Trodden paths
August 15, 2008 | 1 Comment |
Every now and then a band steps away from trodden paths and creates something really beautiful. I came across the latest single of Radiohead and the accompanying video. The video was made without any traditional cameras:
“In Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards”, no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. The video was created entirely with visualizations of that data.”
An amazing end result. Both musically and visually. I love the dissolving objects as the view point moves forward. Almost like things are swept away by a soft wind. Together with the high pitched voice of the singer… well, judge for yourself. I think it’s one of their best songs, to be honest.
The roof
August 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment |
Today I finished the first part of boarding the roof. I started yesterday and finished today at about 3pm. Never thought that banging in nails would give such a muscle ache… I was able to do the job without scaffolding although Simon was so good to give me 3 more bays of his. I’ll need those once the tiles go up.
Tomorrow: finish the gables (yuk, I’m fed up with mixing mortar…), attach metal strips from gables to rafters to increase structural integrity and start with the second part of the sarking boards.
Beyond that: roof felt, facia’s and soffits, outside rendering, painting, door, electricity, inside finish
Weather: totally summer (I got another sun burn), blue skies, sunshine, lovely cool sea breeze (no midges, hurray!!!)
For the ladies…
August 12, 2008 | 2 Comments |
Well, it’s not the guitar riff from George Thorogood but it IS a sweaty guy on a platform sipping his diet coke… The old diet coke commercial a.k.a. the “11:30 appointment”…
Enjoy ladies!!!
Human - Midges: 1-1
August 12, 2008 | 2 Comments |
It was looking like a lost battle I was fighting against the midges. They were just too bad today with the wind gone and the skies all overcast. While standing on the roof and nailing down the sarking boards I had clouds of the disgusting little buggers around me… buzzing in my ears, crawling over my face… totally horrendous. I absolutely fail to see what these horrid insects add to the world… what is their role in the food chain?
But, today we evened the score as we brought in two new weapons. First the special netted hat. It looks extremely nerdy but it is one of the best purchases we did recently. What a marvelous piece of gear. Second, a bottle of cream called “Tabard”, imported by a local shop owner from South Africa! Great stuff, very expensive but works for 8 hours (while the famous “Skin So Soft” from Avon only works 20 minutes).
I did a test: arms and hands rubbed with Tabard and my head covered in the geeky hat! The human is all prepped for tomorrow! Let the battle commence!!!!!
The itch (you cannot scratch)
August 9, 2008 | 3 Comments |
Tonight we watched a program about the toughest pubs in the UK. Well, apparently there are quite a few. Each pub featured was introduced with this famous guitar lick… tada… tada… ta… daahhh…. Lots of reverb and a really, really good guitar lick. We both could not remember the title of the song… That’s when it starts. The intch. The itch you cannot scratch. Arggg…!!! When you can’t remember something: the name of a song, the name of a film, the name of an actor… Is there something more annoying??
Unfortunately you can’t log on to Google and find a guitar lick like “tada… tada… ta… daahhh….”. It’s not that advanced yet. So it’s back to manual work and inspect the iTunes library. And indeed, I found it. It was “Bad To The Bone” by George Thorogood… Very appropriate!
Enjoy the video… b..b..b..b..b..bad….
Little bit of cheating
August 7, 2008 | 2 Comments |
The front gable is done. I’m really happy with it… it looks, well… just like a real shed. Or should I say garage?? The scaffolding has been dismantled and moved to the backside to build up the back gable. I nailed the first sarking boards on the top, just to get a feeling whether the lot would fit, and it did.
I discovered one little blemish though, which made me cheat a bit. The front pair of rafters are not completely level. The effect of this was that the ladders would show more overhang at the bottom than at the top. After some thinking I cheated by removing the front piece of timber of the ladders and adjust the steps of the ladder in such a way that the overhang is the same from top to bottom. Are you with me?? So in stead of parallel ladders, I now have ladders that are wider at the top than at the bottom. It’s not much of a problem as this will all be covered up by the sarking boards and the roof will still look good…
As you can see on the photo, the weather was spectacular: blue skies, lovely breeze, sunny, no midges(!!)
The front gable
August 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment |
The work on the shed has now moved to the front gable. For that I needed a scaffold and Simon was so good to provide with a bay of his set. Great!
There are a number of challenges… First, it’s fairly high so the logistics get more complicated. I need to lift the blocks up in stages. First stage is on a pair of folding steps and then onto the scaffold. Only 4 as space is limited.
Second, the mortar cannot be transported in the wheelbarrow. I use a bucket for that, so every two blocks I need to refill the mortar supply.
Third, I need to cut blocks to follow the pitch of the roof. Cutting a block is done with a electrical saw using a diamond blade. This generates huge dust clouds, making it very difficult to track markings on the block and get a clean cut (…and get a breath of air…). As you can see on the photo, there are small triangles at the right end of each row. I fill out each row of blocks with straight blocks and then cut a rectangle as the closing element. The benefit is that with one cut I get 2 triangle elements. For seven rows of blocks, I only need to make 4 cuts!!
The scaffold tends to be a bit wobbly. Moving the heavy 6” blocks around is a bit awkward, especially if you have to set blocks close to the sides or outside the area covered by the scaffold. I’m very pleased with the final result, though… It’s starting to look like “the real deal”…
Weather: northerly winds, blue sky and some sun. Got another sun burn Good building weather and no midges!!!!
My new friend… for a short while…
August 2, 2008 | 3 Comments |
He (or she?) is very small… extremely small and very fragile. This morning, while reading the latest in the WHFP, we heard this sharp tick against the window and saw a tiny bird laying on the patio tiles. It was obviously KO. Normally they fly away after a short while but this one didn’t.
So I went out and picked it up. It was really, really small and fragile and had its eyes closed in a sleepy way. There was still life in it though… While holding it, it slowly woke up but still kept dozing off. After about 10 minutes without any visible improvements, I put it down inside a piece of driftwood which we have in our garden. A relatively safe place where it would not be disturbed by lurking predators.
I checked it out again after 15 minutes. It was still sitting there so I carefully picked it up again. And then, all of sudden it had found its spirits and flew off and landed safely in the gutter where it looked at me for a couple of seconds. Then it flew off into the bushes next to the house….
9:52pm edit: I got somewhat curious as to what species my little friend belongs to and according to the website of the RSPB it’s a Goldcrest, one of the smallest singing birds. I’m not an expert so any bird watcher out there might prove me wrong!
The RSPB have an extremely cool website with an online bird identifier!
Remarkable
August 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment |
It caught my eye while browsing my Google homepage: “Muslim outrage at police advert featuring cute puppy sitting in policeman’s hat“. The offending poster shows a cute puppy sitting in a policeman’s hat advertising a new telephone number of the Tayside police force.
“The advert has upset Muslims because dogs are considered ritually unclean and has sparked such anger that some shopkeepers in Dundee have refused to display the advert.” according to the article.
On the matter of dogs, police and Muslims there was this other item that police search dogs will now have to wear special footwear when doing sniffing work in houses occupied by Muslims.
Both quite remarkable news items in my opinion.
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Latest music...
Hair (1968, Original Broadway recording). Some naughty lyrics for that time!!
An Rathad a Bhatarsaigh, by the Vatersay Boys