bearnecessities – true enough about good sleep being more important than common sense… In the end I let it go as I figured even if it’s just placebo, if it works then it works.

When she was pregnant she tried both accupuncture and homeopathy to get rid of morning sickness. Even I wasn’t stupid enough to do anything other be fully supportive of both ideas!

sweepy – Member
Did you put your phone in the drawer, or do people only get affected by their own phones?

That did occur to me at the time, but I thought it wise not mention it.

chambord – Member
Given the “I knew you were going to be like this” comment, it sounds like you have a history of dismissing her views and should aim to be a better listener.

Touché! :-) although you could argue that I was listening very well, which is what caused me to notice the massive, bleeding obvious, fatal flaw in her argument. I didn’t even say she was wrong, I just asked for more details, since she hadn’t really offered any.

She’s intelligent and well-read, and more knowledgeable than me on many subjects, but every once in a while she latches on to some crackpot idea and gets proper arsey when you try to ask for the logic behind it.

Can’t think of anything she’s done to me, but I did once fracture her cheek. She was lying in bed, on her left side, facing the edge of the bed. I was on the other side of the bed, lying on my back. She decided to roll over and give me a kiss. Only problem was I’d just started a stretch & yawn combo, had both arms folded double – fists directly above my shoulders, elbows pointed outwards.
She basically face-butted the point of my left elbow. Big cracking noise, followed by screams of pain.

She had a black eye for a week, took great joy in telling people she’d walked into a door, and flinched every time I moved towards her…

Thanks all, will try racking to secondary and adding finings.

If you’re kegging it then you have co2 available?

Yep, got CO2. I normally purge my kegs with it prior to filling them, will do the same with the secondary.

Cheers for the advice re finings in secondary – that’s actually ringing a bell, and I’m sure I’ve got some isinglass somewhere. I’ll have to go through my records to see whether it was from my early beers or maybe the wines I made prior to that.

Will do some research on gelatin vs isinglass.

I’ve got a minor dilemma… I’ve currently got an APA fermenting away nicely in the garage. Everything went to plan on brew day except I forgot to add Irish moss late in the boil.

Normally this would be just a mild annoyance – it’s not going to affect the taste, so I wouldn’t care. It might be a wee bit hazy, but normally it’s by and large only for my consumption so no big deal.

Except this beer is being brewed for a homebrew competition at the wife’s work… so now I’m wondering what (if anything) to do –

a) just leave it and hope for the best.

b) after primary fermentation is done, rack to secondary, hoping that the disturbance will help proteins to drop out. But the extra exposure to the air increases the chance of infection.

c) a day or two prior to kegging, crash chill by dropping the temp as low as the fridge will go (an old fridge with an STC-1000, no idea how cold it will get – although it did hold 2 degrees very well for a lager I did last winter)

d) a and c

e) b and c

f) something else?

I’m leaning towards leaving it in primary and crash chilling prior to kegging, unless there are any other bight ideas out there…

davidrussell – I’ve just done my 21st brew, so still a novice and learning/tweaking/screwing up/rescuing brews as I go, but here’s my 2p’s worth…

had enough of my mashing bag. it fits the pot badly (too narrow and tall) so its hard to secure it to the pot. raining in grain is a three handed affair!

The place I buy grain from sends it in big zip-lock bags – typically there’s about 2.5 to 3 kgs in each one. Stirring with one hand and trying to pour steadily from a flimsy but bulky bag is tricky. I found that it’s easiest to put the grain in a big Tupperware box first. Being rigid it’s much easier to pour it single-handed while stirring.

If it’s just a case of needing one hand to hold the grain bag and stop it falling in, use pegs as per john_drummer’s pics.

Anyone used one of these custom BIAB makers to run up a bag? i’m using the 19l ebay pot.

