Last night was enjoyable tho, a swift stroll by the lake after a positively riotous evening meal sharing a table with 2 British couples. A doctor was singing Nellie the Elephant to illustrate proper CPR technique, that song is forever tainted now..

Our modes varied slightly because I’m on holiday, rather than a mission, so I took the bus, train and cable car along the valley instead.

I got chatting to a couple of guys from North Carolina, they were roughly following Kev’s C-Z route, but with a couple of approximations made by the company they contracted with to handle all the arrangements. I thought 31 C was 10 degrees too hot to do anything, they thought it was pleasantly cool. Different idea of normal I guess.

It was more than a bit novel to be the expert French speaker in the group! Their idea of the cable car up from La Chable was a pleasant finish, only a couple of Francs more than the bus. Then i promptly got us lost leaving the telecabane station.

My mission for the day was finding us somewhere reasonable to stay, it’s still quiet – medium season in Verbier so I had the pick of 2 or 3 places within budget. So I’m typing this from my private balcony over looking le place centrale over the third ice tea of the day. Holiday much?

much of the town is under construction, lots of big lorries and cement mixers feeding the many hungry big cranes.
Found a family pharmacy for a throat spray and joy of joys, they stocked Fisherman’s Friends and the kindly man spoke great English, tho I amused what I’m guessing was their daughter with my broken french and glee at finding yeehar strength mint tablets.

I perplexed half the town’s sports and shoe shops looking for size 50 insoles, mostly not available until ski season, tho I did fine a pair of size 50 boots on sale. “Le Cinqante?!” *surprise and bafflement*

I also finished devouring the novel I brought along for the ride, so that’ll get posted home in a bit, dead weight ftl.

tomorrow is the start of the real mountain leg of the holiday, the point of the exercise as it were. Up to 2600m at Col Terman and sleeping at 2200m at Lac de Louvie. Up close and personal with the mountains. Could be interesting or it could be seriously annoying if the promised thunderstorm hits.

I can’t promise much phone signal until Grimentz in a week’s time, but I’ve ceased being surprised where Swisscom put cells..

LBA’s baggage belts were broken, so there was more than no pandemonium as Jet2 tried to get three 7am flights sent off at once.

Still, we got to Geneva 10mins early and wandered off to stock up on noms from the Migros. The nice people running ChamExpress(.com) managed to fit us in a minibus an hour early, I can thoroughly recommend their service.

Paused in Chamonix for an hour to take the obligatory photos and an ice cream before letting the train take the strain up to our home for the next two nights, Belle Vue Alpine Lodge.

The sun was scorchio down in the valley, but there’s a gorgeous cooling breeze here, probably about 20ish degrees, which perfectly matched a cool bottle of wheat beer from Brasserie Du Mont Blanc ‘La Blanche’.

oh, and Mountains!

Another of the small recipes I picked up from this year’s NEC show is from Alys Fowler. Apparently if you pack some apples in elderflowers for a month, they come out tasting like pineapples. Knowing my luck they’ll turn out tasting of pollen beetle, but I’ll let you know how I get on

Alys Fowler

I picked up a couple of cheap pineapples from the supermarket, which was a good excuse to restock my jam supplies. It’s also nice to spread the bounty around a bit, it can make a fun, if horribly sweet, gift. It’s pictured here with some olive oil and herb foccacia bread I made.

The garden is showing some positive signs too, although more water would be nice. My pineapple guava plants are putting on lots of new growth, albeit from the bottom rather than the top, so it’s more hedging than a goblet shape at the moment. I’m hoping it will eventually flower like the professionally grown ones, here’s one I spotted at the NEC:

Pineapple Guava

I suspect that hoping for Yorkshire guavas is a touch optimistic though

The sweet peas are making steady progress up their supports and the garden peas are starting to swell nicely. Some of the tomato plants are looking very green and healthy, though the uneven watering has encouraged my spinach and cabbages to bolt like the oil seed rape in the field next door. Maybe next year I’ll find some seeds for this fun looking spinach variety:

Mexican tree spinach

Automating the process took a little bit of thought, so I’m putting it online so it’s easier for me to find next time I format my computer and forget to back it all up.

Getting the files off the PVR

If you’re still running a 32bit copy of Windows XP, then use Humax’s Media e-linker application to copy the files onto your laptop. If, however, you’re using something that isn’t 9 years old, then you’ll need the help of some community experts to download from it.

I’m discounting the method of connecting a computer directly to the Humax’s builtin hard disk because many users at home aren’t comfortable with that level of hardware modifications, so this is strictly USB file transers.

First you’ll need a copy of Andy Chappell’s Humax Media Controller. This is a command line rewrite of media e-linker and uses the open source Libusb-win32 library to do the interfacing. However, the 2007 version of this library didn’t support 64bit windows, so you’ll need Mike Dimmick’s remarkably handy updated driver and specially compiled copy of libusb0.dll to make it work with your OS and HMC.

Transcoding from .ts into .mp3

Once you’ve got the files transferred onto your computer, you will likely want to convert it into something your phone or mp3 player will cope with. It comes as MPEG2 Transport Streams (.ts.) which VLC media player copes with just fine, and you can use it to transcode it into an mp3 and attempt to put an ID3 tag or two in using a tool like id3 mass tagger

This approach works just as well for video as it does for audio but because of the size of the files involved, you really do need two seperate hard drive spindles to split the reading from the writing, otherwise you’ll be there for hours.

