One of the things that often confuses Americans when they visit the UK is our lack of window screens. All the Imperialist Yankee media I consumed as a kid had a delightful array of screen doors and windows. But here in rainy old England, there's never been much call for them. Mosquitos are rare. Our bugs tend not to be large and terrifying. Our summers are rarely hot for long enough to warrant opening the windows. But, hey, climate change is real. After sweltering last year and getting a fair …
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There's no one dafter than the previous owner of your property. Over the years we've found dodgy wiring, horrificly bodged plaster, and things plumbed in backwards. We've started re-doing our garden recently. The hideous decking was quickly rotting away and needed removing. But what would we find under there? Google's StreetView for the web lets you take a short trip back in time - if you're lucky, you might catch a glimpse of what your garden looked like over the year. (That's a random…
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Last year, I reviewed the X-Sense wireless interlinked smoke alarms. They were a multipack of smoke alarms - set one off in the kitchen and the one in your bedroom will start chirping. As I noted at the time, they were only smoke alarms. Without an interlinked heat alarm, they may not have been compliant with Scottish legislation. Well, I'm pleased to say the fine folk at X-Sense have released an interlinked heat alarm. They've kindly sent me one to review. Set up was pretty easy. The…
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As I blogged about a few weeks ago, I've been playing with the Seek Thermal Compact Infrared Camera. I've been using it for such incredibly interesting things as seeing how cold my nose is and whether my radiators are balanced. Fun! But what I really wanted it for is to see how well - or poorly - insulated our new house is. So I waited until it was freezing outside, then turned the heating on to max for an hour, then went outside to see whether there were any obvious leaks. First thing was a …
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I've just built this magic floating record wall on the cheap. I think it looks great during video calls. Here's how I did it: Step One - Stalk eBay With lockdown, I couldn't exactly go to my local record store. And I didn't fancy rummaging through bins of second hand items trying to find exactly what I wanted. So I decided to buy a job-lot of records from eBay. Beatles collections are regularly sold. Some are designed for people who want pristine records, and some who want original…
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When we moved house, we found the previous owners had installed under-cupboard lighting in the kitchen. It uses basic and cheap 12V LED strips. The strips are flexible and have glue on the back. We didn't like them in the kitchen. So we tried them on the stairs. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentTrying to work out where I want LED strips.The "aeroplane emergency lighting" look on the stairs isn't great.Suggestions? pic.x.com/ctvppeuytk❤️ 7💬 13♻️ 014:24 - Sun 09 February 2020 Meh! Our mate S…
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One of the problems with buying a house, is that you're inevitably stuck with someone else's taste in decor. Our new place isn't too bad - it's just a little dull. With lockdown in full-force, some of the boring bits of the house have been annoying me more than is reasonable. I'm not a big fan of net curtains. They always look a bit ratty, and are a dust trap. So we decided to get some "stained glass" privacy film. We found this beautiful Mondrian-style sticker It brings me joy every…
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