Author: pete

Categories
Meander

Consumption

Joy of joys, last Sunday I went into Dyas and found that they now stock plug-through energy meters for £10 apiece (apparently £13 on the website).

First device to get measured up was the fridge, which we found to be consuming about 0.4 KWh per day (average over a 4 day period). We took a vacuum cleaner hose to the coils at the back, and found that the usage dropped to about 0.33 KWh per day (also measured over 4 days).

Next up is my computer. Even before anything was switched on, I was finding a draw of 11 W, which I guess is just the power supply keeping itself alive. Once the computer is switched on and settled down, this is up to 70 W. Turning on the monitor takes us up to 110 W, speaker system up to 113 W, desk lamp up to 160 W.

I was surprised by how much more energy the computer consumes than a fridge. We are always being told how the fridge is such a significant slurper of juice, yet having a computer on round the clock equates to having five fridges, and that’s without the monitor switched on. Putting it into standby or hibernate mode obviously reduces this greatly, but that’s not much help if you are actually using the thing. Maybe our fridge is just phenomenally efficient. Your mileage will vary, obviously – the odds are that your computer isn’t an AMD Sempron 3000+ with three hard drives in it.

What should I measure next?

Categories
Meander

Wally

A while ago, Karen and I had a fantastic idea. Bernard used to enjoy playing with our wallets, so we gave him one of my old ones. We filled it with old train tickets etc to give it that authentic walletness.

Last week, we had ordered a curry and Karen was upstairs hushing Bernard back to sleep. I was tidying up the sitting room, and saw Bernard’s wallet and toy mobile phone on the coffee table. I tossed them into his toybox and thought nothing more of it.

When the curry arrived, Karen got into a bit of a panic when she couldn’t find her wallet. I didn’t have enough cash in mine to pay the guy at the door. After a while, he got tired of waiting while we turned the place upside down, so he told us that he’d leave us to it, and phone us later on to get our credit card number.

Mere seconds after he’d driven off, it all clicked into place in my head. I lifted Bernard’s wallet out of his toybox and put it back on the coffee table.

Happy 5th anniversary, Karen. Looking forward to the next 50.

Categories
TITGIG

Indecision

I have a number of email addresses, all of which find their way into the same inbox. There is one address which I use as my primary address. Entirely unsurprisingly, it’s of the form something @ thisdomain. It seems to get a lot of spam, which is a shame, as I thought that I had done a decent job of guarding it.

It would be very simple for me, configurationally speaking, to switch to using somethingelse @ thisdomain as my primary email address instead. Any email sent to the old address would get the error message that the specified mailbox could not be found on this host.

Naturally, my only concern is for my existing contacts. When the old address suddenly stops working, will they have the sense to open a web browser and go to http://pete.nu to find out what gives? At present, that page just redirects to the blog, but I could very easily change it to display a huge message saying *I have changed my email address, use this contact form to get in touch with me.*

On the one hand, spam doesn’t trouble me too much because GMail’s filters seem to be reasonably reliable. But, on the other hand, it would be nice to not have to scan a couple of hundred email subject lines each day to check for false positives.

Should I go for it?

Categories
IAMOWIM

Cold

I estimate that over the course of a 24 hour period, I am collecting (and discarding) approximately the weight of my own head in nasal mucus.

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Top Photos

Sleeping duck

sleeping duck

Categories
Parenting Photos

Knobs

knobs

Bernard reflected in the knobs of our new bathroom cabinet. At the time of writing, it’s not yet up on the wall. We’re going to need a bigger drill.

Categories
Photos

ScOwl

scowling owl

Pain in my ass

At five to six last night, while Karen, Bernard and I were having dinner (well, technically Karen and I were looking at our empty plates while Bernard very slowly polished off his chilli con carne) I sat up straight and clicked my fingers.

*Darn it, I forgot to go out for my bike ride this weekend.*

Karen looked at me like a cat.

*Or did I? I could squeeze it in after dinner.*

Karen cocked her head.

“You could go out right now, if you want, ” she said, gesticulating at Bernard’s plate.

Long story short, I did. Findings:

1. It wasn’t too cold at all. Long-sleeved t-shirt and shorts were adequate.
2. It wasn’t too dark either. It was getting a bit dark by the end of my half hour ride, but I’m cool with that.
3. The track through the woods wasn’t too wet (though obviously today’s rain will have seen to that).
4. Bike is in fine condition. One of my front lights might need new batteries, but I have no shortage of front lights, nor do I have a shortage of spare batteries.
5. I am not in terribly good condition, endurance-wise, but hopefully a few weeks will sort that out.
6. Ow my arse hurts. Another thing that you get used to.
7. My new gloves are awesome.

I would have cycled to work today, but I was put off by the gale force winds and heavy rain, which you may have noticed.

So, looks like there’ll be no cycling to work this week. Maybe next week. We’ve made progress, at least.

Categories
Top Photos

Parakeet

parakeet

Categories
Gaming

When did I stop enjoying computer games?

Okay, perhaps I’m being a bit melodramatic, but I feel like there’s been a shift of some sort.

I used to play games all the time. I liked racing games (eg Gran Turismo, Midnight Club), action games (eg GTA, Hitman, The Getaway), survival horrors (Silent Hill, Resident Evil), adventure games (Tomb Raider), FPSs (Half Life, Max Payne) and text-based online RPGs (Urban Dead, Nexus War). Quite a wide variety, really.

But these days I find playing games to be quite an unfulfilling experience. I’m playing a little Tomb Raider lately, it’s true, and I have picked up the controller to play Gran Turismo 3 (to unlock more of the arcade mode tracks) but for the most part, I find that the most enjoyable part of the gameplaying experience is the relief that I feel when I finally turn the bloody thing off.

The advantage of this is that I can make a single game last me for many, many months (I’ve had my PlayStation 2 for more than 5 years, and I still only own 9 games for it, 4 of which I have completed in their single player mode. I’ve also rented a few games over the years, but that still only bumps the total up to 12, and I’m not sure if that counts because each one only occupied one weekend. So gaming is not an expensive habit, for me.

I’m not really sad to find myself in this situation. Gaming was never exactly a passion of mine, just something that I enjoyed doing.

Y’know, maybe I’m just overthinking it. Maybe I enjoy gaming as much as I ever did, but excessive introspection is just highlighting the cracks. That aside, the facts don’t lie: whereas I could once play a game for six hours at a time, I now get bored after half an hour. No bad thing, you might say. I’d be inclined to agree.