Ramblings

I know I'm going to regret this!

Fri, 16 May 2008 16:56:32 GMT

Just tried the Superhero team quiz.

If you thought lucas_t_bear was an unlikely superhero I have some terrible news!

Superhero Team Quiz

LiveJournal Username

Your Primary Super Power

Cape?

Identitiy

Origin

Location of Head Quarters

Primary Costume/Uniform Colors

Why are you a Superhero?

Your Superheroic Codename

The veteran grim member of the team

lucas_t_bear

The sexist and crass but annoyingly effective one

l_zinkiewicz

The bright-eyed novice or sidekick

lucas_t_bear

The teammate that will eventually go evil or insan

flickgc

The inept yet determined/reoccurring supervillain

twinfair

The sinister Arch-Villain and team's greatest foe

lucas_t_bear

The perky civilian that keeps getting kidnapped

catlily

How often does your team actually 'save the day'?

24%

This Fun Quiz created by Shannon at BlogQuiz.Net

Weight Loss Tips and Diet Advice from WeightLossTips.TV

Discworld Meme

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:51:18 GMT

Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as The Librarian

Youâ€™re the Librarian! Once a wizard, now an Orang-utan (due to an unfortunate magical accident), you refuse to be turned back for a few reasons: In this form, itâ€™s easier to reach the shelves and hold more books; having the strength of five men makes people return their books on time; lifeâ€™s great philosophical questions boil down to â€œwhen do I get my next banana?â€¿ You say â€œookâ€¿ but are usually understood well enough.

The Librarian

81%

Carrot Ironfounderson

75%

Rincewind

63%

Gytha (Nanny) Ogg

63%

Lord Havelock Vetinari

56%

Commander Samuel Vimes

50%

Cohen The Barbarian

44%

Greebo

38%

Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax

31%

Death

25%

Discworld meme

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:45:30 GMT

Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as The Librarian

The Librarian

69%

Lord Havelock Vetinari

63%

Carrot Ironfounderson

56%

Gytha (Nanny) Ogg

56%

Rincewind

50%

Commander Samuel Vimes

50%

Death

44%

Cohen The Barbarian

44%

Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax

44%

Greebo

38%

Mystery carvings

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 18:23:02 GMT

A while ago frandowdsofa posted a link to a story about mysterious stone carvings appearing, Onthe BBC news site
appears to explain the mystery, while suggesting that there remain many more to be found as there are supposed to be more than fifty in total.

The related link at One to One Productions is interesting for those who wish to follow the story further.

So, my commiserations to frandowdsofa if one hasn't turned up by now I doubt it's going to happen.

Unfortunately the one to be found on aspodeline's page isn't one of them!

The mysteries of ecomarketing

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:07:33 GMT

I know I don't update much - well asphodeline tends to put anything interesting up first!

Ok, some background . We've restarted insulating the loft before the weather turns cold and we start wasting energy heating the loft and sky above on cold nights. So I've been comparing prices etc on insulation (since we're cleaning out the remnants of the decaying original we're effectively starting from scratch - aside from the area we did, and floored over to provide storage space, when we first moved in.

So 100mm of new insulation between the joists then, if and when, we have the funds another 160mm plus over the top of that. So, in September I went looking to see what I could find

Single width (370/380mm) roll plastic wrapped space blanket 200mm thick by 4metres long £16
114cm - triple width combiroll 100mm thick by 12 metres long- £38 so triple roll it was.

