Cake baking

Leigh had mentioned a desire for Victoria Sponge cake and I had never attempet to make one of these so there was my challenge! It is a surprisingly easy cake to make. We had to purchase a couple of baking tins and went for a couple about 15cm in diameter. I followed a simple recipe found online here. I jammed around a bit with the amounts but that's chemistry I guess! Unfortunately our oven doesn't have air flow so our sponges were a little over done on the bottom, but still very tasty! Whisking the double cream to stiffness ready for sandwiching was quite a task, alas I am no Popeye and had to call in the assistance of Leigh. The two sponges were sandwiched with strawberry jam and freshly whisked cream and dusted with icing sugar. It was lovely, a highly recommended baking session for all!

Narrowboat news

After all the frozen weather over Christmas and throughout January, the boat has survived! Horrah! (however upon writing this I hear of more ice on it's way!) Obviously this has held up any moves towards our goal. Fortunatley, we have visited the boat since, down near the power station (pictured above full of smoky clouds) and got the burner going. All is well and we are once again full of joy and excitement at our future prospect.


The pontoon has been well hauled in, with some adjustments to the near by tree and chaining up well. Also we discovered that the gangplank is back in place which is great to access the boat with ease. We did have some difficulty with the car, we could only go so close to the boat and walk the duration through the mud. Really one needs a 4x4 but, well, we don't, so there.


It really was cold as we go onboard but with a leaf log on the burner and cups of tea it soon warmed up!

Yang style

This position (above) is part of the single whip movement. In the tai chi class we have been working on getting to this point through various postures and moves. I have just found the following You Tube movie showing the yang style. The first minute and a half is what we have been working on to date.

Construction project continues...

So the audio amplifier is in place as above, the test for sound was a sucess and so I continue following the instructions to complete the radio receiver.

Next up are the resistors for the detector and preamp stage including a small wire to connect the long pad to a smaller pad. Notice that when soldering to the ground plane (the copper base) it is best to heat the area with the soldering iron then apply some solder to form a connection point to then solder the component to.


Then the capacitors are soldered to the board making sure the electrolytic capacitors were the correct way around. It was easier to bend out the legs to then solder neatly in place.


And then I soldered the zener diode in place taking note of the cathode/anode lead.


Then I soldered a wire between two pads joining up the amplifier and detector/preamp stages. After testing for voltage I did in fact get 8.97v which might be showing up some problem as I should have around 6.2v. I have checked the poliarity and resistors are correct but so far haven't seen any errors. I have continued none the less.


Next up were the transistors, 2N3819 - audio preamplifier transistor and 2N3904 - impedance detector transistor. Notice the positioning of the transistors identified by the semi-circle shape. After several tests of the transistors and putting the rest of the resistors in place the next thing is the controller.

This controller is a potentiometer as you can see attached in the bottom left of this photograph.


There are still 6 more stages of construction to complete which will have to take place on another day. It was getting late during this latest build and the smell of solder was getting to me.

Stillness in movement and movement in stillness

This year has begun with taking up a new interest.

I used to live with a wonderful woman called Josie who was a gem at things spiritual, creative and musical. We used to set up in the best sonic room of the house, the bathroom, with her playing the digjeridoo and me on the djembe recording our hearts away. She used to attend Tai Chi classes and I remember evenings where I was sat upon the bed listening and watching as she would move around the essence scented room telling me about different sequences, breathing rythmically with each stretch. I always thought it sounded wonderful but never really considered doing it myself. We used to cycle around together, we lived together, we went to the same University, that was enough for any friendship!

Since then some years have passed and from somewhere came the urge to now look for a class to attend. I discovered the Tai Chi Alliance who run classes locally and went along. Not much thought went into this process I now realise upon reflection, maybe it was more of a subconscious thing?

I am being taught Yang style Tai Chi which seems to be, out of the 5 styles in practice, a version of gentle and large movements. It stays at the same pace throughout and has a very relaxing effect. After some warm ups in the first session we went straight into the Tai Chi walk and I think this is my favourite part so far. See the movie for how it goes (I recommend switching off the music)

Construction project continues...

After far too long away from the radio club, I finally made it along last night. It was a great evening and we cracked on with John leading the construction project, the SNARC version of "Nicky's TRF receiver". We got to view some mods that folks had made and check out John using the signal generator to check frequencies and make some pretty amazing sounds!



I am still in the process of building my radio receiver so carried on with that. I managed to complete the Af amplifier and test it out. As you can see I have attached the loudspeaker, battery lead and the volume control to the circuit and ground plane.


Above, you can see the chip in place, LM386 and the volume controller wired up. I shall carry on with this project throughout the evening and see where I get to.

Raleigh Swift

All this hard shift-work is certainly paying off. Here is my latest purchase. My last bike became a bit of a death trap so this was desperately needed. Due to our change from land to water and reduction in living space I opted for a fold-up bike. It folds in half, the handles and one pedal folds in and the seat comes down.



The Raleigh Swift was the cheapest I could afford, on offer from Halfords it cost £159. Not bad for something that I use everyday. It is a great ride the for the price, the only problem is catching my heels on the paniers but that should just need tweeking. I plan to look after this one and it should see me through a while. Look sharp as I speed past on this beauty. Whizzz!!