Travelled to Birmingham a couple of times this week. Monday and Tuesday I was installing some new software at the offices of One Stop. They are a small supermarket chain.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The cold weather
Will this cold weather ever stop? We have had -7C on our thermometer. The ponds are frozen, and the temperature has failed to rise above zero for days. Where has this global warming gone, or is it another con by our politicians and the green groups. If we are cold, then one assumes there must be a balanced hot area in the North. To me it does not seem right that all of Europe is cold, and that Canada is having a cold winter as well. Sea ice in the arctic was at a high this summer as well.
Typical of Putin to cut off the gas when it is cold. At least we have our wood burner, fed almost exclusively on hard wood. In this cold weather, how have the wind farms been doing. Oh not a lot, generating nothing. Cold weather comes with no wind. Seems to me a rather waste of money. Time the UK stepped up to the task and built more nuclear reactors. At least they work, look at France which generates 90% of their electricity with nuclear. It’s time something is done, even if it’s opening the closed coal mines and building more coal-fired powerstations before our lights start going out.
Talking about lights, we can not buy any more filament lights, at least the type you can see by. Another green con, and instead all the mercury from the new low energy lights will now go into landfill, polute the ground water and make us all brain dead. Maybe the EU and our Government want to us to be brain dead, so we just accept their dictacts without argument.
WordPress 2.7
Another painless upgrade to my blogging software. I am now running version 2.7. Not sure what new features there are, except for the administrators panel which has changed. I know some, not to be named, who don’t like change, but I do feel this is a move to the better.
Nokia E71
I bought myself a new toy. It’s a mobile phone, a Nokia E71. I have to admit I am really proud of it, and can’t let an hour go by without carressing its tiny keypad, and looking at the new messages that have arrived. [In other words, he’s become a technobore]
It has a GPS, and with google maps I can walk around the garden using the mobile to navigate with. [I can walk around the garden using my eyes]
It connects to the wirless wan as well as the mobile network, and has skype support and ipphone support. So I can make cheap or even free phone calls on the mobile, and receive phone calls from my IPphone number. It’s a video phone as well. There is the normal camera and a small video camera on the keyboard side to video me when I am making a call.
Of course it it web enable, so I can browse the web and email on the move. The email is always running, so I get little sound notifications when a new email arrives.
Finally I have discovered a wealth of applications which run on the phone. I was really impressed when I found ptty which runs on it. For those who don’t know, ptty is a secure terminal emulator, and allows me to logon to unix boxes in character mode and run basic editors. Sad I know but a great tool.
I really just love the build quality of the Nokia E71, the solid cold feel of the metal case of the slender phone. It was love at first sight. [Humph]
Norwich
Rosemary and I went to Norwich for the weekend to see Ann and Mike. We visited Nick and Ali, and saw the great work they have been doing on their house. Much remodelling, removal of walls, moving staircases and a complete replaster of all the walls. Truely quite a change to the house and a really excellent change. Their children had changed too! Both much taller.
Sunday was spent on Mike’s PC sorting out the pictures and re-loading the electronic picture frame we gave them.
Bristol
Wednesday 8th, just back from Bristol after spending three days working for a Supermarket. Not really much to report about the place. Stayed in the hotel for the two evenings, internet access was bad as I was on the wrong side of the hotel. Also spent a fortune there on the hotel bill, really Bristol could do with a few more hotels to bring down the cost a little.
Subscribe to the Blasdale Blog
It was pointed out to me that the email subscribe function was not working. Indeed it was not, and cannot have worked for well over a year.
Should all be fixed now, so hoping to see lots of subscriptions to the mail list now.
Another day logging
Another Saturday morning with the chain saw cutting up logs, with Rosemary stacking them in the shed. Think the blade has gone blunt again, so gave up for lunch time. Next week will have to get the blade sharpened again.
Wood for next year’s fires!
Decided to cut down 4 willow trees. Despite all having been cut down before, they had now grown to a rather large size. Out with the chain saw, started first time and away we went cutting. Alas after several minutes not much impression. Blunt saw.
Sent Rosemary off to Longmoor’s to have it sharpened. She came back suitably chastened after being told that it had not been serviced, the oil was not lubricating the chain and the chain was too tight. Soon was cutting again, like the proverbial hot knife through butter.
Managed to cut down all the trees and started logging some of them.
Another wet and horrible day
Working from home to day, the weather is absolutely crap. The Blasdale field is flooded, the poor sheep are wearing (Wellington) boots today.