I guess it feels more like the pre-ground-effect era which is kind of fine.

Verstappen flippant thought: Of course he doesn't like the new cars, he's not winning. I expect the media to make his voice the loudest to generate clicks.

#F1 #Formula1 #FormulaOne #AustraliaGrandPrix

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So my reliance on uBlock Origin has increased, so I'm going to collate a series of lists that I use there. There're a few and probably some cross-over =/

Trackers

Hagezi

• Normal – https://codeberg.org/hagezi/mirror2/raw/branch/main/dns-blocklists/adblock/pro.mini.txt
• Threat Intelligence Mini – https://codeberg.org/hagezi/mirror2/raw/branch/main/dns-blocklists/adblock/light.txt

Badblock

• Click tracking – https://codeberg.org/celenity/BadBlock/raw/branch/pages/abp/click-tracking.txt
• Twitter – https://codeberg.org/celenity/BadBlock/raw/branch/pages/abp/twitter.txt
• Facebook -https://codeberg.org/celenity/BadBlock/raw/branch/pages/abp/facebook.txt
• TikTok – https://codeberg.org/celenity/BadBlock/raw/branch/pages/abp/tiktok.txt

Also an ethical whitelist https://codeberg.org/celenity/BadBlock/raw/branch/pages/abp/ethical_whitelist.txt

Misc

• No QAnon
• Super SEO Spam Suppressor
• Huge AI Blocklist (this was cloned from Laylavish as that list appear to be dormant)
• Stevo's GenAI blocklist, this contains an extra, separate, list for specific posters/users on X, DeviantArt and Reddit.
• AI Blacklist, “a personal list for uBlock Origin blocking AI content farms”.
• DandelionSprout Anti-Malware https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DandelionSprout/adfilt/master/Alternate%20versions%20Anti-Malware%20List/AntiMalwareAdGuardHome.txt

Paywalls

• Anti-Paywall
• Browse without Logging in – DandelionSprout

There's probably overlap within some of these lists. Many work alongside uBlacklist, which if you use that, will be worth looking the in the 'misc' list for those specific lists.

#uBlockOrigin #TrackerBlocking #NoAI

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I really enjoyed watching Reservation Dogs, especially seasons 1 and 2. The 3rd season had a very different feel to it and seemed driven more as a series of individual stories than an over-arching story across the season; it was not lesser for this it just felt different.

The stories in the show were fun and told the difficult aspects of life well too. I particularly enjoyed things like “white jesus”, and doughnuts being “white people food” as thus should be avoided. I want to try catfish and fry bread to see what they are like. Flamin Flamers can stay on the show XD

I enjoyed the depiction of the extended groups; cousin uncles, cousin-grandson, aunties, etc. I am familiar with something that's perhaps similar here, an auntie or uncle not needing to be blood to have those titles but it doesn't extend much further than that.

North of North

Similar to Reservation Dogs, I really enjoyed this show. Location was obvs amazing, I wish here experienced cold that was below-freezing for extended periods of time, much nicer than being around freezing with slush and sleet.

Again, it was good to see them tackle harder issues of their place, especially with the incomers seeing a “blank slate” and having loads of ideas to improve the area. Very familiar with that rhetoric tbh, hear it frequently enough.

Connections

I enjoyed the similarities depicted in both shows with aspects of being of The Highlands. Folk who've grand ideas of how to improve the area and the casual racism that associated. The implicit power dynamic of money and investment; lack of investment running the place down.

I'd like to say the community aspect is similar too but that would not be my experience, unfortunately. Perhaps it was before but I don't experience that today, that could also just be me.

I enjoyed the use of non-English in both series, it was awesome to hear them. I wish it was more prevalent in TBh here but there're too many folk with colonised minds^1 ^2 here to go for that.

The Night Manager

We watched the 2 seasons back-to-back having not somehow missed the 1st season for over a decade. Thoroughly enjoyed the 1st season, it had a good James Bond feel to it; music, locations and cinematography doing the work there. The 2nd season was not so good, it seemed far more of a cash-in and the ending felt kind of flat. A lot of action in a short-space of time for a relatively short and quiet ending. It didn't feel like it fitted the longer show at all. It certainly lost the James Bond feel to it. He even lost the Night Manager aspect of his identity...?! Like he was at least a night manager in the 1st series.

