Chris Nelms

Following on from my posts last week about candles, Tilley lamps, and Camping Gaz lanterns, there is one emergency light source that I omitted: Hurricane lamps.  These lanterns are simple in design which means there’s little to go wrong, and they burn a flame from a cloth wick that dips into a reservoir of paraffin.  A lantern with a full tank will burn continuously for about 11 hours.

These lamps can be purchased new from many places, including for example hurricanelamps.co.uk (although I have never purchased from this website).  As I write this they are offering new lamps in a variety of colours for £9.75 each plus £3.75 postage and packing.  As is so often the case one can buy cheaper lamps, both new and used, on eBay.  I bought the ‘Gremlin’ lamp pictured here on eBay for £5.69 plus £3 p&p.

The light from a hurricane lamp is much dimmer than a Tilley lamp but considerably brighter than a single candle.  Unlike a candle the hurricane lamp can be carried around without an concern about the draught blowing out the flame.  Like Tilley lamps a hurricane lamp can burn either paraffin or domestic heating oil (but never, ever, petrol).

 I now need to find a source of replacement wicks, the only consumable a hurricane lamp needs apart from paraffin.  The Gremlin lamp pictured has a flat cloth wick half an inch wide.  This should last for many months of continuous use but my compulsion to have a stock of all consumables for my emergency lighting means that I shall buy at least one spare wick, and probably two.  Two suppliers of wicks I have found are the eBay shop of PARAFINALIA2000 who sells a variety of wick by the yard, and an interesting online hardware store called Partridges which sells wick by the metre.  I haven’t purchased from either of these yet.

The instructions supplied with one make of new hurricane lamp are as follows:

User Instructions

1. Fuel

Recommended fuel for this lantern: Common lamp oil (clear or coloured), citronella oil and paraffin.

2. Filling the Lantern

Do not fill the lantern font more than ½ full, unless maximum burning time is required. Over filling the lantern may cause the fuel to spill out of the burner socket onto the inner air chamber plate and leak out the side tube joint, thus creating the impression that the lantern is leaking and makes a mess!

3. Lighting the Lantern

The wick should be adjusted so that it is no more than 1/16th of an inch above the flame plate. As the lantern warms to normal operating temperature, the flame will increase in size. Five minutes after lighting, the flame may be adjusted to provide maximum illumination. If the wick is set too high, smoking will occur which means a sooted globe and possible globe breakage!

4. Trimming the Wick

With steady use, the wicks will need trimming occasionally. Trim off the charred tip with sharp scissors so that the top of the wick is flat and square, making right angles at the corners.

5. Caution
Keep away from children — this is not a toy.
Glass globe and chimney cap will become hot during use. This lantern should not be left unattended when lit.

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I’m a relative novice at creating public websites although I have developed intranet ASP and ASP.NET web applications for over six years.  However since 2002 I have run a small, amateur, non-profit website that provides information on a local folly, King Alfred’s Tower.  The site aims to be the definitive source of information about this building.  When first set up the Alfred’s Tower website quickly went to number one in the Google rankings, which is not surprising since there is very little competition.

In 2004 the site suddenly disappeared from the Google index, and has remained unindexed by Google ever since.  If I search Google for site:www.alfredstower.info or info:www.alfredstower.info it returns no matches.  I regularly submit the URL to Google for inclusion, but when I use Google’s webmaster tools it reports that “No pages from your site are currently included in Google’s index”.  This is very odd since several other search engines such as Yahoo and Ask include the site in their index, and there are dozens of other sites that link to mine.  I’m not using any dubious tools to promote the site.

In contrast I started this blog just a few weeks ago.  To the best of my knowledge no other sites link to it.  Yet within four days of creating this blog the Googlebot had found it and included it in the Google index.  All pages on the Alfred’s Tower site are XHTML compliant and pass the w3.org validator.  It hasn’t got a robots.txt file.  The server log shows that googlebot visits the site regularly but doesn’t download many pages.  I would welcome any suggestions as to how I can get Google to include the Alfred’s Tower site.

