March 2008 - matnkat.com

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Pub quiz and piglets

Kat: We've been attending the Globe pub quiz regularly since we moved to Lostwithiel 10 months ago and it's compulsory for visitors staying with us on Sunday night, whatever their general knowledge is like. For that reason there's been an increasing amount of up-country interest in the quiz so I've built a dedicated pub quiz page. You can view the latest quiz and record your score, or try previous quizzes. No cheating now! If you're signed up to automatic blog and gallery notifications, you can choose to be notified when the new quiz is available in your preferences.

On an entirely different subject, we visited the new pig club additions yesterday. A local lad, Scott, keeps his own pigs a couple of fields away from the pig club field, and one of his gilts farrowed a couple of weeks ago. We went to see the new piglets and arrived to find another had farrowed just an hour or two earlier. Unfortunately she wasn't due for a week so she was still in her pen when she gave birth, rather than in a farrowing box, and as a result she'd crushed 4 of her 9 piglets to death. Apparently this is common for a first litter - the mother will get up each time she gives birth then lie down on top of the newborn to give birth again; next time she'll be more careful. You can see the newborn in the picture has quite a few cuts on his face from errant trotters, poor thing.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Wasted energy

Kat: Following an Energy event held by Transition Lostwithiel earlier this month, we treated ourselves to a household energy meter to measure how much our appliances are using. You're right, it's nothing to do with the environment - it's just an excuse for another gadget. You can see the workshop run by Matt Trevaskis that inspired us to get the gadgets, and read his calculations for how much energy is wasted by an average home.

Our appliances don't match his exactly. Our telly and microwave are a lot less powerful and they use proportionally less energy on standby - although it's still a lot of energy (and money) considering the amount of time they're not in use. The most notable (assuming we left them on standby all the time which we don't, and 13p per kWh) are:

Appliance	Watts on standby	Watts in use	Time in use per day	Annual cost of standby	Annual cost of use
TV	7w	43w	1hr	£7.64	£2.04
Stereo	4w	10w	6hrs	£3.42	£2.85
Speakers	3w	4w	30mins	£3.35	£0.09
Microwave	4w	1500w	3mins	£4.55	£3.56

We thought our biggest energy use would be computers, but they're peanuts compared to one standard lamp which is more mood than illuminating - it uses a massive 95w because we haven't got round to finding a low energy bulb to fit it.

Interestingly, our 800w microwave gobbles up nearly twice that - what's it doing with the rest? The meter also gave us conclusive proof that some "energy saving" ideas are a waste of time: a TFT screen uses exactly the same energy as normal when the screen is on "energy saving" black mode or using Blackle compared to regular Google.

As part of our energy saving strategy we've bought a battery powered magnetic clock to stick on the fridge so we can turn the microwave off (we only used it for the clock), and remote plugs so we can switch everything off at the socket at the touch of a button. Hooray, more gadgets!

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Got a new motor

Kat: From the time that we returned to the UK last March until the weekend before last, we were borrowing a car. Even with a mainline station in Lostwithiel, we'd have found it quite difficult without a car. The car loan was a complicated situation based on my parents' plan to buy one car to replace two others, and then not having anywhere to store it in the interim. In fact it was more like a set-up so that they could lend us a car without seeming to do us a favour, for which we're extremely grateful. The outcome was that last March we (very tentatively) drove a brand new Corsa away from the garage and enjoyed nearly a year of driving it. It was a great little car - really fuel efficient and compact - but when my parents were finally ready to take it back we were keen get something a bit bigger.

We hadn't quite anticipated how big the car we'd end up with would be! Being entirely ignorant about cars, we enlisted my dad in a search for a second-hand car and he found us this palatial Peugot 406 estate. Through further stealth-favours he engineered it to be within our budget and went over it with a fine tooth comb to check for problems - what a star! Thanks pa :) It's great because:

it's really spacious and comfy - even the driver's chair has arm rests
it's got two fold away seats in the boot which makes it a 7-seater
there's enough room in the back for us both to sleep - car-camping!
it's much bigger than the Corsa but about as efficient to run
it has LOADS of gadgets - auto everything (including windscreen wipers that turn on when they sense water), retro 2002 satnav, a computer that works out your mpg and best of all, cruise control

The long journeys just fly by now as we experiment with cruise control at different speeds and see how many mpg we can get. Our record (and possibly the highest it can record) is 942mpg, down a steep hill. On the flat it's surprising to see the fuel consumption jump up between 70, 75 and 80mph. It also makes driving much easier - it makes you realise how much more tiring it is to concentrate on speed as well as steering and other road users. If only it steered and braked as well...