in gravyland

We’ve just launched our new business, Nodestone.  We’re bringing Lib’s and my businesses together to cover Social Web Education, Integration and Development under one roof.  Exciting.

Please come over and have a look at nodestone.com.

Swim after work

Originally uploaded by gra

We headed down to the beach in Hove after work today and had a swim and bbq with Simon from the works with his kids and Jay popped down as well. It was a still, warm, beautiful evening,

We’ve headed west, and over the water to the Isle of Wight for a week of seaside fresh air and blustery winter walks and no doubt too many cream teas :-)

We’re staying around the St Helens Duver in a little NT cottage. Been hacking around on foot and by bike this morning and it really is quite remote and beachy. Brilliant.

We’ve cleared the bit above the rabbit-proof fence and have made room for ten rows of potatos there, and after a lot of digging, mostly not by me, planting starts. That leaves the really steep bit far up the back of the allotment for grass and maybe a cubby-house for the kids one day?

I planted two rows of spuds today, 1 ft deep, 18 inches or so apart, can’t remember the variety though. Alister or Colin must have planted the first three rows. It is getting steeper up there, each row is a little harder to get in place and there are a lot of upside-down turfy bits that make it a bit tricky.

The garlic is looking ok. Bottom of stems are going purple-ish.

To Do up there:

• Tie up the rasberry canes again. The last lot fell down an became ankle traps for those going past.
• Plant some herbs and beans and stuff.

Was Christmas really a month ago today? Yup.

As I said earlier, we had a nice one. Full of friends and family. We had ten adults and five kids staying over from Christmas eve to the day after boxing day, as well. That includes us. We fully filled up the house and then some.

It was great. Everybody took a turn in the kitchen cooking, and everybody jumped in to help clean up and somehow it all fell together beautifully.

Christmas day worked really well. After a fantastic pancake brekky, we assaulted the tree and opened presents. That went on for hours. Then after a long morning at it and a lot of milling around, we finally sat down the Christmas dinner about 4pm I think it was. And you know, all the toddlers and babies chose that time to be asleep, so it was a lovely sit down meal around the big table in the conservatory.

There are some photos about somewhere. We keep trying to get them up on flickr. One day soon.

It stopped raining on Boxing day and the clouds cleared, so we all set out for Cuckmere Haven for a walk. The sun shined a lot and we all got a lot of sky and air, which was a good thing after the insideness of Christmas day.

What else to say? It was a lot of fun, and pretty exhausting all around. Whose house are we going to next year? :-)

Excellent timing. This year the spring Low Tide Sunrise Bike Ride is going to be on my birthday, April 8. What better way to start a birthday than rising at dawn and riding along the sea bed. Perfect.

More Details on Upcoming

[Update: 7 April: not doing it this year now. Been a bit crook for a few days, and think it is pretty mad to do it and make myself sicker. Sigh. The last one was such fun.

But, rising at dawn is still possible. What shall I do with myself?]

Here we are, 2:29pm on Christmas day 2007. We have a house full of wonderful friends and family and after a mad present-unwrapping frenzy we are having a quiet interlude with appetizers before the Queen’s speech coming at 3pm.

It is raining outside.  I’ve got a sniffly nose.   But that doesn’t matter. This is huge fun.

We got a Nabaztag for Christmas.  I’ll pop a widget in so you can send us a message.  Fun!.

I planted this collection of perennials today in the third wide bed going up — the bed above the garlic.. November is probably a bit late for planting, but we’ll see I guess.

This bunch is called 3 seasons collection from Spalding Bulbs.

Alistair came down as well and we dug in another bed .. so they are pretty much all done now. We just need to work out what to plant. The garlic planted at the end of September has come up — about 3 inch green shoots now. Most of the 40 have come up.