The script that does the work is just below. Call it either one at a time or as a

for /f %i in (*.ts) do @transcodeThis.cmd

@echo off
echo %1
set out=%1
set out=%OUT: =%
set out=%OUT:'=%
set out=%OUT:ts=mp3%
echo %OUT%

set thisfile=%out%
set thisfile=%OUT:"=%
set thisyear=%thisfile:~0,4%
set thismonth=%thisfile:~4,2%
set thisday=%thisfile:~6,2%
set thishour=%thisfile:~8,2%
set thismin=%thisfile:~10,2%
set thistitle=%thisfile:~12,-4%

start /wait f:\Progra~2\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe %1 --sout=#transcode{acodec=mp3,ab=128}:standard{access=file,mux=dummy,dst=%OUT%} vlc://quit

rem ID3 v2 tag
rem f:\datafiles\pvr\id3.exe -2 -M -g "Podcast" -a "%thistitle%" -t "%thistitle% %thisyear%/%thismonth%/%thisday% %thishour%:%thismin%" -y "%thisyear%" %1
rem ID3 v1 tag
f:\datafiles\pvr\id3.exe -M -g "Speech" -a "%thistitle%" -t "%thistitle% %thisyear%/%thismonth%/%thisday% %thishour%:%thismin%" -y "%thisyear%" %out%

The lawn’s had its first weeding and haircut of the year, I’ve put some seeds in some compost, the veg plots have had their thick mulch of organic matter applied for about a month and have been dug over ready for the soil to warm up enough for some direct sowing and my amaryllis has flowered. I even spent a good 30 minutes with a screwdriver, can of air and vacuum cleaner to spring clean the inside of my computer, the dust filters over its inlet fans were gross.

After last year’s mixed successes in my current garden, I’m changing my planting plan slightly to match. The tomatoes are the same variety (F1 Totem) and I’ll be carrying on with the same spinach, chard and beetrooot varieties (largely because I’ve got loads of seed left over) but gone are the Nasturtiums and Strawberry Spinach, the round cucumbers (waah!) and squashes. In their place, however, will be a japanese variety of parsley, some more second early potatoes, three varieties of shallot and possibly a standard issue Pumpkin vine for my work’s annual competition.

I’m going to be doing three sowings of spinach and chard, 3 to 4 weeks apart, which should give a steady supply through the summer and not leave just the old and tough stalks in the autumn. In effect, I’m growing things that I use a lot of, but can be expensive to buy and I’m leaving alone the things I use but are cheap to buy.

My Amaryllis took a little over two years to flower again from when it flowered the first time and only had two blooms instead of four, possibly because I didn’t keep it sufficiently fed and watered. It was an interesting exercise to see if it works, but I don’t think it’s worth the space the pot and large spread of leaves take up. One of my bulbs was happy enough to split off a child, which is growing on strongly and might flower next year, if I keep it around that long. I may just to find a sheltered and sunny corner somewhere and plant them out so I’ve got space for the next fun things I’ve got in mind.

Amaryllis flower

It’s getting close to Easter, so I’ve had a quick experiment with a coffee chocolate fudge; mix up a quantity of plain fudge, melt 75g of good quality coffee chocolate and swirl one through the other.

Chocolate fudge

Ah, snow. Like it or loathe it, it’s impossible to ignore it.
England isn’t used to snow in any real quantity, which is why these past couple of weeks have been so newsworthy.
Apart from my Scandinavian car not coping with ice as well as I’d prefer, I’ve been lucky enough to not be significantly inconvenienced by it all. Things are just different, Being Prepared helps more than ever, driving to work just takes 3 times as long and you can’t always rely on shopping at the last minute.

Parliament Street

But that’s not a bad thing, with roads, rails and runways all suffering from the snow, travel suddenly becomes hugely more valuable. When driving, you have to take your time to be aware of the road and your car’s reactions to it. We’re all used to being able to quickly go wherever we want, whenever we want, so this is an incentive to be aware of, and enjoy our surroundings more.

If I lived nearer the Wolds, I’d be considering getting some skis for a bit of fun, the snow round my home is perfect, just need a slope

The thick blanket of snow on the fields is refreshingly like a canvas, showing what and who has passed by, the low winter sun picking out in orange contrast all the foot, tyre and hoof prints left on the lane as the day’s business goes past. Only to be filled in after darkness and snow falls anew, ready for the next days activity.

Chilly Busking

Most people round the city centre seemed to be enjoying themselves, from the kids throwing snowballs at each other and the world in general by the fountain in the middle to the slightly bonkers but very good busker by the Minster, effortlessly playing the piano with gloves on in the subzero wind.

Unless you’re in the market for a large television, I recommend a reasonably large LCD monitor instead, their LCD panels tend to be much higher quality than an LCD TV and are also generally cheaper because they don’t have unnecessary rubbish inside like TV tuners and remote control receivers. Why these are unnecessary will be introduced in just a moment.

The choice of monitor should be limited to those with a native resolution of 1920×1080, or just “1080p” in current parlance, it allows you to use the same device to watch TV, play XBox and run your computer though and generally saves space, money and the planet. This year has seen the release of a lot of 21.5″ LCD panels that run at this resolution, but I’d pick one with a larger pixel size because you’ll be watching it from a few feet away.

These are a few options in various sizes:

Watching digital TV without the help of a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) is missing out on some major opportunities, such as recording two channels at once whilst watching a third, pausing live TV whilst you answer the [phone/oven/small child], and series link recording. Series Link is one of the most misunderstood techologies out at the moment and people usually expect miracles, even though they didn’t when they used VHS or DVD recorders. The implementation also varies between different Manufacturers, so you must read and understand how it does it.

