Worm Farm…

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So when some asks you whether you have a pet (s) what do you say if all ya got is a worm farm? ‘well sort of’ is usually the response, with that said, I feed them and occasionally look at them and they provide some entertainment so I guess they constitute as pets! – fish for example are much the same, feed them and watch them…

However worms have a pretty useful side benefit – they eat scraps and give great fertiliser! even liquid fertiliser so i thats one extra point for worms over fish. Now worms are a bit picky when it comes to food, you can’t just feed them any old scrap, for example, no onions, bread meat or dairy products, basically whatever falls on the ground naturally is what they eat. However there are some excellent kitchen waste products that they just love, coffee grinds, banana peels (they love these) , any leafy vegetable, tea bags (remove the staple) just to name a few.

Now we got ours from the Watershed (newtown) when we did the workshop there, 65 bucks is not bad either especially considering it is recycled plastic and also australian designed and made. The actual worms can be purchased here also for 30 odd bucks (not a bad trade either, i reckon ya could make a few bob this way!). The actual name of the farm is a “Worm Factory” see here for more.

Now the pictures here are from our one which we got in Jan 08, it is fairly well developed and we are almost moving upstairs to the next level.

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More useful links:

http://www.ryde.nsw.gov.au/services/worm.htm

http://www.reln.com.au/worm-factory-p-131.html

http://www.nitrowormfarms.com/worm_farms.html

The Herd, Summerland

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herd.jpg14 Jun 2008, The Factory Theatre Victoria Rd – Marrickville, Sydney, New South Wales.

Pretty good show, nice mix of new stuff of the album and classic stuff, ‘scallops’ was a winner. The Factory Theatre is a damn fine venue, hope to see more here, especially since it is but a 10 minute walk – easy to roll home with a stop at the Vic on the park….

This is the second Herd show we have seen, will definitely go for a third! The first was at the Enmore Theatre, not a bad venue either.

probably only the second time I have visted myspace was to check these guys profile – I wont dare link to that shit tho…

The best place to find info about them and the rest of the solo artists is at http://www.elefanttraks.com/

Take the time to check out the solo artists like Urthboy and Ozibatla – these shows usually have half the herd there anyways 🙂

Sites of Enmore/Newtown

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Well I have lived here so long and never taken a picture of the most famous site in Newtown – the ‘I have a Dream’ mural. I do regularly get and take pictures of some of the graf that is around, its amazing how often it changes, there is even a stencil art wall in Enmore which morphs and evolves on a regular basis..

Check out more graf here

Just wander on thru the back streets and you find a world of artwork (some may not classify it as so) that is everchanging…

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and from the City of Sydney Site

Paula Hamilton and Paul Ashton who kindly gave permission to reproduce the following extract from their article in Public History Review Vol. 9, pp23-36 (see especially pp30-32)

Another memorial in the Inner Western suburb of Newtown is painted on a wall. It is at the less salubrious

end of the area on a main traffic thoroughfare in one of the most congested streets in the city. Adorning a whole wall in bold colours, it is impossible to miss. It bears the classic realism of the spraycan artist. There are two images: the Earth, and the face of Martin Luther King, both stark against a black background.

Underneath are the words ‘I have a dream’. Across the bottom third of the wall is the Aboriginal flag and the injunction: ‘Please show respect, post no bills here.’ But despite this mural’s visual accessibility and prominence it is often viewed ‘in a state of distraction’-as opposed, for example, to the intense focus when in a museum- because it is part of the public streetscape of buildings, shops, people and cars. It is arresting, but becomes part of the urban visual wallpaper. Memories embedded in buildings like this one acquire meanings different from those the architect intended, and the mural obscures any sense of the three storey building underneath it.

Twin Pioneer – Scottish built taildragger…can it get any worse :)

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dsc_4890-test1.jpg This has to come pretty close to the ugliest plane I have seen at our airport! The light blue paint job certainly did not do it any favours! This big bad boy is a twin engine (LEONIDES 531/8, whatever the hell those are! 9-cylinder supercharged aircooled radial piston engine – 550 odd HP) taildragger, another strike against it! I feel sorry for the pax, talk about a vertigo trip and you have not even lifted the tail! It feels like your climbing everest when trying to get to the cockpit!

