It’s more like a water mine, it seems to have water year round even though we are at the top of a hill. At the beginning of summer when we moved in the frogs would be making noise all day and night long.
With the dry summer the water level has dropped quite a bit, the tree trunk in the water was quite submerged a while back. The frog have also gone much quieter, though there are still frogs, it seems not as many.
It’s odd how much cleaner it looked when it had more water, I am looking forward to winter and the rains so we can see the level of the water get higher again.
Unfortunately people think it’s ok to dump their rubble etc. here, this was from a recent drop off someone had made, the water is on the edge of a road, I think over time it has eroded the soil away and formed the cliff you see. People back op their trucks or trailers and just dump the stuff over the side.
There are quite a few trees, pine and eucalyptus mostly. We have collected a fair amount of pine cones for starting fires in our fireplace in winter. All from these trees.
My house in the distance, so few neighbours, so little noise, other than the road.
Even more trees, behind me as I took this shot there is more land, again full of trees and it goes on for quite a while. One of the things I enjoy most with this house is the easy access to the forest, just to be able to walk in amongst the trees is really amazing.
I was off for a while just to get things in place and now am back fully to get everything running and start blogging. I have really missed steemit and most news which went on here but now that am back I will try my best to check all those news and update myself to get on to the level of everyone. I wont talk much for today I will continue everything tomorrow have a great day and enjoy your day and your night.
Fifa 2020 game is out so those who wants to play can check it out on origin and download it but those of us who are interested in the game but dont have money to purchase the game will start from the demo and wait for the crack of the game to come out then we will jump on the main one and play. This is an announcement to the gamers so if you know you are a fun of fifa then hurry and get yours
The defeat of Manchester City has made Liverpool lead them with a margin of 5 points. These two teams are the most serious teams to watch out this season because they dont give chance to any small chance they get. They actually make good use of it when they get those chances. Now it will be very difficult for Manchester City to close up the gab but it wont supprise me if they close it early because both teams are really good. And when they close the point that is where we will see the strongest lol. I will end here for today, I will bring you more news tomorrow God willing have a good night stay bless.
Hello everyone, This weekend was not good for Manchester City after losing 3 goals to 2 to the newly graduated team Norwich. It really shocked me when I saw Norwich leading two goals within the first half. So it made me felt like wow why have they sold the match or they are seriously playing the match. But all the same its all good and is football and football is a game of chance so when you get your chance just make good use of it that is all. Thanks for your time have a great day.
She ain’t purdy but she works. Another image heavy post, this after I culled a few!
Let’s jump right into it, gates are up and dogs can now be let loose in the back yard without going into the street, WINNING!
A note on rawl bolts and quality
Also known as sleeve anchor bolts it seems. I bought a box of 10 at the hardware store, on the box it showed you should use a 14mm drill bit when installing them, I did not have one so picked one of those up too.
When installing I noticed they were awful loose in the holes, as if the drill bit was oversized. I managed to mess a few of them up as I tried drilling a smaller hole, eventually I ran short on this fence post, so bought a few loose sleeves from another hardware store. I only needed the sleeves as I still had the bolts that were left over from the ones I destroyed.
Lets take a look at some pictures, first picture you will notice the nut that’s inside the sleeve is almost at the top.
The following hazy photo id of the sleeve I bought loose. See how far down the sleeve it is?
The only deduction I can make is that the box of bolts I bought were really cheap and nasty and undersized. The loose sleeves I bought went in snug with the 14mm hole and I could feel they were tightening up much sooner and had more bite.
OK, boring I know…
Miranda do Corvo on fire
There was a fire near us and for some time there were a fleet of firefighting planes going overhead. Every so often the five (yes 5!!) planes would fly overhead as they picked up more water to dump on the fires.
I only managed to get two in one shot though.
Moving the fence
The length of fence was attached to a pole, which by this point was hanging on for dear life as Roxy, the bigger dog had been digging a hole right by it.
I had attached it with some simple binding wire a while back.
The bush had managed to go through the fence, so getting it loose ended up being more of a struggle than I expected.
Eventually I got it loose and boy was I relieved that it was long enough to make it to the post I had installed. After much pulling and dragging and stretching I had figured out where I wanted to anchor it.
I had explained in my last post, but heres a picture, showing how I clamp the fence to the wood using screws and the roofing washers.
