You can suck a futon mattress down for packing

One of my most popular blog posts concerns shrinking a memory foam mattress down in size by creating a massive vacuum bag from a mattress protector bag.

I've done this several times now and it works a treat.

Recently I had to pack and store a futon mattress. So I thought I would try the same trick. I didn't even bother to create a valve, but simply taped up most of one end of the bag, and then Placed the vacuum cleaner through the remaining small hole into the back. So simple, so effective.

Within a few minutes the mattress was about half the size and I taped it up using gaffer tape and parcel tape (some bits of gaffer snapped because my seal wasn't so good).

Here's photographic proof :)

Olympics 2012 Opening Ceremony in Danny Boyle's own words

If you download the Olympic 2012 Opening Ceremony album - "Isles of Wonder" - there is a foreword by Danny Boyle that explains the concept of the opening ceremony. I thought it was very helpful in understanding what the point of his spectacular was - and underlines, in my opinion, just how successful it was; here it is:

At some point in their histories, most nations experiencea revolution that changes everything about them. The United Kingdom had a revolution that changed the whole of human existence. In 1709 Abraham Darby smelted iron in a blast furnace, using coke. And so began the IndustrialRevolution. Out of Abraham’s Shropshire furnace flowed molten metal. Out of his genius flowed the mills, looms, engines, weapons, railways, ships, cities, conflicts and prosperity that built the world we live in.It was a revolution that filled the world with noise,smoke, prosperity, pain and possibility.

In November 1990 another Briton sparked another revolution – equally far-reaching – a revolution we’restill living through. Tim Berners - Lee invented the World Wide Web, and built the world’s first website. He took no money for his invention. This, he said, is for everyone.

Just like the Industrial Revolution, the digital revolution is turning the world upside down, taking music, books,shopping, conversation, information to places that they never went before.

But flickering in the smoke and noise and excitement, you can sometimes glimpse a single golden thread of purpose – the idea of Jerusalem – of the better world, the world of real freedom and true equality, a world that can be built through the prosperity of industry, through the caring nation that built the welfare state, through the joyous energy of popular culture, through the dream of universal communication. A belief that we can build Jerusalem.

And that it will be for everyone.

Danny Boyle

Artistic Director

London 2012 Olympic Games

Opening Ceremony

Recipe for awesome Pea and Ham soup

I'm afraid I tend to cook by instinct and taste, so what I don't have is a completely prescriptive recipe measured to the nearest gramme. ☺ If you need to follow a recipe like that, you need to look elsewhere. Otherwise, do what I do, and taste what you're making and judge what to use as you go along.

With that out the way, here's some of the best Pea and Ham soup you'll ever make.

Ingredients

• Dried Peas - soaked (the quick variety usually take about two hours to soak)
• Onions - about the same amount as you have peas
• Turmeric - a couple of teaspoons - optional if you don't have it
• Cumin seeds - again, optional - but if you have them, a teaspoon or so
• Coriander leaf - fresh or dried - fresh is obviously best; add enough to make a difference but not to overpower
• Chilli powder - as much or as little as you like
• Black pepper - lots
• Garlic - loads - at least several bulbs, maybe double
• A teaspoon or two of English mustard
• Ham, bacon or lardons; smoked or unsmoked whichever you like about 1 Quarter the amount of peas
• Marigold swiss vegetable bouillon stock powder - seriously, this is the best stock you can get, use it in everything
• Olive oil

Method

Prepare the peas according to the packet (this usually means soak and rinse for a few hours).

Dice onions into small cubes if you haven't bought them pre-diced. Warm the pot with a few spoons of oil olive oil and start sauteing the onions. Also add the garlic, ham, and turmeric. Keep stirring and sauteing to start caramelising the onions. 

After about 5 minutes of good sizzling, add everything else (except the stock powder) and stir is together. I usually keep this going on a the heat for a minute or two before then adding boiling water. 

