We squeezed in a trip to Reading and LEGOLAND over the weekend. Here’s a quick recap of what’s going on.

Mobile Dimension Saw

My brother and his wife have spent the last three years working with a rather niche product. They bought a company that manufactures portable saw mills in Oregon, USA. The embedded video is documenting their process on the Essential Craftsman YouTube channel. The amount of work they have put in is incredible, so check it out.

Coffee Time

The weekly trip to Rhubarb & Mustard was a success as usual. Flat white, and a deviation from the usual routine, a slice of raspberry and pistachio cake. We’ve now been coming for about a year and never been disappointed. The coffee is top notch, and the food is excellent. The only downside is the limited opening hours and lack of weekend opening. It’s still my favourite café in Plymouth.

LEGOLAND

Nope. Not a typo. It is truly that aggressive. Like an angry rant online, LEGOLAND is all capitals. This is a trigger warning for nostalgia, because who hasn’t thought back to a childhood trip to the Windsor Resort. We visited as part of a school trip in Primary School many years ago, and it has been two (and a bit) decades, so it’s time to see if the experience holds up. And if it’s worth the ticket price.

Turns out there is a quite a lot to do. We arrived on a Brick Day where parking was free and there was plenty of space in the Priority Car Park with car chargers which was convenient for the return leg of the journey.

The park was busy, although not packed. Our first attempt at a ride was the Duplo Dino Coaster. Unfortunately that wasn’t a go-er. We waited in line for an ungodly amount of time, inching forward only when other souls left the line, only to give up and move on to better prospects. Thankfully this experience wasn’t repeated in the rest of the park and we had a great time on the Mythica ride and the Haunted House Monster Party (a Vekoma Madhouse, apparently). The food was expensive, as expected in a theme park, but the overall it was better than I recalled. The park has expanded considerably since my childhood visits and worth a re-visit.

Korean BBQ

Our trip to Reading included a mandatory Korean BBQ meal at Gooi Nara. The restaurant was fairly packed on Saturday at 6.30 with a primarily Korean clientele (usually a fair indication of authenticity), and we had a mixture of different meats (beef, pork belly, chicken) and prawns. It was great, although I do struggle with the paucity of vegetables in Korean barbecue. We had some plum soju and (Bokbunja-ju) which was delicious too.

Ohme My God

We have had an Ohme Home Pro EV charger for almost a year now. And it has just worked, for the most part. Alongside Octopus Intelligent Go it lets you plug in the car at any time, then schedules charging based on times of peak production on the grid, and usage troughs. When it works, it works really well. The last few weeks have been less good though. A few months ago there was a blip where I needed to turn the charger off at the breaker, but it worked fine after that. No issues for a few weeks after that, then suddenly it wasn’t connected. It depends on getting a 4G signal which has never been an issue in the past, but now the SIM is not being detected periodically. The charger can still be used, and the cheapest electricity is still available from 11.30pm to 5.30am, but it’s not nearly as convenient as being able to charge any time.

Most of the troubleshooting involves “powercycling” (yes, an invented term for turning it on and off again), although the next step is sending a bunch of photos to Ohme for no particular reason. Hopefully they have a fix available because it is starting to get frustrating. Luckily it’s easy to schedule charges for our cars. Hopefully our smart charger will be back in full working order soon. Until then, it remains a dumb charger. Need a drink? Time for a Tajin-rimmed mezcal margarita.