Category: General

Well, this is unexpected. I’d given myself a notional ‘day off’, not at work, not needing to do my essay… But I thought I’d check and see if I’ve got any feedback. I’ve not. I mean, there’s plenty that I could/should/would be doing. But I’ve submitted the essay for feedback, and I’ve got the list of audit patients, I’m ready… poised… just waiting on a signature for approval to pull notes and feedback on the dissertation.

I actually can’t do anything terribly useful. I could restructure the dissertation, maybe, but I really want someone sane to point me at that because while I feel it’s a bit weavy, I’m a bit close to it at the moment. I’ve tried, and find myself just making it tie itself in knots.

So I’ve actually got a day off. The sun’s out. The bike’s taxed, tested and insured…

Wheeeeeeeee.

And no, I’ve not just been watching Castle, although that has occupied a fair bit of time.

I have actually either been at work, at work on nights, or working on my dissertation. I have, however, come off nights today, which means I’m allowed a whole day of sloth. Or ‘other activities’. Which include:

– Breakfast at the very lovely Workhouse Cafe, who remember me, even via twitter :)
– Fresh coffee brought home from Two Day Coffee, home of the best coffee in all of Bristol.
– Working on Kathryn’s present.

And… fixing a fountain pen. See, work don’t give us pens anymore, well, I don’t think they do. I have not been privy to the location of a pen-store, and am thus reliant on either then pens I buy, or the pens I find lying around when my pen runs out at some difficult moment.

And so, I decided that my new plan would be to have a nice fountain pen and a crappy biro. Nice pen…’til it runs out of ink, then crappy biro to tide me over. Except that I don’t have a nice pen, not since the ‘nice’ pen I got from WHSmith had the paint turn to crap. I’m assuming a mixture of hospital soap and alco-gel wasn’t very good for it. It may not be very good for this pen, but we shall see how we get on.

Anyhow, I laid out an entire 1.50, I think, plus postage, for this pen…

As you can see, when it arrived the nib was munged and the ink sac was, well, sad.

Well, the ink sac’s still sad, but I stripped it down:

Spent some time cleaning it all out, straightened out the nib (which now feels like it should write okay), and reassembled it. I need a new ink sac, which is on order, along with the shellac to stick it together. I also need some ink. Which is odd, because I’m fairly certain there’s a bottle of black Parker Quink kicking around (which I’ve had since at least university the first time, and I think actually from school).

Having failed to find it (or have even a faint clue where it is) I’ve ordered some black ink.

I am quite looking forward to it…

So I’ve been looking for an anglepoise for my desk. Yes, yes, Emma, Bankers Lamp. I know :)

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for anglepoisen, my dad’s one adorns our bedroom despite being somewhat battered (and I think it’s a knock-off, original to the 1960s though). Anyhow, I started off planning to get another one of the ikea ones, but really, I’m not terribly impressed with the underlying quality of the steel. It’s a bit thin.

So then I thought, hell, they can’t be that hard to find, I’ll get a second hand one. So I started scanning local charity shops. Then I upped it to actively looking in local charity shops. Then I tried e-bay, and noticed that almost everything on there is a brand anglepoise, and is also not just a scabby old second hand ‘poise. And then I realised that even the few scabby old ‘poises don’t go cheap.

And then it happened. I started to rather fancy a real ‘poise. Specifically either the 1228:

or the 1227:

But after trying to catch a few of the rattier ones going past (1227s, there’s no hope of me winning a 1228 auction because everyone knows they’re worth a fortune), trying misspelled auction (there was one, I got outbid by a couple of quid) I started to think carefully. We want to move to Canada, do we really need more stuff? Do we want to be collecting period furniture now. After lots of careful consideration and poking myself with the ‘you shouldn’t spend money anyway’ stick I gave in and removed the multiple watched auctions…

I found a couple of the far less my style Anglepoise type 90s, and stuck a couple of bids on them, and resigned myself to probably landing up with an ikea lamp.

And then I showed them to Kathryn. And she commented that the price I’d been considering as too ‘spensive wasn’t really ‘spensive for a decent lamp. And that she rather liked them. And all that carefully constructed faux decision making collapsed.

And I’m back hunting for a nice 1227. Well, actually, a ratty 1227 that in a few years time I can clean up and make niceynicey. Not winning though… However, I’ve one bid on a far less exciting knock-off anglepoise, which was my concession to financial good sense. I doubt I’ll win, but hey, let’s see.

I don’t expect to win the other thing I’m after. I found an old Heathkit valve* amplifier. I’m very much wanting it, but I don’t think I can really bid as much as I expect it’ll go for. I had a moment of thinking ‘hey, I’ve probably got the circuit diagram, I could just buy the parts and build a new one’… And then checked my collection of most heathkit circuit layouts…. and it’s oddly absent.

Feh.

* tube

So I booked the bike in for an MOT and Service. This is because she now runs, and so we need to do MOT and service for the purpose of making her road-legal. And then riding her on the few summer days we have like today (because we’ve broken the planet). It, like the Minor’s 1275 are relics of a bygone time, or they will be soon, when burning oil was considered a reasonable way to move yourself around. Anyhow, the Kawasaki’s engine is, certainly, within the bounds of things I could service. It’s just something I have little interest in doing. Bikes are small, fiddly, and generally a pain in the ass to maintain. The K’wak is a toy, really. If the government get their way and we end up with regional pay, I may end up commuting around the country on her, but otherwise, she’s a summer toy. Yes, I am a bad and naughty person.