Reduce to a simmer and keep stirring. Stir in a few spoons of stock powder. Keep tasting and adding as required. Remember that over time and as it cools the soup will taste more salty, so don't go too mad, just keep tasting. But make sure you add enough. Leave to simmer for 30 - 40 minutes, but keep checking on it and tasting. Add more pepper if needed. 

Serving

Usually I part blend mine with a hand blender, just to remove any chunks (especially if you used lardons). Served, of course, with home made chunks of ciabatta bread.

Delish. 

Please forgive me - it's fossil fuel...

This household is about to buy a new car, a supermini, and it won't be electric and it won't be a hybrid.

Before you yell, no-one is sadder about this than me.

As an early adopter and general planet-hugger, I already switched to a diesel car with double the MPG (and diesel particulate filter) a few years ago. So, the prospect of a car that is cleaner still and costs about 90% less per mile is a very tantalising idea. [By the way, I won't even enter a debate on the stats and benefits of electric - if you want a decent argument on the topic, follow Bobby Llewelyn on twitter or read his blog - he knows his stuff.] 

So, firstly, the car is not for me, but my better half; so ultimately it's her decision and has to fit her needs. I will only drive it occasionally. (Unless, perhaps, she was getting a car that was faster than mine, in which case I might hanker after it all the time :-) But she's not.)

Secondly, electric cars currently just don't suit our needs. A lot of criticism comes the way of the current breed of electric cars, most centred around range, which is typically 100 - 140 miles on a charge. For many, many people who are based in towns and doing lots of short trips and school runs, this type of vehicle would surely meet their needs. However, it just so happens that our life doesn't follow that pattern - in fact we both have long distance journeys to do as our main journeys (so not only can we not share one car, but we need two). Turns out those journeys are beyond the distance of the average electric range and we also don't have the necessary charging means at the other end. I think an electric car would be brilliant to have - but we need a simpler life. (I reckon that's true regardless.)

So, much as I believe that electric cars represent a realistic future and can deliver some cracking performance, the current range limitation rules them out of our driving pattern for the time-being. Next time round might be a possibility though.

Now, what would be a good alternative for our lifestyle is a hybrid car, which combines fossil fuel and electric power to deliver more MPG and extended range when there is no battery power. Volvo, for example, have just announced an S60 saloon than can deliver about 125mpg and drive 1000 miles on a tank. Awesome. Truly Awesome.

The issue with this breed of cars basically comes down to cost and choice. There are not that many models available at the moment and they are also beyond our current target budget (and form factor) of a super-mini. I can pretty much guarantee that if Skoda produced a hybrid Fabia at Skoda prices, it would be a no-brainer purchase.

But they don't. No-one does. 

So, that leaves us going for a conventional fossil burner. Another requirement is to have an automatic, which also limits the choice and price - and in the end the best all-round value vehicle we have found is the Skoda Fabia with 7 Speed DSG auto box (a beautiful piece of equipment in its own right, complete with "flappy paddles" as the girls on Top Gear would say). Better still, the auto is actually more economical than the equivalent manual! I am confident it will be a smooth and economical drive, as I have the 6 speed DSG on my Octavia and it's nothing short of fantastic. These cars must be popular as the waiting list is currently 4 - 5 months.

Once again, it will be a step change in economy and lower emissions compared to the car it is replacing - so it's all in the right direction. I hope you feel forgiving. 

Fixing the desk-spaghetti

This weekend I decided to tackle the mounting cable problem on my desk. Which was somewhat serendiptous, as at the moment I'm also involved in a project at work about "workplace transformation" that also happens to include small desks over-run with cables.

The problem arose because I had a "laptop refresh" at work from a Dell to an HP and consequently could not use my existing docking station. (Over the years I have come to love the simplicity and tidiness a docking station provides, especially at home.)  The company does not provide docking stations, but I was fortunate that my last work and personal laptops were the same model, so I had my own dock.

