The miniature willow tree we planted is doing really well. Looks pretty healthy to me – but it’s clearly still got a strong ant and aphid infestation. Click to embiggen any of the photo’s.
Here’s the garden in general with the tree,
And here’s the ant infestation.
Been a while since I posted about the house and the garden (well, technically it’s been a while since I posted about much at all). Anyway, in March I moaned about some stuff. One of those issues was the brickwork around the base of the house. A nice gentleman posted a comment which I took seriously. We actually got the plumbing in the bathroom sorted out first, because it was easier. However, we asked around some friends for builders / brickies they trusted, and one of them popped around yesterday and confirmed it is frost damage, and it’s not a big job for him to fix. He’s sending us a quote.
There’s no way I’d have the confidence to fix it myself, and we need some re-pointing doing as well. One of the bricks is partially under the path so we’ll need some cold tarmac as well. Anyway, pleased we finally started the process of getting it sorted – he suggested once he’s fixed them up we coat them with silicon to keep the frost out.
Here’s the before shots so you know what frost damage bricks look like, and so I can remember how bad it was after we get them fixed.
I wrote a review for Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse over at BookThing – you can check it out here.
So I wrote a post about some moans (here). Grete (as usual) put in loads of effort and arranged some appointments, specifically an electrician and a plumber to give us some quotes. So in relation to this moan,
Plumbing
The plumbing isn’t bad (especially compared to the electrics), but the bathroom sink hot tap has seized up, and although it’s decreasing in frequency, flushing the loo causes some of the pipes somewhere to vibrate. Also, the silicon sealant around the bath and sinks has perished and really needs sorting.
The plumber thinks the vibration is the ball valve in the loo (which we suspected), but since he checked and fiddled with it, it hasn’t done it since. Result. She then moved to show him the seized up hot tap – turned it – and it turned on. Fine. Without any problems. Result 2! She had to promise him it had been broken.
In the old days, when I was a boy, it was usually the case that if you bought a monitor that was larger than your current one (diagonally larger screen), it supported more pixels as well. These days, it’s sad to see monitor vendors sticking to the flawed idea that somehow, 1080 pixels is the new one size fits all.
If you buy a bigger monitor, you don’t get more pixels, you just get bigger pixels.
This is because monitor vendors have bought into the HDTV size of 1900 x 1080. Why would anyone want to use anything different? I think it’s actually because monitor vendors realised they were being dumb. I mean, people spent thousands of pounds buying larger and larger televisions in the old days, and they never got any increase in resolution? If people would pay top dollar for huge TV’s at the same resolution as 14″ portables, why the hell couldn’t they bring that business model to the LCD monitor market.
So they did.
There’s a good rant on this over here.
When I bought the LCD’s we use at the moment, I got 5:4 ratio LCD monitors. People probably laughed. They’re 19″ displays. That means (sorry to switch units), that the actual screen is ~30.5cm high and ~37.5cm wide. That gives about a ~48cm display (diagonal). We were thinking of getting some new monitors, but I knew it wouldn’t be that easy so I made sure I had the measurements. These monitors run at 1280 x 1024. A 19″ widescreen (16:9) might give 1900 x 1080, but it’s vertically much smaller than the monitors we have. That’s okay, 21″ widescreen? Still shorter. 22″? Still shorter. 23″? Still shorter. I’d have to buy a 24″ monitor, running at just 56 more pixels high, to give me roughly the same physical height as my existing monitor. And the screen would be ~20 inches wide (or ~50cm).
To get 56 more pixels (vertically).
And that’s it – you have to be specifically looking to find anything higher than 1080 vertical resolution and you pay for it. And there’s no good reason for it. If I want to watch movies, I do that on my television. So we didn’t buy any new monitors.
I want a choice of monitors, with a choice of native resolutions, in a choice of ratios.
Eight years ago I registered the gemmellmania.co.uk domain. Sometime in 1999, I registered the gemmell-mania.org.uk domain (don’t go there now, it’s just full of links). I ran various forums and web sites on those domains, hosted a Usenet FAQ (here, long out of date), ran mailing lists and wrote reviews.
The reviews eventually led to me meeting David, and to being a test reader on some of his later books, something I’m still astoundingly grateful for and proud of.
For a few years now, the site has had only a single page, my tribute to David. However, the time has come for me to let the domain go. The tribute is included on this blog as well (here).
The spirit of David’s writing lives on in The David Gemmell Legend Awards.
It looks like the Willow has survived the Winter and is ready to put some work in during the Spring.
I’m going to moan about life, you’ve been warned.