Nonetheless we should concentrate on its good points…top speed? 145kts, well thats pretty good considering the size of the wings and the fuse, on that note you could probably land it in a footy field with those flaps and slats 🙂 This one i think was built around 1958, there were also military models, this may explain the tri-tail configuration to help against enemy fire – I think damage tolerance had a different meaning back then 🙂

What else we got? the cabin is very roomy with plenty of emergency egress exits – all in the roof?! reminds me a little of the Shorts skyvan, come to think of it, thats gotta be the ugliest aircraft ever built and still flying. So, Twin Pioneer you off the hook here, the second ugliest plane on the airport (note the skyvan has a real uncarriage setup:) )

dsc_4883_1.jpg An interesting note about this particular aircraft, on the left had side of the fuse (internal) there is a whole stack of hand scrawled notes/calculations, maybe the flight engineer ran out of paper?! Imagine that, mid-transit and heres your flight engineer calculating landing distances based on weight etc on the fuselage skin, that would be a sight.

Head on over to the gallery for a full series of pictures on this ugly duckling – a few of some great british engineering with chains, hydraulics and the like!

Accident Prevention Program – Single-engine vs Twins

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Always Leave Yourself an Out

While single-engine aircraft may not be safer, twins can be more dangerous/Richard N. Aarons

DESPITE heated scoldings from flight instructors and grim warnings from the National Transportation Safety Board, many pilots still seem to believe that implied in the fact that an aircraft has two engines is a promise that it will perform with only one of those engines operative. And the light-twin stall/spin accident rate further indicates that many multi-engine pilots have not come to grips with the facts that:

  • Significantly more than half the climb performance disappears when one engine signs out
  • Exploration of the Vmc regime close to the ground is a sure way to kill yourself.

A while back, the NTSB reported that light multi-engine aircraft are involved in fewer engine-failure-related accidents than single-engine aircraft. However the same report observed that an engine-failure-related accident in a twin is four times more likely to cause serious or fatal injuries. An analysis of that report appeared in the June issue of B/CA (Cause and Circumstance).

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Wombats….(and i’m not talking about the band!)

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dsc_4642.jpgyes..very noisy at night…blind as a bat but can hear exceptionally well!

Wombats are stout, sturdy marsupials. They grow to about 1.3 metres in length, and can weigh up to 36 kg. They have a large, blunt head with small eyes and ears, and a short, muscular neck. Their sharp claws and stubby, powerful legs make them great diggers. Wombats have been known to live for up to 27 years in captivity.

dsc_4638.jpgTwo of the three species of wombat occur in NSW:

  • The common wombat, most widespread of the two, has a large, naked snout covered in grainy skin.
  • The much rarer southern hairy-nosed wombat has larger ears than the common wombat, and its snout is coated with fine hairs.

The northern hairy-nosed wombat is presumed extinct in NSW.


Frogs and Stuff….

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dsc_4511_3.jpg

This little guy is as small as your little fingernail!

From the good people at “Wildlife of Sydney”

http://www.faunanet.gov.au/

Eastern Dwarf Tree Frog Fact File

Litoria fallax

This little frog is usually a green colour but it can change colour to be brown or a mix of the two colours. This colouration gives it excellent camouflage in the vegetation of swamps or dams where it hunts. It is active both day and night, spending much of its time in the vegetation, occasionally lunging out to take mosquitoes and other flying insects.

Like many tree frogs, you are more likely to hear them than see them. Visit any wetland around Sydney, particularly from October to April, and you will probably hear the ‘reek…pip, reek…pip…pip’ sound of the male Eastern Dwarf Tree Frog calling for a mate.

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What the f#&* is MTU and why have Telstra changed it? More importantly why does my CounterStrike not work.

