Yodeller

There are huge number of different LEGO set themes these days. A lot more than the original three introduces back in 1978 (city/town, castle and space). Most of those themes use (mostly) standard LEGO bricks, but there are few that have their own distinctive pieces.

The most well known such themes are Dublo- and Technic sets. Former featuring big, double sized bricks and later using pins instead of studs for primary connectors between bricks.

Bionicle might also fall into this category of well known themes that doesn't use standard bricks, but mostly technics style connections with a distinctive pieces. There are also few other themes that use similar building techniques as Bionicle.

Apart from few unique themes, like clickits, the rest of the "special" themes mostly use standard bricks. But they are distinctive from the regular themes by a few factors. Some of them use different kind of minifigs, like the old Fabuland sets or the towards girls targeted sets like Bellville or Friends. Some of those sets also use a different colour palette, offering bricks in colours not available in any other themes.

It's funny how in this day of modern technology we still need to adjust most of the clocks manually. Not to mention how archaic it is to use daylight saving times to begin with. But as long as we don't get rid of it, it needs to be done twice a year.

Computers, phones and smart watches at least are smart enough to do the adjustment automatically. Of course the analogue clocks can't do it and I still like to keep them around the house. The "smart" home appliances are a different story. They claim to be smart, but can't handle even this little thing.

It's not just that it needs to done manually. It's that they don't even have an easy setting to switch it on and off. You need to dabble with the confusing menus (each one having their own, weird logic) and then adjust the time by the minute, wither by clicking a button 60 times or scrolling a wheel for the same effect.

At least my current ones are a bit more advanced than some of the devices I remember from the past. The worst always insisted starting from so.e obscure, past year (probably the release year of the thing) to set the time and date all over again instead just adjusting the current set one.

My mortgage's interest rate is tied to 12 month euribor. Back when we bought the place the interest's were on negative side, although the banks had already prepared for such situations and capped the bottom rates at 0 %.

Few years ago when things started to happen the interest's skyrocketed. Last year was the worst. Ar the beginning it was good as my interest was fixed for 12 months on the lower rate while the interests kept raising. But last year, the fixing time happened to be at the height of those rates. So past year I have been "enjoying" the highest rates for a long time.

Now the rates have been going down quite rapidly. They are already about 1,5% lower than a year ago when the last fixing point happened. And they are still falling. They might be even lower in a few months, but I'm happy for that 1,5% decrease already when the fixed period starts.

It has been nearly 4 years since I launched Writestreak, my "new" writing platform. Before that I had already been writing on my previous platform for years. In the matter of fact exactly as long as I have now been writing on Writestreak.

It still feels like a new place to write. The first half of my streak still feels much longer. It feels like it was very long ago when I originally started writing, but it feels it wasn't that long ago when I switched to this new platform (although I still keep cross posting to the old platform as well).

Writestreak still feels like a fresh system whereas the old platform already starts to show it's age. Even though four years is also quite a long time in tech and new things keep popping up all the time. But despite the tech getting older it's still up to date, maybe even still a bit ahead of it's time. I did use some cutting edge technologies like realtime database when creating Writestreak and those still aren't commonplace in general web development. Maybe it's a bit too on the edge technology and there isn't that much demand for it given their added complexity.

Even though the weather has remained unusually warm for this time of the year the annual signs for winter are still on the horizon. On the coming weekend the daylight saving time is once again ending meaning there will be a bit more light in the mornings, but the evening darkness will also come an hour earlier.

Another sign of closing winter is the speed limits which will be changing to the winter limits starting next week. The limits will be lowered by 20km/h for the highest limits (120km/h and 100km/h) on most roads to address the coming icy conditions.

It's also time to change the tires to winter tires. Technically they should be changed before November, but there are some freedom on that depending on the actual weather.

The only thing still missing is the sub-zero temperatures which usually are common at least during the nights around this time of the year. But at least the forecast isn't yet promising anything like that in the coming days.