Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

The new Pergola is up and running and just as I was getting the camera out to take a pic, I noticed the most amazing rainbow just across the valley.

This one’s even better – honestly – THIS is what it actually looked like this afternoon, looking down the valley..

and that’s about it – nice day for the time of year, the Pergola is now all wired up again, expecting our new car to arrive tonight – just in time to store it away for a while over the weekend!

The rain today didn’t help, but here it is, the start of a new Pergola, poles treated and buried in concrete. If the weather holds we may have everything put back together before the weekend is done… it doesn’t look much now, but just wait… what with that and the soon-to-be-functional pylon (just out of view behind the rearmost post) all that’s missing now is a decent US or British-made power supply for the broadband – and we’re all set!

Not much else happened today, we went to the Huescar market, it rained, nothing new – oh, Maureen got some new material as she’s planning an insulating curtain between downstairs and upstairs (to keep the heat out of our bedroom in the summer – and keep it downstairs in the winter (there are both upstairs and downstairs bedrooms). IN THEORY the new car turns up tomorrow night! If that all works out, no more car renting – which means I can pop over anytime for a few days.

We’ve certainly had our share of rubbish builders. Whoever our property developer RAMONE used to put out Pergola together needs a GOOD THRASHING!

We recently discovered that the Pergola was loose and so today we’ve had our new builder come and take a look. Turns out the wood was neither treated nor buried in concrete but just stuck in a hole with concrete on the TOP… the result, the wood has ultimately rotted (see end of front right piece in the image below – totally rotted).

And so as you see in the photo, the whole lot is now dismantled and we’re starting again from scratch…

The moral of the story?  This might be a one-off- but I doubt it. If you’ve had pergolas put together by the same builder, get them checked – and if necessary re-built before they fall down – and make sure you know where to SEND THE BILL TO!! I know where ours will be going.

Considering the time of year, the weather today was not that bad – sunny pretty much all day and heading toward 20c. We took a trip over to Orce market, which was a little disappointing but while there we noticed a sign for the museum and headed over there. A small entrance on the outside hides a 16th century very nice building which houses the museum.

Once inside we were welcomed in and given full instructions in English before being left to roam freely, not signs to tell you not to use your camera, no big-brother cameras. Very civilised.

We left the museum towards lunchtime and headed over to Huescar (just a few kilometres apart) where FINALLY after much effort and wasted money I found some solder that actually works at the local Ferreteria. There was most likely nothing wrong with my original soldering iron – just the cheap rubbish Chinese crappy solder they supplied with and sold separately from the irons – hard to imagine as to why a retailer could be so thick as to sell soldering irons along with solder that isn’t suitable for those irons – but there you have it. Anyway, along the way today I took some photos and here they are. You can click any photo to enlarge it.

Enjoy the pics… click to enlarge…

Believe it or not, after 3 years of builder’s electricity, it looks like we’re about to get "proper" electricity. The pylon is up, wired and apparently ready to go.

After some disappointing weather over the last few days, we’re set for sunshine today so we’re off to the Orce market to see what’s new there.

After bringing some new lighting technology over with me to add atmospheric lighting to the cave, I’m now onto my second Chinese soldering iron which utterly refuses to do the job and I’m convinced it’s actually the solder. The last one I bought was a 60w device and I bought solder and flux to go with it, yet after 40 years of soldering I cannot even START to tin the iron bit never mind do some sensible soldering – so the logical conclusion is that this is something ELSE the Chinese can’t get right (at least not in the stuff they sell here). So I’m off in search of good old-fashioned European-sourced solder!

Yesterday we went off to the lakes with friends – too cold to go swimming but just to show them around. We’ve also been to the Huescar fair which ended on Sunday night, not much to write about, just a standard market, the same people as usual.

I’m starting to get jaded with the smaller markets you rarely see anything new and interesting… not so bad in the summer when you can just enjoy the weather but we really could do with finding a really large and varying market.

Our Spanish-licenced car should be arriving this week, just in time to go into cold storage until our next trip – but at least this means we can kiss goodbye to extortionate car rentals once the paperwork is sorted and it gives me greater possibilities for short trips over here when there are last-minute cheap flights available, something we’ve not been able to do up to now.

I’m looking forward to some sun today so I can try out some new hi-def video capture software for the iPhone. Yes, I’ve a decent camera that can do video but I get sick of lugging a camera around. A phone on the other hand sits in your pocket – the problem being, the quality is usually rubbish. Well, I’ve already gotten around that with the HDR software on the iPhone to some extent (most of the photos here are HDR taken using the phone) and so now it’s time to turn to video.

Many problems with amateur videos taken on phones can be improved on the iPhone with a little care and the right software. Firstly clean the lens every single time you use it – and secondly use software to turn off the automatic controls. The stuff I’m playing with turns off auto-focus, exposure control, white balance and lets you take 16:9 format video – I’d prefer cinema format but the phone isn’t fast enough for that.. iPhone 4s to the rescue (if only). With these settings as seen in the phone in their normal default it really doesn’t matter what you do – your videos are always going to look home made.  Easy to say, let’s see what I can do with this – results in a later blog providing the weather holds out.

Oh yes, it’s around 20 degrees MAXIMUM here during the day, a far cry from September… and no sign of the builder!!

Not QUITE what you might expect of a Spanish morning (10am) after months of low humidity… there is a thick fog outside this morning – I’m so glad I’m not planning on driving anywhere. I’ve a ton of work to do today before spending a little holiday time over here. Hopefully by the time I get done, this will have lifted. Already there are signs off the right of the photo of the sun trying to blast through – but it’s quite a sight, standing near the top of the mountains looking down at this cotton wool stuff!

Our builder is supposed to be coming over today to fix the pergola – which looks quite sad in this weather but believe me in the summer it’s essential. Still – the fog will no doubt please the plants.