The general blog area for the site. Articles which do not fall into a specific category will appear here.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
A few weeks ago we took a drive up the mountain. It was a sunny day and pretty warm as usual here in Fundão when we set off. By the time we'd reached the summit things were quite different. No snow of course as the Summer was still with us but much chillier, at least 10 degrees lower. Still, not a problem for a Northerner and even though I took my fleece jacket it wasn't needed.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
After a few aborted attempts to re-utilise the Dell server I came to the conclusion that I don't really need a big, beefy server roaring away in the spare bedroom, sucking up lots of energy and producing even more heat. As a stopgap the Raspberry Pi was just about coping with the workload but is a little bit under-powered for my needs and to add enough storage for all my videos and music requires an external disk anyway.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
After a fortnight living out of a suitcase in a single hotel room, relying on friends or public 'transport' to get around, and combined with the unpleasant environment of unruly thugs and the saddening number of rough sleepers, I am really happy to be back. Yes, it was great to meet up with old friends.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Sadly, my server has succumbed to the heat here in Portugal. Perhaps hiding it under the bed in the spare room was not such a good idea. Anyway, one of the disk drives has failed and the mirror copy is also suspect so I spent a long time making yet another copy of the critical (irreplaceable) data to a spare disk.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Added photo's from this year's holiday to the photo album app. Janet and I took a two week break in the Algarve near Alvor. The hotel (Pestana at Praia dos Três Irmãos) was rather good, very clean and accommodating.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Ironically, here we are in early June, in central Portugal where the weather is a good few degrees cooler than it is in Oslo or Copenhagen. There is even still evidence of snow on the top of the mountain. It's not cold here but the mostly cloudy sky and regular rain showers is making things looks very familiar. We might as well be back in Macclesfield.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
It's been a while since the last post. We've been working most weekends at the apartment of a friend in a village near Alem do Rio in the North towards Porto. The place has been gutted and we have been helping with the re-decoration and building Ikea furniture.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Thank's to another local UK ex-pat who we met at the Portuguese course I finally had some proper work to do earlier this week. Ok, so it was only cutting up some branches for firewood but I got to work outside, do a bit of exercise and get some fresh air.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
It's been a while since the last update but things have got a bit more interesting recently. Last weekend I had a pleasant train ride to Vila Nova de Guia, all 5½ hours of it. Janet had been working at their office during the week so we eventually met up and visited a local restaurant for a feed. The hotel is 40 minutes walk, up a steep hill on a clammy Spring evening.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Winter is now well and truly (probably) over. Sunshine from dawn through to late afternoon when the clouds bubble up and then warm through the night. Hot like a hot Summer day in the UK and we're just getting to the end of April.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
The weather has really picked up in the past few days, lots of sun and a good breeze from the South is making the place feel really pleasant.
Had an enjoyable train ride from Fundão to Lisboa on Friday afternoon to meet Janet from work.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
It really is feeling more and more like home. After a decent, though cold, day yesterday we're back to the rain and more rain predicted for the next few days.
Apparently it has been the coldest and wettest March on record. During our good walk last weekend we went past some of the damage done to the forest by the fires last year and also damage caused by the torrential rain over the past month or so.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
OK, that's the end of our six months language course Portuguese Para Todos It has been really enjoyable although difficult at many times.
The final test was surprisingly easy compared to the others but composition part of the test was embarrassingly frustrating; it's is very difficult to make up something to write and even harder to construct it in Portuguese. We have to learn how to think Portuguese and not English.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Now I've transcoded and added the entire MMC Big Band set from Jean's birthday gig. Find it here.
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- Written by: Rick Nason
Latest picture of the Serra de Estrela taken from the bedroom window today.