Ramblings of the Human Potato

Stoopid Chickens

2012-02-06T00:50:00.000-08:00

Life as a chicken can be brutal. One of our baby chickens had died before it had ever had a chance to see the sky, found dead 'neath the predatory foot of a hungry and overly inquisitive Labrador. Another, after toiling day and night to find freedom, found only her own doom, a pathetic pile of feathers in the back yard the only proof of prematurely prevented poultry potential.
But life goes on, and eggs ain't getting any cheaper. Of the 5 chickens purchased, only 3 remain alive and only one of them is female. Though this may be the ideal set up for a chicken p0rn film, it does not represent the efficient egg-producing scenario desired by the chicken's human overlords. This meant we had to re-stock on chickens which was the mission of the weekend past.
When selecting which breed of chickens to raise we employ a rigid list of selection criteria which can be listed as follows:
1) the more stupid looking, the better.

A Stupid Looking Chicken

Hence we decided upon two female Silkie's, a breed that has been developed by professional poultry wranglers through hundreds of years of selective breeding, all culminating in a chicken that looks as stupid as possible. They met our requirements perfectly. They were a little larger than our current Seabrite bantams but we were assured they would not present a problem when we incorporated them into the general population section of the coop. However, like a fat kid at a school dance, the new chickens were relegated to the corner and initially they were largely ignored by the other chickens.

Checking out the new crib

Up until now, we had assumed that "Robocop" was ruling the roost. However with the introduction of the new chickens it would appear that his Alpha Chicken status has been usurped by a hitherto un-named white Seabrite, whom I shall henceforth refer to as "Arnold". After a few minutes of investigative sniffing and pecking, Arnold decided that he had the new-comers number and would take to charging directly at them. The Silkies didn’t seem particularly perturbed by this behaviour. Julian later banished them from the sleeping quarters and stood guard at the entrance to the poultry boudoir, a curious strategy since it meant that the only chickens who had access to food and water were the recent arrivals. Not the brightest of Seabrites, that one.

Arnold (seen here dressed in white) preparing to charge

Will Arnold remain king of the coop? Or will he fall prey to the Machiavellian machinations of the Silkies and their alluring head-mop's? Or perhaps Robocop will rise up to take his rightful place on the throne? One thing is for certain : for our little chicken empire, THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.

Chicks Gone Wild

2011-12-28T00:47:00.000-08:00

The last time I mentioned anything about the chicken coop project was back in February of this year (Click here to refresh your memory). Well, finally the day has arrived for the grand unveiling. Having chickens in your loungeroom is quite a novelty for a few days but as they slowly get older and more rowdy it becomes clear that they are not ideal indoor pets.

This is how the chicken coop appeared in February:

Concreting some posts into the ground

Some more of the framework

My beautifully crafted door

The end product, all wired up

The main difficulty was in using nothing other than the old, rotting timber we already had laying around from the previous chicken coop (that I demolished circa 2007) which I think was built in the 60's. The selection of timber available to me largely dictated the design. I had to take into consideration the possibility that our dogs would do everything in their power to tear the chickens apart, especially seeing as our Labrador had already gotten to one that foolishly escaped the cage in our lounge room. Consequently, this thing is built like a tank. As it turns out, the dogs don't seem to be the least bit interested in the chickens at all.

So, of the 5 chickens we started with, one was KIA, two appear to be roosters ("Robocop" and "Hawaiian Pack"), one is female and the other one is, I think, a hermaphrodite.

Here are some videos I shot of the chickens being released into the wild, the first time they have ever been outdoors. The first thing they did was run straight indoors. I haven't vetted these videos (i.e. I haven't seen them yet) so I take no responsibility for...anything.

Installing Windows

2011-08-02T04:23:00.000-07:00

The title of this entry is a lot more clever than you might think. You see, on the weekend that I did this work, not only did I install Windows 7 Ultimate on my file server, but I also built and literally installed a window in my bedroom. See, clever huh?

Before you get excited, the window work was a lot less grand than you may expect from a master craftsman like myself. You see, I have yet to decide if it is permanent. Allow me to explain. When I installed the air conditioners in our bedrooms it was necessary to board up the areas surrounding the air conditioner units. In the master bedroom this was not a problem because the room has two windows, but in my bedroom there was only the one window. This meant ventilation was greatly curtailed (to zero), unless I used the noisy a/c unit to provide fresh air.

So a window was needed. Originally I was just going to install a hinged wooden panel which would have been cheap, easy and quick. Naturally, I like to make things a lot more difficult so the project evolved and expanded in scope. Eventually I reigned in my grand ambitions a little and settled on a small square hinged perspex window. It seemed a decent compromise between a much more involved job and a throwaway temporary job.

The four sides of the window frame, sitting on my home made router table.

The profile of each piece, showing what the router was used for. As I always say, you would not believe the time and effort that went into this:

The perspex in place in the assembled frame. The perspex was a $5 off-cut that I got from a local store.

The window on the right, and the flyscreen on the left which will be affixed on the exterior side of the timber panel:

Traditionally this is where I would put the final photo of the project demonstrating how well it all came together. I am not going to do that this time, mainly because it did not all go together well. What happened is that when I built the flyscreen I made it identical in size to the window. This was a big mistake, since it needed to be about 2 inches larger in order to conceal all the staples and fixings I had used to construct it. The upshot of all this is that it looks completely ratshit and I don't want anyone seeing it. It will do the job I needed it to do but it just didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. I console myself with the knowledge that I will be re-installing the original window sometime next year if I decide to upgrade the air conditioner. Otherwise I may re-build the entire thing.

