Art of Nonconformity
“Unconventional strategies for life, work and travel”
Chris Guillebeau is an intrepid traveller, and I’ve been following with interest his journey towards the goal of visiting every country in the world by the age of 35. So far, at age 31, he’s been to 107 countries out of 197. He also writes very well on the topic of living an unconventional life, something that resonates with people like me who don’t think being “normal” is all it’s cracked up to be. He doesn’t profess any spiritual beliefs on his website, but his writings line up well with the bible’s teachings on being the unique individual you were created to be, rather than conforming to the pattern of the world.

Get Rich Slowly
“Personal finance that makes cents”
There’s plenty of dodgy stuff on the internet about getting rich quick, but this blog is refreshingly different (just ignore the ads Google places on it). It’s a great resource of personal finance tips and information grounded in good sense and wisdom; the result of extensive research by an average guy named J.D. Roth who got himself out of debt and lives frugally. Some of the content applies to an American audience, but this can be excused as the author is an American.

Backyard Missionary
“Unrefined theological musings, random personal reflections and occasional naughtiness”
This trained pastor, but otherwise regular guy - Andrew Hamilton - writes on subjects ranging from spirituality to books to coffee, and much other stuff. Whatever the topic, he writes from a Christian perspective, but with an authenticity and “down-to-earth-ness” that real people can relate to. Sometimes he raises questions and doubts which I suspect most of us have thought, but never felt comfortable about speaking out. He has just set off with his family on a six month trip round-Australia road trip - the grey nomad lifestyle, but without waiting until he’s old and grey.

Cafe Grendel
“The blog of a coffee snob and home coffee roasting enthusiast”
The subject of this blog is mostly coffee-related, but Grendel (sometimes known as Michael Carroll) writes on a range of other subjects with knowledge, wit and compassion. His Perth Coffee Map is a great resource for anyone looking for a guide to the best coffee outlets in Perth and beyond, all sampled and reviewed personally by Grendel … oh, what sacrifice! He roast his own beans rather well too.

Incidentally, I discovered these four blogs quite independantly of each other, before learning that:

• The writers of the first two blogs both live in Portland, Oregon, and they know each other.
• The writers of the last two blogs both live in Perth’s far northern suburbs, not far from each other, and they know each other. One day I bumped into both of them at a cafe.

Big internet, small world

The fence back in the good old days … before the
fence-mounted brassiere was banned for our protection

The Cardrona Bra Fence was a section of farm fencing in rural New Zealand on which hundreds of womens’ bras had been hung. It began when four women each hung their bra on the fence as a new year celebration for the new millenium. In the succeding six years the bra population multiplied and it grew to be a unique tourist attraction, gaining worldwide attention (and frequent donations of underwear). I visited the quirky collection in August 2006 and blogged about it here, blissfully unaware that just two weeks after my visit the whole lot would be pulled down.

As you may imagine, the sight of hundreds of women’s undergarments hanging artistically from a roadside fence tended to polarise people. While an overwhelming majority viewed it positively, a few saw it as an eyesore, an embarrassment or a traffic hazard, and tried to have it removed. Some claimed it might offend Japanese students in Wanaka, 24km away.

After many unsuccessful legal challenges, and the burning of many bras (on the fence), it was found that the fence rested on public land. The Queenstown Lakes District council then stepped in and ordered the removal of the bras from the fence, declaring them to be an eyesore and traffic hazard. On September 9, 2006, the fence was stripped of over 1500 bras.

I toured the bra fence at its peak, and thought it was rather decorative. At the worst, it was no more unsightly than some of the other man-made structures in the region. Perhaps it could potentially have been a traffic hazard - maybe - but no more so than plenty of other roadside distractions which nobody seemed to be as concerned with. Oh well, at least the vocal minority no longer have to suffer the sight of a fence that didn’t look the same as every other fence.

The battle of the bra fence may have been lost, but I can take comfort in one thing. I was among the last privileged travellers to behold the spectacle of 1500 mammary support garments fluttering majestically in the breeze on a humble farmer’s fence.

