I’m (just) old enough to remember playing with cassettes. But they were well and truly on the way out by the time I graced this mortal coil with the ability to form memories. CD was the norm, you were pretty cool if you had an MP3 Walkman, and you were a baller if you had a minidisc player.

Oh bugger! And yeah, I love it. A couple minor issues, but nothing that’ll cost more than a couple hundred to fix.

I don’t mind oat milk. I’m a certified barista and I’ve still not made it myself into a drink of my own creation. I need to buy a new espresso machine, mine didn’t really survive being under the house at my last place. Whatever I do buy will be fully manual, as I like going through the motions.

I live in Brisbane, Australia! ^.^

I’ll give it a test for you! But we’re expecting storms over the next couple days, so I’d like to keep it charged just in case.

As an aside, Queensland is the skin cancer capital of the world. It’s so prevalent here that we have an entire research centre dedicated to it.

Here’s a bin chicken in its natural habitat - anywhere and everywhere. I was less than a metre away when I took this photo, they’re not afraid of anything.

Finally, while I’m on the topic of birbs, these little guys are clowns. The perfect embodiment of chaos. Not everything in Australia wants to kill you, some things just want to be silly.

youtube.com/shorts/Xj0wM...

Oh, and down south, either crows or ravens (can’t remember which) also have a knack for opening bins placed on the kerb and proceeding to have a party in it. Someone invented locks that mean that birds can’t open the bin, but will disengage and open when the garbo truck lifts it onto the truck.

Where I used to live backed onto a nature reserve, and we’d get loads of bush turkeys roaming the place. We also have millions of ibises around the place (the white ones), otherwise known as bin chickens or tip turkeys, because they love scavenging in garbage. You couldn’t kill them with an axe.

Almost looks like a creeper in Minecraft. At least that’s what I’m reminded of.

Thank you! I took it through inch thick glass with so much grease from kids hands on the window you could fill a deep fryer with it. Don’t ask me how it turned out as well as it did, because I have no idea!

And that 50Hz transformer hum as the train accelerates, I can listen to that all day.

Newer trains are harder to notice, though, as they keep all the lights on for up to a few seconds, which is usually enough time to clear the section. You’ll still get the two pops though, as the circuit breaker opens and closes again, which is controlled by magnets on the track. Interesting stuff.