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Big increase in the amount of spam I’m getting on wordpress. Any bright ideas on how to prevent it would be greatly appreciated? I’ve got it set up so I have to authorize any comments anyway, would just be nice to get rid of it! Is there any way of turning on captcha or something similar?

Well, was back to work for the first time in almost a fortnight 🙂  Was nice to have a bit of time out of the place anyway.  Although I have tomorrow, and then I’m off again until Friday woop!

Strange being back into the cold weather, not used to it anymore!  Car had frost this morning for the first time in ages!  Most strange…

Been catching up on the O.C. again, sort of missed it.

Does anyone else love the way Starbucks always send free coupons?  I never actually get a chance to use them but hey, it’s a nice thought 🙂

Anyway…  I should really head on, give Amanda some attention 😛  Although she’s busy reading a magazine anyway…  Byes..

Is it just me or is there a distinct lack of public toilets in Belfast? I know there are probably ones in buildings and shops, but there are very few places to go if you’re caught short on the street?

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places, but there are quite a few times when I would really have to go…

Anyway currently sitting on the bus, using my homebrew MiFi on my Touch Diamond, using my iPod touch to write on the blog. Pretty nifty l, I thought anyway…

Was up helping dad set up some more computers, and we’d plugged some of the final ones in, and all the power went off on that floor… Not totally sure what’s going on, as it was the main breaker tripping, not the smaller ones for each circuit…

Went to see Strictly yesterday afternoon at the Odyssey. It was quite good, alhough there were too many old people for my liking. We had intended to call into Streat for lunch, but it was packed full to the brim, so we ended up eating on the Arena itself. The food was actually pretty good, no major complaints, although they mixed up my half pound burger, charging me for it but I only got a quarter pound burger… Didn’t realise until we got to our seats, by which time I couldn’t be steed going back up to change it…

Dinner we went to our usual place, Nando’s. I was brave and went for hot again, with a bottle of extra hot to put over my fries, rice and chicken. It was actually very tasty, and the extra hot sauce was bearable… I would definetly get it again. Had a dessert for once, White Chocolate and Raspberry Swirl, and an espresso to go with it. Again it was delicious, and the guy ‘Roy’ couldn’t have been more helpful with the second order!

Well still sitting on the bus, just going past Cityside. There’s a mum and a young boy, maybe 5 or 6, and the language she is using towards him is a disgrace, I don’t think it’s appropriate to drop the ‘F bomb’ with kids that age, and certainly not in a public place…

Anyway this long-winded blog post is coming to the end, sitting on a rear facing seat and I need to concentrate on when to get up haha. Cheerio, thanks for reading!

Well I should start off by saying how awful I have felt the last day or two! Don’t know why, been getting longer in bed, so I guess I should be feeling fine.

Made pancakes yesterday evening with Amanda. They turned out pretty well tbh, it was Delia’s recipe, and we found they needed some sugar or syrup to make them taste good, but once they had that extra touch they were lovely!

Spent the weekend in the Hilton, Dublin. Was a lovely weekend, didn’t do much, just did a bit of shopping, ate too much as usual, and slept… And had a bit of a dander around the city too. On Sunday we went home via Wicklow, had a nice drive around there, and found a huge shopping centre in the sleepy town of Arklow… Very odd!

Well lecture just starting so i’d better head on… Oh the projector just turned itself off… Hm…

For the pancake mixture:
110g/4oz plain flour, sifted
pinch of salt
2 eggs
200ml/7fl oz milk mixed with 75ml/3fl oz water
50g/2oz butter
To serve:
caster sugar
lemon juice
lemon wedges

Method

Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl with a sieve held high above the bowl so the flour gets a airing. Now make a well in the centre of the flour and break the eggs into it. Then begin whisking the eggs – any sort of whisk or even a fork will do – incorporating any bits of flour from around the edge of the bowl as you do so.