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Having always lived in the country I have grown up with log fires and wood-burning stoves.  Heating a house, or even a single room, with wood is hard work. If you have some woodland the trees must be felled and the firewood must be cut, split, carted, stored, and seasoned.  Alternatively you can buy the firewood from a supplier, and arrange delivery, then move the wood from wherever the supplier’s truck tips it to the place where you will store it.  Then at least once a week, but probably more frequently, the wood must be brought into the house for burning, and the ash removed.  If this all sounds like hard work that’s because it is.  However there are also several rewards: a wood fire looks attractive, the smell of woodsmoke is delightful, unlike fossil fuel the production of firewood is sustainable, and once you have the logs you are not vulnerable to any interruption in your winter heating fuel supply.  A log fire brings a room to life and makes it more welcoming.

In this rambling house we have three wood-burning stoves.  During the winter we only use the one in our family room on a daily basis.  The other two are lit at weekends and holidays, and also when the weather is particularly cold.  Over the past few days of the Christmas holiday I have brought in large quantities of firewood daily to feed our three fires and this has caused me to dwell on our firewood arrangements.  We purchase seasoned logs cut to the size we specify from a local woodyard.  They sell by the metric tonne and they even supply a printed ticket from their weighbridge as ‘proof’ that we are receiving the quantity ordered.  We try to order our logs in mid or late summer, obtaining a sufficient quantity to see us comfortably through the winter.  Last July we had 2 tonnes of standard 12-inch logs and 1 tonne of 18″ logs costing £208.60 in total.  They are tipped near the house and then I laboriously move them by wheelbarrow and stack them outside the back door, covering the top loosely with a plastic tarpaulin (green logs contain up to 50% water and even dry logs seasoned outdoors may contain 20% moisture so it is vital that they are kept well-ventilated in order for them to remain dry).  The wood is mainly beech, with some birch, oak, and a little ash.  As a general rule the denser the wood, the more heat you will get from it, and this usually means that firewood from slow-growing trees is best.

On dry autumn and winter days we send the children out into the woods to collect twigs for kindling which we store in the greenhouse and in the cupboard under the stairs.  Even if damp when collected they quickly dry out.  You can never have enough kindling to last through the winter and I sometimes supplement the twigs with pieces scrap timber or old pallets which I cut to size and then split with a little hand-axe.

When being stored outside the house logs often become damp from the rain.  However if they have been well seasoned the damp does not penetrate far and the logs will still burn well on a fire that is already lit.  It is only starting a fire that requires really dry wood.  In theory a fire can be easily lit with a few sheets of screwed-up newspaper, a few dry twigs, and then some dry, ideally split, logs on top.  However often we cheat by using a firelighter block which makes the job really easy.

In 1854 Henry David Thoreau, in his book Walden, wrote that ‘Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection’.  I think this is as true today as it was then.  When our supply of logs is stacked outside the house in the autumn I know that whatever misfortune befalls us during the winter we should at least stay warm.  I would urge anyone who is able to burn wood in their home to keep at least a small supply of logs in case the central heating fails.

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year.
Chestnut only good they say,
If for long ’tis laid away.
But ash new or ash old
Is fit for queen with crown of gold.

Birch and fir logs burn too fast,
Blaze up bright and do not last.
It is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E’en the very flames are cold.
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for queen with golden crown.

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,
Fills your eyes and makes you choke.
Apple wood will scent your room,
With an incense like perfume.
Oak and maple, if dry and old,
Keep away the winter’s cold.
But ash wood wet or ash wood dry,
A King shall warm his slippers by.

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Yesterday we gave son Matt a Sony PSP for Christmas (although he had made a contribution towards its purchase himself because when combined with a couple of games and a few other small gifts it exceeded our budget).  The neat little device pleased its new owner and worked well.  During the afternoon we attempted to connect it to the WLAN in our house but repeatedly got a ‘connection error’.  Matt wasn’t too bothered about this but I viewed it as a technical challenge and unsociably spent an hour of Christmas Day on the computer trying to resolve it.  I did so in the end, but not before trawling through numerous PSP forums where the youthful participants leave posts littered with spelling mistakes and profanities.  Where are all the dads like myself trying to solve these technical problems in a methodical way?  I got there in the end and am posting this in case it helps someone else.

