Digitalquill

I recently blogged a recipe for Posh Beans on Toast, I first cooked it for the in-laws and did not have time to take a photograph, however, I did it again the other nigh for Cheryl and myself and thought I would take a couple of photographs to show what it turns out like. This time I served it with some crispy Bacon on the top, you could even add a fried Quail egg to give something a little extra.

Posh Beans On Toast

We have been having problems with out boiler for some time now, the problems have come to a head with us only have a partly working boiler which does nothing very well at all, giving us lukewarm water and a heating system that continually requires top-ups of water to keep it going.

Although we have long term plans for the kitchen we have put those on hold for the moment due to money grabbing builders who seem to think we are made of money and want a gold lined extension building! We were going to replace the boiler when we did the kitchen but with things as they are we have had to re-think. I will post more about what our plans are regarding the kitchen in the near future.

Currently the boiler is on the kitchen wall, and as we are struggling for space in the kitchen it makes sense to try and fine another location for it. The downstairs toilet seems to be the obvious solution.

The downstairs toilet is very dated and showing its age, however, for not much cost I will be able to replace it and update it, however, in order to get the boiler in as well I will be blocking up the window, which we never use anyway keeping the blind down all the time. This being so it will be a larger job than it should be, something that I will have to do over several weekends. I intend to get the window bricked up next weekend, this will mean having the window out, maybe even the toilet and sink out to give me access.

I will also be taking down the ceiling, firstly because it is artexed and I hate artex and also because I am hoping that I can grab an inch or so to allow extra room for the boiler.

The first problem I have is finding a compact cloakroom suite, maybe even corner basin and corner toilet.

I mentioned in a post on the 22nd January 2009 that I had taken the decision to cover my tenants with the Land Lord Cover from British Gas. at that time I said I would update you as to how it goes, and as promised here is an update.

The monthly payments cover a yearly service and safety certificate for the property, something that is a legal requirements for land lords to have. The first years cover is now over and as such the second services are also now due. It is down to the tenant to book an appointment for the service and the safety certificate update. This has proven to be a failing, not really with the cover it’s self but with  how it actually works in reality. If the tenant does not organise a time then the do not have the safety certificate for which the land lord is legally responsible. As such I believe that it should be the land lords responsibility to tell the tenant when the booking is and if the tenant can not be at the property for that allotted time then the land lord should have access to the property for the service and gas safety certificate to be done.

I have however been very pleased with the service, I have only had reason to call them out for two separate incidents, firstly a boiler which would not stay on and secondly a burst radiator. These where both dealt with swiftly and all under the cover at no extra expense to myself including a new radiator.

All in all I would recommend the service both to private home owners and Land Lords, however if you are a land lord make sure that you manage the process and ensure that you do not take your responsibility for granted.

If you are interested in more information on the British Gas Cover click here

Eva loves cooking, we made some chocolate rice crispy cakes with her yesterday, she loved it, we made way too many so we will have to give some away. All Eva could say was exciting! She had one for her tea and loved it!

Serves: 2

Cooking Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

1×400g tin of Chickpeas
1×400g tin of Tinned tomatoes (chopped)
2-3 bacon rashers thinly chopped
Red Onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
Chopped Coriander
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
1 teaspoon of Sugar
Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Chop the onion and garlic and fry in a small amount of olive oil until soft
2. Add the chopped tomatoes and chick peas straining off any water with the chick peas
3. Add a splash of balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper to taste
4. Add a good helping of chopped coriander
5. Leave to simmer for 10 minutes, add some water if it starts to get too stiff
6. Fry the thinly chopped bacon in another pan until crispy
7. Add the bacon to the beans and simmer for a further 5 minutes
8. Fry or grill some ciabatta bread in olive oil (or drizzle some olive oil over the bread if grilling)
9. Serve the beans over the bread

Well it has been some time since I last posted, during that time allot of water has gone under the bridge. It was back at the end of February last year that I wrote my last blog post on this site. Shameful I know, but I have been battling against Google and others for the length of that time.

This and my other blog Earning From Affiliates was hacked and links to spyware added to the bottom of some of my sites, I assume this was some form of SQL injection attack on a vulnerability in Wordpress.

As soon as I found this problem (hours after it happened) the site was cleaned, repaired and wordpress upgraded to fix the vulnerability, however by that time Google has showing a warning about the sites. No problem, all I should need to do is use the Google Webmaster tools to contact Google and ask them to re-check the site and remove the warnings. No… not that easy at all, emails and messages to Google went without a response. Weeks turned into months and I got fed up with the mess and was about to simply bin the sites when I thoughts I would have one more try and what do you know the warnings were removed and all is now back to normal running.
It has meant that the sites have been without updates for so long that their readers have probably long gone, any ranking in Google or other search engines has been damaged if not set back to zero so I am effectively starting afresh, although I do have the advantage that both sites still have their content, which is all self written unique content.

I have been busy over the last year, I was married in August to the wonderful and beautify Cheryl, her and our Daughter Eva are my life.

I have also been working on other projects, mainly software projects relating to Affiliate marketing, which have been much more successful that I could ever have hoped.

I will post more details about those projects in the coming days, but for now I just wanted to add a note to say I was back and I will be trying to find the time to post regularly and put some effort into these sites.

One of the reasons I have been quite on this blog (and on Earning From Affiliates) is that I have started yet another blog.

On The Allotment blog is a blog about all the activity on my new allotment plot. I have taken the tack of using it to record everything that happens on the plot.

To do this I intend it to be very visual, rather than having lots of words in the blogs, so this weekend I produced my first ever video blogs. I really went to town and produced three in one weekend. Go over to On The Allotment and have a look to see what you think.

I used YouTube and created a channel specifically for the blog. It was very simple to do, I have  Sony HD camera, and was able to upload the files directly from the camera to YouTube in HD format.

Ideally what I need to do is find some software that will allow me to edit those files. I was able to do some simply trimming and joining of the clips using the camera but I really want to do a better job with things like audio balance and putting intro clips and copyright notices onto the clips.

You may also be interested to have a look at Earning From Affiliates where I have just posted a blog post about the marketing of this new blog and how the posting of the Video Blogs and the use of YouTube has had a positive impact on the numbers of hits to the blog.

We put Eva to bed at 1:30 as normal today, and after a little protesting she went off to sleep. at 3:00 I went to get her up and found the following scene! She had pulled off the boarder. She always does love looking at it and picking at it, but she had pulled the while lot off the wall.

Daddy has another job to add to his list!

Eva Pulls Off the Wall Paper - Another Job For Daddy!

I am currently looking at developing a wordpress plug-in, really for nothing more than my own interest. I have an idea for a plugin that monitors keyword density, which would therefore be a useful tool in SEO. The formula for working this out is relatively simple, however having never attempted creating a plug-in I really have no idea where to start… google and some tutorials I guess!

Having just posted a good write-up of Virtualbox I am having a strange problem with my Ubuntu Desktop. I decided to update it all, so ran the ‘apt-get update’ which was fine, but when I ran an ‘apt-get upgrade’ it decided it needed to download 150mb or updates. This was expected so I allowed to to go and get them, which was when the problems started.

The whole PC ground to a halt, task manager showed Virtualbox was using 100% of the CPU constantly.

I managed to get back onto the Virtualbox and cancel the upgrade which then released the CPU. However after repeating the upgrade the same thing happened.

Doing the same on the Virtual Debian works fine…

Very strange… Anyone else had any similar problems?