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Maybe the best thing I did all week I did was rub the strike plate with a moist wipe, and now my front door – it’s a self-closing fire door – properly self-closes without intervention. Every source I can find suggests that I’m talking out of my arse, that if your door won’t self-close properly – potentially allowing fire to spread – it can only be because the latch is too stiff. But no, there must have been a sticky roughness that was causing friction, and now there isn’t and I get a satisfied thrill every time I go out or come in.
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Some work. Last week I experimented with using Amazon Location Service to offer some new map styles. They have satellite imagery, and a remarkable live traffic layer that shows things like traffic jams and roadworks. But it costs money – a small amount, multiplied by the small fraction of users who’ve noticed the obscure button to use the Amazon map style, but that amounts to a surprising lot, affordable but still more than I’d like to give Amazon. And I don’t like being unloyal, disloyal to the OpenStreetMap scene. But mainly I’m a miserly arse.
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Last month I became interested in trying to pull an apple in half with my bare hands, which is a whole thing. The first apple I tried to part was a Red Windsor, which had a mushy, pappy texture, and I was successful. But the next apple was crispier and juicier, it had been in a fridge, and in the end I had to give up and use a knife, and it was only by not having announced what I was about to try to do that I didn’t look like a right hubristic fool.
From now on, am I only going to have apples with a less satisfying-to-eat texture, just because they’re easier to pull apart? Absolutely. But with practise – remembering the various mantras, twisting equals tears, gripping not ripping – I might be able to work my way up to a Honeycrisp or a SweeTango.