• It encourages good spending habits. Earning too much to receive a student allowance, but not earning enough to cover all expenses in the long term, is an excellent incentive to practise careful budgeting.
• It improves appreciation of spare time. This is the principle of supply and demand in action - the less spare time there is, the more highly it is valued.
• It makes life easier for indecisive people by limiting the decisions about how to spend after-hours time. That’s because, whatever the day or time, there is always some sort of homework that ought to be done!
• It helps get chores done. When faced with a pile of unpleasant homework and study, mundane household chores which have been put off for a long time suddenly become more attractive in comparison, and may actually get done as a form of homework avoidance.
• It can encourage a better outlook on employment. Full time work can be a chore, but the endless after-hours homework that comes with studying can inspire appreciation for a job which you can forget about when leaving work for the day.
• It is a double blessing. Many people would like to study, but aren’t able, or would like to work, but can’t find a job … I get to do both! While doing both at the same time can be tiring, many are denied the opportunity to do either.

Now that I’ve avoided homework for however long it took me to write this, I really should get back to revising for an exam on Monday. On the other hand, my toilet needs cleaning …

I only noticed this milestone when transferring website statistics into a spreadsheet, something I do only occasionally. Accurate numbers are missing for parts of this site’s ten year history, but the steadiness of visitor numbers means I can be fairly confident that the one million total was reached within a month or two either side of the start of 2009. Not hits, or page views, but unique visitors - actual humans visiting this site (repeat visits within each month are filtered out).

My mind boggles a little - this is just a non-commercial, hobby-related personal website which I’ve hardly ever promoted. I can credit the visitor traffic mostly to the page about my navel lint collection, which has been referred to by numerous other websites and media stories over the years. In fact, as of today, there are 2786 websites linking to my navel lint page, according to Google - a testament to the popularity of things considered weird. What encourages me more is knowing there are another 2100 websites out there linking to pages on my site other than the navel lint page.

If only earning the first million dollars was as easy as accumulating the first million website visitors … if it were so, I might have been reporting this via satellite from an Antarctic cruise ship!

Thank you for visiting.

Ready to roast using my current
setup: raw beans in the bowl

The setup was simple - a heat gun, mounted on a tripod, blowing super hot air (600°C) into a stainless steel bowl, with the beans being stirred by hand with a wooden spoon. Heating is adjusted by moving the heat gun towards or away from the beans (hence the tripod). It produced some great tasting beans, but with some drawbacks. One was the stirring by hand, which can feel a little tedious when done for 15 minutes at a time. Another was the way the bean temperature fluctuated in windy weather - the wideness and shallowness of the bowl left the beans susceptible to the cooling effect of wind gusts.

No problem, I thought. I built a motorised stirrer, and switched to a tall and narrow tin to shelter the beans more. Unfortunately it didn’t work. The tin shape might have reduced the influence of wind a little, but I couldn’t get the stirring to work properly. I experimented with different stirring speeds and paddle designs, but couldn’t get the motorised stirrer to mix the beans thoroughly enough. The result was unevenly roasted beans - some underdone, some almost charcoal, and few in between. Not nice!

So I went back to the wide open bowl and the wooden spoon, and came to appreciate just how well it worked. Stirring for 15 minutes once per week isn’t that hard really, and does allow for very thorough mixing. As for temperature fluctuations, I just took more care to avoid roasting in the wind.

I also tried being more scientific about temperature control. Instead of just observing the bean temperature readout, I set up a laptop and entered the numbers into a spreadsheet while roasting to produce a live chart of the temperature profile, which I could try to match with that of previous good roasts. This proved distracting, and more trouble than it was worth, so I went back to calculating the desired heating rates in my head.

After the roast: beans cooling

One worthy improvement was the use of a fan (see photos). While roasting, the fan provides cool air for the heat gun intake, which prolongs the life of the element. It also blows away the chaff which the beans eject when they crack open. After roasting, the fan is laid on its back so that it blows upwards: this rapidly cools the beans when they are spread over a mesh screen above the fan.

It seems somehow ironic that, after trying to improve the roasting process with technology and a motor, returning to the low-tech simplicity of the heat gun, bowl and spoon has worked better. Apart from a basic temperature display (I need some measure of how fast it is rising), I roast coffee by sight, sound and smell, and the results keep getting better as I get to know each bean type’s characteristics. Equipment and gadgetry are appropriate for big commercial roasters, but human senses and experience are sometimes all the home hobbyist really needs.

The healthy dinner consisted of a selection of fresh vegetables … peeled, chopped, bathed in olive oil with a little garlic and ginger, then left in the oven to slowly roast for an hour. Sprinkled with a little salt and dried oregano, this substantial vege feast was not only bursting with goodness but also tasted great and filled me up. The smell was pretty good too. To drink with it, I had a chilled glass of water - filtered tapwater with a bit of lemon juice (from my own tree) which is refreshing and complemented the veges nicely. The cost of this drink was negligible; here is the cost breakdown of the meal:

0.65    sweet potato
0.70    butternut pumpkin
0.55    white gourmet potatoes
0.24    carrot
0.38    pickling onions
0.17    garlic, minced
0.14    ginger, minced
0.45    olive oil (extra virgin)
0.02    salt and dried oregano
—–
$3.30

This is cheap for a main course in Australia - I don’t know of any take-away fast food meal with drink which can be had for less than $3.30, or $4.30 if you add some yoghurt for dessert like I did. I haven’t got the time or inclination to do a thorough price survey, but I’d expect to pay two or three times that much, per person, for a typical burger combo meal, or fish & chips, chinese, take-away chicken, or pizza. Some good frozen or refrigerated dinners from supermarkets can be found for $4 to $6, which is probably the cheapest fast food option, but still not quite as cheap as a healthy dinner made at home.

But what about meat? I often eat fish or chicken, in which case I’d halve the amount of vegetables above and steam them in the microwave. The total cost would vary a lot, depending on what fish or chicken I used (I’ll take note of the costs in future), but would still be less than an equivalent take-away … and healthier!

I should point out that the ingredients I listed above were all top quality, fresh, and locally produced here in Western Australia. You could lower the cost even more by using lesser quality imported vegetables from supermarkets, although they don’t taste as good.

Next time I see someone on TV with a burger and fries, complaining that healthy food costs too much, I’ll feel justified in disagreeing. I suspect the only way that home-made healthy food costs more is if you measure the cost in terms of time, effort, and planning ahead, rather than money.

I don’t mean to downplay the heat in the east. Adelaide’s record six consecutive days over 40°C (104°F), with a peak of 45.7°, is very hot. Melbourne had a record three consecutive days over 40°C last week, and today reached 46.4°. That is serious heat!

But consider the small town of Gascoyne Junction, inland from carnarvon on the central coast of Western Australia. This is what the folks there have been quietly enduring over the last six weeks:

• Over 40°C for 22 consecutive days, followed by one day of “only” 39.8°, then over 40° for a further 11 consecutive days.
• Average overnight minimum temps for January: 26.6°
• Average maximum temps for the whole of January: 43.3°
• Hottest day: 48.6° (119.5°F)
• So far this month: over 40° every day (average 44.3°)
• Forecast temperatures for the next six days: between 44° and 48° each day (as shown below)
• Relief in sight: none
• National media coverage: none

The news section of the WeatherZone website has been swamped with reports of heat in the east, but heat in Gascoyne Junction and other places like it barely rates a mention - even though the above temperatures are considerably above average. Remoteness and small population could be a factor, but I suspect it has more to do with the fact that most of our national news is generated by people living on the east side of the country, where most of the population is. I’ve often noticed this bias; even hot spells in Perth don’t seem to be as newsworthy as hot spells in Adelaide, despite Perth’s higher population and usually hotter weather (except recently).

Whatever heat we suffer in the capital cities, we should spare a thought for those in places like Gascoyne Junction … where the weather is even hotter, but not as newsworthy.

Update Feb 9th:
I must emphasise that my comments relate to purely weather-related news. Since writing the above, devastating bushfires fanned by the heat in Victoria have killed at least 131 people and destroyed over 700 homes - obviously heat-related tragedy on this scale deserves much attention, as well as our prayers and support.

I grew up with the old “water guzzling” shower nozzles, but when I moved into my current home I found it had a low-flow water saving shower nozzle. At first I thought this was a good thing - by saving water in the shower I’d be doing the planet a favour, and my green halo would shine brighter. Alas, it didn’t work like that.

By limiting the water flow to what seemed like a pathetic trickle, it was taking me nearly twice as long to wash properly. Even after much practice, this didn’t reduce much. The saving in water flow was nearly being cancelled out by the extra time I needed to have a proper shower! So much for slashing water usage.

But isn’t even a small saving good? Not necessarily, because it’s not just about the water … there’s the heating to consider too. My water is heated by an instantaneous gas heater, which heats on-demand as the water flows through it (for very low use this is more efficient than a storage tank). It’s either on or off, and burns gas according to how long it runs. If the shower takes twice as long, then twice the gas is burned.

