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 share of mozzie bites, it was time to switch things up.

So I bought the cheapest magnetic window screens I could. Here's what they look like:

For about £15 - £20 per window (depending on size) you get a couple of rolls of sticky magnetic tape, a mesh curtain, decorative strips, and some corner pieces.

I'd say the quality is... adequate. In the positive column - the magnetic tape sticks well to a uPVC frame and the magnets cling well to each other.

The mesh is fine. It is a bit stiff so it worth ironing before deploying in order to get the creases out. Bugs are unable to penetrate it - but it isn't so dense that it replaces the need for a net curtain for privacy.

Sticking the mesh to the magnetic strips is a bit fiddly. Unless you can get it perfectly taut, you'll end up with wrinkles and bunches of fabric. Nothing too obnoxious though.

Sadly, the decorative strips are a bit crap. The have glue on one side and - I guess - are supposed to bond with the glue on the magstrips through the mesh. It doesn't work.

In the end, I squirted a bit of OB1 adhesive on the decorative strips and that seemed to hold them in place.

Once it's all stuck down, it is easy to trim the mesh to size. The corner pieces (once also glued down) are easy to use.

The end result? Yeah, they work. I can leave the windows open and I occasionally see bugs struggling to get in. The mesh keeps out flies, mosquitos, moths, wasps, hornets, and any other winged beastie.

These are much cheaper than pre-fabricated meshes. They're a bit of a faff to fit and get looking just right. But they work - our house is bug free.

And, no, they're not connected to the Internet!

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 house I found, not mine!)

But what about satellite images? Both Bing and Google provide an overhead view of your property. But they only show the most recent images.

There is a way to see previous satellite imagery though! Using the (appallingly named) Google Earth Pro Desktop app. It's available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Hidden away at the top is a magic little icon:

Drag it around and you can go back in time - up to the 1940s in some cases.

Now, the fidelity of the images isn't always brilliant but it's often enough to get a sense about what your area was like long ago.

And that's how we found out that the decking was covering a rather fine ornamental pond!

So I've spend the last few weekends excavating it. And cursing the previous owners for filling it with their concrete rubble, sweet wrappers, and broken bricks!

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 little instruction manual showed how to set one of the smoke alarms into pairing mode. With a few flicks of a switch, the heat alarm became part of the network. The back of the device also has basic instructions:

Pros

It's a small, light, and unobtrusive alarm unit. It's loud enough and, even if you're a sound sleeper, sets off all the alarms in your house - even if they're on a different floor. It's relatively cheap and easy to screw onto a ceiling without needing to wire it in.

The battery claims to have a ten year life-span. Check back to this blog in a decade to see if that's accurate!

Cons

It doesn't interlink with the X-Sense WiFi enabled smoke alarm. That's really my only complaint. If it goes off, I won't get a pop up on my phone. You may think that's an advantage!

As will most interlinked systems, it only guarantees to interlink with units from the same manufacturer.

Overall? It's a small and cheap alarm with a handy interconnect. If you've already got their other alarms, it makes sense to add this to your home.

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 long shot of the property - with an LED streetlamp in the foreground.

It's good to see that the camera can pick up the heat of the lamp. I'm not really interested in whether the readings are completely accurate - I just want to make sure that the camera can discriminate relative temperatures. From this perspective, things are looking good! The property's walls are a fairly uniform temperature. There are no prominent hot-spots where the radiators are. The windows, naturally, are slightly warmer. But not massively.

Let's take a closer look at one of the windows:

This is fairly typical of our windows. I was glad that there weren't huge leaks all around the edges. But the tops of each window had a thermal disparity.

So it might be worth replacing the UPVC seals, and re-doing the sealant around the edges.

The back of the house was slightly different:

On the top right is a hot-spot - that's the flue from the boiler. The hot "line" is the drainpipe which acts as the overflow from the boiler, I think. The hot circle is the exhaust hole for an extractor fan. It looks like the wall is very thermally leaky - but I think that's a quirk of the camera. As I panned down, I got this image:

That looks much more like I was expecting. But let's pan down to ground level: As expected, there's a bit of escape around the back door - but what's that hot-patch near the ground? Zoom! Enhance? That's the vent for the tumble-drier. Not really a huge amount I can do about that. Hot air and moisture need to esape. There's a similar warm patch on the left of the image which is our Rediffusion Junction Box.

Thoughts

This was a quick experiment. The camera - and it is a cheap addon - isn't always great at telling temperature, especially at a distance. For some "quick and dirty" visualisations, it is pretty good. But I suspect I'd get better clarity and more information out of a more expensive model.

I'm hoping that when / if the temperature drops to below freezing, and the heating has been on longer, I'll get a better idea of how our insulation is working. I'm also toying with the idea of taking thermal images of the houses around me. Although I'm not sure of the legal / ethical implications of publishing them!

