Moments in Time

Not sure why but I thought it would be fun to pull together a few short video clips of famous users of the humble typewriter, in action.

First up is Sir Patrick Moore:

Followed by Woody Allen:

And last but by no means least, Bob Dylan:

Definitely the best summary that I've heard of Donald Trump's US Presidency (2 min 45 sec).

I recently bought a pair of these folding e-Bikes secondhand for us to use from home for short leisure rides, to take in the car to explore further afield and to take away in our motorhome if we were going somewhere where we particularly wanted to explore by bike. We have a 125cc scooter in the motorhome for normal use but occasionally it will be nice to go away with the bikes. I've spent quite bit of time cleaning up these bikes and adjusting them and they really ride very nicely for their intended purpose but I wouldn't want to ride very long distances on them, that's not what they are designed for.

Here are the unfolded bikes, saddles shown in lowest position for storage:

In order to protect the bikes I wanted to find a suitable bag or similar so that when they are in the car or the motorhome they do not get badly scratched and I spent ages trying to find something suitable. I reckoned that there may be others out there going through the same process so I thought I'd just show you how one bag does fit the bill for these particular bikes , in case this helps you if you are in a similar position.

After much deliberation I selected the ROCKBROS Bike Transport Bag with Backpack, the backpack is simply used to store the bag in when not in use but can of course be used for shopping or to transport the folded bag. I wasn't certain the bike would fit but it does and the combination of the Raleigh Stow-E-Way and the ROCKBROS Bike Transport Bag works really well.

Below is the rucksack which has the bike transport bag folded inside:

Below is the bike transport bag when unfolded:

Below is the folded Raleigh Stow-E-Way, I remove the saddle/seatpost before packing, which can go inside the bag:

Below is the Raleigh Stow-E-Way packed into the ROCKBROS Bike Transport Bag:

I'm very happy with this solution as a means of protecting our bikes when in transit in the car or motorhome. I wouldn't want to carry one of these bikes very far, for me the primary advantage of the fold is for easy motorised transport and storage, not easy portability. These are great for nipping to the shops!

Hope that helps!

There is an increasing trend these days for people to pay for things like house insurance, car insurance, maintenance contracts etc. etc. using a twelve monthly payments system to spread the cost of household and other bills. I think, in fact, that this has pretty much become the default option for many people, it is certainly convenient and can take the sting out of household bills.

The problem with these arrangements is that they are essentially credit agreements and as we all know they almost always end up costing a lot more than a one off payment with the difference between the one off payment and the 12x monthly payment going as profit to the credit provider. We may not like this arrangement but that doesn't stop us using it.

In these days of very low interest rates for savers, taking out a credit agreement to pay for these things does not make sense if you can afford to pay the cost up front though I do of course accept that this may not be an option for a lot of people. However, it may be an option for more people than may think this to be the case if you borrow from yourself instead of borrowing from a credit company.

In order to do this you need to have available at least some savings but these savings need be quite modest, just enough to cover the cost of the initial payment. Remember, this IS worth it, depending on your car insurance premium and credit history for example, choosing to pay monthly can add up to an extra 20% on the cost of your insurance over the year.

In today's climate let's say you have managed to put away £1000 and that you have this in a typical savings account, this will on average currently pay 0.09% interest over a year, a terrible £0.90p. In other words any interest you earn on this £1000 is effectively zero and can be ignored.

A far better thing to do when your bill comes in, if you do have a little bit saved up, is to borrow from yourself. Once you have found the best deal for your insurance or whatever, pay it up front from your savings and completely avoid credit charges, arrangement fees etc. This might feel like a difficult thing to do but financially it is a far better approach.

What you then do is divide the cost of the insurance you have paid up front into 12 equal instalments and transfer that monthly sum by standing order into your savings account from your current account. So, at the end of the year you have paid 12 instalments from your current account and your savings account is replenished but you have not paid any credit charges.

This way you are borrowing from yourself and still paying off the premium monthly from your current account but not paying credit company charges etc. This approach can save hundreds of pounds if you are able to apply it to a number of payments which you might have in the past paid by monthly instalments using a credit agreement. It really does pay to use your own savings, however modest, to avoid credit agreements, you just pay yourself back instead of a credit provider.

