Friday

Check out those low lying clouds on the centre left - they look like mountains. They really looked incredible.

15 seconds later, the sun came up just a tiny bit more, and I was a bit further around the Bay, and suddenly those same clouds were tinged with pink.

The usual flock of early morning rowers - they must have nuts of steel to be out on the water at this time of the year. They reminded me this morning of the water boatmen insects. Yes, it's cold and all that, but it really is a stunning time of the day.

When most cyclists want to carry a stack of stuff, they buy some panniers. This lady was stuttering along with multiple shopping bags hanging from her handle bars. I'm always paranoid that a bag is going to go into the front spokes, and then over you go.

This bloke must have been seven feet tall - the top of my helmet didn't was below the line of his shoulder. 

The Global Renewable Energy Index is crashing

Oh dear. Read the whole lot here. And just remember this - in Australia, some unions have poured a lot of superannuation money into these money pits. If the Australian renewable sector goes the same way, a lot of union members are going to have their retirement funds hammered. 


The RENIXX® (Renewable Energy Industrial Index) World is the first global stock index, which comprises the performance of the world´s 30 largest companies of the renewable energy industry whose weighting in the index is based on the market capitalization (free float).


Since 2008, the index has lost about 90% of its value. In the last month, the nosedive seems to be accelerating


Filed Bankruptcy:


Solyndra
Beacon Power
Ener1
Range Fuels
Solar Trust of America
Spectrawatt
Evergreen Solar
Eastern Energy
Unisolar
Bright Automotive
Olson’s Crop Service
Energy Conversion Devices
Sovello
Siag
Solon
Q-Cells
Mountain Plaza


Teetering on the Brink:


Abound Solar
A123 Systems
Brightsource Energy
Fisker Automotive
First Solar
Nevada Geothermal
SunPower
Nordex
The Bard Group
Amonix
NRG Energy
Alterra Power
Enel Green Power
Sunpower Corp

It's getting too dark, too dark to see

It's that time of the year when photography is becoming painful - literally. The morning temp dropped to 9 degrees this week, which is when the finger tips start to ask for the fingerless gloves to be put into storage until spring time. The top two joints of my fingers ache with cold for the first five minutes - then the blood starts flowing, and all is well. However, it's bloody hard to take a photo with frozen fingers. It's even harder though taking a photo on the move with full length gloves on. And it's really, really hard taking a photo on the move in the dark, as the above photo attests. 


The dark blob in this photo was out of the ordinary - I could smell cigarette smoke, but couldn't work out where it was coming from. That's nothing new - I smell people smoking dope fairly often, but what kills me is when I smell something freshly baked - like croissants - and I know I can't stop for a bite. Anyway, the smoke was coming from the cyclist in front of me.  It wasn't slowing him down at all. His lungs appeared to be in better shape than mine.

I've seen classic old photos of cyclists having a fag whilst racing, but I can't remember the last time I saw a real life bloke on a bike having a puff. I wouldn't have minded, except that he flicked his butt out behind him and it nearly went down my top. 


Speaking of which, I made the classic mistake of being careless when zipping up this week. It's been one of those weeks of greatcoats on, greatcoats off. Pretty cold in the morning, requiring two layers and leg warmers. Fairly warm in the afternoon, requiring the shedding of the top layer. I was starting to overheat, so when I pulled up at a red light, I quickly took my jacket off and was in the process of neatly folding it away when the light went green. So I simply stuffed it down the front of my jersey, and rode around with one massive tit.


At the next red light, I extracted the jacket, folded it neatly and stowed it in a rear pocket. And then the light went green, so I rapidly zipped up the jersey.


Wrong


Careless old me managed to insert a nice four inch stretch of chest hair into the rapidly moving zipper. That was way wrong. I thought I was going to end up with a landing street between my man boobs, but it didn't eventuate. It certainly felt like half the hairs on my chest were being ripped out.


By the way, follow this link and check out the bears at the bottom. You won't be disappointed.

Cut lunch and a water bag

See that bum bag over his bum? It's contained a few rounds of sandwiches. I'm used to seeing energy bars and energy shots and that sort of thing - but brown bread sandwiches?

An interaction with a depressingly stupid motorist

I've been commuting up and down my route for about 7 years. That's at least 1500 trips by bike back and forth. You could say that I know the road pretty well. I know how drivers, cyclists, dogs, pigeons and pedestrians generally behave at different points along my route (yes, you have to watch out for the Saturday morning pigeons and ibis on the path outside the fast food shops next to the Pyrmont Bridge Hotel - they're gorging themselves on all the pizza, burgers and chips that the drunks have half-heartedly thrown at the overflowing rubbish bins). I know where to ride to avoid the cracks, the suddenly opened doors and the drivers that stop too far forward when entering from side streets. I know where to stop at every intersection. I know where the puddles form when it rains. I know where the trees with the drooping, head catching, branches are. I know.


Tonight, I met a gumby in a car who had no idea about any of this; or about the rules of the road for that matter.


I stopped at a red light. The road is two lanes wide each way. The left lane, holding me, is for cars turning left and bikes going straight ahead - the two lanes merge into one on the other side of the intersection, and there is a bike lane there as well. The right hand lane is for cars going straight ahead or (very rarely) turning right.


Gumby pulls up in the right hand lane, winds down his window and asks me which way I am going.


I tell him straight ahead.


He tells me he is going left, and inquires who will go first.


I kind of snort in surprise and tell him that it will be me. There is no way he is turning left across in front of me. No way in the world. If he wants to be a knob, he can be a knob somewhere else.


At that point, he starts to get quite irate, saying a few rude things about cyclists "always wanting to get it their way".


No mate - I was doing the sensible thing, and you were being a tool. I got the feeling he didn't want to wait a few seconds behind me when the lights went green, and changed lanes in the hope of scooting around me from the wrong lane. He didn't like it when his moronic plan fell apart.


He wasn't the only moron on the road tonight. I had the displeasure of having to play tag with a taxi driver on George St who lane hopped six times in three blocks. He kept changing back and forth, hoping to get a break in the traffic. I could have told him that he had no hope - George St was wall to wall buses from Town Hall to Circular Quay - in those conditions, even skinny cyclists have a hard time getting through. Pudding basins like me just have to sit tight and wait it out. The worst thing about him playing tag is that he kept on barging into my lane - either when I was beside him, or when I had left a bit of a gap between me and the vehicle in front, and he lunged into my safety gap.


Seriously, the sooner retrospective abortion is legalised, the better off we'll be. Starting with the driver of Taxi 9716.

Madness

I occasionally have a gander at cycling forums - as in once or twice a year. I had a look at one last week, and there was a long string of complaints about the bad behaviour of quite a few commuters at peak hour. People racing stupidly, overtaking like morons, lane splitting, barging in, tearing across cross walks when there are pedestrians crossing etc etc etc. As I'm usually on the road before the morning and evening peaks, I rarely witness that sort of thing.


I got caught up at work this afternoon, and for a moment, I thought I was going to be stuck behind that bloody awful pro-Palestinian parade that was due to kick off at 5pm. Thankfully, I was out the door just before it was due to start (I found out later it was delayed until 7pm), but that meant I still had to face the start of peak hour.


Things were OK until I got to the far end of the Pyrmont Bridge - then it turned into a completely undisciplined scrum. Most cyclists formed an orderly queue at the lights, but a few idiots barged in up the front. When the light went green, it was like the start of a major race - the group suddenly went 5 or 6 wide with the front riders fighting to be the first into the bike lane on the other side of the intersection - with bikes coming the other way and pedestrians meandering everywhere and space for only two skinny cyclists riding abreast. Once we got into the bike lane, a few blew through the pedestrian crossing, narrowly missing some women who had right of way. There were cyclists on the wrong side of the road ducking around cars in order to get first position at the lights. A few morons blew right through several red lights. It was sheer bloody madness. I've never seen such a chaotic zoo.


Some of those idiots were pretty fast, and were miles ahead by the time the more law-abiding group made it to the Anzac Bridge - but at that point, the fit and fast moved to the front and the useless lawless types were quickly ridden down. There's no point running red lights if you don't have the legs to take on the hills.


When I started commuting, the bike commuting community was pretty small. We smiled and waved to each other. We took it easy, and didn't cause other people grief. Sure we raced, but only when it was safe and sensible to do so. The rapid growth in commuting over the last few years has dragged in a reasonable leavening of morons - people completely bereft of common sense and courtesy. If they're this bad on a bike, I'd hate to see them behind the wheel of a car.

The North Shore

The North Shore of Sydney is a nice place to live - leafy, rich in parts and picturesque. Geographically, it's got lots and lots of ridges, so there are plenty of views; and lots of valleys where you can have quiet little suburbs. It's not uniformly wealthy, but there are enclaves like Mosman which are wall to wall merchant bankers and lawyers - places where the women drive Volvos, own Labradors, wear pink fluffy sweaters and have long lunches in expensive cafes. However, the North Shore is not uniformly full of silvertails sending their kids to elite  private schools.

I lived there for a few years. It's worth remembering that before the Harbour Bridge was built, it was nowheresville. Land was cheap, because transport into the city was awful. Transport is still pretty bloody awful, but that's not the issue. But it's a very nice place.

I don't know where the Prime Minister gets off when she put the place down the other day. The high property prices and rents on the North Shore say to me that it is a desirable place to live - people want to move there. A lot of people living there weren't born there - they grew up somewhere else and became successful enough in whatever it is they do to afford to relocate there. Australia is a socially fluid place - if you do well, you can live well.