Anyway - the cable problem was getting out of control with power cable, monitor cable, network cable, USB printer cable, USB wireless keyboard adapter, mouse cable, microphone cable (for VOIP calls), USB webcam cable, and 2 x audio cables - one for my TV/Monitor and one for the cinema system. Practically every slot on the PC was used up, and unlike the old Dell, the ports on the HP Elitebook are spread round 3 sides of the machine, so it's all exceedingly messy when it's all wired up.

Thankfully my desk is a home-made affair: a slab of board strung between two walls mounted on batons. I'm no DIY expert, but this setup has done me proud since 2003. So, there is no problem drilling it, making holes in it, or generally sticking things to it. It already has several holes to take cables from the top to the underside; and also has plenty of plastic trunking already screwed underneath along the back to keep cables tidy. I even have a small cisco network switch mounted to the underside to provide me with four network ports. 

However, so far I have not had any trunking on top of the desk, because I've not had that many cables needing to trail across it. That's changed with the new laptop, as well as the addition of docks for my blackberry and iPhone. 

The piece de resistance in sorting all my required cables out on top of the desk is some trunking I have used many times in my recording studio from studio-spares. 

This trunking comes in different sizes, but the great thing is you can stick it down with the built in double sided pad, or screw it down. You can cut it to size and it is very easy to insert and remove cables even in situ. I mounted some of this along my desk edges (side and back) and also from front to back underneath, so that I could bring audio cables out to the audio ports on the PC. It has made a huge difference. 

My other trick was to mount a USB hub on the wall (just using "no more nails" double sided tape) behind my TV/Monitor, which is also wall mounted. This means only one cable running to a USB port on the laptop, back to the hub. Then all the devices are plugged into that, such as printer. All these cables are almost totally concealed now. Result.  

How to suck a mattress down to size

AN UPDATED NOTE: quite a few readers have contacted via the comments with questions about their own situation - will it work with this mattress so-and-so? Am I doing it right?  Why can't I get my back to shrink?  etc. etc. PLEASE NOTE - if you want to ask a question, please contact me via the contact form rather than post a comment, as these go unseen, and there is no way for me to reply to them. 

This article was written for memory foam mattresses. If you are trying it with a sprung mattress, I suspect it won't work. (But it does work with a futon! ) If you want to buy the items used, just try eBay. I did!

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I recently had the challenge of transporting a king size memory foam mattress. The choices seemed to be hire a van (or removal company) or somehow ram it into the Skoda Octavia in the hope it would bend and fit. I wasn’t over-keen on that option as it would mean leaving little room for anything else in the car.

Rewind and little, and the mattress originally came rolled up in a vacuum packed bag and box (which expanded with great amusement when sliced open). Could I therefore repeat this feat of wizardy and reverse the great unfolding? Well, I do like a challenge, especially when science is on my side.

I was inspired by those “vac pac” bags you can get that: you suck the air from a sealed polythene bag with your favourite dysonomatic and compress the contents down to an n-th their size. Seemed like a perfect solution but it didn’t take long scouring the internet to discover vac-pacs don’t come in that size (and if they did, they would cost a pretty penny).

So I figured I could make one. I ordered a king size mattress polythene bag, as used by removal companies for protection. That only cost a couple of pounds. Then I ordered a small vac-pac bag off eBay, which also costs under 2 pounds.

I wrapped the mattress in the large bag and sealed with gaffer & parcel tape. I cut out the valve from the vac pac and taped it to the inside of the large bag and sliced a hole to bring the valve through; and again, taped it up as airtight as I could. (see picture)

Then, with the help of my able assistant, we attached a vacuum cleaner and began sucking the air from the mattress bag. It compressed beautifully. We kept going (somewhat startled by how effective it was) until the mattress was thin enough to start rolling; stopping every once in a while to listen for leaks (very obvious hissing!) and sealing them with parcel tape. Then I rolled the mattress and stood it on end. The bag was still a bit leaky so we continued vacuuming while I wrapped it in tape to keep the roll shape intact.

