What a wasteful society. A near top of the range desktop PC, with SATA hard disk, dual core processor, accelerated graphics card with digital output, almost thrown out because the power supply isn't working. Thankfully the owner thought to try and Freecycle it.
I took ages getting to the other side of town. My street is full of snow and ice so I tentatively drove out with the 4-wheel drive switched on. In town I had to negotiate Christmas shoppers and idiots driving whilst talking into their mobiles. My mobile rang, I ignored it. Don't people realise that using a phone whilst driving makes you as incapable as a drunk driver.
Once I got the PC home I spent an hour hoovering out the dust. The machine still smells of nicotine but that will pass. I have plenty of power supplies, from other machines I've picked up, and will either swap the whole unit or, more likely, just the board inside the power supply.
I tested the hard drive with my handy USB to IDE/SATA cable. I normally use it to back up my systems up with a spare 320GB hard drive I picked up but I also use the cable to test drives outside of PCs. I've never had a SATA drive afore as they cost a lot more than old parallel ATAs.
I am always worried that I may run into something dodgy on one of these hard drives I pick up. But beng a 160GB drive I thought to myself, "Anything remotely suspicious results in a reformat and not a visit to the corporate security service, I mean police."
I received an old laptop a few weeks ago. That was a week long challenge. The previous owner said broken CD drive. I discovered a boot sector virus on the hard drive instead. The machine was too old to receive the latest Ubuntu distribution so I put XP on for now. I only have an XP update disk so I had to get an old bit torrent Windows 98 copy first and then install CP on top of that.
The laptop is now in London, doing someone a favour. It will probably be replaced by this desktop, I'm working on, and then I can convert the laptop into a flat panel book reader.
Bagged a Freecycle bargain
I suppose that I should say something about Copenhagen
Not much to say other than I never had high expectations. After all, we are dealing with suits who are thinking only of the next general election or (in some cases) which colonel is going to overthrow them. Why is it always colonels (and a pair of corporals) and never higher ranks?
Obama, as I said prior to and during his election, hasn't amounted to much. Elected for neither being a Republican or having the surname Bush. He gets a Nobel peace prize for doing nothing. I suppose not declaring any new wars amounts to being peaceful. He wears a suit and ensures the lives of other suits.
I gave up on politicians long ago. As each day passes, more join my side. The climate is irrelevant because it has been left to its own devices. It is now up to the individual to look after themselves. You can cling on to the old ways of doings things (and hope for the best) or you can experiment with your life and discover new possibilities. A little life hacking, if you want to give it a name.
Remember, buying something "green" doesn't make you green. Not buying something does make you green.
A ticket to ride
I have a one-way ticket out of the country for January 1st. However, it started to snow today. Flights were cancelled and so fingers are crossed that I will have a window out of here in two weeks time.
There is an offer of a rent free house, in a small commuter town, near Madrid. Some building work needs doing on the house, which I can busy myself with. A yard for container growing, if I find myself still in the house in March.
I shall live in the downsized style that I have gotten used to. The house has all the mod cons but I won't make use of them. No fridge, a wasteful luxury. A local supermarket will act as my fridge. I will only take two bags with clothes and a few other items. I will take my home-grown onions and potatoes plus some of my never ending sack of rice. You will all be kept up to date on my progress via a netbook and my skills at piggy-backing on free (or otherwise) wifi connections.
As the winter passes, I shall work my way to northern Spain, on the look out for land and a liveable (for me, a roof and four sturdy walls) house.
Next week sees the solstice and the return of the Sun. The darkness has been getting me down for the past few weeks. Happy solstice / Christmas / New Year etc. etc.
Don't chuck that broken umbrella!
With winter fast approaching there are often blustery showers. Because of high winds you will, more often than not, see broken umbrellas discarded in bins or on the roadside. There is no need to throw away a broken umbrella because it is so easy to fix.
The most common failure points on an umbrella are the little rivets holding the component parts of the stretchers together. All you need, to fix the stretchers, is some wire, a pair of scissors and a sailing knot.
You will need a 6-inch piece of enamelled wire, enamelled so that it doesn't rust in the wet. Not too thick a piece of wire that you can't get enough wraps from it and not too thin that it is too weak to hold the stretcher together in a wind. Now, don't go buying wire, we are meant to be recycling and reusing. Open up the mains cable in some old appliance you no longer use and look for some free wire in there.
Next, match up the rivet holes of the two pieces of broken stretcher and pass the wire through the holes. Wrap the wire around and thread through again.
Keep doing so until there is no more room for more wraps of wire. Do two half-hitches (look it up here) with the wire. Trim the two ends of the wire to about half an inch in length. Twist the ends of the wire together and then tuck them away. Job done!
Now go outside and rejoice by imitating Gene Kelly.
Get off the path weirdo!
Here, in Northampton, there are many walks through grey field sites that have been converted into woods and nature trails. These walks offer pleasant shortcuts to various parts of town to which I go shopping. However, I have noticed odd looks from others I see along the way.
I have realised what separates myself from everyone else I see, they have a dog with them. The only reason why these people are walking is because they have to walk their dogs. There is no other reason, these people can think of, for walking. And so, when they see me, they naturally think that I lost my car or I am a serial killer.
To be honest, a month ago, I did lose my car after some idiot pulled into the main road, I was travelling on, without looking. However, before then I was a walker anyway. I just find it odd that others find it odd for anyone to be a voluntary walker.
The lack of a car means that I cannot go farm spotting until the New Year. My licence is not quite two years old and that makes renting a car very difficult and very expensive. I have a few projects to work on, which will keep me busy during these dark depressing days.
Today, I dug up a few onions that had been forgotten from the autumn harvest. I have also been cleaning an old valve oscilloscope and signal generator. They still work. On eBay I have been selling off some scrap I plundered. "Where there's muck there's brass!"
When has food really gone off?
I am known to make a chicken last a week. Roasted on Sunday, the chicken's legs and wings are eaten. The rest of the chicken is stripped off, the bones boiled up for stock. Next day, the remaining chicken is made into curry, which will give four portions. The stock makes soups.
I am surprised to see many people fearful of my cooking methods. I cook my curry, leave it in the pot and leave the pot in the oven but never in a fridge. I don't have access to a fridge and wouldn't know what to do with one, if I had one. I take a bit of curry of the pot and reheat it when needed.
Many people are quite ignorant of food safety but you can't blame them in a society that is geared to frightening people, making them worried so they can be more easily controlled.
A useful news article on the BBC explains the true meaning of 'use-by', 'best-before' and 'sell-by' dates. Essentially, don't eat anything after its use-by date but anything after a best-before or sell-by date is just as edible as it was afore the date.
Far too much food is wasted because people buy too much and/or do not understand the safety labels. This week I spent £4.14 at the supermarket. I rely on my home-grown vegetables, any freebies I can get hold of, cheap supermarkets, buying raw ingredients, avoiding processed food and never eating out (unless someone else is paying!).
There are plenty of bargains to be had when supermarkets sell food cheaply as it reaches its sell-by date. But hurry, as more of us purchase bargains like this, supermarkets will catch on and lobby parliament for the abolition of date labelling so they can sell old food for the same high prices as fresh food.
BBC - Sell-by buys
