Keeping busy, and more Kindle stuff

It’s been one of those busy days today; we seem to be alternating, partly because the weather is doing so. Tomorrow is forecast to be pretty bad, so we wanted to get as much done as possible today.

We had a walk downtown for routine shopping – it was quite entertaining to get caught up in some inter store rivalry. A new Waitrose has recently opened, so high quality shopping has arrived in Poynton (previously the best they could manage was an ex-Somerfield Morrison’s). The Waitrose is smallish, but very pleasant to use, albeit a bit pricier than the alternatives. Coincidentally, one of the local Co-ops was ram raided, and they’ve taken the opportunity to restructure and refurbish it.

It re-opened this week, and they had staff out offering goodies ranging from free drinks of orange juice to complimentary shopping bags, as well as money off vouchers. We still shopped in the Waitrose, but it’s good to know that the choices are there.

Apart from that, we’d left a washload running whilst we were away, and Sheila hung it out on the whirligig when it was done. We’ve also been getting to grips with the Kindles, of course, experimenting with the various ways of loading books onto them. They have a neat screensaver, mostly pictures of famous authors, with odd bits and bobs like old drawings of sea creatures and the like. There's no way of customising these, so it’s just as well we don’t mind them.

{There’s some stuff on Mobile Read about ways of getting at them, but we're talking terminal-prompt hacks of the firmware here, and I’m not going near that stuff.}

Today is the last day of our £15 for 1 month and 3Gbyte O2 data purchase, so we both ran Software Update and brought the Mac systems up to date. No big deal this time, but still about 500 Mbyte of download altogether, so worth doing before we’re back on the 1 Gb/month of the 3 contract.

I bought us a copy of Terry Pratchett’s latest, I Shall Wear Midnight, for the Kindle, (£5.35)and we’ve ordered a case each for them – the unadorned Kindle is just a touch slippy to hold, and it would be a disaster to drop one.

We’ll be welcoming back the hire boat tomorrow; Peter and Susan should be here to do that, but they’ve got stuck in Spain as a result of the general strike, and may not make it back until the weekend.

The Kindles have come

We did indeed have the pleasure of Andrew and Gina’s company last night, and very good it was too; we managed to be reasonably sensible, stopping after a couple of glasses and getting to bed in reasonable time.

This morning, the weather has been not good again, cold and rainy, though not much wind. It’s being one of those dull Autumns that makes up for such a splendid summer.

The high point of the day was the arrival of the Kindles, a day early; well done Amazon. First impressions are very good, as the beast arrives ready to roll, straight out of the box. Since we’d ordered two, one was already registered to my Amazon account, and the other was readily added once we’d got it connected to the 3 MiFi dongle. In a house, the same could be achieved with a broadband WiFi router, or failing that, you can hook it up to your PC or Mac via USB and do everything that way.

The physical controls are a bit more fiddly than the Sony, except for the page turning buttons located on both sides of the beast. It’s about the same size, but thinner, and around the same weight, so no effort to hold it up for long periods of time whilst reading; it’s a lot lighter than a blockbuster paperback. You don’t get a leather cover with it, though, which may well have solved our Christmas present problems as well. The page turn on the screen is a bit faster that the Sony, using the same eInk technology.

The most notable thing is the ease with which you can buy books for it, which are, as I said before, generally cheaper than the ones available via the other bookshops. If you are on a WiFi link, you can navigate to the Kindle shop on the reader, search for the book or author you want, choose the title, select “Buy”, and down it comes, being available to read within a minute of selection. Otherwise, you go to the Amazon site, buy it there, and it will download to the Kindle next time it's online.

This compares with, for the Sony Reader:

1. Find the right website on your computer
2. Use one or other of a horrible set of search engines
3. Buy and download a token file
4. Launch Adobe Digital Editions (which you’ve had to download previously)
5. Use ADE to download the main file
6. Transfer that to the Reader via either Sony Digital Library or calibre.

Any book you buy for the Kindle may be read on any Kindle or other machine registered in your name with Amazon (like my Kindle for Mac, or on your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch). It will even keep track of how far you’ve got reading it on one device and sync that with the next one you use, so you could be reading the book on your iPhone whilst commuting, for example, carry on at lunch time on your PC at work, then come home and relax with your Kindle, picking up from where you left off each time.

I reckon this means that Amazon will wipe out the opposition, it’s all just so easy.

Apart from playing with the new toys, I've uploaded a set of pictures of the grandkids to Flickr; it's much easier than fiddling about on the static website, especially as the only machine we've got with a viable copy of Dreamweaver is the old iBook.

Otherwise, we’ve had a quiet day – took a stroll out to feed the ducks at lunchtime, and lurked in the boat the rest of the time, doing housework and reading. The shutters are all finished, so we’re just waiting for the last bits and bobs to be done from the snagging list, some of which may well involve a couple of days in the paint dock next week, as the weather is just too damp for successful touching-in outside.