Here's my advice for the PM:

• If you want to live on the North Shore, forget about spending your life existing on welfare. You'll need to get a job and work very hard at it. There aren't enough hand outs in the world to subsidise a life on the North Shore.
• That will almost certainly involve starting in a shitty, lowly paid job and working your way up through a whole series of jobs until you get a good one. Every rich, successful person I know started out in a job that was the equivalent of flipping burgers. (In fact, their first jobs usually involved cleaning up for the burger flippers - burger flipping requires skill).
• Alternatively, start a business and work even harder. Your first few businesses will probably fail, and you will be broke for a while.
• There is no certainty success will happen - life isn't fair
• A good education will help. Study hard, work hard, be thrifty. Don't blow money on crap.
• Try and hang out with like minded people. You'll find the going harder if you hang out with crooks and neer-do-wells.

End rant.

Trying to ride away from your own stench

I'm used to getting sweaty twice a day, but it's usually good clean sweat - followed by a good long shower. I get rid of it before it has a chance to pong.


One of the beauties of lycra is that it dries quickly and rarely smells when I have to put it back on at the end of the working day. It might whiff a bit, but not enough to put anyone off.


That all changed last week with one jersey. I dragged it out at the end of the day, and it smelled like a wino had pissed on it. It reeked something awful. It was so bad, I couldn't stand still for a moment because the fumes wafting up were so over powering. Red lights were a nightmare - I was sorely tempted to jump a few, just to leave the stench behind. It was eye-wateringly bad.


I have no idea what caused it - my diet hasn't changed, I didn't eat anything odd the night before and I didn't sweat a bucket more than normal that morning. When I got home, I had to bolt for the shower, not even bothering to undress before getting under the water.


Next day, I had a different jersey, and it was fine.


And then the jersey rotated around again as the laundry cycle did its thing, and I was stuck with the smell again. Not so bad this time, but it was definitely there.


Some fancy cycling jerseys have things embedded in the fabric to stop this sort of things happening - maybe that particular one has just reached the end of its bacteria killing life. Whatever it was, it was nasty.


If it happens again, I won't throw it out. I'll save it in case the Occupy mob set up camp again. A quick visit to their camp wearing that thing should clear them out quick-smart.

Weekend riding

Normally, I only ride Monday to Friday and have the weekend off. The body likes a bit of a rest from time to time. For various reasons, that didn't happen last weekend - today is my only day off after 12 days of solid riding. Surprisingly, the body has held up reasonably well. I was expecting to wake up stiff and sore and to find the first five minutes on the bike in the morning to be pretty miserable, but I've actually felt better with no breaks at all. The legs haven't had time to tighten up. Well, that was the case until yesterday afternoon when the cramps kicked in, and it felt like all the hounds of hell had sunk their teeth into my thighs. The only other downside is that I haven't felt that zing that you get in the legs after a few days off. 

The weekend brings out a completely different type of rider - the middle aged male pack cyclist. The MAMIL - Middle Aged Men In Lycra. They're rarely found on cycle paths, as the paths just aren't wide and straight enough to accommodate packs that range from a dozen up to 30 or more - especially when you mix in people walking, running, pushing prams and unleashed dogs on the same paths. Plus they tend to move pretty quickly compared to commuters, people ambling down to the pub on two wheels and dads riding with their young kids. 


I saw 4 packs one morning - this was the smallest. The last time I had the opportunity to ride with a group was back in January. Funnily enough, for those who see the bicycle as a Green Machine, most of the blokes who turned up for the ride drove to the start point and then drove home afterwards. One bloke drove 40 minutes each way. Riding actually produced more CO2 emissions than if they'd stayed at home in bed. All is not what it seems.

Although I usually try to get away before the peak hour starts in the evening, I'm occasionally caught by work and find myself riding home at dusk or in the dark. I was amazed at how crystal clear the air was on Friday night, and how sharp the bridge looked. Of course the photo has come out nothing like reality - I would have needed to have stopped and setup a tripod for the photo to come out properly. And there's no room in my back pocket for a proper tripod.

Different perspectives

Same shot, taken from three different positions over a very short period. First one was taken with the camera held at arm's length above my head, the next down at knee level, the last at normal height. Interesting how different the light comes out.

Knobs and other people

I'll start with the other people. For starters, the bloke above is a good reminder to buy knicks that are nice and long at the back. The light is too dim for this photo to have come out clearly, but he had a really, really bad case of brickie's crack. 

Two disparate approaches to cycling visibility - the bloke in the middle has opted to ride Ninja style (black and invisible) whilst the women on either side of him have plenty of lights and shiny stuff. A ninja like this bloke almost ran into me head-on during the week on a bike path. It was dark, the path was unlit, and he was screaming around a bend on the wrong side of the cycle path. I had a concrete wall on my left, and nowhere to go. Thankfully, he swerved at the last minute, and I got home with nothing broken or scratched. It's unsettling to think that my fellow cyclists can be as much or more of a risk than morons driving taxis and delivery vehicles.