I bought some voile material with this intention, but ended up buying a ready-made bag. The only problem is that it’s essentially the same shape as a pillow-case, i.e. rectangular. When it’s full of wet grain it tends to hang with the two corners lowest, so there are two streams of wort running off it. This can be a bit tricky to manage, as it’s chuffing heavy, and I often end up spilling a bit on the floor before I manhandle it over a pot and lift one of the corners to rearrange the grain inside.
If I ever get round to making my own, it’ll still be a flat bag (like a pillow case) but the sewn end will be pointy rather than square – so hopefully when lifted it’ll have a roughly conical shape at the bottom.

my insulation experiments needs work – i think the foam wrap lost about 2.5/3 degrees/hour which is a bit much. needs revisited i think to get this closer to 1 degree/hour

I brew in a 48L electric urn. I use a big, heavy, cotton beach towel folded lengthways then wrapped around the pot, secured by a bungee strap. I then take another big heavy towel and wrap that over the first, moving the bungee so it’s now securing both towels. Then I wrap a foam camping mat round the lot, moving the bungee again so it holds the lot in place. The width of the folded towels is about the same as the camping mat, and conveniently about the same as the height of the urn. I insulate the pot from the start, so the insulation is fully warm at the start of the mash (so I don’t lose heat to warming up the insulation). Once the gain is in I put the lid on, fold another towel into a square about the size of the lid, put that on top, then finally drape yet another towel over the top to close up any gaps. It’s possibly overkill, but it’s cheap and I generally don’t lose more than 1°C over an hour, and I’m not convinced that such a small change makes any significant difference. I guess if you’re doing small-size batches then heat loss is a bigger issue due to the volume:area ratio.

need to invest in some ss bearings or something to sink hops in a hop bag, my last dry hop effort hardly touched the wort as it sat on the top of the brew:(

As mentioned above, pretty much anything will do – glass marble? Ss nut or bolt? (admittedly the latter two will have nooks and crannies for grot to hide in, but can be boiled for 15mins to sterilise)
I ferment in a glass demi-john, which has a tiny neck (about an inch internal diameter). I put my hop pellets in a nylon stocking (I got the wife to buy me a multi-pack of knee-high ones), knot it and thread it into the FV. It’s suspended on a bit of mono-filament fishing line for retrieval, secured by the bung in the top. Initially it just sits on top of the wort, but it very quickly sinks as the pellets soak up the liquid. It does ‘float’, but immediately beneath the surface, fully submerged. Maybe before adding weights, try using a sanitised spoon to poke it under the surface until it’s wet enough to stay there?

…in case people get jiggy in the tub

… in case fat people t=start getting jiggy

You don’t sound very sure who these people are, yet seem to think there’s a very real chance of them ‘getting jiggy’ in there…

Is this thing some sort of municipal sex pond, or are you a member of a local dogging club? 8O

Also check out the Yepp Mini, with an extra mount on the other bike. The mount for the Yepp is way lighter and less intrusive than for the WeeRide (I’ve owned and used both seats with my son. I swapped the WeeRide with someone for a crate of beer, have kept the Yepp in the hope of child #2 making an appearance…)

Taking the seat off one bike and attaching to the other will take all of about five seconds (no hyperbole, it really is simple and quick).

I also found that the Yepp interfered less with my knees than the WeeRide, although this will vary according to frame geometry, leg length etc.

Our lad is 2 & ¾. The other week he came into our room at about 3am, and woke me up:

“Daddy, need a wee.”
“Ok. You know where the toilet is, do you want me to come and help you?”
“No, I go by myself.”
So he did, and put himself back to bed. Cheers for waking me up at 3am for nothing then…

Then there was the time when he got his hands on a bottle of sunscreen, took the lid off and poured it all over the hallway carpet. It was a spray one, so really runny (and also full), so it spread everywhere. Sunscreen is a real b*tch to get out of carpet…

Or the time he swallowed a marble at daycare. Except they weren’t sure, as he’d managed to get two or three in his mouth and spat two out… So a fun ten days of checking every filled nappy to see if there was a marble in it. Eventually we got him x-rayed (definitely one in there) so had a further week of squidging nappies until it came out. At least we have a cool x-ray to show him when he’s older!

