Drying Out!

This morning was the first time since Tuesday I have been able to get out for a bike ride because of the recent consistent wet and very cool weather.  I got the 12k's or so completed this morning but did get the occasional spot of rain!.  As the day progresses, the grey clouds lift a little more and we even get a speck of sunshine every now and again.

The pool is down to 22°so any swim this morning was brief and refreshing!

It is still mid teens overnight and the temp outside today will get to around 25 or so.  Both Trish and I went for pullovers the other evening as we got a top temp around 23 or so.  Come 4pm it cooled right off!

Following on from Wednesday, the new brew has been bottled and stored away.  Another brew has gone 'on', this one labelled "Melbourne Blonde".  It is a brew I will put into large soft drink bottles and take with us down to Melbourne when we head that way for Christmas and to catch up with all the family.

Kate, Arj and family are flying in from Saudi Arabia for Christmas, Kim is flying over from Perth and we are heading down from Queensland.

What other news is there?  The remote sensor on the weather station has been returned via mail for a replacement, I haven't heard back from Lou Ann yet with any possible storm update and the recliner lounge chairs we ordered some time ago have been built and arrived this morning.

The new chairs are fabric covered rather than leather as the previous ones were.  One word to describe them is "comfortable".  They are more compact than the 'old' recliners which were each huge by comparison. The color seems to fit in well with the general toning of our home.  A purposely made quilt will eventually cover my chair.  I tend to perspire a fair bit and in the sub tropical climate we have here the chair will require some protection.

To remove the old chairs was a story in itself!  They were too big to take down our inside passage way so we used a trolley to get them out via the sideway.  Because of their size, we had to move bins, bikes etc just to fit them through.  The neighbour over the road will take them.  If there is a change of mind, the "Salvos" will take them.

Right now they are cluttering up the garage.

We have drinks again this afternoon at 3pm.  At this stage there will be just 4 of us but that will be OK.

Damp Start To A New Day

The new Weather Station I bought in the midst of frustration with the old one arrived on Monday, was setup and running Monday night, was in pieces when the remote temperature sensor failed Tuesday morning and by late Tuesday afternoon was packed up and its box ready for return!

On a more positive scale, the Android TV box has been running at around 99% and right now I am delighted with it.

The quality sound issue remains with the Android Box but the most listening we do to is TV stuff via our wireless headphones, so the sound quality issue isn't a diabolical concern at this stage.

We are entering the 'storm' season here and have had regular overnight rain the last couple of nights with almost 1/2" on each the last few nights.  Usually it has cleared by dawn so I can bike ride OK.  This morning the showers have lingered and any bike riding is off the agenda!

The photo above shows the bottles now drying which I have rinsed prior to bottling.  The rinse is to ensure I remove all of the sanitizer which dries in the bottles during the washing process.  The bottles are a little easier to handle during bottling if dry.

The photo also shows the kind of day we have awoken to this morning and the mats we have bought to catch any oil leaks from the 'old' car we brought back from Melbourne.

It is interesting that the problems I have had with the Android Box and now the Weather Station have raised my anxiety level just a little.

Also the WDTV Media Player box has been acting up something awful as well.  I was able to backdate the firmware to an earlier version and since then it has been behaving itself nicely.  It is good to have a win at last!

We saw that terrible storm in Mexico recently and how the system petered out to be a rain depression over Texas dropping heaps of rain there.  We wonder whether Lou-ann there managed to get any of this rain as it has been incredibly dry for a few years in her part of the world.  I haven't spotted anything on her Facebook page but I don't look all that often.

Time to get back to the bottling I suppose!

An Overcast Sunday

The forecast yesterday (Saturday) was for a possible morning shower clearing to a fine and sunny afternoon.  The 11mls of rain in the rain gauge this morning indicates we didn't get the weather that was forecast.

It continues overcast and mid 20's today but it is brighter outside now than earlier this morning.  And as the photo shows, bottle washing has been completed as well.  The pool is full, the grass out the front is turning green again and all the garden and pots have had a good water.

After bottle washing I went for an 'abbreviated' ride but I still did 10k's.  The pool felt better than it looked when I had a post ride swim!