And now for our Knob of the Week. This bloke went through 4 red lights on the way into town. This is him going through the first set. It didn't make much difference to our respective journey times - I'd wait for the green, catch him, stop, watch him go through a red, wait for the green, catch him etc etc etc. I don't get why he was in such a burning hurry that he had to keep running red lights. The problem with knobs like this is that drivers see them and start to think that all cyclists are law breaking morons. I don't care if you decline to wear a helmet - that is your choice. But please, obey the rest of the bloody road rules.

The real cost of renewables

No thanks.

More bad news here.

Global-warming-related catastrophes are increasingly hitting vulnerable populations around the world, with one species in particular danger: the electricity ratepayer. Denmark, an early adopter of the global-warming mania, now requires its households to pay the developed world’s highest power prices — about 40¢ a kilowatt hour, or three to four times what North Americans pay today. Germany, whose powerhouse economy gave green developers a blank cheque, is a close second, followed by other politically correct nations such as Belgium, the headquarters of the EU, and distressed nations such as Spain. The result is chaos to the economic well-being of the EU nations. Even in rock-solid Germany, up to 15% of the populace is now believed to be in “fuel poverty.” Some 600,000 low-income Germans are now being cut off by their power companies annually, a number expected to increase as a never-ending stream of global-warming projects in the pipeline wallops customers. In the U.K., which has laboured under the most politically correct climate leadership in the world, some 12 million people are already in fuel poverty, 900,000 of them in wind-infested Scotland alone, and the U.K. has now entered a double-dip recession. –Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, 12 May 2012

Lots of photos

Electric bike

Flipping heck - a week without posting anything. It's just been one of those weeks - work, work, work and then sleep, sleep, sleep. I was face down on the couch before 8pm last night, just totally toasted. I had to be shaken roughly awake at 11pm and sent to bed.

Electric bikes - yes, there are lots more of them about. I might get one some years after I become a pensioner. And only if I can ensure that it is charged with electricity generated by coal or nuclear power.

Hell, it must be cold on the water at 0600. The temp when I depart has dropped from 15 degrees to 12 to 10 over the last week. 10 degrees is where the finger tips in the fingerless gloves start to feel the cold, and I'm seriously considering searching through the shed for my leg warmers.

Bike traffic during the peak periods is getting worse too. I slept in one morning, and found myself leaving for work about half an hour later than usual. I ended up being stuck behind hubbards on numerous occasions - it used to be that the slow riders were never a problem as you could always overtake safely. Not any more - places like the Anzac Bridge now have a steady stream of riders going in both directions, so unless you can accelerate up hill like a world class sprinter, overtaking is a no-no. Of course, that doesn't stop world-class morons from attempting it.

Another tough nut - it was cold that morning, and this guy was out running in bare feet. Notice the two cyclists way off in the distance? Their fluro vests really stand out, even in the dim, overcast early morning light.

As opposed to this ninja, dressed in black from head to foot. I saw another cyclist like her this morning - even  his bike and shoes were black. How the hell do you expect to be seen when you have the fashion sense of Hotblack Desiato.

The best dawn photos really need a few tenths of cloud cover. And maybe some air pollution.

Woops, listing badly. Must be an Italian captaining this ship.

More solar madness

Watts up with that on the incredible cost of solar power.

Not a good look

I've never gone in for pastel blue ties myself.

Now go read a poem.

Nice to know I'm not the only one who feels this way

I almost choked on my latte this morning when I got to the Readers' Ed section of the SMH - lots of readers got all steamed up about the photos the SMH has been using to illustrate climate change/carbon tax stories, and the editor has even issued an edict about how they're going to caption these things in future.


The thing I found interesting is that Judy Prisk did have a look a the original photo and questioned the photographer about whether it had been manipulated - it hadn't. That's reassuring. However, I think the SMH is starting to get the message that its readers don't appreciate the pudding being over egged when it comes to climate change stories. Or should I rephrase that as "we're all about to die - how climate change is producing mutant killer ants".


I wonder if anyone at the SMH sees the irony in this paragraph:


First, the photographer did not manipulate the image in any way. He says he shot a series of four in the middle of the day using F22, which means a small aperture made the images razor sharp. And the reason he stopped to take the pics on the way to another job was because the scene looked so unusual. He presumes the darkness of the vapour was because it was heavy with moisture.


Hmm. The cloud was full of moisture. Yet it was used to illustrate a story about invisible CO2. The stupid - it burns!

Knobs

Knobs. They're everywhere.

Knob one. Riding home alongside the City West Link tonight. A police car is tearing up the road behind us with lights and sirens on. Most cars in the fast lane change lanes, but several knobs drive along in blissful ignorance for some distance with a blaring, blazing, honking police car behind them. What hope do we cyclists have of being noticed when there are some people who are so dense and uncaring that they fail to notice emergency vehicles?

Knob two. Riding up George St this morning. A taxi is crawling along in front of me, clearly hoping for business. I get sick of him and overtake. I'm going considerably faster than he was - but he pulls out, overtakes me and then goes back to kerb crawling. He couldn't handle the idea of anyone getting in front of him. So I overtook him again and then took a lane position that prevented him from repeating that stupid manoeuvre. He didn't get a fare after all that.

