Those wanting a small burr grinder might try your local Asian market and look for a hand-cranked pepper grinder with the shelf down below.
Yes!
I'll also share that a couple of years ago Mrs. The_Riv received an iRobot "Roomba" smart vacuum unit, and man oh man what a difference that thing has made. Like @Cheery Gardener we are always amazed at what and how much this little thing removes from our floors: wood, tile, and carpeted. The whole process is fully programmable and controllable via a smartphone App, and while it does make our two dogs a bit nervous, it has been a game-changer for our little household, especially since Mrs. The_Riv advanced from an Adjunct to a f/t college teaching position. We recently got one for our daughter, and we'll definitely be scouring the next Amazon Prime Day and/or this year's Black Friday Deals to upgrade or replace our little wonder disc. Absolutely worth the investment.
I could definitely use a roomba she says, looking at the carpet.
For those of you have one, what would you recommend as a starter model?
I am a bit put off by the ads enthusing about integration with Siri and Alexa since I don't use either app. How about one you just switch on rather than have to talk to?
The church where I supply preach at uses a roomba to clean its sanctuary. They let it go to work after everyone leaves on Sunday. It guides around all the pews and other furnishings on its own. Takes about four hours to clean the whole sanctuary. Nifty.
A little joke: I asked my phone: Siri, why am I so bad with women. I am Alexa, you moron.
I could definitely use a roomba she says, looking at the carpet.
For those of you have one, what would you recommend as a starter model?
I am a bit put off by the ads enthusing about integration with Siri and Alexa since I don't use either app. How about one you just switch on rather than have to talk to?
FWIW, we've had a base model. Right now on Amazon the Roomba 692 is on sale for $169.99USD, and the Roomba 694 is listed on sale for $199.99USD. Pretty sure we bought our daughter a 692 at that same price back in November (fair warning, though -- purchase via a third party may void the warranty). AND, we use it manually more than anything else -- pick it up & off of its charging station, carry it to the room to be vacuumed, & set it down and push the button 2x to get it going. The app feature we use most often is "return to charging station," though if it reaches a low enough battery it will retreat to the charger on its own. I *think* that if it determines it has completely cleaned a confined area it will shut off automatically and trigger a message via the app that it has finished cleaning. Neat, fun, and not at all "Terminator" scary.
I did! The Polish corner shop has a good line in jams, and they're usually less sugary and have more fruit in them. So it'll be crumpets and jam tomorrow morning. Done on an old-fashioned grill.
How do these Roomba things work with edges? I'm thinking of where the wall meets the floor. And what about stairs?
(Looks too pricy. Besides, I've just splurged out on a packet of crumpets. Am sticking with my vacuum cleaner.)
There is a flat, circular brush that spins out from under the front edge of the machine, pulling debris toward and into the same kind of horizontal, rotating cylindrical brush most standard vacuum cleaners have.
Stairs are a no-go, I'm afraid. We live in a split-level house.
How does a Roomba manage in a room with a mix of hardwood floors and rugs?
I am intrigued by them, ever since reading a newspaper story last year about one that made a break for freedom when a door was left open, and was found heading down the road a hundred yards away.
How does a Roomba manage in a room with a mix of hardwood floors and rugs?
I am intrigued by them, ever since reading a newspaper story last year about one that made a break for freedom when a door was left open, and was found heading down the road a hundred yards away.
Depends on the rugs. We have a cheap imitation, and depending on the angle it happens to approach the rug at, the circular whirly brush thing can hook under the end of the rug and it gets hung up and turned around. We could take it off, but it's useful.
I found the Roomba was eating away too much of the pile of my special Oriental rugs. And I disliked its automated settings, and the way it would speak and tell me it wanted to go to work. So I took it the battery out, and then would forget to put it back in to charge it the night before when I did want to put it to use.
Eventually with my worsening back problem, I simply found it too heavy to move from one place to another or to lift for emptying.
When I listed it for free-cycling, I had more requests than for any other item I have listed.
I found the Roomba was eating away too much of the pile of my special Oriental rugs.
I wondered about that. I have a deep pile carpet that's quite old now, and while it's difficult to clean, I wouldn't want so much suction that bald patches become evident. Also, the stairs are carpeted, so if the Roomba doesn't do stairs, I'd still have to use the vacuum cleaner, which would be a bit belt-and-braces. It's probably safer and more useful on laminated floors (which I would never have by choice).
