Looks like my thumbs may have a little green in them after all! Some of the chilli seeds have poked their heads up in the last couple of days. I was expecting either no action for a long while, or no action at all, after reading a few sites that suggested that the seeds need a very high temperature, and often a long time to germinate. But I’m not complaining!
New toys are always fun! The latest is a small media viewer that I scored off ebay for a really good price. I’ve had my eye on one for a while, but they were always going for more then I was willing to pay. But then one popped up with not much interest in it, and I got it for a lot less than some of the same units that had auctions finishing just before and after this one. Odd, but I’m not complaining!
The unit is a Hauppauge MVP, which is a tiny little box that gets plugged into the network, and can be used to output movies, pictures and music to a TV. I’m using it to be able to watch the programmes that we’ve recorded on the MythTV superbox up in the bedroom. A much better idea than trying to sneak a proper PC in there.
It downloads an operating system that has been built to connect to MythTV, MVPMC , from a server and away we go. The technical stuff around getting it to work is on this page .
Well, it’s been a bit of an agricultural weekend. The state of the twigs and weeds in the pots out the front door just got too much to bear, and so we finally decided to sort it. New plants all round, including quite a few bulbs, some red flowery things, a couple of herbs, and some other stuff that will hopefully be blue flowers in the end. I know that the herbs are Rosemary and Thyme, but the others are a bit of a mystery at this stage. You can tell that I really know my plants, huh?
But the big excitement was planting chilli seeds! Ring of Fire and Habanero variants. I suspect that it’s not too hard to work out what the heat value of them might be! So I have a seed tray full of seeds, and now I just have to wait and see if any of them sprout. Please, please, please! I let you know how they get on.
If you want an easy way to check if there is anything new on this site, and assuming you’re using Firefox or any other browser that has this feature (Internet Explorer doesn’t yet) then you can add a “live bookmark” to this site as easily as a normal bookmark that will show you if there are any new posts, and take you to them if you want to read that new post.
A good explaination of how to do this and what they are all about is here. Just note that if you have a different theme installed for Firefox, then the little orange icon may actually look like something else, but it will still be in the same place in the address bar.
This feature is really handy for all sorts of sites, especially news and blog type sites. The icon will appear for any site that lets the browser know that it has such a live bookmark feed.
Taking a break from the Neal Stephenson epic, last weekend was spent reading the one of the latest from Tom Holt. Earth, Air, Fire and Custard is the third in his series that started with The Portable Door set in what must be one of the weirdest places to work. Weirder even than a UK government department. I’ll let you read about it if you want, rather then trying to explain. I don’t think I could.
What’s so good about these books is the way Holt can get across the feeling that for his main characters this is just like the most mundane, boring job that I’ve ever done, despite all the chaos and mayhem that is going on around them. And there is certainly plenty of that! As well as the filing.
It’s good to try not to worry about working out just what the hell is going on for a while safe in the knowledge that it will all be explained sometime, somehow. Maybe.
I also really like a bit at the end where one of the characters is asked to explain New Zealand to another: “Well I don’t really know a lot. It’s sort of near Australia, and the people are sort of like Australians only not quite so bouncy, and they filmed the Lord of the Rings there, and I think that’s about it really.” Sums it up really!
Really good fun.
Here’s a story from the Sun site with his vital stats, and here is the BBC’s story, with details of his diet.