There isn't a lot of news....   I won't bore you with swapping the batteries over in the weather station (was that a gasp of relief I heard?).  Getting the main unit to connect to the outside weather sensor for the outdoor temperature is always a bit hit and miss.

I reckon I used several sets of batteries before giving up with the outside temp area blank on the main display unit.  I just couldn't get it to connect.  eBay was the next port of call and a replacement ordered!  Just as I was about to toss the old unit out, I noticed the temperature outside was 26°!  The bloody thing had connected.

The Android Box works at about 90%.  It is OK but not perfect.  It won't turn off sometimes and the sound jumps a little as well.  Trish said to get and better quality one but I said I had one more trick to try!

I use Trish's old laptop as a backup and for most of the day it just sits there.  Regretfully it doesn't have an HDMI out connection on it.  But via eBay you can buy VGA + audio to HDMI converters.  So I have ordered one of those and will try running the old laptop as a HTPC (Home Theatre PC).  The converter is due around midweek.  It won't do high quality sound as the old laptop just doesn't have the hardware/software to do that sort of thing.

But we will give it a go.

Most likely I will lash out and buy myself a quality Android TV Box unit for Christmas.  Cheap ones are around $100 (or less),  OK ones are closer to $140 and good ones are anything from $200 to $300!  The Nvidia Shield unit is over $300!

The one in the photo is around $200 depending on where you buy it from, what it is preloaded with and if you want an 'air mouse' to control it.In the photo you can see the standard remote control, you really need an 'air mouse' or as I have a portable wireless keyboard!

They are amazing gadgets!

Midweek News

Just after lunch the temperature here is heading towards the high 20's with 30+ expected tomorrow.  Then it drops back to mid 20's or just over again until warming up again over the weekend.  The minimum temp for the next week or so is now up to 18° overnight which is good news for the pool as the water won't cool off as much overnight.

The mower started first go today.  It was just a little job cleaning up some of the bits and pieces of reed paneling I was cutting up to put into the recycling bin.

The ceiling fans are on every day or so for around an hour just to temper things.

My new Android box has had a couple of firmware issues and all the new owners are hastily awaiting an automatic firmware update to come through.  This happened the other day with my unit.  Not only was the update unsuccessful but I also got an error message saying the system was now damaged and wireless updates would no longer work.

Being a Chinese supplier, explanations in English on how to fix the problem make interesting reading.  A quick understandable fix appeared online and I was a lucky one because the fix worked.  The box is now updated and working OK.  I tried to restore a previous Kodi setup I had backed up.  Regretfully the backup didn't work and the box didn't operate properly.

Another reinstall of Kodi this morning and I am pleased to say the unit is now working well.

It is Spring and it is spring clean up time.  The blinds along the front of the pergola (see the photo above) get dusty and require a couple of cleans (back and front) each year.  It is after jobs like this one I realize I am not as young as I used to be.

But the back yard is looking its best right now.

I also managed to put another brew on this morning (Weds) so bottle washing and a bottling will follow.

I did to get to the Chiro on Monday and I may possibly need to go again later this week. The back remains a little sore.

Arj has sent a link to some of his photos online following their recent trip to Sand Island.  You can see them here.

A Sensational Sunday!

The 'temporary' final maneuvering of potplants has occurred.  The solar powered Christmas lights are almost all in place and the backyard has returned to blissful peace.  The stretched and sore muscles in both our bodies are recovering and a call is about to made to the Chiropractor for a tune up.

Some of the remaining paint will be used on the two sections of concrete we still have up towards the back fence.  Though not proper 'paving paint' we have so much of it we will give it a go.  A quick patch up paint from time to time will be required but we have enough paint to last for some time.

I am not good with my hands when it comes to anything mechanical.  When our good friends and neighbours moved out recently when they downsized from a 5 bedroom home to a small 3 bedroom unit they decided they didn't want their 15 year old (or thereabouts) lawnmower any more.

I decided to give my 30 year old mower to the guy over the road and took Brian's 15 year old model.  It worked beautifully when I gave the lawn a mow a week or so ago.  I needed to tidy the lawn up again on Friday and despite my best efforts I couldn't get the thing to start.  So I grabbed my old model back again from the neighbour, gave the lawn a quick mow and contacted Brian to see if there was a special knack to start his former mower.