Like many people as I read about more and more data breaches I become progressively more paranoid about important information being hacked and the security of important systems being compromised. At the same time it is obviously important to have records of logins to important accounts etc. and for these logins to be available to a trusted individual should the worst happen and you become unable to access things yourself.

I was pondering over this kind of thing and how I might come up with a simple convenient solution which was also secure and I decided I needed a system that combined a digital element for convenience with an analogue element for security. I wanted the system to be COMPLETELY IMMUNE from being hacked or the data stolen which is always possible if something is stored wholly digitally. One only has to consider the 2017 Equifax hack where the personal information of 145 million Americans was stolen.

Not long ago I’d read about some Russian and German authorities (there may well be others) using "old-fashioned" methods to protect extremely sensitive data by reverting back to technology long forgotten by many, the humble typewriter.

If something is typed out using analogue technology there is then NO digital record or footprint of it to be stolen by a hacker, I had also been unable to find a method of typing something on a computer and be CERTAIN that no digital trace or footprint remained.

My "solution" is simple. Firstly, on a computer, I designed a simple template including some explanatory text which included a table format list of all the systems I was going to record information about. This included computer systems (email account etc.), bank accounts, telephone passcodes, tablet passcodes, laptop passcodes, you get the idea. The actual login and password information was NOT typed into this computer document, blank spaces were left for this information. This template, containing no confidential information whatsoever, can of course be updated and reprinted at will.

Once printed out it is a simple matter using a typewriter, to enter the sensitive data. The end result is a document which can be used in the event of emergency access being required by a family member or similar. The final and complete document does not exist anywhere in a digital format, it cannot therefore be hacked, forwarded, shared, altered or similarly abused. This was why the Russians and the German authorities reverted in part to analogue devices. If it’s not digital it cannot be hacked, the paper record does not need to be shared and can simply be vaulted in the old-fashioned way.

Where special characters are used in any passwords they are typed out in full and within parentheses, this is because not all currently used password characters are available on a manual typewriter keyboard. For example, the password 1Ab76c*v#2 is shown as shown below, note that the parentheses are NOT themselves password characters.

1Ab76c(asterisk)v(hash)2

Of course the document has to be stored properly but that’s easy and it’s a small price to pay for having an unhackable record of very important information that could be invaluable in the event of the unexpected happening. This arrangement seems to be a reasonable compromise, when things change you don’t have to retype the whole thing, just print out the template with all the systems etc. listed on it and then fill in the new private stuff and don’t forget to shred the old one properly!

Using password managers (eg. LastPass) is a convenient and excellent way to store passwords. However, I would NEVER store ultra sensitive information such as online banking login information in an online system, for me it’s just a step too far. However, the system suggested here I would use to store such information. I would also store the login details for my password manager in this system so that in the event of a disaster my online life could be accessed. The printed/typed document is sealed in a tamper proof pouch to be accessed only in extremis.

I recently started to add some Hive products to my home and so far I've been happy with how things are going. There does however, to me at least, seem to be a yawning gap in the system in that there is no available internal siren. I liken this to having a smoke or carbon monoxide alarm in the house which doesn't actually make any noise but silently detects a problem.

If I'm in the house and I have motion sensors and door sensors installed if anyone gets into the house I want a siren to go off so that I know they are there. In the middle of the night having a (probably muted) notification delivered to my phone is simply not a reliable way of:

a). Letting me do something about the problem or

b). Letting the intruder know that they have been detected and therefore hopefully being deterred.

I don't see the Hive system as being a system that just lets me know something is wrong when I'm 100 miles away, I want it to also let me know when something is wrong in the middle of the night when I'm at home. To not do so completely misses a potentially invaluable opportunity for the system to help a home owner.

I would buy a plug-in siren which could be configured to sound when a motion sensor or door/window sensor was triggered in a heartbeat, come on Hive.

Fritillaries (Fritillaria meleagris) are one of my very favourite flowers and it was great to spot some growing in the Belford Community Woodland, well done Belford!

Lovely site just off the A1 in Northumberland, well worth a visit.

Been spending a few nights in the Hymer up near Belford and stopped at Belford church just to check it out, lovely little place.