powerrabbit

Been doing a bit of tidying up around the garden today, it's been a nice dry day so I picked the last of the peas and shelled them out, cut the lawns, first time they've been cut in the last 4 weeks since the hot weather started. Also pruned back the Black Hamburg, it's a black grape, to let in the light to the nicely developing bunches of grapes and prevent them getting mould.

We've had a couple of very heavy and quite prolonged showers here this afternoon, first one was around 2.30 and the second about 6.30. We're up to 5.7mm of rain today now. Oh, and I've put a jumper on.

Yesterday it was overcast all day and today it's sunny spells but mostly cloudy with very light showers and the temperature is 10 degrees lower than of late at 17.5C. Will have to put a jumper on!

We had 14.4mm of very welcome rain over night into this morning. It will give everything a bit of respite but to do any real good we need steady rain for a week.

Nothing here, just spectacular clear blue sky and more hot sun. It's much cooler tonight with a bit of high cloud coming from a Westerly direction that could be rain bearing if it gets thick enough, the thunder has missed us but it looks like there could be a front coming in off the Atlantic that could be rain bearing but whatever does come I don't think there's going to be much in the way of rain coming with it. We now here have had 32 straight days of this hot dry weather.

Looking at the weather chart it looks like here in Devon that we're going to miss the current thunder and rain, it did come in very overcast and slightly damping after dark last night and at 2'00am I could hear the thunder to the East and see very faint flashes. This morning it's overcast and very muggy although the temperature has dropped a few degrees to 22C, at 8.00 this morning the humidity reading was 96% but the cloud is thinning with the sun burning it off and the humidity is now 61%. Devon and Cornwall could have a spell of rain later as a front is coming in from the West.

Be careful what you wish for Chris, plenty of time for that next Jan/Feb. A little more comfortable here this morning with quite a strong wind and temperature at this moment of 24.3C. Keep an eye on the forecast, looks like we might get wet the end of the weekend and into next week.

The heat here is a killer, last few days it's been between 28.7C and 31.4C. A little cooler at 28.1C today and at the moment, even with all the house windows and two doors to the outside open it's only 1.2 degrees cooler indoors than it is out but feels cooler out of the direct sun. All the grass here is now looking like it's all been sprayed off. Forecast is for the possibility of thunder storms coming up from France from Sunday through the course of the next week.

There's a chap that has a large tool stall in the local market town on Wednesdays and Saturdays Bill that sells a lot of garden tools stuff and I noticed last week that he had a pile of very similar multi-spray guns but not Hozelock but at the very competitive price of between £2.50 and £4.50, he had 2 sorts. Last Sunday in the local car boot sale I picked up a new boxed 10.1" white tablet PC, didn't ask why the lad was selling it but it was unused, even had a black leather case with it that doubles as a stand There's no brand name on it as such but it's an exact 'copy' of the new Samsung tablet PC. Brilliant bit of kit.

Went to the local car boot sale early this morning home again by 9.00 for breakfast, rest of the day keeping out of the heat, peaked at 31.4 C mid afternoon, watered the veg garden when the sun went over the horizon. This heat is just sucking the moisture out of the ground, grass is starting to burn and go brown and the forecast is for it to go on until mid August. At least we are having a summer this year!

There's no real problem in getting covered with the smelly stuff on a cabless tractor from a rotary dung spreader, as long as you're driving into the wind, the front end plate is higher and squarer than the rear plate which stops the dung being flung forwards. It's the old land drive spreaders that are not so good, get a stone in the dung and if it gets hit by the finger rotors it invariably shoots the stone forward and clouts you on the head, I knew a farmer that died this way, they reckoned that the stone knocked him out and the tractor and spreader kept going to the hedge and turned over killing him, he didn't regain consciousness soon enough to stop the tractor and spreader from climbing the hedge.

Well, summer seems to be here at last, goes from one extreme to the other though, yesterday here the temperature reached 25.7 C mid afternoon and today it got to 32.1 C. I'm glad I'm not out shifting small bales!

Google and Amazon will do the books for you Bill, they seem to know how to save money! Purchased a nice Kenwood car radio today in a local charity shop, not a very sophisticated one, it has TI, RDS and all that but non of this Bluetooth or mp3 connection but does have the CD facility which is what I wanted plus the front pops off the radio in the Defender is/was a tape player one of non description. The new one is new, still in the box with everything there should be with it including the case for the front for £30. Had to buy a harness plug adapter as the vehicle wiring had no plugs, just a half dozen wires in one of those opaque wire connectors that you buy in a strip and cut up to your requirements, anyway, all wired in and up and running. Boogie on!

Went to a local antiques and collectors fair this morning, first I've been to for about a year now. After a good look around the stands I came across this, (pictured) I've always wanted one but have never found an example that I could afford, or I should say, more affordable. It's not antique but does have a little age and the design is the same as it has been for 150 years. It has an 8 day movement and in the drawer under there are enough new packs of cylinder charts for the next 5 years and it's all up and running. I have re-set it to the barometric pressure according to the reading on my digital weather station. You can still buy these new, this one is now currently £1500.