Firstly, I’ve not got much to moan about when compared to some people in the world – but we all live within our own context. So in the global scheme of things, I’m super lucky. But that doesn’t stop me being overwhelmed by rubbish stuff. So, in an attempt at some cathartic release, here we go.
We bought our house about 5 or 6 years ago and haven’t done much to it since, so everything that’s ‘wrong’ with the house is a hangover from previous owners.
Our driveway is tarmac. It’s starting to perish and the rate of failure is increasing. There’s a long crack from the front to almost the back, and about 2 feet of tarmac is going to slowly fall away. I suspect when our next door neighbour had a long hedgerow removed to put in a fence, the contractor hasn’t backfilled tightly enough, or the ground has dried out, and so the drive has sunk a little. Around a water access grate at the front of the drive it’s beginning to crumble, and near the back of the house where the tarmac joins a sheet of concrete patio, it’s sinking into a little hole.
Car is due it’s MOT at the end of March and we know it’s going to fail with various bits. If they come back and say it’s a few hundred, we’ll pay, if they say it’s a lot more we won’t, but if they come back in the middle ground, it’s always an annoying decision. Pay and hope we get another year out of it, or don’t pay and just replace it. Replacing a car isn’t easy for us either, we don’t know anything about them, and when you have no transport, getting around to buy another car is always a depressing experience. I do not cope well.
A layer of bricks around the bottom of the house is crumbling. This worries me in a sort of esoteric way, I’m not even sure how terrified I should be.
The electrics in the house are a little worrying. At some point, one of the previous owners did some ‘work’, so there are extensions running all over the place, plugs that appear to hang off other plugs, and various other things that seem clearly wrong to me. But we’d need to get someone in and review it and then do a lot of work to fix it. And we never have a single lump of cash to do that with.
The plumbing isn’t bad (especially compared to the electrics), but the bathroom sink hot tap has seized up, and although it’s decreasing in frequency, flushing the loo causes some of the pipes somewhere to vibrate. Also, the silicon sealant around the bath and sinks has perished and really needs sorting.
The oven is starting to fall apart, and I try and avoid thinking about how the various bits of electrical equipment in the kitchen are actually wired in.
Our bedroom double glazed window has had a hole in the outside of the glass since we moved in. The woodwork on all the frames needs serious attention. One of the previous owners extended the kitchen, and the kitchen window’s outside wooden frame doesn’t actually fit into the brickwork properly. So last year I found two 1.5cm diameter holes at the end of the woodwork, between the frame and the bricks. Lovely.
The paint on the wall in our bedroom under the window is flaking away. Either it was put onto the plaster while it was wet, or we’ve got some damp action going on.
The whole house is in serious need of internal decoration.
I’ve blogged a couple of times about the soup I make (I think, although a quick search doesn’t reveal anything). Anyway, it seems to be good for my blood sugar which I found out after I’d been making it a while, which is handy for my diabetes. It took me a few years to get it right – my mum makes it (or used to) with a ham shank, which I could never get around to sorting out.
I eventually settled on a gammon joint as the base and it works quite well. Since I’m about to put another batch on, I thought I’d write down how I make it.
I buy a gammon join, and some potatoes, carrots, swede, shallots, leeks and lentils. I boil the gammon joint for some period of time, until it’s done. Then I chop the various amounts of vegetables, and chuck them and the lentils into the stock. I know I should strain the stock and get the fat out, but I don’t. I then chop some of the gammon joint and stick that in (I slice the rest and keep it). I then simmer it for some period of time until the lentils have turned completely smooth.
See? Easy 🙂
I guess if you want numbers, just remember that I don’t look at this by quantity, I just buy whatever looks okay at the time and stick it all in.
Half cover the gammon (in a big pan), simmer for an hour or so, and then while it’s cooling, chop the veg. Take the gammon out (remove the fat from the gammon, and get the fat out of the stock if you want – easier if you make the gammon stock the day before, I don’t). Stick the veg and lentils into the stock. Chop gammon to taste, stick into the stock. At this point, you need to judge if there’s enough water or if you need to add more. I make this soup *thick*. I’m serious, it’s slice-able when cold. However, if you like it with more liquid you’ll need an even bigger pan.
Heat slowly, stir often to prevent sticking. It’s done for me when the lentils are virtually a single homogeneous gloop.
Some of these are a little out of focus, sorry about that, it was cold and I was in a rush (to get the car sorted and get to work).
Our tree – looking like someone dusted it with icing sugar.
Our poor willow tree – small but feisty, looks so sad despite the natural decorations.
Couldn’t get this close-up (of one of the last remaining leaves on the willow) to work well – my hands were too shaky in the cold.
Nature’s natural Christmas decorations – frozen spider webs.
Spider webs up-close (sorry for the terrible photography).
