Been giving my hotplate a thorough disassembling, cleaning up and putting back together again. Got the magnetic stirring bit sorted so it works properly again, the magnet pole pieces had pretty thoroughly siezed thanks to some sort of unmentionable-looking and fouler smelling still (think cherry bakewell tarts, mixed with soured wine and stagnant ordure in water kind of dead animal-ish stench, sweet, almondy but utterly sickening that left a truly revolting sweaty BO-like sour acid tang in the air and which stripped the paint from the steel wherever it touched and left it sloughing off in sheets of soggy semi-solid equivalent of necrotic flesh, like gangrene but for paint on the inside. Spent the night scrubbing that shite out, cleaning the circuit boards, wiping off the repulsive looking what used to be paint, de-rusting some screws with a tender loving acid bath and an old toothbrush, which, needless to say, will not, be seeing the inside of my mouth any time in the forseeable ever and giving the rotors a tart up with some high-temperature tolerance lubricant that hopefully should at least give it a bit of a respite from the kind of things that poor bastard thing has to put up with)