Anyway, the current PVR I recommend is the Topfield TF5810. As long as the PVR of your choice has an HDMI output and contains a function called an ‘upsizer’ which just takes normal TV and scales it up to fill a HighDef screen, you’re good. Be careful, upsizing is a generally a software function and a lot of them are of an unwatchably low quality.

Unlike the Humax 9200T that I’ve been happy with for years, the Topfield’s menu system is fast to use, its USB download to computer function doesn’t crash it and, most importantly, the software is customisable. Which means that the community supplies user interface improvements way faster than the manufacturer can. http://www.toppy.org.uk/ is the place to start looking, but if you just get the addon (or TAP as they’re called) called MyStuff you won’t go far wrong. Download MyStuff.

Finally, don’t forget a good quality spare HDMI cable to connect things to the monitor with:

This setup isn’t for everybody because monitors generally don’t have as many video inputs as TVs, neither are they as large, but this article is just to point my friends and family towards and they can cope with moving a plug when they want to change inputs over

Edit:

I’ve been reminded that I forgot sound. In which case, pick one of these monitors with built in A/V switches and tinny little speakers:

For now, however, I’m going to contain myself into a bit of a rave about my latest toy. It’s one of those tools that’s going to have to last my lifetime, but I’ve recently succumbed to temptation and treated myself to a Santoku, made from Damascus folded steel by Tojiro.

After deciding which knife to get, there was a lot of shopping around to be done. It turns out that the cheapest place was York’s very own Barnitts! Whilst they had to order it in especially for me (“these don’t exactly fly off the shelves you know”), it was still £45 cheaper than the RRP. This isn’t exactly an impulse buy, I don’t part with that much money at all easily, so being an Engineer, I made sure the specification was right before I chose my product

Unlike its cheaper counterparts from, say, QVC shopping channel, the pattern isn’t so much painted onto the blade as reflected out from inside it. Beautiful stuff.

Tojiro 180mm Santoku

It wasn’t just the appearance that I chose this material for the blade, however,I wanted steel that was malleable enough to be able to be sharpened but hard enough to keep its edge once it got it, anything over 60 on the Rockwell scale would do. I also wanted a sensible grip on the handle. I’ve tried a few other knives, IO Shen were good, but I felt were edged out by Tojiro. Despite their innovative sharpening gadgetry and the genius marketing man that is Mr Global, Min, I don’t rate Global’s style at all (although they sell a huge volume of good quality knives to Western Europe, so I’m in the minority with this opinion).

The weight is perfect for me, it’s heavy enough to have a heft of its own and unlike my French knives, the balance is slightly forward of the handle which makes my life easier. The shape of the blade is a great compromise between piercing, chopping and rocking whilst still being thick enough for me to rest my knuckles against whilst using (big hands aren’t always a bonus). Whilst I will still use my 6 and 8 inch Sabatier cooks knives, it’s immediately clear why this shape of blade outsells all others in Japan.

I thought I’d used sharp knives before, but Oh My God. I chopped a stir fry this evening and I eventually had to be told me to stop giggling before I cut myself. Not a chance with that knife, it was completely controlled. I wasn’t bored enough to make a video of it, but this will cut through a ripe tomato, perfectly, under its own action alone. No need to put the point through the skin and cut back through it, or to draw the cutting edge across the skin like a serrated edge.

It literally cut through vegetables as if they weren’t there. Now I begin to underst how TV chefs do their rapid fire showing off action, they use properly sharp knives.

Carols, dixieland style

The sound track was provided by a local dixieland jazz band playing christmas carols, I forgot to note the groups name, but I’m sure I recognised their trumpet player from the old Wednesday night jazz jam session in the Black Swan from a year or 10 ago.

Barley Hall

Barley Hall was doing it’s usual historic market, with stall keepers dressed in costume and happy to cater to all of your needs, provided they can be made from hand stitched leather, hand woven wool or properly blacksmithed.

One brand that’s really taken off this year is delicouslyorkshire who had taken over the top end of Parliament St with their usual made in Yorkshire market. My bag came out a good deal heavier than it went in..

I try to make a rule of not shopping round a supermarket when hungry, but that should also apply to markets. I stopped by Cross of York to see if they had any fish left for dinner tonight and was reminded of how good a skilled fishmonger can be, watching them fillet my choice of fish ready for the pan. So tonight will probably be pan fried butterflied-fillet of Trout on a bed of steamed kale with a sage risotto, followed by a baked apple because it’s cold and dark and I like that sort of thing

Baked goods aside, I didn’t really achive much Christmas shopping, I did pop into Borders to see what the effects of its administration were. The 20% sale coupled with the seasonal pile of customers led to an epic queue, so I’ll leave that shop until next time I’m in town.

Speaking of which, next weekend’s looking busy with a walking club trip to the famous Lion on Blakey Ridge, and the weekend after is my second favourite (after the fortnight’s worth of Food and Drink Festival) time in York, Festival of Angels.

There were a lot of neat touches with the event’s organisation, including doing a deal with some off site parking in Stamford Bridge and making the “torch lit procession” part of the event.

Otherwise it was pretty much a fireworks event. There was a nice big bonfire that you could get close enough to to feel the benefit from, a mulled wine tent was doing steady business, which gave something warming to hold and sip whilst queuing up for the hog roast and traditional barbequeued burgers and hot dogs. We thought the burgers didn’t look too wide so I had the double, turned out they were just thick instead, which coupled with the serve-it-yourself onions and ketchup meant I was mostly wearing my dinner at the end. Very tasty though.

There were a couple of decoratively lit horse trailers with party games and people selling the sort of glowy light sticks you get these days, there was even a barrel for children of all ages to try their mouth at bobbing for apples grown on the premises. The bar was well stocked, though I couldn’t get near it, with optics as well as draught beer. The local Guides were present, running a tombola with prizes that were collected over the recent weeks.

The brass band kept up a very good set, and were well organised and didn’t compete with either the fireworks or the tent from Minster FM who were compereing the night’s proceedings. They even got the timing spot on with getting the crowd to chant “10..9..8..etc..1..FIRE!” which led to a remarkably good display of *whoosh* *kablam* *aahh*.

The fireworks were a good selection and well sequenced, with pretty much all the childhood favourites apart from a catherine wheel. I think the crowd was about 100m away from the fairly modest looking launching apparatus, so the bigger rockets really did explode overhead. It went on for what seemed like about 20 minutes and was remarkably dense. Way better than the Scout displays I used to help, although computer firing sequences are much less fun than running between the milk bottles and the back of the landrover to get the next rocket.

There were a few picnic tables dotted about and plenty straw bales to perch on if standing up for the full display wasn’t your thing. There was plenty of space, so the crowd wasn’t too deep and even the car park was well organised (it would have to be for that many cars).

The Cadets were doing the parking and they made good use of the glowy sticks, having one in each hand to direct the traffic like you see people on TV doing with planes. There were a couple of tractors doing the rounds to tow out the people who got stuck in the mud, which was fine from our point of view because we were smug cyclists but would have been highly fustrating for the drivers who would have had to wait for their turn for quite some time. But then, everybody was parking in muddy fields so there was bound to be a fair number of stuck cars.

All in all, it was a very accomplished event, certainly better then the Castle Howard one last year, possibly because it involved less traffic jams.

I had a gossip with one of the Balloon Tree’s staff earlier on, they apparently sold out of all 1600 tickets (that’s all they were brave enough to sell) with a week or so to go, so I’m glad I got mine when I did. They found it succesful enough to have already started planning next year’s, so fingers crossed that a small, succesful enterprise will triumph where other, larger organisations have chickened out from.

So, yes, good traditional British nights out are still going strong. Yay.

I’d left the sweet peas last few rounds of flowers to set seed, and I needed the large tubs they were in, so it was time to collect the seeds and dry them out ready for the spring. Many people recommend planting sweet peas about now and then giving them a prune in February to give them a good start and encourage many stems. I’ve never had any success doing that, so I’m going to sow them in 5″ pots in about March time and hope they’ll establish themselves ready to plant out again in late spring.

Sweet Pea Pods

I also took the opportunity to rescue my specimem pelargoniums for the winter, one has done substantially better than the other two, not sure if that’s because it was in a wider pot or whether it was just a better plant. I’m always surprised by the volume of dead material you comb out of a herbacious plant when preparing to overwinter it indoors. I tend to take all the flower stems off and prune back the longer, more spindly stems so encourage the plant to spend its energy on new growth and building up energy in the roots ready for the spring.

Tidying up a geranium

I recently took advantage of a few special offers that Thompson & Morgan advertise to Gardener’s World Magazine readers. Turns out they keep an online catalogue of them all, so you don’t have to place your order in the correct month. I’m sure things like the 100 free Spring Flowering Bulbs and 100 free Alliums are more than effective as a loss leader given the good selection of other plants advertised in that page. In a way, I’m quite happy to just order from that subset of their full range, way too much choice otherwise. Anyway, they will hopefully provide a good mixed background to the specimen tulips bulbs I’ve got to plant in the tubs I’ve just freed up.

http://www.thompson-morgan.com/gwm is where you want to be.

Otherwise things are a bit same old same old. A lot of my friends are off Doing Interesting Things at the moment, be it travelling the world, taking contracts in Australia or New Zealand, being couragous enough to quit their current job without having a replacement signed up first or doing their part to continue the species.

I guess this introspection was brought home by renewing my passport ready for some gratuitious trips away in the new year. Has it really been 10 years since I stopped by Goodricke College’s photo machine about 2 months after I decided to start growing my hair long (yes, I’ve been stuck with that photo for 10 years..)? I’d love to say I’ve come a long way in that time, but in many respects I’m feeling a bit like Peter Pan and refusing to grow up. Given a lack of other demands upon my time, I still tend towards consuming narration (one reason my bookshelves are bursting at the seams with crap scifi and fantasy fiction) and take part in adventures that others have already created.

Problem is, I still very much enjoy the life I’ve built and feel very little compulsion to change things for the worse, just for change’s sake. I get to look out of the window at the afternoon sun highlighting the Wolds in the distance. I’ve worked in the same office since I graduated and I still get the opportunity to make a difference every day to a cause I consider worthwhile. I’ve been able to pick up new skills that take my fancy, like cooking, photography, gardening and even dabbling in Tai Chi (scarily, I’ve signed up for a class in a different style of that at work, should be ‘interesting’). Oh, and I get to share it with a certain somebody I think I’ve persuaded that it’s better to live with me than not

Growing up doesn’t seem all it’s cracked up to be, once I’ve finished and published this ramble, I might head back to the internet in search of more data to answer my current question. What’s the difference between investing in a Stocks’n'Shares ISA over the next 30 years and a Government approved Stakeholder pension? Does the tax relief on contributions but also the administration fees outweigh the lack of flexibility with what you can do with the capital come retirement age?

Gah! It’s almost tedious enough to try an experiment in the kitchen, can you leaven an apple cake using yeast because the nearest shop to home’s sold out of self-raising flour?

Not having had alloy wheels on a car before, it didn’t occur to me that they would need some TLC every now and again.

The problem started about a year ago, when my Saab 9-5 was 8, with the two front wheels losing their air pressure more quickly than I’d expect. I found myself topping them back up from 20-odd psi every couple of weeks.

Earlier on this summer, it turns out ‘every couple of weeks or so’ wasn’t often enough and I’d done sufficient damage to my side walls to need a new set of tyres. Oops. It got as far as losing 5 psi a day before I got around to doing something about it. Even paying 50p a day for a few minutes at the nearest air hose wasn’t too expensive over a year, but the week’s holiday away from such things was enough to tip the balance.

The problem is that alloys rely on their coats of paint and lacquer to keep an airtight seal with the tyres and over time this gets attacked by the atmosphere and the occasional ambush by feral curbstones.

Gouges from rims of old alloy wheels

It was characterised by the paint on the spokes bubbling up as well as the more obvious gouges near the rims.

Bubbly paint on old alloy wheels

There are a number of services advertising on the interwebs that profess to refurbish wheels, but they all boil down to

1. sand blast the old coatings off back down the the aluminium
2. spray on a base coat
3. spray on the colour paint of your choice
4. varnish

As amusing as it would be to have hot pink or lime green wheels, local expertise (as well as not having to take days out of work) beats fancy websites so I turned down a national franchise and visited Ian Jemison Engineering, who just about all my team at work had heard of (except me, of course). He’s more well known for his years of experience driving rally cars, so I was confident I’d be in safe hands. In his words, “they were much more badly corroded inside than outside, and the outside was pretty poor”.

He doesn’t publish his prices, so I won’t either, but it cost much less than the set of tyres and it took a day to do all 4. The effect was very good, if I was bothered about the appearance I’d be very happy as they look brand new. As it is, that’s another 7-8 years of life out of my wheels, without following the advice of the dealers and spending over a thousand pounds on a new set or having to fit a compressor to the car Scrapheap Challenge style.

Newly refurbished wheels

Result.

I harvested this year’s apple crop yesterday, another surprisingly generous harvest considering the small stature of the trees and their pots, I also gave up on the tomato vines putting any more growth into their fruit and picked it all green.

The tomato variety, F1 Totem, did well again this year, keeping to a bushy habit despite having plenty of space for its root to run around in. It wasn’t anything like as early to fruit as in previous years, but that’s almost certainly because of the amount of wind that whistles through our garden. I had two containers planted up with it, one longer trough that’s about twice as deep as a grow bag, and a shorter one that’s four times as deep. Despite the roots only going halfway down the compost in the deep trough, its plants did over twice as well as the shallower trough, so that’s worth remembering for next year.

I composted the rest of my courgette and squash vines after their leaves got covered with mildew and pretty much stopped working, although again I took a reasoanble final crop off them. The yellow ball variety, One Ball, did reasonably well, but was too late and didn’t get the chance to develop its dozen or so fruits per fine. The green ball variety, Eight Ball, did better and because its skin is pretty solid, I’m treating just like a squash so am hopeful they’ll keep for a couple of months.

I lifted a few pots of alpine strawberries that showed just how vigorously they can spread when given half a chance, to make room for a collection of red cabbage seedlings that should hopefully mean that next spring I’ll be mostly eating cabbage, as well as finding people with a home for some strawberries

If my chutney making is anything to go by, Autumn is early this year, the previous two years saw me harvesting green tomatoes the last weekend in October, not the first. The local squirrel has been busy stashing away acorns and nuts to make sure we get a few trees growing in odd places next year.

Squirrel, making a getaway

I’m having a go in a slightly different way this time around, in a bid to reduce the simmer time and therefore keep the colour less caramelised, I took out the seeds and soggy bits from the middles of the tomatoes. It was particularly fiddly, but seems to have done the job. I’m also mixing my own pickling spice which I first infused into the white wine vinegar over a slow heat for about half an hour: 1 teaspoon nepal peppercorns, 1 star anise, 1 teaspoon coriander seed, half a teaspoon cloves, 1 sprig rosemary and 4 small sticks of cinnamon. It’s simmering now and will be for another hour or two, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Spices to infuse in the vinegar for pickling

A quick consultation with the RHS Big Book of Everything suggests that I need to leave my Canna and Fushias well alone until the spring before trying to split or root some cuttings which means it’s time to see what spring flowering bulbs are left in the shops. If you give them time to get their roots spread before the frosts hit, they can flower a week or two earlier than if you put them in directly before the spring and stand a greater chance of growing on the rest of the year to flower again next spring.

Port Ellen

I’m writing these words from the Quayside at Port Ellen, queuing up for the ferry home with the smell of salt on the breeze and seagulls cawwing over the harbour.

This week’s Academy was a far cry from the combination of chemistry lessons and warehouse operations that I was expecting. Each of the people we met had a seemingly limitless collection of stories of their experience of the island, life on it and the history of the distilling industry. It became clear that this was an exceptionally important part of the end product, so much so that a quarter of Jim’s 8 ‘Key Factors influencing the Flavour of Whisky’ are Location and People.

My fellow students were a great bunch both individually and as a group, I’m certain it wouldn’t have been anything like as fun otherwise. They were all rock solid whisky followers and I had much to learn from them, as well as more than a few laughs. I perhaps spent a bit too much time with my face in a notebook and a laptop writing up my notes from the action packed days, but I didn’t get to know them as much as I’d have liked. Perhaps I’ll just have to use the whisky ships as a feeble excuse to return to Switzerland.

Duncan and Jim both said visitors take a piece of Islay home with them. It’s not just the scenery or the lack of hurrying or even totally transforming the style of management of a reasonably successful business. But I will miss the belief in what they’re doing and the general joie de vivre, even down to the smiling and waving at other drivers as they go by.

I had the chance to briefly converse with a novelist from Strasbourg who had just arrived at Bruichladdich to research exactly this, all their stories were written with the goal of encouraging readers to enjoy life, wherever it may lead. I like the sound of that, it will be interesting to see if there’s an essence of Islay that can be distilled into words.

For now, it’s back to reality and the sail and 300 mile drive home again. I wonder if the car alarm symphony will play a different tune on the return leg and how far I can get up the Mull of Kintyre before passers by replace waving back with a funny look.

When I was saying my farewells, everybody said I’d be back, sooner or later. Y’know, I think they’re right.

*a week passes*

It hardly seems real that my trip to Islay was a week ago. Apart from the fun of recounting my experiences and a few stories to my malt loving friends, it’s been quite difficult to hang onto the feelings of last week. It’s all too easy to descend back into the busy busy busy work and the mindless consumption of life, whether it be watching dvds (Battlestar Galatica and the simply fantastic Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
, playing computer games, cooking something quick rather than making it from scratch or just kicking back and guzzling novels at a rate of knots.

I mentioned that the sense of smell was based hugely on memories of scenes. Well, just the smell of a dram of Black Bottle was enough to sent me slamming straight back into the Still Room at Bruichladdich. If the dram smelled of a 1 on a scale of 10, then the still room smelt of 11, but it was still enough to bring back the association. And of course, I’ve got a few props (well, ok, bottles), more than a few photographs and a lot of interest in my holiday musings. Thanks all!

September is a fantastic month to spend outdoors, the sun is still bright, the skies clear and the wind slightly cooling. That, the garden that needs a spot of tidying and propagating from and the myriad recipes I’ve got that need writing up should help me resist sloth’s siren song for a while longer.

Half eaten cherries

3 weeks ago, I spent a merry afternoon putting my hard earned boy scout knots to good use lashing together a fruit cage to put my cherry tree in. The tree is a graft of two varieties, I can’t remember their names, but one is about 3 weeks later than the other. Last year was the first year it was old enough to start fruiting and the birds got them before I did, so this year was going to be different.

Lashings of lashings

The cage was pretty simple, I used three 2 metre supports, three 1.5m crosspieces and three 2m diagonal braces, lots of garden twine and 4 metres of fruit netting from the local DIY shop. You do need one diagonal bracing (remember the triangles, always the triangles) per facing, otherwise it will fall over in the wind. If you can’t be bothered with that bit, then bury it in the ground a bit or pretend its a tent and deploy some guy ropes.

Finished fruit cage

The cage only has to be up for 4 weeks of the year, but even so, the corners do have to cope with a fair bit of abuse so make sure you do a good tight job of your square lashings and remember a few frapping turns. The diagonal bracings are better done with a lashing with more give in it, it’s the angles that hold it together.

Cherries!

Keeping on a cherry theme, it turned out to be worth the effort putting the cage together because one week later, we had our first handful of home grown cherries. They were sweet and juicy and whilst they weren’t quite as big as professionally imported ones, the smug factor was great. The second variety should be ready for harvest sometime this week, if the sun puts in an appearance again.

Jumbo gooseberries

The gooseberries have been picked and put straight into the freezer. This year I wound up with a smaller number of really big dessert gooseberries, which I think I’ll do on purpose next year. General opinion holds that one bush gives a certain weight of crop each year, so it’s up to you whether you want to have lots of middling fruits or fewer big ones.

In the intervening three weeks, the blackcurrants have ripened and been harvested. That bush is probably 5 years old now and is giving me about a punnet a year, which should be plenty for an blackcurrant jelly to have with roast dinners or one or two cheesecakes. I couldn’t decide so froze them too.

More scale insects than you could possibly imagine

Annoyingly, the blackcurrant bush has also produced a bumper crop of scale insect, I don’t think I’ve seen such an infestation before. Before I have to get my hands dirty and scrape all the buggers off, which would not be a fun way to spend an hour, I’m trying a two pronged approach to control it. The first was a few blasts from an extremely unorganic pesticide spray, which I’m sure won’t really work terribly well but the HSE won’t let you use proper stuff at home. I’m also leaving 10-20 berries on the plant and putting the plant out in the open, I’m hoping that will attract a few birds in who might think the scale insects would make a tasty course after nomming the rest of the berries.

The red currants are having a year off after the major pruning I administered last autumn, I had to cut out a lot of growth that would have fruited this year if the bush was going to survive in its pot. It’s grown back well, although the same can’t be said for the cuttings I struck in a pot. The cuttings that went straight into the ground have done exceedingly well, but in a pot? not so much.

Canna

The Canna I bought earlier on this year has grown well, although it’s turned out to be vulnerable to the wind that howls through our garden and its leaves have been shredded somewhat. They’re still attractive and it’s fine to grow in a pot, but it needs more shelter than our garden gives. A sunny corner, perhaps?

The sweet peas have grown well up the supports and the first flower has opened. We’ll have to remember to keep on top of picking them because the instant that a sweet pea plant sets a seed, it will stop producing flowers and start dying back.

Some of the courgette plants have established better than others, unfortunately I guessed wrong which bed would do better than the other so things are getting more than a little cramped in places. Still, I’m confident I’ll get a major crop of ball courgettes this summer.

