Photo-voltaic cells

27 07 2008

We’d like to incorporate photo-voltaic cells in our new house, if and when we ever build it (the stock market meltdown and the direct effect of that on our retirement funds have put all plans on hold…). Why? Well, the thought of not being 100% reliant on an external power supply is the main reason, then there are the carbon footprint/green reasons.

When we first saw these systems, we were impressed. But not impressed with the approximately $20,000 price at the time. Then we found that the Federal Government offered a substantial rebate to householders who decided to install them (somewhere between $8000 and $12000), making them much more affordable.

But since then we’ve had a change of federal government, to one that rode the coat tails of ‘being green’ to get into power. The same government that now wants to commit Australian companies to a draconian Emissions Trading Scheme (don’t get me started…). Anyhow, this new ‘green’ government has decided to apply a ‘means test’ to photo-voltaic cell systems for households, so you only get a partial rebate if your household earns less than $100,000 per year. Well, you only need two income earners on $51,000 a year each and you’re already over that mark.

My understanding is that the whole idea of these household systems is twofold:

  • to make homeowners partially self-sufficient for their electricity supply
  • to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions required to create and deliver electricity.

Now, if the federal government is serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions created by producing and delivering electricity, then it should be doing everything in its power to get these solar cells on to every Australian rooftop. That doesn’t mean bringing in a means test for the rebate! It means subsidising the industry (gee, that’s a dirty word these days) to the point where the price is such that purchasing and installing such a product is as cheap as buying a new TV. It means making a serious difference in the way that we use the one unlimited and free resource we have plenty of—sunshine! It means looking at the small things (like photo-voltaic cells on rooftops) as well as the big ones (the proposed solar array installations that will cost billions of dollars, take up massive amounts of land, yet only service about 50,000 households).

Anyhow, if you live in Australia and feel as pissed off annoyed about this change to the rebate conditions as I do, then head on over and sign the petition organised by the Channel 7 “Sunrise” team. So far there are nearly 50,000 signatures. Maybe yours can make a difference.

You can add your name to the petition here:
http://sunrisefamily.com.au/current/petition/index.php


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Categories : Life stuff

Comfort food 12: Lamb Shanks

26 07 2008

One of the delights of the depths of winter is the yummy stews and casseroles you can make. It’s many years since I made lamb shanks but I gave them a go the other night. Unfortunately, they didn’t taste anywhere near as good as they looked—I don’t use salt in my cooking, but I do use some chili mixes and suspect there may quite a bit of salt in them as I didn’t use them this time and these lamb shanks tasted very bland. They were definitely missing salt.

The ‘recipe’ was one of those ‘bit of this, bit of that’ ones—look at what’s in the fridge and just toss it in! I’ll try and formalise it…

Ingredients

  • 2 lamb shanks
  • Lots of veges, all chopped coarsely into chunks. From memory I put in a couple of onions, some carrots, pumpkin, sweet potato, half a zucchini, a few mushrooms, some celery stalks,  maybe a potato or two… whatever you think goes together, really.
  • 1 or 2 cans tomatoes
  • half a long red chili (to taste—if you don’t like chili, don’t add it); I think I also added a slurp of chili sauce too
  • a couple of sprigs of rosemary
  • salt and pepper to taste

Method

I used a heavy cast iron pot with lid on top of the stove, but you could do this in the oven too, or in a slow cooker.

  1. Brown the onions, chili, and mushrooms in a small quirt of oil.
  2. Add the lamb shanks and brown them lightly.
  3. Add the rest of the veges, including the tomatoes and the rosemary.
  4. Add some water if you think it’s necessary. But don’t add too much otherwise you’ll have a soup.
  5. Throw in the rosemary and a pinch of salt and pepper.
  6. Turn down the heat and leave to simmer for a couple of hours, stirring occasionally if it’s on the stove top. Add water as required if it seems to be cooking too fast and drying out. (If using an oven, this is the step where you put the dish into the oven!)
  7. When the lamb shanks are nearly falling off the bone, they’re cooked!
  8. Serve with something to absorb the lovely tomato-ey juices/gravy, such as rice, couscous, or mashed potato, and some green veges for color. You might want to have some crusty bread on hand too, to mop up those juices!

Here are the lamb shanks nearly ready for serving—look at all those lovely veges in the sauce:

And here’s one meal—one lamb shank is MORE than enough!


