Family / This Site | Keys Corner

Traveling for a bit

By John, on May 31st, 2008

We’re taking off for a bit more than a couple of weeks, heading down to Valencia in the car to look up a cousin of mine and do some sightseeing in France and Spain at the same time. Depending on whether we find convenient free access to WLANs while we are traveling, we may . . . → Read More: Traveling for a bit

Pond restrained

By John, on May 30th, 2008

Palisades at the side of the pond
The last couple of years, we’ve had problems during heavy rain that our pond overflows into the neighbour’s garden downhill from us. Obviously they weren’t terribly pleased to have their large wooden shed occasionally under water, and as the side of the pond is held back by wooden palisades which have been in place since the house was built about 20 years ago, we were quite worried that they might be rotting and that one day our pond might end up completely in their garden.

In the photo above you can see the pipe we connected to a heavy-duty pump to keep the pond under control when it rained a lot – it looks as if we’re pumping into the neighbour’s garden; which we are, but the pipe goes straight into an underground stream and doesn’t flood their garden.
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Troublesome technology

By John, on May 14th, 2008

I have been tearing my hair out, fighting technology, at home this last week.

Firstly, I have been trying to get a decent wireless LAN connection from the office to the cellar. The problem here is that the floors in our house are made of reinforced concrete (and, I suspect so are at . . . → Read More: Troublesome technology

Spring is finally here

By John, on April 20th, 2008

At last, after the recent snow, it has warmed up and some of the foreign birds have arrived from warmer climes. These ducks arrived today and are making themselves useful eating the duckweed in our pond.

Schmitten 7:20 this morning

By John, on March 26th, 2008

The view this morning at 7:20. It has been snowing most of the night, and the forecast is for more to come today. It should warm up a bit tomorrow, so I hope the winter might have gone after the weekend!

View out of our windows

By John, on March 25th, 2008

Ruth is in the UK at the moment for a few days, so these pictures are mainly to show her how much snow (and sleet and hail) we have had since she left on Sunday!

And it was good job she flew into Heathrow and not London City (with its short runway . . . → Read More: View out of our windows

Rostock

By John, on March 22nd, 2008

We visited a friend in Rostock from Thursday until today. It is a really lovely town – it has been nicely renovated since the reunification in the early 1990′s and is a very pleasant place to live. The historical building style uses bricks very effectively – and many of the modern buildings in the . . . → Read More: Rostock

We’ve tidied up the site

By John, on March 11th, 2008

Last week we had a bill from a company for over 1500 Euro for the use of a small (approx. 120 x 80 pixel) image that they claim they own the copyright for. We’ve engaged a lawyer specialized on IP (intellectual property) rights to defend our corner. IP disputes are NOT covered by legal . . . → Read More: We’ve tidied up the site

New toy

By John, on March 8th, 2008

This is amazingly good value for money. I bought a Fujitsu Siemens SnapScan S510M this week.

The scanner is small, as you can see in the photo, where it is sitting next to the Mac Mini. When it’s not in use, it’s even smaller as the sheet feeder and the paper tray . . . → Read More: New toy