This won’t work every time, but from my own experiences it has worked each time.  I’ve never personally filled a laptop with liquid or sunk a mobile phone (either I’m just more careful or really lucky), but I know a number of people that have done this.  So here is the advice I’ve given in all the cases an d it’s managed to work.  You must follow the advice closely and NOT try and rush the process!!!  I can’t say that enough, DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Here it goes.

The most important thing to be done when water or other liquid comes in contact with your tech toys, REMOVE ALL POWER SOURCES!!!  Forget what you were doing on the laptop DO NOT try and save your work, you’ll only increase the risk of damage.  Unplug the power cord and remove the battery (or just the battery if it’s a phone, unless you’re unlucky enough to own an iPhone, you can thank Steve Jobs for the inability to pull the battery out).  The killer of wet devices is power, plain and simple.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Next, for laptops, once you’ve removed all the power sources take out anything else that can be removed, such as the CD/DVD drives if they can be taken out.  Get the laptop turned up on it’s end towards which ever side has the cooling vents on it and give the laptop a gentle shake downwards to get the liquid to come out of vents.   Don’t shake to too hard as you don’t want to damage the hard drive by the excess force.  Water will generally move quite easily assuming your location is under the normal laws of gravity.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

Get a small screw driver and take all the covers off the bottom of the machine, normally there are a couple, they usually cover the RAM DIMMS, hard drive, and other bits.  Getting these off will help to get some circulation through the machine and may even help to allow any trapped liquid to escape from the machine.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

You’ll need to get the machine warm, I suggest using an airing closet or if you haven’t got one then somewhere else that’s quite warm.  This shouldn’t exceed about 40-45C to you’ll risk more damage from the heat.  If you haven’t got that then get a fan and place the fan so it’s blowing into the keyboard and/or the open panels on the bottom.  If you’ve only got the one fan then alternate it blowing on each side.  All the time your laptop should try to remain on it’s end so water can run out of the machine, it can’t run out of the machine if it’s flat on it’s base, well not easily.

DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!!

In case you somehow managed to miss my warnings DO NOT RUSH THE PROCESS!!! you should read my posting again. 

You should NOT attempt to reapply power or insert the battery for at least 12 hours.  After the 12 hours examine the machine as best you can for any signs of moisture, shake the machine gently again to see if there’s any more liquid coming out, if nothing then turn the machine around and turn it over to try and shake lose any liquid that’s still lurking inside.  If your not 100% sure if the liquid has been completely removed then return it to the drying process in front of the fan or in the airing closet for another 6-8 hours and check it again.

Only once you are 100% sure all of the liquid has been removed should you risk applying power to the device again.  Start with the battery first then mains power.  If the liquid was anything other then water it’s possible keys on the keyboard may be sticky.  This too can generally be fixed by removing the keyboard from the laptop and washing it in a bit of water (I know it sounds strange, but as it’s been removed from the device the risk of further damage is quite low.

I hope you find this helpful.   If you’ve had experiences of this and were able to salvage your equipment either by the method I’ve outlined or by some other method please feel free to post some comments about it.  I’d like to hear some other ways people have managed to save their gear after coming in contact with some liquid.

I wouldn’t have too much desire to live in places such as Edinburgh or Glasgow, no disrespect those cities, but they are too large for me.  Deep down I’m a small town/village sort of fellow.  I never realized that until moving to the UK and having spent the last few years in Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, this has shown me how quiet life can be in a smallish village.

My own regret after my most recent week in Scotland was that I wasn’t able to get out into the countryside and do more walking around, but what I did manage was superb and gave me a real boost mentally and “spiritually” (in a non-religious way).  One of these days I’ll go and just never come back. 

With some spectacular views like these it’s easy to see why [click to see full sized images]

I think in just a very short time of being there I’ve fallen in love with Ceann Rois (Kinross), it’s just about the perfect size and the views of the surrounding area are, well, spectacular.  From the shores of Loch Lìobhann (Loch Leven), or looking east to Bishop Hill or Benarty Hill to the south, the views are simply awesome. 