Then again, it was fathers’ day the other week and my wife bought me some Lego (which was instantly appropriated by my son) but we spent hours building stuff together, which was awesome.

And a few weeks ago I got a 2×4 and an old bit of melamine shelf from the garage and showed him how to ride a see-saw and a (very small) drop/jump on his balance bike (a.k.a. his wobbly bike). He loved it, kept going and making small adjustments to it and riding it again and again.

The quality times vastly outweigh the sleepless nights and other dramas.

After finishing the inaugural Huka Challenge at Taupo with a distinctly average time (I was just happy to get round), my race number was pulled from the hat and I won an all-expenses trip to Thailand for two. Three nights in Bangkok, seven in Phuket at Club Med. Result 8)

My No1 tip would be to not get too precious about light and noise when she’s asleep. If she gets used to dark and silent conditions to get to sleep, you’re ****! Can’t take her anywhere that’s not ‘perfect’. If she can learn to sleep if it’s a bit lighter/darker than normal, or if there’s a bit of noise going on, life will be much, much easier for you…

Install Hola[/url] on your device and while you’re away you can use it to tell Netflix that you’re still in the UK. You can also use it (either while you’re away or from home) to tell it you’re in the US, Canada, or any other place where Netflix is available, and you can use your normal login details to access the shows on that particular network. As molgrips mentioned, the selection of shows varies from region to region.

When I was at school I was pretty poor at football. Except I was a good defender. Somehow I had a knack for stopping people getting past me with the ball. I couldn’t necessarily get it off them, but was quite good at not letting them past, so wasn’t entirely useless. But, once I had the ball, I had (still have) little to no ability. Can’t pass accurately and can’t dribble or dodge a tackle.

At a previous place of employment I was invited to join the office five-a-side after work one day. They were just being nice to the new guy. About 30 seconds into the warm-up knockabout I went for a 50-50 ball and had a very light collision with one of my new colleagues. He fell over and broke his collarbone. I wasn’t asked to play again…

I made one from a bunch of pallets – heat treated ones, not chemically treated. We have three bays, kinda like this:

Except they have slots on either side at the front, so we can drop in spare boards to make a front wall, like on this one:

That way you can raise/lower the height of the front to make it easier to add material, or when turning the compost (shovelling from one bin to another).

On some of the pallets I knocked the slats off using a pry bar and a lump hammer, and put them back on a bit closer together plus an extra slat or two, to reduce the gap sizes.

I use some spare bits of corrugated iron for a roof. Works a treat. Having at least two bays/bins means you can turn it over easier, as you’re not turning it over into itself, you can just shovel from bin 1 to bin 2, so it gets well aerated as you do it. You can then start afresh in bin 1 with uncomposted materials while bin 2 finishes off. Having a third bin means you can be a bit less organised with regular turning, or just have three bins at different stages of decomposition.

Some years ago I went travelling to Central America. Two days before flying, I put a last load of clothes in the washer, stuff I needed for the trip. Then I headed off to work. Mid-morning I suddenly realised, completely out of the blue, that my passport was in the pocket of one of the pairs of trousers in the wash…

I told my boss I had an emergency and legged it home. The passport was all blurry and not stuck together very well, it looked like a very bad forgery. We were due to fly via the states, and this was just after 9/11 so they were very hot on security at the time.

I rang the passport office in Victoria and asked about getting a replacement. They said it would take four weeks to get a replacement. There was a 24-hour option, at a cost, but that was only an option if some of my personal details on the passport had changed. Which they hadn’t.

Except, I’d got my old passport when I was about 14, and it was probably the first thing I’d ever had to sign, so I hadn’t really settled on a signature at that time. By the time I was 22 or so my signature was slightly different, and instantly became even more different… luckily that was enough to justify using the 24-hour service!

