Alan Williams's Blog, page 71

2014 – The Year In Review(s)

tontowilliams:

Found a fellow pen geeks website, great posts throughout.

Originally posted on edjelley.com - Fountain Pen, Ink, and Stationery Reviews:

Top 10 Fountain Pen Reviews of 2014

Ihad a lot of fun doing the year-end roundup last year, so I figured I would do it again. Some pens have maintained their presence in the top 10 list and with good reason. Each of these posts got the most page views out of all of the posts I’ve made this year. The blog has continued to grow, and there were twice...

Allotment Update: Digging A Bean Trench

A “How To” video on digging a bean trench for the summer. The trench will help keep my runner beans from drying out in the summer and provide them with nutrients.

Allotment Video Update 17th January 2015

A cold start on the plot with frozen padlocks.

I’ve also created a 2015 Allotment album on Google+ so that I can post all my 2015 allotment photos to one place. Here’s a link

The Big Allotment Challenge Series Two: Quick Review

I was fairly unimpressed with series one when it was first shown last year, but thought I would see if there was any improvement with series two.

I waited a few days to watch the first episode of series two, watching on iPlayer, rather than live on the series’ newly promoted slot on Friday night from its previous slot on Tuesdays.

Sadly, although I thought there was improvement on series one, it’s still not the show for me. Too much about the competition element, instead of the actual growing....

2014 Review and a Look Ahead

I don’t tend to do review of the year posts each year, sometimes I’ll take a theme and just cover that, other times I won’t bother at all. The latter is more often the norm. 2014 however has been a “bit of a year” for me. So I thought I’d just write out a few highlights and one or two low bits too for good measure.

Work

I’d say that the year as a whole has been backdropped by work-life balance, with the balance being unevenly tilted towards work. I’ve had to reapply for my job as part of a rest...

Allotment Video Update 6th December 2014

It was a frosty start to this morning, with the temperature down to -4 Celsius. Given the weather and my work commitments over the last few weeks this is the first proper visit I’ve made to the allotment, beyond checking that everything is in order. I’d laid down some tarpaulin a few weeks ago when it was so wet in order to keep a patch dry to allow me to start the winter dig. Here’s a video update from this morning.

I also took a few pictures:

Ruby Pupdate

Ruby is going on 7 months old. Here are a few photos:

Twenty Four And Counting

This is my fourth year of undertaking GoodReads Reading Challenge. Each year I’ve set out to read a certain number of books in the year. Each year I’ve read less than the previous year. This year my target is at an all time low of 30 books, and apparently I’m about two books behind. I hope to catch up, for although this is a somewhat artificial challenge (I can revise my target up or down if I choose), I do get a bit of a kick out of see the little badges on my page with the “completed” sash...

My Twenty Minute Rule & My Fifty Page Rule

How often do you start reading a book or watching a movie and you just can’t get into the story / plot. This has happened to me more times than I can remember, and over the years I’ve developed a couple of simple guides to give myself an out if I need one.

Simply if I’m not getting into a book within the first 50 pages or the first 20 minutes of a film, I’ll give it a miss. It’s not hard and fast, sometimes I’ll read a few more pages or watch a few more minutes, but I find I don’t often spend...

Going Dutch

I’ve been in The Netherlands for a few days for work. Normally these trips are a flash in the pan and I never get to see any of the local area where I’m staying other than the office or wherever the meeting happens to be. This time however I’ve managed to see quite a bit, including on the flight out from the airport.

I’m staying in a fairly basic hotel, comfy and with a giant Aardvark right outside.

An Aardvark that also has a twitter account.

I also managed to get out and see the John Frost Bri...