As I have posted before I am in the early stages of automating my home to make it smarter and interact better with the people (and dog) that live within it. My system is based on the Idratek system, which is a UK company that is very supportive.

The following "How-to..." guide was written by "Kevin" in response to a question I asked on the Automated Home forum pages (http://www.automatedhome.co.uk/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2108). I have just reformatted it for easier reading and added screenshots to make it easier to follow.

Hey,

Before I get onto anything check out this link. My uncle's photos are absolutely amazing. Seriously they rock my socks =]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/71492355@N00/

So Far its been Paul's nonsense thats been put up on this website. As soon as I can make a page that will be changed. But at the moment I will have to make do with annoying him over these blog things. (Which are quite boring too.)

Anyway, first off. Happy New Year. Hope everyone has a good 2009.

And second, hope you all had a great Christmas.

 

 

(I'm an angel really!) Besides this place needs jazzing up a bit! =]

BECKY

xXxXxXx

 

For a few years now we have been inspired to grow a few simple things ourselves. Although we have a moderate garden for a modern house it is not ready to grow a full assortment of vegetables. However, after seeing Gardener's World (I must be getting really old) we have tried growing potatoes in a plastic dustbin. We just drilled a few holes in the bottom to make sure the water can escape then filled the inside bottom 2" with stones and broken pots to act as drainage.

The soil this year was a mix of the garden soil which is Weald Clay and our own compost from a couple of bins that have been on the go for about a year. The seed potatoes came from Thompson & Morgan (sorry can't remember the variety) and were planted by Christopher in March.

 

A long time ago when I was a youthful teenager I was quite into photography and had a 35mm SLR Praktica camera that I learnt to use. Manual exposure with the in-built light meter, varying the depth of field and shutter speed to get effects. I even dabbled at devloping the film.

That was quite some time ago now and since then I have tended to use compact digital cameras. My last camera was an improvement and was a Fuji S5000 which allowed control of exposure, shutter speed, etc. However, it still had a non-changeable lens but took some pretty good pictures. The picture on the top of the family web page was taken with it and is a shot of Eastbourne from Beachy Head. With the arrival of Lucy both Ali, Becky and I have been snapping pictures and I decided to revitalise the old hobby.

Here is the new addition to the family, Lucy.

Lucy is a Golden Retriever that has joined our household and is now 10 weeks old. She is settling in pretty well to her new surroundings and we in turn are getting used to her.

She has only had her first vaccination so walkies haven't started. She has a lot of energy and quite confident. Only real issue we are dealing with at the moment is biting during play. Hopefully, we'll have that sorted out shortly.

Puppy classes start in a few weeks but I am not sure who is being taught Lucy or Alison and I.

If anyone is currently viewing the webpage you may have noticed the addition of weather information for where we live in the top right-hand corner of the header?

It is a small addition that was working on my home server but not on my hosted website. Basically I use a web hosting package from Zen Internet, they also provide our broadband connection. The Linux based web hosting server was running PHP version 4.x and the Nucleus plugin needed libaraies only included in PHP 5.x