Still seems bizarre to me that you could get a passport in 24 hours if there was incorrect information, but it would take four weeks if it was damaged (i.e. just a straight replacement, not having to verify new information).

If you are sharing a bed with your other half then avoid a double airbed at all costs. Every time one person moves the other gets bounced around like a bouncy castle. Two single airbeds side by side eliminate that problem, with a fitted sheet over to hold them together, then duvet and pillows. I have occasionally felt cold with airbeds though (whichever side of me is against the airbed gets cold) so as mikewsmith says thermarests or similar, with foam inside for insulation, can be a good alternative. Still recommend normal bedding through, instead of sleeping bags.

Yeah, INDIRECT and MATCH are useful for situations where vlookups won’t work (like if the data columns are not in a convenient order).

I should probably point out that if the phone number you are looking up appears more than once in your original data, that formula will only pick up the first occurrence.

You’d probably need some VBA to get around that.

Right, let’s say your data is in a worksheet called Data. Your postcodes are in column B and phone numbers are in column Q.

In your new tab cells A1 to A400 (or however many) are your phone numbers that you want to look up. In cell B1, type the following:

=INDIRECT(“Data!B”&MATCH(A1,Data!$Q:$Q,0))

You can then drag-fill this formula down to B400, or however many phone numbers you are looking up.

What this does is looks up the phone number in cell A1 (new worksheet) in column Q of the Data worksheet. It identifies the row number for that value. It then returns the value (postcode) of the cell with that row number, in the B column.

Our son had lessons at about six months, but as eat_more_cheese says, we realised that they weren’t doing anything we couldn’t do ourselves. At that age they’re not doing lessons anyway, it’s just about getting them used to the water.

We started up again at about 2 ½ years and things were a bit more structured. He’s not learning how to swim so much as how to survive in water. Things like how to get to the surface if you’re at the bottom of a pool, how to hold on to the side and make your way round to a ladder, how to climb out unassisted. Plus general confidence in water. None of the above is overt though, they just do a series of games and exercises and the skills are picked up along the way.

Plus, our son – now 2 ¾ – can be a bit, err… strong-willed, for want of a better word. Definitely gets it from his mother :twisted:. So the environment of being in a small group and having to pay attention and respond to a (non-friend/family) teacher without us is good for him as far as we’re concerned.

I have an old (maybe 10 years) Gore Bike Wear pac-lite jacket. Long arms, and a bum flap that clips up when not needed, but stops your backside getting wet and gritty when deployed. I have great long monkey arms and this is the only jacket I’ve found that fits properly when on the bike. Breathability is pretty average (about the same as any waterproof jacket I guess), but water still beads well after all these years. It packs down into its own rear pocket, very light weight and compact.

Not sure of the model but looking at their website it’s an older version of this:

http://www.goreapparel.com/gore-bike-wear-alp-x-20-gore-tex-active-jacket/JGALPX,default,pd.html?dwvar_JGALPX_color=3599&start=1&cgid=gbw-men-geartype-jackets-jackets&prefn1=ingredientCategory&prefv1=GORE-TEX%C2%AE%20Products&navid=search

or this:

http://www.goreapparel.com/gore-bike-wear-fusion-20-gore-tex-active-jacket/JGFUST,default,pd.html?dwvar_JGFUST_color=3599&start=7&cgid=gbw-men-geartype-jackets-jackets&prefn1=ingredientCategory&prefv1=GORE-TEX%C2%AE%20Products&navid=search

Probably the first one as it has a fold-away tail, aka bum flap.

Can’t help you on the travel front, but as Franksinatra said, allow some time at St Pancras, it’s really nice these days. Huge cavernous ceiling with some decent upper-level spots to stand and watch trains coming and going.