A quick update:

• The my-poor-old-laptop saga resulted in Apple sending me a new MacBook Pro. I’ll post something about that whole process soon. In short, it was long and painful, with a (so far..) happy ending.
• Lib’s Authentic Blogging courses are off and running. She’s running three courses at the moment and the students are just making their first blogs and blog entries. Pretty exciting stuff. I’m supporting with a few questions and answers on the Authentic Blogging blog and here as well.
• We are just back from a half-term break in Brittany. Gorgeous.
• Halloween approaches. And October is at an end. The months fly by, don’t they?

We’re sharing an alottment with a couple of mates. Three families in all. Seems about the right amount of people to keep it going. So far I’m loving getting out there and gardening together.

I want to keep a bit of a diary here so we get a sense of what we’ve achieved and what worked and didn’t. So here’s the first bit of that. NB.. this is what we all achieve together, not just our bit.

Last weekend

• Weeding beds and around beds, removing long grass and big, weird weeds. Great big fleshing flowery things. What were they?
• Picked a few runner beans, but they were a bit woody. Inside, some beautiful coloured beans — purples and pinks and spots. They turned into an art project.

This weekend

• Dug out some not-too-bad compost and built up a bed with some top soil to plan garlic in.
• Planted about 40 garlic bulbs.
• Put topsoil around the raspberries.
• Put topsoil in other beds, more weeding of beds.
• Pulled out bean plants that are past it.
• Built a trellis for one row of raspberries. Need to build one for the other row.
• Bea found a couple of raspberrys to eat. Yum.

We just moved house, and that means lots of things changed. And it means that I hand carried, with help from Lib and friends, almost everything we own from one home to anther via a van.

A lot of stuff. I’ve been really wondering why we have it all. But, you know, I like a lot of this stuff.

In the middle of all this I was taking out the trash as well.. I took a couple of lulu-van-loads of stuff to Hove recycling centre:

“Do you want this old tumble dryer?”

“Nope.”

So it gets recycled into metal and probably the plastic bits get chucked into landfill. So chucking stuff out seems bad and weird and wasteful. But I’m happy to have the experience. Next time I’ll put more effort into giving stuff away to people who really want it.

There are still a few boxes to empty and a bunch of sutff sitting in the backyard. The lovely new place is still a mess. It is a bit like living in a jigsaw, and there’s always another piece that needs to be moved to the right place.

But we’ll get over that. The new place is great. We are down towards the bottom of Havelock Road in Fiveways, closer to urban Brighton town. More street life, more walking, more kids around.

When we tidy up, I’ll pop some photos on flickr.

We applied and Bea has been offered a place at Downs Infants School, which is a short walk away. Lots of kids walk past our front door on the way to school. She starts at the new school on Monday in year 2. And she’s really excited about it, as we all are.

I’ve put a few of our Glastonbury photos (many taken by Bea) up on Flickr. There are a few more mud wrestling shots than are really representative, but that’s just how the photos worked out :-)

Wow, there goes a couple of months. Here’s a quick ‘what has been going on’post:

• We are just back from Glastonbury festival, where Lib and I were working in the Buddhafields Cafe, cooking and serving and washing dishes. Lots of fun, mud and music.
• We’ve been out and about camping on weekends a lot, with the Woodcraft folk (a cooperative/peace oriented guides equivalent) which Bea loves.
• We’ve got a few plans for summer, which include a campervan trip to Spain.
• Lib is building up her new blogging courses. Have a look at authenticblogging.com.
• I’m looking for the perfect project or short-term management role based in Brighton or close by. More about that at Presence Labs.
• Scouta is growing nicely and getting some good press.

I’ve just finished up my job with UBS in the city (of London), so now it feels like it is time for England, Part 2, or the next phase of our lives here.

I had the pleasure of cashing in my annual rail card yesterday, indicating the end of my daily commuting to London and a nine-to-five life, for a little while anyway.

Work-wise, I’m starting to look at new opportunities here in Brighton, put some effort into Scouta to bring it to a sustainable place, and seriously think about entering the web applications business proper with our own Presence Labs.

And there is the summer to look forward to as well.

A time for growth and change for all of us.  Today is the first of May.  There are Beltane celebrations planned for tonight and the moon is full.  Who know what magic may be out there tonight.

