Tag Archives: LED lights

Thursday 7th December 2017 – WE HAVE …

… a new visitor in the harbour today.

Thrashing her way into harbour today came Normandy Trader. She’s not a sister ship to Shetland Trader and Islay Trader but she is in fact a converted landing craft of the type that we have seen on several occasions in different places around the world.

She’s not by any means new to Granville – in fact she works a shuttle to here from Jersey on a regular basis just like Grima, and so I’m surprised that I’ve never seen here here before.

But here you can see her smashing her way through the storm into the harbour. It really is wicked outside and the spray is flying everywhere as the waves crash into the concrete sea walls.

The wind has turned round and is now blowing from the north-west, and that’s right into the harbour mouth. No wonder that Normandy Trader is making heavy weather of it. Landing craft aren’t designed for conditions like this, especially with a gross tonnage of just 73 tonnes. She was being tossed around like a cork out there.

Last night was a reasonable night for me. Although it took me a while to go off to sleep, I was well away. I somehow missed the first alarm, although I must have responded as the phone was in my hand when I awoke, not under the pillow where it usually is.

But anyway, the second alarm of Billy Cotton and his “Wakey waaaaaaa ….KEYYYYYY” took me completely by surprise.

After breakfast and a little rest, I had a shower and then braved the wind and rain up to LIDL.

Had I still been living on the farm, I would have bought quite a bit of stuff from their special offers this week. But with having changed my lifestyle considerably, there’s nothing that I really need.

But had I been Rhys, I would have been spending my money there. He’s trying to organise some interior lighting for his bus, and they had the rows of 12-volt LED striplights that I like so much. 212 lumens, which is the equivalent of about 18 watts of incandescent power, but drawing 0.1 watt. And you can link them together to give you a running strip light.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I bought a pile back down on the farm and use them as work lights over the work benches. And they are great.

I walked back here in the rain and was almost trampled to death in the rush of a pile of little kids descending from a school bus. And back here, I had a coffee and a … errr … relax.

After lunch I braved the wind and gales and went for a walk around the headland. And I was the only person out there. And that’s no surprise given the weather.

Tonight I went out for my other walk around the walls – and I’ve done 105% of my day’s target according to the fitbit.

The wind has changed further round now and so I stood for hours on the headland watching the waves down below crash over the sea wall and onto the promenade. It’s an amazing spectacle, the power of nature out there.

Rosemary rang up and we put the world to rights for an hour, and I booked my trip to Leuven for next week too. I’ll be staying at the flathotel at the back of the prison.

Tea was steaeed vegetables and vegan sausages in vegan cheese sauce – and delicious it was too.

So seeing that I have no plans for tomorrow, I’m going to have a nice quiet day of relaxing and organising myself for Leuven

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Thursday 11th December 2014 – I FINALLY BIT THE BULLET TODAY.

When the alarm went off this morning at 07:30, not only was I up and about already but I had even had my breakfast and drunk my coffee. Having had an early-ish night last night I was wide awake by 05:00 and by 06:30 I gave up on the idea and made my breakfast.

I was outside by 10:00 and the first job was the check the tyres on Caliburn. The right-hand rear tyre looked distinctly low.

solar energy power prtable control board kubota B1220 tractor les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt wasn’t, as it happened. It must have been an optical illusion. But nevertheless it gave me the opportunity to try out the portable power board that I built the other day.

Here it is wired up to the flying lead on the Kubota tractor and the air compressor ran quite nicely off that. All the four tyres are now at the correct pressure and I’ve even charged the tank on the air compressor.

As I said before, the idea of fitting the flying lead on the Kubota was an impressive decision.

After all of that, I fitted the inline fuse for the overcharge circuit on the power board in the barn – the fuse that I had forgotten and wbout which I spoke yesterday.

I also fitted an LED striplight in the barn so that it illuminates the power board – whenever the power board might be finished.

After lunch (and after a little snooze too) I fetched up a pile of wood for the fire for the next few days and then carried on with the front panel for the power board. Almost everything is now in place and I’ve even done some of the wiring on it.

However, I did manage to shear off a screw on one of the connectors on one of the data loggers so I had to work out how to dismantle that, remove the broken screw and then find another screw to replace it. And that didn’t take only 5 minutes either.

In other news, I had a friend from the North-East of England who mysteriously disappeared out of touch about three years or so ago, and I had no news at all. Anyway, all of a sudden, he’s reappeared, and that’s cheered me up.

I’m resisting the temptation to ask him where he’s been – if he wants me to know, he will tell me. Usually with my friends and associates, it’s one of three reasons –
1) – they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil (clearly not the case here)
2) – they’ve been removed to a place of safety in accordance with the provisions of the Mental Health Acts
3) – they’ve been sent down and detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure – the more usual fate of my friends, although what pleasure Her Majesty could possibly have from detaining any of my friends is very hard to understand.

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Saturday 27th September 2014 – BACK IN NEW BRUNSWICK

trans canada highway irvings truck stop grand falls new brunswick canada september 2014Last night I found a decent place to sleep, at an Irving truck at Grand Falls. And this was a comfortable spec as well. Tucked away around the back of the building there out of the way. No-one bothered me at all and I didn’t feel a thing. But it was a disturbed night for some reason – I was tossing and turning for a bit and I don’t know why.

