Tag Archives: eric hall

Sunday 4th March 2012 – IT WAS SUNDAY TODAY …

… and despite me having another one of these “04:30 in the morning” sessions, it was 10:25 when I was up and about.

Just as well, though, because I had to have an early start.

FC Pionsat Sy Hilaire’s 1st XI was playing Clermont Fontaine du Bac’s 2nd XI today and that necessitated a drive almost to Aubière – and the kick-off was at 13:00. That meant an 11:30 start from here.

Finding the stadium was easy. Finding the entrance was something else. Eventually, after many trials and tribulations, I stumbled upon it – in the … errr …”rue du Fontaine du Bac”.

D’ohhhh!!!!

The opponents were a good strong attacking side, and Pionsat’s team was … errr … somewhat makeshift, especially in defence. Not one of the four established full-backs was out there today.

And Jerome, who usually tears up opposition defences, was on the bench (the only substitute as well) and Franck resisted all temptation to put him on the field in place of the one or two attacking midfielders who were clearly only there in body this afternoon.

He managed a brief 15-minute cameo when Cedric was forced to hobble off. It was no surprise that Pionsat lost 3-1, and it was something of a disappointment.

On the way back I stopped to fuel up at the Auchan at Clermont-Ferrand – and €1.42 per litre for the diesel. It’s ridiculous the cost of fuel right now, and it’s not going to let up.

It’s also raining – the first time for 8 days – and the wind has shifted direction and is blowing from the north-west. We’ve been promised snow again on Tuesday and by the looks of things it may well be here before that.

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Saturday 3rd March 2012 – THE WEATHER …

… wasn’t quite as nice today.

Based upon the scheme of description that I use, we had “scattered clouds” this morning followed by “clouds” this afternoon. That’s rather a change from the “glorious” of the last couple of days.

I was up quite early this morning and had something of a lazy half-day doing nothing in particular.

From there it was off to Commentry, just for a change, to do a round of the shops there. But there was nothing extraordinary at all on offer about the place today and I didn’t buy anything special at all

I did make it to the swimming baths at Neris-les-bBains though, for the first time in ages, and I’m all clean now.

I finally managed to watch a football match tonight – the first time for what feels like several years.

Down in Pionsat, FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI were playing Menetrol so I went along to lend them my support. And despite playing a little better than they have done just recently, they still managed to lose again.

They are now struggling near the foot of the table with relegation starting to stare them in the face and it’s all looking quite ominous.

-3

Friday 2nd March 2012 – WELL, I DIDN’T …

… quite have my early night last night.

I started talking to someone on the internet just after I posted last night’s blog and it was 02:00 when I finally went to bed.

But here’s something that doesn’t happen every day – not only was I awake when the alarm went off, and not only was I breakfasting, but I was actually outside weeding the garden when the alarm clock went off this morning.

Wide awake at 07:30, I was, and I’ve no idea why. I must have wet the bed or something.

But it was a good day to be wide awake so early. By the time that I came in for a coffee – at about 11:50 – it was 24.6°C outside with gorgeous blue skies and everything. It really was marvellous.

Terry came round a little later. He had a job of work to do in the vicinity and so he popped by to sey hello. And I swapped a few 4mm bolts for a few sacks of sawdust – the composting toilet depends on sawdust, and plenty of it, and I was starting to run low, although you might not think so with all of the wood that I have cut up just recently

With it being so nice, I quickly coupled up the solar water heater -cum – shower unit. I was not really wanting to do that as there are a few improvements that I want to do, but it was a shame to miss out on the solar heat and the possibility of a shower some time in the near future.

I could certainly do with a shower anyway, and I’ll be heading to the swimming baths at Neris-les-Bains if it stays nice tomorrow.

With so much solar energy (we had 243 amp-hours today – that’s about 3KwH) the water in the dump load reached 48°C. That was the cue for the first load of washing for the year.