Our home wireless network is possibly slightly unusual in that the thick walls and several small rooms require two wireless access points.  So we have a Linksys WAG54G ADSL Gateway that connects to our broadband and acts as network router, but the wireless access point on this box is unused.  Instead, connected to it with a patch cable is a Linksys WAP54G that acts as a wireless access point, and at the other end of the house is a second WAP54G that links wirelessly to the first and acts as a wireless repeater.

I try to run a secure network here so that our traffic cannot be eavesdropped from outside the house and so that passers-by cannot use our precious internet bandwidth (which is limited because our remote rural location means we can only achieve a 512Mb ADSL connection).  Therefore the network is configured only to permit connections from devices with MAC addresses that have been entered into the permitted list in the router.  It also uses WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), a protocol that supposedly replicates the security of a wired network by encrypting the traffic.

My first job was to find the MAC address of the PSP.  The MAC (Media Access Control) address is a unique identifier for each networked device and it is hard-wired into the device so it cannot be changed.  The MAC address of the PSP is available by going to the System Settings menu and then choosing System Information.  It is a 12-digit hexadecimal number, with each two digits separated with a colon (e.g. 00:02:C6:9B:28:41).  I added this to the list of permitted wireless MAC addresses in my router.

Then, because my network uses the WEP security mode, when working through the network connection wizard on the PSP I had to enter the WEP key.  This is not the Passphrase in the router; below it are four keys (WEP Key 1, WEP Key 2, WEP Key 3, WEP Key 4).  I am using 64-bit encryption on my WLAN so these keys are 10-digit hexadecimal numbers.  (I suspect that if I had opted for a more secure 128-bit encryption the keys would be 26-digits long).  My router is set to use key 1 as the default key so I entered the 10-digit hexadecimal number for WEP Key 1 into the PSP.  These steps should be sufficient for the device to connect and it’s certainly all I did last week to connect a laptop from work to my network.

Sadly the PSP still showed a connection error.  It could detect the network, display its name and show the signal strength (100%) but it wouldn’t connect.  Eventually I tracked the problem down to the Wireless Network Mode dropdown list on the Basic Wireless Settings page of the router configuration.  I had this set to 802.11g on all three Linksys boxes.  When I changed it to Mixed (presumably meaning it uses both 802.11g and the slower 802.11b IEEE interface) the PSP instantly connected and I was able to use the built-in web browser to surf the web.  By this time Matt had fallen asleep!

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On Saturday, following a visit to my mum, I had a rather curious experience.  It appears that my mum’s uncle, Keith Robson, had a cine camera in the 1950s.  His son Chris Robson recently found a short piece of cine film taken at my Mum and Dad’s wedding on 14th September 1957 and sent it to one of the companies that transfers old films to DVDs.  Mum hasn’t got a DVD player so I took the disc home and found myself watching a very short sequence of shots taken outside the church at Abbess Roding in Essex before and after my parents’ wedding.  There was no soundtrack, but to my surprise the film was in colour and of very good quality.  This still is taken from the film and shows the happy couple in the porch of the church after the wedding.  I was born 2½ years later!

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I have been a fan of BBC Radio for many years, particularly Radio 4.  They seem to churn out an endless supply of high-quality documentaries, plays, comedies, quizzes, discussion programmes, and much else.  Since I spend about 3 hours a day in the car commuting to and from work I have plenty of opportunity to listen to the radio.

The advent of the Listen Again facility on the BBC Radio websites has transformed my life.  Now I can capture programmes during the week in which they were broadcast, and listen to them on my MP3 player at a time that is convenient for me.  Many people grumble about the TV licence fee we have to pay that funds the BBC (it’s currently £131.50 per year) but at least I now believe I am getting good value for my money.  I’m not clear what the strict legal position is regarding downloading and saving radio programmes for later listening, but since these are purely for my own use and I don’t share or resell these files I can’t believe I am committing any breach of copyright.

I have been asked by a few friends and work colleagues how I capture the programmes that are streamed in Real Audio format from the BBC Radio websites, so I thought I’d try briefly to describe my method here.  It is laborious, and has become quite a chore since I save 30 or 40 programmes a week.  The BBC has started to make certain programmes available as a ‘podcast’ or MP3 download and I’m ignoring these because my objective is to be able to download any radio programme and save it as an MP3 file.