Annnyhow, then yesterday I got a nice reminder that Rebecca Mog’s tax disk is due to expire. Since currently tax disk and MOT are the same date, I have endeavoured to book some friends for the ‘moving the minor into the garage’ day. Because whilst Rebeccamog may just simply drive round there, there’s also the possibility that the diff will die completely, and we’ll get to partially disassemble her on the gravel drive to get her into the garage. No fun if I’m here just with Kathryn, we may want more people. This is fine, it shouldn’t really incur any expenses I don’t already know about. I’m slightly tempted to take Chester around first, because then if Rebecca dies she can be dragged on the gravel. Yes, I really am a bit paranoid about this whole experience.

Then today I got the reminder that the Volvo’s tax disk is….due to expire the end of the month. Which means the MOT expires…err… in 6 days time. ACK! So now the Volvo (with it’s illustrious history of smoothly passing MOTs) is due to to go in for an MOT. I fear for the monies. All the monies. August’s a pain in the ass.

Gack.

So, continuing my run of actually fixing things that I’ve been intending to fix, I decided to attack Kathryn’s typewriter. See, a while back I obtained a Remington Compact Portable – from somewhere between 1932 and 1938, apparently. I was under the impression that this was the typewriter Hemmingway used. I was wrong. But it’s still a very nice typewriter :)

The poor beastie was somewhat foxed when it arrived – and the carriage return string was broken*. So I spent a little time today with fishing line and guesswork, and worked out where the path of the wire was, and how to retension the spring, and how taut to make it, and playing “no please don’t wind yourself around that”.

Success was eventually obtained (5th attempt I got the tension right, I got the adjustment right on the spring and it didn’t manage to wind itself underneath the spring/returnwheel/thingie**). However, then I spent an age trying to work out why the ratchet mechanism wasn’t engaging. I could see the lever that should operate it, but it seemed wedged in a position that was… unhelpful. And then, with seconds until I was due to leave to collect Kathryn I realised that if I pressed in a pin, which I have no idea what it’s meant to do, the lever would be freed. I had no idea that this pin even moved until that moment. The ratchet engaged, and lo, the typewriter works.

Sadly I didn’t have time to switch to the new ribbon before collecting Kathryn, but after she got home I spent some time getting down-and-dirty with the old ribbon and the new (two colour) ribbon. So, it’s just a bit of lubrication required (it’s a bit sticky, so tends to not move the carriage very reliably) – although that might just work out with some use, anyhow. But I can now, finally, say that I gave my beloved a portable typewriter :)

* As with my valve radio’s tuner thread which broke shortly after it arrived in the house.
** Highly technical term, that is.

So, since it was sunny, and because I wanted to I tried out the rebuilt Raleigh today. Well, repaired, renovated, re-working’d. Something like that. I decided that I wanted a hunk of wood and that a nice little trundle down the river to BWRP would be just ideal for testing the bike.

I was mentally prepared for a looong walk back after something broke, or sheared, or fell off, or exploded, or failed. I was envisaging no brakes by the time I got there. I was preparing mentally for disaster.

Apart from 1st gear being a little tricksy (it’ll occasionally slip out of gear, I think I need someone more experienced with Sturmey Archer’s to get it set up a bit better, that and a new cable) the ride was hitchless. Smooth (in so far as she’s smooth. There’s some clattery-clicky noises coming from inside the chain guard – so smooth isn’t quite the right word).

I was impressed though, when I turned up at the Bristol Wood Recycling Project the lass there popped out and instantly proclaimed “Nice bike! Rod braked, isn’t it…” and then we had a brief chat, during which she correctly identified it’s lineage – saying “It’s a raleigh, isn’t it?” (despite it being completely free of identifiers apart from a sprayed over badge on the front). She, apparently, is a rod-bike afficionado, but abandoned them because she now cycles all over Brizzle, and Brizzle’s a bit hilly for 3 speeds (or 2½ speeds as the case may be). After wandering around for a bit & realising that’s the place to get the pallets from for building the deck, I went back to pondering a variety of solutions to the Superpad Problem.

The Superpad problem is, basically, that the Superpad 2 needs a portrait mode stand with its cables attached and, ideally, hidden. This is because I wish to use it as an audio player. And so it needs an audio cable, and frankly, it needs to be on charge. I have (as I said yesterday updated the firmware to get it a bit more flexible. Tests have proven that it’s a bit crap, but adequate. And so, now I want a stand.

So, while I was there I meandered around and stared at hunks of uncut timber, offcuts, random bits of willow tree… and finally settled on some ‘eucalyptus type wood’, which I’m planning to make into something that looks less like I’ve taken chunks of timber and randomly stuck them together:

And more like a gracefully sculpted T-shape that’ll support the pad vertically and have the cables running through-and-then under it. That’s the *plan*.

If there are more photos, you know it worked. If not, you know I spent 50p on some firewood.