Samathy @s@social.samathy.space

Oh, I also need to get some toe stops. Because I can't find ( in my house ) the ones I was going to use, and these black ones are uh...end of life.

I finished my custom roller skates last night!
They're very yellow and very good.

They are a little tight around the balls of my feet, but I'm hoping the leather will stretch a bit.

Other than that, they're really good! Plate placement is nice.

I need to cut a *third* right aluminum plate, because I countersunk the holes from the wrong side. But that isnt suuuper important.

I'm getting into "Political parties are stupid".

But the reason they exist is that effecting change is easier when you have a whole group of elected officials who are aiming for the same thing - I guess that is a political party.

Except, it isnt, not in the UK at a national level. Because the officials believe in the *party* and vote on the party line because of whips. So you're never electing an official with their own beliefs and goals for their constituents anyway.

I kinda get why local council elections affiliate with national parties in the sense that it also *gets* them voters, as much as it looses them voters.

In the sense that Joe who always votes labour will always vote labour in national, and local issues.

But thats a silly way to vote. Voting should always be about policy, not vague ideas of what a party represents.

Today is polling day for a lot of local councils - I continue to not understand why local parties affiliate themselves with national parties.

It only serves to get people voting on national policy, instead of voting for local candidates on their own merits.

I mean, I'd never feel happy voting "Conservative" in local elections. But if it was just "Ann-Marie from down the street", I'd be more lilkely to vote for her even if the policy was "better funding for busses" in both cases.

A day in modern software development is oft marked with an hour or so trying to figure out why a tool that worked yesterday isnt working today.

Imagine a carpenter having to spend 1/3 of their day repairing their hammer which suddenly broke overnight.

I might eventually re-cut the insole I did do because it is rather shorter in length than it needs to be.

On account of figuring out how best to get it to slide into the shoe *after* I'd been trimming material off. I reckon I could trim less off and still get it to slide in - resulting in slightly stronger shoe and an easier time fitting the skate plate.

But maybe I'll just see how I go and cut a new insole if the need arises.

I managed to cut two alumninium insoles last night, and sand one of them to fit in the shoe.

The hackspace's bandsaw was out of action ( for stupid hackspace reasons that are not "its broken" ) so I ended up using a jigsaw that was worse than the one I have at home, just because I'd gone to the hackspace so goddamn I was gonna hack.

Being able to use the variety of bench sanding tools was, however, very useful.

My main concerns at this stage are:

The shoes fit me and are not oversized. Over sizing is recommended for custom Vans skates to allow for the metal insole. Concerned they might be a bit snug! But, they're soft shoes so I reckon they'll be fine.

The plates are 2 sizes smaller than Sunlite recommends for this size shoe. Made this choice because the wheel base of these seems correct for my feet, but idk what I'm doing honestly.

Most of the bits have arrived for my custom roller skates!

I've got some DC shoes, Sunlite plates and soft Radar wheels.

Not-pictured - a sheet of aluminium to make the insoles from.

I need to grab some bearing spacers before I can build up the wheels.
I'll probably get some better bearings too because the cheap ones I got from a local skate shop don't spin very well.

Using spare toe-stops from my parts bin for now.

Cutting the insoles and fitting the plates at the hackspace tomorrow.

No. Slack channels is a growth only metric.

It only goes up.

Life news for masto crews: I passed my driving test yesterday!

I might not be running a masto server that accepts registrations - but It is very clear by the number of new follows I've had that people are heading on over following the Elon x Twitter news.

Multiple people have suddenly followed me in the last couple of days, its very telling that i immediately assume Twitter has done something terrible recently.
I cant tell that they have.

But still, i might come back to posting stuff here.

I still believe in Mastodon is a semi-solution to social media monopolys, but it still doesnt have quite the critical mass to move me over for content from the people i care about.

I need to start journaling again.

When I was doing it last year, it was a really, really good way of being my own therapist.

Yanno, just working out what I'm thinking/feeling. Telling it to someone. Making it cohesive, rather than just a ball of brain weasels.

Today I discovered that Dunlop/Woods type inner tube valves are secret option C.

My partner has a bike from 1991 with Dunlop tubes. I thought they were Schrader tubes and bought the wrong ones to replace a punctured one 🙁

Patched the tube instead, bought some Dunlop ones. Lessons learned!

Not really using Facebook really does shut me out of a bunch of communities I'd like to be more involved in.

Events are organised, conversations conducted, but I don't see them because I'm not checking Facebook every day,

Even if I do check Facebook, my feed is so full of absolute garbage ads and sponsored posts, Its hard to see any page/group posts anyway.

Wow, existing feels exhausting this week.

I possibly have got bike wheel/tyre combination that is hard to get inner tubes for.

They're deepish wheels that need ~50+mm presta valve tubes.

But my tyres are 700x35c and it appears to be impossible to get 700x35c tubes with valves longer than 40mm.

Continental make a 'Cross28' tube that is 700x35-47x, presta 60mm which looks like it'd solve my problem. But they're quite difficult to find online.

#bike #bikes