Scargill

Looks like the last time I wrote in here was late last year.  That might seem odd to some of you so to clarify, I spent much of December, all of January and part of February 2018 in hospital following a stroke in mid-December. I have since then been incredibly hard at work performing a mix of official NHS therapy and my own home brew therapy concentrating on getting my lost keyboard skills back.

The stroke initially took out my entire left side but that is now largely reduced to weakness in my arm and hand and a slight inattention in my foot and will improve in time. My back is weak but that isn’t stopping me getting around. The big one for me is the left (writing) hand which is very much a work in progress and I’m using it to type this blog, but not without hard work.

For no reason other than getting a head start when I was out of action, I’ve dropped my weight by 20% with more on the way, helped no doubt by having no desire to consume alcohol.

A shame it took something this dramatic to get me to lose the weight but there you are. I’ve only just started to resume blogging and the hand still needs lots of work but I’m making a start. Maureen is also losing weight which makes it easier for me.

We’ve been back in the UK for a three weeks (seems like years) and one of the very few highlights has been Guy Fawkes. So we took the grandkids off to Hexham on 4th of November for the display – and what a display it was – huge bonfire and a spectacular firework show.

As is always the case in the Northeast of England, it was of course bollock-freezing cold but thankfully not wet. Hexham town centre was buzzing with activity, except for the shops which were, by and large, inexplicably shut (a tip shopkeepers – lots of people out on Guy Fawkes night with kids wanting to spend their parents money). Thankfully there were a few street vendors (burger vans, ice-cream) and a fellow selling battery-powered-use-once-then-dump flashing lights.

All in all a pleasant experience and then off we went to Bob and Margaret’s place (friends of ours who have a business in Hexham) for Indian grub – which was delicious.

On the actual night of the 5th, we’d been shopping and dropped the grand-kids off so by the time we got back to Bellingham we were a little tired, it was VERY cold and there was no-where to park anywhere near the fireworks – so, we gave it a miss.  We didn’t miss too much because once back home we could see the fireworks – which were fine – but of course not in the same class as the Hexham show.

When we arrived back in the UK after fixing things around the house (which had been holiday rented for 6 months and so needed a little TLC) I settled down to making good use of Ebay to pass on stuff that I realised had been sitting here all summer and not being missed! And so I’m not ploughing through the web in search of a 3d printer!

Not a lot else happening as it’s too cold!

In the early hours of the morning, I’m usually asleep. This morning however was different, I had two completely unrelated things on my mind. One was technical and is documented elsewhere and the other involved the origin of life. Yes, some of us do have deep thoughts from time to time and occasionally, they’re not rubbish. This may or may not be one of those times.

So firstly, a disclaimer, I’m not a doctor, scientist – or anything really – just someone who was brought up learning how things work and watching Attenborough, Star Trek and just about every other sci-fi movie and TV series of note, reading Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins and challenging just about everything. Still, at age 63, what you are about to read may or may not be complete bollocks but hopefully entertaining bollocks.

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Little did I know when I started the annual discussion with my (art degree) wife about colours that I would start a whole feud off about the subject. This blog entry is a TAD technical but hopefully not enough to put you off – if you think the 3 basic (primary) colours are red, yellow and blue then you really DO owe it to yourself to spend a moment to read on… with an open mind you’re about to learn something new and interesting…

So the argument goes that red, yellow and blue are indivisible – they’re the colours that can’t be made. So how is it that every printer on the planet makes red from magenta and yellow?  Caught your attention? Read and learn…

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Not been doing a lot of updating of this blog because of course, we’re over in Spain for the summer.  BBQ season is over as far as the countryside is  concerned – we had our last country BBQ  at the end of May in the area you see below – just outside of Huescar (Andalusia). It is now starting to get very dry and such events could trigger forest fires – hence no more forest BBQs – of course that’s only the countryside.

Here in Galera we’re getting temperatures up towards 30c with very few clouds and Maureen and I have been working on all sorts of things at home including a new upstairs ceiling after we discovered a worrying crack appearing in the bedroom ceiling.  This of course was most likely to do with one or more of the may earthquakes we get – now to keep that in perspective I have neither felt nor heard an earthquake in the years we’ve been coming up here but it doesn’t take much movement to cause damage over time and we think this is what has happened.

Never mind, all fixed now, we’re working on the hot tub (heater issues) and putting new doors on our own BBQ. Anyway, it is all documented on the Spanish blog above.  For those looking for my technical blog it is here.