Close up view shows a bit more, I install the screws in such a way that the trap the fence, so pulling it up, or down, left or right won’t free it up.
Because I want to be absolutely sure you get it, here a photo of the screw in the washer pre-installation 😉
French drain access hole
After getting the fence connected to the post, I cleaned off some of the sand and muck from the cement, should have done that first!
I actually found the cover that would be used to pump out the ‘stuff’ from the drain if it gets full. I had been wondering where it was and found it quite by chance.
I pulled the fence to once side to clear it, so that if we needed to get it emptied, the fence would not be in the way.
Day over, it rained
It had been threatening for a while, so I decided to pack up before my tools got rained on and got soaked.
As I took this photo, after having just finished packing everything away it started to drizzle. I had made it just in time!
I took a break on the terrace and tried to get a photo of the rain, but it’s lost in this photo. Whilst I was a bit disappointed that I had not finished I was thankful that the rain would at least be helping the firefighters a bit in their task.
I heard from my wife the next day that it seemed the rain was what helped the firefighters get the blaze under control, so all good in the end.
I was sitting outside and was about to start writing this when the rain subsided, I decided to take my chance as I could get away with fewer tools in case it rained again.
Support needed
I anchored the fence into the cement slab, so that it would stay out of the way.
I used a simple plastic wall plug here as it is not under much strain.
The fence had enough tension on it to pull the post away from the gate, so much so that there was a very noticeable gap. I did not like the look of that so grabbed a length of wood we had dragged in from the forest next door and made it work as lateral support for the fence post.
Final bits to do were to add some cross bracing on the gate, it was still quite flimsy. I too two lengths of brandering that I had taken off of the terrace roof and put one on each side of the gate, so that they crossed over in the middle. The wood that the gate is made up of is quite soft, so I added metal washers to the screw head, so that it would tighten up against the wood and not get pulled all the way through.
An example of how the wood had already split, the washers worked well enough even on such a damaged piece.
Finally I cut a hole in the fence by each of the latches, so that you can open it easily no matter which side of the gate you are. This gate was done.
As I was packing up I thought I should add a lateral brace on the front gate too, so did that as quick as I could as it was about to rain again. It does not look too bad from far.
So my gates are up, I bought a few rawl bolts, screws and additional latches. Pretty much everything else was re-used from the original gates or from other stuff I had salvaged.
Not pretty but definitely functional, have you managed to reuse something lately?
Yesterday was Chelsea’s game against Wolverhampton. Who would have ever thought Chelsea could win that game with a margin of three goals. It was unbelievable especially with the injury crisis within the Chelsea football club team.
It was a victory well deserved for the blues. They played really well. Their attacker was well proficient in front of goal and that gave them the edge to score as many as five goals in a single match against a side that haven’t lost a match at home for over eight months now. I think it is a good thing that the Chelsea manager decided to switch his formation from 4-2-3-1 to 3-4-3. However, I think Frank Lampard still need to work a lot on the defense side to avoid conceding too much goals.
I think the compactness of a playing as a team is better than other previous matches but believe they can do better with that. I think if the team can learn to be compact while playing, then that would really go a long way to help solve the issue of conceding too much goals. In general, the game a was an interesting one and the Chelsea team performed excellently and it was a victory well deserved for them.
Sine, I think, I started earning my own money, I have had an issue with sweet things. Candy, chips, ice-cream etc. I always had a sweet tooth but my parents did not really keep much around the house so as a kid it was not such an issue.
Over the years my wife has pointed it out numerous times though, a few years back she decided to change her eating habits, for the sake of her health and wellbeing. She tried to get me onboard too, knowing that, while it did not show, I was not eating healthy and I was becoming less and less active.
She wanted support as it would be harder for her to change if I kept on my merry way. I agreed in principle.
In reality I struggled immensely. I finally started realising what a problem it was.
Still nothing changed, only last year did I make a concerted effort to cut sugar out completely. It was eye opening how difficult it was and how much I craved any snack. My wife has been super supportive, knowing I was struggling, she bought 70 or 75% cocoa chocolate, which I did not enjoy at all. I craved the sweetness of milk chocolate and candies and biscuits even.
Soon enough I fell back into the trap of snacking multiple times a day, then eating even more after dinner.
My wife set an ultimatum (another one, she has tried more than once). She was to eat more healthy and I had to join her, starting in September. The first week we both lapsed, but last week we both faired much better.