1. The most important tool for this is the ‘RealAudio to WAV converter’.  This is a freeware program that can be downloaded from www.rawavrecorder.homestead.com/.  The description of freeware means that it can be downloaded and used for personal, non-commercial purposes, without payment of any licence fee.  The program looks home-made, is described as a beta, and has a few rough edges.  I did send an email to the author suggesting a few improvements and offering to make a payment but I didn’t receive any reply.  Nevertheless it works so download it and unzip the contents and copy them to somewhere convenient on your computer.  Do it now before the site suddenly disappears.
2. You need to find the URL on the BBC’s web server of the file you wish to download.  This can be tricky because the BBC use two different techniques to describe programme downloads on their web pages.  I’ll try to describe them both:
   • Some pages include a hyperlink directly to a specific .RAM file on their server.  As an example the page about Iran (www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/iran/) has a link like this.  The section entitled Sir John Tusa on Uncovering Iran has a link to a .RAM file.  In this case you can right-click on the link and select Copy shortcut from the pop-up context menu.
   • Most programmes do not have a link like this.  Instead the link takes you to a new browser window entitled the BBC Radio Player.  This has control buttons to play, pause, and fast-forward the audio stream rather like a tape or CD player.  The programme usually starts playing as soon as the window opens.  In this case you need to right-click on a blank part of the Player window and choose View Source from the pop-up context menu.  This should display the HTML source for that web page in a text editor (Windows Notepad on my computer).  A few lines from the top (usually about 12) will be the declaration of a JavaScript variable called Audiostream.  Don’t worry if you don’t understand JavaScript, you don’t need to.  You are looking for a line like this: var AudioStream = “/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/lennyandwill”;  You need to copy the text between the quotation marks (i.e. in this case it will be /radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/lennyandwill).
   • In the event that neither of these methods yields the path to the .RAM file, search the source for .RAM and you should find a link to the relevant file (e.g. /radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/archomnibus.ram).
3. Run the RealAudio to WAV Recorder programme you downloaded in step 1.  Click on the Options menu and choose Configurations… to bring up the options box.  Make sure that the Record option is selected, and in the Destination Path box enter the path of the folder on your computer where you want to save the recording (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\Chris\Desktop), then click the OK button to save your settings.
4. Having got a URL (or part of a URL) from step 2, paste this into the Location box.
5. If the URL starts with a slash (/) character, prepend it with www.bbc.co.uk at the beginning of the Location box.
6. If the URL doesn’t end in .RAM append .RAM to the end of the location box.  Like all URLs this is case-insensitive so it doesn’t matter if you use upper- or lower-case letters.  You should now have a string of text in the location box something like this: www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/radio4/lennyandwill.ram. 
7. Hit the Enter key and your download will start.  It records in real-time so that a 30 minute programme takes 30 minutes to download.  The programme will be saved as a .WAV file.
8. When the programme has been saved on your computer, use one of the many freeware audio file converters to convert the .WAV file to .MP3 format.  I use the Free CD to MP3 Converter (http://www.eusing.com/).

Now you will have an MP3 file of the radio programme that you can copy to your MP3 player to enjoy at your leisure!

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Anyone interested in preparing themselves and their family for unexpected hardship or emergency would be well advised to visit the website of FEMA, the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (http://www.fema.gov).  Among the pages of this fascinating website is advice on all kinds of emergencies, along with manuals on emergency planning and preparation that can be downloaded in PDF format.

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Well I think this is the one.  I’ve been using WordPress for two weeks and I’m still delighted with it.  I only wish I had discovered it sooner, and then I could have saved the countless hours I spent tinkering with dasBlog trying to get it to work.  I realise that I’ve only scratched the surface of WordPress, and I’m not entirely sure that I’ll stick with this bright green Cordoba theme, but if anything I’m overwhelmed by the number of themes available.  I’ve only just started to explore the plug-ins and widgets but I derive confidence from the fact that so much work has been put into these tools, and into the extensive documentation too.

So if you’re considering setting up a blog I would strongly recommend WordPress!