Next gradually add small quantities of the milk and water mixture, still whisking (don’t worry about any lumps as they will eventually disappear as you whisk). When all the liquid has been added, use a rubber spatula to scrape any elusive bits of flour from around the edge into the centre, then whisk once more until the batter is smooth, with the consistency of thin cream. Now melt the 50g/2oz of butter in a pan. Spoon 2 tbsp of it into the batter and whisk it in, then pour the rest into a bowl anduse it to lubricate the pan, using a wodge of kitchen paper to smear it round before you make each pancake.

Now get the pan really hot, then turn the heat down to medium and, to start with, do a test pancake to see if you’re using the correct amount of batter. I find 2 tbsp is about right for an 18cm/7in pan. It’s also helpful if you spoon the batter into a ladle so it can be poured into the hot pan in one go. As soon as the batter hits the hot pan, tip it around from side to side to get the base evenly coated with batter. It should take only half a minute or so to cook; you can lift the edge with a palette knife to see if it’s tinged gold as it should be. Flip the pancake over with a pan slice or palette knife – the other side will need a few seconds only – then simply slide it out of the pan onto a plate.
Stack the pancakes as you make them between sheets of greaseproof paper on a plate fitted over simmering water, to keep them warm while you make the rest.

To serve, spinkle each pancake with freshly squeezed lemon juice and caster sugar, fold in half, then in half again to form triangles, or else simply roll them up. Serve sprinkled with a little more sugar and lemon juice and extra sections of lemon.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/basilpancakswithsuga_66226.shtml

Well the powermonkey/mobile gave up last night, at midnight again… This time it managed nearly 90 hours, pretty impressive!

Would love to try the solargorilla, it’s bigger, so I would imagine it wouldake the experiment last longer… I’ve found the real killer for the experiment is the cloudy weather, and you can’t store enough when the weather is good. Started the expt again this morning at the usual time of 7.30, and as always I’ll keep you all updated here.

You’ll all be fed up listening about the Powermonkey!  I’ve currently just set up the powermonkey in my car, it’s getting a bit of a charge, as I used it this morning to half charge the phone battery.  Thought it would be best to leave it in the car, as I have a class soon, and won’t be able to charge it up – lecture theatre has curtains!

It certainly seems to be going a bit better this time – there’s a small red LED on the powermonkey that indicates how quickly it is charging, and it’s actually lit up this time, whereas the last time I could barely get it to light up, even when I was outside…  It’s not too bad a day here today, and I’m driving down to Dublin in a couple of hours, so I’ll leave the thing charging underneath the windscreen, and see what more power I can get into it.

Staying in Jury’s Inn in Dublin tonight, going to see Kelly Clarkson, which should be pretty cool, I guess…  Hopefully be able to find a decent window in the hotel to wire up the monkey for another bit of a charge, although I would hope after about 4 or 5 hours of charging it will be back to full capacity, ready for another day…  Driving back up to Belfast on Saturday, so again I’ll leave the solar panel out to charge a bit more, and then on Sunday I’ve got an 8 hour shift in work, so I’ll be able to set up the solar panel in the car again – if I haven’t run out of battery again…  It does seem to be working a little better this time, and I think giving the thing a fair chance by giving it a full charge off the mains will do it a favour.

So, currently I’ve been ‘unplugged’ for 28 hours, and still going strong 🙂

I’ll keep you all updated on here as usual 🙂

Well, sort of.  About midnight last night the phone battery gave up, so I basically just proved that the weather here was too terrible for the last few days to get any decent power saved up into the powermonkey, and there was definitely not enough solar energy to stay away from the mains indefinitely.  This would make sense, as the solar panel has a max. output (in perfect conditions) of 200mA, my phone has a 1200mAh-ish battery, and that battery generally only lasts about a day with moderate use.  By my calculations then I would need to be storing 6 hours of full blast sunlight to sustain the phone for that length of time.  And well, considering the weather in NI, the time I have to spend in class, and the fact that the solar panel wasn’t ideally placed a lot of the time, the powermonkey did quite well!

So by the end of the experiment I had managed to keep my phone away from the mains for about 59 hours, which is actually pretty good going for that phone, as I said above, I normally only get about a day out of a full charge..

