Spring…. It’s still not technically here…. But it kind of is

I was walking down the path to go to a farewell gathering in Falcon Farm for all the Land Workers in Botton, the sun was shining, and all the crocuses were out, looked very pretty and I was gutted that I forgot my camera… So, I went back after milking  with my camera, but the sun had partially set, so the light wasn’t quite as nice. It still looked very pretty though, very colourful.

The daffodils are coming up nicely, and in some places they have come into bloom. Soon it will be a good time to go to Farndale to the daffodil walk.

Very pretty petals of a crocus.

Another one of a crocus

Some snowdrops

…Nooo! This wasn’t staged at all!

Anyways! I’m currently destroyed from morning milking and a lack of discipline, so I shall go and snooze at the breakfast table and y’all have a good day!

-Skip out.

It’s a beautiful day here on Pandora….. (Well, Botton Village…)

So, the temperature got up to a toasty 12 degrees or so today, so it was out with the shirts and off with the overalls!

Blue Sky! Just what you need to set you up for being in a good mood for the afternoon.

At first we chased some sheep out of the back of the dale, and put them back on the moors.

Took us about an hour to chase them out…

We then moved some gates to prevent them coming back in again, then we only had about 30 minutes left before tea break, which we used to rebuild a stone wall that the sheep had used to get into a field:

<Before

< After

It’s not a Phil Collier work, but it’ll do to keep the sheep out!

As promised, a picture of my hair cut!

I like it!

Then we headed back for tea break, and milking!

Valknut

Just a little something I’ve been doing in my spare time.. What little of it I get…

It’s a pretty simple geometric design I found. This is cut into a piece of sandstone I found near the back of the dale… I jumped off the tractor and grabbed it then jumped back on, I got a very odd look from everyone….

Sennheiser Cx150 In Ear Headphones from HMV

|| Product being looked at here! ||
Righty, a few months back I broke my headphones, I think they must’ve got wet or something while I was doing Marine Biology, but they stopped working is the key point. I headed into Bangor, North Wales in search of some new headphones and found a HMV.

I found some pretty cheap headphones. They were just £15 when i found them in October 2011. I figured they’d be okay, maybe nothing special, but better than a dull and quiet bus ride home, so I bought them.
The only way I can fully express my feelings towards these headphones is to describe what happened next.
After I left the shop I tried them on, and plugged in my Ipod…. I’ve never had this before but I could not stop the massive grin forming on my face whilst listning with them, the sound quality is amazing, I was hearing instruments and riffs I didn’t even know existed in some songs.
I have tried expensive headphones, cheap headphones and a load of others in between, but I can honestly say these Sennheiser Cx150 headphones are the best I have ever tried. I strongly recommend!
Only downside I’ve found is that they’re a little fragile, am slightly concerned I’ll break them… Downside of being a farmer…..

:UPDATE: 19/03/2012
Okay, I had a bit of a fear that I'd break these headphones, and I may have actually managed that...
Though I'm not sure yet...
When I'm using these headphones my ipod keeps pausing, like when you pull the headphones out... Only the headphones are still very much plugged in. I tried turning the headphone plug around in the socket a few times and it doesn't seem to pause it by doing that... so I'm not sure how it's doing it...
I tried my old SkullCandy headphones again, and the problem was reduced, but still occasionally there, though instead of every 20 seconds it was every couple of songs... Which isn't quite as bad, but when you're milking, or doing something with your hands it is pretty annoying...
But still, I love these headphones, the audio quality is unmatched, but the annoying pausing issue is meaning I can't really use them in my ipod anymore :(

Spring comes to Botton

So, spring is begining to come to Botton, the Snow Drops (Galanthus nivalis) and  crocuses (Crocus spp) are begining to appear. I think we’ve had all  the snow we’ll be having this year, was not really enough to go sledging in, but no matter!

Snow Drops(Galanthus nivalis)

Crocus (Crocus spp)

Anyways, it’s all very pretty, well, on the nice sunny days anyway!

On the rainy horrible days it’s a bit junk.. but it’s still pretty!

Dear Esther (2012)

Well, the studio behind the original HL2 mod “Dear Esther”, a group called The Chinese Room, have been working on an actual release title of Dear Esther. They teamed up with Robert Briscoe, who designed some of the levels for another of my favourite games, Mirror’s Edge, to bring us a remade Dear Esther. They redid the graphics, the voice recording etc etc and it looks pretty damned awesome.

I played the original Dear Esther a few years back, and was very impressed with the game (I can’t really describe it as a game… but it is the only label I can put on it…. I guess it’s more of an interactive visual arts medium/Interactive novel?). I’ve been keeping an eye on the development of this release, and jumped on it the day it came out…

So, here are some screenshots:

 

The ship wreck on the shore

Interior of the Lighthouse… I love the detail!

