Monthly Archives: May 2008

Chilling out and dog walking

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In addition to Amy visiting this weekend, my parents’ dog, Todd has also been dropped off. He’s staying until Sunday when I have to take him back home. Amy’s dog Twinkle is also staying, so the house is full of inquisitive noses and wagging tails. You lie down for two mintues and a soft, cold squidgy nose comes to investigate.

Earlier we took them out for a walk around the midge-infested septic pool across the road. It’s a fairly nice walk through a forest if you mind the dog poo and local chavs.

BBQ

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Amy’s come over for the weekend and since it’s nice we decided to have a barbequeue. I bought a double-pack disposable barbequeue pack from the local petrol station, the sale of BBQ equipment at petrol stations being a typically British thing. They weren’t the best things, taking a few sloshes of meths to get the coals going properly, the bit of soggy cardboard lighter paper having no real effect.

Once the chicken was on it soon started going :)

The Internet is a wonderful thing

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I am currently listening to CB radio over it using the really cool WebSDR. I am listening to two people in Norwich talking to each other, and someone from Hanover. However I have no receiver, but am using the Internet and a receiver in Holland. Cleverly my computer is running a software radio receiver and doing all the frequency tuning and decoding. The system is really cool.

It’s like IRC, but the chatter mostly seems to consist of people talking about their kit, where they’re from and announcing their callsigns.

I want to buy a radio scanner now and hear what the locals are saying.

Fog and more motorway driving

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It’s pretty foggy out there. I’ve just been ‘over the border’ (between Yorkshire and Lancashire) along the M62 to visit Steve to sort out some things we’re doing. The weather wasn’t so bad when I left, just the usual drizzle and rain, but over the tops it’s a near whiteout. Coming back in the dark was a slow and difficult affair, playing the game of ‘spot the red lights’ and avoiding the trucks.

Steve’s local pub has wifi, and also a rather poorly chosen password on the router. We did the slightly poncy thing of installing Visual Studio on my Macbook in VirtualBox while eating our tea.