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I’ve decided that it’s time to get back on to Twitter. I used to use it about a year ago, and had the username ‘jb’ but decided to give it up as I wasn’t using my account. I’ve just added my twitter posts to the sidebar of the site, but if you use twitter then feel free to follow me, and drop me a message every now and again…
Tags: blog, Blogging, twitter
Tags: blog, Blogging, twitter
The new garden
March 7th, 2009 10:10 in Garden, Personal by JonAfter my last post about our new house, I thought I’d follow it up with a post about our garden. Going from a two bedroom flat, to a house, having a garden of our own is a novelty. We’ve been saying for years that we want to grow our own vegetables and actually spend time in the garden so we spent last weekend digging out some of the raised beds and a patch at the back of the garden for potatoes.
We’ve been inspired by Vegmonkey and the Mrs and their planting plan so we’ve decided to come up with our own planting plan and post it online. We’re currently using three raised beds, and one patch of dug garden (for potoates). Here’s how we’ve split things
We’ ve decided to plant the following (all from seed)
- French Beans*
- Oregon Sugar Pod
- Pea Early Onward
- Spinach*
- Rocket*
- Broccoli Autumn Spear
- Cauliflower All The Year Round
- Courgette*
- Turnip Atlantic Speedy
- Swede Ruby
- Lettuce Lobjoits Green
- Lettuce Little Gem
- Radish Mixed
- Squash F1 Butternut Barbara
- Cabbage (Savoy) F1 Traviata
- Parsnips*
- Onion (Salad) North Holland Blood Red
Onion (Salad) Shimonita - Carrot F1 Purple Haze
Carrot F1 Maestro - Onions*
The items marked with a * are being donated from my colleague Sean Johnson
We’re also planning on growing some pumpkin (Pumpkin F1 Becky) in an old patch of ground at the bottom of the garden next to our potato bed. No doubt I’ll add some images when everything arrives and we get the first seedlings potted up
Tags: food, Garden, growing, house, vegetables
Tags: food, Garden, growing, house, vegetables
Snow snow snow…
February 10th, 2009 9:12 in Personal by Jon
I’m writing this post for two exciting reasons… One it’s snowing outside! Something that hardly ever happens in the UK (especially where I live) and secondly I’m writing this post from our new house, looking out at the snow-covered garden!
Here’s a pic of the view into our new garden.
We moved in a few weeks ago and we’re finally getting sorted out. We’ve moved from a two bed ground-floor flat into a two bed house, so it’s nice to actually have enough space! No doubt I’ll post more pictures and details as we get settled in and start to decorate and make the place our own.
If you want our new address then you know how to contact me to ask…
Tags: home, Personal, weather
Tags: home, Personal, weather
Friday fun with books
November 14th, 2008 9:01 in Everything Else, Personal by Jon“When Bob receives a message from Alice, how does he know it is authentic? If Alice signed her message, this is easy. Alice’s digital signature is enough to convince anyone that the message is authentic”
Book meme:
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
This is quite sad, but the closest book I have is a copy of “Applied Cryptography” by Bruce Schneier…
Last.fm and other musical things
December 29th, 2007 1:17 in Linux, Music, Personal by Jon
I’ve been a huge fan of last.fm since I started using it back in 2006 (for those who don’t know, it’s a social music website that logs every song you listen to, and connects you with people of similar taste, and suggests other music that you might like), but one feature that I’ve often overlooked is the stand-alone last.fm player.
On windows it’s the main tool that scrobbles your tracks as you listen to them in iTunes or Windows Media Player, but you can also type an artists name, or a specific tag, and listen to a stream of similar music; something I’ve been using a lost this Christmas. It’s been great to fire up the player on a laptop and listen to music tagged with ‘acoustic’ while I cook dinner, or type in an artist like ‘John Mayer‘ and find similar artists.
A side-effect of this is that I’ve also discovered 7digital, an online music store that offers DRM[?] free music (last.fm direct you to 7digital if you want to buy an album electronically) which is perfect now that I’m using Linux. There’s also a Linux version of the stand-alone player, and other options like built in support for scrobbling and listening to last.fm streams in Amarok.
One issue that I have experienced since I switched to Linux, is the downside to DRM. I’ve purchased quite a bit of music over the past few years from the iTunes Music Store, which is copy protected and won’t play outside of an authorised copy of iTunes, which is a problem if you’re using Linux and can’t actually run iTunes. Thankfully it’s a pretty common issue and thanks to the Hymn Project I’ve been able to all of my purchased music into a linux friendly format!
Happy days.
Tags: drm, hymn project, itunes, last.fm, Linux, Music, streaming
Tags: drm, hymn project, itunes, last.fm, Linux, Music, streaming
Its official, I’ve decided to drop Microsoft Windows completely at home, and use Linux instead. It started off as a little experiment, to see what Linux is like these days (it’s been a few years since I used it last), but after a few days of using it I love it!
I’m currently running Gentoo Linux, with the KDE desktop (3.5). I’ve included some screen shots of what it currently looks like.
Tags: amarok, avant, avant-window-navigator, compiz-fusion, firefox, gentoo, gimp, kde, kopete, last.fm, Linux, open office, osk, vlc, xine
Tags: amarok, avant, avant-window-navigator, compiz-fusion, firefox, gentoo, gimp, kde, kopete, last.fm, Linux, open office, osk, vlc, xine
Design Update
December 18th, 2007 17:10 in Personal, This Blog by JonI’ve just updated some images, and CSS styles to expand the size of the site. It should sit nicely inside a browser at 1024×768. We’ve had quite a debate at work about designing sites to 1024×768 rather than 800×600, especially with the newly designed BBC home page being 1024×768.
I really need to do some more work on the design of this site (well to be honest I need to do some design work in the first place because it’s a bit bland at the moment). Maybe if I get bored over Christmas you’ll see some updates.
For those of you reading in an RSS reader head over to the site and let me know what you think by leaving a comment
Tags: design, This Blog, version7
Tags: design, This Blog, version7
Wordpress Upgrade
October 4th, 2007 10:14 in Personal, This Blog by Jon
I’ve just completed an upgrade to my Wordpress installation, and it looks like some of my plugins might not be compatible with the latest release. As soon as updates are released I’ll get them installed, but in the mean time tags are disabled. If you see any error messages, or anything that looks odd then drop me an email or leave a comment, and I’ll get it fixed asap.
Tags: tagging, wordpress, wordpress2.3
Tags: tagging, wordpress, wordpress2.3
Sean’s Blog
October 3rd, 2007 1:00 in Personal, Web Design by Jon
I obviously haven’t been keeping up with my blog subscriptions, because my good friend and colleague, Sean Johnson, has been busy updating his blog recently, with a new design, and some great book reviews and articles on Wordpress, CSS, HTML etc…
Head over to http://seanjohnson.net or pick up the RSS feed.
Tags: blogs, bluestone, bluestonecreative, designer, seanjohnson, webdesign
Tags: blogs, bluestone, bluestonecreative, designer, seanjohnson, webdesign
I’ve finally caught up with the 21st century!
October 2nd, 2007 18:54 in Internet, Personal by Jon
Believe it or not, I’m finally writing the post from home, using a broadband connection! I’ve been waiting to get broadband installed for three years, but the local infrastructure couldn’t support ADSL on our line (for those interested, BT installed fiber cabling rather the copper, so they had to overlay copper).
It’s great to be online at the same time as the rest of my family, and not have to wait until the phone line is free before I can get online!
Maybe I’ll be able to get around to updating this blog a bit more often now.
