Blog

Today I bought a radio for 47p. Not some modern disposable piece of crap, oh no. No, whilst I was pottering home after a bonus make up early shift and having been good and stopped off at the bank to sort out the mailing address problem*, I finally visited a furniture recycling place with the intention of seeing if they had a stool for Kathryn’s office, or anything else interesting.
(more…)

So occasionally it occurs to me that Bristol is actually a city. A really nice, friendly city which has delightful places, some of which are open when I finish a night shift. I’d been meaning to try Full Court Press which I cycle by on my way to work. They open at 0730 which means they’re just not quite open for me to get coffee on my way to work in the mornings, sadly, but they are open as I head home from work on a night shift.

But because of Kathryn’s shifts, I’ve often been coming home to see my beloved, and I’d rather come home and sneak an hour of sleep curled up with my wife than get coffee and a danish on the way home. But today I stopped and tried FCP.

The guys there were awesome. I honestly think I’ve never had better service (although it’s equal would be La Berlue (in Florac) who despite our one-word-in-fifty French chatted to us, even had Kathryn holding their baby, whilst we nattered in broken FrenGlish about books). I sat and chatted, and didn’t mind chatting despite it being after a night shift because they just made me so welcome. I supped some really excellent coffee* – and then was plied with samples. I rather excitedly discovered that they sell cold brew coffee – and having indicated my excitement was then offered a sample.

Now, the cold brew I had today was reminiscent, to me, of a light whisky, sort of. Certainly a spirit, it also packed a mean punch.

So I sat there, chilled, ate a danish, and when the exhaustion washed over me like a bag of jellied eels I made my excuses and hopped on my bicycle heading off to Hart’s Bakery, again. The intention was to pick up a loaf of bread to take home, and maybe a treat for midday. Of course, when I got there the overpowering hunger of the post-nights-desire-for-protein sucked me into getting one of their intriguing little egg-bacon-muffin thingies.

And then I headed home.

So I wandered up the garden enjoying the not-quite-summer-not-quite-autumn morning, the sun shining, the gentle warmth, and as I reached the top of the garden, there sat the deck and the temporary table I’d made by throwing a pallet on top of the cast iron legs of a table. Next to the table sat the handily placed metal chair saved from the nettles at my mum’s allotment years ago.

I looked at it and I thought, y’know, it’d be a criminal waste not to enjoy this.

Although, it’s slightly fraudulent, because I think if I consume any more caffeine at this point in the day I will not be able to sit down again until tonight, so I just popped the (excellent) FCP bottle on the table for the photo, before slipping it in to the fridge. I actually bought a bottle because I thought my best beloved might enjoy it.

Anyhow, I sat, chilled out, ate breakfast. And now I’m going to get my hour’s kip before the rest of the day continues…

In other news, we’ll be getting recycled denim insulation for the house, I think. Got the quote today, I don’t think there’s much in it between fibreglass and recycled denim; but to work with this stuff is meant to be nicer and it’s more environmentally sound. So yay, and ultra huge thanks to, I think Wibble, for the suggestion.

* Incidentally, their pet hate is the word ‘tasty’ to describe coffee. Which having discovered this I immediately suggested was ‘nice tasty coffee’ ;)

So, over the deck so far has been constructed from pallets obtained from a nice business just a street away from us (although we have to wander around a fair bit to get to it, because there’s a bloody great spikey fence betwixt us and them). I popped in and said “can I have ’em?” and their response was a ‘quite definitely, please help yourself’ type response.

And slowly we’ve robbed them of their pile of pallets, but having done the lighter, crappier ones, and with the help of the very nice Nikki who came around today we got two of the ultralong ones (we got one of them a couple of days ago by a process of Kathryn and I carrying the thing).

The problem is that at this point I still need complete pallets. And they don’t fit in any of our vehicles. I’ve now managed to find the 4 attachments that allow the roofrack to fit the car. Now, if I could find either

• the roofrack
• the twin chrome roof-bars I made because I’ve never managed to locate the whole roof-rack at once

Then it would all be good. The minor is, despite its diminutive size an awesome load carrier. The dirty great leafsprings at the back will handle a surprising amount of weight (I believe I once carried 10 bags of gravel and 3 people back from B&Q, she’s travelled down the motorway with a 26″ CRT tv on the roof, and carried a office grade laser printer, more computers and monitors than you can shake a stick at tens of miles). So loading up the roofrack with a couple of pallets and running back and forth is definitely a possibility. But I can’t find one of the frigging tubes, and nor can I find the actual roofrack. Given that it’s miles of clippy black metal tubes and four alloy corners, that’s not wholly surprising. But the fact I can find one, but not the other 4 foot long chrome pole is quite upsetting. I mean, it’s a four foot long chrome pole. One would think it wouldn’t be that easy to hide.

