Tag Archives: statistics

Wednesday 19th December 2012 – EEEUUURRRGGGHHH!

Yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve been like this. The last couple of months of the year has not been very kind to me.

I can’t speak because of my sore throat … "hooray" – ed … I feel as if I have a piece of sandpaper stuck in my throat so it kills me when I cough, and I have a nose that could run a marathon.

I’ve not been outside at all except a brief run out to take the statistics. But then that’s no surprise because the weather is totally awful. I wouldn’t have gone out in this weather even if I were feeling healthy.

So now I’m snuggled up under the quilt by the side of a roaring wood stove and I don’t intend to move.

A good book or two, a couple of good films and some tins of food that I can heat up in the oven on the wood stove along with some baked potatoes and that will do me until I feel better.

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Tuesday 6th November 2012 – HORRIBLE, GREY, WET AND MISERABLE.

But that’s enough about me – let’s talk about the weather.

That was miserable, dark and overcast, and it has done nothing but pour down with rain all day.

This morning I finally finished off putting the data logger statistics onto the computer. It’s taken me ages to do that and it would have been so much easier to have done it day by day.

I’ve also finished off writing the web pages for the Pionsat football matches at the weekend. You can see them here if you like.

That took me up to lunchtime, and this afternoon I carried on with the shelving.

Now, both the rails are now finished and assembled, and I’ve started to cut and shape the shelves. And that’s not the work of 5 minutes to cut them precisely to shape either.

And that’s it, really. Nothing else. It’s not been the right kind of weather to do much or to go far.

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Wednesday 17th October 2012 – I WAS LOOKING ….

…. through the stats for the past few years (the records that I have here go back to 2007) and one thing that I noticed is that this recent deterioration in the weather is occurring about 4 weeks earlier than in the previous years.

I hope that it’s not a forewarning because it won’t be very nice if it is.

Yes, last night was absolutely taters – temperature in my room dropped to 15.5°C. Hard to believe that this time last year it was still well into the 20s.

Anyway, a howling wind (good news for the wind turbines) brought the temperature up a few degrees.

This morning, after recording a few stats, I cracked on with my web site. At the moment I’m on my way to see St Andrews, the Scottish Protestant Church in Québec.

And when I finished that I went outside and emptied Caliburn of all of the pylons and the grillage that I had bought the other day.

After lunch I carried on moving stuff off the hard-standing – something that is going to take me years.

One of the difficulties I’m having is actually finding room to put stuff. But all of the old chevrons have been moved (back to where I moved them from 2 years ago) and I’ve also uprooted tons of nettles and entire root systems.

And tomorrow it will be more of the same, I reckon.

Totally frightening, what was growing in the hard-standing.

But there is an added complication in that part of the bank of the side of the hard-standing has collapsed, so I’ll need to dig that all out and then to secure it all somehow, otherwise it will just keep on slipping down and that will be a nuisance, to say the least

This tidying up of all of the nuts and screws and nails and so on is progressing apace. And it’s amazing what I’ve been finding.

It’s also turning out to be quite profitable – so far £0:15 and a token for the spin dryer in the laundry.

Spend, spend, spend, hey? 

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Monday 4th July 2011 – What’s happening?

Yes indeed. I forgot to check the stats on my website last night and so I did that this evening. And to my surprise, Sunday (which is usually a quiet day) I had three times the usual average number of visitors. And today so far, I’ve had 50% more than usual. Clearly something is up.

That was more than I was this morning. Another late start again and then a couple of hours on the computer as usual – I’m touring Halifax at night at the moment.

And when the battery went flat, I went to work on my magnum opus for the Anglo-French group – as it’s Independence Day over there, I made a quiz of 30 questions for the group, and that took longer than I anticipated – it didn’t leave me with much time in the garden but I managed to do some weeding, move some more of the fallen tree and plant some lettuce that I’d bought at the weekend.

school closure demonstration manifestation pionsat puy de dome franceAnother beautiful day and so a nice solar shower at 40°:C and then off to this demonstration about the closure of one of the classes at Pionsat’s Elementary School. Only about 50 or so people turned up, which was a huge disappointment.

What was even more surprising was that the manager of “La Montagne” turned up – but without his camera. And so Yours Truly became an officially-accredited Press Photographer for the evening. No sense in having a trumpet and not blowing it, and if you have friends in the Press you should be taking advantage of the opportunities that they pass your way.

Another surprise at the Anglo-French Group was that Pete turned up – and we haven’t seen him for ages. That was nice. It seems that there are all kinds of changes going on in his life right now and he needs a little company..

Tomorrow I have to go to Montlucon – Marianne needs some stuff for her house and needs a van to transport it. And I suppose that I owe her a favour for the evening’s work that she found for me.

One good turn, etc etc.

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Saturday 17th July 2010 – I’ve not done much today

After having had to work on a Bank Holiday and on the odd Sunday just recently I’ve been taking it easy.

A leisurely morning entering the stats into the computer and then at lunchtime going to Commentry for shopping. Aldi produced s few tins of metal paint to replace the one we used on the caravan chassis a few weeks ago and Centrakor – one of the cheapo shops produced a shower curtain. But as usual the other cheap shop – Les Bonnes Affaires – produced the goods – a huge pile of plastic storage containers at 10 for €1 so I bought 30 of them. And then I can sort out all my nails and screws properly.

Most of the day was miserable and it didn’t lighten up until late afternoon. The water didn’t get hot enough for a solar shower and the electric water heater didn’t click in. But never mind.

But while doing the statistics it was interesting to see the figures of solar energy received for the first day that the automatic heater ran. Bank 1 gave an impressive 153.3 amp-hours and bank 2 gave a record 130.7. So now that I have somewhere to dump all of the electricity then you can see that my system is capable of generating almost 285 amp-hours of electricity – that’s over 3KwH – in a good day. And I’m quite pleased with that. Next task is to put up the remaining wind turbine. That should be even more impressive.

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Sunday 4th July 2010 – Even though it was Sunday today …

xylophene wood treatment chevrons barn roof les guis virlet puy de dome france… I’ve been working today. Yes, it does occasionally happen.

In this photo you can see the huge stack of wood that I treated with xylophene wood treatment – the stuff that kills all of the nasty beasties.

In fact it didn’t take all that long to do – not if you line all the bits up adjacent to each other and attack them with a paint roller soaked in the stuff (that’s what the black container is for). All you do is to whallop the stuff on, turn the wood on its side and do the next side and then keep on going until all of the sides and all of the pieces are done.

Before that I was up a ladder repositioning a gutter mounting bracket and then taking down the mast for the wind turbine – that’s going to be mounted elsewhere as you know. And I took the opportunity to hunt down a spare blade (and that wasn’t easy either) to replace the one that broke a while ago.

Lieneke came around for a chat too – she’s going to talk to Terry about some work. And once she had gone it was shower-time, and we aren’t talking about the Open University Students Association either. 36°C the water was at 18;20 when I knocked off and so I took full advantage. After all, I missed the swimming baths yesterday.

This morning though I didn’t do too much. After all it is Sunday. 2 telephone calls one after the other summoned me from my reverie at some ungodly hour … “you mean 10:10” – ed …  and after breakfast I entered the stats onto the computer, something I hadn’t done since March and there was a lot of catching up to do.

And talking of stats, on the 1st of July I started a new record book as the old one is now full. August 2007 I started keeping records and there were just four items that I recorded. Today there are about 35 entries that I need to make each evening. But filling the first book is definitely progress.

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