And there was plenty of that to do as well.

And it was nice to sit outside this afternoon with a butty or two, a coffee from the electric coffee machine, and watch the washing machine do the business using water heated by the surplus energy off my system. It really is a sense of acccomplishment for all of this to happen.

But as for the washing itself, most of it is going to have to be done again. I tried to do it using these washing nut things but they turned out to be a dismal failure and haven’t made mush impression at all on the dirty stuff.

I’ll have to buy some “proper” washing powder stuff and do it again.

After all of that, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden again.

I didn’t have the fire going because I had the washing hanging out, but there’s now a huge mountain of weeds and so on ready to be burnt and I might do that tomorrow morning.

The area to where I’m going to move one of the compost bins is now clear. All I need to do is to dig up a few small tree stumps there, and compact some hardcore down to stop the weeds from penetrating from underneath, and then I can put the first of the bins there.

And when the pile of weeds has been burnt, I can start to put the greenhouse there where it ought to be.

It seems to me that everyone is starting to come out of hibernation now.

-2

Thursday 1st March 2012 I’M GOING …

… to have an early night in a couple of minutes. All of this paperwork in the morning is wearing me out

But still, it’s nice to be up early (well, early for me, anyway) and spend the morning with a pot of coffee.

Ohh what luxury!

But once the paperwork period was over, I excelled myself by doing a little tidying up in the bedroom where I’ve been working. I can actually see some floor now, and that’s real progress.

I’ve also been tidying up a little in the barn, and outside I’ve fought my way further down the garden and hacked out a load of brambles.

What I’ll be doing tomorrow afternoon if it stays nice (and today was easily the nicest day of the year with over 120 amp-hours on one of the solar banks) will be to have a garden fire and burn a load of dead vegetation, and then move one of the compost bins to its final position.

Won’t that be a cue for a torrential rainstorm?

The hour-meters for the solar banks, those that I installed yesterday, are giving me the results that I expected, but the hour-meter on the overcharge is not quite so good.

It seems that there’s some current seeping through the overcharge controller once the voltage passes 13.4 volts. Not much – a question of a couple of milli-amps or so – but it’s enough to start the hourmeter working.

These things are so sensitive that this one is feeding off the current that is seeping. The old car clock that I was using before couldn’t detect that current, and so tHe figures are going to be a little distorted as from now on

Another thing that I’ve been doing, or at least, trying to do, is to continue to drill this 48mm hole through the wall between the lean-to and the house in order to pass some electrical cables through.

But for some reason, the first 25cms went through without any real effort whatsover but ever since then it’s been making no impression at all, and I’m not halfway yet. Today with an hour or so, I reckon that I made almost one centimetre.

There’s definitely something not quite right about this

Wednesday 29th February 2012 – I’VE GONE …

… onto summer hours!

Yes, already! It’s now light enough to be still working outside at 19:00 and so that’s what I’m doing.

And the computing activities that I need to do, well I’m doing those from 10:00 until 12:00.

So with an early night after my dithering about, I had an early morning as well, just for a change. And on went the coffee pot again because if anything it was even nicer today than yesterday.

So much so, in fact, that I ran the electric heater up here. Not because I needed to, but because it was a shame to waste the energy.

One of the things that I needed to do was to print off about 50 pages of stuff that I need to complete. And I think that I’m having printer issues. The black ink didn’t work at all and in the end I put a new cartridge in.

That worked fine for a few pages and then we were back to the missing lines and dirty heads again. I cleaned the heads, and that worked fine for a while and then we were back in the missing lines and dirty heads.

I don’t know why that is. Printers never seem to last very long with me.

This afternoon I had a pile of fun.

I’ve had a few parcels delivered these last couple of days, and one of them contained the half-a-dozen 12 volt DC hour meters similar to the 230 volt ones that I bought to run with the mains inverters.