Saturday we went DIY shopping for a couple of other items and stumbled across an insulation two for one sale.
Options
170mm thick 114 cm wide 7 m long combi roll £28.98
200mm thick 37cm wide 4m long plastic wrapped space blanket £13.98
200mm thick 37cm wide 4 m long Ecowool insulation £14.98

Approximate area covered
Combiroll 8m2
Space roll 1.5m2
Ecowool 1.5m2

Cost per square metre
Combiroll £ 3.62
Space roll £ 9.45
Ecowool £10.12

Allowing for the special offer
Cost per square metre
Combiroll £ 1.81
Space roll £ 4.72
Ecowool £ 5.06

Given that they make a point about the Ecowool being 85% recycled plastic and using 23kilowatt hours less energy to make per roll (actually it's 'enough energy saved to run a 60 watt light bulb for 16 days') it seems a bit much to charge a premium - particularly as, if you read the small print, the space blanket roll infill is made using 85% recycled glass. I didn't examine the combi roll as closely but as all three products come from the same manufacturer I'd say it's a reasonable assumption that that contains a similar proportion of recycled glass as well.

I'm afraid that when public (and possibly spurious) ecological ethics meets pure costs - Well we've bought sufficient of the combiroll to cover the whole loft in at least 10” for under 40% of the other alternatives.

Now we've just got to finish laying it!

Cat kills mouse

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 11:24:49 GMT

Ok not exactly earth shattering.But the kittens have been getting far more adventurous.

I was at my desk when the male kitten (Basil) jumped in front of me with a mouse hanging by it's tail, he then proceeded to play with said mouse until I rescued it - unfortunately by this time life was extinct.

Anything odd about this? Only that the mouse in question was a wheel mouse!

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:03:34 GMT

Let's try this

Well that works, funny it gives an error message in preview mode!

I have to say that it's asphodeline's fault! Pretty though.

Energy efficiency and diminishing returns

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 10:03:18 GMT

Ok, I've been a real geek here, I set up a simple spreadsheet to calculate the energy usage and savings of switching to efficient lighting types. As I said before the previous owners were profligate with electricity. I made certain assumptions based upon our room usage pattern to produce a baseline energy demand. Call it a before and after snapshot of lighting costs (for details of the original lighting scheme see lj post early Feb) With the exception of the bathroom's subtropical lighting scheme we have replaced all lights with compact or strip fluorescent units (under kitchen cabinet lighting) this has reduced our peak (i.e. All lights on) load from 1,900 watts to 690 watts. Given our usage pattern the vast bulk of the savings come from the kitchen and lounge which had both high power lighting and long(ish) lit times This saves around three kwh per day. Replacing the bathroom lights is not a high priority from the energy pov as stripping out the existing setup and replacing with (say) a single fluorescent fitting would save maybe £0.02 per day. Oh we'll get around to it fairly soon but not for purely conservation reasons.

We've made a start on insulating the loft, but this has been more of a side effect of preparing a safe, floored area to store boxes of things we don't need immediately but want to keep. We will expand this area to make a base from which we can properly insulate the loft (and, in the fullness of time, tidy up the bathroom lighting!).

Communications

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 21:01:27 GMT

While we haven't found the modem cables yet - and switching our broadband could take a couple of weeks we thought we had a telephone.

We were wrong, about 3 pm yesterday we discovered a mysterious, rusty, cable connector block spliced into the telephone cable on the outside wall. On re-entering the house we found the phone line was now dead. After battling with BT's automated 'customer service' system we got a promise of a service engineer for Friday. But he arrived this morning, Yes! He was willing to shorten the line and emplace a new master socket where it was far more convenient for us.

Sometimes things work out for the best.

Welcome to the energy inefficient house.

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:58:59 GMT

Well we got the keys on Friday and spent the weekend cleaning and painting the ceilings white (originally a dense mid blue which took at least two coats of brilliant white to hide). I spent an educational day exploring the wiring and lighting setup (the former owner was a professional electrician - Glad he never did any work for me!) Here's a brief tour.

In through the front door into a small hallway (about 1.5m by 2m) lit by a 100 watt bulb, turn left into the lounge which is a large room (5.5m by 3m) lit by two ceiling lights each containing a single 200 watt bulb and two lamp standards - which they had left - each with a 60 watt bulbs. The kitchen is a fairly large room (3.5m by 4m) lit by the only energy efficient lght in the house and a 150 watt spotlight and two under cabinet lights illuminating the worktops (each has 60 watt bulb, the cabinet is shielded by what looks like an aluminium pie dish!). Climb the stairs to the landing which is under a metre wide and three long lit by two 100 watt bulbs. Enter the master bedroom this is lit by two 150 watt bulbs controlled by a dimmer switch. But the real shock is the bathroom - you really need shades for this; the room is less than 2 metres square and has six, repeat six fifty watt halogen spots embedded in the ceiling.