He came round, went through the start up procedure but there it sat, silent and useless.  We both felt that most likely the spark plug was the problem but I was unsure if I had a spark plug spanner.  After an hour or so I seemed to recollect where I might have the required sized socket, found it and yes it fitted perfectly.  The spark plug screwed out with hardly any pressure required.

With this in mind I replaced the spark plug and gave it just a small bit of pressure to ensure it was locked in place.  Two pulls of the starter cord and the mower burst into life!

We will see how well the 'fix' went when I need to start the mower again in a week or so.

Delightful sunny days and I have no idea where the forecast of possible morning showers came from!  The days are around 26° and sunny, even the pool was 24.5° this morning when I had a post bike ride swim!

After Computer Club yesterday I am even more convinced that some people should never be permitted to have access to a laptop!  Movie chat and some stuff on Kodi took up more time.  I helped a couple buy an i5 powered laptop for $575 delivered as well and they were very happy with the deal.

Cricket on TV and plenty of stuff to enjoy on the new Android box. 

Life is good right now.

Arj has a new post on his Blog Site.  We visited this little spot when we did our Red Sea snorkelling thing!  It is relatively close to the shore and a really picturesque little spot.

http://behindthekeyboard.global2.vic.edu.au/2015/10/18/on-the-weekend-17th-october-2015/

All Finished

There will be a few tiddly bits to finally sort out (like which pot plant where) but the feature wall job is done.

We bought the two panels yesterday and pinned them into place with a few screws.  We even had our former neighbour and retired house painter pop around to advise if the job needed yet another coat.  He said it all looked fine to him.

Trish even managed to get her Christmas lights up as well. The butterfly received a coat of paint and now takes pride of place in the feature wall.

We are delighted with the finished job.  We feel it really adds to the backyard and helps focus even more on the pool itself.

Gorgeous day today, mid to high 20's and even the pool is beginning to warm up.  When the older neighbour moved out he left me his mower.  It wouldn't start when I went to mow the lawn.  I am giving both it and myself a rest for 30 minutes before going out and trying again.

We have a Friday drinks on at our place later today.  It should be a nice day for it.

Getting There!

The older one gets, projects such as the one we are currently undertaking around our house the more difficult they seem to become.  I would suggest almost every muscle in my body right now is screaming out in pain!  I am just not used to carrying, holding onto, thinking, aligning and painting!  And as the photo shows our little backyard is changing quite a deal.

I now have two layers of 4.5metres of bamboo paneling to get to the tip after I removed it for new wall.  I will need to borrow the use of a vehicle to do that.  We have become constant visitors to the super sized hardware store a couple of k's away.  My small household electric drill gave up the ghost yesterday as I was screwing the final cement sheet into place and now I have a new (but still very cheap) electric drill.

We have oodles too much paint so in future anything around our home which needs a coat of paint will be the color of the new feature wall.  In the photo it has one coat paint only with a final coat still to go.  Most likely that will go on this afternoon.

We have decided the current length of the wall is ideal so the extra paint I bought to do the whole fence as well as plenty of extra 'just in case' will go into storage in the shed.

We celebrated our good work yesterday with a trip to the Dicky Beach Surf Club for a meal and a couple of drinks last night.

So there will be a little more painting to happen later on today.  Trish is thinking about exactly what she still plans to do, where the feature panels will go, the new tall wire sculpture to go in the very middle, all that important stuff!

I did get my latest brew bottled as well this morning so that job is out of the way.

We had some thunder and lightning last night and early this morning.  But there were only a few mls in the rain gauge, enough to water the lawn and the garden as well as top up the pool. By 9 am any thought of a storm had gone, the sun was out and I was free to begin with the putting on the undercoat!

With any work to do around the house, bike riding goes on the back burner.  I may be back on board the bike tomorrow though!

Looks Like Work To Be Done!

The first non footy week for the best part of 5 months has now come and gone.  Taking its place of course is a heap of cricket on TV.  Most of the matches are now available on free to air so the TV screen on the computer desktop is tuned right in.