Getting busy again, and a change of heart about eReaders

Lighting the fire yesterday was great, and cleared that clammy feeling out of the boat, but it got a bit warm later in the day; the weather relented and became milder, and we found ourselves having to open the bow doors to get cool again.

Still feeling lazy after the exertions of the weekend, we decided to go to the Boar’s Head for dinner. What a blow – they weren’t doing food, as they were having a major clean up and sort out. So it was back to the boat and reheat a chilli - what a good job I had something in the freezer.

Never mind, we still had a very peaceful evening, loafing about and reading. I’ve now finished Transition as a Kindle book, reading it on the Mac, but we’ve been so impressed by the Amazon approach to ebooks that we’ve ordered a Kindle apiece as our birthday presents this year. Advantages over the Sony?

• Cheaper books, lots of them, and much easier to find and buy on the Amazon site
• Longer battery life
• More functionality, as it has a keypad, and you can do dictionary lookups and the like.

More on this after they arrive; they’re due in a couple of days time, so Apple must have resolved their supply problems. We’re keeping the Sonys as well for now, but may in the end use calibre to convert all those epub and lrf format books to mobi, the file format readable by the Kindle.

Meantime today, we’ve been busy to make up for yesterday’s sloth (some people have parrots on their boats, we just settle for a slothful existence). We’ve polished up and Incralacked the new brass strips on the doors to hold the shutters, as well as the doorknobs and locking bars, changed over our clothing from summer to winter mode, welcomed La Suvera back from her shake down cruise and taken a load of recycling to the tip.

Not sure what’s happening this evening; we may well have Andrew and Gina in for a drink...

Calm after the storm

It was a frantic day yesterday, very quiet day today, once Graeme, Cathy and the boys had left. As I said in my tweet, it was great, with eight of us in the boat, but very noisy, and quite tiring.

After Peter and Jan had gone, we had some dinner, and the boys were persuaded (eventually) to settle down in their bunks. Both beds are a complete success, the pipe cot being very popular with Daniel, and the hammock net strung alongside the side berth turning it into an effective cot for Alex.

Matters were very noisy again this morning, until the boys were taken off for a walk, then finally packed into the car to go home.

Sheila and I sorted out the boat, putting things back in their usual places, and since then we’ve just had a quiet, recovering type day. I’ve been reading Transition on the Kindle for Mac, and Sheila has been doing some crochet and reading as well. The weather is quite unpleasant, cold and damp, so we’ve lit the stove, which made a lot of difference, but also encouraged a fair bit of dozing over the books.

The snagging is almost finished, bar the paintwork; the weather means that we may have to hang about here until next week, when it will be possible to go into the paint dock for a couple of days.

Chilling out on a Saturday

It’s been a much calmer day today; we actually had a serious lie in, not getting up until nearly nine, eating a leisurely breakfast and then walking down into Poynton to shop. We explored the new Waitrose, which is very nice; not the largest ever, around the same size as the one in Wallingford, but with a decent range of stock.

Back at the boat, it was lunchtime already. We’ve idled the afternoon away, doing the occasional chore like refilling the water tank and finishing off the cabin shafts by wiping the Cuprinol dust off them, and Sheila has been working on a crochet order. I’m reading the Iain Banks on my Mac, using Kindle for Mac. It’s not as convenient as having it on the Sony Reader, but better than nothing. It doesn't seem to be available as an ebook in other formats.

{For geeks only: Kindle books, file extension .azw, are really in MobiPocket format, and in theory could be converted by Calibre, were it not that they have fancy DRM (Digital Rights Management) encoding. There are python scripts out there which could de-drm the file, but they need the serial number of the Kindle it's been downloaded to, which is used to generate the encryption key, and I’ve not been able to find what the Amazon site has used as the serial number for the Mac.

Also, of course, it is likely that removing the DRM is illegal, even for private use of a book you’ve bought. As I’ve said before, the book publishers are moronically making all the same mistakes as the music publishers did on the advent of MP3. It’s just a matter of time before they realise that all they are doing is encouraging the development of a black market in DRM-broken books, with the consequent loss of revenue.}

The book itself is classic Banks, convoluted, challenging and entertaining, and it cost less than a fiver, which is something.

Tomorrow, the ravening horde returns for another night, and Peter and Jan are coming over for tea in the afternoon, so I suspect it might be a tweet day, blogwise.

Quick because we've been helpful

OK, I know, I keep saying it, but this time it really is going to be a quickie – I nearly settled for a tweet, but that would be too lazy. I was all set to do this blog, and we had a walk in from a nice couple who wanted to know about living aboard and about Braidbars, so we did a buckshee show through, with all the nattering about living aboard.

