Beers, brakes and two waiters in a fist fight

This week has been a medium burger meal sized one here at One Man Many Plans HQ. I’ve been applying the Handbrake to my computer, I’m celebrating a year of Mazda ownership, I think I’ve solved my missing ads issue and I’m quite impressed by a single beer bottle of all things..

Hello, we’d like some more money please!

Actually that’s not exactly how the email went, but it was from my insurance company looking for me to renew for another 12 months for the low low price of a few dollars more than last year. And while I looked at that email with the usual stare of disdain (reserved for bills and press releases that are absolute garbage) on a lighter note it did remind me that I’ve just clocked up a full years ownership of my Mazda 6 and I couldn’t be happier with the decision.

Doesn’t brap, but it works!

Yes it’s strange a former Rx7 owner praising Mazda reliability of all things but in the year I’ve had it, it has not let me down once. Yes my local mechanic did buy a new boat when I last had it serviced on account of the new disc rotors that it needed and yes, it still needs a couple of new tires on account of the unbalanced fronts getting nice and smooth on the inside. But like cabin and oil filters, all of the things that it’s had replaced have all been general wear and tear items. At no stage has it failed to start, overheated, vomited coolant or given me a heat gauge related mini heart attack.

The suffering Subaru I mistakenly bought before it? Completely different story (and one you can read another day if you like tales of woe.)

My Cursedbaru: Drank coolant, ate engine knock sensors.

No it’s a happy 12 months of work commute, Dad’s taxi service, taking anything and everything to the tip and finding out that yes it can fit a 13 year old’s mountain bike in the back provided you remove the front wheel first (and turn the handlebars slightly before you close the door.) Long drives, interstate trips, impromptu picnics – it has handled the absolute lot with the greatest of ease and even though the paintwork seems to attract scratches like an industrial strength magnet, it’s still one of the greatest cars I’ve ever owned. So here’s to another issue free 12 months!

The Handbrake is now on and the computer is drifting

So my in laws recently upgraded their TV and very nicely donated their old smart TV to us to replace the ageing unit we’ve had for over ten years now (funnily enough the old TV we bought off the in laws back in the day! And that old TV is now at my brother in laws place, so it’s a one big happy family TV trading session that went on recently.) And even though smart TV’s aren’t anything new, for me they are and how nice is it to have a TV with a WiFi connection and streaming services onboard so I don’t have to wait a week for the Xbox One to finally get it’s act together.

Speaking of the Xbox, it’s doubly nice to have some free to air streaming options on this TV that don’t crash if you scroll too fast – something that drove me crazy when searching for Doctor Who episodes on the X One through ABC iView (And this TV has SBS on demand too which is awesome, something I couldn’t add to the gaming unit.)

The only drawback to this new smart telly if you can really call it that, is when it comes to popping in a USB stick into it to watch anything downloaded. Because it’s on BFF terms with things created in the MP4 format and doesn’t want a bar of anything else that isn’t. And here’s me with a whole collection of bits and pieces in every format under the sun, with the vast minority in what it loves to play.

Luckily someone on the internet suggested Handbrake, an open sourced video transcoder which took one look at an old TV series collection I threw at it and went ‘Yep, no worries boss. Go and make a sandwhich, we’ve got this’ before getting down to transcoding business. Actually no it didn’t talk at all naturally but a trial run last night took about 30 minutes to transform something from the unplayable on the new screen to a ‘Yay, now I can finally catch up on this series’ moment.

Well once I transcribe the rest of these episodes first of course. The good news is you can set it up for bulk work and it just works its way through a queue, chewing through one job after another until it runs out of things to convert. Top job Handbrake, now I can find out what happened to the train full of weed but no wood to smoke the sushi with.

I hope this train has a snack cart!

Adsense Ads and the case of the cloak of invisibility

Now this is an issue that’s been vexing me for a while when it turns out it really shouldn’t have been: Google Adsense ads only showing after a refresh.

Yes in the last few months when I’d review how some of my posts looked, the ads I wanted there just wouldn’t appear until I refreshed the page. And considering I make tiny handful of cents from advertising, having it not show up unless prompted to is a bit of a problem, the main part being who reads a post and thinks ‘Loved that, let’s refresh and do it all over again?’ The answer is no one. No one refreshes a page on the net unless they have to, ergo no one would see the ads, ergo how am I supposed to buy shares now and retire from my radio day job with a fleet of Ferrari’s now?

It turns out the spanner in the works here wasn’t not having an ads plugin, it was having two of them trying to do the same thing at the same time and stopping each other from doing anything.

To paint a clearer picture: Imagine this place (blog) was a restaurant and you sat down at a table ready to tuck in to some hearty…er writing. And while you did that, the waiter (named Google Adsense) come by on occasion to serve up some ads to help keep the restaurant lights on.

My Restaurant Rules related hiccup here was managing to have two waiters trying to serve up things at the exact same time and then getting into a fight over who’s table it was, not serving up anything until a refresh occured (in which one waiter stormed back into the kitchen?)

Two waiters about to have a fist fight
You will fight it out to decide who serves me steak.

Or to get more WordPress technical, I had the Google Sitekit plugin and the Ad Inserter plugin (not made by Google but loaded with Adsense code) going head to head. Deactivating Ad Inserter and allowing auto ads through Adsense got everything working displaying again although I’m still figuring out the mobile issue.

Does that mean my daily earnings are now through the roof and I can pay the rent with this blog finally? Eh…no. But things are working and that’s a start!

Drink the Balter, save the bottle

Being part of Everyday Rewards has popped up some interesting bonuses as of late. Occasionally wifey will send me to Woolworths with a shopping list but also a pic or two of a free monthly ‘bonus item’. And who doesn’t like a freebie in this overpaying for everything day and age?

The latest discounts however involved BWS (the supermarket bottle shop) where various drinks were down to $4 a pop, limited two per customer per day. With some you’d save roughly a dollar (it’s still a saving!) where as if you grabbed a Cruiser Double Vodka and Coke, that’s $11 down to $4 and a massive discount.

On my list: The Tiger Lager or a Balter Cerveza and since the Balter was the first one I spotted in the fridge, it hit the basket. The beer was lovely on a hot afternoon like a Cerveza should be without being as sharp as a Corona but I’m really enjoying this lovely bottle too:

Refreshing in a cool bottle.

There’s probably an official name for these beer bottle neck stylings but until someone reveals what they are in a comment below, I’m going to go with ‘French fries.’
Therefore I’m really enjoying the French fries here.

It’s such a happy smily bottle too!

So much so that I’ve decided not to throw it out, but instead place it in the home brew bottle collection which is now 99% PET bottles from the Coopers kit and one French Fry Cerveza. It will contain some kind of beer in it again at some stage I’m sure as I continue to brew (even though clear bottles are not ideal for home brew due to light filtration or a lack of it. From best to worst: Brown, green, clear.)

Although I will admit, it’s not the coolest beer bottle I’ve ever seen/enjoyed/recycled. That honour goes to the Lucky Budha beer effort. I can’t remember how it tasted (I don’t remember getting lucky after drinking it either) but how awesome was this beer receptacle!

Who ya gonna call? No wait..

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