Spinach “tarpy” did very well to start with, its unusually shaped leaves were fun and it coped well with everything I cooked it in, however, it’s completely bolted after about 12 weeks, so definately needs to a succession sowing each month. I’ve run out of space for that, though.

Tomato F1 “Totem” are doing as well as in previous years, bushing out nicely and generally holding their form. Unlike maincrops, you don’t need to go to the effort of pinching out the sideshoots, training the main stem up a support and stopping it when its as high as you. Throw the seedlings in the ground, wait a bit and eventually you get a nice crop of sweet tomatoes. I hope.

The peas and beans were a write off, next year I’m growing dwarfing varieties of each and direct sowing, probably without major supports.

Finally, the beetroot is developing nicely and a few roots have started to swell up, fingers crossed for that too.

This script monitors whether or not a host is responding to ICMP and can be happily set to a resolution of 1 second. It’s written in bash and will happily run on my linux. It should run on yours, too.


./pingit 1 myHostname.dyndns.org > /var/log/myIspIsNotIdeal.log


#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -ne 2 ]
  then
  echo "Usage: $0 <timeout in seconds> <hostname to ping>"
  exit 1
fi
while true
do
  echo -n "$(date) "
  ping -q -c 1 -W $1 $2 > /dev/null
  case $? in
  1)
    echo "down"
    ;;
  0)
    echo "ok"
    sleep $1
    ;;
  2)
    echo "the damage report machine has exploded"
    ;;
  esac
done

Run it and redirect its output to a file for later grepping. Once I’m happy its bedded in and working, and I’ve finished tarting it about a bit, I’ll make it only output a line on failure.

I’m normally monogamous when reading fiction, I prefer stories that hold your attention whilst you furiously turn the pages but perhaps wouldn’t stand up too well in a court of literary criticism, or put another way, crap sci fi novels. When my imagination isn’t flying between the stars, I quite like the adventure from reading non fiction travelogues, especially those well written with a diarists attention to detail.

Michael Palin has been holding my attention for a while now, it took me a good two months or so to plough through his ‘Python Years’ diaries, but having just polished off Himalaya
and Hemingway, I can see that he was just warming up. Himalaya especially was an incredible read, not just the lush descriptions of my favourite sorts of landscapes, but the stories told by the people he met. With Palin’s incredible optimism, I do wonder if his travels are just gifted with far too much luck, or he just doesn’t recount bad things that happen. I’m definately going to keep my eye out for a second hand copy of 80 days or Sahara.

They’re in a similar vein to Ewen McGregor and Charlie Borman’s “Long Way” motorcycle adventures. Again with those two, I read the books long before I watched the DVDs of the TV series. I found myself recognising key characters from the books which meant you had an understanding of the stars unvoiced opinions as well as the on screen action. I might have to see about seeing Himalaya at some point, although I suspect that’s a job for LoveFilm as it’s unlikely to be watched more than once.

I’m writing this whilst trying to catch up with some TV, which due to the wonders of modern technology is all prerecorded on my PVR. One of my staple series is Saturday Kitchen. This one was actually from yesterday and had Galton Blackiston showing how easy it is to reuse leftover risotto as risotto cakes with an amusingly heckling audience. The studio guests are normally to be seen and not heard, but I quite liked the banter when they joined in, especially when it took a detour into gardening advice for growing Cherville.. It’s not quite up to the Hairy Bikers standards of pandemonium though. I often cook risotto so it was great to see just how easy they are to make, especially when presented in Blackiston’s stern lecturing tones. I wonder what would happen if he ever met somebody like Jamie Oliver..

It seems I’m not the only person with a plentiful supply of summer asparagus, James’ studio guest this week got some spears that were picked at 6 o’clock that morning and went into the pot at about half past 10. nice. He’s poaching and then chargrilling it in a similar way to how I cook it, but because he’s a proper chef he’s presenting it with a freshly hollandaise sauce, which I can’t imagine ever coping with.

Mmm, food again. oops.
Time for a cup of Harvey’s Lapsang Souchong for me.

As part of my attempts to steal a march on the seasons, I’ve hardening off my courgette plants by leaving them outside to the wind and rain during the day before bringing them in out of the cold at night, so they’ve now been planted out in the veg plots, alongside my second batch of beans and peas. The idea being that the legumes will grow up and out of the way whilst the courgettes will curl around the base. The beds have got plenty of horse compost in them, so I’m hoping not to have to feed this year.

Courgettes can be a bit annoying to grow in open ground because they’re what I all a ground vine, they generally don’t grow lots of shoots from a central node, rather they go crawling off along the ground sprouting leaves and flowers from successive nodes, much like a climber. However, when you get the full sized leaves, not to mention the fruit growing, the weight combined with the wind can easily twist and break the stem that’s just out of the ground. The best way I’ve found so far is to just stuff it with straw so it’s sufficiently supported, not dissimilar to strawberries. However, that stage is a month or three away yet.

My second batch of peas and beans were not left outside in a plastic greenhouse where our vicious wind could snatch them away, so have gone straight from a sunny window to the open ground. They’ll take a check whilst they establish and I suspect one or two might not cope with the shock, but I’m hoping that the slightly early start will provide a bigger centre of energy for the second half of spring. They’re also nicely visual and grow quickly enough to give a good sense of satisfaction.

Beetroot and Chard Seedlings

Some of the chard and beetroot seeds I sowed directly 3 weeks ago have started to germinate, so the plan of having freshly preserved beetroot for salads is still on. The strawberry spinach on the other hand is showing no signs of life, but it’s early days yet.

