Today at work, one of the neaby coaching groups was set some excellent Brain Teaser activities that really got them and in fact me and my coaching group thinking.  Below is one of them that I have to confess I could not work out.

So what is it all about then?  There are 4 men as you can see above all wearing either a white or dark hat.  The men know that two of them are wearing a white hat and two of them are wearing a dark hat.  They are all facing the way they are in the picture above and cannot move, neither can they talk to each other.  The rectangle in the picture is a wall.  Underneath them is water which is rising and will eventually drown them (don’t ask why!).  The only way to stop the water is for one of the men to shout out which colour of hat they are wearing.  Only one person can shout out the colour of the hat they are wearing and only once can one person shout, or they will drown.  They have 10 minutes.  Which person shouts out the colour they are wearing and how do they know they are correct?

With the garage conversion being completed the other day it meant that it was time to sort out Harry’s room as the gym stuff had then moved downstairs.  It was real fun getting everything set up, including the cot, sofa and even the wall stickers.

It is amazing how much stuff (bedding etc.) actually goes onto a cot!  I have to say though that once the cot was ready it looked really snug.  In fact I could have just got in that cot and had a little sleep.  After that came the wall stickers.  Down in Devon the other weekend we came across a quaint little shop in Bideford where we found some excellent decorative wall stickers.  They had allsorts but we settled on the dinosaur ones which were really cool.  Therefore yesterday evening I constructed my collage of dinosaurs on the wall about the cot.  I have to say they look really cool!  Just hope they don’t scare Harry too much!

So I think that are now ready for Harry’s arrival – if you can every be ready!  She is 32 and a half weeks at the moment so he could come very soon.  I have my money on between Christmas and New Year.

It has taken a while and a lot of organising from my wife but finally we now have a wonderful garage conversion which has created a home gym room and also a lovely larger dining room.

Yesterday was the ‘icing on the cake’ as the carpet fitters came and fit the carpet in the gym.  The laminate was already down and the painting already completed.  It is amazing the extra space and room that the new rooms give to the house.  It just feels bigger all over.  OK, we have lost a garage but we have gained two great living spaces.  Highly recommended to anyone considering this.

A wrote last week about the home networking of my house and the addition of hard wired connections into the new garage conversion.  Well over the last couple of days we have been trying to get it working and finally we have managed it.

It has been causing tremendous problems as it would simply not work.  Everything seemed to going fine, the cables were laid and then plugs put on one end of all four cables that were going into the router and then face plates on the opposite end to provide a socket on the wall.  However when a patch lead was plugged in and then into a computer nothing.

So we tried just putting as plug on the end of the wire coming out of the wall were the face plate would go on and it worked.  Therefore it was clear that it was the face plate connection.  I am not an expert on this but the plugs going into the router where wired as type B (the norm).  The faceplates were also wired type B and then a B to B patch lead to the computer.  This provides a ’straight through’ connection but it wouldn’t work.  Therefore we did the face plates as type A crossing over the connection and then tried a straight through patch cable.  Still nothing!  Finally trying a cross over patch cable works, which makes sense as the connection is now crossed over twice.

Wierd but we at least have it working apart from the dining room port which we can only assume has a fault in the wire.

Well it seems as though the promise of a post about the coat that I purchased has got you all on the end of your seats so here goes to put you out of your misery!

I have been needing a winter coat for around 3 years now and never ended up buying one.  Well when down in Devon we came across the Tog 24 shop, which for those not in the know is an outdoor clothing brand.  I spotted a nice jacket that I liked and therefore decided to make a purchase after trying it on.

When I got to the till the assistant started going on about iPods and I was wondering for a minute what he was on about as this was a coat!  Then he showed me the sleeve and it turns out that the jacket has built in iPod controls!  Therefore  you can plug you iPod into the pockets wire and then control your iPod on the sleeve controls.  For a techy geek like me I thought this was cool!  Take a look below:

Yesterday we made the long journey south to the beautiful county of Devon in the south of England.  In many ways it is like going back in time as [apparently] Devon is about ten years behind everyone else!  We went to visit some friends and have a general relax.

The journey down was a long one (280 miles to be precise) but we made it in good time at a fraction short of 4 hours.  This was the only time that I have been down south were I have not hit terrible traffic.  Actually the journey was trouble free and we went past the sights on that place were all the cars are stored in the UK (off the M5) and other sites of interest on the way down such as Cheddar gorge.  We arrived in the lovely small town of Westward Ho! at about 1015 at night, ready for a brew!.  Westward Ho! is the only place in the UK that has an exclamation mark in the title.

So today we decided to venture out and take a look at Devon itself.  We started by driving to the small town of Bideford, where we went into the Atlantic Shopping Park.  This was a small centre with some shops, mainly outdoor shops and the odd one that is familiar to us all.  It was here that I purchased a wonderful, yet practical outdoor jacket with an added twist, which I will write about in my next post.

We wandered around the town taking a look at all the little shops and that and even made a few purchases.  In fact by this point I had already spent around £140 which was becoming an expensive shopping session for me. We also got the chance to see the sea and the river estuary were Bideford lies, including all the boats and fishing vessels that are parked on the towns quayside.

It must have been around 1300 when we all felt our tummies rumbling and therefore headed for the nearest coffee shop to be watered and fed.  Omlette and chips did the job for me with a cup of tea (for some reason, as I don’t normally fancy tea) to wash it all down with.  The we nipped back to a shop tp purchase some wall stickers in order to decorate Harry’s room before leaving for the beach.

It was windy at the beach but suprisingly warm actually.  The beach was beautiful, even in the murky depths of the November autumn and there were a number of surfers trying their luck on the somewhat small waves.  In fact surfer, canoeist general swimmer it didn’t matter they were out to try it.  I have to say that it looked absolutely freezing, but our knowledgeable hosts for the weekend informed us that actually this is the warmest time of the year for going in the see.  There was the countries oldest links course on the sea front (Royal North Devon Golf Club) where the golfers play alongside the sheep!

After seeing the beach, my pregnant wife simply needed a site down and so we retired to our accommodation for the rest of the evening.  Tomorrow we have the long journey home, which I am not looking forward to but [Westward] hey ho!

With the garage conversion in full swing now it was time over the weekend and today to put the first fix electrics and plumbing into place.  I was surpirsed how easy the plumbing part was actually.

It took about 1.5 hours to add an additional radiator to the new garage conversion.  It surpirsed me how easy and fast it was really.  The first part was to saw through the floor upstairs (Helen had a worried look on at this stage!) in order to get to the existing pipe work.  Then all that was done was to tee of the existing pipe into that room and then send the new pipe through the floor into the new room.  All they had to do was put a small wole in the plasterboard which will be covered up when the plasterer comes on Thursday.  With these plastic pipes it really seems quite easy.