No-no, No-no No-no

July 17th, 2010 No Comments »

Thanks to Ken of Ken’s Quiz Site and Robbins Ramblings (and of course father-in-law) fame, today’s energy drink was entitled “I Have No Limits”. It had a very nice flavour that was quite sweet – not far off Red Bull. Due to the odd comment about lack of Frenchness regarding my blog, I’ve taken the photo of the can with a backdrop of a 17th Century Norman farmhouse… the out-of-focus can was intentional, honest (I shall get used to Manual mode on the camera one day).

Tomorrow we are off to Disney, whoop!


When in France

July 16th, 2010 No Comments »

…do as I always do and find an authentic local Restaurant. This one was of a Scottish theme named “McDonalds”. Poppy had Les Nuggets de Poullet avec des Frites with a glass of Jus d’Orange. I opted for a CBO avec des Frites. Poppy enjoyed herself:

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After the meal, I took Poppy to the supermarket for supplies. It was at this point that my childish sense of humour unfortunately got the better of me and I had to suppress sniggers by taking photos. I wasn’t aware you could actually purchase a Gaylord Mincer.

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And if you get bored of mincing, you can always pop one of these pills:

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Calvados

July 13th, 2010 No Comments »

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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:

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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

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