Having mastered this I could draw all these bits together. The comprehensive rules facility in the OS/X built-in email client allows an Applescript to be executed when certain conditions are satisfied. I wired a mains socket to relay 1 and plugged my Anglepoise desk lamp into it, and created a couple of email rules. Now, when an incoming email arrives from my personal email address with my preset password in the subject line, and a command in the body of the email, the relay is activated.Holiday on the Mon & Brec
We have just returned from a week’s holiday on the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal. We hired narrowboat Country Lass II from Phil and Sue Ware at Country Craft Narrowboats for £684. Our boat was new for the 2009 season and had only been hired for one week previously. We were initially dismayed to discover that the interior of the boat was surprisingly dirty. The previous hirers had clearly kept a dog on board and everything in the boat was covered in dog hairs. No vacuum cleaner was provided on the boat so we had to sweep the entire interior with a broom and dustpan & brush, a job we would normally expect the hire company to do before handing over the keys. Worse, the cleanliness of the kitchen equipment was appalling. Some of the crockery had clearly been used by the dog and was dirty and covered in dog hairs; the cheese grater was encrusted with cheese from when it was last used, and a baking tray from the oven still contained oil from when it was last used. We have hired several narrowboats from other companies and never previously encountered such poor standards.
The fit-out of the boat was competent but unexceptional. Most of the interior was clad in varnished plywood with blue fabric-covered panels on the sides above the gunwales providing some relief from the dark brown wood. The floor was a wood-effect laminate which is a practical floor covering for a hire boat. The quality of the joinery was generally of DIY standard rather than of a professional boat fitter and there were several areas which may prove problematic in the longer term.
In the galley crockery is stored in a cupboard under the sink but a leak from somewhere, we never discovered the source, meant that plates and cookware were usually wet. There was a full-size gas cooker but the push-button ignition didn’t work and the oven door was hinged on the wrong side so lighting the oven or grill involved kneeling on the floor and trying to strike a match with one hand while holding in the control knob with the other. I singed the hairs on my hand several times attempting this. The boat was supplied with a box containing about 12 matches so we had to stop soon and find a shop that sold matches! There was a decent-sized 12 volt fridge with small freezer compartment which kept nicely cold but again the door had been installed with the hinges on the wrong side. This is just carelessness since, like most fridges, the door was clearly designed to be hung from either side.
In the shower room there was an efficient push-button macerator toilet, albeit with a small seat compared with domestic toilets. This sucked the waste into a tank under the fixed double bed. With a family of four the waste tank became full in two days and because it was mounted off-centre the boat developed a pronounced list as the tank filled, causing complaints from the children that sleeping was difficult on a tilting boat. During the initial handover I asked Sue Ware what would happen when the tank filled up and she replied that she didn’t know because the boat was new. We discovered that there was no warning light or problem with flushing the toilet; when the tank was full the raw sewage was merely pumped into the canal through a hole in the side of the boat. We did experience some difficulty in finding places to pump out the sewage tank, but had an assurance from Sue Ware that any pump-out charges we incurred would be reimbursed. In the end we only had one pump-out, from the very friendly team at Castle Narrowboats in Gilwern who made no charge.
On a more positive note the boat was a joy to handle. I would say it was one of the easiest hire-boats to steer that I’ve ever known. When moving forwards it went exactly where directed by the tiller providing there was water under the boat. When the bottom of the boat was scraping the bottom of the canal, as it did regularly, the boat just would not turn left for some reason and we’d end up having to pole the bow away from the bank. In reverse the boat went backwards in a straight line, which is a real benefit and by no means to be expected from a narrowboat.
