Crazy British Weather

As a British citizen,  have a duty to uphold the internationally renowned reputation of talking about the weather. I have pretty much talked about the weather in every single post, so I am not going to start to change that.

And the thing is, as a society, our natural instinct is to talk about the weather. There is nothing anybody can do about it. When we try and have a conversation with somebody without making reference to the weather, there ends up with awkward silences until somebody spurts out THE phrase... "Bloomin' weather can't make up it's mind."

And unfortunately this is just something that us brits will have to live with for the rest of our existence  We can't have a conversation without talking about the weather. End of.

I have tried to think of the reasons why we always talk about the weather, not least always moan about the weather...

And there aren't really any reasons why. I mean yes in Britain we can go through all 4 seasons in 1 day, and the weather is, to quote, 'very changeable' but that doesn't give us an excuse to talk about the weather so much.

And it isn't like there isn't plenty else to talk about. I think it just boils down to tradition. People have always talked about the weather as a way of creating small-talk, and that is how we now think. We have to use the weather as a conversation starter, so that is what we do.

But hey, that's what makes us British.

It's too hot for me. I mean I like it warm but this is too sticky for me...

And they are biting, little things are biting...

Thanks for reading,
Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Moggy Update 7/7/13

After spending an absolutely scorching afternoon in England (we only get 2 a year so I have to let everyone know) in a Park with LOADS AND LOADS of cars, I thought I would take this moment of inspiration to fill you in on the progress (or not-so-progress) on Lucy.

I always like talking about things I am going to do. It means I can sound like a very busy person, when, in reality, I do bugger all. Until now. Tomorrow is D-Day. That's right, the weather forecast says 27 degrees, working party has been gathered and the order has been placed at the chippy and the tab opened at the pub.

We Are Ready.

About 8.30 tomorrow morning I will be starting to strip Lucy ( naughty :0 ) of her varnish, and make her look really stunning with a new coat of the finest UV Waterproof Protection Oil, and some standard issue brown wood filler, to get this baby looking hot. 

As I sit here listening the Gentlemen by PSY, I can't help but feel inspired. If you are unsure as to what I mean (which you should be, I will put it that way) just watch the video on YouTube, along with the other 50 bilion people, and imagine Lucy in that film... And also not Korean...

So I will by seeing my fellow Morris Minor Enthusiasts bright and early in the morning, where we will finally get this bloomin' job done. 

I can't wait to make some progress to be honest with you, and hope this will be a catalyst to loads more good work to come.

To keep up to date with tomorrow's progress, follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Thanks for reading!

My Amazing Cooking Tips

I have always fancied myself as a bit of a chef, with the chequered trousers and the floppy hat. Trouble is I am not all that good at cooking, I just pretend to be.

However I have a new revelation. At the co-op they do stir-fry make your own ready meal type things, with a pack of stir fry veg, fresh noodles and sauce. This is very fun to do and it does taste pretty damn good... I shall have to cook it for you some time ;)

Anyway, I also do some chicken with this. Nothing to complicated, but I have a secret trick which I now apply to everything. Lob a load of sweet chilli dipping sauce on the meat, and hey presto! You have very tasty meat with a sweet and flavoursome glaze.

So I apply this to literally everything now. Burgers on the barbie, prawns on the barbie, and now, introducing the all new to the Tom Peach Barbecue Range (tweet me if you want to buy any stock, big supermarkets), it the Mushroom, Pepper and Chicken BBQ Skewers, marinated in Sweet Chilli Dipping Sauce. Trust me, that stuff works with everything, this has got to work. It's FOOLPROOF.

Anyway, I am off to cook them now. I might let you know how they taste! Jamie Oliver eat your heart out...

Thanks for reading!

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Radio Fever

The first thing anybody will know about me, is that I am a massive nerd. No matter how much I try and disguise this by wearing my sunglasses on my head and buying clothes that are vaguely in fashion, I have to confess, I am the a massive geek. This I think is really quantified and solidified when it comes to technology. Not only do I have to be able to talk fluently about anything and everything to do with technology, that has involved hours and days of me sat, reading through the entire wikipedia website to learn about how a computer works and what all the funny little cables do, I also get far to excited about it when it comes to new gadgets. The perfect example of this is when we run Alrewas Radio. I spend hours and hours of my life just looking through websites at all the different kit, miss, mixers, software and broadcasting hosting packages to find out about them all and what all the features of the are and do.

There is something about the radio kit which fills and little hole in my heart with liquid honey and boyish excitement. This is very hard for me to portray to the regular listener, because it is so weird, but there we are. This is something which I am very proud of, mainly because I get really excited about it, and the circle repeats…

Anyway, I really want to tell you about what I have found out, in the name of Alrewas Radio. I have been speaking to a few people about upgrading the microphones that we use here at Radio Towers, as we currently only have 1. We would quite like 2, however that would require us to have the inputs via a mixer board, so we could use more than one microphone. Keep up with the thought processes… If we are expanding our inputs to 2, it seems sensible to try and get as many inputs as possible so that we can have plenty of inputs from guitars and other live musician type things, because we would love to get some awesome live music here on the Radio.

So I have been looking at a Behringer XENYX 1204 USB Mixer, which has all the FX sliders and controllers, along with 12 inputs, 4 of which are for microphones and then the other 8 are for things like guitars. The thought process behind this £160 bit of kit is that it will really allow us to be able to expand the Radio, maybe be able to mic up a whole band to play some awesome music live and local. This is something which excites me.

The next port of call after this is decided then is the microphones. Now originally I was thinking about a £120 condenser microphone, which is at an intermediate level, not the most basic by any stretch of the imagination. This was a thought that went along the lines of price is quality, however after talking to people about this, they have all advised me that unless we are in a completely soundproof professional studio, which would be lovely but is a million miles away yet, the difference between a £60 and a £100 condenser mic is pretty much non-existent. The very fact that it is a condenser microphone, means that the frequencies are much flatter and therefore beautifully realistic and crystal clear, which is what we want for radio. So that decided, we have our shopping list…

Apart from one more thing… We are professionals here at Alrewas Radio and we have to look the part as well as sound the part, and that requires some lovely microphone stands, which clip to our desk, and act like a boom scissor arm, which will stretch in front of our face and away from very smoothly, with the proper elastic suspension microphone mounts which allow us to not pick up any vibrations from putting your tea down on the table mid-link.

So our wish list has really shaped up, and I can't wait to be able to buy at least some of this kit! I told you I get excited about nerdy gadgets, well even writing this I am typing slower than I can think the post because I am that excited! Anyway I am off now to try nd find a rich person to buy us some stuff…

Thanks for reading, 

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Follow Alrewas Radio on twitter: @AlrewasRadio

#AlrewasRadio

Alrewas Radio Update 5/7/13

Long time no posty I am afraid guys, and I do apologise! I have been busy hard at work. Yesterday for example, I did a 7-1 shift in the co-op, then I had 15 minutes for my lunch before I shot off up to the primary school to run radio workshops with some year 6s, for a podcast they are creating for their Leavers Evening!  enjoy doing stuff with the radio, so it is a great opportunity for me to dust off the old macbook and mics. I then dashed straight off to beavers, where we were playing a massive game of capture the flag in a field right next to the canal in a field full of cow poo. Lovely...

But as far as the topic of this post, Alrewas Radio. The last time I wrote, I was just about ta attend a meeting about something completely unrelated, but still very related! There is currently a development of a Village Neighbourhood Plan, to allow people to have a say in the development of the village, and this is something that I have been dragged into, being a young person on the organisers emailing list... But anyway, with a few other young people in the village, we are going to be creating some little short clips to do with our village plan.

At a meeting about this, I discussed with the Alrewas Radio Gods about the possibilities of future expansion of Alrewas Radio, and in the process, I have got a bit caught up in techy hype...

I have also borrowed some mixers and mics from the recording studio we have at school to use during the Alrewas Radio Barge Fest (24th - 28th July, be there or be square) and on the back of that we will have some funding to invest in some new kit.

I have been looking into it and I have found what I think we are looking for. I am thinking about investing in a 8 channel input alongside 2 radio condesner mics that, when used together, will give us a wider range of things to do and also a much better quality.