There was a knob number three, but I can't remember what they did. Ah well, that's enough knobs for one day.

Cold, hot, wet - welcome to Autumn

The mornings are getting colder - not cold enough for leg warmers, full length gloves, shoe covers and an undershirt - but there is definitely a nip in the air.

No - not that sort of nip. I mean a wee chill that's just chilly enough to make the nads wish they were back in bed.

I kept the spray jacket on for the entire ride this morning - not that it was raining - just for warmth. It was about half a degree too cold to take it off, but about 5 degrees too warm to wear it for the entire distance. When I got to work, my gloves were saturated with the sweat that had run down my arms under the jacket.

As tempting as it is to remove the jacket, I'm always thinking of the "urban cool island" that is the Sydney CBD early in the morning. Due to the lack of sunlight in the canyons between the buildings, the last little bit of the ride is actually a lot colder than the start, even though the sun has been up for half an hour by the time I get to the office. If I take the jacket off 10 minutes into my ride, the sweat will freeze on my skin over the last two kilometres. It's annoying to find yourself sweating and shivering at the same time.

So I put up with the sweat - that's what showers are for.

Prick on paper

Our favourite Prick is too shy to mention that he's got an article in this week's Spectator magazine. It's not online yet - I found out by lying back on the couch and reading it the old fashioned way.


Perhaps you can enjoy the back catalogue while you impatiently wait for the latest article to be posted.

This view never gets old

Some might see getting up before dawn as a terrible imposition, but once I get down to the water, I think it's worth it. Sure, some mornings are grey, wet and totally horrible - but others are quite amazing. I passed a couple of blokes last week who had lugged cameras and tripods down to this spot to photograph the dawn. 

That black blob is a jogger running past. The camera makes it look like it's fairly light, but it's not. It's dark enough that there is a reasonable risk of me smashing into a jogger running on the bike path if I'm not careful.

I almost took out a pedestrian last week - I was so busy ogling the view, I forgot to watch where I was going. 

The Cenotaph

I stopped at the Cenotaph after Anzac Day to have a look. Sydney Architecture has a good article on the construction and dedication.

There were a few individual dedications like the one above.I didn't think there would be room in amongst all the official wreaths and such.

It’s official: China now eats twice the meat of the US

Fascinating - and with graphs!

This confirms that there's no point in becoming a vegetarian to save the planet - your tiny effort will be swamped by the chowing-down of a billion Chinese.

New Zealand wind farms - a public policy failure

Worth a read. Good old Fairfax gets mentioned again.

Finally, you may ask why none of this has been reported in the media. The answer is simple. NZ has huge liabilities under Kyoto, if it ever revives. Link The local paper, the Manawatu Standard, is like most papers in NZ, owned by Fairfax, which has a vested interest in climate alarmism and a one third ownership of Earth Hour. Link The Standard knows about the earthquake risk, the corrupt contract disenfranchising their own readers and devaluing hundreds of properties and the problems relating to dispatching wind generated electricity, but has chosen to remain silent.  On the earthquake risk to Palmerston North, however, it has had plenty to say.

Bread, part whatever

Do you watch cooking shows? Have you ever seen people go "ooh" and "aah" over bread, listening to how crunchy it sounds when broken? Have you heard chefs and presenters rave on about how yeasty a dough smells?

I have, and I always thought it was a load of wank.

Until today.

I decided last week I was going to make bread on Saturday, so I got ultra prepared and made a small starter dough on Wednesday. I figured I'd feed it for two days, and add it to the dough on Saturday etc etc.

Saturday came, and then Sunday, and I found I just didn't have time to make bread.

So I fed it a bit each night, and watched it grow and grow and grow.

It was pretty normal for the first few days - I fed it a bit of flour and water each night, gave it a stir and put it back to bed. It bubbled up like normal dough, and that was that.

Then it changed.

After the 4th night, it started to smell like super-beer. It also became soup-like in its consistency - I didn't over water it - it just went that way. A very thick soup, but soup nonetheless.

By tonight, the yeasty smell was quite overpowering. It was a good yeasty smell too - evocative of.....yeast. I almost ran down to the shop to buy some Coopers Pale Ale in order to compare the aromas.

I managed to find a bit of time tonight, so I mixed up a normal batch of dough and then scraped in the starter. The soupy starter made a wetter dough than usual, but I could handle that.

Into the oven it went...blah blah blah...and out came a super crusty, beautifully risen loaf. When I turned the oven on, I put a thick, cast iron skillet on the bottom shelf. It gets pretty hot as the oven warms up - perfect for making steam. Just before putting the bread in, I boiled up about 1 1/2 cups of water, put the dough in and then poured some boiling water over the skillet. That filled the oven completely with steam, and the steam is apparently what helps to form a crust. I checked the bread after 20 minutes, and poured in more hot water at that point.

I think I've finally got the knack. It's only taken about 10 years, 100 kilos of flour and endless totally or partially failed loaves. Boy, I'm a fast learner.

Crikey

I never thought I'd see Crikey having a go at Earth Hour.


But they have. Thanks, David Salter.



What tends to be forgotten — or deftly sidestepped — is that Earth Hour began in 2007 as a promotional campaign for Fairfax dreamed up by an advertising agency, Leo Burnett (the Earth Hour website now describes this genesis as a “partnership with brand co-owners, Fairfax Media”). The basic idea pitched by the advertising “creatives” five years ago was to cloak the Fairfax broadsheet mastheads with the feel-good moral superiority of joining the Good Fight against global warming while adding to paid sales and making an extra little pot of cash from spin-off custom display advertising. To clinch the warm-inner-glow value of their pitch, the World Wildlife Fund was enlisted as a partner, complete with their heart-tugging little Panda Bear logo.


This was the cynical commodification of concern — flattering readers with a false sense of empowerment while hoping to make a fast buck behind their backs. And it worked. Pledges to participate in the empty gesture of turning off the lights for one hour boomed and Fairfax pocketed a tidy profit from a 56-page colour liftout crammed with conscience advertising largely gouged from energy companies greenmailed into buying space. (There’s been no sign of a similar supplement this year, a measure of how much the corporate world has lost interest in buying environmental brownie points.)

The ideal BBQ?

I'm currently pining for the old fashioned type of BBQ, which was just a slab of metal over a fire. No lips on the edge, no hole in the middle - just a roughly cut slab. It sometimes wasn't very flat, and the BBQ itself certainly wasn't level.

The beauty of that design is it allowed all the fat to drain off the edge, either into the fire, onto your feet or onto the grass behind the BBQ. Once you got the tilt setup properly, you had a self draining BBQ.

I spent yesterday cleaning our fancy modern BBQ. It's got a tiny drain hole in the centre, and it clogs faster  than Peter Slipper can fill out a taxi voucher. The fat drains into a container underneath that holds less than half a cup by volume. That means crawling under the BBQ on a regular basis to empty the fat container.

Bleah.

BBQ design needs to go one way or the other - either build a fat trap that is so small, it needs to be emptied after every use, or install one the size of a large bucket; one so large, you throw it out when you get rid of the BBQ, and never have to bother emptying it.

You know it makes sense.

This bloke seems to get around

Australia Day riot, Canberra

Do you reckon this is the same bloke? (I'm talking about the bloke getting the heave-ho in the bottom right of the picture). 

Kings Cross shooting

The logo on his shirt appears to say Aboriginal Legal Service. Here's a link to the video at the ABC. It must be nice for the activists at a protest or riot to know that they've got government funded legal aid right on hand.

Is it possible to stuff up a creme brulee?

Yes, it most certainly is.


I've eaten quite a few creme brulees in my time, most of them in restaurants. I've made a few at home, and generally stuffed them up until I got my hands on a blow torch. For some reason, doing the sugar under the griller never worked very well.


I tried making them again last night, using a recipe from SBS.


Big mistake.


I used the same site earlier in the week to make soufflés - the recipe I downloaded from SBS was a dog's breakfast, but the souffles turned out ok. Thankfully, the recipe came with a video and I was able to bypass the shortcomings of the recipe by watching the video a few times. As I was left with a bowl full of excess egg yolks, creme brulee seemed like the obvious way to use them up.


I've made plenty of simple baked custards over the last few years, but without the crunchy topping. Every single one of them has worked perfectly. How hard can it be to make a baked custard?


Thanks to SBS, I got yellow soup. A few of them were reasonably well set, but they were anything but firm.


Still, we spread sugar on the top (after refrigerating them overnight) and gave them a bash with the blow torch. However, because the custard hadn't really set on a few of them, the sugar got wet, and then it burned. Not the best toffee topping I've ever experienced.


I sensibly gave the blow torch to Junior to toast the sugar, as he likes playing with fire and the whole family should be involved in producing meals; but when he went to put it out, it pretty much exploded in a ball of flame in his hands. Something to do with blow back I guess. All it did was singe off a few hairs - I've seen much bigger fireballs in hotel bath tubs. We ignored the smell of burning hair and the sound of swearing teenagers and sat down to eat yellow soup with a blackened sugar topping.


It was about as appetising as it sounds. Not my finest hour in the kitchen. I'll give it a go again next week, but I'll be sticking to Donna Hay for the recipe.

Just faffing around

I'm fiddling with the width settings and my photo sizes to see if I can make the photos come out a bit better. I'm sick of the way Blogger sizes photos.

I've set the width of the entire blog to 1200 pixels and the sidebar to 200 pixels. The photo below has been resized (keeping the same aspect ratio) to 900 pixels wide, and I've inserted it at "original size". That means it "should" fit into the body of the blog with a bit left over on each side.

It should turn out alright, unless you have a pathetically small monitor.