I have a Letterboxd account too if folk wish to follow there for not-great reviews

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It's interesting to see these tourist tax reports, and who wants them, coming in from Highland Council

2% comes up a lot in the against pile. Whilst there's an average of 5% over Highland at large. Which means that the areas outwith the “againsts” must be facing significantly larger STL property numbers.

For: * Lochaber * Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh * Skye and Raasay * Sutherland

Against: * Nairnshire * Black Isle and Easter Ross * Caithness * Dingwall and Seaforth

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We use a broad range of products to try and reduce the mould that infiltrates the house here. Perhaps it may be of help to folk who are searching for solutions.

Mechanical

The most expensive item we use is by far the dehumidifier, this is the one that we bought a few years ago when the landlord wanted return of their one. It's done a super job in getting rid of the largest portion of humidity we deal with. Regularly removes about 2 litres per day of use. I'm beginning to think it's running out of juice and/or we need a larger one to deal with the house instead of rooms.

The next device we have is an air purifier, this small one from Meaco, again, it does a grand job. It usually lives in the children's room to keep them healthier or in the living room to keep the ash/dust from the fire minimal.

Recently we bought a window vacuum to remove the volume of water that clings to the colder windows of the house, to save it from evaporating into the rooms. So far, it's doing a good job.
We used to clean with a squeegee and a towel which was a bother as the towel often was saturated before we were finished.

As part of a government scheme we had some mechanical extraction installed in the house, so in 3 rooms (kitchen, bathroom and “utility”) there is humidity controlled fans that boost when humidity reaches a certain level. This did have a positive effect really quickly, windows were noticeably less misty on cold mornings.

Chemical

We have used a small variety of chemical help too. It was originally bleach from, I think dettol. The stench from the bleach was pretty rough, so we took another look and found a pair of products that reduces the need for bleach spray. Mould shield and Mould killer. In the few months I've tried the shield the usual small spots of mould that appear after a cold/wet week haven't re-appeared. The other benefit of the shield is that it can be painted over when dry! So we have doubled up where possible and have painted over the Mould Shield with paint from Rustoleum that is mould resistant. There's a reasonable array of colours and it covers the wall well.

Passive

The passive activities we do is to open the windows when possible, usually when warmer and certainly for 15 minutes in the morning (often longer but not all day).

Group Support

IF you know of another method or tool that would be useful, feel free to get in touch =)

#Mould #Mold #Mildew #HomeImprovements

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Drystone, A life rebuilt by @kristiedegaris@mastodon.scot and Ashes and Stones by @AllysonShaw@wandering.shop

Looking forward to finishing them soon and, hopefully, reading some more books from Fediverse 🤓

My Bookwyrm book list which folk can recommend books too if they so wish =) hopefully the embed below works!

📖

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My addition to the conversation here:

Granted I'm not in Lochinver BUT the nearest hospital is still around 80 miles away. I moved into one of these communities and brought with me a family; 1 child in nursery, 1 in primary and, until recently, 1 in secondary school. My primary job is seasonal and my partner's primary job is not quite full-time.

I hear, regularly, of jobs available but no housing available. An example; a tiny swimming pool nearby has been needing lifeguards for months; positions are available. There was someone who could take the job, they weren't able to because of no housing.

This goes for school teachers too.

We have fewer services because our housing stock is being depleted for short-term lets. Skye has 10% of the housing removed for short-term letting or as this opinion piece writes that there were 25 right-move rents available in the Highland Council region, whilst there were 4,000 short-term lets available.

Whilst also fighting increasing house prices on wages that are stagnating, via jobs that don't pay well. How is one to compete with folk who can buy sight-unseen? Who have much higher wages and can attain loans to buy what becomes a commercial property?

It's a cycle that starts with houses being bought-out by people who want a return on a financial investment and give no hoots about community.

No housing, no people; no people, no jobs can be filled; no jobs, services disappear.

I also believe that centralisation is a massive problem. Too much of our society is being cut and moved to larger population centers where we receive lesser care because the centralised services are already under-funded and under-workered.

This is an active clearance for commercial gain, in my long-held opinion. Who benefits? Folk who live outwith the communities and those, within, who don't see the problem because their pockets are getting lined.

Perhaps it is lazy. I also believe the people who can change this, and know the solutions, refuse to utilise the solutions because they too are rentiers.

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