St Pancras by W Hyde[/url], on Flickr

I once had a pair of Salomons that were the most comfortable pair of shoes I’ve ever worn. After that I ended up with Merrells for a number of years, but as my last pair are currently held together with ShoeGoo and have numerous gaping holes, I recently went shopping for replacements.

I came to the same conclusion about Merrells. Styling seems to have gone downhill as well as quality (subjective, but I don’t like the new styles).

I ended up with some Keen somethingorothers, Targhee II’s according to the website. They are without doubt the least grippy shoes I have ever worn, including flip flops on wet polished floors. The soles must be made of Teflon or something, it’s truly staggering how they’ve managed to make a trail shoe with such little grip. I’m going to take them back as not fit for purpose. There’s always the possibility that they’re from a dodgy batch I guess.

Edit: On a positive note they are very light compared to my old Merrells, and also very comfortable. But I just remembered the left one has developed a loud squeak/creak on heel-strike, after about a month’s use, so they’re definitely going back.

Ocrider, Never heard of lemon party, so I stupidly googled it… 8O

Can you make eye bleach from lemons???

Chapaking – kinda my point! I’ve had ‘proper’ limoncello and thought it was quite nice. Homemade stuff, not so much.

Lemon sorbet sounds good too.

Why not salt some to preserve them for later in the year

Interesting, didn’t realise you could preserve fruit in salt. Not sure I’ve got any recipes calling for preserved lemons, but might make some out of curiosity.

Ooh yeah, might look into brewing some alcoholic lemonade.

Cody – wife already makes lemon curd…

Scrumfled – cheers, well give that a try.

One time, riding the long way home I was going over a bridge. It’s a rail bridge, maybe half a mile long, with a clip-on cycle and pedestrian path on one side. The path was maybe four feet wide, but every fifteen out so feet there was a massive iron girder, part of the bridge structure, sticking out and causing pinch points. With the bars on my commuter there was maybe an inch of clearance on either side… as the weeks went by, I got faster and faster along the bridge, until one day, doing about 15 mph I clipped a girder. Bars spun 90 degrees in an instant, over I went.

Just after I’d picked myself up another cyclist came along, so I leaned on the railing all casual and pretended I was taking in the view…

After dropping my son at daycare one day I got back to the bike, turned it round, helmet on, and started to roll down the sloping garden to the path that I’m about to join. I’m freewheeling down the slope, dragging the brake and going very, very slowly, maybe 1-2km/h as a) I’ve only just set off, b) I’ve only got one foot clipped in, c) in about five yards I have to make a very sharp left, where going wide around the corner will result in a dip in the estuary, and d) I’ve got my head down, checking what gear I’m in.

As I looked up, a low branch on a nearby tree leaped out and hooked itself under the front of my helmet. The deliberate upward movement of me lifting my head segued smoothly into an unintended look up into the tree, chinstrap tightening, hands pulled off the bars, and me being very, very slowly dragged off the bike backwards… At this point I managed to get one foot down, the bike stopped with me still vaguely upright (but leaning backwards, still hooked on the branch). I then managed to undo my helmet strap and extricate myself.

Luckily no-one was around to have seen it, but when I got to work I found that the branch, prior to hooking under the helmet, had jabbed me in the forehead, breaking the skin and leaving a big cut/scrape/welt combo slap-bang in the middle. I still have a slight scar, six months later :oops:

davidrussell – Member
hey guys, my first brew has been in the primary now for 11 days, so will be fermented out. it was dry hopped a week ago so should be coming along nicely. question is how long do you chill it down for if you use temp control? i’m going to bottle soon so i’m going to chill down to 6 degrees for a few days. actually looking forward to getting this one n the bottle and planning my next brew!

Just a word of warning – fermentation might not have finished after 11 days (but then again it might). Best thing is to take a sample, measure the gravity. Do the same again 24hrs later. If there’s no change then it’s probably finished primary fermentation. Common advice is to take a third sample, and if you get three days in a row with no change in gravity then you’re done. Just because it’s been 11 days and it looks like it’s finished, doesn’t mean it has.