Monday

Some days you're cooking, and other days, you're totally cooked. I was utterly nutted this morning - rotating the cranks at just a sedate pace was hard work. It's not like I spent the weekend on the turps or anything - it was just one of those weeks where I was run down to a bare nub by Friday night. A weekend of recovery didn't do much for me.

Dunno what happened during the day though, but I was cooking on the way home tonight - I just flew home. Riding was easy and I had power to burn. The body is a strange, strange thing.

Sunset was pretty spectacular tonight as I came home around the Bay - pity about all the bloody trees spoiling the view. You've got this smashing water vista, and the blasted council plants trees between the water and the path so the view is almost totally blocked. What's the point of laying a path around a feature with a great view if you're then going to stuff up the view?

This bloke is one of the red-light jumping breed. He jumped, or tried to jump, every single light on the way out of town. I love it when these turkeys do that - it gives me someone to chase. I stay nice and legal and give them a nice long lead, and then I chase them down like a ferret after a rabbit.

Or perhaps a buffalo chasing a turtle might be a better analogy.

The only way to cut time off your ride on my commute is to be fast and strong on the hills. Jumping red lights won't give you the sort of time gains you'll get from powering up hills faster than everyone around you. When you see a cyclist jump a red light, just think this thought: "Piss weak".

That is all.

Senator Ludlam visits Afghanistan

Senator Scott Ludlam has posted an excellent blog on his recent visit to Afghanistan. Whilst I disagree with his party (the Greens), he's a very entertaining writer. The whole thing is really worth reading.


I pity the poor bugger - the Greens aren't renowned for getting along with or understanding the military. They just don't get the mindset. Still, I give him full marks for trying.


One bit in particular totally cracked me up:


Pausing at the FOB (the only moment of hostility so far – “Which one’s the Green? You can wait outside the base,”)


Think about that for a minute - in how many armies around the world could a footsoldier get away with a wisecrack like that to a serving member of parliament? And does Senator Ludlam go berserk and demand that the digger be strung from the nearest yardarm? No. He blogs about it so that we can all have a laugh.


It's little moments like that where you realise you really are living in the greatest country on earth.


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The other thing I like is that Senator Ludlam is willing to tell it like it is, even if what he's hearing probably clashes totally with everything he believes in:



One thing is pretty clear. The ADF will do what they’re asked – this is a focussed, professional, task-driven organisation and the people at the sharpest end of it spent their lives training to be sent into harm’s way. They are completely, unambiguously aware of the risk – they’ve all attended ramp ceremonies where their mates’ casket is repatriated to family back into Australia.


All the same, there’s an eagerness to prove themselves. The further forward you get, the happier crew are to be there and the less interested in being pulled back into safety. Having spent years training, most of them really, really want to be in theatre.


“This is a great battle lab for us.”


“Al Qaeda has been removed from the battlespace.”


“This is mostly about the US alliance.”


“I’d do this whether you paid me or not.”


Like I said, read the lot. I just wish the "news" that we got from our usual media outlets was this good.

Fairfax invents new military rank

The sub-editing at Fairfax really is hitting new lows. I've always thought that their military coverage was pretty pathetic, but this week, it plumbed the depths by coming up with the rank of "Lieutenant-Corporal" - not once, but twice.


I think they meant to say "Lance Corporal", which the yanks also describe as an E-3.


What next? Captain-Major? Sergeant-Colonel?

George Carlin on Environmentalism and Earth Day

H/T - Carpe Diem.

Baker's delight

I put up a video last weekend about kneading bread. This weekend, I decided to do rather than watch. In the past, I've tried to be sophisticated and have attempted various types of buns, rolls and baguettes - they've been a lot of work and never really worked as well as I would have liked. So this week, I just made up my usual portion of dough (500gm of flour, 350gm of water, 10gm of salt and 10gm of yeast) and turned out a single loaf. Here it is proving, lightly dusted with flour and polenta (I meant to use semolina, but I mixed the tubs of yellow stuff up). I use the plain old white flour that you get at the supermarket - the ingredients shown above cost a bit over 50 cents.


I gave it two minutes in the mixer to bring it together, and then spent 10 minutes manually bashing, stretching and kneading it on the kitchen bench. After that little effort, I couldn't raise my arms. I am getting completely soft and pathetic.

The fancy bakers slice their dough open with old fashioned razor blades, and I can see why - because they are so thin and sharp, they don't "grab" the dough like a knife - even a brutally sharp knife. The way bakers slash the dough is supposed to be their signature - not sure what my signature says about me. Except that I need to get a razor blade.

24 minutes in a hot oven sitting on a pizza stone (I crank mine up to as hot as it will go about half an hour before starting). I put a cast iron lid in the bottom and let it get really hot - just before putting in the loaf, I pour boiling water onto the lid so that it produces great gouts of steam. Apparently that helps with crusty crust formation.