That wasn't the end of it, when we stuck our heads into the attic we discovered that the halogen bulbs were exposed with one apparently wearing it's own nest of straw! Oh and the insulation in the attic space - somewhere between 2 and 4 cm (say ½ to 1 ½ inches!)

Now for the good news, it is double glazed - mostly - for some reason known only to God the back bedroom is single glazed. The gas central heating radiators have thermostatic valves.

Things to do
1, Replace the light bulbs with energy efficient ones (replacing the dimmer switches as needed. Already done in the hall and landing; Bedroom and Lounge next on the list, also the cabinet work lights (there were new low wattage mini fluorescent lights in the garden shed will be fitting those soon!)
2, Remodel the bathroom lights to something less tropical.
3, Slightly further out, clear out and properly insulate the attic, and arrange reasonable loft storage.

Moving

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 20:55:55 GMT

Life is terribly hectic at the moment. We're part way into moving into our new house - and discovering various pluses and minuses more in a seperate post.

As we're half way between homes we don't have all our bits in one place And of course the modem cables to gain a dial up connection are currently missing and this post is courtesy of an unknown neighbour's generously wide open wireless network ~(there are actually five such wireless hotspots within range only two of which have any kind of security).

You don't realise quite how much 'stuff' you collect until you have to move it!

Moving

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 14:13:19 GMT

Ok we're now moving house! fortunately it doesn't require a one day massive heave - which is good because there are several things which need doing before/ as we settle in. The sellor was a professional electrician of the sort who add things to his own home that he wouldn't (or oughtn't) countenance in any other circumstance!

Also both gas and electric are on prepayment meters with next to nothing on either, and we can't use the top up cards are they are registered to him! New cards are - hopefully- in the post We can't get the meters changed for at least a fortnight and even then it's do one then do the other otherwise the supplier charges a £75 fee to convert!

The upside is that I can retain my existing phone number and the transfer will take place in about an hour, the downside is that the Broadband is a seperate munit and I can't ask them to transfer until after the phone has been changed over, then it could be p to ten days of Dialup until we get broadband back.

Service will be erratic for a while.

Take care

spring and gardens

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:35:31 GMT

There's no way I could be described as a gardener. But I came across this
http://publicspace.ca/gardeners.htm and it sounds a better plan than yet more municipal concrete It's also one of Terry Pratchett's 'Anticrimes' alongside breaking and decorating (as practised by the tv makeover shows).

Go forth

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 18:42:56 GMT

It's been windy few days, but from the news, we've come out of this with minimal damage, One gust blew a section of roof off one of the dutch barns (complete with timber beams) but it missed our power cables. a couple of decent timbers and four large roofing sheets and a day or so and we should be as good as new - well nearly!

Life and people

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:36:24 GMT

There are all sorts of people, obvious I know, but there is a point.

For many years now I have had an arrangement with a local department store to retouch/repair where economic furniture about which they had a complaint (sometimes the manufacturer would replace the item). In recent times the amount of minor faults seems to have been increasing and several of the well known mid range firms (i.e. not MFI!) have been taken over/amalgamated, moved production offshore or switched to design only with the actual construction being farmed out to Thailand or, increasingly, China.

It reached the point where I was being asked to check over pieces direct from the manufacturing firms before sending them out to mthe customer and so, regretably, the store has decided to withdraw from selling furniture and the floor space turned over to women's fashion.

They are having a final furniture clearance sale and I've ended up doing a couple of retouch jobs on the sale items. Tomorrow I have to 'sort out' a dining table - the problem? one of the legs has a rough spot and 'the lady fears for her tights!'