The purchase of a house I think makes all of the rest of our recent purchases seem so very insignificant in comparison, well, really there is no comparison! Well done Niels, enjoy.

Claim for it on your insurance Tris, get a phone repairer to give you a written statement to say that it's an 'uneconomical repair' to present with your claim form together with the price of an up to date 'equivalent' replacement from the phone shop and see what happens.

I've now had my Galaxy S111 GT i9300 just long enough now to evaluate it a bit more and it's a terrific phone, some say that it's better in certain areas that the new Galaxy 4 and now they're saying that the Galaxy 5 will be here by the end of May, we don't get chance to catch up! Don't bother with taking out insurance for your phone from the shop/provider, it's expensive, it should be automatically on your house insurance which should include any item kept in the house but used outside, if it's worth over £500 you may need to 'specify' it on your policy but if your policy is 'new for old' you'll be ok. I've found a very useful app, called 'Dodo QR Code and barcode reader' very good for scanning these on products, surprising how much fake stuff you come across, if nothing comes up on your scan, it's a 'dubious' product.

Samsung Galaxy phones seem to make good money on eBay Alex, especially if they are unlocked. Dickies stuff is pretty good, I wear the trousers, damn good value and last forever, well, nearly!

When I bought my TZ30 Sean in the Panasonic shop cheating sods never gave me anything with it, not even a cheap case, quoted me £14 for a plain, black, non-branded hard case and £24 for a soft case with a strap to go round your neck, went into Argos, bought the same hard case for £2.50 and the soft case with strap, it was on 'offer', for £1.50. eBay's best place for charger and batteries but don't buy the ones from China or any under 2500Ah as they don't hold charge for that long. I've got a 16Gb HDSC card in mine, on iA mode set at 640x480, 0.3M it will take 79790 pictures.

The TZ30 has all those Sean, says 20x zoom but in 'scene' mode will go to 47x. Also has GPS, 18 'scene' modes and 3D as well. Battery life is good, if your new one is the same, the battery power is only being used when the camera is 'on', it uses no power when 'sleeping' and when off it doesn't drain, charges in camera 'off'' either with the USB cable connected to the supplied mains plug or unplug the mains plug and use the cable to charge via your PC Seems like both cameras are much the same but yours being the next generation, my TZ30 is under 12 months old. You'll never regret buying it Sean, they're terrific cameras! Forgot to ask Sean, did you get either the free SD card or free battery with it?

And I thought the TZ30 was pretty functioned up! If it's got the same zoom capability on it as the TZ30 Sean then you'll be able to take the wedding pics from home!

When you click in the box to type your reply to a post, I have noticed that the type box loads so quickly that before you let go the mouse button the cursor is on one of the icons above which activates whatever icon it's on, such as underline, bold, italic etc., perhaps this is the problem?

No Tris, he was a private seller, he had the phone as an insurance replacement just after last Christmas and bought the case, extra charger and the 2 extra batteries and wall charger for them as he was going on a long haul holiday which failed to materialise and unknown to him his wife had already bought him a new phone so he thought that it would be more prudent to keep the phone his wife bought him and sell the Samsung. You want to do some sums Tris to do a comparison between contract and pay as you go. In my case my contract costs me just below £200 a year, that's £12 and a few pence per month tariff, calls/usage including VAT, which is reclaimed, plus a free phone upgrade at the end of each 24 month contract. This is saving me between £160 to £200 or thereabouts on pay as you go as the total of the two, contract and payg would be what you'd have to pay for a new phone should you want to change it. Another thing I have found with the Samsung Galaxy phone in looking around is that parts to repair and enhance them are pretty cheap, take a look on eBay and you'll see what I mean.

If you're looking at a Samsung Tris go for the S111 GT i9300, it will be considerably dearer than the Mini but you'll get a better spec phone, it has an 8MPX camera on it for one thing, and if you're on a monthly contract then when it's up and you're due an upgrade it might come as a free phone, sometimes you can get a better phone than what's offered as a free upgrade by paying a little one off extra payment. One thing to be aware of though is that the newer phones take a micro SIM card, smaller than older models so you can't swap it over, I found this out when I bought my GT i9300, I had to get a new SIM I bought my phone off eBay as it was the right price with the bundle of extras that came with it, 2 rear covers, flip case, 2 chargers and a desk charger, 2 spare batteries and all the original packaging and paperwork plus still has 2 years manufacturers warrantee on it plus it's unlocked which although not expensive to have done does make a phone a bit more desirable. I was toying with the idea of going to Pay as you go but for the amount I use a mobile phone and the monthly tariff plus usage I pay the latter works out a lot cheaper. I'm beginning to waffle now.

This topic seems to have been sleeping well, perhaps it's time we woke it up again now that technology has advanced even further with the advent of the new iPhone 4 system but it seems that despite the hype and advertising about new Apple, HTC and other brands it seems that the Galaxy range is still about the most popular. I recently acquired a Samsung Galaxy S111 GT i9300 and after a short time have decided that it's the best phone I've had to date, it's basically a well loaded pocket computer that is also a phone.