One thing that surprised us for a boat of this size was the small capacity of its water tank. With very moderate water consumption for a family of four we had to fill up with water every day and plan showers to coincide with water stops. As with the sewage tank, there is no gauge to show the level in the water tank and on our second day we suddenly ran out of water which meant several hours without a cup of tea until we reached a canal-side tap. The pressure of water in these taps varied greatly. Usually there was a good flow and the tank could be refilled in twenty minutes but the tap near Brynich Lock, 2 miles from Brecon, was incredibly slow. We left the hose running into our tank for an hour and a half and still the tank wasn’t full so we gave up and moved on, topping off the tank at Talybont 3 or 4 miles away. There are plenty of water points along the canal so we rarely had any trouble finding one. We took with us the excellent Nicholson Guide: Four Counties & the Welsh Canals and this proved better than the guides provided with the boat. When cruising an unfamiliar canal I always like to have a map so that I know where I am, and how far to the next bridge, lock, village, pub, etc.
The canal passes through breathtakingly beautiful countryside, and for much of its length it follows the contours halfway up the slopes of the Usk Valley, giving an elevated position for views across the valley. (From an engineering standpoint this might be unwise as the canal has suffered repeatedly from landslips that cause the bank to slide down the hill and the water to pour out, most recently in 2007). The canal is never far from villages though so if you don’t mind a short walk there’s usually a pub and shop nearby. We had no trouble getting newspapers, bread, milk and a few groceries.
We didn’t stop at many pubs, having brought our own food and drink because we were uncertain how rural the canal would be, but one pub that deserves a mention is the Bridge End Inn at Crickhowell. We had moored near bridge 118 and this pub is about threequarters of a mile away, down the steep hill from the canal to the road bridge crossing the River Usk. We had to walk through the inevitable crowd of smokers gathered outside around the entrance which is slightly intimidating when visiting an unfamiliar pub but inside the welcome was warm and the beer well kept. The pub was very busy but they found us a table in the restaurant without delay. The menu at first glance looks unadventurous, with many dishes that one would find on pub menus the length of Britain, and the prices weren’t the cheapest, but when our food arrived we forgave them everything. They weren’t standard, bought-in frozen meals that required reheating, the food was proper home-made fare. Louise had melt-in-the mouth Welsh lamb (£13.95) and I had a delicious steak pie with a shortcrust pastry top (£12.95). There was a good selection of vegetables, and the house red was a very pleasant wine for £10.45. Service was attentive but not pushy from an efficient waiter and if we visit this area again we shall certainly return for another meal.
One feature of the Mon & Brec is its shallowness. It’s not a lack of water because the level was always up to the rim of the weirs, and following the 2007 breach millions of pounds have clearly been spent by British Waterways during its 2008 closure on renovating the canal. We were told by Phil Ware that BW are reluctant to dredge the canal for fear that it might trigger another breach of the bank. So for much of its length, even when cruising down the middle of the canal, we would hear the bottom of the boat scraping the bed of the waterway. Regularly we would run aground, and passing other boats could be tricky because we would both have to risk moving towards the side of the cut where the water is even shallower. Inevitably one or both of the craft would run aground and quick work with the pole, plus reverse gear, was required to refloat the boat. Fortunately the canal is very quiet with relatively few privately-owned boats compared with the main network of canals in England. Most of the craft that we passed were hire-boats from the several hire companies along the canal crewed by good-natured holidaymakers like ourselves. Most canals are murky but the Mon & Brec is positively muddy, presumably because of the silt from the bottom constantly being stirred up by passing boats.
At the southern end of the canal, towards Pontypool, the canal becomes even more consistently shallow and much quieter. We cruised for a day and a half without passing another moving boat. At the southernmost point of the navigable canal we moored to take on water only to find that the British Waterways tap was dry. We had hoped to walk further south to follow the line of the canal that is no longer navigable but a local ‘character’ sitting by the towpath eyeing our boat, who looked rather shifty himself, warned us not to leave the boat unattended because it was a “dodgy area and they’ll break into the boat within five minutes”. He didn’t actually ask us for money for him to keep an eye on the boat and keep ‘them’ away but perhaps that was his hope. Anyway we did have a quick stroll across the road to the sad remnants of a flight of locks. I wonder if I’ll ever see this restored.
