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I’m currently listening to Tenacious D’s eponymous first album and I had a revelation. The D and Tre from the Apprentice both share the same “We’re/I’m brilliant and you’re going to believe it” attitude. Tre was particularly excellent at it, “it’s another thing I’m great at”.

Lewis Hamilton has it too and people just believe it (well, up until the European GP anyway but we’ll gloss over that). I think there’s something to be said for this, so, just in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m awesome I am. Not to mention good looking and intelligent. With some minor assistance from Amoy I make a mean stir fry. And I’m modest too. I’ll let you know how this goes, but I think I’m on to a winner.

Awesomeness aside, there’s something to be said for being more confident in small ways. I made the decision a while back to avoid moving out of the way of other people when walking along streets and crossing roads. I got fed up of being polite and taking really long paths to get to where I want to go because of all the people in the way. This is working out really well, especially with all the tourists around at the moment.

OK, it’s nearly the end of this day of awesomeness (well, this last however long a Tenacious D album is), tomorrow another full day of excellence!

That got your attention eh?

I think it’s about time I blogged the current results of an experiment I’ve been running.

When Sarah decided to grow tomatoes and peppers I saw sceptical. Would tomato plants really produce something edible, or even survive, on a windowsill in Edinburgh? I figured as the plants were between 25-99p each there wasn’t much to lose.

After the plants started to grow I thought there might actually be something in this growing your own food lark so I decided to have a crack at it. The difference was that instead of faffing around growing ‘ingredient’ type plants I’ve gone for end products. That’s plants that give you a full meal. Even more, I’m growing a drink! The best thing about this is that you can grow brand name products!

Here’s the proof:

This is growing well, I’m not sure what magic technique Coke uses to turn the green stuff into the liquid but as Coke is black I’m guessing some kind of burning is needed.

Again, I’m very hopeful with this one. Sainsbury’s does a mean canned CTM so hopefully I’ll have a viable food source.

The Jelly Belly bean plant was sadly lost to high wind but I’m still please with the results so far. Obviously I’m keeping some the details secret for now but once my patent’s through watch out!

“A book review?!” I hear you ask. “Isn’t that just a thinly veiled excuse for Amazon Affiliate links to try and make a quick buck?”. The answer of course is no. It’s not veiled at all. With your cynical questioning out of the way, on to the review…

It’s Not Easy Being Green: One Family’s Journey Towards Eco-Friendly Living
Dick Strawbridge
BBC Books (13 April 2006)
ISBN: 0563493461

This has been an interesting read for the past couple of weeks. I’m a fan of Dick Strawbridge’s past work including Scrapheap Challenge and various programmes about inventions. You really can’t go wrong with that combination of facial hair and welding for a start. The book is a spin off from the BBC TV series of the same name which I managed to mostly miss but did really enjoy when I caught it.

The basic premise is that Dick and the Strawbridge family sell up and move to a run down house in Cornwall to do it up, greenify it as best they can and then live as eco-friendly a life as possible. This book documents their journey but isn’t a howto guide. It’s aspirational rather than an instruction manual. I have to say I liked the balance of this book, the mix of story and technical details was very easy to read and gave what could be stale technical details some life. To be honest though, as a geek I got more out of the technical details and wish the diagrams were just a bit more technical and a bit less cartoony so I could figure out how some of it worked (I just couldn’t figure out the imploded glass greenhouse floor but it might have been getting late when I read that bit).

The Strawbridges managed to cover most aspects of self sufficency: making electricity; growing food; making fuel for cars and more. As a geek the bit that interested me the most was electricity generation. This is something I really want to do in the future (even though leaving PCs running 24 hours a day isn’t the best to run from a solar panel…). I’d like to do it now but I don’t have anywhere to put solar panels and battery banks.

Building a waterwheel and viaduct in the garden seems like an excellent idea to me but might not go down so well with the neighbours. Also, the lack of stream here would make it a bit pointless. Still, it would be nice to look at. It was interesting to see just how much you can actually get “for free” from nature if you’re in the right place.

On the whole the book is a light and fun read (with a few good chuckles), there is a grisly bit though in the food section to do with rearing pigs for food. This really isn’t a section for vegetarians. I struggled to read a few parts of it being the crap meat eater that I am (sometimes it’s best not to know where your food actually comes from). Still, that’s only a small part of the section and the rest is interesting to read.

The best part to this book is the thinking it forces you to do, going through the book you can’t help but score yourself on how much you recycle (8/10), how much electricity you use (6/10) and how much crap you buy (5/10). We’re not yet entirely self sufficent in tomatos just yet, although the bedroom window plants have so far produced one tomato (we count that as a glorious success) and at the latest count we have 14 “in progress”. I think we’re on to a winner here!

Of course, you should really just read the book yourself rather than listen to me waffle about it. Which you can do from Amazon. Or (and Dick would be proud of this), you can do what I did and walk to my library and take the book out on Sarah’s card. I should get my own really, or at least contribute to the fines…

Wikipedia is a dangerous game. I think it’s actual proof of six degrees of separation, it’s possible to get from anything to any other thing in less than six steps. Without resorting to All articles with unsourced statements. And lo, someone has created a tool to do just that.

This all started by looking up Office Space which I just watched. Before you know it you’ve read articles on staplers and somehow ended up Star Trek TNG. Funny how it works.