I went a week with no sugar, it did not even seem that hard, till my wife brought home a treat for me, when I saw it I could feel my mouth watering. I ate it and immediately after felt I needed more.
This weekend so far I have had pancakes for breakfast, a pastry at coffee with my wife and some ice-cream. While it is less than any comparative Saturday, I feel I need to stay away from it completely or I will be tempted to go back to my old ways.
So here we go again, I am going to try get through another week with no sugar or processed snacks.
I feel as I have been one of the most critical steemians regarding the possible negative consequences concerning the deployment of the HF21 but now I have to say that I like what I see, despite the evident reduction on the number of posts we can see in our FEED page.
The truth is that, putting aside the controversy of what I think is a very drastic Rewarding Algorithm which penalizes posts that do not reach a certain threshold of upvotes (see chart below), the downvote solution is really fixing the blockchain from abusers and also the number of spamming posts has dramatically reduced as well.
Threshold is currently at $3, below you are getting less in author and curation rewards
It’s a fact that big stakeholders are doing now greatly but also is a fact that if you are a consistent steemian I am sure you have benefitted as well for the whole update.
Take my example, now that we are more or less close to the equator of the month.
Before HF21, I used to get 8 SP a week in Curation while in Author Rewards the value was around 60 SP a week…
Today, without changing my overall posting and upvoting behaviour, things are going much better in overall for me.
My curation rewards have increased to around 15 SP a week, which is almost double the old rewards.
My Author Rewards are dancing around 62 SP a week as well so, no reduction on this aspect or even getting a little more than before…
To tell you the truth, I don’t know how I managed to sustain those Author Rewards… I have powered up around 700 STEEM lately but this cannot explain this good value. Certainly, the huge reduction of the number of posts published has something to do with this. There are less content to be discovered and so there are a higher likelihood to be nicely upvoted by bigger stakeholders. Also, the downvoting effect is returning STEEM to the rewarding pool so, if you are an active steemian you have more chances to be rewarded too.
Redistribution of power have not finished yet
The market is hitting STEEM and the rest of the altcoins very hardly, that’s for sure. We have less activity at the blockchain not only due to the effects of the past HF but also because the permanent decay of the STEEM price.
But, you know, I am totally sure now that the problem is not STEEM. The problem is the situation of the whole market itself which is cyclic.
It’s really painful to see day after day how we loss price…but also it is a fact that as soon as we get out from the bears, not only BITCOIN but the whole cryptosphere will resume the uptrend…
…and then, it will be very difficult for everyone to “build” the STEEM POWER you need in order to take profit of the uptrend conditions of the market. I am sure many will then try to buy STEEM again at any price and so, we will have another SUPER FUD PUMP there.
The best we can do now is…
To keep posting, publishing your thoughts, amazing ideas, photos and creations
Try to do your best to engage with the audience. Work on your network. Buy some BEER token and provide them to your best commenters and followers for instance.
Build your STEEM POWER as much as “morally” possible… I am buying small quantities every now and then at the lowest prices we have seen during the last 2 years. Remember 50 Euros = 350 STEEM at BITVAVO , PEANUTS!!!! I have bought the same quantity at more than double that price 1 year ago!!!
Invest on TRIBES that you like in a wisely manner. For instance, If you are a sport lover, use #sportstalk as a tag, check the trend page and your wallet account at https://www.sportstalksocial.com/ , use the voter (@sportsvoter) there in order to “burn” SPORTS token there and obtain some STEEM in your sport related posts… The same for other tribes, LEO, PALNET, NEOXIAN…all of them are here to help us.
Share your best posts at other social media as Tweeter, FB and the like
These are only a few things you can do, I am sure there are many things and ways to keep growing at the STEEM blockchain but the most important is always related with your level of ENGAGEMENT.
Hello everyone, Today is another day for sports news. When the Fifa awards was ongoing a question was thrown to CR7 where he addressed it nicely so as Messi was also given the same question And he also answered it nicely. Messi said he will accept a dinner request from Cristiano Ronaldo if only he sent it. But he is also bot sure if the request will come off because both players has their differences which might not make them meet or have the dinner together but it turns to happen he will accept that and go with Cristiano Ronaldo. This has cleared the point of this Rivalry between these two players because people taught that it was personal but it now turns out that it is not but is a healthy Rivalry. The Rivalry comes only in football they dont take it off pitch. Thanks for your time for reading have a great day.
