Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Once again teams are gathering in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory to ready their solar powered vehicles for the challenge (not race 
of driving 3000km to Adelaide in South Australia.
The big news so far this year is that the favourite contenders Nuna have had an accident that severely damaged their ($1.8 million) solar array and are having to use their backup.
Meanwhile Western Australian High School team Leeming and their car Hammerhead have arrived in Darwin and are preparing for scrutineering and the race.
Tags: wsc2009
Posted in Education, Environment, Events, Science and Technology, Sungroper | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Once again teams are gathering in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory to ready their solar powered vehicles for the challenge (not race of driving 3000km to Adelaide in South Australia.
The big news so far this year is that the favourite contenders Nuna have had an accident that severely damaged their ($1.8 million) solar array and are having to use their backup.
Meanwhile Western Australian High School team Leeming and their car Hammerhead have arrived in Darwin and are preparing for scrutineering and the race.
Tags: wsc2009
Posted in Education, Environment, Events, Science and Technology, Sungroper | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Once again teams are gathering in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory to ready their solar powered vehicles for the challenge (not race of driving 3000km to Adelaide in South Australia.
The big news so far this year is that the favourite contenders Nuna have had an accident that severely damaged their ($1.8 million) solar array and are having to use their backup.
Meanwhile Western Australian High School team Leeming and their car Hammerhead have arrived in Darwin and are preparing for scrutineering and the race.
Tags: wsc2009
Posted in Education, Environment, Events, Science and Technology, Sungroper | 4 Comments »
Monday, September 28th, 2009
(Ah, if only I’d waited another 4 days 
- Ghenghiscon quiz night win, thanks to a most excellent team. I really need to memorize countries and capitals.
- UCC dinner at Mez in Northbridge. Food was pretty good, but quite a loud venue on a Friday night (I suspect even if you subtracted the UCC’s noise
- DogCow dinner at Trigg Island Café. Not cheap (not particularly expensive), but the food, serving size and service were all excellent (on a Tuesday night, too!). Went the Blackened Fish and the Cherries Jubilee (which came with three full scoops of icecream!)
- A very enjoyable random dinner at The Moon
- My first site visit to as yet mostly unfurnished Perth Artifactory. Lots of potential there, hopefully it’ll be realised! And hopefully it’ll get me making stuff.
- Blood pressure monitoring. Seems it’s 15 points lower when it’s not in the GP’s office. Or between the left and right arms
- Discovered that while you may only need to keep your tax records for 7 years, you probably want to keep your share records for longer than that when you’re trying to work out your Capital Gains Tax.
- 4WD towball through my car’s front grille in the UWA carpark. Don’t bother using your horn, the other driver probably has the stereo on. Looks like mainly cosmetic damage. Now have to decide, do I claim and perhaps get the car written off (and then have to come up with money to buy a new one?) or do I just live with it?
- Planted squash, butternut pumpkin, golden cucumbers and pansies (in a hope that they’ll either keep the bugs away or get eaten first. Plus it’s easier to get the kids to water the flowers and they’re conveniently next to the veges). Hoping for some more groundcover to keep the grass at bay. I think one of the secrets the whole vege gardening has reinforced (I did learn it on my permaculture introduction), is to plant lots of different things close together. A nice big cauliflower, which unfortunately went to seed.
- Watched “The Pink Panther” at movie club. Still worth a few laughs. I wonder how long it is before movie ratings include “Includes smoking”? (Or will it just come under “Drug references”?)
- Leaves on the fig, flowers on the plum, many mulberries waiting to ripen (and then those that the kids can reach get eaten). Hoping we get some mulberry stained eggs from the chooks…
Posted in Environment, Food and Drink, Health, Life, Seasonal | No Comments »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
- Took Puggle to meet a real live Astronaut, followed by fish and chips down on the foreshore in front of Steve’s, where he spotted trains going along the freeway, and pelicans cruised past in the dark
- Took Bilby shopping, and for a babycino. She brought her bag and carried the (two items) of shopping for me!