A line from a song sung by Celtic Woman, Caledonia (click to see the video) (Sung by Lisa Kelly) really does describe how I feel about Scotland

Let me tell you that I love you
That I think about you all the time
Caledonia, you’re calling me,

[The two photos above are from the Isle of Mull, click on them to see full size images]

Since the mid 90’s when I got my first taste of Gaelic I’ve had a fascination with the language.  Thought by many to be a dead or dying language, however it’s been shown to be gaining ground in parts of Scotland with more taking up the language all the time.  Back in the 90’s I’d heard about Sabhal Mòr Ostaig (meaning, the great barn at Ostaig, owing to it’s 1973 start up location),on the Isle of Skye. This was, and still is today, the only college specializing in higher education taught solely in Gaelic.  Anyhow, back in the 90’s I’d ordered some CD’s and Video tapes from the school to try and learn Gaelic at home.  This worked a little, but without any support network and anyone to speak with it all sort of went by the wayside.  When I went to the Isle of Mull back in 2008 my love for the ancient language came back having not only heard some of the locals speaking it, but really but the fact that I could actually remember and understand some of it (very little, but hey better then none at all). 

I’ve recently been looking into taking a distance learning course from SMO.  I’m just waiting to find out when the term will actually start and see about getting signed up for it.  I still have a problem with finding local people to converse with, however I don’t think it will be nearly as hard these days as it was back in the 90’s, especially being this close to the source of the language. 

What will it give me to be able to speak Gaelic?  Likely not that much to be fair, but it will give me another ticked box on my list of things I want to do in my life, not really my “bucket list” as such, but I suppose if it needs a label then that can be used.   Maybe one day I’ll formally write my list of things I want to do and start physically checking stuff off… hmm good idea.   I suppose another thing that learning Gaelic might be give me is a bit of an advantage should I actually manage to pull off move to Scotland and ending up in an area where the language is commonly used.

While up in Scotland I’d attended by first Céilidh and even dressed the part with a hired kilt.  While I didn’t actually muster enough courage to go and try dancing it was still great fun watching it all.

While the tartan wasn’t that of the Clan MacKenzie I think it looked alright, the tartan is that of the Clan Douglas, the kilt hire shop wasn’t able to get my own tartan on the short notice I’d given them.  Oh well, next time.

I’ve been blithering on for too long and it’s bed time.

After checking in we needed to get ourselves over to the kilt shop to get our kilt fitting for the Ceilidh on Saturday night, which was a blast. We didn’t get up and do any dancing however, it really was a couples thing. But was great fun to watch the dancing. Before heading to the party we had a long walk around Perth collecting Geocaches along with the other 1000 or so people attending Mega Scotland 2010… What must the residents of the town have been thinking of all this.

Dinner was quite exciting, it started off by the piping in  of the Haggis followed by the Ode To The Haggis with a slight variation to bring into it a bit about Geocaching. The ‘show’ before dinner was served lasted about 10 mins, very entertaining to say the least.

Gord and I both opted for the Haggis. It was over heard that the Haggis was by all accounts was top quality.  it was Gords’ first time ever having Haggis, I had had it before however I think it was canned so that’s not real Haggis   We both loved it, it was spicier then we’d expected, not hot spicy but just pepper type spicy.

After the Ceilidh it was back to the camp site for more much needed sleep.

Sunday, Aug 1st, we didn’t really know what to do, the weather took a turn for the worse on Sunday after a couple of nice days. We headed to Edinburgh to have a walk about. The weather really went to hell about after 90 mins of us getting there. We’d stopped for Pizza in a nice but hot little Restaurant… Outside were 100′s of people attending the big buskers festival that was going on.

After lunch we’d started to wander the streets to see what we could find.. This is when the contents of the Firth of Fourth stated to drop on the city. We took refuge in a Whiskey shop and even managed a sample of something that Gord bought to take home for a friend. I bought a couple little pocket sized bottles, just enough to fill the nice little MacKenzie key ring flask that I picked up   We had managed to find one geocache in town before heading back to the car and returning to the camp site to attend the ‘Yorkshire Day Away’ Geocache Event being held just about outside of our tent.

Monday, Aug 2, we had to return to Perth to return the kilts. It was an exceptionally lazy day due to the typical Scottish weather. Before leaving the camp site for the day we had attended yet another Geocache Event, ‘Bun and Brew to recover from the post Mega blues’.  nearly everyone from the camp site was there along with the Scottish weather, no one invited that though. 

