Selfsufficientish.com

Walking To Greenham by Ann Pettitt Published by Honno ISBN 1 870206 762 In 1981, Ann Pettitt, who had escaped the rat race of London to become a smallholder in Wales, decided to organise a protest march from Wales to a proposed nuclear base in Berkshire. When they got there, they decided to set up c...

Learn to tie your shoelaces with one hand (I had a one armed friend who could do this).

Learn to play the bass guitar like this.

I wouldn't recommend sugar soap unless you are going to redecorate; it's good at cutting through grime, especially in a smoker's house, but it can leave the walls looking streaky. It's really for use before painting. But if you do try it, start at the bottom and work up, and try to stop the solution...

As it happens, I noticed that yesterday's Radio 4 Check Up programme was about this. Click on the Listen Again button to hear it.

Basic concrete blocks are, as you say, little more than concrete poured into moulds. There are specified standards that they have to reach (in the UK, at least) for strength and crush resistance. Decent concrete includes aggregate of some sort for bulk and strength. I think commercially there are a ...

That's pretty cool, Andy. But look, next time you need to time something, and don't have a clock, remember that the period of a pendulum is given by the formula T = 2πSqrt(L/g) where L is the length of the pendulum string, and g given by G(M/R^2), is about 9.8 M/s^2 (at sea level, anyway). Rearrangi...

I had a Lexmark until the ink became too painful to replace. It doesn't help that that Lexmark ink cartridges have an integral printhead, so that you have to buy some precision engineering with every cartridge. I tried the refill kits for a while, but it wasn't really a success. So I bought the chea...

Well done, guys. Out in time for the Christmas market?

Jack, I blame those spell chequers, witch aunt as good as there maid out two bee.

Jack wrote:I am wrapped with the idea

Don't know anything about blaand, but I'm pretty intrigued by Jack wrapping himself up in a brown paper idea.

In fact you might say I'm rapt with the idea.

I read somewhere that laylandii had a fairly good heat value because of its high tar content (in common with other coniferous trees). But this does mean you will have to burn it on a hot fire if you want to stop the tar condensing in the flue. Regarding splitting wood - some splits more easily after...

I wonder if crushed mussel shells would act as a slug deterrent in the way that crushed eggshells can. Might last a bit longer, too.

This doesn't make sense! you lot are talking about someone else calling the protesters terrorists but you are talking like you're terrorists. That's a incredible thing to say - I mean without any credibility whatsoever. Where, where does anyone in this thread, or in the entire forum talk like a ter...

Have to say I was very disappointed with Newsnight tonight; Kirsty Wark pressed George Monbiot to condemn actions that hadn't actually taken place, and were entirely a work of fiction that had come from that epitome of the right wing reactionary press, The Evening Standard. Having established that t...

...when I was a boy my mother used to smere eggs with petrolium jelly. She used to say as long as the egg stays sealed it won't go off. That's what I've always been told the point is. But then we have to wonder why such exotic stuff as isinglass and/or/AKA waterglass was used, when sealing up the p...