Aotearoa Daily Kōrero 12/1/2024
Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!
Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!
Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.
So, how’s it going?
For some reason yesterday I was reading about ketchup on Wikipedia, apparently in the UK it was originally made with mushrooms instead of tomatoes, which has got me intrigued. I’m not sure I want to waste a bunch of mushrooms trying to make it, in case it’s gross. But I’ve never seen a commercial version of mushroom ketchup here before 🤔
Interesting, I didn't know that! I guess it makes sense, tomatoes are native to the Americas so wouldn't have been in Europe until relatively recently.
Friday today. My two eldest have been with my mum this week, coming back tomorrow.
Last night my wife and I played Five Tribes for the second time. I got my butt kicked, so I'm going to have to pay more attention next time.
So how's the gameplay on Five Tribes?
Just getting used to it, but once we googled for some clarity on the rules it was good (the rules say "turn" to refer to a round of each player having a turn, as well as referring to an individual player's turn as a turn. In addition, in a two player game each player plays twice in a round, leading to further confusion about things you can only do once per turn).
I don't have a sound strategy yet (clearly). It looked a bit complex when setting up but the base gameplay turned out to be pretty straightforward once you got your head around it. I think there may be some deep strategy involved, and not too dependent on luck, which is good. You claim spaces on the board, resource cards, djinns, palaces, palm trees, different types of people (meeples) as well as coins, and have to balance your strategy between them while trying to shoot down the other player's strategy. Scoring is done via their special score pad because it's got so many different ways to score, but you only add up at the end.
It does need a fair bit of table space, though.
Got some Cavius smoke alarms at the recommendation of @Dave. Havent installed them yet (Will be a friday evening Job :)). They look good.
Nice! Good luck!
I considered those, but I've read some bad reviews. Friend of mine had them all through his house and said none of them lasted more than about 2 years. He's technical like me so I take his word on them. But, I've read good things too. May have to try a set for myself. Don't throw your receipts away in a hurry.
I did the house half in the Cavius ones and half in the Orca ones (both from Mitre 10). Must have been about 5 of each. The Orca ones mostly died within a year or two, probably the batteries (which are replaceable but I couldn't find anywhere selling them). One of them was DOA, when I put the battery in it, the alarm went off until I pulled the battery out.
The Cavius ones are still going strong. This was perhaps 3-4 years ago, though some are newer since I replaced most of the Orca ones (actually, I was dumb enough to buy more Orca ones first, because I could just fit them into the existing brackets so I didn't have to do much work, but then when they died again, that's when I replaced them with Cavius).
I did some research on smoke alarms the other day, and my conclusion is that they all have bad reviews to some extent. I guess like any electronic, they have a reasonably high failure rate, so it's probably pretty common for people to have a bad experience (my bad experience with Orca may likewise be a fluke).
My smoke alarms have a nasty habit of going off in the middle of the night. I'm in a humid area, wondering if that is the cause or maybe something to do with the HRV pumping different temperature air over them.
Smoke alarms normally say not to install within X distance (50cm maybe?) of a duct. Not sure if that's because of dust or heat, I know our DVS gets big circles of grime around them from what I assume is grubby ceiling air (even though it has a filter) that needs cleaning every few years. Hard to see if you're not up close, though.
Humidity might be an issue, because I was silly enough to put a smoke alarm where shower steam would reach (our house has a weird layout) and it would set off the smoke alarm. However, I've never heard of just generally humid air being a problem, but that doesn't mean it isn't.
Managed to catch my calf with the corner of the car door this morning. That's gonna leave a mark...
Bet it hurt like a bastard too.
Sure did.