We decided that since the showers at the camp site were sub par and long queues at time, that we would go swimming instead. We’d gone to the Leisure Centre next to the Mega Scotland venue. We were attracted to it because of the water slides that took you outside of the building, no we didn’t get on them haha.

Finished with the swim it was off to the kilt shop to drop everything off followed by a nice slow drive back to the camp site by the slow country roads. We’d managed to bag another 6 or 7 caches before returning to the site including Gords 500th cache!!!

After a bbq dinner of burgers and having had a chat with another cacher in the camp about a cache that he could find, we all decided to go and blitz the area looking for it. Nothing at all. Even a local dog walking muggle gave us a suggestion of where it should be, but nothing was found. After around an our we had to give up the search out of frustration and failing light, it was after all after 10pm by now.

Tuesday, Aug 3rd. It was time to back up and say good bye to Scotland and lead back south of the boarder again. Stopping for a breakfast just outside of Edinburgh we found a local cache near by. Next stop was the boarder for some photos and a rest and, yup you guessed it, another cache on the boarder.  From there it was on to Hexham. We’d found a tourist info place to get a list of camp sites. Gord liked the sounds of one place, Hadrian’s Wall Camping and Caravan Park.

We opted for using the small tent, we got it set up then went for dinner at a local pub. Excellent food it was too. We went for a small walk along a segment of Hadrian’s Wall. We did about a mile of the wall I suppose. We had to share the path with a lot of cows, that was a bit exciting as some of them weren’t interested in sharing the path and wouldn’t move out of the way.

That brings us to now… It’s time for bed.

Wednesday, Aug 4.  Well, it was and uneventful night in the small tent. There was just a touch of rain during the night was short lived so no bother at all. We were packed up and out of 950 so not bad going really  

We struck off for the ruins at Vindolanda and managed to get the just in time for one of the guided tours of the site. It must really have been impressive in it day. There were apparently some 500 soldiers and 1500 or so civilians in the area of the fort. There are many photos which I’ll get uploaded at some point..

The admission to this site also provides us access to the Roman Army Museum, which will be next on our tour before heading back to Cambridge.

We’d made it back to Cottenham just shortly after 7pm, sat for a few mins then got the car all cleaned out and got the tents out and hung up to dry out.

That’s the end of what was a most excellent adventure to Scotland for my largest Geocaching evening, well OK fine, my FIRST Geocaching event, hopefully not my last either.

We arrived at the camp site about 9pm and had everything set up by about half 9 or so. A quick trip around the camp site to see is about and scope out the facilities, then it was back to meet the neighbours and chill out by their fire.

The sleep was great, I used my new down sleeping bag, it was very warm and comfy. Only problem, on a clear morning the Sun in Scotland shows its face about 4am… Needed my siesta glasses but could be arsed to get out of my bag to get them. Won’t make that mistake tonight thought haha

Saturday: first on the list besides getting showered will be to find food. Then its off to the kilt makers for Gord and I. Then to the actual Mega Scotland event.

I will post more later including some pics I hope.

Cheerio from Scotland

Posted by Wordmobi

First, what did I have before?  I was carrying a Campingaz Bluet Micro Plus Camping Stove, which takes a number of sizes of gas canisters.  The pros to this is fast boil time and nice adjustable flame if you want to simmer or cook for a number of people.  The cons, weight and having to carry canisters that you must take out with you and dispose of when you return.  When empty you can puncture and stomp them flat, but you still have to bring them back.

The way forward for most people is to use something that burns Alcohol (the more pure the better, 91%+ or at worse rubbing alcohol, but that’s dirty when it burns and makes a mess of your pots), denatured alcohol, Heet (gasoline antifreeze) or to use Methylated spirits.   I’ve settled on Meths as it’s easy to buy from hardware stores and camping shops. 

So, what can you use as a stove?  Well, there’s 100’s of possible options.  I’ve selected a Penny Stove / Pepsi Can Stove / Coke Can Stove, whatever name you want call it.  I’ve also decided to try the Super Cat stove.

There are pros and cons to these types of stoves as well.  

Pro:  Really accessible fuel – Efficient burning of the fuel to weight ratio

Con: Messy if it tips over – No flame control (really) – Wind really effects the performance

There are many more pros and cons for these, but for me these are most appropriate.  Others will argue about altitude, temps outside, etc, etc.