The snagging is almost finished; the new fixings for the shutters on the side hatches look great, but I’ve got to Incralac the nice brass strips tomorrow. I’ve shown Paul and Cherry round Islay, which they've taken for a week’s hire, and now we’re settling down for a quiet night.

I bought a new sort of ebook this afternoon; Amazon do a "Kindle for the Mac" deal, which lets you read books formatted for the Kindle on a Mac (gosh). So I bought a copy of Iain Banks’s latest, Transition, for £4.74, and I’ll let you know how I get on.

That’s about all for now – hopefully a fuller report tomorrow!

The accommodation suits the family

Sorry not to post yesterday; it all got a bit exciting. Much of the snagging list is now done, including the extra drain holes in the gas locker, for when the full water tank pushes the standard ones below water.

Peter Harper and I went and fetched Bessie Surtees, mooring her on the shop mooring (Kevin and Brian reckon it’s winter already, and they are not opening on Wednesdays now). This enabled the yard staff to fit her new deck (“cratch”) board, and Phil the gopher polished her starboard side.

Graeme, Cathy, Daniel and Alex arrived mid afternoon, and we spent the rest of the day being entertained by/entertaining them. I’m pleased to say that our arrangements in the study bedroom worked a treat. Daniel was thrilled with the pipe cot, and we rigged a hammock net alongside the berth so that Alex couldn’t roll out in the night.

It only took them a couple of hours to settle down after dinner, and the adults could have some quality time in the saloon.

We made a leisurely start this morning, and have acquired a load of photos of them all, from which I’ll create a Flickr album sometime soon.

The Ocado order arrived in good time, so we’ve been able to restock the wine cellar after the depredations of the Owners’ Weekend. Peter and Gill have left now, so we are the only ones left from that merry meeting; never mind, there’s always next year. Their departure meant that Bessie Surtees could come into the yard to have her port side polished. (She's just been sold, and her new owner wanted some repairs and tidying up done.)

We’ve settled down to enjoy some peace and quiet for the night, though a handy bit of work was put in drying out the stern bilge; tomorrow, some more snagging will be done, and we will be looking after some hirers for Islay, Peter and Susan having taken a week off for a well deserved holiday.

Settling down in the yard

A quick blog to keep up to date: we’ve had a very pleasant 24 hours, mostly supervising the snagging, which is proceeding apace. For the avoidance of doubt, and so that Gill Harper doesn’t get confused, the post on Building Sanity Again will be in a week or so’s time, once all the snagging is done. Of the 23 items on the list, around 16 are now complete, so it’s not going to be too long.

We ate on board last night, then went round to Cala for a quiet drink, which became a little more raucous after Bill and Eileen of New Dawn joined us. (New Dawn has a parrot, so we reckon Bill feels the need to express himself once he’s off the boat.) Cala is in the yard alongside us, having some bits of work done to her solar panel and stove chimney.

Today, I nipped down into Poynton for fresh bread and meat, and to get a prescription filled, and returned to find the yard a hive of activity. The gazebos have finally dried out in this splendid late September weather, and have been put away. Peter and Susan wanted to take the workforce from the yard out for a celebratory lunch after the delivery of La Suvera, number 124, and we looked after the office for them whilst they did so.

I have started painting the cabin shafts with Cuprinol; we’d tried oiling them at first, but it hasn’t stood up to the weather, so it’s back to tried and tested approaches. Another quiet night, tonight, I expect, then we look forward to an invasion of Graeme, Cathy, Daniel and Alex tomorrow.

(PS thanks to Gill for proof reading this for me!)

What a weekend...

Gosh, where to start? It’s been a great weekend, but tiring, with late nights in good company.

Wet weather meant that we postponed erecting the gazebos and putting up the bunting until Friday, but with many hands available, things then went up with a swing. In the evening, we had the international potluck meal – everyone brought a dish and some form of accompaniment, and we had a mix of sweet and sour, Thai green curry, pasta, chicken and cardamom curry and salads and rice, naan breads and baked potatoes.

Next morning, we staggered up in good time. We had a bit of an emergency with sanity Again’s toilet, but a frantic 90 minutes work by Peter and myself saw it sorted out just as the first people arrived for the Open Day.

As always, that passed in a bit of a blur, with loads of people to show through the boat, loads of compliments, and the chance for brief meetings with old friends like Tim Tyler and Luisa Bryceland.

Lizzie Birks was kept busy running her canteen, maintaining a steady supply of teas and coffees, sandwiches for lunch, and an amazing range of cakes and flapjack. Although the event officially finished at four, we didn’t see the last of the visitors away until five. Peter was able to announce that he’d taken deposit cheques for two build slots, and was hopeful of a third. This means that he has only maybe one slot left for 2011, and is now taking bookings for 2012, so if you are thinking of having a Braidbar boat built sometime in the next couple of years, don’t delay!

