Cheap Therapy

• Using Google Sketchup to model some housing development and investigate overshadowing. Pretty awesome once you get the hang of it. Write submission
• Probably no WWDC this year
• A birthday dinner for Becc with fine food and company
• A week without students. Meaning lots of things getting done while they’re not around
• Get to see Cygnet for the first time
• A long weekend. ANZAC day. Bless ‘em.
• A picnic in a smaller park than anticipated. But my first time walking both Puggle and Bilby there. Reminder, Bilby is heavy enough I need the stroller
• AppleScripty pythony Dilberty goodness
• Car test driving. Kia Grand Carnival and Toyota Tarago (Last week the Volkswagen Passat Wagon, Subaru Liberty and the Tarago). See a separate post somewhat later
• Games at Kylie’s. Happy Birthday! This time I prove I can lose at Super Scrabble as well as Scrabble

The RAC are running a car battery recycling day on the 3rd of May 2008, just drop your battery off at an RAC Auto Service Centre.

Welcome to Canberra!

Sporting chivalrous contest helps knit the bonds of peace between nations. Therefore may the Olympic flame never expire.

At the first Olympic torchlighting ceremony, Berlin, 1936 - Adolf Hitler

Check out lunchinabox.net for cool food storage ideas. via BoingBoing.

If you want to work out what a song you heard on Triple J was, you could check out jplay.com.au for lists of what was played when.

Japanese toilets. Who knew?

For those who don’t read boingboing.net, a blogger’s article on raising Free Range Kids (letting her 9 year old navigate their way home on the subway themselves), now has spawned a Free Range Kids blog.

• Jen’s birthday dinner. Spiderwick Chronicles (glad I didn’t bring Puggle, there were some bits that scared me).
• A long weekend in Mandurah. Many dogs to pat. St Bernards are big! Mandurah’s newspapers are filled with a) complaints about mosquitoes (you’d think they’d have thought of that before they moved to an estuarine area), b) discussion about the art at the train station (if it inspires discussion, it’s probably art).
• Made random casserole with chook thighs, leeks, shallots, bacon, corn, cauliflower, and 1L chook stock. Was pretty good.
• Missed many people who were in town. That’s what you get when you book leave in advance. Sorry folks!
• Played with Sketchup and Google Earth to prepare a submisison on a development application. Requires more playing, could be fun…
• Bilby is into books. Does seem to look at them upside down a lot though.
• Discovered the Puggle standard opening (Move all your pawns to the third row).
• Lose weight, annoy your gallbladder. Pained sigh.
• Car shopping. It is cheaper to spend $1000 on new car seats than have to spend an extra $10,000 on a car Build and driving quality varies.
• 40th Anniversary of the cub pack I vaguely remember attending
• Family MacGeeks at the park, conveniently overlapping the end of Swancon at the park. Lens envy. Much thanks to Toby, Skip and David for their culinary efforts. Let Puggle roam free for a bit, at least until in the distance he’s noticed standing on the middle of the island with his pants around his knees. He was distracted by ducks.
• World domination planning continues

So, individuals with solar panels don’t get a great rate when selling back to the grid (ie the Renewable Energy Buyback Scheme pays you less than what Synergy energy would charge for green power). What if they formed a co-op that sold the total sum of their contributions back to the grid? Would have more negotiating power for a better price, presumably.

More quality editing from news.com.au.