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Travel
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Thursday, 16 November 2006 |
This week has been a rather odd experience. I was originally due to come to South Africa back in June, but for various reasons that didn't happen. I prepared to come this time, and spent the last couple of weeks being told "don't go" and "be very careful", and "don't do this" and "do this" and generally being given the impression that a trip to Johannesburg was only slightly more preferable to a one way ticket to Hell.
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Sweden
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Thursday, 02 November 2006 |
Last weekend we had the happy and sad experience of going to collect our Genebank Blommehöns from a delightful couple not too far away from where we live. They sadly are having to give up their chickens due to the family deciding not to keep animals on their farm any more. Goldie was heartbroken to give up her chickens. More info about them is <a href="http://www.alledal.nu/content/view/33/30/">here</a>.
This week has seen a real reminder that winter is well and truly arriving.
The last few weeks have seen heavier skies and colder nights, and the temperatures have been falling at night, and the electricity has been climbing! The issues with the satellite dish over summer that had been annoying became very problematic, and thanks to some very helpful people on the internet we finally found that when our 2.4m dish had been installed the wrong type of LNB had been used, meaning it could only "see" about 80cm of the dish, hence everytime it rained the picture dissappeared. We have now fitted the correct type of LNB and a <a href="http://www.invacom.com/products/adf_120.htm">feedhorn</a> (something Nigel reckons looks more like a potato masher than a horn!) a little tweak, and we now have BBC and ITV again. The picture failed yesterday, but that was quickly solved when the snow was removed from the dish.
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Travel
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Tuesday, 10 October 2006 |
It's a few years since I last visited Prague. A beautiful city and one I thoroughly enjoyed last time I was here.
This week I have returned for work and the flight from Copenhagen to Prague was uneventful, barring my surprise at having to show my passport - something I've not had to do recently whilst in Sweden and visiting to Schengen countries. We landed at Prague some 20 minutes ahead of schedule, and waited patiently for the luggage to arrive. There was lots of tutting when a later flight seemed to get preferential treatment and get their luggage ahead of us - the fact there was only 10 bags on the flight, though, soon settled everyone.
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Sweden
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Friday, 06 October 2006 |
It's been a good week so far. The weekend seemed to be a constant battle against the thunderstorms. We were lucky, our neighbours had their internet connection knocked out by the huge thunderstorms. The thunderstorms were really impressive and for the first time in ages we saw forked lightning. The chickens didn't seem that bothered by it, neither did our elderly cat. The brave hunter, Troy the Weimaraner, cowering and really quite worked up. Poor thing!
One thing that's really noticeable here is how little light polution there is. Despite the thunderstorms we've had a lot of really clear night skys recently. The whole sky is a mass of stars, and sights that aren't easily visible in the UK are visible here, such as actually being able to see The Milky Way, and even more amazing for the first time I ever I realised that some of the stars that make up <a href="http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/default.htm?http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/constellations/plough.html">The Plough</a> are actually <a href="http://www.dibonsmith.com/uma_con.htm">double stars or binaries</a>. For something you take for granted to not be the thing you thought it was for 30-odd years is really quite something. One of the stranger outcomes of this is that it's a lot harder to spot Orion due to all the extra stars in the sky...
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Sweden
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Written by Stephen Baines
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Monday, 02 October 2006 |
We’ve been working hard with bureaucracy over the last week or so.
Number one for me was dealing with cars – we have two major projects on this front, number one was to get my UK car registered in Sweden, number two was to get a Swedish car as a second car. The first one has had us mired in bureaucracy that I thought we’d escaped…
It should have been easy. The website said it was easy. As an EU car, all we needed to do, according to Vägverket, was bring it to Sweden, take it to Bilprovningen, pay 300 SEK, and hey presto! One Swedish registered car.
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