The weekend was 'as usual' with me off to Computer Club first thing Saturday for the usual round of email problems, setting up a new android phones, some updates to people who are interested in Kodi and a general chat about anything at all.

More Android TV messing around for much of the rest of Saturday and for some of Sunday filled my days.  Interspersed was a look at the cricket on TV!

Here in Queensland the household fences around the house block are built with palings side by side rather than overlapped like we had in Melbourne.  As the fence ages, the palings shrink and you can see through to next door.  To get a little extra privacy we have double sided the back fence and we have put up reed grass panels to help fill the gaps along the side fence as you can see in the photo above.  As the reed gets older and begins to crumble, I usually just put a new layer over of panels over the top.  This gives us good coverage and privacy around the pool area.

After time and with weathering the reed panels begin to look pretty 'second hand' like it is looking right now.

This morning it was off to Bunnings (the local super hardware store) and grabbed some cement sheet panels and oodles of quality paint, similar in shade to the pavers. I bought 3 sheets 1.6 x .9 metres as the first 'stage' of recovering the side fence.  After I remove some of the old reed paneling, the 3 cement sheet panels will go up tomorrow and they will then get their first coat of paint.  I will still need two more sheets of cement sheeting to complete the first stage from the pool fence across to the pool filter cover.

You can buy decorative heavy duty patterned plastic panels nowadays.  We will buy two and they will go into place to complete the job.

I have heaps of paint so if we decide to go all the way from behind the pool pump across to the back fence we can if we want to.

I will put off a required visit to the chiropractor until after the panel work is completed.

I did manage to bottle wash on Sunday and I expect to be bottling either tomorrow (Tues) or Wednesday.

Lovely sunny days the last few days.  It was a round 22° in the pool this morning after my bike ride, still a little on the brisk side!

A Damp Start To Friday

The sky appears to be clearing at 9:30 am here after some quite strong south easterlies have blown in off the Pacific Ocean which meant great surf for surfers for much of yesterday.  I began yesterday's bike ride in blustery conditions and sunny skies but didn't hang around on the bike for long.  The wind made bike riding very unpleasant.

Then clouds began to blow in off the ocean later on Thursday afternoon and we even had a sprinkle of rain. It remained windy overnight and the sprinkles changed to showers which have continued throughout the night and into the morning.  We have had around 14 mls of much desired rain during the showers, a much needed top up for the pool and the lawn.  There were large areas of yellowed grass yesterday and hopefully with the showers the green will return.

Trish has forgiven me over fixing the dishwasher. It has been operating perfectly the last few washes.  It is doing well for around 13 years old.

I continue to play with the Android TV Box via a lot of trial and error. I have completely re installed "Kodi" once and added a "Build".  A 'Build' is a fully repackaged addon for Kodi with its own theme, preferred downloaded add ons and a considerable re working and integration of the these addons.  If you get the right build, you probably won't need anything else.  I have only added some Aussie TV backup addons

I have then 'modified' some aspects of the 'Build' to get it to do more for what I want it to do.  Kodi seems to be designed to access online video and audio streaming sources from the internet.  I still prefer to download my own files and use Kodi as a media player to play them back.  The program Kodi allows you to do both.

Kodi will go anywhere on your home wireless network to find files to playback for you. So you don't really need to have a hard drive connected directly to it to playback movies and TV Shows.

This model of android box does have a slight playback issue as I have discovered from personal use and from the comments of other owners.  There can be a one second 'stuttering' of the playback which may happen once or twice over a 4 hour period of viewing.  I moved the hard drive containing all the playback files to a direct connection to the box  to see if that eliminated the stuttering.  It didn't work.  So I have now returned the drive to the old media player where I can directly access it as a 'network drive' from the PC over the wireless network.

The advantage this has is that I have just downloaded an episode of a new English TV detective series.  I can just drag and drop the file onto the network drive and can easily add it to the Library of the Android TV Box.

The biggest advantage of the Android TV Box is it plays ALL files, including the new HEVC file type.  This file type is HD quality in a SD File size!  So is super quality in extra small file size.

I did a brew on Wednesday and it is bubbling away nicely.  I now have the awkward job of ensuring I have enough empty bottles for the upcoming bottling, a job I reckon I can handle OK!