So what cooking kit have I decided to take solo hiking / wild camping?

Above is a Snow Peak – Trek 700 Titanium cup in it’s mesh bag.  This is great cut, big and light weight.  The lid hangs on the side of the cup and has a slot in it for draining water out of the cup, for example if you were making pasta.

Lets have a look inside the cup.

Inside the cup I have .. (left to right) tin foil for a wind screen, Swedish Firesteel, Super Cat Stove, empty tin to use as base or to extinguish the stove (never blow out an alcohol stove), the purple bottle has 150ml of Methylated Spirits, right of that is the lid of a sweets tin, that can be used as a base for the stove or as a priming pan for the penny stove.    The second photo above you can see the pot on top of the stove with the foil screen in place.

Here we have the 3 stoves I’ll likely carry with me (well, not at the same time).  The first photo from left to right .. the penny stove I bought from nikki.ikkin on Ebay, then one that I made myself and finally the Super Cat stove.

One problem with the penny stove is you need to use a pot stand for these (something else to carry, not that it has to be much).  I’ve not actually made a pot stand yet that will fit my Snow Peak 700.   The the penny stove from Ebay arrived I tried it out at home using a stand from my Compressed Hexamine Stove and just a normal pot from the kitchen, a rather heavy based pot as well.  The stove brought 500ml of cold tap water to a rolling boil in 6 mins, not bad at all. 

The Super Cat on the other hand IS the pot stand as well.  The penny stove I made myself (first ever attempt) does work and reasonably well too I think, but it is a bit bigger (taller) then the one I bought.  The height of the chamber does seem to have an effect on performance of these devices, also, the holes I made are too big, this is also a noticeable difference in it’s performance.  These stove really are pretty easy to make, took me about 10 mins to make it, minus the drying time for the sealing compound I used.

The Super Cat build time is much less, took me like 3 – 4 mins including the time to open the tin, dispose of the cat food inside, clean and punch the 32 holes in the tin with a paper punch.   This brought 500ml of cold tap water to a boil in about 8 mins using the Snow Peak 700, slower then the penny stove but I think over all it used less fuel.

These photos just give you a look down inside of the cup once it’s all loaded up.  In there is the foil screen folded up inside the Super Cat Stove, which is inside the empty tin you saw in another photo, that and the fuel bottle are inside the a ziplock bag to keep the fuel from spilling into my cup.  You can also see the firesteel used to light the stove.  At the bottom of the photo you can see a tube, that contains 8 reusable cloths – Wemmi Wipes (down near the bottom of the page), these just take a couple tea spoons of water to expand them from the small tablets they come as.

Now, I just need to get a chance to get out hiking to actually try out the stove(s) and make a brew on the trail.  I’ll blog again once I’ve had a chance to try them out in the wild.  The Campingaz stove I know works well as I’ve used it a few times already, but these are new to me.

I’d love to hear your comments and experiences with these types of stoves, including tips and tricks for using them.

I must get some more pics of the girls with Minnie as well.. but she’s pretty skittish of the kids (and adults too really).

Continue reading to see about the trip to St Andrews…. (photos from the day are in Canada – 2010 – Group 3.

We’ve had a lot of rain here in NB, it’s the only thing that’s made the trip a bit tedious really.  It would have been nice to have some nicer weather and get out and about more.  There’s so much to see in NB but it really does want nicer weather, especially with kids.  On Monday (June 7) we took a chance on the weather holding at cloudy and a touch of drizzle to head down to St Andrews for some seafood.  The day turned out perfectly.  It was cool and windy when we got there but the sun was mostly out and the rain completely stopped.  It was great for walking around the town, not so good when you stopped to look though haha

We decided to eat at the Harbour Front Restaurant on Water Street, just about 150m from the Pier.  We went here because of the big platter for 2 they had on offer.  Well, really it was just a platter for just one Yuki, but I managed to distract her just enough to get a few bits from it

Some photos of the seafood feast

The first basket is what I ate, the second is what Yuki ate .. the last photo is of the lucky ones that survived the feast

It was a great day out and everyone had fun.  I made Yuki drive back home as she needs practice driving in Canada, she’s going to help with the non-stop drive back to Ontario on Wed night.  I’m getting way to old to do it myself now hahah

I sat in the middle row of seats and enjoyed the ride and surfed using the pocket access point and USB rocket pictured above, it was bloody slow haha

Lisa was playing on her DSi (Thanks to Nana Carol)  the entire trip down and back to St Andrews, killed the battery completely on the trip.. she’s junky already.  Emma, well it was just all too much for her, she had to crash for the entire trip home.

