Energy saving tips

It is amazing how much energy some people waste! You would think in these days of high energy costs, everyone would be switching things off at every opportunity, and insulating everything in sight!

10 ideas for energy saving

1. Lights off when you don't need them! Same goes for the TV and other electrical appliances - one of the neighbours seems to leave the TV on all night!

2. Drive slower, I drive at about 60mph now on A roads and motorways, and now get about 550 miles to 50 litres of petrol (car is a 1.6l Scenic). The way you drive is also a factor, steady not zooming around from junction to lights etc

3. Turn the heating down - adjust the timer for the times you really need it, and turn down to 16 or 17 deg C, plenty warm enough apart from in really cold snaps. Heat the rooms you are in.

4. Close the curtains at dusk, make sure windows are shut when the heating is on.

5. Change energy supplier - I have just changed and will save about £100-150 a year all being well. Look at your energy use in cooking, electric rings stay hot for a while after switch off, food will still cook with the remaining heat, switch off the kettle before the end, it's boiling quite a bit before it switches off.

6. Look at your appliances and central heating - I went from a G rated back boiler to a A rated combi, most appliances are A or even A+ rated nowadays

7. Keep doors shut - retain the heat in the rooms. Make sure visitors do the same when they come in!

8. Look at renewables if you have the spare cash to invest, and can justify the payback time. User solar or wind up chargers for phones and radio etc.

9. Grow your own - better for you (if organic), better for the environment (massive food miles by supermarkets), buy local

10. Insulate - loft grants are still available, as are cavity wall ones. If you don't have cavity walls, put a layer of loft insulation on a bare wall, with wooden slats between the lengths, then tongue and groove panel over the top to give a nice insulated wall, and it stops damp as well on cold walls.

Above all, just think about what you do, and what you can do to save energy!

Long time, no blog!

It's been a while since I last posted, time seems to have gone so quickly. Now it's November and the allotment is going into shutdown mode (cue Windows (tm) chime...)

There are still plenty of parsnips growing, in fact there's two rows, one for eating and one for wine making, that's assuming I can get another demijohn, a sterilised bucket and all the other associated bits and bats before January. There's leeks as well but that's really about it apart from the fractal cauliflower (below) which, now picked, I am told tastes like broccoli.

So, much of the work has been digging over the ground ready for next year, though there's some winter broad beans gone in and some winter lettuce and cabbage. I have got some manure (a local farmer drops some off for the allotment holders to share each year), so that's around where the peas and beans will go, and I have mulched around some of the fruit trees. I need to stake out the pears as they are growing a lot now.

The Moon

Isn't it strange, I was reading about why a "blue moon" is called a blue moon yesterday, and lo and behold we have one today. Though it's cloudy and you can't see it! A blue moon is the second full moon in a particular month. As this only occurs once every 2.75 years or so, hence the saying "once in a blue moon". The reason is that the moon's cycle is 29 days, whereas months are mostly 30 or 31 (except Feb of course), so eventually the date of full moon fits twice within a month.

As always Wikipedia explains best

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_moon

So I decided to do a bit of Moon digiscoping! I know this isn't quite full moon but you have to do this when the sky is clear!

For digiscoping you don't need too much equipment. You can use your compact camera - in fact I have read that compact cameras are actually better for this than DSLRs in some respects, although you need a long shutter speed for anything really remote, like nebulae etc (and an equatorial mount but I can't afford one of those just now!). You also need a camera mount for the telescope - about £20. The telescope btw was about £50 off eBay, it's a 75mm objective with a 25mm and 9mm lens and 3x Barlow Converter. So it gets some decent stuff for casual viewing. And it's the right way up so I can digiscope wildlife as well.

The above is a close up of Tycho, a crater near the base of the moon. Notice the white rays coming off it, which are streams of material ejected when the meteorite impacted the moon's surface. These rays are common to a few craters such as Archimedes and Plato in the north west quadrant of the moon (viewed right way up), and are only really spectacular near the full moon, whereas for crater spotting you probably need a much less full moon to get the shadows etc.

The difficulty with digiscoping is setting the telescope up first, even though the moon is pretty big in the sky you would be surprised how difficult I found it with a 9mm lens to pinpoint it. Plus it moves in the few minutes it takes to point the telescope the right way! Before I got the camera mount I took video to compensate for camera shake and telescope shake, and also before I found the setting on the compact camera (a Canon) to delay a photo for anything up to 2 or 3 minutes - though 20 seconds is usually enough.