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Well I think the heading pretty well spells it out, here I am everything travelling ok and one day i get an error from within my Counterstrike Source stating error after 4 tries – hmm strange, now everthing else is working, browsing the web, mail, even finding CSS servers and Steam connection, it all worked fine. The only thing was trying to connect to a server..whack thanks for coming..no CSS for you :).css-erro-cropr.png

css-error-2-crop.pngA little research pulled up a similiar problem from the Gamearena forums with a clue regarding the recent Telstra change of the MTU value – note there was very little info and related cases…. Now wtf is a mtu and why is telstra messing with it.

Referring to the wonderful Wikipedia, MTU stands for Maximum Transmission Unit. Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) refers to the size (in bytes) of the largest packet that a given layer of a communications protocol can pass onwards. MTU parameters usually appear in association with a communications interface (NIC, serial port, etc.). The MTU may be fixed by standards (as is the case with Ethernet) or decided at connect time (as is usually the case with point-to-point serial links). A higher MTU brings higher bandwidth efficiency. However, large packets can block up a slow interface for some time, increasing the lag for further packets.

Read on…it gets interesting 🙂

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Telstra, Phone Lines and Cable… It can’t be that hard!

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Well, a little history here – moved house from where I had an existing cable internet connection to a new house where it already had provisions for cable internet (the people before musta had it), so bright ‘ol me thinks, just plug him in and see what happens – fairly typical process for me, very little thought and worry about the consequences later 🙂

So I plug it in and fire up the my debian gateway and voilia (or however you spell that french word) instant internet connection…..hmmm wonder if I should tell telstra. Well changed the billing address for our account to ensure i got the new bills! Nonetheless, a few weeks later decided I would call them and get the address changed etc, I suspected they may whack me with an $86 reconnection fee but hey…note I have been a cable customer for over 5 years! so theres no contract or stuff. Anyways..called up telstra and they were helpful and offered me a new modem and no reconnection fee provided I sign a new contract blah blah…However it would be best to get the phone transferred over before doing the cable, ‘no problem’ I say, they even offered to call me back after they connected the phone (which for the record they did not!)

Now to the phone…got the wheels in motion and they said it would be connected on day X and just make sure a phone was plugged in…no problem. Done but no working phone…just one very dead line…hmmm no problem I say, lets get the tech dude to check the line to the house. Tech dude comes out checks the outside line, leaves a note saying fixed fault in line and now please check all outlets and if you have any problems good luck and its now your problem. Maybe not in those exact words but basically thats what they say 🙂

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So off I went to check the phone and yep…dead as a doornail…great…

So being the electrical guru that I am 🙂 and seeing that little ‘ol terminal block on the front door (inside) I thought…lets have a poke….pulled off the cover and found a birds nest of wiring…hmmm phones only need two wires to work, blue and white, yep they seem to be there….however there is two separate lines coming into the house! One that is connected is a newer looking one and other, an older looking cable with all wires not connected…

So again, lets just try and plug something in and see what happens..Pulled out some alligator clips and hooked up the unconnected blue and white wires to my phone (Yes I did check which ones go where! – see here)….after a little static and re-arranging of the clips….shazzam…we have a dial tone…. It would appear that the wrong line into the house was connected or corrected during the service….

I, like a dutiful clean electrical guru 🙂 ( by now u must know the truth) tidied up the wires and whacked the cover back on….

game on.

La Pavoni’s new Grinder…..

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dsc07982.JPGGerrys Coffee GrinderI could be onto something here…..why yes of course I would love the ‘jolly’ La Pavoni coffee bean grinder but when the financial crunch hits what better way than to improvise 🙂

Now, the hand grinder was generously supplied by the petti-coat government, however by the time the coffee beans were ground ones elbow was also ground and clicking….so rather than spend $200 on a good burr grinder – note any self respecting coffee maker must use a burr grinder, refer to here for the difference between burr and blade grinders – I decided to do a quick mod to allow the hook up of the cordless drill. Now these wheel burr grinders can be noisy and messy so the poor neighbours now suffer the morning pain of me grinding away 🙂 But it is substantially faster than the hand options….