Without seeing it I can't be sure, but I've handled furniture of the same design and it's probably something curable with a few light passes with a decent wax and a soft cloth, and for this I am to do a round trip of twenty to thirty miles!

Ah well I'll find out tomorrow.

Communications

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 18:31:53 GMT

The farm was outside of ADSL range of the local exchange until fairly recently, but until the fun with the house felt no need to try and get a connection set up. However when it seemed that we'd be staying at the farm longer than originally planned asphodeline transferred her Broadband account to the farm line (and will transfer it again to the new home - wherever we end up!)

We've now got a broadband connection set up here with a (secured) wireless network hub linking the laptops to the net and a wired network link to my old (5 years) tower system which handles the printers and additional data archiving functions.

This is new enough to us that several things strike me which a lot now take for granted like using the net as another extension to a local computer's data resources. Particularly since the always on nature of the connection means that you open up Firefox (or other browser) and submit your search term and get an answer back almost before you;ve finished framing the question. the speed of any download, I downloaded Open Office ~(approx 80Mb) in little over an hour.

And yet people don't stay satisfied for long, a near neigbour was bemoaning the paltry state of local broadband compared to the 8Mb or better available in the local city areas. and broadband of any description only reached us less than two years ago!

I means come on the ADSL link may be a 'paltry' 582Kbps downstream but it's better than ten times the best that dial up could offer. I know we live in an information age but bemoaning ADSL while living in the countryside when the solution (move next door to the exchange)exists is definitely a case of wanting his cake and eating it!

The infamous Dolls house

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 19:20:12 GMT

As I've mentioned previously I was asked to make a dolls house for A feature in the Daily Mail.

The article is available online on the Daily Mail website
Article here

Unfortunately a picture of the dolls house didn't make it into the piece and if you blink you'll miss any reference to me!

A happy Christmas to all!

Of Dolls houses,

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 20:07:20 GMT

Ok I mentioned that I'd been asked to make a dolls house for a newspaper feature. Well Igot an email from the feature's writer. The feature should be in this weekend's paper however due to assorted factors it doesn't actually appear!
What was said was
"... you get a mention,but sadly you can't see the house on the picture. It's very disappointing, but the layout was completely out of my hands."

And after all the rush to get it finished on time too

Oops, almost forgot, it's for the Daily Mail and hopefully will be in this weekend!

So for those who wanted to see part of what I've been up too I can only say "Not this time." I've got some pictures but they're not currently up anywhere. This is definitely another reason to do something with my website!

Of life and dolls houses

Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:24:19 GMT

Life is middling hectic at the moment, and so now is a great time to add a new challenge!

I've been asked to build a dolls house for a photo shoot.

A national paper wanted to see whether it was possible to still have a 'British' Christmas. My place in this ia because I was the only person who - when asked- didn't turn them down flat when asked if it was possible to make a traditional dolls house.

This isn't to be just a mock up but a true child friendly (i.e. bombproof!) toy which means I've designed it to 1/12th scale (the most common scale , and the scale where additional homemade furniture isn't too finicky to make)and - if they could balance on the pitched roof- capable of surviving one of the little darlings standing on it. And there's another reason, for doing it right, the dolls house is going to wind up as some girl's christmas present.

So for my sins(!) I now have to finish the construction, paint, and do some (minor) decoration all in time for the shoot on Saturday. As a consequence I finished tonight shortly after eight and I'm only just coming round. and now it's time for bed

Dell, and the wonders of online security

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 20:47:46 GMT

I'm almost more frustrated than angry. I've bought from Dell in the past (three years ago) and when I started looking for a replacement system I decided to visit their site.

I went through the select and configure cycle and when it got to the end I put in my email address which their system recognised and directed me to a log in page - only one snag - I had never registered, so I didn't have a password! never mind try the 'if you've forgotten your password we will email it to you' option.

Nothing appeared, not to my very great surprise, like I said I don't remember registering in the first place!