It's here! (Considering I only ordered it yesterday).
I've done the setting up with a bit of commuting between paper, phone and iPad.
It's done the hall, coping fairly well with a lumpy rug in the middle, stopping only when its bin was full. The capacity is quite small, but then there is quite a - erm - backlog of dust. So that may improve over time.
Have you checked out the Which report on robot vacuum cleaners?
Nope. If I want anything researched I keep a sister-in-law for that. Me, I impulse buy.
Just sent it on a second tour of duty. It managed about a quarter of the sitting room before it was full (again, unsurprising). Interesting watching it on manoeuvre: it doesn't behave as you might expect. Faced with open ground it often checks, turns and goes back to areas it's already covered.
Oh yes! I should have mentioned that it can be better not to watch a Roomba do its work! LOL! We just appreciate when a room has been completed, even if its method is mysterious to us. I should also mention that I use "Roomba" in the same way I use "Xerox" -- as a whole generic category of machines, and not the individual company. Our good friends have a completely different company's machine, and it also does a wonderful job, though I can't remember it's name right now. Also, from time to time we do have to go around to the very corners to manage the occasional cobweb and or dust that a round machine still, with brushes as good as they are, misses. Small, even cute triangles.
On a second pass it has finished the sitting room in a godlike (moving in mysterious ways) manner. It definitely gets places eg under chairs and the sofa, that I've seldom been, emerging with an honourable testimony of cobwebs.
The roomba was on sale, so the outlay - by my standards - modest. A housekeeper would do a lot more - everything above floor level for a start - so would be a different level of (ongoing) expenditure.
I know they can't do stairs, but what about small changes in floor level? I live in part of a converted Victorian house which slopes slightly one way, and there are small steps of about 1-2 inches from one room to another.
I've observed it do changes in level of about half an inch - thick rugs, or the join between carpet and Lino, or a threshold. More than that and it would decide wall/obstacle. But given the capacity of the dust bin, would you want it to tackle more than one room at a time?
Not sure if this is considered a gadget or not, but we have automated doors on our garage. When working well, fabulous, when not hmmm. We have felt a lot more comfortable about our daughter working shift work because she can in theory drive straight into the garage and from there into the house. Sometimes she returns home either late at night or in the wee small hours. It's our first experience of shiftwork, so we have been grateful we had this option, when we bought the house she was still at Uni and we'd not ever considered she would have anything other than a 9-5 job.
My neighbours have them - though they said they had to change their car because the mechanism for the doors takes up slightly more room than it would have done if it hadn't been fitted. That was something I remembered because I'd wondered about having the doors done on my own, but I don't think I will now. The garage is quite tight and was built to fit older cars; modern cars are usually bigger these days.
I'd not really thought about cars being bigger, but yes that is true and definitely could impact whether those types of doors are suitable for your garage. I'll certainly keep that in mind if we look for another house. Ah gadgets!!!
The usual garage door opener around here pulls from the centre of the door, and has a motor mounted on the ceiling at the back of the garage, and a long chain running fore and aft to perform said pulling. The presence or absence of the mechanism doesn't alter the space available.
(One surprising thing that a number of garage owners find is how long some modern vehicles are. They buy their new SUV or minivan, drive it in to their garage, close the door, and hear the door scraping on the rear 3 inches of their car...
We gave in and brought a tumble dryer just after Christmas. I'd always been against them for being environmentally unfriendly then someone mentioned they had a heat pump one. We live in a biggish house but never had anywhere sensible to hang up washing in the winter. We'd have things hanging around in the downstairs loo for days. Now it's all done and put away in hours. In the summer (if we have one) it won't get used much, but I'm jolly glad we brought one.
I'm glad you are finding the dryer helpful in getting rid of the hanging around stuff, that does make life a lot more pleasant @Sarasa!
I remember my Mum having a dryer that was like a metal cupboard, it predated tumble dryers and my sister still has it which is quite impressive as I think Dad bought it when my sister was a baby, 50+ years ago!