It’s Tuesday now and I’m blogging this from the Chapters – Indigo Bookstore in the Regent St Shopping Mall, sip’n a Starbucks coffee.  The girls are all out getting their hair cut and ready for the Wedding on Monday of my Dad and Carol.  There will be plenty of photos posted from that

Well, just got a text, the girls are done and heading for home.  I’ll go and meet them and get yuki for a bit more shopping.  We need to get a few more things and get back and start getting stuff packed up for tomorrows departure.

On the Sunday we went for a 90 min boat cruise around Kingston and Wolfe Island.  Here’s a couple of photos from the boat with Emma and Lisa taking turns at the helm (before leaving port haha)

We’d stayed until Monday morning when we packed up the van and headed out for Burlington VT.  We planned to stop here and shop, but clearly we made some wrong shopping choices as we didn’t find much in the way of bargains or much of any thing really.   Here we are crossing the bridges at Cornwall Ontario heading for the US.

Here we are taking the ferry across Lake Champlain that separates New York state and Vermont.

After a good nights sleep, but a stupid early wake up for some reason (still a bit jet lagged I guess), we got an early start on the second leg of the journey to New Brunswick to see Nana Shirley and the family in that part of the country.  We’re pretty well shopped out now I think   The girls have been spending money getting all kitted out for the wedding back in Kingston on the 14th of June.  I still need a shirt and tie but other then that we’re all set haha

When we arrived in New Brunswick it was starting to rain, and it rained for the next couple days.  Today we’ve had dry weather but it’s threatening to rain again for the next couple of days.   Saturday (June 5th, our wedding anniversary) we’re hoping to get an early start to the day and get down to St Andrews for sights and seafood, Yuki is a seafood-a-holic if ever there was one.  However, the weather forecast isn’t looking good for Saturday, so that might get pushed off until Monday.

Tonight we took the kids around to my cousin Gregg’s house to play with their 3 kids (Chanse, Dakota and Kendall), they were great and our girls had an awesome time playing with them.  That Kendall is a real cutie.  The kids had a great time running around and playing games.  I hope their kids sleep as well as I hope ours sleep haha.

Like usual, all the photos from our trip will be on Flickr.  They’ll all be in the Canada 2010 collection.

I’ll try to blog more as the trip goes, I’ve been time sharing the computer with Yuki so I don’t get to use it as much as I’d like

On May 1st I managed to get a few hours to get out alone and go walking.  I’d planned a 3.5mi walk but it turned out to be a 5.5 mile walk.  What a great place to go walking.  There were two separate wooded area’s.  Once was Archers Wood

About this wood

Parts of Archer’s Wood are believed to be remnants of the original British wildwood, a ditch and bank in the northern section is a scheduled ancient monument and, true to its name the wood was a sanctuary for highwaymen. Even today you look to the north and imagine a 14th century Cistercian monastic grange that once stood there. Flat and easy to access, the site is dominated by oak, ash and field maple and served by a figure-of-eight network of rides so it’s great for gentle walks. Be sure to stroll along the main ride to spot the rare and beautiful wild service tree – and look out for foxes, woodpeckers and nuthatches.

The other was Aversley Wood, both just outside of Sawtry, Cambridgeshire.

About this wood

A woodland gem in England’s least-wooded county, expansive, impressive Aversley Wood is well worth the steep trek (sometimes boggy in winter) required to reach it. Believed to date back to the Ice Age, it is one of Cambridgeshire’s largest ancient woodland sites and a full tour is not for the faint-hearted – but very rewarding, with impressive fenland views.

You can see the full route of the walk with notes along the way by going to www.stepwhere.com.  I’ve been using this site for storing and planning my recent walks.  You can see all my public walks by going to my user name, M1XZG.  The process I’ve been doing with the site is planning the walk online and loading the track onto my GPS, then, when I’m out walking I record the actual track I walk and upload that to www.stepwhere.com. 

