Thursday 20 August 2009

Using less electricity?

Had our next electric bill today, and being a bit sad - and in light of all the things we've changed to try to reduce our bills, I thought I'd track our success.

We have averaged 18.25 units a day over this quarter, compared to 18.55 for the same quarter last year. The two intervening quarters were 22.80 and 25.20 respectively.

The first 18.55 is a bit anomolous as we were still moving in, and neither this quarter nor last quarter did we have the heating on at all - therefore I'm going to say that we've managed to reduce from 25.2 to 18.25.

Thats a saving of 6.95 units a day. If we assume the electric is used 300 days a year (bit of a rough figure, but hey), and as per current bill is 13.11p a unit, well, heck, thats a possible saving of over £270.00 a year. Thats equivalent to roughly a quarter's usage!

Wednesday 19 August 2009

A Night in the Park - Jersey Film Festival

We went to one of the "Jersey Outdoor Film Festival" nights, in Howard Davis Park, last night, to watch "A Night at the Museum 2".

The film itself was pretty good.

The picnic we had, and generally the atmosphere with what could well have been 2000+ people all in the same space, watching the movie, was brilliant.

Shame there aren't any more movies on in this run which we want to watch!

Monday 17 August 2009

Think twice? Too right!

As you may or may not know, there is a big 'Think Twice, Buy Local' campaign running here in Jersey (if you're local, I'm sure you're getting a bit fed up of the advert on Channel 103 by now).

I do think it's a good idea, and we've even pledged some support to the concept through our collaborative eCommerce website, Jersey Market - you can read a bit more about Think Twice Buy Local and find some other links, there.

Anyway, back to the point. I wanted to buy a micro-SD card for the other half's phone. This is not a significant purchase, therefore I thought - well - price locally is going to be within about a quid of Amazon, and it's a lot easier to just pick one up in town.

So I popped into a smallish local computer shop (seemed a logical place) - I won't name names, but I'm sure you can work out which one. It was just gone 9am - I'd be in town sorting a few other things out early.

The door was open, so in I popped. Only to be gruffly told that they didn't open until 9. Oh well. Back home - straight on Amazon! Will not be going back there in a hurry. OK, a bit petty of me to quibble over a minute or two, but still - there are ways of doing things and ways of not doing them, and I was pretty much told to piss off because I was too early! Grr.

Still here, never fear!

Oops. Bit of an unexpected break in the blogging schedule here.

Sorry folks - things have just been so crazy busy, both at work (this web development lark isn't as easy as you think!) and at home - lots of barbeques when we had a nice couple of weeks, and so on - that I've been totally neglecting my blog.

Needless to say, I've made some notes on things which have annoyed me over the last few weeks, and will try to post some of them up very soon!