Strawberry Fields

We really needed to escape the confines of the house and today made a short trip north to one of the local “pick your own” strawberry farms. 

The farm is only open to the public on the weekends and the way it works is you purchase a cardboard box for $7 which you then fill with strawberries.  Both Jan and I noticed the majority of the people picking were families of Asian origin.  Apparently Jan had the right idea arriving in the morning when there were less pickers and therefore more easily accessible strawberries.  It took less than an hour to fill our two boxes.

On our return Jan cut up ¾ of the berries placing them on trays in our large freezer where they were snap frozen.  The remaining fruit went into two large strawberry tarts.

One of these also went into the freezer whilst the other was cut into eight slices which I shall cheerfully consume during the coming week.

I’ve finished making the mounting bracket for the 4x4 electrics.  All the nuts and bolts were removed and smeared with Sikaflex before being reinstalled.  The idea is this will prevent them from vibrating loose.

The top 20A circuit breaker is the supply to the cabin accessories and the larger 100A breaker is the main.  The relay is for a future LED light bar.  The VSR is on the reverse.  It’s now all wired up and I did a test fit .

You can see the top of the 100A breaker in the bottom left of the photo below.  I have replaced the positive battery terminal with a large brass type that has 3 cable connection points.  One will be for the main cabin accessory feed and the second for the cables to the trailer.  the last is for the power to the electric trailer brake controller (yet to be purchased and fitted).

I’m pleased to report the repairs to the teak table stool have been successful.  Now I need to think about the method for repairing the table. 

The computer media server has been successfully running for several days and I’m rather pleased with it’s reliability.  However it is still early days.  At the moment I’m trialling it simultaneously broadcasting video to the TV and my Tablet.  The computer has sufficient power to simultaneously server 6 – 8 devices.  All the software is in the public domain and therefore there has been no financial cost.  Although I must confess to a certain degree of stress setting up the system.   I was also pleased when I finally managed to make a working computer out of spare parts.  It’s taken several days to get the computer to the point where it would start so I was particularly delighted when the monitor displayed the boot screen.

I’m installing Ubuntu on it and will eventually configure the machine as a MythTV backend box with five TV capture cards.

The last of what I think are good computer parts have been laid out as a breadboard to test if I can make a 3rd computer.  A computer breadboard is just a way of connecting and testing the computer components without a case.

I can get power onto the motherboard and the fans run; but there’s no sign it wants to boot.  This project has gone onto the backburner as I need to do something about the ‘snipe’ I’m getting with the thicknesser.

Hi Ade…… Link to Emby <here>