Weather Alert!

It's new Gizmo time again!, doesn't seem long since the last one :-(

I have an interest in all things Weather, I think it's part of the English psyche.

My kids bought me a weather station about 5 years ago and, whilst it works fine and I use it daily, it doesn't give me the full weather picture. To monitor wind and rainfall requires a somewhat more substantial unit - hence me new Gizmo!

The La Crosse WS2350 Weather Station fits the bill, it includes all the outdoor bits for wind and rain measurement AND the ability to talk to my iMac computer and transfer data, a gizmo freak's dream!

Naturally, I have to invest in some new software to gather all this interesting data.

Running an iMac computer, whilst it's the undisputed Roll-Royce of desktops, it does limit the choice of software for niche applications such as this.

I looked at the three main contenders - the most popular was a cobbled-up version of the Windows edition :-( , but I settled on Lightsoft Weather Centre (LWC).

The communication from weather station unit to computer can be tricky as these units output a serial signal which has to be transposed into USB for all modern computers. A serial/USB (Heath Robinson brand) lead was supplied and, after finding a suitable driver to download, it worked fine!

The screen display is shown below:

It naturally follows that I'm now seriously happy in heavy rain or dangerous gusts of wind knowing that my charts will be enhanced by the peaks and troughs of our lovely British weather!

See Weather data from my station at the foot of this page!

I'm Tanked Up!

I've had an interest in Tropical fish since teenage years and have owned at least one tank ever since, I reached my piscatorial peak when a spare bedroom was turned into a fish room and 6 large tanks occupied one complete wallspace. A leak whilst away finally saw the room return to it's original use.

Since then I've dabbled with Discus - a difficult but beautiful Amazonian species, run a marine reef tank for a year or two before my conscience regarding the plundering of scarce natural resources lead me to convert the reef tank into a 40 gallon freshwater job.That one tank is still here after about 15 years - but now I have another:

A Fluval Edge!!

A very modern and controversial design - being a small glass cube filled entirely with 5 gallons of water except for a small opening in the top to allow filtered water to be circulated.

The size of this tank - Nano in fishkeeping jargon - only allows a few small fish to be kept as the golden rule is 1cm of fish per litre of water.

I have six White Cloud Mountain Minnows (Tanichthys albonubes) flashing around in it at present.

The very good filter system (an Aquaclear 100) was cycled for 17 days using ammonia before the introduction of the fish. This builds up the bacteria colonies necessary to deal with the natural waste products produced by the fish and plants.

So far everything is running well and the fish are lively and eating everything.

Thanks to my dear wife for a very nice Christmas Gift!