Generally, still unhappy about the direction the UK is taking with Brexit but by now there’s nothing that can be done about that other than moan. As for the recent terrorist attacks – I have the same view I’ve always had – as long as we continue to allow the breeding grounds to exist, the problem will not go away. I think we should be looking at this less as terrorism and more the result of brainwashing-induced mental illness. How do you tackle someone who has no regard for their own life? I wish I had a solution.

Simba the cat is once again in trouble – he’s developed an obsessive need to nibble at himself – we can’t let him out as there are too many dogs in the area but that is about to change and I’m hoping that getting out and about will help him relax – right now he’s covered in a purple dye that is supposed to help – that may be the case but he looks awfully silly in purple.

Making new friends along the way, lots coming up in the coming month or so – check out the bedrock site for more info.

Less than 24 hours to go and we start our long trip to Spain. Very roughly the image describes our planned route – from the Northeast, stopping over at a friend’s place, 24 hour ferry from Portsmouth to Bilbao, then a couple of hours drive before another stopover before heading down to Galera.

Quite a trip armed with three cats and a car-full of “stuff”. But we’ve done it before so it’s not entirely new.

With rain and 13c max temperatures forecast for Hexham area for the coming week now is a great time to clear off. 

Galera on the other hand is forecast to have a constant 26c maximum for the coming week – that will do us just fine – great weather for fixing hosepipes and upgrading the solar panel.

Had a great winter here in the UK thanks to our friends – without which it would have been pretty miserable (the weather in the Northeast is always miserable) – looking forward to getting together with our friends in Spain for a great summer.

Last update 11/04/2017

Early in 2016, having used PlusNet for normal broadband and seeing their offer of fibre broadband in Bellingham, Northumberland, we signed up for the 80 Mb fibre service.

The PlusNet modem was supplied and initially we managed to get up to 78Mb downloads and 19Mb uploads – not quiet the headline figure – but very close.

Soon after however, we started to experience drop-outs. The modem would disconnect and reconnect a minute or so later. This would happen every day either once or several times – perhaps with gaps of 2-3 days without issue.

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What a great day. Newcastle has an annual Maker Faire and it is on this weekend – and what a faire it is.

I headed off first thing to get some parking and was pleased to find that Newcastle College had some cheap parking – £4 for the day. I arrived 45 minutes to early, thankfully the security guard was a chatty type who wanted to know what all the fuss was about so we filled in time while waiting for my friend Aidan to turn up.

We got talking about cars as that was his thing and so by the time Aidan turned up in his Tesla, the guy was itching to see it and up to his armpits in questions.

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This weekend we went up to Edinburgh with our friends Karen and Dave.  Friday afternoon we drove up to Edinburgh and stopped in a little apartment in the city centre.

Of course, being Edinburgh, it poured rain most of the time..

We spent the evening wandering around town after the obligatory trip to (House of Fraser) Jenners and ended up in a very nice Indian Restaurant just behind Princes Street…

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No exciting photos right now, mainly because we’ve not seen sunshine in the Northeast of England for a while now, just the usual suicide-inducing damp, cold weather.

Having said that, we’ve not had snow or anything – there is no chance of it being a white Christmas for example.  I’ve been buried away in my workshop now for some time, taking advantage of the bad weather to get stuck into some new learning.

On the right you’ll see my new toy – a home-made-from-scratch ultra-sound humidifier. The idea came to me one morning as she was griping about the room being dry. Inside the £2.99 B&M glass-with-wooden-stopper case is a £4.99 high intensity ultrasonic steamer from China, which when fed 24v (supply came with the unit) generates one hell of a lot of cold steam due to silent ultrasound vibration. Then follows an aluminium tube from B&Q, a 25mm processor fan (£1 from China) and a little convertor to take 24v down to around 3v (£ from China). The 5v fan forces air into the container and hence lots of very fine steam out. I dropped the voltage (to the fan) to reduce noise to virtually zero. Right now it is running flawlessly and I’m waiting to see how long it takes and how much water it takes to make an effective change to the room humidity – which, run by radiators and fire – tends to get a little dry at times.

The whole thing is on a Sonoff controller hooked back to my house system which knows how dry or otherwise the room is and controls accordingly. At least that’s the plan. How well it will survive cats sniffing, running dry and other daily challenges remains to be seen. Also needs a protective shield to stop the fan getting damp and make it look more presentable.  It did occur to me that a somewhat more powerful version of this would be ideal for the pergola in the height of Spanish summer. We have misters but they provide rather large water droplets whereas this is REALLY fine stuff. Could be nice for compensating for the blisteringly dry heat in August.

Other than that, Maureen is doing her usual Christmas stuff, I’m focussed on my blog which is just about to tip 6,000 signed up visitors and needs lots of attention. Some day if the sun ever gets out we’ll get around to some outdoor activities.