The McKenzies' Blog…

Looking for a change in where we take the girls to play, I got on Google and starting searching for alternative indoor play areas for kids in Cambridgeshire.  Normally we go to either Funky Fun House or Cheeky Monkeys.  They’re both great fun the kids love them, but sometimes you just want to mix it up a little bit.  So while searching for places I came across Activity World in Peterborough.  It’s not too far and was a nice day so the drive was pleasant. 

This place was an incredible size!  The actual play area was easily 5 times bigger then Funky Fun House .. And so much more to do there.  You can see from clicking on the link for Activity World they have more pics and videos on their site which is why I decided to go there and check it out.

Here are some pics I took on the day, there are more in our Flickr Gallery ..

 click here to see them all.

Click the thumbnails to see the bigger images.

It’s still a bit early and not all of the details are available as yet .. but I’m waiting with bated breath for all the details.. I’ve actually already booked my hotel room.. didn’t want that to be the primary reason I couldn’t get there.

I’ve been using WordPress now for what.. nearly 3 years I think.. maybe only 2, can’t remember. But I’m dead impressed with it… I’ve been watching all of the WordCamp events around the world and waiting for one to come up here.. I know they had a 2008 one in the UK, however I missed that completely for some reason..

Check out the WordCamp UK website:

http://wiki.wordcampuk.tonyscott.org.uk/Main_Page

And follow them on Twitter too: http://twitter.com/wordcampuk

I hope to meet loads of people there.. sounds like it should be great fun!

#wordcampuk

So, while looking for a small and light weight stove for hiking / SOTA whatever I decided to pick up a Hexamine pocket stove and give it a try.  I usually have a Camping Gaz type stove but it’s big, bulky and you need to carry compressed gas cartridges with it.  These themselves are big, bulky and can’t really just be chucked in a bin when they are finished as they are still a risk of exploding.

I’d really like a MSR Whisperlite but they aren’t cheap, however, they are very versatile.. best you read about them on the manufactures website (click the link back there).  At some point I’ll likely get one of these, but not right now. 

For now I’ll have a go with this Hexamine stove.    This the very same one I have picked up for £4.00

To night I decided to do some timing experiments to see how long it takes to boil water in both my crusader cup and a small aluminium kettle.  The Crusader cup took 6m20sec to bring 1L of water to a boil and the Hexamine cube held the boil for 3 minutes.  Might want it to boil longer if you were sterilizing water, but just pop another cube of Hexamine and it would be good for another 9 mins of burn time.  The kettle, which has a lid, only took 4m30sec and the same 9 min burn time on the cube so that means 4m30sec of the water being held at a boil.

A couple of pics and a couple of videos can be seen below.. click to enlarge or see the videos.

Well, now just have to try it out in anger one day in the field