The purpose of these 12-volt hour meters is to wire them into the solar panel circuits to see for how long a solar charge is received by the panels (to help in resiting them to an optimum position), to wire into the wind turbine circuits ditto, and also to wire into the overcharge circuits to see for how long surplus energy is created.

And so I spent a happy afternoon wiring in the overcharge timers and the solar timers. I’m not able to do the wind turbine timers as I need diodes to stop the backflow of energy from the batteries and they haven’t come yet.

The wind turbines are connected directly to the batteries with no charge controller so if you wire a timer in there without stopping the current flowing back from the batteries, the timers will be running 24 hours per day, feeding off the batteries.

I also did some tidying up of the panel that I made a couple of months ago – the one with the 600-watt inverter, the electric meter and the electrical sockets, that I’m using in the barn. That looks neater and tidier, and works better than before.

But I forgot to say that when I was in Brussels at Christmas, Marianne was chucking out an old hair drier – something like 400 watts or so. Anyway, I chucked it into Caliburn and brought it back here.

The reason?

Every now and again I use heat shrink insulation on bare wires and while you are supposed to shrink it using a hot-air paint stripper, I don’t have enough power to run a hot-air paint stripper.

I do have enough though to run a 400-watt hair drier and while it’s slower and not quite as effective, it does in fact work well enough.

I’m quite impressed with that.

-2

Tuesday 28th February 2012 – I’VE SPENT …

… most of the day on the computer today.

One or two things have needed doing rather urgently and that was what took up most of the day.

But there was so much bright sunlight that I could sit up here with the luxury of a coffee machine on the boil all day, which I refilled as necessary. The last time that I did that was probably back in 2007 when I was still living in Brussels … "it was just a week or two ago actually" – ed.

But I ended up not having ny tea last night. The fact was that it was far too warm to light the fire up here and what with feeling a little weary this evening I didn’t really feel like going downstairs to cook anything.

It’s hard to summon up the enthusiasm thse days and I don’t know why.

It’s not as if I’ve been working hard, is it?

Monday 27th February 2012 – IT WASN’T QUITE …

… as warm up herethis morning.

A mere 13.4°C up here in fact.

But considering that the temperature had dropped to -2.2°C outside last night and that I had no heating on in here last night either, I was quite impressed by that.

I’m wondering in fact whether or not it’s staying warmer up here since I finished the ceiling in the room below. It does seem like it.

This morning I went off to Sauret-Besserve and picked up Liz, and then we made our way down to Gerzat to record the Radio Arverne programmes. And wasn’t that a farce? They have had new computers and new programs installed and Bernard didn’t know how to work it all.

It took quite a bit of telephone assistance together with a little first-hand aid from Yours Truly to organise everything.

At one stage it looked like we might have to come back and do it all over again – an idea that didn’t impress me too much.

Instead of being a quick hour or so it ended up more like two and a half hours. Both Liz and I had things to do this afternoon so that meant hurrying back up here to get ready, and then off to Radio Tartasse in Marcillat en Combraille to carry out another little task, more of which anon.

Today we had well over 11 hours of solar energy – a huge improvement on winter’s previous best of 10:49. It seems that the weather has suddenly opened up.

So much so that when I came back from Radio Tartasse I did a little gardening – not on my garden but in the lane there are several small trees starting to grow and their branches have been scratching the side of Caliburn. I spent a pleasant half hour or so cutting them down.

I had a fire up here tonight although it wasn’t strictly necessary. And the temperature went to over 25°C while I cooked my baked potatoes and ratatouille.

It won’t be much longer before I have to abandon the idea of cooking up here on the stove. It’s warming up far too much.

-2

Sunday 26th February 2012 – ONE THING …

… that I can never understand is how it is that it can be 4:30 in the morning and I’m wide awake and I only go to bed because it’s force of habit – and yet next morning I wake up, don’t move for ages, slowly come round, eventually make sure that I’m wide awake and then get up because there’s no point in lying in any longer, and it’s only 09:20.