When we moved to our current place, we were excited because there was a vent in the laundry to enable the damp air to be vented out through the roof. We haven't connected it though as our dryer has a tank where it stores the water extracted as it dries. I was amazed by this facility as I'd not bought a new dryer for about 20 years!! I just tip the water down the drain, I had assumed that it would be like grey water and not suitable for the vege patch.
We don't use our dryer very much, as we have a long rail in the laundry above the bench where I hang shirts up straight from the washing machine. However, the daughter does use the dryer because of her shift work and sometimes she needs to do an emergency wash, particularly on the weeks where she does night shift.
I remember one particularly horrible wet year where even with a dryer it was taking all weekend to do the washing. Husband and I ended up taking all our wet washing to the laundromat and doing it in about an hour in one of the giant commercial dryers they had there. Made for a much happier weekend and I suspect made for savings on our electrical bill as well.
I live in a terrace of upper and lower flats built in the 1920s. Each has a garden, furnished at the time with 3 or 4 cast iron poles between which you could string your washing lines. So for an upper like mine, once you'd scrubbed your clothes in a stone sink with a washboard, you could cart the sopping basketful through the house, down the stairs, unlock the back door, along the path, and peg them out.
When we bought the flat, two of the poles were still standing and there was a large overhanging cherry tree. By this time we had a washing machine, but Mr F plaintively asked why I didn't hang the washing outside (instead of on a clotheshorse in the scullery). Distance to carry and birds, I said. But mainly this: if it came on to rain, would he drop what he was doing and rush out through the intervening door, passages, paths to rescue the washing? No? That's women's work obviously.
Dryers are pretty standard equipment in most American homes. But we have used a solar powered dryer (read clothesline) for a number of years in good weather. However, after falling three times while hanging clothes outside, I am pretty well relegated to using our internal clothes dryer now. At least I still do my part of the laundry.
I have just fallen for a personal gadget, a smart watch which reputedly can sense my blood pressure, oxygen,and glucose, number of steps, sleep and other things. Non-invasively. It is supposed to communicate with my smartphone by Bluetooth. It doesn't. It has communicated with a computer while charging, as it now shows the correct date and time. (American style date) The manual win't tell me how to do that.
It did not say an the ad, which it does in the microscopic manual, that it should not be used for medical information. Now who would by for blood pressure and sugar if they didn't need it for medical reasons. It generally backs up my proper BP measurer, and the glucose goes up and then down after a meal, so it is useful in monitoring my newly diagnosed diabetes Type 2
I am bemused by something labelled MET. which has an icon like a molecule model with a large ball at the centre and four smaller ones at the corners of a tetrahedron. Apparently I have 1 of it. Not the London police, and the figure of 1 doesn't suggest metabolism.
Other features depend on Bluetooth, which it is incapable of connecting, even if next door to the phone.
I think I may have fallen for something vaguely scam-like
I am bemused by something labelled MET. which has an icon like a molecule model with a large ball at the centre and four smaller ones at the corners of a tetrahedron. Apparently I have 1 of it.
MET is the ratio of your current metabolic rate to your basal metabolic rate. So you should have a MET of 1 when at rest, and a larger number when active. AIUI, it's measured with oxygen use. Not sure how this watch gadget tries to figure it out, but my guess is that it's a motion detector (step counter) and a scale factor, rather than anything that attempts to be an actual measurement.
It's not licensed as medical equipment, so they have to include the "don't use for medical information" time disclaimer. This doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't work, although it does mean that the manufacturer doesn't want to make promises about accuracy.
Thank you. I am not often active enough to measure, and it does not count all my steps, so how it does that I can't tell, How it measures oxygen and glucose while just sitting there on my wrist I can't tell. It has a metal button in contact with my skin, and an array of a square thing with four little thinga around it, behind a screen of some sort. It also irritates like a metal bracelet which since it is some sort of rubber is puzzling. It does not stay on my wrist as long as it is intended to.
But at least I know what MET is. Acronym finders online were not helpful. Not that posh frocks do in New York either.
A traditional pulse oximeter clips on your finger, and measures oxygen content of your blood by looking at the absorption of light shone through your finger.
I think watches attempt to do the same thing by looking at reflected light. Not sure any of them are approved by the FDA or an equivalent body, and not sure how well they work. There are, in theory, ways of attempting to measure glucose with reflectometry as well, although robustness is likely to be a challenge.