But apparently it’s quite happy hiding where it is. It’s more annoying because I thought I knew where it was (with the other one, ha). Whereas I thought I didn’t know where the four roof attachments were, but it turns out that I had that backwards.

Meh.

Ironically, once I’ve got a few more pallets home I can stop bringing back complete ones, and taking the Imey and stripping the pallets down first becomes a quite reasonable approach.

On the plus side I’ve just discovered the autofeeding screwdriver. This is a tool I wasn’t really wholly aware of. Now I am, and have one winging its way to me. Not only do I have one but I have an 18 volt cordless one, which means that, with luck I can use the battery with a bit of work producing an adaptor, on the Makita circular saw (which replaces the stolen one).

Also, I’ve managed to procure a heater to go in the kitchen and two pipe-freezing kits so I don’t have to drain the central heating to fit the new pipe work (although I’ll be cheating and using plastic pipework for speed and ease of fitment whilst lying under the floor. Yes, I’m weak and lazy).

And that’s it.

This might be a shorter than normal ramble, because the world is not filled with excitement today. I’ve not a lot to add to the contents of the internet today, to be honest. I just wanted to share that I’ve been working on the deck again. The four pillars are concreted in. And incredibly for me, they’re actually in line. Seriously, they’re actually in line. I can put the joist up that will support one edge of the pallets, and y’know what, it actually touches all four posts. I’m quite astonishingly proud of myself.

I spent much of the day doing unpleasant things to the wood trim that was on the deck until today. I was originally planning to pull it off and attempt to reuse the larch lap type stuff, but it’s nailed in so well that they were just breaking. Having realised what a state the concrete is in behind them, I instead broke out the jigsaw and lopped the top section off. It’ll be hidden under the deck anyhow, so it’ll just provide a ‘nicer’ looking back to the underneath of the deck (which is intended to be ‘shed-y’). I largely managed to prise the actual decking boards off though, so I might be able to reuse them to make the stairs. I;d like to feign feeling butch after breaking out the crowbar, but actually, I mainly felt wussy as I didn’t really have the strength and it was generally a bit of a battle. Still, all but one of the bits I want off is off. Tomorrow I hope to attach the joist, it’s marked up, but I thought that doing something I can’t easily correct if I get wrong after only 2 hours sleep was possibly unwise.

On my way home from work I stopped at one of the places that’s got a stack of pallets mouldering, it looks optimistic and since I have to nip out tomorrow for a package collection I shall endeavour to pop in and ask if I can have some. There’s another place which has more, though, who I might ask first, because I’ve bought stuff from them many times in the past (plumber’s merchant).

I’ve checked the measurements too, and it looks like it should all fit together kinda the way I intended. The only thing that’s changed mid-plan is the way I want to do the stairs – just because I think I’ve worked out a better, nicer way to do the stairs. Although I reserve my right to change my mind back.

It’s quite exciting though.

I’ve also put yet another coat of filler on the section under the stairs that needs more filler. I’m starting to get enthusiasm for these jobs because I want the house finished… basically. Once the house is ‘done’ I can start on other projects, but the house has been hanging around part finished. So it’s time to get it done.

I’m, incidentally, still trying to sort out the recycled denim insulation. And the solar panels.

Oh god damn it.

So, I had a lovely morning, until 10:32. Because at 10:32 I remembered the appointment that I was meant to be at, at 10:00. Cue apologetic angst ridden phonecall. New appointment at 11:45.

Perfect. Make it with plenty of time… Return home. Parking Rebecca in the garage get the alignment right with only one in-and-out (required because the road’s too narrow and overgrown to align in one), start reversing in… decide that I’m a little far over to the right, swing the car a little and ‘SCREEK’. Dirty great scratch on the front wheel arch.

Fuckbuckets.

That’s what I say. Bucket loads of fuck.

*sigh*.

Oh, and she’s now sporting a bit of duct-tape holding the front number plate on because last time it caught on one of the many brambles and broke the plastic number plate screw.

I may not do anything for the rest of the day, for everyone’s safety.

Err, sorry, I was overcome by the title, just for a moment.

So, I seem to have managed to locate a bit of enthusiasm for working on the house again, thankfully. I think it was the thinking-about-heating post I did for Shades, but that prompted me to go and locate a radiator for the kitchen*, which as I mentioned was somewhat underwhelmingly heated last winter.

I need to also order the under floor insulation stuff, which I shall look forward to with the customary deep joy that grovelling under the house gives me. I think I’ve decided on a plan now, though:

– Insulate ‘properly’ under the kitchen and the hallway.
– Rugs for the lounge. Many of them. Just for the winter.

My hope is that this will mean that we can have a nice warm winter, since there’s enough heat coming in, it’s just that the cold was following it.

Anyhow, that seemed to coax me into a little productivity – so I’d bought some posts to support the deck:

Which have been sat, propped against the deck for a little while.