I was going to let it cool off, but that thought lasted all of 5 minutes. Here it is, about to be slathered with $9 butter. Yep - cheap 50 cent bread and expensive butter. It's a good combination. I was planning on using it to make steak sandwiches for dinner, but it didn't last that long. This stuff is perfect with steak. Or vegemite for that matter. You know it's good when the kids descend on the kitchen and demolish it. I was quite taken aback last month when we had a tribe of teenagers in the house and they declared my bread to be "the best they've ever had". I thought their taste in bread would have been shaped by Subway and McDonalds - but evidently not.

I then did something totally different - I got organised and made up a poolish for tomorrow's batch. I'll see if my arms and shoulders are up to doing it all by hand.

Pack light and she'll be right

Hilarious contrasts in packing styles in this video - whether you're into cycling or not, it's just amazing what a female can lug around with her. An ex-infantry types will probably have kittens when they watch this...





I back packed around Europe 20 years ago. I was on the road for over 3 months, and everything I needed fitted easily into a single echelon bag. Mine was quite filthy when I left - it had been out bush with me for months and never been washed. I took it figuring that thieves would first plunder the expensive looking back packs of my fellow travellers, and they'd leave mine alone - it looked like the sort of thing a wino would carry with him. And funnily enough, that worked most of the time. It took me an entire year of being away to fill it to the brim.


I spent a few days travelling with an American female. Her makeup kit weighed more than my single eshy. 


Before I had kids, I could leave town for the weekend with nothing more than the following:

• toothbrush
• spare undies
• wallet

The teenager already has that ethic. He can go out all night without even taking any of these with him. I wonder how the rest of the kids will go?

Food miles - why they're a crock

But the local food movement now threatens to devolve into another one of those self-indulgent — and self-defeating — do-gooder dogmas. Arbitrary rules, without any real scientific basis, are repeated as gospel by “locavores,” celebrity chefs and mainstream environmental organizations. Words like “sustainability” and “food-miles” are thrown around without any clear understanding of the larger picture of energy and land use.

The result has been all kinds of absurdities. For instance, it is sinful in New York City to buy a tomato grown in a California field because of the energy spent to truck it across the country; it is virtuous to buy one grown in a lavishly heated greenhouse in, say, the Hudson Valley.

Studies have shown that whether it’s grown in California or Maine, or whether it’s organic or conventional, about 5,000 calories of energy go into one pound of lettuce. Given how efficient trains and tractor-trailers are, shipping a head of lettuce across the country actually adds next to nothing to the total energy bill.


More here. Read it all.

Riding in the wet

It's been a wet week here in Sydney - more local flooding, and our big dam is overflowing again. As usual, those I work and socialise with are rather stunned that I continue to ride when the heavens are opened.


Why shouldn't I?


It's not like rain will kill you, especially when it's between 16 and 20 degrees at the moment. It rains, I get wet, I finish my ride and have a shower. What's the problem with that?


I had a run in with Sod's Law this week.


Monday - I could hear rain spattering on the roof when I woke up. I considered going all soft and sleeping in a bit in the hope it would pass, but I hardened up and got on with it. By the time I hit the road, it had stopped raining, and the rain held off until I was about 100 metres from work. About a minute after I parked the bike, it started utterly bucketing down - I couldn't see the building across the road for a few minutes. It just goes to show that being soft will get you soaked.


Tuesday - got soaked on the way home, so I put the shoes and helmet in the dryer so they'd be dry the next morning. You've got to think ahead...


Wednesday - woke up to find it bucketing down. Put dry shoes, gloves and helmet on, had wet shoes and wet helmet 10 seconds later. Dried shoes etc again on Wednesday night.


Thursday - repeat of above, except I didn't bother drying anything. Why go through the effort when it will just get soaked again the next morning?


Friday - pulled on wet shoes, helmet and gloves and rode to work without a drop of rain. Arrrghhhh! Had to put up with wet shoes and socks on the way home too, and it didn't rain at all.


Like I said - Sod's Law in action.


Anyway, why ride in the rain?


Because the alternative for me is to catch a bus, and buses become as unreliable as Italian boyfriends when it gets wet. On a good day, I can go door to door by bus in 45 minutes. Due to traffic etc, those good days are rare. It can take 90 minutes to get home, most of that being spent waiting at the bus stop in town for a late bus. When it rains, the timetable goes out the window. Work colleagues who came by public transport were arriving 1-2 hours late this week, and they were all wet and bedraggled.


It take me 40-45 minutes on the bike most days. If it's raining really hard, you can add 5 minutes to that. Unless I have a breakdown or puncture, my trip to and from work is as timely as a Swiss watch. I really can't stand walking to the bus stop in the rain in a suit, standing under a leaking bus shelter (in a suit), standing in a slow moving, steamed-up bus as it inches into town, and then running the gauntlet of the city streets and puddles to get to the office. And then doing it again getting home, which usually involves having your umbrella blown inside-out halfway home. What would you prefer - getting wet and being late in a suit, or getting wet and being on time in lycra?

Giant toasties

Watch and enjoy...but probably best not tried at home.

But curried banana? WTF?