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Although we try to keep our cars well-maintained there is still always the risk that we’ll be stranded somewhere inconvenient by a mechanical breakdown or accident.  For years we have paid annually for membership of a motoring breakdown organisation such as the AA or RAC.  The membership card gives great peace of mind, but it’s expensive and most years we don’t make a single call.

While I was examining ways to reduce our overheads I discovered that a couple of these organisations (and possibly more) will come out to help a stranded motorist even if you don’t belong to their organisation.  The catch is that you must join on the spot and I think also pay a £50 surcharge.  This seems like a fair deal to me.  I suspect this will work out cheaper in the long run.  Therefore in the glovebox of both our cars is a piece of paper with the following information:

AA 24 hour vehicle breakdown service: phone 0800 887 766
RAC: phone 08000 280964 and quote reference WJ0003

We haven’t tested how well this will work, and we may find that a non-member is made to wait so long at the roadside that we’ll prefer to pay the annual premium, but I think it’s worth a try.

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As a freelance software developer I drive about 2,000 miles a month in my car on business.  Although it is fairly unlikely, one of my concerns is that I should become stranded in my car owing to a mechanical breakdown, accident, or poor weather.  Severe weather in southern England is rare, but in the winter of 2004/05 I experienced a fifty mile journey home that started with just a few snowflakes falling but quickly developed into a blizzard.  After I had travelled about 25 miles around 3 inches of snow had settled and the untreated roads had become skating rinks on which I witnessed several accidents.  As darkness fell I started to wonder if I would be able to get home.  On this occasion I did arrive home safely, but I resolved to ensure that I was better prepared next time.  

Over the months I have therefore accumulated various items of emergency and survival kit in my car, and recently I realised that I didn’t even know exactly what I did have stowed in the car.  So today I performed an inventory and I list it here mainly so that I can print out a copy to keep in the car for emergencies.  Some of the items are laughable because they are more suited to living off the land than to surviving a commuting mishap.  For example I cannot envisage that I shall ever need a rabbit snare  when returning from the office!  Nevertheless the snare came as part of a survival kit and I shall probably keep it; every item of survival equipment might prove useful for a job other than the one it was originally intended for, so for example the snare might end up holding up a broken exhaust silencer.

The complete inventory of my car’s contents goes as follows (I have omitted the standard manufacturer’s equipment such as scissor jack, wheel brace, and toolkit).

Driver’s door pocket

• Sunglasses
• Leather notepad
• Retractable ballpoint pen
• Pencil

Driver’s seat pocket

• Notebook
• Pencil
• 4 disposable plastic gloves
• 2 paper towels

Passenger’s seat pocket

• 2 folded paper handwipes 

Centre console

• Tesco clubcard (supermarket loyalty card)
• Polo mints
• Bluetooth phone earpiece
• Toothpick
• Token for the car-park barrier at the Goddard Arms Hotel in Swindon (?)
• Cassette player adapter and 12v charger for my MP3 player
• Universal phone charger with 12v, 240v, and USB plugs
• Nokia charger adapter for bluetooth earpiece
• Money bag with coins for parking machines
• McDonald’s rubbish bag
• 3 Volvo panel bulbs
• A screw-top plastic jar containing:
  • one 8″ nylon cable tie
  • three 5″ nylon cable ties
  • four 3″ nylon cable ties
  • three 2″ nylon cable ties
  • two safety pins (1 large, 1 small)
  • Pair black shoe laces
  • Sealed sample phial of WD40 oil
  • Folding scissors
  • Emergency sewing kit (five colours of cotton, needle, 2 buttons, 5 safety pins)
  • Sealed moist wipe
  • Box of matches
  • Length of parcel string
  • 8 disposable plastic gloves
  • Emergency Velcro hose seal tape
  • Box with folding toothbrush and toothpaste
  • Fuzzy Brush chewable toothbrush
  • Emery board
  • Victorinox Swiss Army knife
  • Unopened packet of Wet Ones wipes
  • Unopened pocket pack of Kleenex tissues

Glovebox

• 12v cigarette lighter rechargeable LED torch
• LED keyring torch
• Canister of Halfords lock de-icer
• Tyre tread depth gauge
• Tyre pressure gauge
• Digital stopwatch with clock
• Car handbook, service record, dealer list, etc.
• Two compact road atlases
• Breakdown service phone numbers
• Windscreen scraper / squeegee
• 12v water heater
• Aerosol canister of windscreen de-icer
• A copy of this inventory!