Today I took my fear in hand and attacked the crazy paving that sits under where the extended deck will run to***. I measured roughly, calculated, and made four large holes in the ground. I have to say, I’d often thought our ground was fairly clay-ey but the stuff that I dug out of two of the holes was just insane. It looked like I should start my own pottery, right there and then. I didn’t though. I just dumped it at the other end of the garden under what will be a very soggy patch of grass one day.

I now need some gravel and then some concrete to fill the holes. This requires a trip to a DIY place to get some (because I’m feeling lazy) postcrete. I could get concrete and sand and gravel and mix it. And maybe, when faced with the extortionate expense of postcrete I might, but lazy is as lazy does, and lazy thinks that postcrete would be easier.

I’ve then got to get the posts all lined up (bit of string in the shed already, lots of scrap timber kicking around to fix them vertically and in-line), find the trowel (‘in the garage’) and I shall fix’em into the ground. Then it’s just a case of ripping the wood cladding off the concrete plinth and laying my hands on as many pallets as I can get FOC. Which shouldn’t be too hard, although I am wondering if they’ll fit in the iMiEV****. And doing a mixture of things with those pallets. Some will be required intact. Others will be stripped down for their timber. Mwuahahaha.

Anyhow, that done, I also did a bit more pond digging, before my body started to gently suggest that maybe I’d like to stop that now, please.

Then I wandered back inside and recommenced the filling job I’d left half done a while ago – that is – the side panelling on the stairs. I’ve slapped another layer of filler over some of it, and hopefully one more layer of that and I should be ready to start sanding it down. Once that’s done we can commence a new festival of painting. This time it’s the trim that I’m gunning for – but once that is done, and the door’s planed down a bit (so it actually fits in the door frame) that will be a major item off the giganto-list. Although one of the biggies is the garage lighting, which I really should do as a summer job. That and under the house. Oh ah, time to get busy again I guess.

* I found a company that does ‘b-grade’ cosmetically marked designer radiators. Since we have a ‘designer’ radiator in the bathroom, I though we should match it with one in the kitchen. Also, it’s nearly 2kW of heat – which makes me happy**.
** Yes, I do wish that I’d put under floor heating in the kitchen, thanks.
*** Basically, if you combined the surface area of the 1m up in the air concrete slab and the crazy paving we’d have a pretty much perfect sitting area. However, given that there’s about 1m difference in height between them, it’s always been a bit of a bugger sitting out there.
**** Which is, somewhat, resisting naming. We tried Puck, but it didn’t really stick. Pondering Imey (pronounced a bit like Amy),

So, a few quick comments on tankless water heater/central heating.

When we moved in we just had an ‘on demand’ gas water heater. Ugly as sin and sat in the main bedroom, but it worked fine. Dunno who made it.

I imagine that the ideal brand isn’t one that’s available in the states, but if it is, our gas engineers recommended it very highly. It’s apparently 91% efficient (according to the energy rating stats) and is a fan/condensing on demand hot water / heating boiler.

Experience wise – I love having endless hot water*. It doesn’t make for efficient hot water usage, but it’s nice to be able to shower, do washing up and not worry about when it’s going to run out. Also when friends stay (rare though it is) it’s nice to be able to not worry about when we might suddenly run out of hot water. It’s pretty quiet – we used to have ours in the kitchen back in Slough, and it was okay, but by sticking ours in an outbuilding (‘the boiler room’ aka ‘the garden shed’ (brick built attached to the house)) we’ve eliminated pretty much all the noise. It takes a couple of seconds longer than it does with tanked hot water for the boiler to kick in and heat the water up, but in all honesty, the water running through the pipes probably takes almost as long. It can heat the water hot enough for it to be scalding if we turn it right up, but ours is turned down to ‘eco’ setting (unsurprisingly). The only other thing which can be a little irritating is if, for whatever reason, you need to run-stop-run the hot tap. Then you’ll get a period of cold water in between the hot water. I’m just used to that, though.

Heating wise (I can’t instantly remember if this applies) – if we had invested in an extra radiator in the kitchen and actually sealed under the floorboards, we’d be fine. The radiators are plenty hot enough, but we underestimated the amount of energy we require in the kitchen (or more accurately, I didn’t realise how much heat having the boiler in the old kitchen meant we got ‘for free’) and so leaving us to a couple of kW short seemed less of a problem than it turned out to be. The gas engineers actually commented that we could do with more power in the kitchen, but we hoped to get away with it because we cook lots, but, err, it didn’t work out that way. Cook lots, yes, but whinge about it being cold also**.

This actually reminds me that when I go under the house I should install pipework for the extra radiator… bother… and that I should order a radiator to put up in the house. Yes. [Done]. Also need to order under floor insulation… Will do that when I’ve found a measuring stick.