The game looks absolutely stunning… And this is on a machine that struggles to play Borderlands on the lowest setting…….Can’t  wait to take it for a spin on my Desktop…

Floor details, plus obligatory chemical symbols…

Stairwell into the Lighthouse

Lighthouse building interior

sigh… It’s puurty

I love it…. Despite the main character being a right downer… He sounds like no fun to be around….

Awesome game… Pop over to Steam and pick it up

>>> Do it! <<<

Interesting article on their website:

Dear Esther sold 16k units in under 24 hours - Recoupes financial backing in 6 hours

Not entirely surprising…

Anyways, have a goodun!

Skipper out.

Red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning?

Just some rather nice pictures of the sky on the 14th of Feb 2012. Thought they were rather pretty. Apparently “red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning” but it turned out to be a rather nice day, a little rain, but otherwise, pretty good!

Oh I do love my job!

Skippy: Plumber!

So, I’ve started a new career… Well, temporarily.. Just this once actually, well, I hope.
No, I’m still a farmer, it’s alright!
Right, we have some stables around the farm it's self, loose boxes etc, and many of them have their own water supply, this being both Moors Water and Mains Water supplies. Today I heard from someone that one of the taps was leaking, one of the other taps had broken off from the ice a while ago, so I figured it was just the same one leaking a bit, and put it on my “To get around to doing sometime this evening” list…. (It’s not a real list, just a vague idea of what needs doing) however, Tom came back and heard it, went and had a look and called me down. 
The issue was that the tap would not turn off, you could turn the thingy and it would get very very stiff, but the water would keep running. I tried putting my finger over the end of the tap, but the pressure was so high I couldn’t stop it at all, thus telling me it was mains water, not moors water. The farm mains water supply is under the bullk tank in the miking parlour, so with a bit of caving experience, I crawled underneath and located the very awkwardly positioned tap and switched it off. When I got back to the tap in the stable I found it was still running at full pressure, so the shut off was not the right one… Back to the parlour to turn it back on again….

So, if it is not from the barn, it must be on the house supply… The whole system for the house water is massively complicated due to the wood boiler inflow and return systems, but there were 3 shut off taps, all of which i shut off, and found the tap in the stable was still running… Oh wonderful….
So, with there being no known way to shut this damned supply off I was left with 2 options, try and crimp the pipe and reduce the flow a bit, and let maintenance fix it tomorrow, but loose quite a bit of water anyway. Or to get the broken tap off, and replace it with a new one, under full pressure, with the risk of being unable to get the tap on and wasting even more water.
I chose the latter… The old tap came off pretty easily, and produced a very satisfying jet of water that reached out about 3m across the barn. Then came the interesting part… trying to wrestle a new tap over the water jet, and screw it back down in place under full pressure…
I tried many times, and I could not get the threads to meet on the tap and the pipe, and I got thoroughly soaked in the process… When you hold the tap over the pipe the water comes out all around the fitting, as well as from the tap itself, reaching the roof, the walls, and especially up my sleeves, in my face and down my jacket. (Very glad I wore my water proofs or it’d look like I just straight up jumped in a lake… I was only marginally drier)
I had almost given up, and decided I’d have one more try before I just gave up and wasted a load of water by letting maintenance fix it tomorrow.
I just managed to get the threads to mesh, and knew I had it! So, with that done I screwed the tap in place and closed the tap. Oh the success was so great Felt like an epic quest.

A very wet, but very content Skippy.
Very invigorating.
In other news, I managed to keep the boiler so hot that I managed to fill all 4 1750L accumulator storage tanks with hot water:

YES! Achievement!
Anyways, hot shower time… Skippy out

A bit more snow

So, I think we’ve got all the snow we’re gonna get this year… About a cm worth.. It did blow into some good little drifts, but not enough to go sledging.

It was all very pretty.

Yea… Think that’s about it.. Just pretty snow, and hard work!

-Skipper out.

Oops I broke my blog…

So, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged…. I went on today to write something, and discovered to my horror that I’ve managed to break my blog…. For some reason the picture is now a thumbnail, and the whole background is now messed up….

See!

So, now I’ve got a few hours of figuring to do to try and make it work properly again… It being a few hours as I’m using terrible internet at the moment…

My solution, in my head at least, is to delete the image, reset the theme back to a boring blue or something, then re do the themes  and see if it fixes it… Right now though the computer is taking it’s sweet time to upload the background image again…

When it has done so I shall write something worth while, maybe.

Well, we shall see!

-Skip