Author Archives: james

A home-made Ashforth-style feeder

Posted on January 10, 2012 by james

I need around twenty feeders for my beehives this year. I’ve messed about with trays full of syrup on top of the crown board up until now, but I really need something a bit better. A few people recommended the … Continue reading →

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A home-made steam wax extractor

Posted on January 10, 2012 by james

In those years where we have a proper summer (not since about 2006 now), I put “waste” beeswax and old combs into my solar extractor to melt down the wax. In 2011 we didn’t really get that much decent wax-melting … Continue reading →

Posted in Bee-keeping, Projects, Smallholding | 1 Comment

Polytunnel Chiles

Posted on January 10, 2012 by james

Most years I try to grow a few different varieties of chile in the polytunnel. Jalapenos are always on the list so we can pickle them for use on pizzas, in fajitas and tacos and suchlike. 2011 hasn’t exactly been … Continue reading →

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Harlequin ladybirds by the thousand

Posted on January 10, 2012 by james

The Harlequin ladybird appears to be moving into the south west of the UK in huge numbers now, having been fairly rare only five years ago. As the summer ends the adult ladybirds find somewhere to overwinter and apparently produce … Continue reading →

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Odd cloud effect

Posted on January 10, 2012 by james

I looked out of my office window the other day and saw this: No idea what caused it. Looks like an aircraft contrail in reverse. Not something I’ve ever noticed before.

Posted in Random | 4 Comments

Google Completely Loses the Plot

Posted on October 11, 2011 by james

Over the last couple of days I’ve been receiving frequent emails containing the tedious witterings of someone I’m barely acquainted with, courtesy of Google+. I have never told Google I wish to receive email from Google+, so at what point … Continue reading →

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MythTV/FFmpeg: Part 3

Posted on September 29, 2011 by james

Well, I finally realised that there’s a 0.24 fixes tree for nuvexport that isn’t part of the main MythTV 0.24 fixes tree, so I downloaded that having read on the mailing list that it should work with the MythTV 0.24 … Continue reading →

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MythTV/FFmpeg: Part 2

Posted on September 28, 2011 by james

Enabling mp3 encoding in the bundled version of ffmpeg was merely a case of adding –enable-libmp3lame to the configure command for the entire package. nuvexport-xvid now runs to completion. Unfortunately the output looks all wrong, so I’m back to the … Continue reading →

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Trials and Tribulations with MythTV and FFmpeg

Posted on September 27, 2011 by james

I’m running MythTV 0.24.1 at the moment with quite a few MythBuntu and other front ends. I’m running out of disk for recordings and decided to archive a few off to release some space which I’ve done with previous versions … Continue reading →

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Jupiter and Moons

Posted on September 27, 2011 by james

Since Jupiter is returning to our skies now I thought I’d take advantage of last Thursday’s clear-ish skies to do some imaging practice with my 127 Mak and SPC900. I’ve not been through all the clips I took with my … Continue reading →

Posted in Astroimaging, Astronomy | Tagged | Leave a comment