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Anyone who happens to glance at my front windows first thing in the morning, might think I’m the classic ‘nosy neighbour’ if they catch me peeping through a crack in the curtains, trying hard not to be seen.

Truth is, I’m hiding from a flock of ducks! Eight or so of them wait patiently on the grass opposite until they see someone opening their curtains; then off they march to park themselves on the front lawn waiting for breakfast!

I wouldn’t mind – it’s an easy way to get rid of old bread – but what goes in one end……

My iPhone 4 has been pestering me the last few days to upgrade to the latest operating system iOS7. A friend, who’s much more confident in messing around with these things visited on Saturday, so it seemed a good opportunity to upgrade while I had the benefit of his expertise.

So we upgraded to iOS7.

It puzzles me why software companies, such as Apple and Microsoft, have spent the last 15 years or so evolving the polished (glass) look of their user interface and suddenly there’s a mad scramble to abandon it and get their operating systems to look as much as possible like Windows 3.1 looked over 20 years ago.

It also puzzles me that I would have expected successive versions of an Operating System to get more and more efficient in its use of processor resources. I can understand applications getting more and more sophisticated that they need more resources but, when the operating system isn’t running any user applications, I can’t understand why successive versions use more resources, not less.

I can’t help thinking that foisting the new ‘flat look’ on us is more an attempt to stop the operating system grinding the processor to a halt rather than for any aesthetic reasons. Clearly, the iPhone 4 is struggling with iOS7 when no apps are running which is proof enough to me that the Operating System itself is less efficient that iOS6 was.

Whatever the reason – and I’m sure I’ll get used to it – I can’t help feeling they’ve made changes for change’s sake and, in doing so, will have alienated a lot of previously loyal Apple users!

Guess what?

About a week ago, before the nice weather came to an end, I decided to clean the ‘tipping bucket’ in the rain gauge for my weather station.

Unfortunately, over the years, the case had become amazingly brittle. I hardly touched it and it fell apart into dozens of pieces.

It was made from a 100 CD ‘cakebox’ and I found a dealer on ebay who sold the empty cases for £1 each (as a pack of 6 but, hey, it looks like I’ll need a few spares!).

It was a twist-on type, the same as the existing one, but naturally sod’s law didn’t make it too easy. The old one only had three fixing lugs, the new ones have 4. So it meant dismantling the ‘guts’ to drill and fit a new base as well as making the new top.

Luckily, it stopped raining long enough for me to get the ladder out and get to work!

I went for a walk along the Moreton to Meols coast yesterday and spotted the work had started on the where the HVDC cable is coming ashore. I only had my mobile phone with me and grabbed this shot:

So today, I took my ‘proper’ camera along and took these shots of the ‘work in progress’ on the HVDC cable linking Scotland with England and Wales, via Wirral. Details of the project can be found here.

To my mind, conveying electricity underground and under the sea from where there’s a surplus of renewable (nuclear) energy to where there’s a shortage of capacity makes much more sense than installing more antiquated high-cost wind turbines that seem to suffer from either not enough wind or too much. And which will, no doubt, stand there as abandoned salt-corroded technological follies within 20 years.

(Click images below for a larger copy)

Just walked into the living room deciding what to have for my evening meal and spotted the cat staring intently at the gas fire – well, actually, at a butterfly that had become trapped behind the glass!

It’s a sealed unit gas fire so it can only have come in through the outside flue and didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of getting out again…

Now, what you may be thinking didn’t even cross my mind (!) so it was a mad scramble to remove the decorative fire front and undo the 12 awkwardly-placed wing nuts to remove the glass.

Happy butterfly flew out of an open window and the cat gave me a look that could kill !

During the Bank Holiday weekend, I ordered some tiny electronic components for the latest project I’m building. I’d already bought most of the parts but had overlooked these. CPC is one of my favourite suppliers because they have no minimum order charge and online orders are sent postage free.

As you can see, the parts are tiny with a total cost of £1.08 including VAT.

Today, being the first day after the Bank Holiday, I was surprised to see a UPS delivery van pull up outside. The driver arrived with a weighty parcel which I signed for although I had no idea what it could be and was certain I’d been sent the wrong order.

But no. CPC had included their latest free calalogue – all 3595 pages of it – weighing in at just over 3kg!

I’m certainly not knocking it but it makes me wonder how a company can deliver, by UPS, a £1.08 item free of charge AND include a catalogue that is at least 4 times the thickness of a Maplin catalogue, that Maplin charge £2 for.

No, not Mrs Slocombe’s!

During these hot sticky nights, Misty, my cat, has been pestering to be let out around 3 o’clock in the morning. The problem is, she’s found a way out of the back garden by jumping off a fence but, she’s too fat or too lazy to get back in again. As a result she’s ‘trapped’ outside where she’s vulnerable to loose dogs and a fox or two until I get up around 7.

So, after a quick trip to Argos (by me), she must now be one of a select few cats to have a catflap in the fence! The black tape in the photo is a ‘training stabilizer’ to hold the flap about 1/3 open while she gets used to it. Told you – a really pampered pussy!

The coolest place this week has been in the house!

Staying indoors gave me the chance to put the finishing touches to the battery charger for my Garden Radio.

Full details on my main site, here.

My internet wifi signal has always been pretty dire around the bungalow so I recently bought a Netgear Range Extender to see if it would improve things.

It worked quite well but, as it was occupying the one and only socket in the hall, I decided to fit a socket in the utility cupboard which houses the house alarm. It entailed running a new 2.5mm cable in the loft and, for some unknown reason, I decided today – one of the hottest days of the year – would be a good day to do it.

As you can see from the thermometer I took into the loft (after the job was finished), it was pretty hot up there!

Anyway, it’s done now and I get a good signal all round the bungalow.

(The electrical regulations say it’s legal – ‘though not necessarily advisable – for anyone to add to an existing 13 Amp circuit provided it’s not in the kitchen or bathroom or outside.

Bizarrely, although I’m a time-served electrician and daily worked on high voltage industrial equipment, I was never certified to Part P of the Building Regulations and am not allowed to do work outside that outlined above. Well, strictly speaking, as a ‘competent person’, I would be allowed to do the work but would then need to get it certified by a Part P inspector – which is likely to cost more than getting a Part P electrician to do the work in the first place.)