The pool is slowly but surely warming up.  Most mornings the pool temperature is around 22º.  It gets up to almost 25º by late afternoon.  I swim most mornings after my bike ride.

There is a heap of domestic one-day cricket now on TV so there is always something to watch and fill in time if required.

Trish is at Quilters this morning and the sun is just beginning to pop its head through the clouds!

I hope this post gets online OK as Blogger is doing a few strange things.

Duty Free, One Down One to Go!

When we returned from our two months overseas earlier this year we bought a couple of bottles of both Tricia's favorite, "Pernod" as well as Frangelico "Duty Free'.  Following Tricia's footy team's big win in the Grand Final on Saturday, bottle 1 of the Pernod has now been emptied!

That is three premierships in a row to Hawthorn!  Trish loved the game but for those barracking for neither side the game was a fizzer!  But the drinks we had, the hot pies and the scrumptious prawns were just delightful!

For me the eating and drinking were the most enjoyable features of the day.

The NRL Grand Final (Rugby League) played the next night was a great match to watch because of the closeness of the scores and the amazing finish.  Both games were sellouts but a ticket to the NRL Grand final was around $45 a ticket while a ticket up in the nosebleeds for the AFL Grand Final was around $170!  And they could have sold the AFL Grand Final tickets twice over!

The weather here has been spectacular.  High 20's each day and hardly a breath of wind nor a cloud.  I have been back in the pool each day after my bike ride with the swims getting a little longer each day.  But the water is still cold.

It was to the pool shop today for the 'before the summer swimming season pool chemical' top up!  A couple of bags of salt, some "Buffer" and a bag of "PH Increaser" and by late afternoon today the water will be perfect (if a little on the cooler side)!

Cricket is back on the TV again so all is going along nicely!

A brew will go on tomorrow so that will keep things ticking over.

This website looks interesting!  (https://couchpota.to/)  I can run the "Chrome" web browser on my Android Box and this would be another way to enjoy movies. Or you could go online and just hook your lightweight laptop up to your TV with a HDMI lead and off you go!

Grand Final Day

The storms we had earlier in the week have now disappeared.  They have been swapped to glorious warm days with temps close to 30° during the day then mid teens during the night.  The winds still comes from the south east so it isn't summery just yet.

I was in the pool Friday morning after my bike ride but 21.5° isn't conducive to having a long swim!  I usually say the swimming season here goes from Grand Final Day through to Anzac Day.  Coldish nights are the problem with any heat gained during the day is lost overnight.  It also needs the soil around the pool to warm up as well.

I have extended the pool's filter operating times (photo above left) so the 'chlorinator' has more time to make some extra chlorine now the swimming season is upon us.

News remains scant with the usual hum drum during the day.

To a Bowls Club for an evening meal on Wednesday, Community Club occasion on Thursday attended by the deputy premier of the state and other dignitaries.  Dress for the official occasion was 'business' attire so it was coat, collar and tie.  It is the first time I have worn socks for quite some time.

I have been back on the bike again keeping out of the way of any magpies, they haven't been a problem as long as I steer clear of their nesting areas.

I continue to learn about Kodi and my Android TV Box, usually there is something new each day.  I am beginning to see it is not necessarily for the new non computer oriented user as it does have some idiosyncrasies.

The links to Android Apps in the post below have been a real eye opener.  If you just want to stream movies or TV shows this would suit your needs.  I have found Show Box to be the best.  I have read somewhere the Apple version is called Movie Box.

Today is Grand Final Day here and we have stocked up with meat pies, prawns and other nibblies.  I will make an appearance at Computer Club but plan to be back home mid morning.  There is an U/17's (or something similar) live on Pay TV prior to the big game.  Trish's team is playing so she is quite looking forward to the game.

Most of the electrical appliances we have at home we bought when we first arrived here on the Sunshine Coast, making much of it around 13 years old.  Recently the dish washer door has been difficult to open and required it to be lifted and then pulled firmly.  A new one was on the cards.

So Trish was pretty peeved when I mucked around with it and bent a piece of the lock (a metal tongue) downwards.  Since then the door has opened easily and freely!