Rain?

July 13th, 2010 No Comments »

Yup, this morning we saw rain. For about an hour anyway, now it’s baking again. We decided to go for a drive in case it started again and drove to a town called Argentan, via Trun. Driving in France on the wrong side of the road has turned out to be very easy. The roads aren’t quiet, but drivers aren’t as aggressive as in the UK and my heavy underpowered Scenic starts to make sense – everybody takes their time to get up to speed. Once in Argentan we found a local pizzeria and I decided to French it up by ordering Pizza Tartiflette (based on the French dish of the same name made with potatoes, cream and cheese). After that we drove to a hypermarket which is where things get really interesting – I discovered a new energy drink called X-Tense so I purchased both the normal and sugar-free varieties. Let’s jump back a bit – I tested the other drinks I mentioned a couple of days ago and they were all pretty minging, however X-Tense was like a sweeter version of Red Bull – yum.

X-Tense


Networked France

July 11th, 2010 1 Comment »

Although the Gites here have broadband (at a decent 3Mbps I’ve tested), the range of the Wi-Fi is unfortunately limited by the big old stone walls. Luckily I had considered this being a problem before leaving so packed a geek-based arsenal to create a solution.

Step 1: Take an old laptop and a USB Wi-Fi adapter, install Windows XP and enable Internet Connection Sharing (couldn’t get bridge mode to work sadly due to old network adapters for those who are interested in why I didn’t do it properly). Place the old laptop in a location where the Wi-Fi signal is pretty decent and hang the Wi-Fi adapter in the window:

FranceNet1

Step 2: Hide the laptop in a convenient looking cupboard on wheels and plug a very long network cable in to the network port:

FranceNet2

Step 3: Trail the cable out the window and all along the side of the building, cross the fence to the building you are actually staying in:

FranceNet3

Step 4: Take an old wireless-capable ADSL modem/router and disable everything but the Wi-Fi functionality, plug it in and connect to the new access-point from your laptop and bingo!

FranceNet4

In France

July 11th, 2010 No Comments »

I made it to France and am working on improving the Internet connection as we speak…. that’s a story for another blog post. In fact, details of the building, scenery, journey and food are unlikely to be appearing on this blog too because I know what my readers want. I know that the question on all my reader’s minds is “So Oli, what are French energy drinks like?”. Well dear readers I have purchased four cans and will describe them as I drink them.

French Energy Drinks

I started this morning with the can on the left, “Energy Drink” which I believe is U-Mart’s own brand. It tasted just like any other supermarket’s own brand energy drink so nothing special to report on that. Coming up later, Burn Intense Energy, Dark Dog, and Truc de Fou.

If however you would like to follow what is actually happening here in France then there are a few other blogs covering the same story:

Robbins Ramblings – Ken

Cooking Through 30 – Naomi

‘Allo ‘Allo – Roz

Coming up in future posts – how I rewired the Gites to extend the wireless network coverage.

July’s Crazy Dream

July 7th, 2010 No Comments »

Right then, this time it has gone fully weird. My dream started off in what I believe to be the old hall from my school. Desks were laid out as if exams were taking place, but all the seats were filled with random people of all ages. I was sitting next to Steve (from work) but Nick (also from work) had decided we weren’t allowed to sit together any more because we were distracting each other. The desk moving crew were called in and lifted Steve and his desk over to a new location near the back of the hall. Then some old lady dressed in a shiny green dress ran past, there was some mumbling amongst the other old ladies sitting at the desks, who then passed around a large green pad of foam and hid it under one desk leaving it sticking out a bit. The green-dress lady ran back down the aisle and tripped over the foam pad only to be caught by all the other old ladies. It then went a bit theatrical and everyone watched a performance of the ladies amputating green-dress lady’s leg (!?). Once the leg had been chopped off, the lights dimmed and the DJ (where did he come from?) announced the sexy police woman had arrived. The aforementioned police woman turned out to be Vicky wearing something not dissimilar to the costume worn by Amy Pond in Doctor Who and I was most annoyed that my dad started calling me from the bathroom to assist with a plumbing emergency. So off I toddled to my bathro0m… jump back a bit here because I was no longer in my school hall, but my house which isn’t actually my house at all. Dad was attempting to put my sink back on the wall but couldn’t hold the sink and bodge holes in the plasterboard at the same time. He bunged a screwdriver through but it made the hole too large so we’d have to fill it in and start again, but it didn’t matter by this point because it was raining and dark outside and some maniac in a Noddy car was terrorizing the cats out on the front drive. I know there was more to this dream but I can’t remember it all – I think that’ll do for the moment though. All I need now is for Joseph to get a little older so he can tell me what it means.

Fixed the Scenic. Again

July 6th, 2010 No Comments »

I managed to fix the Scenic in record time this evening. The replacement component arrived exactly as requested courtesy of The Wing Mirror Man and at a very reasonable price too. He charged me £14.10 plus £6 for next day delivery (normal delivery was free if I hadn’t needed it so quickly). Renault wanted to charge me £130 + VAT for the entire wing mirror (excluding the body coloured trim part) and refused to just sell the individual electric unit – ridiculous!