I’m doing the experiment again, although this time I’ve made a couple of changes.  I fully charged both my phone and the powermonkey from the mains last night, to give the thing a fighting chance, it is winter after-all…  I know the solar panel is up to the job, as I fully charged my nexus battery pack the other afternoon by leaving it in the car for a shift, but with the clouds/snow/fog we’re having at the minute we’re getting very low levels of UV at the ground, making the amount of electricity available very low…

Anyway just a wee bit of info on the powermonkey – they’re getting a free plug!  The powermonkey explorer (the version I’m using) is a combination of a Li-Ion battery pack, and a solar panel, along with the ‘monkey nuts’ which are the connectors that you use to connect your phone/iPod/mp3 player/some cameras to the battery.  The solar panel has a maximum output of 200mA, and the battery pack has a capacity of 2200mAh.  You can charge the battery using the solar panel, which will take about 18 hours of sunlight for a full charge, a mains plug, which takes about 3-4 hours for a full charge, and using a usb lead (supplied with the monkey) connected to a computer, or anything with a powered USB port, which will take about 6 hours for a charge.  You can then go out into the wilderness, strap the solar panel to your rucksack, and be partially self sufficient for electricity.

They also do a thing called the solargorilla, which is suitable for charging your laptop, and can also charge your devices in the same way as the powermonkey…

The battery is great for devices which chew their own batteries, like smart-phones, which don’t normally get a great battery life, it’s not too bulky – it’ll fit in your pocket, and it can power a multitude of different devices, as long as they make a monkey-nut for it…  You also get a neat carry case, a Velcro sealed bag to keep your bits and bobs in, and a velcro strap for the solar panel to make it easier to strap it to a bag/rucksack/window/coat/whatever tickles your fancy really…

Anyway, plug over!  For more info on the powertraveller products just go to https://powertraveller.com/.

I’ll keep you all updated on the progress of the experiment this time round too…

Well, it’s now been about 56 hours since my phone was plugged into the mains… Now, it normally dies after a day, so I think that’s pretty impressive. Not too sure how many more days I’ll get, at the minute the weather is quite bad, and it’s getting difficult to get any decent charging done…  Mobile has about 2 bars left still, which is ‘half charge’ and the powermonkey is now actually down to 1 bar out of 7 or 8, so that’s not looking too promising!

The cool thing is, I’ve been using my phone as normal, normal texting habits, checking stuff online the odd bit, emails are on push, and it’s still not dead, although I wouldn’t hold my breath on that one, can’t imagine I have long left..  I’ll keep you all updated.
If it fails this time I’ll maybe try it again, and give the phone and powermonkey a proper charge before I start the experiment…  It’s probably a bad time of the year, and I didn’t count on the apparant snow clouds above belfast today, which I would imagine didn’t help much by blocking a pile of UV…

Well, this may seem quite odd, but doing a wee bit of an experiment with my Powermonkey. Going to try and power my mobile using only solar power. Not too sure how it will go. Sort of cheating a little bit, the powermonkey had about 75% charge and my mobile had about 50% charge, but all the same…

So day one, I didn’t get a lot of sun today, but the powermonkey is still around 50% charge, hopefully I’ll get a bit more tomorrow… I’ve tried to work out a way to strap it to my bag while I’m walking, but it’s hard to get a good angle with the ‘sun’, and with such low intensities it seems to be really important to get it pointing the right direction.

I’ll try and get some pics of the monkey when I’m using it… I’ve found it works really well in the kitchen… Hopefully it’ll work better when the sun comes out a bit more, and we do have a bit of a lack of daylight at the minute…

Phone still has about 3/4 charge, so I should be OK for tomorrow…

Does anyone have any hints or tips while I’m using the powermonkey?

My main worry is the phone I’m using, its an HTC Touch Diamond, and it is a little power hungry… And well, the battery in the phone is 1800mAh, where the solarslave only provides 200mAh, so I need to be storing up at least 9 hours of full blast sunlight per day, which we don’t get at this time of year, as my phone battery doesn’t really last that long, but hey, it’ll be worth a try… Going to hang the solarslave from the window, try and get a few rays before I leave for uni…