What’s In Your Handbag?

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Dragons and Fairy Dust

Most women carry a handbag and most women would be lost without it. I carry a lot of stuff in mine, in fact I dread to think what is lurking at the bottom. I have never really thought about what I would lose if I lost it. Moneysupermarket challenged me to show them what was in my handbag and work out what it was worth. I decided to have a go, it would enable me to check if the contents were covered if I ever lost it.

This is my handbag:

When I say this is my handbag, it is the one I am using at the moment. I have a few different handbags. This one is great as it has lots of different pockets and zips to put things in so I use it for everyday use. It is also quite large so I can put lots in it, handy if I am at the shop and have forgotten my bag for life. I got it from Marks and Spencers and it cost £30, which is reasonable for a bag.

Inside I have my diary, a notebook and my phone.

Strangely I do not have a pen. It seems a bit pointless carrying a diary and a notebook with no pen! The diary is personalised and cost £8. The notepad was probably about £3. The phone would still cost around £200 to replace even though it is an older model.

Next my purse and as a bonus I found a load of coins lurking at the bottom of my bag.

I didn’t have much money in there when I looked, around £10 but it would be a nightmare to replace all my loyalty cards and bank cards. The purse is from Kipling and it was about £25 when I got it. Next my house keys.
Easy enough to replace if you have them, but if you lost them how much would it cost to get the lock on your house changed? I have no idea why I have three key rings and one key. I also have a selection of cables.

A car charger for my phone, a usb charger for my phone and the cable for my camera. My camera is also in my bag but I am using it to take the photos. Including the camera it would be about £250 to replace.

I also have a selection of USB memory sticks

At a guess these would be about £40 to replace but the data on them would be irreplaceable.

A selection of girly items can also be found lurking in my bag.

Lip balm, a roll on for spots, some spray and a very useful hairbrush that also contains a mirror. This lot cost about £20. I am also prepared for the weather with an umbrella and three gloves.

I have no idea why I have three gloves, I only have two hands. I also have no idea why I am carrying gloves in the middle of the summer. This would be about £25 to replace.

Finally I have a selection of receipts, tissues and other rubbish.

These have now gone. Adding up the total of items and the cost of my handbag it comes to £631. This would be a lot to lose so I am in the process of streamlining what I carry now. I would love to know what you carry in your handbag.

Disclosure: This is my entry into MoneySupermarket.com What’s In Your Handbag competition.

Stopping Hotlinking and Bandwidth Theft

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Dragons and Fairy Dust

Right now you might be wondering what hotlinking is and why you would want to stop it. If you own a self-hosted blog it is something that you should be aware of.

This is a blog and it is self-hosted. Put simply this means I pay a hosting company money every month to host my website. In return they store the website on their server, do back ups for me and help me with some technical problems. I am happy doing this as it gives me the freedom to control my own website. Normally when you choose to do this there are a number of packages you can choose from which cost different prices. The main difference between the prices is the amount of storage space and bandwidth you can use per month on that server. The more bandwidth you use the more it costs.

At this point you are probably asking yourself what is bandwidth? In terms of a website it is the amount of data that is transferred per month. When you visit a website it downloads the information on the page to your internet browser. The amount of data depends on how much text and images are on the page, normally around 70-100 kB. If you then look at another page you download more data. The more people who look at the website the more data is downloaded. A highly viewed website will use lots more data that one with not many views.

Recently I have been worried about the amount of bandwidth my site had been using. At the end of the month I was charged extra for going over my bandwidth limit. Looking at my stats I could not see how this was possible. I asked other people with blogs to compare and found out they were using much less than me. It was time to investigate further. I asked my host how I could see what was using bandwidth and they have a tool which tracks visitor stats and bandwidth use. It is called awstats and I could access it via my control panel. I could easily see my bandwidth use in here. Looking in referring sites section I found something odd. Most of the sites showed page views along with the bandwidth used as you can see here

At the bottom of the list though I could see sites that were using my bandwidth but were not generating page views

I clicked on one of the sites and found that they had one were using one of my images. Looking at the source code on their site I found that they were linking my image in such a way that it was using my site to display it, but not allowing their users to go to my site. This was what was using my bandwidth. Investigating further I found that this is a practice known as hotlinking. They were linking directly to my images and showing off my content. This had to stop.

I contacted my hosts and they told me that I could stop this, it would involve modifying my .htaccess file. This is a file that is in your wordpress installation and it is used by the web server to control access to the directories. To access it you will need to use an ftp client.

These are the modifications you need to make:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?mydomain.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|js|css)$ – [F]

This will prevent hotlinking of images, JavaScript and CSS files on your site. I found that the
RewriteEngine on was already in my file so just added the bottom three lines.

To make the changes:

Go to your control panel and make sure ftp access is unlocked
Using an ftp client copy the .htaccess file to your machine. It will be in your wordpress installation, mine was under htmldocs
Make a copy of it for back up
Using a text editor make the changes shown above
Use the ftp client to place it back on your website.

Since I made the changes my bandwidth use had decreased a lot. Just look at the difference. See where it changes from GB to MB, that is where I added the extra part to my .htaccess file.

I am really pleased that I sorted it out.