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Categories : Food & Wine

Just ‘cos I haven’t blogged for a while…

14 07 2008

Just because I haven’t blogged for a while doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening. Yes, we’re in the depths of winter, and this year is much colder than last—I checked the weather bureau’s daily stats on maxima and minima for June and July and it seems we’re about 2 degrees colder each day than last year. The heater’s been on quite a bit so far!

So, what have I been up to? In no particular order:

  • Quilting: I’ve finally finished all 144 blocks for my log cabin quilt (168 if you count the 24 blue guys that I decided not to use!). I haven’t taken photos of each of the colourways yet, and haven’t started to pull the blocks together into a quilt top, but small steps… I think getting 144 block completed in my spare time was an achievement, considering each one took about 15 minutes to do. It’s amazing how they add up when you do a couple each evening after finishing work. Oh, and while watching the football on TV.
  • Travel: I went up to Perth for the office ‘end of financial year’ lunch. Although the lunch was only a half day, I travelled up on the Sunday, spent all of Monday in the office plus Tuesday morning, then we had the lunch on the Tuesday afternoon. On the Wednesday I did a lot of running around (dentist—had to have a filling; hairdresser; old bank to collect new VISA card) before driving home. And a couple of weeks ago we went over to Busselton to have lunch with my folks, and for my husband to go see Hancock (which he enjoyed). While he was at the movies, I looked at stoves (the one in the rental property has died) and laptops, and did a bit of shopping.
  • Catching up with friends and family: While in Perth, I caught up with friends for dinner on the Sunday night, and with my nieces and nephew and their respective partners for dinner on the Monday. There was the work lunch on Tuesday, and then I had breakfast with a couple of ex-work colleagues (is that how it’s hyphenated?) on Wednesday morning so it was a bit of an eating feast! But there’s never enough time to catch up with everyone… It was fabulous seeing the nieces and nephews again! I’ve hardly seen them since we left Perth, and definitely not all together like that.
  • Computer issues: I took my PC to Perth with me to get it serviced. Nothing was wrong with it, but I was getting regular ‘overheating’ messages which I’d been told to ignore. But I didn’t like them—getting a message that the computer is running at 70C when it’s only 10C in the house is a worry! Anyhow, the PC Guru guys looked it over, did some cleaning and testing and found that my power supply was nearly gone (something about capacitors?). So they replaced that, installed SP3 for Windows XP, did some other tweaks, and I packed up my baby in the car and brought her home. SP3 gave me a few problems, which I’ve documented on my professional blog, but they seem to be sorted now. I also had issues with installing Acrobat 9 on my aging laptop. And as a result decided to get a replacement laptop! It’s been something I’ve been considering for a while, so I bit the bullet. I pick it up next Thursday when we’re in Busselton, and it will have Vista on it so I’ll get a chance to try it out, as well as install Office 2007 and try it out too. I’ve been wanting to test Office 2007 for a while, but not on my production machine while all my clients still use Office 2003. Mmmm… new toy! (I’m trying not to remember the pain of installing lots of apps…)
  • Work stuff: I was told by my boss that the division of the Brisbane company that I work for had decided that the volume of work coming in was now sufficient for them to employ a full time tech writer in the Brisbane office (which it is). No big deal—that’s the life of a contractor. So I’ve helped them find someone in Brisbane (yes, I know people in all sorts of places!) and he starts with them mid August. There’ll be some handover time, but I expect to be off that project towards the end of August. There’s other work at the company my other boss there wants me to do, but I’m not sure of the arrangements for that. I suspect that it won’t be enough for three full days, but we’ll see. Meantime, all sorts of other possible opportunities have been cropping up from people I’ve worked with before. We’ll see what comes of those…
  • Stuff related to the technical communication profession: I was asked to be on an editorial advisory panel for Intercom, the non-academic journal produced by the Society for Technical Communication (STC). We’ve had one meeting so far, which was an interesting exercise in logistics for the organiser and others in the group as I was the only one based outside the US. While I’m very familiar with issues arising from working and communicating across international time zones, most of the others weren’t, so if nothing else, they’re gaining an appreciation of the global nature of the organisation! I’ve also been asked to be a co-moderator of one of the biggest user groups for those involved in Help authoring, and have been asked to write some articles for an Australia/New Zealand technical communication publication, and for an international web magazine that focuses on user experience issues. I was also asked to be on a panel but that was in Perth and required me to be on site for just 90 minutes, so I passed along the details of a friend who I was confident could ‘fly the flag’ for technical writing.
  • Enjoying the birds: We have a great variety of birds that pass through the airspace above our backyard, occasionally stopping to sample parts of the garden. We regularly get red-capped parrots and ring-necked parrots (a.k.a. Twenty-Eights and Port Lincoln parrots) foraging on the back lawn, magpies, New Holland honeyeaters, wattle birds, willy wagtails, the occasional kookaburra, and just lately, the most gorgeous tiny Splendid Blue Wrens, with their bright blue iridescent plumage (no, I didn’t take this picture!).

Well, I think there are winds of change in the air. Nothing I can put my finger on, but as I look at this list it seems that parts of my life will be going in different directions soon. That’s not scary—just an observation.


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Categories : Life stuff

Site for parents raising kids

3 07 2008

I was trawling through some old ‘sent’ emails in an vain attempt to delete some of my thousands of accumulated emails, when I came across this one I sent out a couple of years ago.

A chap I’ve recently done some work for has been asked to do some work for these people: http://www.minti.com/ It’s a site for parents all about raising kids. It works on the principle of free advice, word of mouth hints/ideas, etc., not advice about parenting from “the experts”.

Just thought those of you with kids may appreciate this resource.

I just checked and the website still exists and seems to be pretty active. There are some 6500 questions and pieces of advice, all ranked according to their usefulness to the readers; some 8000 questions; and some 25,500 members.

Not being a parent, I have no clue as to whether the advice is sound or not!


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Categories : Life stuff

Log cabin quilt: 1

26 06 2008

OK, I said it’d be a few days… well, it’s been a few minutes!

I’ve had a log cabin quilt in mind for a while, and I thought that one with black as the solid would look good with the jewel colors at the cooler end of the color wheel—the pinks, purples, blues, and greens. I started making blocks some weeks ago, and have made a few at a time. To make a Queen Bed size quilt, I need 144 blocks… and that’s just the start. Then there’s the border, backing fabric, quilting, binding, etc.

I chose six major color themes, raided my stash to find appropriate fabric (three of each color theme, and three different blacks), purchased some foundation paper pieces from my friend Bobbie at The Quilt Mouse, and started making my 6″ blocks.

Making a log cabin with foundation piecing is not the quickest way, but it’s accurate. I know that my finished blocks will be the right size and will fit together exactly. If I was making a log cabin quilt using chain piecing I couldn’t guarantee that. Also, with chain piecing, the cutting and 1/4″ seams have to be absolutely accurate. With foundation paper piecing that’s not the case—I don’t have to be 100% accurate with my cutting and as I stitch on the printed lines and cut the 1/4″ seam using an Add-a-Quarter ruler, it’s easy.

Here’s part of a completed block—each ‘log’ in the cabin is a finished 3/4″ wide, and the ‘log fire’ for all blocks is a yellow square.

So far I’ve made well over 120 blocks—I’ve nearly completed the first stage! Today it was time to go to Bobbie’s new house and play with the blocks on the design wall in her quilting studio. My original thought was to do a furrows pattern, but after she played with a few variations on her computer (using EQ6), I saw one I really liked. It’s still a furrows pattern, but while the blocks run in one diagonal direction, the color bands run in the other.

That sounds more difficult than it is, so here are some photos. The first is my original plan (not all the blocks are laid out, just enough to get a sense of the pattern and color combinations):

Then we tried the pattern I liked on the computer. Notice how the diagonal patterns run in two ways—there’s the furrows (top left to bottom right diagonal), and then there are the colors running in the opposite (top right to bottom left) diagonal direction:

I’m not happy with the dark blue. Most of the other color-themed fabrics have batiks in them, or something that looks like a batik. But the dark blue has plaids. And I don’t like it. It doesn’t suit the rest of the fabrics. But after making 24 of these blocks (approx. 15 mins per block, so that’s about 6 hours of work), I sure didn’t feel like doing them again! However, Bobbie said something that stuck—she said if I don’t like the blue now, I sure won’t like it in a couple of years time. She said that every time I look at this quilt, I’ll focus on the blue plaid and how much I don’t like it. She’s right. So I got some more fabric this afternoon! I’ll redo those blue blocks and use the old ones for something else where they’ll be more suitable (anyone want a set of blue and black place mats? 😉 )

One other variation I tried was the large diamond blocks. It’s never been a preferred option, but I’ll show you what it looks like anyway:

I still don’t like the blue plaid any way I look at it! It has to go!!

