Blogs... Blogs Everywhere!

Recenty i've found that this blog actually has a lot more content (currently) to post than i'd expected, and with a bit more interest in my Warhammer one of the things I intended to do was split that off from this blog into its own one.

So, for those who are interested, heres my Cadian blog. Imperial Guard Cadian 83rd, I'll probably still post a few things here that are of interest (such as conversions) but the bulk will be on the new site.

The other blog i've made is to replace the village hall website I created some time ago and has proved to be a pain to work with. I've been on their committee for a few years now and this site should allow us a lot more flexibility for updates and news. The sites running on http://padworthvillagehall.blogspot.co.uk/ but eventually we'll move the primary domain over so it runs under padworthvillagehall.org.uk again.

Jody Scheckter's Cowboy Steak

Last year my parents came to visit and at the request of my dad we went to a small farm shop in Hampshire he'd heard about. As it happens this farm and shop is owned by Jody Scheckter, the South African F1 champion with Ferrari in 1979 and notable drive of the Tyrrell P34.

(Tyrrell P34 (wiki)

After retiring he bought Laverstoke Park Farm which he now operates as an organic farm and as well as supplying a butchers in Twickenham and numerous other places, as well as the farm shop. When we went there we ended up buying quite a few cuts for both my and my parents. However, the one that caught my eye was a steak, listed as a Cowboy Steak as i recall, and its huge.

Thats a regular sized tin next to it, and its dwarfed.

I decided not to mess around with this when cooking it. It was seared in a hot pan for a minute or so on each side and then put in the oven to cook through a little more and warm up. I say warm, it was extremely rare when it came out, probably bordering on blue and even like this, it was delicious.

I though i'd do some mash with it, nice and simple and some sauce. There actually about twice as much potato on that plate (which is again, one of my bigger plates) than is visible, but the steak has very much taken over here.

I havent been able to find the steak on their website, i'm not sure its a regular stock item but it does look something like one of their bone-in roasting joints which has been cut down. I could be wrong, but it really doesnt matter, everything is good. Everything we've had from there has gone, and theres a gaping hole int he freezer where it once was. 10/10 would gorge myself again!

Everyone in the local area to Overton, Hampshire should go and see what they have to offer, then buy it before I do. You can also follow them on twitter it seems @Laverstoke, or facebook  DO IT! for the glory of meat.

Mini-milestone

Whee, as i type this, apparently I've now had 1000 views of this blog. Pleasing. More updates coming soon too

The Old Jukebox

When I was at uni we had a jukebox PC in the kitchen, bearing in mind this was 2005, it was literally whatever we could scrape together, and it was dire. But it worked, kinda. The sole reason for its being was to load windows and play music while we cooked, or washed up or whatever we happened to be doing in the kitchen.

All told, the specs were: AMD K6-2 450, 84MB of RAM, 8.4GB HDD and a 10/100 NIC. Amazingly it ran WinXP, although it took about 10 minutes to boot and longer to get RDP to login and load Winamp. Often, we'd be done before it actually booted enough (poor planning clearly) but it was one of my better metalwork projects after the cardboard case started to come apart. 

The idea was to replace it with a better mini-ITX board later, but the opportunity to reuse it never really arose.  The whole thing is aluminium held together with M4 nuts and bolts.

All of the sides are aluminium plate and got as far as having the I/O panels and PSU fan cut out, the front was marked for the CD tray, but was never done.

After having a clear out, i found this in the back of a cupboard, its moved with me 5 times and never been in use so its time to put it to rest. Now an old laptop is the kitchen jukebox its going the way of Old Yeller. Although without the shotgun...

The PSU had a hard drive cage behind it for expansion (originally this was planned to be the entire music collection source for the house). The PSU was all of about 200W

The boot drive was hung from the middle shelf which had the motherboard above it.

If i'd done it today, with say an Atom or something, it'd be more useful, but things like the RPi and the benefit of having better spare hardware available for free meant it'll never be completed.

At least it worked for developing some good metalwork skills for another project (A server case) which also outlived its purpose. I think I over plan somethings a little much, or run out of time, either way, this one has been canned to make the list a bit shorter and get to the end of some more useful things.

New Bike Cover

At the side of the house is a path with some space, and m e being me, i've filled it with loads of stuff and made it a pain to Sues bike out. On top of this its covered with a tarp (yes, its a tarp!) which is far too big, despite being cut in half already. 

A while ago I made a BBQ cover and used some stainless steel hooks to hang the tarp from the fence so i'm using the same idea again.

To hold the frame around the bike and help lift it out of the way we've made a frame to hold the tarp in its shape. Fortunately i've had this 2x1 sitting around for ages and its been getting in the way, so at least its been used at last.

Because the fence goes at an angle from the path the sides have to be different lengths and a normal hinge wouldn't work. Using another two hooks and some spare metal brackets the frame hinges nicely on a couple of bump stops screwed underneath.

The tarp hangs over it pretty well but clearly baggy.

Took about an hour to wrangle the tarp and staple it down, by which time the sun went down. I'll take another picture of it open and post it later. The sides are zip tied through punch holes, but the eyelets wouldn't crimp properly (cheap Maplin tool) so i improvised.

The bottom edge at the front is weighted with some steel 1/16" angle so it doesnt flap about badly and stays roughly where it should, again same as the BBQ cover.

All in all, it's pretty much how I wanted save for not using the eyelets like on the BBQ cover and one side not being quite so nicely fitted at the top. But it works, and that's all that matters, plus theres space for two bikes so if i ever get round to cycling again, its ready to go.