My good friend and colleague Andy came over to stay for a while, which meant I had 'entertaining a guest' as an excuse to do some of the fun stuff I've wanted to do for ages.
So we finished making the welding bench! I'd made the top and gotten part way through cutting the legs to length, so we finished cutting them and welded them in place, then welded extra flat strips around the bottom to make it reasonably rigid. It's all just tack welds, and it'll almost certainly need some diagonal struts added, but it stands upright and is surprisingly sturdy; I'm going to experiment with it a bit to see just how many more struts it needs. I'd also like to drill holes so I can mount my vice on it, too.
Then we cleared a space and moved my electronics workbench down into the workshop! This is great news, as it clears up space in the office (albeit revealing the piles of junk that were lurking beneath the bench), means all my tools are in one place (which is most convenient, as things were always in the wrong places), and creates more storage space in the little garage, meaning less stuff on the floor.
I've since reincarnated my power distribution rail, which I had when we lived in Ealing, but haven't used since; the idea being that it'd be good to do my electronics experiments on the end of a dedicated RCD so I don't trip the one in the house. It also splits the output into four circuits, each with a six amp circuit breaker (the smallest I could obtain easily).
I still need to get rid of a lot of waste cardboard that's sitting around, and we're still looking after Seth's motorbike, and there's still junk to be sorted - many things need to be elsewhere; the little garage isn't a place to store things we only use a few times a year, as we have the Big Yellow for that!
Although the lighting's not really good enough when I'm explaining the power rail, here's a quick video tour:
For my next trick, I'll stop procrastinating by building infrastructure, and get on with actually making myself a digital watch with an embedded ARM processor and colour dot-matrix LCD. Watch this space.
Jean's new bed a.k.a. my cousins old bed arrived - Al bought it back from London with him in the van and then we had to face the task of getting it into the little box room. It was decided that the only way was through the window - so Dad and Al with Jean supervising proceeded to be the 'chuckle brothers' and managed to get the bed in!
Here is my bed protector and my sole contribution to this whole thing! Yes I know its a piece of card board but it was needed to stop the bed being wripped apart by the catch on the window.
Of course this ment a slight rearrange of Jean's room including the toy chest being moved - I really should finish painting it - it was one of my nan's old ottamen.
Jean and Daddy then put the winni the pooh bed spread onto Jean's very own Dovet which was entertaining to watch!
Jean then just had to try her bed out - she's decided its a princess bed as it has a pink plush headboard!
Sunday night was her first night and there were not the pitta patta of feet that we were expecting but instead there was a flomp sound - Jean had fallen out of bed but was still a sleep and only woke when I put her back in the bed. Later on there was an even softer flomp (mainly as I'd put the arm chairs cuosins beside the bed) - this time there was a little cone of dovet with a wide eyed Jean head sticking out the top looking around solomy in the dark. I tucked her in over by the wall - she didn't fall out any more - nor in the subsequent nights which is good - but feeling a bit stupid that I hadn't realised she would fall out :/
Jean gets upset if I tell the cats off for things like raking the seat - she does this by crying, 'No Mummy they are my Best Friends!' or Hydrogen is her best friend or mini or Helium depending on who is in trouble.
Even when Mini has upset her she defends her, this is interesting as it she has definatly developed a scense of us and them but this isn't a clear cut relationship.
She will defend me and daddy from Nanny and Ferfer and Barbara but she defend them against people in the 'outside' world. She has also started to say names from pre-school as her best/specific friends and there is definatly a social dynamic forming there.
She also pretends to be a baby or a mummy and takes car of random things like she'll tuck a shoe in for the night and sing it a lullabye. She is always tucking Mini up for the night to which our grumpyest cat responds by purring. Jean also cuddles the cats which they just put up with though if others do it they mew pathetically - there is definatly a two way relationship there.
Today me, dad and Jean went out to find an oil filler cap for his car and do other sundry errands. We got abit lost around the village of Staverton and Dad was panicking abit so I took over the navagation and between the two of us we found our way.
Dad hates getting lost and was actually panicking but then we found this lovely church and we stopped to take photos and look and the map and suddenly it turned into a lovely outing.
The sun was shining and there was lovely blossoms on the trees and lots of flowers - orange tipped butterflies and the like. We did our chores and then decided to head to Gloucester docks for an actual outing.
Jean loves the boats and spent an age just walking around looking at them all - dad carrying my lavander sparkly tote bag which caused lots of hilarity in the shop were I bought him and Jean an ice-cream (I'm still too sick for things like ice-cream). We sat watching the ducks whilst they ate the ice creams with Jean changing her mind every few minutes as to which seat we should be sitting on!
Jean got a bit upset that the ducks would 'full over' the stuff in the water - this was the litter that people had dropped in the water - she was most indignant about this 🙂
We watched one of the narrow boats in a lock that was filling very very slowely - the men looked grumpy and didn't wave at JEan though she was proclaiming she wanted to live on a boat!
We then went into the antiques place where Jean decided she only wanted to look at the Dr Who stuff! Though we found a 'pretty light' in a room full of stuff that looked like I'd been let loose with ceramics! Jean loves all the old furniture and was more interested in going in and looking at the 'pretties' which were all chest and things than looking at the dinky toys or the ty toys with dad which was a suprise.
And then I made a mistake - I wanted a cup of tea and JEan asked for something to eat and selected a packet of quavers - sure if we share them I said and we did and Jeans mood changed to one of complete horrible small whirling dervish! I was so embarressed as she shouted she wasn't stupid and stuff and ran off.
We left - Jean in disgrace and me vowing to check out exactly what is in quavers and feeling slightly guilty that I didn't check the ingredients when I know that one of the red food colourings is bad for her behaviour etc...
On the way out though we saw a youth-dude hanging upside down from the ancient crain - so I tried to take a pick but he moved as I was getting the camera out!
I was a sad that Jean's behaviour had deteriated so much we were going home as punishment when we had been going to go to a country park for her to run around and stuff - never mind though it was a nice day over all.
On Saturday I find out via Twitter that this thing called Earth Hour was happening were everyone (hopefully) would be turning off their lights and such - I vaguelly feel that either Ella, Oliver or Andrew mentioned it too me last weekend.
Anyway I decided that we were going to take part (with half an hour to go) so wizzed around finding candles - Al got out the oil lamps and we light a fraction of what we have here!
Jean said the house was bueatifull - "Its a bueatiful night mummy" which was sweet.
I even cracked out a nice candle floating bowl that we were given for either a house warming or wedding 🙂
It was also the first time we got to use the bathroom candle I'd picked up in a charity shop - its got like glitter and shells in it and looks like a little lamp - I love it and yes I am perfectly awear that it is tacky 🙂
I'm afraid I did have to cheat and put on Jean's LED alphabet lights as I didn't want to keep her up until 9:30 and she wont sleep in the dark.
You all know my view on the global warming issue ie waste of resources is bad reguardless - as a geologist/earth scientist so I'm not going to go into that again. But one of the things I didcovered was that the oil lamps give out far more heat than the electric heater we have for when it gets nippy and we don't have time to light the fire.
Now they give out light aswell so I am wondering if it would not be more effiecent in winter to have lots of these lit around the house than lights and heater (when it snows the fire is no where near enough to keep the house warm).
Building Maintenance, Electronics, Metalworking | alaric | 
Tue 5th May 2009 11:53 pm | 
Comments (2) 
Subscribe