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 pressings. Prices can go absolutely wild. I managed to find someone selling a collection of Beatles (and solo) records which had attracted no bids. While other sets went for £400, I snapped up 33 records for £165 including delivery.

A fiver per LP!

While it might have been nice to have factory-fresh covers, I kinda like the worn æsthetic.

OK, it didn't include every record that I wanted. And had a few that I didn't really want on my wall (sorry Michael Jackson fans!) so the real cost was about a tenner per record.

Step Two - Hang 'em High!

Sticking things to walls is fun! But I didn't want to damage the record sleeves, and I wasn't overly keen on drilling a hundreds of holes in the wall. I considered lots of solutions (see later) but ended up using...

STICKY MAGNETS!

These strong magnets come with 3M glue pads to stick them to non-magnetic surfaces.

These particular ones were £9 for 10 magnets. A cost of £1.80 per album

Step 3 Test

I stuck one of the magnets to the wall. The glue held it tight, so I tested whether two magnets could hold up a the weight of the cover and the record. They couldn't. I could have bought some more powerful magnets, but I decided just to ditch the vinyl.

I didn't want to damage the record sleeve, so I stuck the magnet to a bit of cardboard which was small enough to fit inside the sleeve.

Moment of truth...

IT WORKS!!

Step 3 - Stabilise

Getting the interior magnet in exactly in the right place was a bit annoying. Especially as my grid wasn't exactly perfect.

The strip of cardboard was just what I needed. I could snap the magnets together, and then move the album sleeve vertically and horizontally - keeping the magnet in place.

Flapping open

Some albums aren't just sleeves, they open up gatefold style. I didn't want them flapping about, so needed a non-destructive way to keep them shut.

I used paperclips. They're small, discreet, and cheap.

Sorry that I didn't use some 3D printed, biosonic, weak-nuclear-force, mechanised doo-dahs. Sometimes simple is best!

Step 4 - More Music

I had 10 magnets, so I stuck five albums up - one by each Beatle, and Sgt Pepper.

Step 5 - More Magnets

I had proved that the set-up worked. So I bought a butt-load more magnets. They're cheaper in bulk. And you can always find a use for a spare magnet.

Final Costs

• £10.31 per LP
• £ 1.69 per pair of magnets
• =====
• £12.00 per stuck up sleeve. Not bad!

I also have a bunch of records to sell, or swap, and four pairs of magnets for other projects.

Other options I considered

Buy pre-framed records.

Some enterprising folk sell pre-framed Beatles record covers for £20 each.

Didn't include the vinyl. But ready to go.

Solo Frames

If I just wanted 12x12 frames, the cheapest I found was around £9 each.

Print your own

There are loads of high resolution scans of album covers. Printing a ready-to-hang canvas box frame would cost about £15 each.

Minor risk of copyright infringement. Lack of authenticity. A bit sterile?

Simple Hangers

I found these hangers with built in record sleeves for £15

The plastic might be too glossy. The reviews mention the sleeves tearing easily. There's also no sense of mystique that you get with floating magnetics.

But, £1.88 per record is a good price, and they're a lot easier to hang - just bash a nail into the wall!

3D printed shelves

I found a bunch of 3D printed mini-shelves on Etsy

They were about £2 - £4 each. They looked nice - but I was worried they'd be too fragile. And, they're really only suitable for holding records. With my magnets, I can swap to anything light enough.

Final Thoughts

I don't care if I'm going through a mid-life high-fidelity crisis. I've turned a plain, boring wall into something that brings me joy. If my tastes change, I can quickly and easily shuffle the record sleeves around.

And there's no way I'm buying a record player!

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

@edent

Trying to work out where I want LED strips.
The "aeroplane emergency lighting" look on the stairs isn't great.
Suggestions? pic.x.com/CTvpPeuyTk

---

Meh!

Our mate Sam suggested creating an "illuminated boudoir".

Step 1 - remove the mattress:

Step 2 - thread the LED strips through the bed base's slats:

The hardest part is making sure the lights all face downward.

The strips are tough, and the mattress is soft enough not to crush them.

Step 3 - plug them in!

Taking photos in the dark isn't super easy, but you get the idea.

Super romantic!

Improvements

We've got these plugged into a smartplug so we can toggle them on/off from our phones. We can also shout "Alexa - make the bedroom romantic". The Alexa is kept far away from the bedroom. We're not monsters!

My mate Tiffany uses dimmable Hue LED strips. Coupled with a Hue motion sensor, they activate as soon as you enter the room - or if you get up in the middle of the night.

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 day to see something so bright and illuminated. As a bonus, when the sun is just at the right angle, it shines a rainbow on our stairs.

A long roll was about £8 on Amazon