Glucose is lower before eating and higher after, so it's doing something. It measures sleep too, though does not display itself, but contacts the app, and produces a reasonable record of my waking. Contacting the app seems a bit haphazard though. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else to buy. For one thing, its dimensions are based ona default bloke. I have fairly large wrists for a woman, and usually wear a man's watch, but it is still a bit big for me. must affect its results.
A little research suggests reflectivity is involved for oxygen and glucose.. For oxygen, a single tiny red light flashes in the cross shaped array on the back, for glucose, two tiny white lights flash. In the app, it asks you to select a matching skin colour, mostly brown variations. So thanks for that info. I wonder what the fourth light is for. Presumably it has an accelerometer for step counting, though I wonder how it distinguishes between walking and typing. It vibrates crossly if it doesn't get feedback from the lights because I'm watching it!
A little research suggests reflectivity is involved for oxygen and glucose.. For oxygen, a single tiny red light flashes in the cross shaped array on the back, for glucose, two tiny white lights flash. In the app, it asks you to select a matching skin colour, mostly brown variations. So thanks for that info. I wonder what the fourth light is for.
Might be infra-red. Glucose has several absorption bands in the infra-red range.
According to the watch, I haven't slept for two nights, despite wearng it. It has recorded one night, with appropriate breaks for the loo, but otherwise, not. Yesterday I was fully awake before six, today I woke after nine, and haven't been recognisably awake since. I cannot account for two and a half hours fully. Breakfast, pills, reading local messages, emails (trivial), portion of analysis of Dorothy Dunnett. Doesn't account for the time.
When we had the Exclusive Brethren in school and they wanted their children to be excuse computers, I would have felt far more likely to go along with it if they had argued that they use time which they should be using for serving God and others.
11.45 I;m going to sleep again.
Sleep is now better. I can get it on an app on my phone with a nice graph showing deep sleep, light sleep woke periods. Not exactly as I recall it though, and I don't know what it measuring. It's on my wrist, nowhere near my brain and alpha rhythms.
What I would like some advice with is the blood glucose. Every day starts around 4 mmol/L, slides up to about 8 with my breakfast, then down again, repeat for lunch, repeat for dinner. Every day the same pattern. Except on Tuesday, when I had a very small breakfast (two spoonfuls) and it registered the same as a full breakfast (bowl of berries, oats and yoghurt) and then in the evening started rising before I ate. So I'm wondering if this is an artefact of the device or is it my body releasing glucose in anticipation. Annoying.
A new gadget is making it's way to our place. A few years ago Cheery husband bought a second hand ice machine. He bought it As Is and it wasn't working. He managed to get it working and we've had a few years' service out of it. However over the weekend it mysteriously stopped working and after some investigation husband decided that he can't get it working again, so a new one has been ordered. He has used his credit card points to buy this, so that makes it sweeter than spending actual money.
He only drinks cold drinks (no tea or coffee), so this is some thing to fill up his cup and reduce the amount of fizzy drink being consumed. We all like to use it on really hot days too. Now to dispose of the old one. It must be time for a tip run soon!
I got an Amazon Echo (the round ball kind) months ago and it is AMAZING. I don’t have the more expensive music thing, but I can just speak into the air and it will play the most obscure of genres or artists, or sleep sounds (waves, etc.), tell me weather, etc.
I got an Amazon Echo (the round ball kind) months ago and it is AMAZING. I don’t have the more expensive music thing, but I can just speak into the air and it will play the most obscure of genres or artists, or sleep sounds (waves, etc.), tell me weather, etc.
My daughter and her partner just got a new Google Home gadget for the TV in their new house, which is supposed to be used mainly to allow them to cast streaming services from their devices to the TV, but will also answer voice commands to tell them the weather, etc. Her partner tried it out yesterday just saying "BritBox" to get it playing that streaming service.
The Google device responded "I've been waiting for you to ask me that!" and then started .... beatboxing.
Not a total success, but we got a good laugh out of it.
Comments
Yes!
