• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

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  1. S

    Google AI or ChatGPT

    All current LLMs have a tendency to do this to varying degrees, and it takes careful prompting to avoid it as much as possible. In some of them the 'system prompt' - the instructions that are given to it before you interact, that tell it how to respond, how to refer to itself, and so on - is...
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    Glut of soft fruit.....tip for keeping fresh

    One of my favourite things for plums is a frangipane tart. It can be made with frozen plums, if they're halved before freezing, but works better if you cook the tart(s) first and freeze it entire, then reheat in an oven to just warm. Of course that won't use up kilos of the things without a lot...
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    Terminology - Two countries, separated by a common language

    Yep, those are all definitely metonyms, in the form of a place being used to refer to an organisation based in that place. Another option would be "the Crown" to refer to either the monarch who wears it, or the government who represents it. Synecdoche would be "mouths to feed" (you're hopefully...
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    Terminology - Two countries, separated by a common language

    I'd say synecdoche is a subset of metonymy, so you wouldn't be wrong. A metonym is using one thing to refer to a closely related but different thing; if the relationship between them is that one thing is a part of the other then it's synecdoche. Incidentally, the only time I was actually taught...
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    Modern cooking — a rant.

    NB for the majority of Brits on here: these are all Fahrenheit temperatures. Do not try to smoke things at 225°C.
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    Mower spares pricing

    It's not just mowers either. My car needs the rear wiper motor replacing. The OEM Audi part is £210, or a third party compatible replacement is £30. Given that it's 16 years old and well out of warranty you can guess which one I chose.
  7. S

    The Mighty Sturgeon

    I know a few Scottish people who'd be quite upset by this thread title, at least until they saw the photo.
  8. S

    UK makers of hand tools

    Another easy one: Ashley Iles Edge Tools Ltd https://ashleyiles.co.uk/ As the name suggests: chisels and gouges. Originally made in Sheffield from 1948, and since 1967 in Lincolnshire.
  9. S

    When people get the wrong idea.

    Staines-upon-Thames?
  10. S

    How not to do Customer Service

    It probably had more to do with this being the time when I was flying all over for work, had an executive club gold card, and enough miles to book First. I'm quite sure I wouldn't get the same treatment today.
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    How not to do Customer Service

    On the other hand, around ten years back I decided to burn some air miles and go to New York for a few days. My bag didn't arrive, so BA's service desk gave me a $200 prepaid card to buy a change of clothes and toiletries while I waited for it. Of course, being the USA, they didn't think I'd...
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    Bobby Workshop & Shed (advice needed)

    The reason for the two courses of bricks is to lift the timber parts out of range of rain splashing up from the floor or pooling at the base. You can build a timber structure directly on the slab, and the vast majority of garden sheds are done that way, but it won't last nearly as long before...
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    Hello, good morning and welcome...

    The problem is just that there isn't a system. Over the years various people and companies have come up with new ways of doing mobile data connections, each with various advantages over the previous ones. Each one gets given a name, some more descriptive than others, when it's in the...
  14. S

    Hello, good morning and welcome...

    H+ is significantly better than 3G, but less than 4G; think of it as 3.75G if that's more useful. The progression goes, roughly, 2G/GPRS, E, 3G, H, H+, 4G/LTE, 5G.
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    Sausages

    The status of various meats in Hinduism is an interesting and complex topic. Since none of it (even beef) is directly based in any sort of scripture, it's all culture and tradition and varies hugely by region and caste. If you have to generalise, though, there's a fairly clear progression that...
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    Modern cooking — a rant.

    The technique used in industry for safely serving raw meat is 'sear and shave'. You take a large whole cut of meat, so that bacteria can only exist on the outside. You sear it all over with a blowtorch, raising the exposed surfaces to a temperature that will kill those bacteria. Then you cut off...
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    Modern cooking — a rant.

    Yes and no. Fatty cuts of meat with lots of connective tissue, say a shoulder of lamb or a beef brisket, need to be cooked long and slow to break down the collagen and render the fat. That fat and collagen will keep it moist and juicy when cooked thoroughly and slowly. Lean cuts like most...
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    A question for the electricians

    So yes, having a plug with exposed energised pins is a terrible idea. But the existing domestic solar installs face the same problem, in that grid workers need to be able to turn off power to the street in order to repair underground mains, and having a house feed 240V back into the cables...
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    Wheelie Bin Store

    The law says precisely nothing about dado stacks. Workplace health and safety regulations do say, however, that table saws used in a workplace must have blade guards at all times, and must stop within 10 seconds of killing the power. Now, if your saw isn't braked, or the brake isn't powerful...
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    Glasses - what's your view?

    Is that for standard reading glasses, or for custom made-to-order? You can have a pair for a fiver here... if you need something between +1 and +2.5, the same in both eyes and no cylindrical component. If you just need reading glasses because you've become long-sighted with age, it's dirt cheap...
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