Plastic is the new ink

Posted on May 23, 2018 by james

Yesterday a box of goodies arrived at our door, somewhat sooner than expected (and not as large, either):

This is the aluminium-framed Geeetech Prusa i3 clone that will hopefully be an interesting project for myself and the children to get involved with over this summer. I have a bit much on at the moment to start just yet, but I had to open the box up to see what was inside.

Very wisely they put the paperwork including the instructions on top 😀 Everything else is in foam trays.

The “top deck”. Not much I recognise immediately there. I’m intrigued to know what would have gone in the circular cut-out however.

Next one down is mostly taken up by the frame, which looks pretty sturdy.

And on the bottom, motors, power cord, leadscrews and other stuff I don’t recognise 🙂

Can’t wait to get started, but as I said, I have other priorities first, particularly whilst the weather is being so kind.

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Swimming, 22nd May 2018

Posted on May 23, 2018 by james

Back for hopefully one final attempt at the following set:

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 54s, rest interval 21s
200m front crawl swim down

I wasn’t at all sure how it would go, still being a bit sniffly, but things didn’t feel too bad once I got going and whilst I did once drop in a 53s rep I did manage the entire set with all the rest faster than 53s and felt quite pleased with myself.

Next time I’m down to 53s and 22s rest then. I suspect this is where it’s going to start getting quite tough

USRPT distance this year: 41,150m
Total distance this year: 85,800m

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Swimming, 21st May 2018

Posted on May 23, 2018 by james

Feeling quite tired after a busy weekend, so I just decided to work on technique today and went back to my tumble turns. The biggest issue is timing, really. As my speed through the water increases so the point at which I initiate the turn must move further away from the wall. Getting that right is still tricky.

I ended up doing:

400m f/c warm-up
16 x 50m tumble turn practice
200m f/c swim down

USRPT distance this year: 39,900m
Total distance this year: 83,950m

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Swimming, 17th May 2018

Posted on May 20, 2018 by james

No time to swim yesterday, so today I was back in the pool to try for a second success at

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 54s, rest interval 21s
200m front crawl swim down

Again I didn’t feel at my best, but did managed all 25 reps and did so a little better than last time, definitely slowing in the last five but staying under 53s for the entire set so I think I can be pleased with that.

USRPT distance this year: 39,900m
Total distance this year: 82,550m

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Swimming, 15th May 2018

Posted on May 20, 2018 by james

Another attempt at:

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 54s, rest interval 21s
200m front crawl swim down

I found the going pretty tough for this one, but managed all 25 reps despite sinking quite deep into the 53s for the last few. I think perhaps I am not on my best form. My children both have a cold at the moment and I’m feeling a little snuffly myself which probably doesn’t help.

USRPT distance this year: 38,650m
Total distance this year: 80,700m

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Springtime and new life

Posted on May 20, 2018 by james

Ok, so Spring has been some time coming this year with cold and wet weather for quite a while, but it’s significantly improving now and to celebrate our first chicks hatched out this weekend.

I have a mixture of Marans, Cream Legbar, White Leghorn and Bresse-Gauloise in the incubators. Hatching seems a bit variable though the Marans (the black and white ones in the above photo) are doing well. The Bress-Gauloise I’ve not tried before so it will be interesting to see how they turn out.

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This week’s dashcam footage

Posted on May 20, 2018 by james

Strangest incident this week was finding these two trouble-makers in the road at about 9pm in the evening. I’m not aware that anyone is keeping cattle anywhere near that stretch of road, so I’ve no idea where they came from.

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A comparison of bottle cappers

Posted on May 14, 2018 by james

For many years now my favoured bottle-capping tool has been this two-handed capper that I bought longer ago than I can remember:

It can be a little awkward and isn’t ideally suited to employment by a handy young assistant, but it does make a very neat job of crimping the cap on:

Recently I decided to try a lever model to see if it was any easier (and faster). This is the Brewferm TT:

The height is adjustable for different bottles by releasing a spring-loaded pin from the post and sliding the body of the capping mechanism up and down. This works fine, but isn’t great if you have a selection of different size bottles as regularly appears to be the case in my beer shed. The biggest problem for me though is that it doesn’t appear to put the caps on very well. Certainly they’re crimped over slightly, but nowhere near as much as my two-handled capper:

Finally I gave this much heftier one a go. Sadly I can’t recall where I bought it our who makes it:

It does a great job of capping the bottles and even has a little magnet inside the crimper to hold the cap rather than leaving you to place it on the top of the bottle

Unfortunately it almost always seems to get the cap jammed in the crimping mechanism and lifts the bottle off the base when the lever is released leaving the bottle requiring a sharp pull to release it. If I could fix that it would be great.

But for the time being I’m back to the old faithful because it “just works”.

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Checking on M’aidez brew

Posted on May 14, 2018 by james

After a week in the fermenter I checked my recent brew. Fermentation still looks to be going on at a reasonable rate:

And a quick check with the hydrometer shows it’s got a bit of a way go to yet:

So I’ll be leaving it a few more days before doing another check to see how it’s getting on.

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Swimming, 14th May 2018

Posted on May 14, 2018 by james

I’ve had an unintentional break of about a week since my last swim because work has been rather busy, but today I was back at my next attempt on the 54s reps of 50m:

400m front crawl warm-up
25 x 50m front crawl, target time 54s, rest interval 21s
200m front crawl swim down

I started out fairly quickly, but struggled as I reached the middle of the set, failing on rep 14 and sitting out rep 15. After that I managed to complete the rest, but one or two came very close to 54s. Back to the start for next time then 🙁

I didn’t have time for a proper swim-down either. Had to be back for a conference call, which I made with two minutes to spare 🙂

USRPT distance this year: 37,400m
Total distance this year: 78,850m

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