Random Writings

Cambridge is a rotten place to own a car. It has traffic congestion, pedestrianised zones, byzantine one-way-systems, limited parking, expensive car parks and is generally laid out to be got around on foot or bike. As a result, I haven’t bought a car but have instead relied on hiring one when I need one.

Car hire need not be expensive, but it requires a certain amount of knowledge and technique to get the best deal. I’m going to describe a few the techniques I use to get a good deal. Read the rest of this entry »

Mobile broadband is great, and I bought one of the early Vodafone USB modems, a Huawei E270, when I first moved to Cambridge. My contract on this has now expired, and I’ve moved over to 3, who seem to have better coverage than Vodafone even if the network is more congested. Anyway, I thought I’d try and get the old Vodafone modem unlocked, because I can think of various circumstances in which it might be useful to have access to other networks. Read the rest of this entry »

A sofa has been on the to-do list since I first arrived in Cambridge. I’ve considered various options, but none of them were quite satisfactory. Most sofas are too big to get into a narrowboat, and those that come in sections were still sufficiently large that I was concerned that they would dominate the cabin. Also, I like to be able to clear the floor so that I can get six people round the dining table, or when I have a lot of people staying onboard and sleeping on the floor.

So, this weekend a plan finally came together involving a lot inexpert carpentry and an evolving design.
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When I was a little boy, my greenfingered Mum would drag me round the garden centre. I was always fascinated by the hoses, fittings, sprinklers and other such things – the plants were so boring! Anyway, I’ve constructed myself a rather Heath Robinson arrangement for watering the growbags on the boat’s roof with river water.
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Yesterday afternoon I went across town to get some firewood. I haven’t actually lit the fire all that recently because the weather’s been mild, but I probably should do as the fire helps to reduce the humidity inside the boat. Anyway, I biked off to the south side of town where a lady from church had a job lot of logs to get rid of. When I arrived, it turned out that these were old fruit trees that had sat nicely under a tarpaulain for three years, so were beautifully dry and seasoned. I’d brought my long-handled axe (a birthday present, thanks Mum & Dad!) and a splitting wedge and mallet, and was pleased to discover that the wedge made short work of breaking up the logs and then it was easy to cut them into convenient chunks with the axe. It’s also extremely satisfying!
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I come from a fairly green-fingered family. My mum is an enthusiastic gardener and her parents were also very keen. Perhaps its because I’m getting a bit older, perhaps it’s because I have my own space to work with, but I’m slowly getting into the whole gardening thing.

Last year I tried growing baby plum tomatoes (a variety called “Rosada”) in pots on the foredeck – and they did really well, despite a certain amount of neglect during my absence! This year, with the boat in the much more public environment of Midsummer Common, I decided to be a bit more ambitious.

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Last week I was in Glencoe with some friends, enjoying myself away from the office and the horrors of Visual C++ and Matlab. The idea was to try and get some winter climbing in, but knowing the caprices of Scottish weather, I was always a bit dubious as to how much we’d actually get done. We’d arranged to stay in an independent hostel which was friendly, adequately comfortable and not too expensive.
I took the train up to Edinburgh last Saturday and stayed with Miles and Ciorstaidh, and then Miles and I drove on up to Glencoe the following day. But first we had to get a car… Read the rest of this entry »

A small thing, but nice to have – coathooks for me to hang my wet jackets up somewhere where they don’t drip all over the wooden floor, and for guests to hang their coats by the door when they come in. These rather nifty brass ones fold out of the way when not in use, so they shouldn’t catch on anything inadvertantly. They’re made by Nauticalia, but I got mine from Marinestore who had them on special offer at the time.

Outdoor gear is quite tricky to buy. You can go into a smart shop and spend a lot of money and come out with a lot of wizzy technical gear, but how much better is it than what you can get more cheaply? Conversely, if you get something cheap, will it actually perform, or will it let you down when you need it?

This post is a general public service aimed at recommending a few products I’ve tried and found to be worth having. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a more than slightly techie post, so apologies if you were looking for further tales of life on the river. One of the reasons for my lack of bloggage over the last six months or more has been that my old faithful Acer laptop died in early August. I replaced it temporarily with an Asus eeePC 900, although that was such a pain to use for more than about half-an-hour that my enthusiasm for blogging diminished considerably! Anyway, I saved my pennies and splashed out on a new Mac a little while ago, which brings me to the mainstream of this evening’s symposium, as Tom Lehrer used to say…

I had a laptop with a nontrivial fault (either motherboard or processor – it wouldn’t boot) but reckoned that the hard disk was okay. Based on this hunch, I got a cheap caddy from Dabs and converted the laptop’s internal hard drive into a USB external disk. This let me recover my data, but the PC also contained quite a lot of software – much of it paid for – that I was reluctant to reinstall and track down all the relevant licence keys. Besides, I’ve moved to a Mac – so I bought VMWare Fusion to met me run Windows for those odd awkward things that won’t work under Mac OS. Read the rest of this entry »