Let the Games Begin

This weekend sees the start of a new part of my life. Summer club sports. For years I have been meaning to get back into playing cricket, and either couldn't be bothered, or forgot, or in one case the team never got back to me.
This summer will be different. I have joined my local club Chesham CC. Everyone has been very welcoming, even trying to teach me which end of the funny stick I need to hold to hit that funny red thing! Now I am cricket mad! I eat, sleep, drink cricket. It's like I'm 12 again, absorbing any snippet of information I can.

Tomorrow, I will be playing my first club match in 20 years (yes, you read correctly!). Chesham 4th XI are at home to NPL Teddington CC 3rd XI. We are meeting as part of the 8b league of the Morrant Thames Valley Leagues. I can't wait. Next week I will try and post about the pain I'll be in.

Watch this space!

Fivers From an ATM?

I remember about ten years ago when you could get £20, £10, and £5 notes from an ATM. All banks eventually changed to allowing only £10 & £20 notes to be withdrawn.

Today, I went into a Barclays bank and took out £10. Imagine my surprise when I was presented with two £5 notes. It confused me so much I actually stopped for a couple of seconds to work it out!

Weird.

A Possible Fix if Your Homepage Keeps Resetting

I was recently presented with a problem by my in-laws. Their browser's homepage kept on resetting to MSN every time they restarted. Although a reasonable homepage to have, they prefer to just have the google.co.uk front page.
The specific page that the browser would reset to was - http://uk.msn.com/?ocid=iehp. I thought the same as you, just go into options -> properties and reset the homepage. Nope. Every time the browser restarted, back to good 'ole MSN.
So what is the solution? Well, after much googling for various things, I found an obscure reference to my dilemma on a forum (can't remember which, sorry). It turns out that some spyware and antivirus programs (in this case Norton) have 'homepage protection'. This setting locks anything from hijacking your browser homepage for their own nefarious purposes. It also means that once a homepage is set, it will continue to default back to that upon a browser reload.
So there you have it. Turn off your homepage protection, and return it to the correct homepage. I don't know what happens if you switch the homepage protection back on and I don't intend to find out.

Twitter Twit

A couple of my friends recently did a shout out asking if anyone was on Twitter. I knew a bit about Twitter, but had never really looked into it. A couple of days ago I thought I would have a look. I’m now twittering with everyone else!

For those of you who don’t know, Twitter is a sort of mass text messaging social network. You ‘follow’ someone’s updates and they and/or others follow you. It’s one of these silly-but-fun web 2.0 things.

I think the most fun thing about Twitter is that some of the geekier celebrities Twitter. So you can follow them and what they are doing. As I said silly-but-fun. Amongst some of the more frequent twitter-ers is Stephen Fry (http://twitter.com/stephenfry). He twitters three or four times per day. It’s kind of fun to know what he’s up to and comment about it.

So, go on, give it a go. I won’t say who else is on there for following, you can find out easily enough, and that is part of the fun, I think.

Back Into the Saddle

Ok. Four months without any updates to any of my blogs is a bit pants. Last year I wanted to average one blog update per week…on all of my blogs. If you do a quick tour around, you will see that this didn’t happen. In fact, I barely made it past averaging one blog update per week on all my blogs put together.

So this year, I want to try for the full 52 on this blog. It’s going to be tough, especially since we’re nearly two months in already, but hopefully I will be able to do it.

You will have seen me say this before, but watch this space!

Books and Blogs - The Frugal Cook

Continuing from yesterdays post about frugality, I have a recommendation, particularly with Christmas coming up.

Typically for this time of year many books are being released, particularly in the cookery section. One book you may not be aware of is The Frugal Cook by Fiona Beckett.  As I said, there are other cook books out this season, one of which is Delia's reprise of her Frugal Food recipe book, and is a direct competitor for your pound this Christmas. While this is a good book, it is a re-release, and I would urge you to go for an original publishing.

The Frugal Cook is based on Fiona's blog of  the same name. I love the blog. It's on my RSS feed, and I read every article with interest. Fiona's writing is well thought out, her recipes concise, and her ideas inspiring. I also like the fact that if you comment on any of Fiona's articles, she will generally answer you personally. It is this accessibility that makes me a fan, and will see me buying her book (or getting someone to give it to me as a present) this Christmas.

Whether you get the book or read the blog, enjoy. It is time well spent.

Frugally Yours

Wow. Well, it's been quite a while since my last post. I unfortunately found that other things in my life needed to take priority above blogging, but I am going to have to get back into blogging as it was a great outlet both psychologically, and creatively.

And what better way to get back on the wagon than to tell you what I have been up to!

In the current financial climate the watchword seems to be "Frugal". Speaking personally, I am doing everything I can to lower my overall spending. One place Mrs. Mouse and I are boxing clever is with food shopping. This is an area fraught with pitfalls put there by supermarkets attempting to maximise their impact on your pocket. To counter this, we have taken a few measures which have saved us quite a bit of money.
Firstly, we do almost all of our vegetable shopping at the local market. Their prices are excellent, and we get a bit of exercise cycling to and from the market.
Secondly, we have moved down a pricing band, where possible, in our supermarket purchases. This is a common with most people - if you buy the premium brand, you move to the regular brand, etc.. The breadth of this I feel is shown by Tesco introducing a fourth tier of pricing with their "Discount Brands" which sits between regular and basics range.
Finally, we shop a bit later in the evening to get cut-price goods. This technique won't suit everyone, but it can mean you get some good breads for next to nothing, as well as cooked produce which needs to be sold that day. It does mean you have to be a bit flexible with your meal plans, but is also fun when you have an impromptu lounge picnic!

These three tips have helped us save quite a bit of money, and have fun doing it!