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Other things I want to get done:

• Start working on the programs I’m thinking of.
• Set up the scanner, clean up the study, and organise my CDs.
• Take the dogs for a good walk w/ lunch.
• Write up some of the stuff I’ve been thinking about.
• Maybe bottle the bitter and get the sars bubbling.  If it finishes brewing, which I doubt.  It will be hot though, so it might finish earlier than I’m expecting …
• Play some WoW.  Yes, it’s a pretty sad goal, but I know I’ll definitely do it …
• Read and relax.

Thank God for long weekends.  Like, really long weekends.

43 degrees ain’t fun.  So, we sat around in the house and did nothing for pretty much the whole weekend.  Very boring.  Tried sitting in the hammock on the weekend - not a great idea.  Fell asleep, but I think that may have been a defensive reaction to the heat.  Now I know what a chicken feels like just before it gets roasted.  Nothing like 43 degree air blowing over you all afternoon …

Read some good books though.  Should write about that, actually.

Still, thankfully there’s a four day weekend coming up, between Australia day and a day off.  So, the current plan for this weekend is to:

• Measure and plan the shed redesign.
• Plan the garden and come up with some preliminary designs.
• Play some tennis.
• Go geocaching (finally!).

And some other things as well once I think of them.

I’ve bottled the cider (finally) and have put on a batch of Coopers Bitter.  Apparently this weekend is going to be almost as hot, so I’m trying to get the brew going as quickly as I can while the weather’s cool.  With any luck, it’ll go through a reasonable chunk of fermentation before the temperature peaks.  After that, I’m making alcoholic sarsparilla.

V bought me a Nintendo DS for my birthday.  Very cool!!  I’ve been playing the thing non-stop - it’s really fun!  More than I was expecting, even!  Nintendo’s really onto something with this handheld - it’s complex enough to offer games that are actually enjoyable, but it’s not so complex that I feel like I don’t have the time to play it (like my computer at the moment).  Sheer genius!

More about it all soon.  After cleaning the bottles, bottling the cider, cleaning the kit, and setting up the new batch, it’s almost 8:30.  Time to cool down, take a break, and chill out, me thinks.

For those who can’t see anything, it appears that they seem to be rather … romantically entangled.

1010 and falling!  And, even better, it still tastes like beer!  No vinegar or apparent mould yet.  Looks like I’ll be bottling on Saturday.  Next on the schedule is a bitter, followed by a cider and possibly a stout.  And then, a rest until I can set up a second fermenter to rack it prior to bottling.  240 bottles should last a while, once they’re actually drinkable.

Plan for this weekend:

• Plan the shed.
• Bottle the beer.
• Get the next batch of beer going.
• Get the phone sockets wired.
• Look for and hopefully buy / hang a mirror.
• Whipper-snipper the lawn.
• Fix the vacuum cleaner.
• Wire the shed.
• Read and relax.

Can’t wait.

Looks like I didn’t quite tighten the lid as much as I could have. Happily bubbling away now, hopefully before the wort had been contaminated. Still smells fine, and it’s still sitting at around 1025.

Looks like I’ve got a leak. That’s why there’s no bubbles. The fermentation’s happening (the gravity is down to around 1025 from 1035), but the airlock isn’t bubbling. My guess is that the grommit doesn’t quite fit perfectly - it’s a good enough seal to prevent gas leakage up to a certain pressure, but beyond that pressure, it lets it escape. Hopefully it’ll still be OK - it doesn’t seem to be loose enough to let air in. We shall see by Friday, I think. Looks like I’ll have to head out to pick up a new grommit this weekend though.

That and I couldn’t fix my alarm clock last night. We dropped it while painting the rooms, and I think one of the solder joins cracked (not that I could figure out which one). Not an auspicious start, so far. Hopefully it’s still covered under warranty.

The brew’s away! Despite the title, not quite bubbling yet though. I’m a little concerned about that, but it’s been just over 24 hours so far. From what I remember, it takes a little bit longer than that to actually start fermentation proper. This time round though, I’m actually keeping records - maybe that way I’ll actually know what I’m drinking and what works. That and I’m going to try letting them sit for a little longer than the bare minimum …

Given that it’s sitting between 25 and 30 degrees, I’m going for a dark ale. Photos to follow soon so I remember what it looks like. I’ll use the lager I got with the kit once it cools down a bit, but I think I’ll try for some mead next. All I need to do is find a decent source of bulk honey …

I’ve dropped the galllery, which means a number of the images I used in my first post about a year ago won’t work any more. Nothing too exciting there - I know what they were, and I doubt anyone else is going to go back that far to look at them. I’ve added a wiki as well now, located at wiki.tindrumfire.com. I’m using TikiWiki, which is a bit of a beast in terms of space used. I would have preferred to use TWiki, but I couldn’t be bothered trying to configure it manually on a virtual host. It’s easy enough on a personal box, but to get it working here, I’d have to re-familiarise myself with all the default permissions and apache settings and try and work out how to get it working again. Too much work for what should be a relatively simple job.

TikiWiki has its own problems though. The permissions are overly complex for a simple deployment, and the language and configuration settings aren’t the most intuitive. I’d like to open up certain areas to be publicly editable, but I haven’t quite worked out how yet. I could be wrong, but I can’t seem to find a “creator” default permission set. There’s an “editor” default permission set, but that won’t let me create new pages.

To try and kick-start me into action this year, I’m going to use my wiki to keep track of all the projects I want to do and am currently working on, all the research I’ll need to do to get them done, and how close to completion I’m getting. I really want to get a bunch of things done this year - the first half of last year was great, but I seemed to stagnate a bit in the second half.