- Tied balloons to their backs so they could be astronauts
- Went to a party, at which there was a CupCake Makerbot (it seems everyone has one but me
)
- Craft day, so caught up with friends, distracted kids, put a roast on and took Puggle and Bilby to the park
- Moved the outside light switch inside, so less pfaffing around in the dark
- Realised that we are self sufficient in eggs, tomatoes, grapefruit, lemons and chinese cabbage. Now if only we could come up with unlimited interesting recipes for this combination!
- Bought 25kg of chook food
- Following the broccoli, the cauliflower has gone to seed. We may have a self-sown Chinese cabbage? Also, losing the war on grass
- Gave Cygnet some Nature time under the lemon tree
Posted in Bilby, Cygnet, Environment, Food and Drink, Life, Puggle, Seasonal | No Comments »
Friday, July 10th, 2009
It seems that I manage to update things about every two months, which is pretty lax.
- Rogaining was lots of fun, even if we did only get one checkpoint. Average speed 1.5km/h by the time we stopped for nappy changes, nursing breaks, and for Puggle to beat things with his stick (hammer)
- More mulch in the garden. Tomatoes and now Broccolli!
- Olives for pickling
- Roasting marshmallows with friends
- Dinner with friends
- The (Swine?) Flu, complete with raging fever
- Homelaid eggs (Dark yellow yolks and very white whites. Yummy!)
- Watching big machines move big rocks in Mandurah
- Finished reading Freakonomics (worth reading), now have Wikinomics, Richard Morgan’s “Black Man” and Craig Shuftan’s “Hey Nietzsche leave those kids alone” to read.
- Fixes needed for car, phone and washing machine.
- Bilby still talking up a storm, Puggle is thinking about things, Cygnet is standing up a lot.
-
- Now have a 1.5Tb drive
Posted in Books and Literature, Environment, Food and Drink, Health, Life, SF, Seasonal | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
I didn’t get to the Perth Sun Fair at UWA this year, so went to the Sun Fair’s web site to check out the exhibitors. Amongst them I noticed Ecoflow, who claim to be able to reduce fuel costs by between 5 and 20%, probably by the use of magnets. (Ecoflow is advertised on their site as a “Low cost home based business… No risk with genuine ethical company”). They also offer a range of products for horses, cats, dogs, and even people.
There’s a nice page talking about Ecoflow from an engineering perspective here.
Maybe the Firepower fuel additive guys should have had a look at Ecoflow’s technology instead?
Posted in Environment, Finance, Health, Science and Technology | 1 Comment »
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
A reminder (seeing as I forgot!) that the Perth Sun Fair’s on today (Sunday) at UWA.
Tags: electric_cars, Environment, solar_energy, zero_emission
Posted in Education, Environment, Events, Politics, Science and Technology, Sungroper | No Comments »
Saturday, March 28th, 2009
For 5 people over 181 days:
- Average for our suburb without bore: 233,000L
- Average for our suburb with bore: 144,000L
- Our house this period last year: 137,000L
- Our house this period: 100,000L
Currently at this level of consumption water is costing us AU$0.643/kL
Posted in Environment, Life | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
- UCC’s Fresher Welcome, with added bonus UCC alumni Google guest
- Nachos
- Did some shopping in Mondo’s bulk store. Mmmm… must look up some goat curry recipes for winter
- A chance to stop for a cup of coffee with the family
- Prawn, mango and prosciutto kebabs.
- Met up with a documentary film crew from the US and some other Sungroper team members to do some interviews and look at the Willetton car. The Sungroper chassis lives on, only all the other technologies bolted onto it have changed
- Got a very pleasant chance for the kids to catch up with other kids whilst the adults did likewise. Looking forward to introducing them to Scrapheap Challenge
Tags: mondos_meat, Sungroper
Posted in Bilby, Cygnet, Education, Environment, Food and Drink, Life, Puggle, Science and Technology, Sungroper, TV | No Comments »
