William Goodall's Blog Occasional mutterings

March 15, 2019

Quiet for a while…

Filed under: DIY,IT — William_T_Goodall @ 17:57

But I’ll be posting some more soon. Meanwhile I’ve been doing some home automation with hive heating controls, smart plugs, and some Amazon Echos.

August 17, 2017

New weather station

Filed under: DIY,IT,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 14:55

Finally found a use for the masonry bits I bought in 2010 – drilling a hole to hang the outside sensor outside the window.

August 8, 2015

Shelf Repair

Filed under: Books,DIY — William_T_Goodall @ 14:25

There was a noise in the night which was most likely this shelf collapsing on the left side as a support peg snapped.

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Unloading the shelf’s double layer of books.

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I had to raise the shelf one notch as one of the predrilled peg-holes had been damaged by the collapse. Then I restored the books in a slightly different way as the shelf height was too low for the taller books in the back layer (stacked horizontally instead of vertically).

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Fortunately I managed to find a pack of shelf support pegs from the last time I had a shelf collapse. Unfortunately I think they are the same pegs as the one that broke this time so it might happen again. Maybe I’ll get stronger pegs next time.

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May 13, 2015

Pegler i-Temp revisited

Filed under: DIY — William_T_Goodall @ 13:55

Back in December I installed several of these programmable radiator controls. A few days ago the meter reader came and I got my new statements. Gas consumption down 10%, rebate and monthly direct debit reduced. The annual saving is more than double what the PRCs cost so that’s a win. Should do even better in future as I hadn’t installed all of them due to old valves that needed replacing.

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May 9, 2015

High Chair

Filed under: DIY — William_T_Goodall @ 19:10

The chair now goes quite a lot higher at full extension. This was deliberate as previously it had to be set to full height to be just high enough.

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May 8, 2015

Stuff

Filed under: DIY,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 15:18

Amazon parcel including new gas lift for office chair, rubber mallet for removing old gas lift, pyrex bowl and Tassimo descaling tablets. The minimum order for free delivery went up from £10 to £20 as I was assembling this order which explains the odd mixture of stuff. I also am switching from using ecto for blogging to using MacJournal as ecto hasn’t been updated to support the change from iPhoto to Photo and so I can’t easily post photos from it anymore. MacJournal does support Photo. On the other hand it doesn’t seem to allow me to write html directly so I’ll need to look into that. I actually got MacJournal as part of a large software bundle I bought for another piece of software and hadn’t intended to use it – and now it’s turned out useful!

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New gas lift

Filed under: DIY,Insides,IT,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 15:07

Got a new gas lift for the office chair. Fitting it was slightly harder than the youtube videos made it look and as well as a rubber mallet I needed a mole wrench, hex key and needle-nose pliers. Still, it only took about twenty minutes and I had a seat that went up higher than before and shouldn’t randomly collapse on me 🙂

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March 21, 2015

Doorbell

Filed under: DIY,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 15:10

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The old doorbell finally expired so I got a replacement wireless doorbell. One mains powered ringer and one battery powered ringer.

December 11, 2014

Pegler i-Temp

Filed under: DIY,IT,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 14:01

New heating controllers for the winter. Five TRV heads, a window sensor and a remote control. Discovered a leaky TRV body when installing them so that will need a plumber.

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Installed window sensor using provided double-sided sticky pads.

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May get another remote so I can have one for the office and one for the living room.

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I got a ‘buy three get one free’ deal and got five for the price of four.

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June 5, 2014

New Home Theatre

Filed under: DIY,Music,Television,Unboxing — William_T_Goodall @ 15:13

The DVD player in my old HTIB packed in again and since spares are no longer available it was time to upgrade. New 5.1 speakers with an active subwoofer, an amplifier with four hdmi in and one hdmi out and two optical digital in (my SKY box doesn’t do Dolby over HDMI so I need an optical link for that. And my TV doesn’t do ARC over HDMI so I need an optical link for that too.) And a blu-ray player. And 50 metres of speaker cable, fourteen banana plugs and a subwoofer cable. It all finally arrived by yesterday and I spent some hours unpacking and assembling it.

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Three boxes of speakers making HTS201 system.

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Some stands for the rear speakers.

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100W active subwoofer. 8” down firing ported variety.

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Two front towers with spike feet.

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Center and two rear speakers.

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Rears on stands. The connectors take banana plugs.

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Front speaker with cover off and on.

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Sub with dog hairs. That’s a Tannoy HTS201 speaker system.

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Sub cable and some banana plugs. Both by Fisual.

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Amplifier. Yamaha RX-V375.

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Blu-ray player. LG BP325.

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Set up. I actually tidied up all the wiring before I began but I ended up with another mess. The TV, the SKY box and the blu-ray have wired internet connections so it was handy the switch I bought ages ago had enough ports. The blu-ray promptly downloaded a software update as soon as it was wired up.

The system self-calibrated with the included microphone with the sub at -10dB which might be a little low for my liking. I’ll see about tweaking it all after it’s run in a little.

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