Most importantly, I’ve discovered the importance of (Stephen Root’s) makeup…

How is it that in a city of culture and attractions and stuff I am completely unable to think of something to do in the rain that is near a bus route? There must be something, suggestions in comments please!

I picked up Mum from the airport today, which, in a feat of accidental perfect timing, meant me getting off one airport bus, finding Mum in baggage reclaim then the pair of us getting on the bus in front of the one I just got off. Getting on the bus in front of the one I just alighted from felt a bit like travelling forward in time and gaining an extra few minutes. Probably a bit like crossing the date line and getting a free day. I’m using those free minutes to write this very entry.

We went to visit the Napier campus I’ll hopefully end up at in September. I was quite impressed with my navigational skills as I managed to find it first time having only been there once before. Without a Google Map!

Tomorrow we’re going to attempt a tour bus, assuming it’s not pissing down. Google Calendar claims it will be raining tomorrow, but it also claimed that it wouldn’t rain today. I remain unconvinced…

Well, she can if she can remember the lyrics to the song on TMF she’s singing over. Apparently Madonna sang about level crossings.

The big giant tidy up is complete! Just in time really as my Mum’s coming to stay for a couple of nights. If we don’t pass inspection after five days of solid cleaning I’m going to quite miffed. Now we’re just hoping it doesn’t piss down quite so much as it did last time she was here, we nearly drowned.

I don’t really have much to say but the threat of a fine is looming large so here’s a couple of things from the internet that amused me recently:

(You might need to be a bit geeky to get it but trust me, it’s hilarious)

YouTube comment of the day (Mika – you’re on a winner with comments like this):
“i think this video is good becoz i jst went to devon wid skool and we woz all singin it on da minibus”

Righto, that’s it. See you tomorrow, assuming I can get past security at the airport and get in and out…

There’s something I do that really bugs me: not doing. I’m really excellent at coming up with cunning plans and genius schemes (not as genius as Sarah’s Cheese Sander though) and then completely failing to actually do it. I’m quite good at doing what I say I’ll do with work, stuff tends to get done (although I have six days to complete the big giant database…) but with projects and things I’m pretty crap.

Here’s an immediate list of things I haven’t done that I said I would (in a hope that writing them down will make me do them):

• Buy bits for and finish the MythTV box
• Blog about the Arduino that I said I’d do some days ago
• Figure out how to make the 8×8 LED bricks work and design a PCB for them
• Retrofit a Luxeon LED into an old lamp to make it cool (and to make it work…)

So here’s the plan: Manage my time a bit better so I have a bit of spare time to actually do this stuff. I tend put all my time into one thing and then fry myself working on it. I need to spread my time around a bit over the different things I need to do and I’d like to do. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m not looking at an old processor heatsink sitting on my (unnaturally tidy) desk and thinking that it would look pretty cool with a Luxeon stuck on it too. Luxeon LEDs look totally cool to start with. Another one for the list…

Can you tell what it is yet?

Any closer?

Tada! The Freak Desk!

So as part of the Big Weekend of Tidy Up the spare room/office/junk room got sorted. While I was under the crappy old white desk digging out cables to scrape the dust off them I figured now was as good a time as any to actually sort out what we’re going to do with it. As we have permission from the landlord to bin the desk there was nothing to lose in modifying it to within an inch of it’s life. So we did.

All we needed was a half sized (or less) desk to put the server under and a monitor, keyboard and mouse on top. So off to Homebase to buy a jigsaw we went. A bit later on we had a very short desk and a pile of leftover chipboard.

The nice thing about modifying your furniture is that you can build in high tech features like fully integrated cable management solutions:

And here it is in all it’s glory (there’s even enough room for Tux to sit and keep an eye out for PEBKAC incidents):

Yes, I know you can buy computer desks but that’s not as much fun (or as cheap) as making your own. Plus they tend to wobble even more than this one does. Well, it more leans than wobbles but I think that’s “character”.

It has been a truly thrilling weekend of mostly vacuum cleaning and tidying. It turns out that 1.4 metric tons of dust can accumulate under a bed in less than a year. A chat with Sarah’s Dad went a bit like this (I’ve skipped to the bit where he was told about the dust):

Sarah’s Dad: You know what that means?
Sarah: What?
Sarah’s Dad: You should be ashamed of yourselves!

I think he has a point. It’s amazing how much crap I’ve accumulated in a year and crammed into a fairly small flat. It’s not a good habit and I’m going to try and sort out what I have. It was actually quite a nice feeling to offload some of my Sussex junk on the Sussex Linux geeks.

In my defence the furniture I have here to store and use my junk is, well, suboptimal. With a lot of sub and not much optimal. So tomorrow I’m going to try and modify an old desk in an Ikea Hacker style. Only with an old desk, a jigsaw, copious bodging and probably a substantial amount of swearing.

If it works we’ll have a server desk that’ll fit in better. If it doesn’t we’ll have a pile of broken chipboard (or “firewood” to the people at the back who tried to barbecue with an old bed frame…). We’ll see!

From a BBC News article about Martian dust storms threatening the NASA rovers:

“Opportunity’s solar panels had been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per day, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours.”

700/100 = 7?! You’re kidding me!