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Cake day: June 4th, 2024

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  • Signalised lead ins are helpful to solve flow issues caused by an imbalance in traffic direction at certain times of day. When you get too much traffic building up that can’t enter the roundabout due to no gaps you activate the red light before the entrance dominating traffic flow to give a period where the other directions can move through. The actual roundabout works as per normal and you don’t have to deal with lights during non-peak periods.

    Lights on a roundabout make it not really a roundabout but an unholy mishmash of intersection design. I’ve got one near me and the only thing going for it was that converting a roundabout was significantly cheaper than the flyover intersection it really should be made into.



  • The basics are easy - half an hour with someone who knows what they"re doing should be all you need to get out and about. Getting to the point where it’s instinctual and you don’t have to think about shifting is probably beyond the limits of a short trip but depending on how much driving you do you can be fairly smooth within a few days.

    The main risk you run with learning manual is that once you get the hang of it it spoils automatics for you - you might end up having to buy yourself a manual car to avoid being annoyed by the missteps autos tend to do.


  • The Japanese brands are generally a safer bet for reliability. Toyota is one of the best reputation wise but that comes with an increased price due to that reputation.

    A manual transmission is best for reliability IMO, but if for some reason you really must have a automatic look for one with a standard auto transmission rather than a dual clutch box or a CVT. Run away from VW dry clutched dual clutch and Ford Powershift transmissions.

    Ideally you would have proof of regular servicing, though a completely good record is harder to get on a low budget. Not only do you want it to have the engine oil changed at the service intervals (depends on the vehicle but often ~10k km) but also the other regular stuff that often gets ignored - e.g. brake fluid, coolant, transmission/diff oils, brake pads/rotors. Keep an eye out for big ticket maintenance items such as timing belt changes (typically due around every 100-150k kms) as these are expensive so are often ignored at the risk of major failure.

    If you’re not confident in spotting issues try and bring along a friend or acquaintance who is more familiar with cars to look it over.

    Since you’re in Canada where I believe road salt is common check for rust under the car and in places like wheel wells where moisture is likely to be trapped. It’s hard to avoid some rust in such an environment but you don’t want rust holes anywhere or large sections of flaking rust.


  • It’s not a recent thing, but I would say there has been a decline over the last decade or so. Not only does it seem like spelling and grammar are getting worse but I feel it is much more likely these days to find comments defending improper English rather than correcting it.

    I saw someone spell “extreme” as “extream” which is just kind of baffling, I actually can’t even imagine how one would make such a mistake?

    Maybe they had just come from dealing with large quantities of paper? Or enlarging a bunch of holes?



  • gnu@lemmy.ziptoMemes@sopuli.xyzHe's just eccentric
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    2 months ago

    Apparently the reason they have that odd shape is so that when it’s raining, water can’t make a continuous trickle between the wire and the pylon

    That and also to increase the distance any charge has to travel across the surface of the insulator.




  • My unicorn phone would be one that is both small enough to use with one hand (currently have a Zenfone 10 largely for this reason) and has a secondary camera lens that’s a telephoto rather than an ultra ultra wide.

    It bugs me that phones with a long lens are so comparatively rare, it’s always just wide (verging on ultrawide) as default and when a second lens is added it’s even wider again because people love distortions or taking photos in tiny rooms or something. Sometimes I just want to take a photo of something further away than a few metres and actually have it visible without zooming in, I’d even take a normal lens FoV as an improvement over ultrawide. Those phones that do have one tend to have it as a third lens and also tend to be huge, so get disqualified by the ‘usable with one hand’ criteria even before I reach the massively expensive part.

    I’d also like an Instax back for the Hasselblad V series that was cheap enough that I could actually justify the cost of buying (say ~$200 AUD or less) though I will admit that’s a pretty niche thing to be after.



  • North orientation is the standard for when just browsing a map, but when in navigation mode applications usually rotate the map to match your direction of travel. If your car has a Android Auto/Carplay head unit or one otherwise capable of displaying maps it will also likely default to autorotating the map when driving even without a destination input.

    This behaviour does make it easier to distinguish relative directions to your position (roads on your left as you drive will be on the left on the map and so forth) but also takes away an easy way to orient yourself on a scale broader than the limited section on the screen.




  • As in plasterboard sheets? I don’t see why not if hand loading, plenty of vans will fit a 2400x1200 sheet (my Transporter fitted a bunch of plywood with room to spare). Loading one with a forklift is harder due to no side access long enough to fit 2400mm but that’s a problem shared with tub back utes. If however your plasterboard pallet is side accessible a van with barn doors (like you’d buy if pallets were a priority) will allow you load it in fine.