The One Where The Plumber Comes

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Dragons and Fairy Dust

The other day we were sitting in the living room with some friends when my son came running in from the kitchen and informed me the ceiling was dripping. Obviously this was rather worrying news so we went though to look. He was quite right, we could see drips of water coming though the wood.

I got a couple of buckets and put them under the drips, but obviously we needed to work out where the water was coming from. My husband and his friend decided the only way to find out what to remove the wood from the ceiling. Planks of wood were removed while I was watching worried we might not be able to put them back. After some time we managed to work out that the water was coming from the bathroom and it was near the top of the stairs. I went up to investigate and found that the floor underneath the hot water tank was soaking. It looked like the hot water tank had failed. Time to call some plumbers.

Before calling anyone I did some research and found out that the average hot water tank costs about £200. It is as well I checked as one plumber quoted £1100 for the job. I hope for that price it was a gold hot water tank with diamonds encrusting it. The other two quoted us very similar prices for the same job so we picked the one who seemed the most competent of the two. It does show that it pays to get several estimates.

On the allocated day he turned up to do the job. I told my son he had to go to the toilet before he came as we would be without water until it was done. The first job was to drain the tank and the heating system. I hadn’t realised how much water a hot water tank actually holds. With the tap on and also a hosepipe running out into the garden it took a couple of hours to remove all the water. We had to stop a rather inquisitive King Charles Spaniel drinking it. The water also needed to be drained from the radiators which involved removing the valve from one of them and emptying the water into a bowl.

Finally it was time to put in the new hot water tank, lots of crashing and banging later it was all done. I now have no more dripping though my ceiling but it was an expense I could have done without. I did manage to stop the plumber from taking away the old tank. Apparently copper is worth a lot these days so we plan to take it to the scrap yard and get some money back. Hopefully it is the last drama we will see for a little while.

An Epic Walk

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Dragons and Fairy Dust

The sun was shining, it was a gorgeous day. It was time for a walk in the country with my son and the dog. We packed some water and a bowl for the dog to drink from and we set off. We also brought a Frisbee with us, the idea was the dog would chase it. I am not sure he knew what to make of it so we ended up throwing it between ourselves.
We are lucky enough to live next door to the Rising Sun Country Park so we headed there. First we had to walk past the farmers field.

As it is May the field is starting to show signs of the crop. This year it is rape, last year it was some sort of grain. The borders beside the path are coming into bloom with lots of while flowers, even the nettles have flowers on. Sadly the field is likely to be built on in the next few years, the application for planning permission has gone before the council. It will change the whole face of the area which will be a shame.

We then headed up the steep hill. The path varies according to the weather, a stream often flows down here when it has been raining and the path keeps getting rebuilt.

There is a lovely view from the top of the hill, you can see all the city spread out below. On the other side you can see the cranes of the shipyards. There are several trails though the Rising Sun Country Park which are marked by arrows. We just tend to wander and find new ways each time we go.

We passed the dipping pond. We hadn’t brought a net this time but it is fun to bring a net and a jam jar and see what you can catch. There are usually tadpoles, pond skaters and dragonflies to be seen. When we have finished looking we put everything back.

Into the nature reserve, where dogs have to be kept on leads. It is shady under the trees so time for a quick rest.

Do you think King Kong is beyond the gate?

Further along the path my son found a friend, who do you think is the best looking?

All that walking is hard work. We stopped at the Visitor Centre for a drink. It was very busy, everyone had come out in the sun and the play area was full. All the tables were taken so we sat on the wall outside.

We then continued on our journey. We passed the old quarry which is now filled with water. Lots of geese and ducks had made themselves at home. The Rising Sun Country Park used to have coal mines in it, so I imagine the water is actually very deep.

We then went into some more woods where I found some bluebells growing. A bit further on there were carpets of them which looked very pretty in the sunlight.

Finally we reached the Rising Sun Farm. It is an organic farm that produces fresh fruit and vegetables. They also have several rare breed animals and stables.

This time the farm shop was open so I treated myself to a cabbage and some rhubarb. I was not expecting the cabbage to be a monster cabbage.

Possibly it is a triffid? Needless to say carrying a cabbage this size home whilst holding a dog prevented me taking any more photos. Anyone know some good cabbage recipes?

Make Time 2 Play

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Dragons and Fairy Dust

Do you make time to play with your children? Maybe you should, it has been shown that play activities actually help children learn. It should be no surprise really, the best way to learn something is by actually doing it. I didn’t learn to make cakes by reading about how to make them, I learnt by actually making them. I had to learn how to measure the ingredients, mix everything together, set the oven to the right temperature and know when it was cooked. When you are used to doing it you don’t realise that these are all skills you have learnt by practise.

By allowing your children playtime you are helping them to learn valuable skills. Playing with a box of lego is developing dexterity and problem solving skills, cutting out paper shapes helps fine motor skills, playing with a football enhances gross motor skils, building a tower out of bricks develops problems solving abilities and helps with concentration span. Most importantly playing with other children helps to develop social skills, something that will be important when they get older. When I was little we used to play outside all the time with the other children on the street. These days children seem to stay indoors more and not socialise so any chance to play is a good thing.

Why not make some time and play with your child?

I make time 2 play by: