graham.reeds/

Old Bills 2, Shredders 0

As I slowly go through the process of extricating myself from my ex-house mates house we decided to shred my hoarded bills. These are bills dating back to late 99 in some cases. Every type of bill had it’s own foolscap box and some even had two boxes. Years were grouped, sorted by date and held together with treasury tags. I was really anal about this – even bordering on OCD.

So we decided to shred everything that had any personal information on it. The first shredder was a cheap A5 shredder which was much more suited to quick bursts of small switch receipts instead of the A4 type bills. Every few sheets we had to empty the small bin that it sat upon. Managed to get about one third shredded before it refused to shred any more.

Today we got a beefier cross-shredder from Tesco (previous was a strip shredder). This came with a warning not to run the shredder for more than 2 minutes continuously, but there was an emergency cut-off in case it overheated. And so we shredded again. This was a lot more economical with space: The cross-cut wasted less space between strips and the bin was a lot bigger. This enabled it to run for longer without a break. Even if we did run it for more than two minutes the emergency cut-off will protect it from burning out the motor, wouldn’t it?

It would seem not as we are down another shredder and still have another third of the bills to go. We will attempt to get a replacement from Tesco as the cut-off didn’t protect it as it should. I tried changing the 5amp fuse for another but there wasn’t even a glimmer from the light on the unit.

Hopefully the new one will survive the remaining third and after that it can live in semi-retirement protecting us from identity-theft by shredding all our switch receipts.

0 comments.

They’re here!

Edinburgh was a bit of a wash-out (literally) so we will need to go again to see the zoo and the observatory. I did get to climb The Scott Monument – all 287 steps.

Now we’re back that means we also got the kittens back from their mini-holiday as well, and were they pleased to see us? The kittens were, but Giz seems a little traumatised by the experience. Give her some treats and she starts purring, but is keeping to her corner for the time being.

0 comments.

Where is Pauls shoe?

http://www.whereispaulsshoe.co.uk/

0 comments.

Ever expanding family

I’m now a grand-dad thanks to my Sea Monkeys. It would appear that the original generation have had babies and there are now around a dozen little specks flitting around the tiny tank they live in, making about 24 in total. Seems hard to believe that they were all once that size, considering how massive they are now.

0 comments.

The Seaton Lane Inn

It was SiLs birthday today so we went for a meal at The Seaton Lane Inn, Seaham.

Initial view as I walked in was that it was going to be a typical pub, in which I mean it was quite dark with heavily polished wood and the smell of cooking chips. However the restaurant section was bright and airy but fitted well with the rest of the pub. We had easy listening piped at a perfect volume over the top (Lemonheads & Frank Sinatra being the ones that stand out in memory).

The table was well laid out, though the bucket of ice that the champagne came in was tattooed with the Grolsch logo. Another minor fault was my dessert spoon was actually a serving spoon but not everyone had dessert so that wasn’t a problem as such.

The menu was large, heavily fish biased, though being a seaside town it is to be expected. We were given plentiful fresh bread which was replaced as needed. I had Whitby Crab Crème Fraiche Risotto with Tarragon for starters, followed by Grilled Gammon Steak with pineapple and Pease Pudding (though minus the Pease Pudding). In addition we had 3 serving dishes with new potatoes, chips, and mixed farmhouse vegetables. For dessert I had Apple Pie with Vanilla Custard washed down with a Cappuccino. The cappuccino was small and I wasn’t offered a refill, which is a pity as it was very nice.

With a picky party of 8 we pretty much tried the entire menu and no one actually complained. Mrs Bear tried mussels in a garlic sauce which she liked. SiL (or SiL’s partner) picked up the tab as a birthday treat.

• Service: 8/10
• Atmosphere: 7/10
• Food: 9/10
• Price: N/A
• Overall: 8/10

0 comments.

Catty hols

The cats are with their Aunty Bev in their little holiday home (Maltby Grange Cattery) ahead of our few days away.

We thought we’d have a quiet night in without the cats running around.

However if we thought three cats howling for the 10 minute drive to their temporary home was distressing, sitting around an empty house is even worse and coming back to an empty house without them dashing up to greet us was upsetting as well.

Hope they are enjoying the company of other cats also on their hols – maybe Giz will be slightly less of an ASBO cat when she gets back – and as strange as it may sound we are actually looking forward to when they are back home!

0 comments.

Google Image (Face) Search

Google recently added the ability to perform facial searches in Google Image Search. If you use my name, without quotes, you get a list of luminaries such as Alexander Graham Bell, Alexander Graham Bell and well, Alexander Graham Bell. The others I’ve never heard of so that they don’t shed that much light.

Use quotes and that is another story: You’ll see I get Tom Hanks, Justin Timberlake and John Peel.

The exciting thing about this technology that it does seem to get faces pretty accurately (but not the faces of the people you expect). Imagine this in Picasa, give the engine several snaps of the same person and tell it to get all photo’s of that person. It would make it a breeze to find all pics of a certain friend. You could train it Bayesian-stylee by telling it which it got right and which it got wrong.

An interesting test would be a crowd of faces and if it could recognise my 3 cats correctly.

0 comments.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Mrs Bear!

0 comments.

Nintendo DS+

We (me and Mrs Bear) recently bought a Nintendo DS each. I’ve been playing Mario Kart and Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training, Mrs Bear is dutifully looking after her pet Dalmation. However it is apparent that Nintendo have dropped the ball with the options: You have the online play with Mario Kart but you can’t upload/download your best times, nor can you share your ghost laps with the online community. No ladders, so there is nothing to keep you coming back for more.

One of the other games that I’ve wanted for the DS is Tetris. I’ve always enjoyed Tetris since the original Gameboy days so I gave in and bought it while out shopping the other day. But they had to go and mess with it: Seemingly you can only get a maximum of 200 lines. Why not more? Also it doesn’t feel as responsive as the Gameboy’s. Also there are some modes of play which generally don’t work but were added to give value to the price tag.

1 comment.

Fireman Gee

While NiL was over for dinner we noticed that a lot of white ash and smoke was drifting across our garden and wafting into our house. Being concerned about the amount of smoke we looked across the back gardens and could see what appeared to be a shed on fire.

Dashing off down to the house in question we could see that it wasn’t the shed, but the fencing, trellis, and hedge that was burning. However it was up against a brick shed and I thought it might cause the roof to catch light. Also there was a boat trailer in the fire which had caused the tarpaulin to catch light and start to melt across. We quickly knocked on the door but after no answer (we only waited a few seconds) we tried the handle (it wasn’t locked) and went in and informed the elderly couple who live there. Mrs Bear rang the fire brigade while me and the elderly gentleman organised a hose to try and contain the flames.

I took the hose and started to attack the flames, being careful not to get too close – I was wearing a t-shirt, shorts and slippers! Slowly but surely the flames were put out but the amount of heat that was present was amazing: After soaking a spot I would move onto another, but the heat was such that the water would evaporate and the fire would spring back into life – in one dense spot it restarted 3 or 4 times. Finally the fire brigade arrived to a smoking, smouldering spot and gave the area a soaking with their hose which was a lot more impressive than the one I was using. I secretly hoped they’d ask me to douse it with their hose, but no such luck.

When the couple’s daughter arrived to look after them, me and Mrs Bear went back to NiL and our Fish Pie supper.

Later on I made my way back around to check that they were okay and to apologise for barging in like we did (must of been very shocking for them). They thanked us for being conscientious neighbours.

As to the cause of the fire, the fire service think it was a bottle of white spirit that was placed against the fence and subsequently lit by local kids. I hate to think what would of happened if the wind was in the other direction and we never noticed the fire.

0 comments.