Winter is Coming

Oh yes. And not in the Stark way, either - just a normal, buried under snow Ottawa Valley type way. First snow tomorrow, apparently!

So, the winter prep is pretty much done. After a mostly benign but occasionally grim wait of three weeks for a replacement part for our furnace, we have lovely warm natural gas heat blowing up from the crawl space. Apparently the furnace is 'why companies like these went out of business' - it's 30 years old and should last another 30. Not very efficient, but considering a new furnace is $7k, and the gas cost (excluding delivery - so just the cost of the gas we burn) is about $600 a year, an update that saved half is in no way worth it.

Suffice it to say that new, more complicated furnaces probably don't last as long, either...

I've done some 'yard work' - taking branches and leaves to the dump - so the garden looks ok. Three trailer loads! That's stuff that has built up over the last year and a bit. So the pile behind shed number two is more manageable. I want to get a wood stove in here so we can burn the bigger bits!

I also got gravel for the rear easement, and parking spot at the front. Hopefully that'll help with drainage in the spring. $30 for 'a yard' of gravel - bargain.

Finally, I just put the winter ti/yres on the car. Phew. Forget chopping wood to keep warm! The breaker bar I got last year is a godsend...

So we're all good, snug and cosy in our little house. The final tomato harvest was a thing of wonder - probably over a kilogram of really small ones, not ripe but they ripen up just fine near a banana! Should keep me going another week or two! Yum!

In other news - my house in Texas is tidy and ready to rent, just waiting for the agents down there to find me a tenant... Fingers crossed it won't take *too* long...

Couch Potato Investment Plan for the UK

In Canada, there is the excellent Canadian Couch Potato, but I haven't seen anything similar for the UK.

If you are looking for a very simple, inexpensive way to save for retirement in the UK, I'd go this route:

1. Find a brokerage. iWeb is one, and their fees are lower than the others I have looked at. Open an account - preferably an ISA.
2. Set up monthly transfers in to this account from your bank - as close to payday as possible so you don't 'see' the money and want to spend it. If you can afford it, set it up to you get close to your ISA allowance over the year - £950 a month.
3. Set up purchases of low cost exchange traded funds, 'ETFs', in roughly the following proportions:
  - 25% FTSE 100 (eg: HUKX.L)
  - 25% FTSE 250 (eg: HMCX.L)
  - 20% Gilts (eg: IGLT.L)
  - 30% international equity (eg: IWXU.L)

Regular purchases are cheaper to do than manual ones (at least on iWeb) at only £2 a go. By doing percentages rather than specific amounts, any leftover cash from the prior month will get used.

I am not an investment professional, which means two things. Firstly, don't sue me if it all goes wrong - but there is no reason for it to go any more wrong than any managed fund, and plenty of reasons that it'll go much better. Secondly, I'm not trying to make money with this advice. I get no kickbacks, no fees, nothing.

Basically this is 'cheap' in terms of fees. The management fees for index trackers are very low, and there is little commission-generating (for the fund managers) account 'churn' - the ETFs rebalance when the underlying index does so.

Asset allocation is a hotly debated topic - should you have bonds when they are likely to decline in value (yes, as an anchor; yes, they might still go up before they go down; yes, because the point is that you rebalance every so often - perhaps once or twice a year - to get you back to the asset allocation above; no, if you have a mortgage that has a higher rate than the bonds will give, or in fact any debt). One method is 'your age as bonds' but this is probably too cautious if you are far from retirement - 20% will probably work just fine. Stocks do better than bonds over the long term, but rebalancing like this forces buy low/sell high - and if you have no bonds, you can't sell any! But having a smaller percentage of bonds means you give up less potential return.

This is far from guaranteed, and you should of course do your own research. As CCP mentions, though, not starting at all is a much worse option than picking a not-quite-optimal asset allocation - and the above 'will do'. You have large cap, small/medium cap (ie, size of company) British stuff; rock-solid bonds (Gilts are UK government bonds, so called because of the gold edging); and a nice chunk of 'international' stuff - so even if the UK has a bad time of things, there's some other stuff to *hopefully* still give a good return.
Two things are missing from this portfolio - real estate, and developing world. Those could be added in very easily with, say, IUKP.L and IEEM.L. The latter is more expensive in that it has a management fee of 0.75%. You can of course roll your own - figure your own allocations out. But, in doing so, don't settle for some fund manager that is getting 1% or 2% in kickbacks from the expensive fund providers for everything they sell you!

