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 🙂

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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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….

Watch these nasty little fellows….

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dsc_4057_2.jpgDefinitely do not want to accidentally fall in one of these nests, i remember bites from a single one hurts like buggery and the lump lasts for days! Imagine a nest of ’em….

Galstons Walk – part of the Great Northern Walk – check it out here! a tinyfraction of the 250 km walk!

Bull ants have a fearsome reputation, and deservedly so. They are large with long, straight, powerful jaws and a potent venom-loaded sting. They attack intruders of any size that come too close to their nest. Bull ants also have well-developed vision and will follow or even chase an intruder a good distance from the nest. Usually the sight of large aggressive ants streaming out of the nest is enough to prompt a hasty retreat. If not, the ants deliver painful stings by gripping the intruder with their mandibles (jaws), curling their abdomen to reveal the sting and injecting the victim with venom. Often multiple stings are delivered.

Refer to http://www.faunanet.gov.au/ 

Chinamens Beach Rusty fence…

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dsc_4211_2.jpgWell it was time to do the other end of Chinamens Beach, fortunately all my images are pretty ordinary since I left the VR (Vibration Reduction) on whilst on my tripod and also had ISO set to 1250 from the night before… what a crappy eh.. especially since I got up at the cracker of dawn…

Nonetheless there was some nicely composed pictures, which can be all viewed here….

The attached image is of, what appears to be, a fence of some sort to separate Chinamens Beach from the adjacent beach which is part of a military testing zone – probably has not been used for many years but ….

Well I will be up there again soon and this time, 3rd time, I will remember not to leave the ISO or VR on …. oh and it will be an absolutely magic morning.. 🙂

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Stealth Grub…..

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dsc_3985_2.jpgCheck this cheeky monkey out….if we did not pick this guy up he would have had free reign on our Chilli plant for good….all credit has to go to evolution for this guys camo coat…

I would love to know what this guy is called or what family he is from!

That ‘search engine’ gives me lots of useful info about how to get Grub booting off a usb stick :/ yes I am interested in linux but come on… I am looking for grubbies….

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Spiders…handy info..

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dsc_3977.JPGQuoted from: (excellent, informative site – the pic on the left is one of my many holes!)

http://www.usyd.edu.au/anaes/venom/spiders.html

Spider Bites

The Sydney funnel web (and a few related Atrax species) is unquestionably the most dangerous spider in Australia; the red back and the paralysis tick are the only other two arachnids with potentially fatal bites.

Geoff Isbister has authored a nice review of the management of spider bites on the Australian Prescriber website.

The AVRU has a page on spider identification with some nice photos and a description of their behaviour. The Australian Reptile Park pioneered funnel web venom milking and is the sole supplier of venom to CSL for antivenom production, and they now have a specific spider exhibit. If you capture a live funnel web please take it to one of their funnel-web collection points. Their comprehensive information about important Australian spiders makes fascinating reading.

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Coffee Update….

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Well, after purchasing a cheap, but suitable tamper – which will keep me going until I get my custom one made up 🙂 Things are looking pretty darn good on the coffee front….have not purchased a coffee from the cafe for over a week and I am still going strong!

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Check out this one — note the cup supplied by sar’s Nan 🙂

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