I tend to leave my beers in the FV for about three weeks, which seems to work for me. Some people swear by two weeks, some swear by four weeks, and pretty much everything in between. Like many things in brewing, there really is no right or wrong way to do things, but a spectrum of possibilities, and as long as you end up with good beer it doesn’t matter how you go about things. Like with chilling at the end of fermentation – some will tell you all the crap drops out and the beer will be clearer, others will tell you how they’ve tried with and without and it makes no difference. I suspect it won’t do it any harm if you give it a go. 48hrs should be plenty.

Like this (‘scuse the crappiness but I only have the power of MS Word available to me right now…)
CycleDanger by W Hyde[/url], on Flickr

Since people often don’t like being given instructions without knowing the reason behind them, you could even put the word DANGER in red beneath the left arrow, and SAFER in green beneath the right arrow.

I realise that colour-blind people may have difficulties with the colours, but as long as the symbols and text are distinguishable from the background colour then the message should still get across.

Or maybe the cycle symbol from this sign:

On the left, with a red <— arrow beneath it. Next to it, on the right (where all the text is on the example above), have the same cycle symbol but in green and without the prohibition circle, with a green —> arrow beneath it.

No words, so language ceases to be an issue.

How about, on the left side of the vehicle, a sign with a cycle symbol and an arrow pointing to the right, with the text “PASS ON THE RIGHT” underneath?

cynic-al – yes, the puncture strip is an after-market thing. I haven’t taken it apart yet to have a proper look, but I’m assuming the nail didn’t go through. Although, while the tyre didn’t go flat straight away, it is now flat some 3.5 hours later, so the tube must be damaged.

boxelder – my concern is that I’ve had two tubes explode violently through small holes in tyres. One just riding along and the tube forced its way out through a small hole in the tyre – probably from a bit of broken glass. Second one the bike was parked right outside our Director’s office (nearly gave him a heart attack when it popped)and the tube forced its way out through a spot where the bead had started to separate from the sidewall. The slit was only maybe 5mm long in both cases. I guess a nail hole will only be an almost infinitely small hole, but I think I’d be happier with patches of some description rather than risk a blowout. I think I’ll try tthew’s suggestion, and chop some bits of sidewall from an old tyre.

A bit of an update on my refractometer quandary from my last post… based on a very high FG reading I figured something had gone wrong with the refractometer (it’s a very cheap one from ebay) so I decided to check its calibration. I had in mind a series of known volumes of water with a known amount of sugar dissolved in each, then checking all the samples with both the hydrometer and the refractometer, and noting any differences. I figured I could at least work out if any fudge factors were needed when working out my numbers. Or maybe whether the refractometer was destined for the bin.
A quick google later – to check the best method of calibrating it – and the bleeding obvious is staring me in the face: using the refractometer during or after fermentation will give dodgy results due to the alcohol in the liquid. It seems obvious now, but hadn’t occurred to me before. There are handy calculators online, such as this one: http://www.musther.net/vinocalc.html#monitorferment which returns an FG of 1.013 based on the refractometer readings, close enough to the 1.016 FG given by the hydrometer (which I’ve never calibrated, so combined with the estimating-where-the-curved-surface-of-the-liquid-meets-a-tiny-scale method of reading it, may or may not be particularly accurate anyway).
Just thought I’d post this up in case anyone else is new to using a refractometer and runs into similar issues.

Lists. I find that if I have too much in my head going round and round I can end up getting stressed and struggling to sleep. It’s like I’m trying to remember everything all at once. Writing down a list of jobs, with ‘sub-tasks’ under each one (thinking about work here, but applies to other stuff too.) works for me.

Once it’s all down on paper it’s easy to prioritise it.

Nah, from that game this:

is the best tune by a country mile. But I’m not sure proper songs from proper bands count in this discussion…