So all in all, I’d recommend tankless/on-demand hot water (and in our case central heating). Dunno if that helps…

* To be honest, it’s been over 10 years since I regularly was somewhere without endless hot water. My mum’s house is still a tanked system, because she lives out in the middle of no-where.
** Oh lord, the kitchen is *cold* in the mornings. But a radiator is (hopefully) on its way (bid in place on e-bay for yon’ B-Grade stock).

So, it didn’t seem particularly like it was going to be one of those days. You know the ones, the ones which I consistently try hard throughout them to believe that there is no such thing as bad luck, and the universe can’t have so much interest in me as to make any particular day suck that much. That realistically, just because A went wrong, B and C have no reason to go wrong too (although, invariably, they seem to?)

It’s not even like anything huge or major went wrong, but just endless minor irritations, including trying UPS’s ‘drop off at corner shop’ delivery thingie for shipping ebay items – and suddenly I realised that actually I’m not at all convinced that selling things via ebay is worth the hassle. At least, for the kinds of crappy old tech that I have. It took so long to list it and package up the stuff to ship, and answer the ‘would you please send this to kurdistan if I send you $1500 and you send me back the change’ e-mails, that actually I realised that I’d rather just do an agency shift. That said, despite my bitter griping, it’s about 60 quid made – and the things have gone to a home where they’ll get used. I assume.

Anyhow, the UPS thing? So they appear to have allowed anyone to be a UPS drop off point, which is handy in that there are several around Bristol, but less handy in that many of them seem to have no parking near them, and the shop I took it to instantly went ‘No, we can’t take that, it’s too big’ and then had no suggestion for where I should take it. Then, after I basically said ‘well, I’ll have to ring UPS and ask where to take it, since you can’t suggest anywhere’ decided that maybe they could take it. Then I found out that their storage location for UPS packages is… in the corner of the shop. So that feels secure and safe. Luckily it’s all insured. *sigh*

So yes, there was that, then there was the dismal grey rain which kept popping up…

…then there was me killing the XBMC install which would be only a mild irritant because I thought “I’ve a known good installation backed up on my harddisk” which I have copied across to my new install. However, having written it to the card, first boot it popped up and went ‘oh, I’m way out of date’ and then proceeded to update itself. Which would be fine. Except that…err, it wasn’t fine. It died half way through the update. I think that the slightly stroppy relationship it has with the USB audio card I’ve been trying to persuade into working, well, it may have upset it. I’m not sure. At any rate, it didn’t work.

So then, of course, I thought I’d reinstall it properly. Which means that I am suddenly without the video licence key. Which is in my e-mail. Which I’ve not imported yet. Because I’ve been waiting, optimistically for the Unibox beta. But it’s a limited beta and I suppose I should suck it up and install have some kind of mail application doing something.

So, I fish out the hard disk and copy across the mail thing and start it importing mail. But given that it’s every mail I’ve kept since 2001 that’s going to take a while (and you have no idea how frigging difficult it’s been to keep that mail across multiple mail clients).

So anyhow, I think ‘well, I’ll carry on’ and I manage to install it – but now the LCD display isn’t working, and frankly, for everyone raving about this USB sound card it does sound good… apart from the pauses whilst the Pi thinks about things. Like, y’know, every time I press a button on the remote. AND I can’t seem to set it up to do both HDMI audio out *and* USB audio out, which was the entire fracking point of getting it. It and the nice box to put them both in.

I also promised to help someone at work sort out an excel spreadsheet so it would produce a summary telling them who was due for mandatory training updates. Why I want to inflict this pain on myself I’m not sure, because almost certainly I’ll end up needing to do something exciting. Of course, I realised when I got home that I no longer have Excel installed, because it’s a shiny new OS. Also I couldn’t find the disk. I could find the dodgy copy of dubious origins that I had before I started down the straight and narrow path of actually owning all my software like a real adult. But I had no desire to install that on my freshly minted clean and shiny install.

And so that had to wait…and I killed time…and then asked Kathryn…and then suddenly it came back to me. It was in with the stack of CDs of waiting for ripping. Which I just had to find. Although whilst I was looking for that I came across my copy of Creative Suite 5.5, which was pleasing, because I’d been intending to hurt my poor laptop install it on here.

I have therefore spent the past few hours doing a festival of installation. Which, to be fair, I was intending to do after the install of the OS but having been sucked into the disaster that was the not-properly-seated memory (istr this happened last time I touched the memory on this laptop – it is now maxed out though, no more memory upgrades for her) I never actually finished. I mean, I installed a million applications – but they were all the nice, small apps that I like using. Not the big demonic lumps of lard that come on shiny silver disks (or used to). I am also rewriting xbmc version 12 to the SD card in hopes that this time the update will work. Because I like my little LCD, even if it is totally pointless.