I'll also share that a couple of years ago Mrs. The_Riv received an iRobot "Roomba" smart vacuum unit, and man oh man what a difference that thing has made. Like @Cheery Gardener we are always amazed at what and how much this little thing removes from our floors: wood, tile, and carpeted. The whole process is fully programmable and controllable via a smartphone App, and while it does make our two dogs a bit nervous, it has been a game-changer for our little household, especially since Mrs. The_Riv advanced from an Adjunct to a f/t college teaching position. We recently got one for our daughter, and we'll definitely be scouring the next Amazon Prime Day and/or this year's Black Friday Deals to upgrade or replace our little wonder disc. Absolutely worth the investment.
Thank you! Perhaps I now have something to put on my birthday gift list.
For those of you have one, what would you recommend as a starter model?
I am a bit put off by the ads enthusing about integration with Siri and Alexa since I don't use either app. How about one you just switch on rather than have to talk to?
A little joke: I asked my phone: Siri, why am I so bad with women. I am Alexa, you moron.
FWIW, we've had a base model. Right now on Amazon the Roomba 692 is on sale for $169.99USD, and the Roomba 694 is listed on sale for $199.99USD. Pretty sure we bought our daughter a 692 at that same price back in November (fair warning, though -- purchase via a third party may void the warranty). AND, we use it manually more than anything else -- pick it up & off of its charging station, carry it to the room to be vacuumed, & set it down and push the button 2x to get it going. The app feature we use most often is "return to charging station," though if it reaches a low enough battery it will retreat to the charger on its own. I *think* that if it determines it has completely cleaned a confined area it will shut off automatically and trigger a message via the app that it has finished cleaning. Neat, fun, and not at all "Terminator" scary.
Glad to hear it can be operated manually. Our CH is controlled by an app and I loathe it (just switch the damn heating on).
I've also bought two sacks of compost and a go of jewellery fixings. Someone prise my credit card from my fingers.
(Looks too pricy. Besides, I've just splurged out on a packet of crumpets. Am sticking with my vacuum cleaner.)
I wait to find out, but I gather little side-mounted brushes come out and poke. Stairs, I think they're still early Dalek.
Did you manage to source the blackcurrant jam?
I did! The Polish corner shop has a good line in jams, and they're usually less sugary and have more fruit in them. So it'll be crumpets and jam tomorrow morning. Done on an old-fashioned grill.
There is a flat, circular brush that spins out from under the front edge of the machine, pulling debris toward and into the same kind of horizontal, rotating cylindrical brush most standard vacuum cleaners have.
Stairs are a no-go, I'm afraid. We live in a split-level house.
I am intrigued by them, ever since reading a newspaper story last year about one that made a break for freedom when a door was left open, and was found heading down the road a hundred yards away.
Depends on the rugs. We have a cheap imitation, and depending on the angle it happens to approach the rug at, the circular whirly brush thing can hook under the end of the rug and it gets hung up and turned around. We could take it off, but it's useful.
Eventually with my worsening back problem, I simply found it too heavy to move from one place to another or to lift for emptying.
When I listed it for free-cycling, I had more requests than for any other item I have listed.
I wondered about that. I have a deep pile carpet that's quite old now, and while it's difficult to clean, I wouldn't want so much suction that bald patches become evident. Also, the stairs are carpeted, so if the Roomba doesn't do stairs, I'd still have to use the vacuum cleaner, which would be a bit belt-and-braces. It's probably safer and more useful on laminated floors (which I would never have by choice).
I've done the setting up with a bit of commuting between paper, phone and iPad.
It's done the hall, coping fairly well with a lumpy rug in the middle, stopping only when its bin was full. The capacity is quite small, but then there is quite a - erm - backlog of dust. So that may improve over time.
Nope. If I want anything researched I keep a sister-in-law for that. Me, I impulse buy.
Just sent it on a second tour of duty. It managed about a quarter of the sitting room before it was full (again, unsurprising). Interesting watching it on manoeuvre: it doesn't behave as you might expect. Faced with open ground it often checks, turns and goes back to areas it's already covered.
The roomba was on sale, so the outlay - by my standards - modest. A housekeeper would do a lot more - everything above floor level for a start - so would be a different level of (ongoing) expenditure.
I don't think they're really comparable.
(One surprising thing that a number of garage owners find is how long some modern vehicles are. They buy their new SUV or minivan, drive it in to their garage, close the door, and hear the door scraping on the rear 3 inches of their car...
I remember my Mum having a dryer that was like a metal cupboard, it predated tumble dryers and my sister still has it which is quite impressive as I think Dad bought it when my sister was a baby, 50+ years ago!