OK their system makes provision for this and so I registered and selected my password which required a couple of false starts as the first wasn't acceptable as it didn't include both letters and numbers (or a choice of a limited number of symbols) and the second time the confirm password didn't match. Third time lucky (and I had a hard copy of my new cryptic password in front of me) so I was set.

Wrong! oh boy how wrong! After all this I decided to log out and come back later. At first it seemed fine the site recognised me and I attempted to sign in and got 'An error occurred during log in please try again' then I got 'The E-mail address and password combination you entered does not match any accounts on record. Please try again.'

I tried the 'Forgot Password' option which in theory emails the password to my registered email address - but it didn't! The password hint worked and it corresponded with what I'd written earlier, not that that was any help really - I still had the hardcopy in front of me.

Anyway throwing caution to the winds I entered the password again, and got in! I made a small purchase and signed out. Now several days later I returned to check on a couple of items I flagged on my previous visit and, mindful of my previous experience referred to the hardcopy of the password - again I got the same error messages so I attempted to access their customer services - for which I had to log in! At this point I received the message that my account had been locked as an incorrect password had been used too many times!

Well at least they finally told me! but it would have saved a lot of hassle if the 'account locked' warning had occurred earlier, or that their email password system actually worked! Ah well, back to the telephone tomorrow!

Communications

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:49:00 GMT

I know I seldom post anything, not that there's nothing to post, but what shall I say that's vaguely interesting!

In this case it's communications that we take for granted. Last week we lost all landline links with the rest of the world. While we were actually cut off for only a couple of days (and BT were saying it could be almost a week!) it was a frustrating experience. We now take near instant contact with anyone so much for granted that we are mildly irritated when we reach an answerphone rather than a live person. From recent experience having the links to friends and 'net suddenly removed is far more frustrating, and mobile links are only a partial palliative.

How quickly things change, ten years ago the web of instant contact was barely starting and though I'd been online since '92 I could go days without checking email, now that feels like deprivation!

The reason for the blackout? No it wasn't a tree through the line,At 6:23 in the morning someone stole a 160 metre length of 800 pair trunk cable for the copper! They used a circular saw and a JCB to retrieve the cable then sliced it into man portable chunks to stow on their getaway vehicle and were clear of the scene inside of ten to fifteen minutes.

It's amazing what you can learn when you talk to the service engineer who called to check that the line was functioning correctly

Telemarketers

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:39:44 GMT

First, yes I know I haven't updated this journal in a long time!

Anyway I've just received a call from (I presume) a telesales firm; somehow I don't think the conversation went the way he was expecting.

"Am I speaking to the owner?"
"That depends, the owner of what?"
"Oh God!" click followed by dialtone.

The other side of this is that the number is registered with the telephone preference service so we shouldn't have received the call anyway.

Can anyone explain this?

Wed, 17 May 2006 21:51:43 GMT

Today I spent some time on the Amazon site (I know,dangerous - I seldom come away without spending something). Today I found three books, which brought it over the free postage option. Now each item was flagged as available within 24 hours and had the new 'Want this be Friday the 19th? check out our new special delivery option.'

So you'd think that three items all quoted as being available now would have an expected delivery date within the next week to ten days.

Wrong.
The expected delivery date is the 4th to 6th of NOVEMBER!

What's going on, is this a method of discouraging use of the Free postage option, are they stretching the truth as to the availability of the books (is one not yet published?)or are they bringing truth in advertising and really using snails to make the deliveries?

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 15:48:13 GMT

Don't you think Bush looks tired?

(If you get this, pass it on.) Lifted from watervole

Weather

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 13:31:03 GMT

Just been listening to the BBC weather forcast, it's supposed to continue thawing for the next day or so, fairly decent day time temperature but there's a slight risk of frost over East Anglia and East coast generally and so there's a risk of a 'crunchy start' which I thought was a really nice description.

Here it's thawing with just enough damp in the air to make it feel far colder than yesterday.