Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
Even Santa can’t resist an Ynyslas Sunset! Merry Christmas everyone! If you were expecting a card from us then don’t blame the postie, it’s not lost in the post, instead we’ve made a donation to charity. This year it was a charity that, if you’ll expose the pun, became very close to my heart. Due...
It was one of those quiet weekends before Christmas here in Ynyslas. The sun was out so not only were we generating plenty of energy from our solar panels but it was a nice day for a stroll on the beach too. When I say plenty of energy from the solar panels it is of...
It’s that time of year again – time to for lighting up the Christmas decorations. New this year is a santa sleigh and reindeer, some stars for the hall and little houses for the window sill.
We’ve just got back from a nice weekend away in South Wales. As usual at this time of year we try to combine my birthday, my Mums birthday, my brothers birthday and a Christmas get together into one visit. We usually meet the whole family either in Bristol or somewhere nearby. Covid precautions once again...
I let my aquarium slip a little after my heart attack. I wasn’t really up to maintaining it as lugging heavy buckets of water around was out of the question. It did OK as it is quite self-sufficient, but it did suddenly get a little overwhelmed with algae after a while. Balanced Ecosystem The tank...
I’ve been wondering about clotting recently. First some background for context. As you may know, I was super-fit, super healthy and the last person on Earth that anyone expected to have any heart issues. Despite that I had a major heart attack earlier this year and have been recovering since. As is often the case,...
We’ve been a little obsessed with our electricity usage lately. All prompted by the fact that we’ve had solar panels and battery storage installed. This came with the ability to track our usage a little easier and I built a nice addition to this website that shows how our solar panels are performing. I added...
I wouldn’t say I’ve been ‘training’ yet, but it is time to rebuild. I don’t know if I’ll be competing in any triathlons, quadrathlons, cyclocross races or other events yet, so there’s nothing to actually train for anyway. I have however been very gradually increasing the amount of exercise I do. Rebuilding The volume and...
I couldn’t resist building a Solax WordPress plugin as a project following the installation of our new solar panels and battery. The Solax Inverter has a Wi-Fi dongle that uploads data to Solax Servers where we can see various stats about the usage on the Solax Cloud portal. There is also a Solax App that...
Our new Solax solar system seems to be working well. There were a few teething problems and plenty to configure to get it all working in what we think is the most efficient way, so here’s the deal. The solar panels started working straight away. Even on cloudy days they were pretty much covering our...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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Surf Ski, Kayaking and Canoeing
Bringing Two Surf Skis Back from the Dead (Maybe)
Tuesday, June 16th, 2026