In its 35¾ miles running from Cwmbran in the south to Brecon in the north the canal has a bit of everything. We were comfortably able to cruise south from Country Craft’s base at Cwmcrawnon down to the end at Pontypool, then head north up to the basin in Brecon, then back to Cwmcrawnon in a week without feeling rushed. There are six locks, the 375 yard Ashford Tunnel which has a very low roof, a few swing bridges, and an electric lift bridge at Talybont that requires the boater to close a gate to stop the traffic on a remarkably busy road and then use a British Waterways key to operate the bridge. A queue of about 7 or 8 cars formed on both times that we went through so one feels obligated not to dawdle. A couple of the bridges are very low, so that the mushroom vents on the roof of the boat only had a couple of inches to spare. This makes steering the boat challenging to say the least because one must squat down on the rear deck and hope that the boat was pointed in the right direction. Even holding the tiller is risky under these bridges because the clearance is so tight that you fear grazing your knuckles.
The shallowness of the canal did present challenges when mooring. There were a couple of canalside pubs where we wanted to stop but just couldn’t get the boat close enough to the towpath. The canal has numerous designated 48 hour moorings with rings or bollards but we just couldn’t get the boat close enough to use many of these. When we could get close we might still need to tie the boat about a metre from the bank and use the plank to reach land. In the mornings the boat would often be stuck fast in the mud and require plenty of revs from the engine plus hard pushing from one or both poles to move the boat back to the deeper channel in the middle.
Overall we had a lovely week on the Mon & Brec and would recommend it as a relaxing canal holiday. Two weeks would probably be too long unless you want to moor up a lot and go walking. The only disappointment was the dirty boat and some hirers might wish to investigate the other companies whose standards might be higher. However this didn’t spoil our enjoyment of a lovely canal.
I have written twice before (on 
and hit the Return key. Within a second or so WGET will download the file that contains the real URL of the program you want. In the case of this example the file is named RadioBridge_uk_1415_bbc_radio_fourfm.ram and is just 189 bytes in size. Open that file using a text editor (e.g. Windows Notepad or OS/X TextEdit), not using RealPlayer which will probably be the default application for a file of that type. You will see, as shown here, that the file contains the real URL of the Real Audio stream using the rtsp (Real Time Streaming Protocol).
Having loaded the markets list you choose the market you want in the usual way. Laz-IE Trader works with UK horse racing (win markets) only. Clicking a race displays a grid containing price data for each runner, which looks familiar to existing Betfair users. Unlike the Betfair website though these prices aren’t automatically updated. To enable the automatic updating of the market prices you need to switch it on, and you do this by clicking a red button labelled Market OFF. Yes, that’s right, to turn on updates you click the off button. Having done this the button’s colour changes to green and its caption to Market ON. I’ve never previously encountered a system or machine anywhere where you press a red OFF button to turn it on and a green ON button to switch it off. It is annoying, and counter-intuitive features like this lead me to conclude that the software was written by a young or very inexperienced programmer, possibly a teenager in his bedroom. Not only have they not read the Microsoft style guide for designing Windows interfaces, they haven’t even stopped to think about what would work best. The program is littered with puzzling anomalies like this. For example if you want to cancel all unmatched bets you click the Cancel UnMatched tickbox. But why is it a tickbox? A tick doesn’t appear when you click it. It should be a button. Tickboxes are meant for flagging entries in a list not executing a command.
This brings me to another feature of Laz-IE trader for which the author is to be commended. The software has a learning mode so we can practise trading without risking any money. In learning mode the program behaves exactly as it would with live trading with the (not unreasonable) proviso that it doesn’t check the volume of money available before matching a bet so if I submit a virtual bet for £100 at odds of 2.8 it will show it as matched if any money was available in the market at those odds, even if it was less than £100. This isn’t really a problem and the opportunity to gain confidence by trading without risk is a really nice touch.
I reproduce below an excerpt from Steve Haywood’s book Narrowboat Dreams (Summersdale Publishers Ltd, 2008). The book is a lighthearted description of a journey by inland waterway from Banbury, Oxfordshire to Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. The start of chapter four nicely encapsulates what, for me, is the attraction of owning a narrowboat:
I wrote previously (