It worked a treat, you can see the mattress loaded in the car and also 24 hours later when it was unpacked, still pretty much roll shaped! Gotta be one of the best 4 quid I have spent!

A paper-free birthday

It wasn't specifically intentional, but my recent birthday was almost paper free. 

Just over a decade ago I decluttered the musical part of my life. That was when I made the decision to rid myself of CDs (well, the visible ones) and go "MP3". Embrace the digital revolution, as it were.  

They were fairly early days then for such a move - a collection of nearly 1000 CDs is pushing 100Gb of storage. iPods of the day were, well barely emerging to be honest - 1Gb first generation MP3 players were flavour of the day. Hard disks were not much better - a 100Gb disk was pretty expensive; I think I paid about £250 for a 160Gb disk.  

Nonetheless, I threw myself into it and a first generation Squeezebox gave me wireless network access to all my music. Finally, I had flexibility to listen to my music anywhere and a wallful of free space in the living room. It re-released the joy in all the music I was never getting round to listen to. 

A decade on and the wheel comes full circle. 

This time it's the books and the bookcase. 

It's full of books, full of love, full of joy, but so much of it is unread. This, for me, is the perfect time to embrace the Amazon Kindle. To squeeze a few hundred books from my private collection onto a paperback sized device and keep going for years to come until I reach about 3000. 

Sure, it's not as splendid to look at, not as charming to flick through with your head tilted sideways over dinner. But it does mean there is a chance I'll do a bit more reading in those precious seconds roaming the country. I might, for example, use the text-to-speech option to listen to my books in the car. 

So, it was for my 40th birthday that I put out the broadcast that Amazon vouchers were the thing to get me. I wouldn't be impresssed with anything tangible or physical. And the response was surprisingly beautiful - and handful of amazon vouchers in my email right there on the morning of my birthday. Even one from my Grandma, who has never been near a computer or the interbookfacewebthingy. (Thanks Mum). I was able to go straight ahead and order my Kindle there and then. Not a jot of paper changed hands.

 

I'd like to think it was a lower carbon footprint birthday, though I can't be totally sure (Amazon might have made the Kindle itself in outer Galactica and shipped it via their hub in Timbuktu). I'm sure it WILL be over the lifetime of the Kindle though - fewer trees will certainly go to the great big Gutenberg in the sky. Though this time round I'm unlikely to stash my bookshelves in the loft - they'll just become a fossil record where they stand.

I wonder what will go digital in another 10 years time?

Not Resolutions, compass setting

I've never really been into New Year's Resolutions, possibly because they seem a bit arbitrary to me. That is to say, if you want to change something or improve your life, one could just get on a do it, rather than rely on some fairly arbitrary calendarisation to provide the excuse to do it. (This is perhaps because I tend to love nature's number patterns, rather than man's)

On the other hand, with some Christmas time off work, there's a natural pause to reflect on life's events past and (hopefully) future. Here are a few of my ponderings - I'll use them to set my "compass" rather than create goals I may subsequently fail at. 

More love, laughter & happiness - this is pretty much the standard one, who doesn't want this? It comes in many many guises. 

Skype my niece more often - it's so easy to miss youngsters growing up, it happens so fast. Must try to do it weekly. Have installed the latest skype App on my iphone which now supports video.

Achieve more with my artistic photography. Through 2010 brushstrokes has been successful and rewarding, now with a 4-figure fan base on facebook, a gallery of hundreds of images, collaborations with other photographers and amateur models. It has also confirmed my deep love of photography, which has also been recognised this year: I was selected by the photography company Tiffen as their 'featured imagemaker'. In 2011 I'll explore options to expand my Scottish photography.

Get the work life balance under control. Where to live, where to work? Burning questions for the average mid-lifer. It's no secret that I feel a draw to my homeland of Scotland - so in the long term I need to figure out how this could potentially happen. My work pattern is not ideal either.