To see some photos from the walk of the woods you can CLICK HERE for my www.flickr.com gallery.  Here are a couple of the photos.

If you get out walking why not share your routes?   Also, why not check out www.walkingforum.co.uk – it’s a fantastic site for all manner of walking discussions.

A detailed account of the walk …

I started by parking in the small lot that services a large open park and allotment area off St Judith’s Lane.  Walking out of the car park I turned right and followed the road to a “T” junction, 1.6 km (1 mi)  This is where you can enter Archers Wood.  Just inside the wood is a map, I had a quick study of the map and planned my route sort of through the wood.  I figured I’d walk the outside route around the wood.  The paths were mostly dry and in very good condition.  There was one detour put in place due to some flooding of the path but that was it for any sort of problems.  The wood is mostly on an incline and that was at the lowest end of the wood.  The rest of the wood was very dry with only a few muddy spots from the recent rains.  Through out the wood there are very nice benches placed in excellent locations providing nice views through cuttings or paths in the wood.  I didn’t find any wildlife except birds while walking through this wood, however there was plenty of evidence of small game by the number of rabbit runs.  If it weren’t for the din of A1(M) very close by this would be a perfect place to come and reflect on life and enjoy the quiet.

Exiting the wood by the same gate I entered by, I turned left and continued to follow St Judith’s Lane for just about 1 km (0.6 mi), just past a large farm on the right side of the road you’ll find the Public Path sign.  Follow the path for 1.7 km (1 mi) and that will bring you to one of the entrances to the Aversley Wood.   About 260m before the entrance is a park bench.  This is where I’d stopped to break out my stove and kettle and make a cup of tea and some lunch.  After about a 30min break or so I packed up and headed into the wood.  This was another spectacular wooded area.  The paths were well maintained and very wide with ample chances to sit on benches and reflect and enjoy the quiet.  Because of the geography of this wood there was pretty no noise from the outside world at all.  The only thing to be heard was the rustling of  leafs and the birds.  Again, I didn’t see any wildlife but it’s clear it exists from all of the small game runs.  I did see what I think might be badger tracks, I meant to take a snap of them to check it out but meh, forgot   After quite some time walking around the wood I finally left via the North Eastern most corner with a gentle ascent up a hill then down the other side right back to the park where I started off.  

The total distance was 8.9km (5.6mi).  The weather really couldn’t have been more perfect, it was sunny but a little cool so it made walking not too hot.  Sitting idle you could feel the cold after a while, but it was very nice. 

I’m looking forward to future walk and hope to plan for a number of them to be through wooded areas like these.

I started with THIS recipe, with a couple of modifications.  Firstly I cut everything half.  The thought of destroying that much raw ingredients didn’t sit well with me, plus it might well have required a super heavy duty rubbish bin liner to dispose of it, let alone whatever the damage to the environment it would do haha

So, my mixture went like this:

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 pinches salt
• water, at room temperature

Plus I added some raisins to add to the sweetness and flavour.  The kids loved them, and I thought they were pretty good too.  Didn’t even bother with adding butter or anything to them, they were soft and moist enough without the butter.

Click on the photos to see the full size original photos

What they shipped me was in the box to the right, I’ve used a pen for size reference.  I was quite impressed with the size of the box to say the least.
	Inside the box were two bags, one with the charger/torch in it and the other has all the various bits to fit a multitude of mobile phones.
There is an extension cable that allows you to plug the adapters for the phones into the charger, which is nice, it suggests that perhaps in the future they could simply offer new tips to fit other devices (and not only mobile phones?)  The back page of the manual identifies the tips and the phones they fit.
	You can see how truly small the charger device is in this photo.  I don’t have the biggest hands around it’s fair to say, but I can nearly conceal it in my hand.

Continue reading for my review

First impressions: Firstly, looking at the product in the box and out of the box I’m most impressed with the size of the device, however, at the same time it also made me wonder how well suited for the job it would be.  I was surprised at how well it fit my hand and I was able to operate it.  As simple as it may seem to just pick it up and turn a handle, that’s not always the case.  With some crank devices I’ve tried I found I was bashing my knuckles or scraping fingers because of how the mechanism worked.  This device does work quite well for me, someone with massive hands might find it harder to use due to the small size.  Weight wise, it’s lighter then my Nokia N97 by a fair bit, the phone is 150g, this device is around 70g?

