Scargill

Archive for March, 2021

There can surely be no comparison, even in pandemic times, between the cold, damp misery of Northeast UK winters and the relatively dry and sometimes warm winters over in Southern Spain. It isn’t all roses of course as, while hunkered down to avoid Covid, TV in the latter can sometimes be a frustrating experience for Brits as the BBC does it’s best to stop legit licence holders watching quality TV while out of the country.

There are of course ways around the restrictions but the BBC, peculiarly seems to have disproportionate problems with low-bandwidth broadband compared to, say Netflix and other modern services – and this has the effect of producing a pretty low-resolution picture at times. However, there is more to life than sitting at home watching TV and after welcoming in the New Year down at the sunny coast, we just recently took a couple of day trips to Granada, in particular the Nevada Shopping Centre which is always a lot of fun.

And that’s where I spotted this beauty – the beautiful (now out of production, sadly) Yeelight Candela from Xiaomi. I spent more time than I care to imagine trying to get hold of this, first spotted at the Mi store in Granada (who actually had no stock other than a demo), then online only to find that most online providers had no stock and those who did have stock, had raised the price astronomically.

I found one Spanish online store selling the lights (which glow bright orange like a candle) at a reasonable price. Meanwhile shopping at one very large Chinese store in Granada we also picked up some new seat covers for our outside furniture. I particularly like the faux-wood effect covers as you’ll see in the example below left.

Our trip to Granada provided a welcome break after being confined to our village for a while but at the time of writing we still can’t get to those parts of the coast which are the warmest. Theory is, we’re going to get some snow at the weekend but right now we’re expecting 20c max today and sunny. That’ll do for March.

I’m spending every spare minute working on my tech blog and I’ve decided to copy something increasingly popular in bars and restaurants right now, using QR codes to promote their services, menus etc., with luck I can use the same idea on one or moew ceramic tiles to help one particularly hapless courier find our place up in the hills. I’ve also been giving the PC a much-needed upgrade to solid-state SSD and NVme drives, making the who power-up/rebooting process much less painful than in the past.

Maureen has been working on her garden including a spot of painting and moving large quantities of stones around, replacing pergola panelling etc with a view to giving the place an uplift and today the cats are off to the vets in nearby Baza, always an excuse for coffee and tostada in one of the many cafes up that way.

Busy times to be sure but it keeps us out of mischief while waiting for the return of “normal” travelling once the travel restrictions finally ease up, hopefully in the next month or so. Having the ability to stay in a bar or restaurant later than 6pm would be good, too.