Keep my weight under control. In 2010 I managed to lose of 2 Stones that had crept up on me. I want to keep this off (have succeeded so far) and get more exercise too. 

I think that's a fairly rounded set and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into them.

Driving Tips for Freshers

For students starting university this term, the last thing on their mind is probably driver safety.

But the roads before Fresher’s Week are increasingly filled with students moving their worldly possessions across the country - usually in heavily-laden, small, second-hand cars, raising a number of potential risks; fatigue, view blocking and driving on unfamiliar roads.

The IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists) has a few tips for those travelling to university this week on how to load all their clothes, books, stereos, TV’s and food, and allow students to kick-start their uni life safely.

• Make sure belongings are securely packed - bear in mind, drivers can face prosecution for travelling with an ‘unsecure load’. More importantly, loose objects can be distracting and if the driver needs to brake sharply, unsecured items could fly forward and hit those sitting in front.
• Loading a car until it’s ready to burst can obstruct the already dangerous ‘blind spot’ view further, making the driver more vulnerable when changing lanes. Loads should be made as small as possible and positioned for a clear view. Students should take essentials on the first trip and ask family to bring more when they visit.
• A long drive can lead to fatigue, so drivers should get plenty of rest beforehand. For the journey, comfortable, loose clothing should be worn, the driving seat should be adjusted to a safe upright position and the heating/air-conditioning set to a cool – not cold – temperature, regular breaks should be taken at least every two hours and driving at night should be avoided.
• Having a full car will use more fuel; keep an eye on the fuel level to ensure it doesn’t run out.
• Check tyre pressures before setting off. Tyres on a full and heavy car usually require higher pressure. The right pressures prevent unnecessary wear, excess fuel consumption and potentially dangerous blow outs.
• Finally, driving on unfamiliar roads can be unnerving. Sat navs can help and enable the driver to re-route quickly and relatively easily, however, they can be expensive so it is best to plan the journey before hitting the road. 

University life is fantastic; students should make sure theirs isn’t postponed by keeping their car safely loaded while driving there.

[source IAM]

There are two ways to save money...

There are two ways to save money without undermining what you do: reduce cost and cut wastage.

When I recently invested in my bread machine I thought I was probably doing the former - reducing cost - because I anticipated the price of raw ingredients to be much less than the price of the finished product (a loaf of bread). 

It turns out this assumption is not as starkly true as I had hoped. Sure - there is a lower price point for raw ingredients, but it's more marginal than I had imagined. Silly me for not doing my ROI (return on investment) calculations based on more detailed research/discovery.

Notwithstanding, my bread machine is still saving me loads. How?

Because, for one, it's cutting down wastage. The ability to make my bread "on demand", to make the appropriate quantities I need, AND the ability to store the ingredients until they are needed (rather than keep unused bread until it is mouldy) means my purchasing and consumption patterns are much more closely aligned. I'm putting less into the system, but still getting what I need out. And it's fresher - i.e. better quality. In a sense, my process is more lean.

But there's a third factor two - possibly even the most significant - that is contributing to my results: transformation.

That's right - I have transformed my behaviour. And this is the third way to cut costs - by changing what you do.

In the case of the bread maker, my behaviour has changed so that I eat more bread, more often. This change in behaviour translates into less eating of other, more costly, foodstuffs (such as snacks and ready meals). And that is where the significant savings come. If I can feed myself on bread and soup for a day, it'll cost me, say £2 - when I might otherwise have spent £5 or £10 on alternatives (TV dinners, take aways, or even home-cooked meat & two-veg). The effect of transformation is stark. 

And this is how it applies in business too - technology is an enabler. It may slice a bit of cost off here, enable a slightly more efficient process there - but ultimately, it's by transformation - change in behaviour - that the big bucks can be saved. 

So there you go - the essence of business process transformation in a nutshell - or indeed, a bread machine.