Archive for the ‘Useful’ Category

Spoke dynamo / speichendynamo. Farewell old friend.

Thursday, December 19th, 2013

One of life's reassuring constants has just quit on me: my bicycle dynamo. I bought it from a German website about 10 years ago after a German colleague told me such a thing existed. This was in the days before translation engines on the web, so I recall some trial ...

China’s Lunar Lander – did it Crash?

Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

I first saw the video of the Chang'e 3 lunar landing at LiveLeak and have to say I thought it was beautiful: the smooth motion and clear images reminded me of looking out of the window of an aeroplane as it banks while lining up to land at a destination ...

Rainwater toilet flush

Wednesday, December 11th, 2013

Among other efforts to reduce our South West Water bills, we employ If it's brown flush it down. If it's yellow Let it mellow. - which saves a lot of money, but the bathroom always smells of wee. Fortunately for us, we live in rainy Devon and there's a rainwater butt fed by the drainpipe ...

Muslims in niqab / burqa smile for the camera no eyes visible

Wednesday, July 10th, 2013

Someone forwarded me a photo of Muslims in burqa / niqab today by email with a comment about "incongruity". Here it is: I wasn't immediately convinced it couldn't have been improved for comic effect using something like gimp. I searched for "Image Search", thinking I could just find similar images and ...

Save on winter heating with cheap DIY four poster.

Monday, December 31st, 2012

[caption id="attachment_1508" align="alignright" width="293"] With the sides knotted up during the day[/caption] I'm not keen on central heating but I don't like feeling cold in bed. The house we're currently renting never seems to get very warm: turning up the heating seems only to increase the bills and the 'musty old ...