For those people old enough to remember the halcyon days of mobile gaming, Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, et al before the developers got all greedy with In-App purchases and adverts every 30 seconds, will surely remember Plants v Zombies.
For those that do remember PvZ then you will surely remember the opening audio to each level “The zombies…are coming”. Well, ummm, I kinda changed it to be “The Chillis … are coming”
Some Scotch Bonnet and some finger chilli – not sure which is which yet
Earlier I pondered if the seeds in the Chilli’s from Aldi would germinate. Turns out they did.
Being the early rising dutiful husband that I am I often greet Emma with a cup of tea in the morning. On normal days I’ll have a quick look at what time she set the alarm for and I’ll make tea and take it upstairs just in time to switch off her alarm and then we settle in with tea to do the Guardian crossword.
This is fine except for weekends. She doesn’t set an alarm on weekends. So I’d always in the past try and pick a reasonable time and wander up. This seldom worked out. She’d either be fast asleep or she’d come downstairs before I made tea. This situation could not persist.
A long long time ago Amazon released these really quite cool things called “Amazon Dash Buttons” where you would hook them up to your WiFi and when you press the Dash Button it would contact the Amazon Mothership and order you another whatever, box of teabags, toilet roll, dishwasher tablets – whatever it was set up for.
So I bought one on eBay.
A lot of the info on the web talked about them having a soldered in flat battery which was going to be a pain. After taking my Dremel to the button I discovered that the version I had was filled with a AAA battery. So I replaced the battery and got to configuring my firewall so that the MAC address of the Dash Button couldn’t get outside my network since it seems Amazon are being a bunch of dicks about this sort of thing and remotely bricking any devices that contact the server.
After much hacking involving playing some audio into the Dash Button, performing a factory reset, and then using a Python script to configure the button for my IOT network I had the beginnings of a solution. I have a Raspberry Pi that was already doing a few things and now it also sits and listens for an ARP packet from the MAC address of the Dash Button. When it receives the ARP it will then call a Telegram script that I wrote which will message my phone with a “Bring Tea” message.
So far so good – but there’s no ACK. I could go to the bottom of the stairs and shout up “OK, tea incoming” but that would just wake everyone else up. So I released the hounds…well hound.
Violet, our pet Whippet loves getting in bed with us when we’re doing the crossword. So the sequence of events is now:
Emma wakes up.
Presses the tea button.
I open the door for Violet and she runs upstairs and gets in bed with Emma
I make tea and take it upstairs.
We complete the crossword and the nine-letter anagram.
Not long after it started getting these minging scuffs on the front of it making the whole garage door look a bit rubbish. I couldn’t work out what was causing the problem so every now and then I’d give it a lick of spray paint and it would nice again, for a while.
Recently one of the locking straps snapped so I took it all apart and discovered that some of the plastic circle things that hold the locking straps in place had snapped too. So I ordered a bunch of bits from eBay and set to work. Whilst I was doing all this I noticed that there were scuff marks on the inside of the steel housing that corresponded with the scuff marks on the door. That was it! That was what was cacking up my doors. Upon closer inspection it seemed the top part of the steel housing was bowing down a bit – no idea why but I put a small hole in it with a metal drill, stuck a 100mm torx screw through the hole and screwed it into a roof support above. Screwing the screw in raised the housing top higher and no more scuffing occurred. A jet wash and a bit of spray paint later and we have this
Every now and then my Mum and I will have a few drinks in the rather fabulous Goats Gate and then get a Chinese takeaway. I took a picture to send to Uncle Chris who was busy holidaying at the time. It turned out to be such a lovely picture I had to publish it.
I like cooking. I like cooking with chillies. I like growing stuff. So I’m growing some chillies from some seeds that were inside the chillies that I bought from Aldi. I’m unsure whether they will produce any plants since there was always a rumour that vegetable producers irradiated their produce to keep it fresher and stop people growing the seeds.
As part of the work I do for the local Parish Council I put lots of effort into keeping some woodlands that we own in good condition. One of the things that’s been bothering me for a while is a bunch of plastic tree protectors on trees that the council planted before we bought the land off them.
So I rallied the troops from my Facebook group and off we set one Saturday morning and took down about 400 tree protectors. A week or so later Oli, Amelia, Violet, Jace and I went down to do a little tidying of the tubes. Jace had to shoot off so he didn’t quite make it into the photo.
A month later and the tubes are still on the floor of the woods as recycling them is proving to be a bit tricky – but I have a new lead.
Many years ago we bought a shoe rack basket type thing. Over time it fell apart and I did a patch up job on it with a few screws. It didn’t work very well and started falling apart again. The final straw came when Amelia fell onto it and the whole thing just crumbled and and fell apart. Emma wanted to put it in the bin. I wanted to do a proper fix up job on it.
Bits missing, wood snapped – this will not do
Starting to put it back together. Glued and dowelled. No screws whatsoever…well, except to hold the wicker seats on.
Almost back together. Undercoat being applied.
The finished piece. You can sit on it and everything.
The moles that I mentioned in a previous post made a proper mess of my garden. Like a proper turn-your-ankle-on-the-unevenness mess. I considered hiring a roller from Hodgsons to try and fix it but they only had the ones that you have to pull by hand.
Screw that
So I bought one.
It’s about a metre wide and weighs about 80kg when full of water and fastens perfectly onto the back of Old Faithful.
It’s made a difference – not to the extent that the garden can be used as a putting green but it’s definitely better. However, we’ve not had a really good downpour since I bought it [ you’re all welcome ] so I reckon next time it properly lashes it down and ground is properly soaked I’ll be out there driving around the garden with an umbrella.
It’s that time of year again when life focuses on preparing the garden and the associated outdoor furniture for the coming Summer.
Just look at the difference!
There are few things in life more satisfying than attacking an algae covered piece of furniture with Karcher’s finest jet washer.
Then came time to jet wash the patio. It’s quite a big patio and it was pretty badly covered in algae so it took a while. The other problem is that the jet washer is so powerful it started ripping up all the grouting so I’m going to have to do something about that 🙁
I don’t think I’ll jet wash the patio again though – I’ll use my funky Ryobi battery powered knapsack sprayer which is an absolutely beautiful piece of kit. If you’ve ever had to use a knapsack sprayer with the pumpy handle thing then you’ll know what a pain it is. Battery powered knapsack sprayers are the future kids. Hmmmm, went off on a bit of a tangent there – anyway – into my knapsack sprayer I’ll put some “wet and forget” and spray the patio every 3 months which should keep the algae at bay. We’ll see.
Ever since we kept chickens I’ve been on the hunt for the elusive perfect poached egg. The freshness is definitely important but I also read something recently that made me wonder. We all assume that an egg is made up of a yolk and the white. However, it seems not all white is white. Some of it is very runny and that’s the bit that makes your poached eggs all messy. So some chef suggested putting the egg into a strainer first, to get rid of the runny bit.
So I did
I’m pretty impressed with the one on the left.
Oh and keto bread….it’s a definite meh from me but if you absolutely have to have something on toast and you’re “low-carbing” then it’ll do.
Emma and I nipped into town to see Charlie and Ellie. Food was consumed and then it got messy. As is usual with Emma and I once we have a few drinks all caution is thrown to the wind and we just went mental. Fun day out though
Aside from making completely new fence panels it also seems I’m quite the dab hand at taking old knackered fence panels and bringing them back to life
I had to use my planer to take 20+ years worth of weathering off the fence panel. Then replace one of the back support thingys with some new 2×1 and finally give the whole thing a coating of fence paint – all of which was accomplished with the help of a fine bottle of Burgundy that can be seen in the background. Better thing…Burgundy…Workshop…Agog to Learn
At some point last year me and Uncle Chris were messing about with my tractor adjusting the steering and we spotted that the drive belt had lots of cracks in it and was pretty badly perished in places. It was still working but a worst case scenario is that it would snap whilst mowing the front garden and then I’d have to push it miles to get it back to my workshop…and this tractor is pretty bloody heavy.
So we took it apart
I did a bit of research to find out which belt size I needed and popped down to a local belts and bearings workshop type place and bought one for £20 rather than the £45 that most mower sites were after. Then Winter arrived and it got cold. I hunkered down for the Winter hibernating in a nice warm house rather than rolling around on the frozen concrete floor of my workshop.
Winter came to an end and the weather suddenly picked up in February and it was positively Spring like. I gave Uncle Chris a call, he happened to be free so he came over and we set to it.
I’ve never had my tractor in quite so many pieces so it was a relief to have Chris with me. The drive belt is quite a bugger to replace as you have to take so many bits and pieces off the chassis and engine to release it. Release it we did however, eventually.
Putting the new one on was a piece of cake and we just went backwards through everything we had previously done and it was back together in no time. Fired up the engine and tried to drive it….nothing. I then realised I’d disengaged the clutch when we were moving it around the workshop. Re-engaged the clutch and it started moving, but very, very slowly.
That belt should not be hanging beneath the pulley like that
After a bit of looking and a bit of thinking we decided we’d gone the wrong way around a pulley. Moved the belt across to the other side, tensioned it up again and all was marvelous. The tractor was flying along – I’d be mowing again in no time. Uncle Chris had to leave at this point and I was pretty tired so we knocked off for the day and I’d finish putting it back together again a few days later.
A few days later came and Oli and I went down to the workshop to finish off putting it together. It was only a few minutes before we realised the path the belt was taking was wrong. It would rub against the grass chute when the cutting deck was lifted which would damage both the grass chute and the belt. So I put the belt back to its original position and tried to make it as tense as possible but nothing I did was working.
I eventually concluded that I had the wrong belt. I double checked the writing on the new belt and it was exactly what I asked for. I disassembled the tractor again to get the belt off [ much quicker second time around ] and compared the new belt to the old one. Exactly the same size! I was perplexed at this point. I consulted online mower forums and made a post about my predicament. I’d done everything right. So I just got more and more confused.
Eventually I went back to the belts and bearings supplier and had a long chat with the fellow there. He was a bit bemused too but suggested I try a belt that is 1 inch smaller. He happened to have one in stock so off I popped with it and fitted it pretty quickly since I was now *very* familiar with the process. It was like night and day! The tension was perfect, the routing avoided the grass chute. It was a thing of beauty.
I called the chap at the belt shop and ordered a Kevlar wrapped belt of the same size and then went along and paid for the two belts. The belt that he loaned me is still on the tractor and the Kevlar belt is waiting until I next tear down the tractor and then I’ll do a replacement.
I’m still struggling to understand why everything on the internet [ possible echo chamber going on ] is telling me one size, and in reality I had to buy one an inch shorter. Ho hum. It’s fixed now and I’m happy again.
We’ve always been somewhat plagued with moles. They overran the front garden for quite a long time but I think I got them all. Quite recently the back garden has been absolutely wrecked by them. I think it’s because houses are being built all around us and they’re all being disturbed and driven to my garden. I was getting quite depressed about – they really were popping up everywhere and I was having no luck catching them.
I bought some new mole traps and watched a couple of YouTube videos and one was quite a different approach from what I’d previously tried. So I thought I’d give it a go
First time!
On my very first try of the new technique I bagged one.
I then cleared all the molehills aand waited with baited breath to see if anymore appeared. They did. Traps went down again and I bagged two more. No more mole hills have appeared since so I think I’m mole free – for now.
In case you’re wondering about the new technique…simply clear the mole hill, find out where the hole comes to the surface and determine the direction of the run, peel the turf back and get your duffus trap in there. Check back 12 hrs later.
Every few years JC and I have a game of chess. We must have done it using computers or something last time because we didn’t have quite so much confusion at the start of a game in the past, but now that we’re using chat and doing proper chess notation like Qe2 and all that we’re making a right pigs ear of it.
Several phone calls have taken place along the lines of “oi, the bloody queen can’t do that – it’s not a horse you know” and such.
Anyway, we’re off and running – Jason usually beats me – so we’ll see.
About eighteen years ago my little girl appeared in the world. A little bundle of joy that we drove back from the hospital at about ten miles an hour and then the reality of what we’d done set in.
Much fun over the years – many trials and tribulations and so much happening that there’s even a dedicated blog for her, and her brother.
But now, somehow, unbelievably, she’ll be turning 18.
Quite a long time ago I left Facebook. Totally had enough of seeing people complain about pretty much anything. Then my office chair broke after 20 years of faithful service. I decided I wanted to get myself a Herman Miller Aeron chair like I always used to sit on at Sky. This proved pretty tricky since there were very few on eBay and they were all quite expensive. Emma kept showing me Aeron chairs on Facebook Marketplace and so eventually I gave in and set up another Facebook account. Everyone I messaged seemed to “ignore” me until I realised the messages weren’t being sent because I had no FB friends. So then I had to start adding friends again and getting sucked back in. But, eventually, I bought my Herman Miller Aeron chair and all was well [ ish , turns out it isn’t as comfortable as I remember] with the world.
“Alright Darren, that’s all fascinating but what about the Bang bang chicken” I hear you all cry. Well, in the process of accruing friends on Facebook I must have started following some recipe writing people. They posted a link to Bang bang chicken and I thought “Oi, oi, let’s give this a go”. Desiccated coconut, chicken, flour, Sriracha, sweet chilli sauce and spicy mayo – and voila
I enjoy cooking up a bit of chicken in some home made sauce and then serving it with a ramekin of rice and maybe some soy cooked green beans with a sesame seed finish. I’ve recently started experimenting with coating the chicken in self raising flour before pan frying it and adding it into the sauce. Turns out, as far as the kids are concerned, that this is a proper winner winner chicken dinner. They declared it to be the best one yet – and who am I to argue with that?
It was with a heavy heart that I had to contact my friends in London and tell them I wouldn’t be able to make it down for a visit. An even heavier heart [ if that were possible ] became apparent when I had to tell my Cambridge friends that I wouldn’t be able to attend the Aussie Pink Floyd gig at the Royal Albert Hall [ The ROYAL ALBERT HALL god damnit ] and all because BIM decided to have the graduation ceremony on the same random Tuesday in November.
Nothing. Ever. Happens. On. Tuesdays. Ever!
Anyway – it was all worth it to watch my beloved nephew spend about ten seconds walking across a stage to collect a graduation tie pin. Seriously. A tie pin.
After the graduation we went for some wonderful Tapas down a back street of Manchester near some bins and then drank the night away at Afflecks and Brown. The next day Emma and I had a mooch around Manchester. I bought my traditional sausage selection from the Xmas market along with a bag of Macaroons and it was with much shame that I bought two pairs of gloves from Primark for £3. Seriously – how can they make two pairs of gloves for £3.
I was once of the opinion that you simply couldn’t get a better bowl of soup than some home made French Onion soup cooked slowly for several hours to really bring out the sugars and flavours in the onion.
Turns out I was wrong.
With the addition of a humble Greggs sausage roll it just takes it to the next level of culinary sophistication.