I don’t understand that at all.

And so despite it being yet another day of rest, I did the script for the new radio show, more of which anon, and then went off toi watch the football at Pionsat as the season has restarted.

I was spoilt for choice – FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI were at home to Chanat or the 2nd XI were away at Lapeyrouse?

Now I’ve never been to Lapeyrouse for a match, believe it or not, but the 1st XI match sounded much more interesting and so I waited until 14:50 and went down to the ground, only to find the game postponed.

GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

If only someone had let me know!

Mind you, it’s probably as well that I didn’t go, because the 2nd XI were soundly spanked by the opposition.

But what was remarkable today is that I had to cook my tea downstairs in the verandah on the gas stove. Reason – I’ve not had the fire lit all day. When I woke up it was 17°C and it’s currently 15.5°C.

Isn’t this all a big change from two weeks ago?

-3

Saturday 25th February 2012 – AFTER MY TRIUMPHS …

… of yesterday, I celebrated by doing … errr … badger all.

That’s right. A nice lazy days today.

And I reckoned that I deserved one after all of the hard work that I have put in over the last week or so on my presentation.

Mind you, I didn’t quite do nothing at all. In fact I managed a little (but not much) tidying up and later went down to St Eloy les Mines to do the shopping this afternoon around Carrefour and LIDL. A couple of hours out around the shops and even that wasn’t exciting because I met no-one whom I knew and didn’t buy anything out of the ordinary.

And back here, I carried on with the rest of my Day of Rest – and see if I care.

Friday 24th February 2012 – WELL, THAT WAS EXCITING!

Two hours on my feet in front of about 25 people doing my presentation of the Trans-Labrador Highway. Loads of people whom I knew there too which was really nice.

And doing it all in French as well!

And It went down quite well too, much to my surprise.

The thing that I reckon is most important about living in new surroundings is to make an effort to integrate and to take an active role in community affairs. And so that’s my bit done for the next few years.

Anyway, it’s my birthday today so happy birthday to me of course. And in keeping with tradition I did my best not to do anything today. That’s what birthdays are all about of course.

But it didn’t quite work out like that as I had to redo the presentation (and it STILL didn’t work on anyone’s computer except mine and isn’t that a mystery?) and then I had a surprise visit from Terry to wish me a happy birthday, bring me a birthday cake (thanks, Liz) and a couple of birthday presents, to wit one cement mixer and a box of screwdriver bits.

It’s really nice when your friends understand instinctively your needs.

So that was today, really. But here’s a piece of surprising information – apart from about an hour earlier this morning, I’ve had no heat on in here today. And it’s well after 02:00 and the temperature is still over 15°C.

-2

Thursday 23rd February 2012 – HAVING FINALLY …

… broken the back of my presentation, I can get on and do other things.

This morning I cut up another pile of wood for in here, and doesn’t the lean-to start to look empty now, especially as I discovered that a major proportion of the heap in the middle is actually bricks and stone from when the wall collapsed all those years ago.

Moving some of that stuff out has made quite a difference, that’s for sure.

It’s going to be a while though before I can finish in there though – a term of years is not unlikely. The more wood I cut up, the more that I seem to find.

I also had a good look at the window in the bedroom. Having given the matter considerable thought, I now reckon that I know how I’m going to do the surround. And the next chance that I have to work in there, I’ll be making a start.

But tomorrow I’ll be printing off my notes because the presentation is at 20:00 tomorrow evening. So just you watch the printer break down or run out of ink

But assuming that we do go ahead, everyone is invited!

20:00 at the village hall in Virlet

-2

Wednesday 22nd February 2012 – GRRRRR!

This presentation is getting on my wick.

Having been at it all day yesterday and all day today, I am much nearer my goal but it hasn’t half been a struggle.

The issue is that PowerPoint seems to grind out at 1mb of space and everything after that is lost. That means that only 37 of the slides are being displayed, instead of the … gulp … 123

The answer is of course simple. To prepare four different presentations of about 30 slides each and that should keep it under the limit.

Simple, you might think, except that OpenOffice doesn’t seem to offer the possibility to delete multiple selections of slides. It seems to be just one at a time, and it has ben taking me forever to do that.

There must be a solution because my whole theory about computer programs is that I’m not the only one surely who wants that facility, so it must be there somewhere. It’s not the kind of simple software function that a software designer would have missed.

But I’m blowed if I can find it.

So it’s been the laborious one-by-one procedure.

All day.

And I’m fed up

Totally

Tuesday 21st February 2012 – IT’S GETTING CLOSE …

… to my presentation time.

For those of you not clued up to what is happening, a few months ago I was at a meeting of the village committee here in Virlet where they were discussing the programm for this year.

Once a month, they have an “event” when everyone is invited, and they ask someone to animate it. When they were deciding on the events, they had most of the meetings covered, but one date stuck out like a sore thumb – 24th February.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that 24th February is a date of special significance for me, and so it seemed like an opportunity. As you know, I’m all very much in favour of integration and participating in community events. I should be feeding something back into the community of which I am part.

As a result I offered to animate the meeting on that date, and I’m doing a presentation of my 2010 trip around the Trans-Labrador Highway

Much of it was pretty straightforward but I seem to have run aground somewha.

for some reason that I haven’t quite grasped, a presentation done in OpenOffice and exported as a Powerpoint presentation only displays the first 37 slides (which coincidentally runs to about 1mb) instead of the entire load of … gulp … 123 slides.

I’ve not yet found a workaround for it either.

And this is where I am at the moment

And I only have until Friday to do it too.

Monday 20th February 2012 – I’VE HAD SOMETHING …

… of a busy day today.

And it started, believe it or not, with me being up and about before the alarm clock went off – something that doesn’t happen every day.

So after an early breakfast I stayed in and spent much of the time on the computer working on another project for the radio, more of which anon.

But this involved making a few downloads from the internet. And as I watched these downloads unfold I noticed the internet speed dropping slowly but surely. Clearly something is up, and it’s high time I fixed it.

That meant disabling and then deleting the MacAfee anti-virus suite, which is something pretty appalling and I can’t think whyever it is that computer manufacturers bundle it in.

Once that was out of the way I went back to prehistoric computer protection, and installed the latest free AVG anti-virus software, and then Ad-Aware, Spybot and C-Cleaner, the same as I have been using for years.

Sure enough, 2 viruses, 140-odd adware links and the odd bit of spyware, and half a gb of bunged-up old temporary files all littering the computer and after quite a bit of patience and persuasion, they have all gone.

Now I seem to have a leaner, fitter computer.

Mind you, trying to download AVG at 9.3kbs took absolutely hours, but it was worth it and I’m hoping that I can win back the time in due course.

It’s all very well having virus protection, but not just any old virus protection though. You need one that works quietly, quickly and effectively without pinching all of your resources.

-3

Sunday 19th February 2012 – AFTER THE EXERTIONS …

…or lack thereof yesterday and having crashe dout without any tea, I was out like a light until all of about 07:00 on Sunday morning.

Of course, that time of the morning is far too early for a weekday, never mind a Sunday, and so I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I did wake up I noticed that it had been raining.

Liz even mentioned that at about 09:00 round by hers it had been snowing, but what do I know about 09:00 on a Sunday?

I did almost nothing at all today except deal with some payments I had to make on eBay – although I did make myself two pots of coffee with the 12-volt coffee machine.

The height of decadence.

Later on I went round to Liz and Terry’s at Sauret-Besserve to rehearse our radio programmes. Liz must have known that I hadn’t had my usual Saturday night curry, because she had made a gorgeous chickpea curry.

And not only that, she made me up a doggy bag for tomorrow and that has made my day as well.

-4

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality