Titley Family

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Author: nigel

A weekend (sort of) well spent

29 January 2023 / / 0 Comments

A couple of months ago Benedicte got a new mobile. Well actually it was my old mobile, but you get the idea. I wiped it back to factory defaults and passed it over to her after installing her favourite apps. And that’s where the trouble started…

Our wifi network at home is complicated. We have four networks: a private one (with individual logins), a guest one, one that the car charger sits on and one for our media centres. Only the private one has unfettered access to internal addresses of which the important ones are printers and the home automation system. I tried to set up connectivity to the private one and couldn’t make it connect. I connected her to the guest network which gave her external connectivity but she couldn’t print and she couldn’t control the house. And there things sat for a while.

Eventually I tracked down the problem. The fine folk at Android had tightened security on wi-fi connectivity and the type of private network we had now needed certificates and stuff. I’ve a vague idea how certificates work but only a vague one.

So finally this weekend I bit the bullet and started to work out how to sort it out. It took about six hours of reading of manuals and helpful articles but finally it’s working.

I wrote it up here. Hopefully this may save someone a few hours.

Orange Wine

6 February 2022 / / 0 Comments

This a recipe that I use for an orange wine. It’s very enjoyable and rather strong. I make it once a year in January when the new Spanish oranges come through.

  • 8 sweet oranges
  • 2 lemons
  • Sugar to Specific Gravity (SG)1.124 (approx 1.7kg)
  • Yeast (I usually use SN9 Mangrove Jack’s)
  • Yeast Nutrient
  • 3.5 litres of water

Wash the fruit to remove any wax and then zest it (peel off the outer layer of skin with a potato peeler). Peel off as much white pith as possible and discard.Roughly chop the fruit and put it in a sterilised bucket with the zest. Pour on 3.5 litres of boiling water and leave for 5 days, stirring twice daily. Strain off into a large pan (I use a jam pan) and check the SG. Add enough sugar to take it to 1.124 and stir until dissolved while heating. Check the acid level, it should be approximately 4.5 ppt sulphuric. If not then adjust with tartaric acid, the last batch I made needed about 17gm of acid. Let cool and add the yeast and nutrient.

Fermentation should start within 24 hours (lots of bubbles rising through the mixture). Allow to ferment for a week and then transfer to a demijohn with a fermentation lock, topping up with cold boiled water if needed.

Once the fermentation slows down and the yeast and sediment starts to drop out then rack off (siphon off the clear wine from the sediment) into another demijohn. Thereafter rack every couple of months until the wine settles out clear.

It’s ready for drinking after 6 months or so but be careful. The alcohol content is about 15%, so quite strong. It’s better as an aperitif or after dinner rather than with a meal.

Hello world!

5 February 2022 / / 0 Comments

Well, this is really the first time I’ve used WordPress in anger. When I first looked at it many years ago it was buggy, riddled with security holes and difficult to use. I’m told it has improved since then and this is an experiment with it.

I’ve repurposed an old virtual server that used to provide email, jabber and geneweb services and was running a very old version of Ubuntu (12.04LTS). It’s been wiped and re-imaged with Ubuntu 20.04LTS. It will be used for a number of WordPress sites.

The email server has been moved some time ago, geneweb and jabber were moved last week.

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