Bay Trail

I'm very much looking forward to new Intel Bay Trail based tablets or hybrids that are coming in the next month or so. They are a much-redesigned 'Atom' platform, which means very low power consumption but enough power to do most stuff.

The original Atom CPUs went into netbooks, in 2009 or so. In fact, I'm typing this on one - an MSI Wind U100 clone from the UK, called an Advent 4211. 10.1 inch screen, 1024 * 600; 1.6GHz cpu, pretty decent keyboard. I had an SSD in it for a while, but went back to a standard hard drive. Running Windows XP it's actually fast enough for most stuff.

It falls over with YouTube and other video related tasks - the GPU integrated here is just too slow, or lacking in the optimisations required to do stuff in hardware - meaning the already-weak CPU has to pick up the slack.

Anyway, enough about this laptop. The new Bay Trail systems will have much that this lacks: HDMI (or, mini HDMI, but good enough); an SSD (how fast remains to be seen, and what premium for a reasonable amount of storage - the lowest tier will come with a mere 32Gb, and Windows will take up 20Gb or so of that..). USB 3. Some will have high resolution screens, some 1280 * 800 and some 1366 * 768.

I'm getting one. I just don't know which one will carry the right specs for me, namely:

4Gb RAM (there will be ones with 2Gb; some of the processors will allow a maximum of 2Gb, so I'm limited to the better ones)
64Gb storage or greater (on the good side, most seem to come with micro SD for music and such)
3g connectivity
Not crap quality

From what I've seen so far, I don't know that there is something that will tick *all* my boxes - the Asus T100 has a lower resolution screen, and no 3g; the Dell Venue doesn't have a full dock, but does have 3g (but at what cost?) - more specs are coming next week.

Pretty exciting. For a long time I've known I don't need cutting edge computing power. Pretty much any Core2 Duo CPU is powerful enough - and that includes the Celeron 847 in my Dell Vostro. If I can get that much power in a small tablet form factor, I'll be able to retire my Playbook (good for in bed, bad for web browsing though, really - until I found Origami Browser, which makes things a bit better), a couple of laptops if I get one with a nice resolution screen, and a whole load of power supplies, cables, etc.

Here's hoping something comes along that is able to meet my requirements! These things are going for a really good price, too - I wonder how Microsoft's ARM-based Surface 2 can compete, when it can't run all the stuff a Bay Trail tablet can.

Things...

I really enjoyed reading about the '100 Thing Challenge' when that all kicked off (guy named dave). While staying at Tremblant, and over the last few weeks at 'the farm', I've realised I need far less.

How many things do you 'touch' a day? In my case, my pared-down kit is:

Clothes - hat (because bald), t-shirt, socks, pants, trousers, shoes. Depending on the weather, jumper, coat, scarf, gloves. One thing about the 'vandwelling' movement is that you go where the weather is (or where the weather isn't!). So I'd be targeting 21 degrees C.

What else? Well, sleeping bag. I've only been to places with beds lately, so a sleeping mat hasn't been necessary, but should probably be part of my kit. As should a proper pillow - currently I tend to use either a towel or just go without. I'm fine without, for a while, but sometimes...

Toothpaste, brush, general purpose soap/shower gel, towel.

Laptop, power supply, USB cable to charge phone, headphones.

Cup, spoon, knife (more a pruning knife than cutlery). Instant coffee (urgh). Powdered milk (actually pretty nice). Noodles, plus something to eat with them. Water bottle. Trangia alcohol stove plus some alcohol.

And.. yup that's pretty much it.

I'm thinking that I'll sell my car, as the plan is to take one of our two off the road for Kara's maternity leave. Depending on how much I want to go trekking in a minivan, I'll buy a minivan at the right time. Leave three seats in (benefit to having captain's chairs for the second row!), make a milk crate bed, and put my Things in.. and I'll be good to go!

Kara raised a good question: What to do with diapers/nappies when on the road. We're planning to have reusable ones, but without a washing machine? Hmm.

What am I missing? Well, a mini-fridge would help, plus a more sophisticated cooking setup. The trangia works well - but it chews through alcohol quite quickly, and is only a single burner.

You can fit quite a lot in the back of a minivan, though. And it's not like we'd - all three of us - be sleeping in it for extended trips, more one or two days between visits, or the occasional hotel.

Well.. that's what I'm mulling, anyway.

Bought A(nother) House!

It's a funny old world.

I'm in the process of buying probably the largest AND cheapest house I've ever bought. The fourth house I've ever bought.

This one is going to be.. hopefully fun, not 'fun'. It's in Texas, so there will be another tax return to do. It's a rental property.