So, lots of new and exciting things to come from the production side of Alrewas Radio, as well as from the Presenting side! I hope you guys are all looking forward to it as much as I am!

Thanks for reading.
Follow Alrewas Radio on twitter: @AlrewasRadio
Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Alrewas Radio 2013 Update

Seeing as the balls have slowly started rolling for Alrewas Radio summer 2013, I thought I might do a quick update to tell you what is happening, when and all the preps for it:

First of all there is the Alrewas Canal and Music Festival which is taking place between the 26th and 28th of July, and Alrewas Radio will be broadcasting alongside that 24th-28th. We are all really excited about that. We are really streamlining our broadcasting style and trying to up the professionalism and overall awesomeness of the radio. 

We are doing all this in the view to expanding the equipment we have here at Alrewas Radio Towers. We are borrowing some microphones and a small mixer to get us through the festival, hopefully trying to record some of the awesome music that will be about that weekend. After this, we hope we will get a small donation from the Barge Fest guys to buy so brand new and exciting kit for us to be able to go forward with and make some awesome podcasts and plenty more radio throughout the year!

As we go off to the big U.N.I in september, me and James will be looking for some folks to look after our baby whilst we are away,and we hope to use a week in august of pure broadcasting for the fun of it to be able to do this! It will be really exciting to pass on our radio knowledge to some more local people who will be able to do the radio hopefully more regularly and really have fun with it!

Thanks for reading.

Follow Alrewas Radio on twitter: @AlrewasRadio
Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Moggy Update 3/6/13: Some rusty troubles...

I thought I would update you again with progress of Lucy's life and restoration. Unfortunately, after all my excitement on starting work on the woodwork... it never happened. Bloomin' English weather is all I can say! However I have been keeping a keen eye on the weather forecast and have noticed a significant improvement towards and into the weekend which I am looking forward to finally getting stuck in.

This doesn't mean I haven't been busy though. I seem to have had a few issues, maybe brought on by the winter, others that just used the winter as a catalyst to break stuff. I have been plagued by the unfortunately inevitable rust trouble. This is something non-avoidable on a classic car, so it's a case of if not when. I have been very lucky though as I seem to just get corroded parts, as apposed to the bodywork. As soon as the bodywork starts getting rusty, it travels through it like a virus, attacking everything and leaving nothing but rusty flakes on your drive when you go out the next morning...

I have had 2 things to sort out over the past week. The first, I noticed that my tyres were wearing slightly unevenly, with the worst wear on the inside. So I took it down to the local tyre pace to ask them to balance my tyres. Turns out it wasn't the balancing, it was the tracking. Ahhhh...

So I went back to my local mechanic, who booked Lucy in for the next day and gladly fixed the tracking for all of £15 (how he can do work for the little is beyond me). Turns out she was an absolute mile out, so no wonder the tyres were wearing unevenly!

Anyway, I have also had a bit of a boost in the sound my car makes due to a slightly rusted and broken... So I kind of need to get a new one I think. So my gran, bless her, dutifully went and got a couple of quotes from her favourite mechanics and came back to me, both of whichw ere cheaper than I could buy the part on the internet and fit it myself. So upon this revelation, I went down to my local mechanic and spoke to him. I am currently toying between going for a stainless steel one or just a normal galvanised one. The thing is, seeing as this is a car which I will have for a very long time, no question, I want things to last me a long time, so that means it is a bit of a no-brainer on going for a stainless steel one, as it will last more than twice as long as the bog-standard model. So for an extra £15 (which it seems I have already spent on the tracking so might as well spend it again on an exhaust) I wouldn't mind betting that the stainless steel one is a better option.

So that is where I am up to with dear Lucy. In the process of sorting out the exhaust and a beautifully aligned tracking, I am good to go! And with the prospect of the weather improving enough to actually get down to do some woodwork on her, I am excited! All is well with the world.

Apart from the fact I will have to splash out the best part of £100 at some point in the near future for a new exhaust... Bad times...

Thanks for reading.
Follow me on twitter: @peachy146