When we moved to our current place, we were excited because there was a vent in the laundry to enable the damp air to be vented out through the roof. We haven't connected it though as our dryer has a tank where it stores the water extracted as it dries. I was amazed by this facility as I'd not bought a new dryer for about 20 years!! I just tip the water down the drain, I had assumed that it would be like grey water and not suitable for the vege patch.
We don't use our dryer very much, as we have a long rail in the laundry above the bench where I hang shirts up straight from the washing machine. However, the daughter does use the dryer because of her shift work and sometimes she needs to do an emergency wash, particularly on the weeks where she does night shift.
I remember one particularly horrible wet year where even with a dryer it was taking all weekend to do the washing. Husband and I ended up taking all our wet washing to the laundromat and doing it in about an hour in one of the giant commercial dryers they had there. Made for a much happier weekend and I suspect made for savings on our electrical bill as well.
When we bought the flat, two of the poles were still standing and there was a large overhanging cherry tree. By this time we had a washing machine, but Mr F plaintively asked why I didn't hang the washing outside (instead of on a clotheshorse in the scullery). Distance to carry and birds, I said. But mainly this: if it came on to rain, would he drop what he was doing and rush out through the intervening door, passages, paths to rescue the washing? No? That's women's work obviously.
So eventually we got a washer/drier.
It did not say an the ad, which it does in the microscopic manual, that it should not be used for medical information. Now who would by for blood pressure and sugar if they didn't need it for medical reasons. It generally backs up my proper BP measurer, and the glucose goes up and then down after a meal, so it is useful in monitoring my newly diagnosed diabetes Type 2
I am bemused by something labelled MET. which has an icon like a molecule model with a large ball at the centre and four smaller ones at the corners of a tetrahedron. Apparently I have 1 of it. Not the London police, and the figure of 1 doesn't suggest metabolism.
Other features depend on Bluetooth, which it is incapable of connecting, even if next door to the phone.
I think I may have fallen for something vaguely scam-like
MET is the ratio of your current metabolic rate to your basal metabolic rate. So you should have a MET of 1 when at rest, and a larger number when active. AIUI, it's measured with oxygen use. Not sure how this watch gadget tries to figure it out, but my guess is that it's a motion detector (step counter) and a scale factor, rather than anything that attempts to be an actual measurement.
It's not licensed as medical equipment, so they have to include the "don't use for medical information" time disclaimer. This doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't work, although it does mean that the manufacturer doesn't want to make promises about accuracy.
But at least I know what MET is. Acronym finders online were not helpful. Not that posh frocks do in New York either.
I think watches attempt to do the same thing by looking at reflected light. Not sure any of them are approved by the FDA or an equivalent body, and not sure how well they work. There are, in theory, ways of attempting to measure glucose with reflectometry as well, although robustness is likely to be a challenge.
Might be infra-red. Glucose has several absorption bands in the infra-red range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3M7JfFE-JA
When we had the Exclusive Brethren in school and they wanted their children to be excuse computers, I would have felt far more likely to go along with it if they had argued that they use time which they should be using for serving God and others.
11.45 I;m going to sleep again.
What I would like some advice with is the blood glucose. Every day starts around 4 mmol/L, slides up to about 8 with my breakfast, then down again, repeat for lunch, repeat for dinner. Every day the same pattern. Except on Tuesday, when I had a very small breakfast (two spoonfuls) and it registered the same as a full breakfast (bowl of berries, oats and yoghurt) and then in the evening started rising before I ate. So I'm wondering if this is an artefact of the device or is it my body releasing glucose in anticipation. Annoying.
He only drinks cold drinks (no tea or coffee), so this is some thing to fill up his cup and reduce the amount of fizzy drink being consumed. We all like to use it on really hot days too. Now to dispose of the old one. It must be time for a tip run soon!
My daughter and her partner just got a new Google Home gadget for the TV in their new house, which is supposed to be used mainly to allow them to cast streaming services from their devices to the TV, but will also answer voice commands to tell them the weather, etc. Her partner tried it out yesterday just saying "BritBox" to get it playing that streaming service.
The Google device responded "I've been waiting for you to ask me that!" and then started .... beatboxing.
Not a total success, but we got a good laugh out of it.