Practical usage: I had no problems winding it; holding it did get a bit tiresome due to the small size, fingers were cramping up a bit after 2-3 min of cranking it.  I had my 6 year old crank it for 1 minute.  She did alright but kept wrapping her fingers around the small case and kept bashing her fingers on the crank, not surprising really; ever try to tell a 6 year old anything these days?    The one page manual that comes with the device doesn’t give any indication about how long you should crank to get what approximate amount of usage from the light.  One minute of erratic cranking by my 6 year old kept the light on for about 5 min.  One minute of the suggested speed of about 120rpm gave just over 30 min of usable light.

Using it to charge a phone would be a very tiring prospect that’s for sure, there are much better Nokia N97 Chargers available that’s for sure.  I had a lot of problems actually charging my Nokia N97   There seems to be a connection issue somewhere in all of the connections between the crank charger and the plug to the phone.  In all there is a plug in the crank body to the 20-25cm extension cable, plus the connector needed for my phone to the cable and then finally into the phone.  Whilst cranking the handle at the suggested rate of 120RPM my phone was constantly flapping between charging, not charging and eventually would just give up and stop taking a charge or perhaps it wasn’t getting any voltage out of the cable and connectors.  The type of plug/socket used on the crank body is not the best choice for an object that’s going to be moving around as much as it is when you’re cranking.  There are more stable and secure connectors that could have been selected, but perhaps the ones used were due to cost rather then reliability.

Conclusion: Would I carry this device with me out camping or around in my gadget backpack?  Yes for sure.  As a windup torch it’s aces, as a phone charger it might well work when the chips are down and you need a few more minutes of talk time or just to keep it topped up, but it’s not without the need of some fiddling.

The manual is quite simple, just a single sheet doubled sided, let’s face it, there’s not much to know to use this.  Crank the handle, turn it on or plug in phone and crank the handle

It was a decent enough few days.. the weather could have been better but at least it didn’t rain the entire time. I did manage to get 3 Geocaches in while i was up there too.  Nice easy ones.

We went to the Metrocentre Shopping Centre in Gateshead, besides just walking around looking at the huge number of shops we also enjoyed the entertainment area there .. they had loads of those “grabber” games where you have get a prize out of the machine plus a number of other games of luck/skill/chance where you get tickets if you win and you can exchange them for crap.. and I use that term in the most loving way possible  

The other thing they had were dodgems (bumper cars) .. Lisa was bugging us to let her go.. being too small to go alone I went with Lisa.. man I tell you, I’ve never seen a kid laugh so much and so hard for so long.. I was dead certain I’d have to be yelling “clean up in dodgem #10′” haha she had a great time.. I had to operate the “gas peddle” as it was out of her reach, but she did most of the steering and the ramming of others out in on the rink or whatever you call it.  Yuki took Emma out as well in another car.. Emma had an OK time but she is just a little too small and got chucked around too much.  Lets just say it’s a good thing the cars are well padded including a 6-8 inch thick patch on the steering wheel haha she hit that a lot.. but she survived.  I think Lisa and I ended up having 3 goes on them.

On Tuesday we’d gone for a walk around the town centre, one of the places we visited was Castle Keep,  Pretty slick place and quite well preserved but it’s not had an easy go in it’s life that’s for sure.   Here are a couple of photos from the place .. check out the rest by clicking on any of the photos..

We also visited The Cathedral Church of St. Nicolas just up the road from Castle Keep.

Check out more photos by clicking on any of the above.

Add this to your /etc/bashrc  or ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile

export LESS=X

I’m copying this from THIS SITE.

Check out blog postings over at Dean Read dot net. Here is the video of their Ennerdale Wainwrights video.

I don’t have a plan as to when I’ll do it, but I’m thinking mid-late summer.  Need to plan to do some day walks first and get an idea on what I’m in for.  The other “problem” is also finding someone to do these with.  It would be pretty foolish to attempt this sort of thing alone with the lack of experience.  So, I need for another nutter up for some fun too   If that’s you, lets chat, drop me a comment.