To put it in numbers, I estimated that using a low-flow nozzle might have halved the water flow rate, but led to an increase in shower times from 6 minutes up to 10 minutes. The result: I was using only 16% less water, but burning 66% more gas!

That’s not what I’d call environmentally friendly. Gas is a non-renewable fossil fuel which can’t be replaced, and burning it adds CO2 to the atmosphere. Water, on the other hand, is comparatively replaceable. What goes down the drain ends up as groundwater or seawater, which can eventually be used again somewhere.

But wait, there’s more! Often overlooked is the environmental cost of producing all this shiny new tapware. Materials such as iron ore have to be dug out of the ground, transported to where they are processed into stainless steel and whatever else goes into tapware, transported again to a factory for manufacture, enclosed in packaging materials (which have undergone transport and processing of their own), then distributed to the retailers. Simply putting a new shower nozzle into a shop consumes energy, fossil fuels and finite resources.

This cost may be justified if buying a new nozzle or tap is the only option - when the old one has failed, or when building a new home. But if the old one still works, the environmental cost of buying a new one probably outweighs the questionable benefit of saving a little bit of water.

In the end, my inherited low-flow nozzle deteriorated to the point where I had to replace it. I reverted to a high-flow nozzle and noticed a substantial reduction in my shower times and gas consumption. I use slightly more water in the shower, but still have a green conscience because I save water in other ways, like washing my car only once per year.

So are low-flow shower nozzles any good? If you have solar heating or a hot water storage tank (not instant hot water), AND you can somehow shower just as quickly and effectively with a lot less water, AND you need to buy a new nozzle anyway, then changing to a low-flow nozzle might be worthwhile and green. Otherwise we’d probably be doing the environment a favour by sticking with the plumbing we already have and not buying so much new stuff. There are other ways to save water which don’t have environmental costs … and if you really want to shower with less water, just turning the taps down a bit can often work.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, as small businesses seem to close or change ownership with alarming regularity, and even when they don’t, high standards can sometimes fall. The bakery at Augusta has been around since 1948, and I couldn’t imagine it going downhill, but in today’s economic climate longevity doesn’t always mean a lot.

So it was with relief as well as joy that I found the Augusta Bakery to not only still be there, but still up to the very high standard it maintained when I first started eating there. In the interests of thorough research I sampled from across their range, and enjoyed their superb wholegrain rolls (without any fillings) just as much as the mini quiche and the perfect caramel tart. My original request for “One of everything, please” wasn’t taken seriously by the staff, which was for the best - the variety is large, as my belly would have been if I’d sampled everything!

The bakery has a small cafe attached which serves its own creations (which I didn’t try) as well as the bakery goods. As if the food isn’t enough, delectible edibles can be enjoyed with a coffee while gazing out the panoramic windows at the view over Flinders Bay. It’s a winning combination which deserves to succeed and endure.

The only change I noticed is that the Augusta Bakery now uses paper bags with their name printed on them, rather than plain unmarked bags. As a collector of printed bakery bags, it was pleasing to at last have a decent bag from my favourite bakery to add to my collection. You could say it was the icing on the cake … or the chocolate on the eclair.

Most years letterboxes in my area are graced with a few small promotional calendars given away by politicians or real estate agents. They are envelope-sized cards which have small magnetic strips on the back, for sticking on the fridge. I throw away most of the calendars, but not before peeling the magnetic strips off the back and saving them - because they might come in handy one day.

Fifteen years after I started collecting these little magnets, I’ve finally found a use for them.

As shown in the photo, they help me to keep track of what types of green coffee beans I have in my cupboard, and roughly how much of each type I have left. Printed labels for each coffee are stuck to the magnetic strips, and positioned to indicate roughly how much is left in each bag. It’s much easier than sorting through a growing mountain of cotton bags piled on top of each other to see what’s there.

When I began collecting them I had no idea what the little magnets might be used for - just a conviction that their potential to be useful justified keeping them. Their usefulness may have taken many years to eventuate, but that’s no obstacle to a true collector. It just proves what I always suspected: as long as storage space isn’t an issue, nothing potentially useful should be thrown away in case it might be useful one day.

Even if that one day is a long time coming!