The Last Great Adventure

I’ve been exploring the excellent Herrington Country Park with my kids lately. It was a working colliery with one of the biggest spoil heaps in Europe. Now it’s a country park with lakes, gardens, meadow, forests, outdoor sculptures and wildlife abounding. Swans are on the nest as we speak.
It’s  great place to walk, cycle, jog, or simply picnic.

Anyway, I was selling off unneeded photographic stuff and making reasonable money. (Up your arse ebay…I did it all on Facebook and used Transpact.com for a fixed fee of £2.99, unlike you greedy robbing bastards!)
Such reasonable money that I got carried away and sold my Canon 5D Mark II lol As most of you know though I’ve had 5 of these cameras now and they’re  a pile of crap so I’m looking at the Nikon D800 and the Canon 5D Mark III. Decisions decisions!

I’ll post when I work out what I’m going to buy.

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After 5 years, Paypal finally sorts my account!!

They gave me £25 for a “Good will” gesture lol £5 a year? Good for them I suppose.

Anyway, glad to have it back, I can start earning off my photos again now! Go here if you want to check out the images I have for sale.

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Last year I agreed to attend a works night out for the first time in years. I met up with my colleagues in the Cooper Rose in Sunderland, and we had the most fantastic night. I met some new staff who I’d not seen before so that was nice, and met some I hadn’t seen for a while.

The chat was good, the beer was flowing, and by about 10 pm my feet would not stay still, so I had to get up and dance. Now, I can’t dance, I probably look like a victim of some awful disease but….I LOVE dancing! And I dance to anything, be it popsicle mush, old house, rave or a nice ballad, I can dance to it. Mind you I only have 4 moves but I know how to mix and match them well

So, some time ago I agreed to go to the works meet tonight too, in the same venue. I’m back in the north east anyway seeing friends and family, so may as well catch up with my colleagues who I rarely see. I’ve even bought some new jeans. Only cos it was pay day yesterday  So have a lovely weekend all of you and I’m off to do something with my hair….

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Last August I got my new Trojan batteries, you might have read about it here. It’s coming toward the end of April now so I thought I’d give an update on them.

Trojan J185 H-AC monoblock 12v deep cycle battery

When first installed I was told it may take as many as 100 cycles for them to achieve max capacity. A cycle is where the battery is discharged then charged fully again. It’s possible that I am nowhere near my 100 cycles yet. I’ve had them about 9 months, that’s less than 40 weeks, and they will be recharged perhaps 3 times every 2 weeks. So very roughly they may have experienced 60 cycles so far.

At any rate what I can say is that all the other batteries I’ve had have started to deteriorate within weeks of being used. The Trojans don’t seem to have deteriorated at all in 9 months.

I did borrow a Smartgauge off a friend. This little device measures the voltage and current of the batteries and tries to gauge accurately how much ‘life’ is left in them. Life as measured in amp hours (ahrs). I found that the Smartgauge has not even a clue when the battery is fully charged, and inaccurately reports when it is discharged. So it’s now been disconnected. I’m glad I had the chance to borrow one as they cost about £160 new. The only truly reliable method of testing a battery’s state is to use a specific gravity or SG meter, or hydrometer as they’re also known as, about £3 from auto parts stores. I dream of owning an electronic one but they’re about £3,000!!

Anyway, in use, and regular checks with a hydrometer show that these batteries are performing flawlessly. Finally I’ve solved my battery problems and I am a very happy bunny indeed.

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