The returns are good on paper, but we'll see how it pans out. It is a relatively small purchase so, even if it goes wrong, shouldn't be *too* expensive a mistake (think.. nice mid-range luxury car).

What makes my head spin is that, as I said, it's a reasonable size - three bedrooms, garage, roughly 1/5th acre lot, and yet it is about 1/8th the price of my house in the UK. Once the renovations are done, perhaps 1/6th. Roughly a quarter of the price of the house we live in here in Canada.

It's not a mansion, far from it. Solid (fingers crossed) - metal roof and siding.

I am nervous about buying in the US, but the returns, as I said, seem good. Greed or good sense? Time will tell.

In other news: The tomatoes are doing nicely, the courgettes are getting close to being done. We just spent $500 on one car (two new ty/ires plus some little bits), $180 on the other (oil, fuel filter, wheel balancing...) which.. is a bit painful but I guess it's just part of the driving habit.

Kara just did a job up in Iqaluit where it snowed a little on her last day - in August! I'm just back from Mont-Tremblant. And next week we take a mini-trip down to the US.

I'm retired? I don't know. I'm puttering or pottering. Not really sure what I'm doing - is 'investor' a job title? 'Lazy bum'? Oh yeah - stay at home father. Just under 3 months now, ohmygodohmygod.

I don't know what to think about impending fatherhood. At Tremblant, I spent a little time with my (wife's) nieces - 3 and 5 years old, or there abouts. I guess I'm avoiding thinking about it too much - what will be, will be, worrying about it (which is something I do about lots of things) won't do much.

5-6 more food boxes to do - can't wait for that to be wrapped up. Then, in theory, I'm really free - I could just take off for three weeks. Abandoning my wife, 6 weeks before her due date, though? Well - she's working til the start of November. So I could - for a week, 10 days maybe. Maybe I will.

The other thing.. is cars. We have two. Once the food boxes are done, one will be entirely surplus to requirements - so what do we do? Sell the (my) Crown Vic, which I got a hitch on, and really like? Or just put it off the road? Or keep it on the road, and put the Civic off for the winter/until Kara goes back to work?

Leaving a car sitting all winter.. not the best. Off the road but put into a warm garage? Well, that's just wasteful, and it'd be almost as expensive as keeping it on the road. Selling seems best.. I suppose. But I love my Crown Vic! And if we keep the Civic, we can't do the soapstone (easily) - plus buying a vehicle in Ontario leads to sales tax, so 13% of the purchase price.

Oh well. I did need the car this year. I should've bought a minivan (something I can sleep in, for fun). But I have enjoyed my Crown Vic.

Well, that's enough of a ramble on a Sunday night. Happy long weekend, if you happen to have one!

Surgery - Squash Vine Borers

I overplanted one bed - courgette plants plus squash plants plus cucumber plants. They get big!

Anyway, in addition to cucumber beetles and squash bugs, it turns out I also have Squash Vine Borers.

It's probably too late for the plants I have. They have already mostly wilted and died back - I have pulled a few out already.

But for the two left, I performed surgery. Have a look at this video:

My plants do NOT look as healthy as his, sadly. What I have done is cover parts of the remaining vines with soil in an attempt to get the plant to produce more roots. I pulled 4-5 borers out, though not all in one spot like in this vid.

Fairly disgusting!

Hopefully we'll get a couple more squash, but if not... it'll just be one small one that I harvested a while ago from a dying plant.

I'll know better what to look for next year!

Impatient Bread

This is my recipe for bread when I'm hungry:

500g flour
300ml water - warm, not boiling
tbsp. olive oil
tsp yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar

Flour + yeast + salt + sugar into mixing bowl; combine. Add olive oil. Make a well in the center and pour in the water. I tend to use the handle of a wooden spoon to stir it all together at this point, else one of my hands ends up coated in dough.

Anyway, when you've mixed it all together pretty well, into one mass at least, turn it out and knead, adding a little flour where necessary. Cut the dough ball in half, and roll each half out into a baking-tray long sausage; put on a lightly oiled baking tray and cover with a tea towel.

Leave in the sun for ~50 minutes; turn on the oven, set to about 200 degrees C; when it gets to temperature, shove in the baking tray and wait for about 35 minutes, possibly a little less (the thinner the bread the quicker it'll cook!).

It won't be the best bread ever - to be really good, it should rise - get knocked back - rise again. I think I used not enough yeast today so it didn't rise much at all. But - I was impatient, and when it came out I made a little baguette sandwich which hit the spot!

Om, nom, nom as they say.

Now I'm boiling beetroot that I'm going to pickle!