I haven't had much luck yet with stars, despite keeping the shutter open for a while - in any case to do this properly as I mentioned you would need an equatorial mount and probably a 4 to 6 in scope, which isn't in my budget just now....

Nothing new under the sun...

Just reading a very interesting volume collection of a weekly newspaper called The Graphic published in Victorian times. This volume covered the period of January to June 1887 and does seem to be contemporary published folio, based on what I read on such as AbeBooks.

Some topics in the news include:

Concern regarding the call to Jihad by an Afghan ruler, particularly against the Russian empire.
An enquiry into the earnings of doctors to see whether some doctors were being paid excessively
Concerns about "the 3 R's" in education
various earthquakes and disasters at sea.
Whether the Post Office should deliver on Sundays.
Preparations for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria and a historical look back at the Jubilee of George 111.

Though some topics are definitely of the time:

Discovery of Gold in the Transvaal     (now South Africa)
The last battle in the wars in Arizona and Mexico against the Apache Indians
The opening of the new Tay Bridge

Adverts were for such as Pear's soap, Fry's chocolate and cocoa, Beecham's remedies

One advert was entitled "To Stout People" and was a remedy to cure obesity!

Allotment report or Weeds R Us.. with a bit of hedgehog

All this rain is good for weeds. And slugs. And snails. Wellies are good for rain. And for killing slugs. And for killing snails!

Hedgehogs are also good for getting rid of slugs but we've not had much luck with hedgehog survival in the allotment over the past few years. We had two drown in the sunken bath before we meshed it over, and one we tried to look after with a nice pile of weeds and twigs and grass, milk on a dish and meat fat, which also promptly died, but it did have some kind of growth on it, so it probably wasn't well anyway.

Why am I on about hedgehogs? Well I am now reading (now that my wife has finished it..) "A Prickly Affair" by Hugh Warwick, a self confessed hedgehog enthusiast, and - for balance - an ecologist.

A Prickly Affair: My Life with Hedgehogs

Now onto the allotment.

What's doing well:
Potatoes
Blackcurrants ( I have now spent several hours picking them...)
Raspberries
Parsnips (not ready yet but flourishing)
Onions
Garlic
The damson and apple trees
Weeds
Slugs
Snails

What's not doing well:

Strawberries
Sweetcorn
Beetroot

What's got eaten
Lettuce
Cosmos plants
Many seedlings...

Office veg!

My office at work, as I may have mentioned before, is often like a greenhouse, being so hot at times.

So, a couple of years ago I started to use it as one!

It is a talking point, and staff and visitors are quite impressed! I think I also might be contributing to work's green strategy....

This year it's cherry tomatoes and a pepper plant and I have been bringing home cherry tomatoes all this week.

Collapse of monetary commerce? Lesson from history

Found this interesting article about a new BBC programme

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18159752

I have done quite a bit of reading recently about the late Roman period. I am quite fascinated about the period from 400AD, where the frequent invasions and uprisings, decline of the power of Roman emperors, usurpers to the Roman throne etc eventually led to the Rescript of Honorius, the response of the emperor to the Briton's appeal for help to protect them from invading hordes.

The end actually came more gradually. As late as around 450AD (I hate it when people try to use C.E so that they don't have to acknowledge religion!) St. Albans still had some semblance of Roman civilisation and community.

However, as people left the cities and made more of a subsistence living for themselves in the countryside, money wasn't needed any more as barter was much more useful. A similar thing happened when Argentina went bankrupt a few years ago, money no longer had any meaning and so people resorted to their own barter economy.

The same thing will probably happen in Greece, irrespective of whether it leaves the Euro or not. But if it leaves the Euro, without any form of backing to the "Promise to Pay" form of money - which of course has to be underwritten by the reserves of the Government or central Bank - then there is no basis for the currency. They'll get through it eventually - Argentina is now sufficiently back to normal as to throw its weight around about the Falklands!

There are some interesting parallels in the article, rise of radical movements, migration, greater divide between rich and poor etc.

I once saw a very interesting programme about the eruption of a volcano in about 510AD which caused a global cooling for 3 years or so - mass famine, failure of harvest, no summer - and we struggled nowadays with a small Icelandic volcano! (which I saw the year before it was famous!). This I think killed off - with a handful of exceptions -  the remaining western civilisations and then end of the Roman world was truly complete.....