So, your thoughts? Which design takes *your* fancy?

See also:


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Categories : Quilts and fabric stuff

Evolution of a quilt: 11

26 06 2008

It’s done!

I finished hand stitching the binding in front of TV earlier this week, then tried my hand at some hand sewing with gold metallic thread on the label. I decided that the label should be a grape leaf, so I fused one on the back of the quilt, then did a wobbly blanket stitch around the raw edge and a straight stitch for the veins. After doing that, I remembered why I don’t like hand sewing! All I have to do now is add the provenance details about this quilt—I think I’ll follow the veins of the grape leaf.

Final pics are here, and below is the final quilt pinned on my friend’s design wall, and a close-up of the label.

And you’ve gotta figure that’s not the end of it… While I was waiting for this quilt to come back from Judy (it was away for about 3 months—I was away for 6 weeks of that time too), I got started on a log cabin quilt. But that’s a series of posts for another day!

Links to all posts about this quilt


Comments : 8 Comments »

Categories : Quilts and fabric stuff

If this works…

22 06 2008

… it would solve a lot of the world’s energy supply problems. It seems so simple, and if the execution is anywhere near as brilliant as the idea and if it’s affordable, then we need no longer rely on oil, gas and coal for powering an awful lot of stuff.

What am I talking about? Nano Vent-Skin. Tiny wind turbines connected via a mesh that covers a building, roof, wall, vehicle etc. to produce electricity to power that object.

For details and some cool photos see:

If only…

Update 27 July 2008: Something similar is in the plans by Philips, again incorporating very small elements to create energy, water, and light. You can see the details here:
http://www.design.philips.com/probes/projects/sustainable_habitat_2020/index.page


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Categories : Life stuff

I’m sure someone must’ve thought of this

13 06 2008

I was catching up on some RSS feeds this afternoon, and came across one of Smashing Magazine‘s latest offerings: Beautiful and Original Product Designs.

Yes, most are beautiful and I’d guess many are original. But there was one I can’t believe no-one has thought of before. It’s just so simple…

The “Easy PB&J Jar“—a jar with straight sides and most importantly, lids at both ends so you don’t have to scrape the sides looking for that last little bit of peanut butter, mayo, Vegemite, or whatever. Having spent a couple of minutes this morning scraping the last of the Vegemite in the jar, I would’ve appreciated one of these simple jars!



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Categories : Food & Wine

Evolution of a quilt: 10

7 06 2008

It’s back!

I gave Judy—a local quilter—my dragonfly quilt before I headed off overseas in March. I knew she couldn’t do it for a while and I was OK with that. I got a call from her on Wednesday telling me she’d finished quilting it on her long arm quilting machine (I should have taken some photos of her but I totally forgot to ask her!).

When I’d given her the quilt, we’d talked about some ideas for the quilting—perhaps some sun’s rays, some grapevine tendrils—but I left it in her creative hands. She told me she let the quilt ‘talk to her’ and I’m really pleased with the result. I’ve added a couple of photos at the end of this blog post, but click here for all the photos.

So now I’m down to the last stages—squaring up the quilt, trimming the excess batting and backing, adding a hanging sleeve and doing the binding. I think we’ve got a craft afternoon tomorrow, so maybe I’ll get some of it done then—I’ll need the big tables that the function centre has to get it done properly. My kitchen counter just isn’t suitable!

Oh, and if you’re looking for a good professional quilter, Judy’s details are:

Judy Bland, Blue Rose Quilting, Bridgetown, Western Australia
judy.bee1@bigpond.com
Ph: +61 8 9761 4546

Links to all posts about this quilt


Comments : 3 Comments »

Categories : Quilts and fabric stuff

Local grandmother does well

5 06 2008

When I popped in to town the other day, I saw that the florist and a couple of other shops were plastered with “Go Deb!” and “Australia’s Got Talent” signs. It seems that a local Bridgetown grandmother, 67-year old Deb Perry, has made the grand final of this national TV talent quest. Her talent? Spoons!!

There’s a couple of videos of her on YouTube. For her age, she’s enviably fit and flexible! The first video is of her getting in to the competition; the second is the performance that got her into the grand final, which I think may be next week and the last one is her grand final appearance. Now it’s up to the voters…


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Categories : Life stuff

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