Tag Archives: dying technology

Tuesday 29th September 2009 – I’VE FINISHED PLASTERBOARDING …

insulation plasterboard attic les guis virlet puy de dome france… the outside walls to my room now. Even the two patches around the far window have been done.

Well, not quite. There’s a sliver of an offcut needed for one corner but I have that ready, and then there’s the corner that you can see, where I need to think about the cabling.

One thing I didn’t think about though was the wiring at this end of the room. I forgot to make allowances for where it has to go. But never mind, there’s another option or two about that and I’ll just have to use one of those.

That cassette player I bought on Saturday – it’s been filed under “B”. The reason is that it’s playing slow. Not by much, but by sufficient to annoy me. What I’ve done for now is to bring into the house the hi-fi from the barn. This consists of a cheap mp3 player and a pair of computer speakers and it’s quite adequate for my needs. I can’t work without music – it makes the time go quicker and helps me to relax.

The only drawback is that the speakers are 9-volt. I’m trying my best to standardise everything and if I can’t run things on 12 volt I want to run them on 6-volt. I have a set of 6-volt speakers but only one channel is working. I’ll have to see if I can fix it, or else look for another pair of 6-volt speakers at a brocante.

But I think that I’m going to have to come to terms with the fact that audio cassettes is a dying technology, and I shall have to move with the times.

insulation plasterboard stud wall attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis is the pic that you should have seen yesterday. You can see the stud wall that I’ve finished off now, and all of the plasterboard done down in that corner (except for the tiny sliver that is missing).

Tomorrow I’ll be starting to filling and taping the gaps between all of the boards. I want to do this as quickly as possible as I’m dying to get poncing. When that’s done I can set about fitting the tongue-and-grooving.

In other news, the Open University Students Association Executive Committee has been stung into action by my justified criticism the other day. Members of that august body, in an effort to engage with a much wider audience, have been taking part in some of these reality TV programmes. Andy Pandy, having been well-coached by his friend Teddy, has entered “Come Dancing” as he is one of the few people who can actually do that, but it all went horribly wrong when Pol Pot’s Sibling (who doesn’t feature in these pages half as often as he or she deserves) was eaten by the other contestants during the “Bush Tucker Challenge”.

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Friday 25th September 2009 – AND JUST FOR A CHANGE …

fitting stud wall attic les guis virlet puy de dome france… today’s pic is taken from almost the same spot as the previous two.

You can’t see the battens that I affixed to the wall but you can see the insulation that I attached. That is on the rear wall to the left of the wooden framing, and in the apex above the door. There’s even a shelf up there now – that’s where I’ll be fitting the water tank.

You may be wondering why it is that I haven’t fitted the insulation to the rest of the wall. Two reasons really –

  1. it is outside the limits of my room so I don’t need to do it just now. I’d rather concentrate my efforts inside my room
  2. I ran out of insulation

I’ve also fitted all of the rest of the flooring – one piece of which was not without some considerable effort.

The orange cable that you see is an American 110-volt extension cable, bought in Farmington, New Mexico, in September 2002 and brought back to Europe in my hand luggage. I use American 110-volt fittings for my 12-volt circuit on the farm as it’s capable of handling a much heavier current than European fittings. And I needed the extension cable because with fitting the flooring I’ve had to take out the temporary circuit that I installed the other week.

And of course I clean forgot that I had moved the cassette player across the room. Consequently, in a moment of inattention, I kicked it down through the hole in the stairs all the way down to ground level. I bet that’s done it a world of good.

But cassettes are so depassé these days and CDs are in and as I don’t have a 12-volt CD player I will have to see if I can’t liberate one from a brocante some time and make a more modern 12-volt hi-fi.

Terry and Liz came round again too. They had been to get more sand and came round to see if I had any cement. There were three bags in Caliburn and as they are temporarily in the way I donated them to the cause.

Tomorrow, no Brico Depot. Caliburn is still choc-a-bloc of stuff so I’ve plenty to be going on with. I may well have a run around Commentry tomorrow – it’s quite a while since I’ve been shopping there and there are an Aldi, a Lidl, a good DiY place and a couple of cruddy cheapo shops that are sometimes worth a poke around.

And in other exciting news I’ve had an e-mail from Simon. He wasn’t able to pick up a cheap woodstove for me from Machine Mart as he was leaving last night and delivery wasn’t until today. But a change of plan means that he isn’t leaving until Monday so he’s picking up a stove for me. Many thanks to Krys and Terry for teaming up to work that out for me, and for Simon for putting it into operation.

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