The evening saw a continuation of the fun, with a mega barbecue, and then the quiz once everyone was pleasantly relaxed. I think that this went better than ever this year, with a nail biting final only decided by the outcome of the anagrams round.

We had a late start on Sunday, the weather having finally broken altogether. People congregated in the bungalow for coffees and reminiscences, and to view a video made of the goings on the day before.

At half eleven, some of us went down to the Anson Engine Museum, where we had a guided tour of the new layout, which is a great improvement on the old one. The whole thing now tells the story of heat engines from steam through to the latest W12 Bentley engine as fitted to the Continental, and we saw several of the beasts in operation. Meantime, the scale model of the area round Poynton in 1900 is virtually finished, and looks just amazing.

After a lunch based on the remains of the food, we took down the bunting and banners, and removed the sides from the gazebos; it looks like they’ll have to be dried off indoors, as we are still being rained on as I write this.

This morning has seen an energetic attack by the boatyard staff on our snagging list. In a bit, I’ll do a review post on the Building Sanity Again blog, describing the snagging we’ve had done and giving our thoughts about Sanity Again after six months living on her.

Busy busy at Braidbar

It’s been a busy, if tiring day. We were just thinking about getting up in a leisurely fashion when the phone rang. Peter Mason wanted to know if we would be prepared to move Sanity Again into the yard today, as he was shuffling boats anyway, and it would be convenient to get her into position for Saturday’s Open Day.

Nothing loath, since being in the yard has advantages like a shoreline hook up, we swiftly got ready to face the day, and moved Sanity Again through, initially onto the water point, then to the shop mooring for diesel and pump out, and finally into the yard.

In the process, we investigated why the toilet tank gauge has started to read very low. Removing it, and dipping the tank manually through the hole thus opened up, showed that although the gauge was reading half full, the tank was in fact around three quarters full, as we expected, it being two weeks after the last pump out.

There are a number of possible reasons for this - we’ll monitor the situation for the next couple of weeks and see how we go.

Once in the yard, we’ve been cleaning the outside of the boat, whilst other Braidbar owners, namely Graham from Priscilla, Peter and Gill from Cala and Bill from New Dawn, helped to prepare La Suvera for her owners. La Suvera is Braidbar number 124, and will be going out on her shake down cruise immediately after her owners have joined in the fun this weekend.

Last night we had a merry time in the Boar’s Head – tonight we are all catering for ourselves, then folk are joining us on Sanity Again for a small libation or two.

Here we are again...

We’ve made it! 198 miles and 102 locks between the 1st and 15th of September.

We’re going to take the rest of today to recover - meal in the Boar’s Head tonight, I think - then start getting ready for the Open Day and Owners’ Weekend tomorrow. First sign of trouble - the BW signs which had been put up, reserving ten spaces on the Deeps moorings for boats attending, all disappeared overnight.

Suspicion focusses on the guy living on one of the boats who has been jealously guarding “his” mooring on this towpath for three months now, but no proof, of course, so names will be mentioned here unless there are further developments.

Susan is going to replace the signs today. It looks like we’re going to have a good turnout of current and future Braidbar owners, and we’re hoping that the weather forecast is right for once, and that conditions will improve for the weekend.

They couldn't be worse than at present, with heavy rain and strong winds.
I’ll try and get back into the daily blogging habit, but that’s all for now.

We're doing a lot of boating...

As I said at the end of the last post on the Beale Park blog, I'm taking a break from blogging whilst we charge from one end of the system to the other in order to get to Poynton in time for the Braidbar Open Day and Owners' Weekend.

Our boating day currently consists of getting up at six and setting off straight away, taking it in turns to breakfast on the move. At ten, I serve coffee and toasties from our new Diablo toastie maker (more about that later) and we eat lunch at around half twelve. Some days we then stop to do other stuff in the afternoon, others we boat on again afterwards.

But it seems that some folk are suffering blog withdrawal - I'm sorry about that, and can only offer the Twitter updates at the moment.

We've got as far as Kings Bromley, which is better than we'd hoped or feared, in view of how busy the system is just now. Only severe hold up was at Atherstone, where it took us a long time to descend the flight.

We've managed to buy Sheila a new pair of boots at Tamworth, and we've just bought some new folding chairs here at KB, at the garden centre just up the road.

Elanor is visiting us later today, to take away some stuff she left with us at Beale, and to deliver a slab of Pedigree to me.

Next proper post wil be after we arrive at Poynton, hopefully next Wednesday, unless we get badly held up on the run from here to Harecastle - once we're on the Macc we should be OK.