The sweet pea seeds I had left from a Gardener’s World Live the other year didn’t do well at all, so I stopped at a local nursery in Buttercrambe to buy a few that somebody else had started. It turned out to be a great move because they also had a few bargain priced Cannas that looked similar to one that Mrs C spotted last summer, so that leapt into my basket along with a couple of interesting looking geranium variants, one of which looked more like a Canadian maple leaf

Canna

I’ve been past that nursery a number of times, but hadn’t been in until now. It’s a really interesting place to nose around, the great variety of plants looked very healthy and well kept and some of the bigger containers were set out in groups inside formally box hedged borders which was a nice touch. Like the other local nurserys, it was a good personal service, the person you were buying the plants from was the same person who grew them, so you knew that, for instance, the Canna hadn’t been in its pot for very long so it needed to stay put all summer to grow into it. And the freshly homemade cakes between the fresh veg and the till in the shop were highly tempting.

Sweet Peas with Helper

A couple of the clumps of sweet peas were to try to grow around an interesting wood lattice mushroom I got the other year, so with help from the neighbour’s cat (posing with some plant pots), those got planted up today. Having such a dense structure to try to anchor in the compost was an interesting challenge, so I’m hoping I don’t need to guy it down to stand up to the wind.

Otherwise, the rest of today was potting on my olive tree and Camellia on a size, which leaves me wondering how to cook do some of the fresh asparagus for tea (we’ve got at least two places within as many miles that grow and sell asparagus) spoilt much?

This weekend, I needed to help somebody do a task on their computer, but I couldn’t use too much jargon to talk them through it over the phone, well teamspeak and a headset but same difference and what I needed was an easy method of sharing their computer screen to show them what was meant.

I’ve used Adobe Connect for a while at work as a way of interacting with other people over the internet, it’s a very good tool and because it uses Flash and sits in your browser, you don’t need to mess about with routers and NAT traversal like you do with something like Windows XP’s Remote Assistance, but it costs noticably more than nothing, so it was no use for home. A bit of Googling about later revealed that the tool I wanted turned out to be, Adobe Connect Now. Yup, it’s now free. Yay.

I signed up for the free service, the email to confirm my address came through immediately (unlike a couple of others I tried that took half an hour to email me) and it just worked. You only get one meeting ’space’ per account with the free version, but that’s ok because I’m only one person. I then send the URL to my meeting room to the person you’re assisting, they click on it to enter, I confirm in the webpage that they’re allowed in, I promote them to ‘host’ and they click the ’share desktop’ button. Instant win and showing somebody what I meant was so much less fustrating than trying to talk them through it.

Definately one to add to your toolkits.

I hadn’t heard of Waiting for Godot when this caught my eye back in January, if it wasn’t for the superstar cast then I would probably have missed out competely on this 57 year old play, which would definatly have been my loss.

So on Thursday morning, we headed off to the station to nip up to Newcastle for the matinee, knowing that everybody else was at work whilst we were off travelling added to a feeling that we were playing truant.

I’ve only been past Newcastle before so it was also an excuse to nose around the place a bit. Many cities aren’t at their finest near the railway station, but this was an interesting exception. The castle keep, built on top of the castle that gave the city its name, is a stone’s throw from the railway in anarea full of three dimensional nooks and crannies, just my type of architecture. The castle had some very interesting repairs from the mid 1970s, which illustrates what it could have looked like in its prime.

The river has developed quite a collection of bridges over the years, all of which need to permit Navigation so some rotate along one axis or another to get out of the way whilst others are so tall and lofty they’ve got permanent signs advertising the Samaritans. The cherry and magnolia trees were in full blossom which set off the buildings nicely.

I didn’t really know what to expect from the play, I did a bit of backround reading, mostly on Wikipedia but I hoped that it would be an instructive experience in an undefined Cultural sort of way. I’d picked up that it was a comedy and that it had a sterotype of ‘nothing really happens’, but that’s about it.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried.

The play itself was very enjoyable from the moment Sir Ian McKellen’s Estragon made his entrance climbing over a wall to when he and Patrick Stewart’s Vladimir danced off the stage after their second curtain call.

I know it’s very much Not The Done Thing to talk about the cast rather than the characters, but I’m far from well versed in theatre etiquette and, well, seeing those two perform live on stage was highly noteworthy for me. We’ve all seen them perform on the small and big screens, but seeing them perform ‘proper theatre’ was very impressive, especially Gogo’s authenticate Lancashire accent and Didi’s perfect comic timing.

I did speak to a few people who’ve read or even studied the play and perhaps seen it performed and they all agreed that it was a very complicated work that can be quite impenetrable and why would I go to another city to go see it? For me, this performance was none of that. It was laugh out loud funny in places, with strong use of my favourite comedy elements, repetition (Vladimir looking into his hat, or Estragon and his shoes, or The Thing With The Hats) as well as some deadpan but absurd props, such as a pair of old boots holding a spotlight centre stage. The repetitive comedy seemed to degenerate towards the end towards “The same thing we do every night Pinky, Waiting for Godot”.

Memorising lines is something I’ve never worked out how to do, I suspect it would be quite fun to be able to reel off Lucky’s stream of conciousness on demand, (not that anybody would ever demand it of course, but I’d find it amusing to simply be able to do it).

The day job doesn’t seem to be under much threat from my attempts at being a theatre critic, so I’ll close it with this:

I wouldn’t have gone if it wasn’t for the cast, but their skill and experience made a properly grown-up play really come alive for me. I’m glad I went and highly recommend that if you can snatch up tickets at this late stage, everybody else go too.