Front passenger’s seat back

• UK Road atlas
• Sainsbury’s carrier bag (child’s sick bag)

Driver’s seat back

• Bristol & Bath street atlas
• Two Sainsbury’s carrier bags

Rear Shelf

• Golf umbrella

Boot

• 10 litre plastic can of diesel
• Pair of Dunlop wellington boots
• Snow chains
• Auto Glym car-care holdall
• Aladdin insulated mug with lid
• Two Ainsley Harriott cup soups (BBE Apr 2010)
• Two Ainsley Harriott instant pasta pots (BBE Nov 2009)
• Holdall containing:
  • Plastic lightstick
  • Roll of black insulation tape 19mm x 33m
  • Lifesystems mountain thermal bag 2.2m x 1m
  • Orvis pocket saw
  • Plastic SOS whistle on paracord neck loop
  • Pair of thick walking socks
  • Waterproof trousers
  • Unopened pack of Boots moist toilet tissues
  • Thick brown woollen jumper
  • Waterproof cagoul
  • One 75cl bottle of Evian Mineral Water (BB 26/01/2009)
  • Two 500ml cans of Old Speckled Hen beer (BBE July 2010)
  • Three 200ml cartons of Sainsbury’s pure orange juice (BBE February 2010)
  • One 240g John West Tuna Mediterranean light lunch (BBE December 2010)
  • One 500g bag Sainsbury’s ready to eat dried apricots (BBE May 2010)
  • Four 200g bags of Sainsbury’s jumbo salted peanuts (BB 13/02/2010)
  • One 200g pack of Sainsbury’s all butter shortbread finger biscuits (BB 13/03/2010)
  • Five Mars bars (BB 25/04/2010)
  • Survival bag 1:
    • Two plastic bags for carrying water
    • Fishing kit (line, hooks on nylon, lead wire)
    • Survival aide memoire
    • Tin opener
    • Lifeboat matches and striker (approx. 18)
    • 3 large safety pins
    • 2 large needles
    • Plastic SOS whistle
    • 4″ hacksaw blade
    • Eight combined salt and dextrose tablets
    • Roll of thin nylon cord
    • Flint with metal striker
    • Flexible commando saw
    • Condom (for carrying water)
    • Boots lip salve
    • Potassium permanganate powder (for starting a fire and purifying water)
    • Candle
    • Pencil
    • Two single-sided razor blades
    • Rabbit snare
    • Reel of white cotton
    • Wound dressing and two plasters
    • Cotton wool (tinder for fires)
    • Brass button compass
  • Survival bag 2:
    • Flint and Magnesium fire-starting tool
    • 7ft x 3 ft 120 gauge polythene survival bag
    • Sealed canister of windproof matches
    • 25m parachute cord
    • Victorinox ‘Champion’ Swiss Army knife
  • Toiletries bag:
    • Airport ‘Fresh n Go’ box containing razor, shaving cream, after-shave, shampoo/shower gel, comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, shoeshine, and nail file
    • Toothbrush and toothpaste
    • Shaving brush and shaving soap
    • Bic disposable razor
    • Bar of soap
    • Comb

• In left compartment:
  • J-cloth
  • Duster
  • Rubber Ever Ready torch (two D cells)
  • LED head torch with 1, 7, or 19 LEDs (three AAA cells)
  • Thick plastic gloves
• In right compartment:
  • Halfords first aid kit
  • Folding umbrella
• Underneath boot floor:
  • Tow rope
  • 12v torch / air compressor
  • New junior hacksaw
  • Warning triangle
  • Anti-theft steering wheel lock
  • Folding shovel
  • 2 litre bottle Sainsbury’s Caledonian Still mineral water (BBE Jul 2006)
  • Carrier bag of assorted spare bulbs
  • Haynes manual in jiffy bag
  • Heavy duty jump leads (under spare wheel)
  • Extra-long (ex-Saab) jack winding handle

In the event of snow being forecast I would supplement this with warm gloves and a warm coat.  What have I forgotten?