Devices that require power

• Dell E6500 Latitude (with 9 and 6 cell batteries)
• Nokia N97 (read my other blog postings for my opinion on this device)
• Zoom 4506-N 3G Travel Router
• Microsoft wireless travel mouse
• Jabber BT3030 headset
• Power adapter for laptop (travel adapter for use with mains, car and air plane (I’ve never been fortunate enough to travel in the right class where I can use it on a plane )

Devices that use power but leech off other sources

• Vodafone K3820 3G/HSDPA modem
• 500GB portable USB drive
• Numerous Flash drives of various capacities, some have bootable OSes on them some just for data

Misc items that I carry that don’t need any power themselves

• A number of 8cm CD’s and DVD’s with bootable OSes on them (all Re-Writable for reuse, and for those machines that can’t boot of USB, WTF?)
• A couple of sets of head phones (in case of loss or damage)
• Various cables to connect devices for data transfer or charging, most use the same USB cables so it keeps these to a minimum

All in all it’s a fair bit of gear slung on my shoulder.   The double batteries for the laptop are really just to make sure I can go for hours and hours..  One question I’m sure many are asking themselves – Is all that gear really necessary?   Of course the answer is NO, BUT it’s just become the norm for so many years now, not just with me but so many people.   I can do just nicely with only my phone in most cases.  I managed quite nicely last year to post very long blog postings while out camping.  However, it wasn’t as convenient as it would have been had I had my laptop with me.  I should put my normal “battle load” into my backpack and weight it.  I’m sure it’s the best part of 8KG, might be a  bit more.

The only reason I decided to write this blog posting now was because while I sit in the Starbucks here in Newmarket Road in Cambridge I pulled out my travel mouse to find the battery was flat in it.  That got me thinking about what else I have in my bag that might need a change of batteries.  Thankfully that’s really the only device that can’t be recharged (however that’s a bad thing too really).  By that I mean I can’t plug the mouse in to charge the battery, it’s just a single AA battery.  That in itself is a good thing really, I can get replacements anywhere for it, that however can’t be said for any of the other power hungry devices I carry.  They all have bespoke batteries, so they require having some sort of charger/power adapter (be it wall wart, USB cable or some such).

So, What do you carry with you on a day to day basis?   What do you wish you could carry with you but choose to leave at home for some reason?

The keyboard and mouse is actually attached to the Ubuntu machine, in other words that’s the “server”.  The XP and Windows 7 machines are “clients”.  One thing to consider with Synergy is that it’s not secure.  It does send everything you type in plain text over the network.  This can be avoided by tunnelling the connection over something like SSH.  Perhaps I’ll cover that later.  Synergy2 isn’t new, it’s been around a very long time.

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel or try to take any limelight from those that have already posted great articles on how to set it up, the best information can be found from the Synergy2 website itself.

What I’m posting about is really how to fix a problem that I’m sure others might have encountered.  Right.. so the problem is this.  As I’ve said, the server is on Ubuntu.  Naturally the “Windows key” on Ubuntu has no natural meaning to the OS, it’s just another key and not mapped to anything out of the box.  The problem I’ve had is that while using Synergy the “Windows Key” didn’t work on the Ubuntu machine even though I’d remapped it to do things, such as Win + T to open a new xterm, Win + R to open the Run Command Dialog (basically making it operate a bit like Windows).   the fix for this was a change in the $HOME/.synergy.ini file on the Ubuntu machine.  The weird thing was that when move the mouse to the XP machine the Windows key did what it should, however on the Windows 7 it wouldn’t work.

Right, so what was the fix?  Here is my .synergy.ini file

section: screens
burma:
scotland:
  meta = super
rambler:
  meta = super
end

section: links
burma:
left = scotland
right = rambler
scotland:
right = burma
left = rambler
rambler:
left = burma
right = scotland
end

section: options
screenSaverSync = true
end

The important lines above are the “meta = super”.  Under Ubuntu the Windows Key is called “meta”.  This tells Synergy when the focus is on the windows machines to map the “meta” key to the “super” key, or in other words the Windows key.  Once that was changed and synergys was restarted all was good again.

I’m posting this for anyone else that might have a problem with the windows key not working under synergy with Linux/Ubuntu/Unix machines and windows machines, but also as a reminder to myself should I forget how I fixed it   I’d been through this exercise about 4 years ago but having rebuilt that machine I couldn’t for the life of me recall how I fixed it .. well, now that I’ve blogged about it I’ll at least have one good place to go and find the answer again