And I was on my travels as well during the night too. In the town where I was living was a beautiful bake shop that made some of the most beautiful apple cakes that I had ever tasted. And then a while later I was on my way down to the south of France and I stopped at another bake shop down there to see whether or not they had any apple cakes. And who should be working behind the counter of this bake shop but the young girl from the other place. So we had quite a lengthy chat and I told her that this was nothing because when I was down in the South West of France before, I had bumped into a woman that I knew from my days in Brussels. We discussed about how the world was getting smaller and you can’t go anywhere without meeting anyone whom you know.

So having dealt with those issues, I fuelled up (I believe that if I’m taking advantage of someone’s services I should express my gratitude accordingly) and headed southwards on the Trans-Canada Highway.

Down at Centreville I spent a pleasant morning helping Darren in the garage changing some universal joints on the propshaft of a Dodge Ram pickup and the spark plugs in a Chrysler 200. And if you want to know the meaning of the word “difficult”, try changing the spark plugs on a Chrysler 200.

The physical act of changing them is as straightforward as on any other V6 engine, but it’s finding them that’s the problem. There’s one of these huge pancake air filters on top of the engine and then there’s a huge plastic cowling all over the top of the engine and that’s held on by four or five bolts and brackets that are in something of an inaccessiible position. And I can’t think of any purpose for this cowling except to prevent the average d-i-y motorist from carrying out his own servicing.

This afternoon we had a pleaant day outside in the sunshine doing an enormous amount of tidying up and I installed a couple of solar panels and LED lights over the fire pit at the end of the driveway.

Yes, the weather has been wonderful today and apparently it’s going to be just as good tomorrow. I hope so, because the weather will start closing in soon for winter and we should make the most of the few summer days that are left.

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I’m exhausted

I had another difficult night as far as sleep went, and it wasn’t half a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning, but after breakfast and a shower (I have one once a year whether I need it or not) by 10:00 I was at my (or rather, Marianne’s) desk ready to work.

There’s the third part of the radio programmes to do and I was planning on doing something on “who can check your identity”. For once though, the thoughts ran freely (not quite sure why) and by 14:00 I’d done a mere 3000 words on the subject.

That was the cue for shopping. First port of call was at the bank where I handed over Marianne’s death certificate and they promptly closed her account. and it is indeed as I feared – no life assurance policies, no burial policies, not a trace of anything else. Ahhh well – you live and learn. And I thought that I had learned enough by now, but you would never have guessed.

After the food shopping I called again at this electronics shop in the neighbourhood. Here I had another lucky find – two packs of 2×12-volt MR16 LD light bulbs – reduced for quick sale at €10 the pack. I know that I can but them at €3:99 each but the ones I get are rated at 1.2 watts – these are rated at 2.4 watts.

You might be thinking that that’s not very bright, but you wuld be surprised. The “watts” is quite a misleading measurement as it relates to the amount of current consumed. And in a traditional light bulb, much, if not most, of the energy is wasted as heat, as anyone who has touched an incandescent, or a halogen, light bulb will tell you. LEDs are quite cool even when they are lit, indicating that almost nothing is wasted. LEDs generally give out about 5 times the lumens per watt that an incandescent gives out, and while that might sound not an awful lot more (2.4 watts x 5 compared to, say 40 watts) the light from an LED is much more focused.

Anyway, I digress. Back here I carried on with my magnum opus and by the time I’d finished it (23:00 with an hour out for tea) I’d done over 3700 words on indentity checks, followed by over 2700 on “who can enter your house”. I really was having a good day today.

1306001As for tea, it was gorgeous. I might have mentioned that I made a potato pie last night while the pizza was cooking, and there’s half of the aforementioned. Add to that a heap of peas and carrots in butter and mint and it really was the most delightful meal that I’ve had for quite a while (excepting anything that Liz has cooked, of course). I’m going to have to watch myself here – I’m becoming far too civilised. At this rate I shan’t want to go home.

In other news, I’ve been invited by the Scientologists to go to watch a film at their headquarters. All to do with self-assertiveness and taking control. Hardly the sort of thing that Scientologists are famous for, of course. I wonder if there’s anything in this film about the use of pick-axe handles? They are always good for self-assertiveness and taking control.

And finally – “hooray” … ed – they say that retail therapy is always good for the soul when one is suffering from a little depression. For me, music is the key to my state of mind (provided that it isn’t The Thieving Magpie (La Gazza Ladra) by Marillion of course) and I have been feeling considerably depressed just recently, as you know. Consequently when Amazon announced a special promotion of 2 CDs for £9:00, over 1000 albums on offer, many of which I owned on plastic and haven’t yet replaced, well, I rather pushed the boat out a little and now I’m … errr …£63:00 (plus postage to Belgium) lighter.

But there’s some cracking stuff in there and I don’t consider it money wasted at all. I need cheering up right now. I’ve had a difficult Spring.

 

 

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