Alex's Adventures on the Infobahn - house

Project Veg Patch

2011-10-17T14:46:00+01:00

I noticed I haven't posted anything this month about what's going on in my life. Well as you can imagine the impending arrival of our first child has kind of glossed over everything else. I have not yet achieved a state of panic but it's very firmly in the radar now. Although I've been taking it easy on the drinking (so as to help Fliss avoid the temptation) I'm now going fully dry as I'm on potential hospital driving duties.

It was nice to catch up with a bunch of people at Adam and Lou's wedding last weekend. It more or less qualified as our last venture away from home for the foreseeable future. This weekend I spent a good deal of the time laying the excess turf from Project: Veg Patch over what used to pass for our front lawn. This of course means the main landscaping of the new "Vegetable" patch at the back of our property is now complete:

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I have to admit most of the work at the back was contracted out including a my brother and his partner who did most of the work levelling, laying and building what will hopefully be a productive growing area. Still we are both very pleased with the outcome and hopefully the grass will take and we can concentrate on planting what will provide us with fresh food for the future family!

Getting warmer

2011-04-04T14:06:00+01:00

We've been bumbling along with the central heating for the last few weeks. Every time the weather seemed to be taking a turn for the better it would invariably dive back into cold misty mornings. However it's starting to look like spring is finally arrived and starting to make it's presence felt. It certainly felt like it when I wandered around the garden on Saturday morning sipping my first cup of tea of the day. It was enough to convince me to hang the washing outside which gives you an insight to how radical my Saturdays have become.

It wasn't a very busy weekend which is just as well as the week at work was fairly harrowing. I did spend some time pottering in the garden doing my assigned tasks and finalising plans for the back garden. About the only other achievement of public note was preparing a full Lamb Sunday Roast for our neighbours.

Apologies for the rather banal quality of this post. I do have a number of things I want to write about including the up-coming AV referendum, some back of the envelope calculations with respect to student financing, and the irony of Microsoft referring Google to the EU competition authorities. However despite having a number of things I want to talk about/spark discussion I'm finding it hard to actually get around to writing about them so for now you'll have to contend with these snapshots of my domestic life :-)

In other news

2011-03-28T10:04:00+01:00

Rat diversions aside the weekend was a fairly sedate one. We visited a rather nice Japanese restaurant in town on Saturday with a bunch of the Cambridge LARP group. We left feeling well stuffed.

I spent a chunk of Sunday attending to tasks as directed by the head gardener while she continued attempting the Saturday Times crossword. We seem to have become Saturday Times readers purely on the basis of the quality of their puzzles. Marcus assures me that the Gruniad provides a more brain twisting Cryptic Crossword which Fliss aspires to graduate to one day. Personally I'm happy to manage one clue per crossword but I think I'm getting better at them over time.

We spent a large chunk of the weekend watching through C4's alternative take on teen super heroes Misfits. It's been a fun show to watch and I suspect we'll get to the end of the season 2 box set in short order. We'll have to be careful because there seems to be a lull in any decent TV until Easter when we'll be spoilt for choice. Recommendations for other box sets welcome ;-)

Tis the season for boilers to fail...

2010-12-22T10:53:00+00:00

When the weather outside is so cold the mains water supply is coming in close to freezing you certainly notice when the boiler stops heating your water. At first I thought it was just cutting out do to over-pressure in the heating system (having topped it up previously). However on closer inspection we were seeing leakage.

The rather excellent Plumbing Birds came out and spotted the first of a number of problems. Vaillant had issued a service bulletin to remind people to replace the old silicon seals with a newer more heat resistant graphite one. This hadn't happened in our case and this had resulted in a fire which had melted the air intake of the boiler (but luckily nothing else). However we still have a leak coming out of the heat exchanger which accounts for the slow drop in pressure that has been observed in our heating system. That part is on order so hopefully it will be fitted before Christmas. In the meantime the leak is slow so we at least have heating although I'm monitoring the boiler for any sudden build-up in leakage. At least we now know why we found some of towels in the airing cupboard where damp.

It looks like I'm getting a bonus this year for excellent performance both from myself and the company. I guess I know what I'm spending it on now.

This wire here?

2010-11-22T10:45:00+00:00

I spent most of Saturday hunting a neutral wire fault in the downstairs lighting circuit with my Dad. It was the reason the side lighting in our living room wasn't working and it turned out it was the "spare" wire we found when replacing the ceiling rose in the same room. At least is was helpfully wrapped in masking tape and labelled with what we thought the wire was at the time. I'm becoming resigned to the fact I'll never know quite as much as my Dad about how houses are built, plumbed and wired. I can only hope my skills with media-servers, networking and digital living will become more relevant over the next few years.

The wire hunting wasn't helped by my lower back giving me pain over the weekend. Standing up from sitting currently has me hunched like an old man while emitting various grunts and wheezes. I'm not sure what I've done to aggravate it except maybe a lot of intensive sitting at work. It's mostly fine when I'm walking although I think I might be unconsciously over-correcting which might be putting more strain on it that is good for it. I have started tackling the problem with ibuprofen (better living through chemistry!) and trying to keep mobile.

With that in mind we wandered into town on Sunday to visit DRM central to investigate replacements for Fliss' ailing MacBook Pro. Fliss has been pondering the difference between a new laptop or maybe a Windows gaming rig. After giving the local Genius a hard time with lots of questions ("the most informed customer I've had" apparently) we did eventually decide on going for a new Apple. We dropped a size of screen (from 17" to 15") as it does make it a lot more portable and only went for mid-range CPU (because really how much can you tax 4 2.53Ghz cores these days?). For Window's gaming we are going to set up boot camp although I have left Fliss to purchase the Windows PC. I'll also see if we can get an Ubuntu release on there so she can compare the two Mac's on the same hardware ;-)

While you were out...

2010-07-12T21:00:00+01:00

On Sunday we headed down to the Shelford Feast to catch up with my parents and generally enjoy beer in the sunshine. However while we were out thieving scumbags attempted to break into our house. Apparently there is a bit of a spate of break-ins around fete times as it offers a weekend opportunity when houses are generally empty during the day.

They started by trying to leaver the back door open. However the multi-point lock system held up well. They did however put enough force into it to wedge one of the lock point so solidly that even when we unlocked the door we couldn't get in. They also attacked the patio door with some sort of heavy implement. Although the window is fairly smashed up the laminate finish held it together to thwart their attempt. Unfortunately they didn't leave empty handed as after forcing the lock on the garage they left with Fliss' old mountain bike (fortunately we had taken our brand new bikes with us to ride to Shelford). They also forced the lock on one of the outbuildings but as far as I can tell they didn't nick anything from what is essentially our walk-in LARP wardrobe.

The police turned up fairly quickly followed fairly shortly by the "method of entry" specialist. There was much discussion about the subtle and the not-so-subtle way to gain entry. After the subtle way failed we declined the more direct method to wait for the insurance authorised engineer to turn up. Eventually the SOCO turned up (offering to wear his sunglasses if it would us feel better :-) and managed to get some potential evidence from the scene. Hopefully it won't have been in vain.

Our lovely neighbours put us up and allowed us to watch the World Cup final while we waited for the engineer to turn up and get us into the house. It's a shame the game was so disappointing.

All in all the experience wasn't too bad, the Police (2 officers responsible for most of the villages to the north of Cambridge) were especially helpful. I've been burgled before so from my point of view I can write this of as a failed attack, Fliss however has a slightly different perspective. Overall we are happy* that the house withstood the attack however we will however be reviewing security to make the place even more fortress like. While Cambridge is not like Manchester this has been a reminder of some of the downsides to our relatively exposed rural setting.

* modulo the hassle that is inevitable with dealing with insurance companies and the magic vaporware cover.

End to End Connectivity

2009-12-16T23:22:00+00:00

We had a slight degree of excitement this evening when we got home. All the power was out and the refrigerating appliances were slowing defrosting. Due to the randomness of the breakers tripping we thought it was the boiler. As it happened it was a earth-neutral leakage that was causing the craziness. Once that was all sorted out I sacked off doing the washing-up to do a little more tweaking.

I'm almost there with the Chromium extension. I based it on the work done by David Hilley and basically further hacked it about to make it work more like It's All Text on Firefox. I'm still using David's Python 2.6 shim layer to handle the edit requests until I can get around to implementing an elisp one for Emacs. Don't let my intention to do write one stop any readers from doing so in the meantime should you wish :-).

It works if you stick to one page, currently it gets confused if you have multiple pages open which have sent edit requests. This is because the xmlcomms.js function which handles farming out the edit requests has a single reply_port parameter which will point to the port of the last page to connect to the master extension. I'll need to come up with a slightly neater solution but I'm fairly crusty on Javascript.

Hopefully I'll get around to packaging it up properly in the next few days. In the meantime you can run it from a git checkout by pointing the Extensions page at it via "Load Unpacked Extension".

Still it's my first Chromium extension so I feel quite proud of myself :-)

Waterfalls

2009-11-23T14:44:00+00:00

We spend Saturday visiting the big smoke for a birthday party and house warming. For Graeme's birthday we frequented a cordoned off area of an Ausie Sports bar to watch the two Rugby international. England where predictably beaten although managed to hold onto their dignity up until the last twenty minutes when it all went to pot. To give the Scots their due though they did very well to hold (and finally beat) the Wallabies. After the game we repaired to Hackney for El Franco's South American themed house warming. My voice had started to go by this point (the tale end of my last cold) so I switched to soothing White Russians. Fliss was also asking me to do various Barry White impressions as my voice had dropped an octave or two and was apparently super sexy - an association I've not made with illness before!

After much breakfast and getting a lift through London traffic we finally made it back to our house to find the kitchen floor covered with water and the light fitting dripping. This pretty much eliminated the planned evening of unwinding and led to hurried calls to the insurance company to get a plumber out. After much lifting of carpets and floorboards and scratching of heads we finally tracked it down to a leak in the shower pan seal and the dripping shower head that had not been fully turned off. The water had evidently slowly leaked through over 24 hours and then run back into the centre of the ceiling through the helpful hole formed by the light fitting. Luckily no major damage has been done and getting it fixed up should be a pretty simple task. I'm glad I took out the home emergency cover with the house insurance though.

Partaaaay Aftermarth

2009-11-16T12:14:00+00:00

Well this weekend was filled with the preparation, execution and aftermath of our House Warming party. Fliss finished a number of final touches to curtains, clothes racks, and other such details while I pottered around moving cardboard to the outbuildings and ordering two polypins of local ale to keep people suitably lubricated.

We had a mixture of friends from near and far, family and neighbours attend the party. The early part was taken up with bonfire and fireworks (which I observed from the warmness of inside the house). The lack of launch tubes seemed to account for the large number of ground bursts I saw. However given we had such a large area of land to use for the fireworks the safety margins were a lot higher than your typical Dangerous Fireworks Party ^tm. However one downside of the outdoor pursuits was a grey trail of clay from the fireworks field to the back door. Luckily people were pretty good about removing shoes and our kitchen is easily mopped clean.

The new table got it's first use as a ad-hoc gaming establishment while last.fm's recommendation engine supplied the players with a large amount of hi-energy disco music. I finally switched it to my namesakes radio which was better received. I think it may have won over a new fan to the social networking music idea.

The front room had the universal entertainment system switched on to keep the kids (and some of the adults) happy with a combination of Soul Calibur IV and Super Rub'a'Dub. I was only able to pop in briefly to pwn a few of the younger upstarts before returning to hosting duties.

The kitchen proved to be the central hub of the party and benefited from it's size as well as selection of food courtesy of in house catering with relatives supplying additional dishes. The only downside was having to leave the warmth of the kitchen to pick up another pint of ale from the chilled confines of the garage.

By early morning I was starting to flag and we started allocating sleeping facilities before crashing. It proved to be a useful exercise as we realised the Library was missing a door, something that will need addressing for Christmas where potential guests may be less comatose than S&S who used it. I seem to recall I slept much like a log would.

The next day involved me cooking an excessive amount of bacon, sausages and baking bread as successive kitchen faeries whittled the large stack of washing into a manageable amount. The rest of Sunday was filled with casually directed lounging with a brief intermission watching the new Doctor Who as he turned ever slightly more megalomaniacal. Than I slept.

It was great seeing everyone at the party, especially those that travelled so far to join us. Future visitors can expect better accommodation when bed pressure isn't quite so high! I'm glad everyone has so much fun, the only real lesson I can take from the event is to keep a closer eye on the port decanter ;-)

Tetris

2009-09-11T11:50:00+01:00

Yesterday's packing went smoothly enough that by the end of the day our life was contained in a series of tessellating boxes. Theses boxes are currently being carried out by a series of big strong men and loaded into the two vans. At the rate they are going we should be able to make a move by lunchtime and start the whole unpacking/un-boxing process.

Fliss and I picked up the keys yesterday and checked out what we had brought. It obviously looks a little more spartan now the previous owners have removed all the furniture and pictures but we were still feeling good about the purchase (as you would hope!). One thing we do need to sort out quickly though is getting the key charged electricity meter replaced with a normal one. I have my fingers crossed that Virgin will actually turn up tomorrow to fit the broadband.

Ready to Go

2009-09-01T12:13:00+01:00

I dropped my car off at the body-shop for it's cosmetic surgery today. It will be there for 8-9 working days. On a completely unrelated note we have a completion date now which is in the scarily close sub-fortnight range. Hopefully we'll be moved into our new house the weekend after next. This means I won't be going to the final Maelstrom of the year. Hopefully we shall have the car back in time for the move, I don't think my computer desk will fit on the push-bike ;-)

Lovely Evening

2009-08-18T11:26:00+01:00

Thanks for all the good wishes for yesterday. Despite spending the day in work it was actually a fairly interesting one for that. I headed back in time to enjoy the evening chatting with Fliss while enjoying a BBQ steak with fresh home grown tomatoes, supermarket corn on the cob and a baked potato with a lovely bottle of red wine. A lovely relaxing evening and a nice change of pace from our usual evening routine.

Fingers crossed house stuff is moving forward. As September is full of mostly non-movable events we are aiming to move in the second week of October. Hopefully even the most inefficient solicitors can have everything sorted by then, obviously we'll exchange as soon as possible and then can start planning the move.

Spreadsheets and P60s

2009-07-09T11:22:00+01:00

This afternoon we will spend an hour or so with a bank going through P60's and my self-employment spreadsheet to see if we qualify for a mortgage. I'm suffering a little angst as this is the first time I've gone for money without a permanent job and I'm acutely aware that banks are wary of self-certification mortgages given what happened last time. Having said that we are in a slightly better position of borrowing less as a ratio of the total value of the property than before. Of course we are borrowing more money than we have ever borrowed before so it's really all a mater of your perspective. Fingers crossed!

Big Numbers

2009-07-06T11:58:00+01:00

Yesterday we went for a cycle ride around Fen Ditton to get a feel for the place. Given that we already seem to be developing some roots in Milton it was good to know it's only a short cycle ride away. The principle target of the evaluation involved visiting a few of the local pubs. I think we have been spoilt by Milton's fine selection of hostelries, all of which guest beers. The Fen Ditton pubs all serve ales but mainly of the Green King variety and guest beers are not very much in evidence.

However the village is still lovely and has other fine amenities including the all important cricket oval. Talking to the locals it seems like a pretty good community spirit exists in the area. Overall we are still very positive about it as a place to live. The next few days are going to involve crunching some eye-watering numbers and talking to banks to see if we can buy our dream house. Striking the balance between emotional attachment and cold hard reality is an interesting line to walk.

Floods of biblical proportions

2009-06-26T10:55:00+01:00

I can't tell you exactly what I was doing when I heard that retro pop sensation Michael Jackson had died however I did find out on Twitter which I'm sure will make the BBC happy. However that's all I have to say on that matter as I have been preoccupied with other things.

It was Fliss' birthday yesterday so we headed down to Le Gros Frank last night for a meal with Fliss' Mum, partner and sister. Despite a slightly shakey start from a lovely but nervous waitress (warm champagne, the horror!) the meal was lovely. We did however forgo desert and instead supped our coffees and desert wines back at the ranch.

The serving of such food was slightly hampered by the every expanding micro-fracture in the master pipework coming into the house. As a result 3 days after reporting the leak to the rental agency we currently have a rather leathal kitchen floor and ad-hoc towel based dam. In theory the plumber should be with us in the next half hour and then we can continue preparing for the BBQ on Saturday.

The forcast for the weekend is looking less than ideal but then I stopped believing the forcasts around here a long time ago. We shall have to see what happens on the day, at least it's currently drier than Glasto ;-)

Guilt, but not much

2008-05-23T18:38:00+01:00

You feel slightly guilty as you sit back and play GTAIV while people potter around your house and pack stuff into boxes. However the feeling passes after a while, it's certainly how a plan to move next time :-D