The sun explains happiness. The rain explains sadness.

by Bea

I spend a blissful hour or so up on the downs. Turns out that while I’m working from home, it is really easy to head out in the middle of the day, drive the 5 minutes up to Ditchling Beacon, then walk/run either way, east or west from Ditchling Beacon.

West is about 3.5km along the ridge of South Downs to the Clayton Windmills called Jack and Jill.

East would be heading towards Lewes and the back of Stanmer Park.

So, today I went West, and half-walked half-ran to Jack and Jill and back. The weather was threatening and on the way back I did get rained on a little, but wow, so much sky, so much air.

I’m going to occasionally drop a note in here about mechanical stuff to do with our Lulu. Make sense to share these sort of tips and diagnosis. This is for our 1984 VW T25 Transporter.

So, on the last trip to France, we started to get these weird symptoms: The red coolant-level light would start flashing and the temperature gauge would go unnaturally quickly to maximum and stay there. Stopping the engine and re-starting would often seem to cure the problem.. the temperature gague would return to normal and the flashing light would not show apart from a few seconds at startup.

Firstly, I verified the coolant level was ok. I was worried for a bit that there might be air caught in the radiator system.  There are lots of long pipes making it nice and  complex, with the radiator in the front and the engine and water pump in the back. That was all fine, however, I topped off the coolant tank and the expansion/inspection tank as well. Nothing wrong there.

Then, it was time to look at the wiring diagram and do some experimentation, which revealed:

• The flashing light is latching, in that it will stay on until the ignition is turned off. So that’s why stopping and restarting the engine sometimes cured the problem.
• In my case, the temperature gauge going to maximum is something to do with the red light, not the temperature itself. The wiring diagram sort of suggested this, but I proved it by disconnecting the cable from the sensor. Once open circuit, the flashing light goes on and the temperature gauge goes to maximum. Ok, we are getting somewhere here.
• So, given there is not evidence of missing coolant or overheating, I suspect either the sensor, the connection or the wiring to the sensor.

Cleaning the contacts on the connections to the sensor seems to have solved the problem. The flashing light comes on for 5 seconds after the ignition is turned on, then goes off and stay off. Excellent.

Took our new old camper van Lulu to Normandy over easter and you can still smell chevre all over us.

How about we all buy a house over there together some time? Do a great website etc… see our friends Jack & Penny’s joint at Negreval which we can always rent cheap.

Had a great meal for Gra’s birthday (ony 16 euro’s for the food and 4 FAB courses).

Basically, love the frogs. Ferry Newhaven to Dieppe…. little coastal towns. All grand.

The restaurant we went to was supplied, recommended and booked for us by the wife of the chevriere (sp?) Jean-Paul Martine we happened upon, just around the corner from the organic farm we were staying on. All near Vassy (120m from Mont St Michelle). We didn’t even get there!

Too full of cidre, cheese and sunshine to bother moving…

More photos from this set on Flickr here

You know we’ve been talking about getting a campervan?

Well, we did:

This is (we think her name is) Lulu, a 1984 VW Transporter Caravan.

I’m fully intrigued and excited about my raffle prize, so I’ve been having a bit of a look about to find out more about Cory’s new novel Little Brother.  Here’s Cory explaining a bit about the book from an interview with SCI-FI Weekly:

Doctorow: I just finished a YA novel called Little Brother, about hackers who declare war on the Department of Homeland Security. Every chapter has got a real-world how-to about why homeland security does not work, and how you can defeat it. And it talks about the math and computer science and information science behind the war on terrorism, the junk science behind the war on terrorism. But it’s also meant to be an instruction kit for teaching kids to be culture jammers and technology jammers. I’ve been calling it Encyclopedia Brown meets The Anarchist Cookbook. My editor at Tor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, called it Wikipedia Brown. So I just finished it, and finished the outline of book two. It’s a two book series. My agent is auctioning it off after Labor Day.

Sounds very cool, very useful, very interesting.