Suffering for my art:

The new dog snuggling up with Milly prior to Milly going to her new home with Carrie's Aunt:

Ceiling...Thing (I'm a bit low on inspiration for the title of this entry)

2011-08-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. My bedroom is pink. No, not just the walls, not just the skirting boards. The ENTIRE god damn room, including the ceiling. The same is true of our kitchen, but I'll save that for another day. It is yet another reason I want to hunt down the previous owners and, well, kill them.

Needless to say, a man of my stature cannot have a room that looks like it is straight out of Barbie's Fashion Fairytale Party Palace, so something had to be done. As you may have guessed, that "something" was painting.

I have lived in a pink bedroom for four years, proof that you can get used to pretty much anything

...and below is...a white ceiling. Bet you haven't seen one of those for a while. Bet you're glad you visited my blog now eh?

Being the middle of Canberra's winter meant that the paint actually took well over a week to dry, despite using the heater to help things along. This meant that I was reluctant to start painting the walls until it gets warmer. I am hoping to get the walls done sometime September or possibly November. I am still undecided on color schemes though I am leaning towards something exiting, such as manly beige.

And now, some dog photos, in a futile attempt to save this entry from being 100% tedious.

Meg, being cute. Coz thats how she rolls.

Meg and Milly working on their Ying/Yang impression. They never quite got it right. Since this photo was taken we have upgraded Milly to a better dog who's name varies between any of the following: Ringo, Mango, Bosco, Rosco, Risotto and Placebo. Oh, and Bob, Meathead and Dufus.

I am sure photos of the new dog will appear somewhere in my blog sometime soon.

Odds and Ends

2011-04-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

Well it is Easter which not only means a long weekend, but this year will be an extra long 5-day weekend. Naturally this means a bit of renovation work. I am finally beginning to work on the drainage for our property which is long over due. Our house is located halfway down a hill which means a lot of the rain that falls further uphill naturally ends up flowing over, and under, our property. This is further exacerbated by the fact we have large open back yard that is just sitting there waiting for rain. The end result is that we get more than our share of water.

For various reasons I am not going to document the phases of the drainage that I am currently working on, so I have instead decided to finally document some other jobs that have hitherto slipped under the radar.

We had another curb side garbage collection so I took the opportunity to unload some crap. As you can see there were two TV sets included in said crap, both of which were fully functioning. One of them was my 80cm flat screen CRT TV that in 2005 cost me $1350. Not only was I unable to sell it, I couldn't even give it away (believe me, I tried). Even the Salvos didn't want it. The end result - a perfectly functioning 80cm wide flat screen TV dumped on the curb to go to the tip. Kinda sad, I can remember being very happy with it, but when you have a household of two people and you have six TV's, some of them have to go.

We got the usual assortment of curb crawlers checking out our stuff (who would later return at night to take stuff under the cover of darkness, like we gave a shit). I was certain someone was going to take the tv and had the remote ready to hand over if anyone asked for it, but no one touched it and instead chose to take the broken clothes drier and other stuff that I can't remember. It was kind of funny, each morning I would get up and there would be something missing but I couldn't quite figure out what it was.

After the big clean up I was able to make the front porch a little more presentable and even arranged our dead and dying pot plant collection. Three years and 189 dead pot plants later and we have figured out that cacti are the way to go.

Over the 2010 Xmas holidays I also installed a couple of small air conditioners ("windows rattlers") in each of our bedrooms. I went with small Kelvinator KWH20HRB's which would be powerful enough for our bedrooms and are also quite energy efficient. They are also reverse cycle. The main unit is removable from the chassis, simplifying installation but it still ended up being a bigger job than I expected (as usual).

The A/C chassis located in the window:

Brackets are not supplied with the units so installers are left to fabricate their own solutions. Due to our protruding window sills, fifty year old window frames and cement-board cladding this ended up being quite time consuming, especially when attempting to maintain a 5 degree declination as required to enable condensation to drain.

Like peas in a pod. The area surrounding the A/C's is boarded up and painted to match the rest of the house exterior. A butt-load of silicon later and it is all weather-proofed !

We chose the smaller units because although a split system cost around the same and would be far more effective and quiet, the installation cost would result in more than doubling the price. Also, split systems cannot be installed by a DIYer due to the use of refrigeration gasses. I don't think I would recommend the units we bought as they are louder than I had expected and although I have slept through the night with it operating it is less than ideal. I think that in a few years time I will have to shell out for a split system but in the meantime the window rattlers will suffice.

The last time I mentioned the chicken coop project, it looked like this:

I am doing a little work on it each weekend, and it is currently looking like this:

Yesterday we went and bought 50 metres of chicken wire, so that will be enough to cover the chicken coop, Vegetable Patch 2.0 AND Doggy Alcatraz 2.0 (the latter two projects still being in the planning stages).

And here is Meg, just coz:

So I haven't been posting much, not because I am not doing much but because I am doing lots of little things. I hope to finish the chicken coop over the easter weekend so I am sure you will be waiting with breath bated for the grand unveiling. Stay tuned.

Airing My Dirty Laundry in Public

2011-03-06T02:40:00.000-08:00

Our house has a dirty little secret. The Laundry. It's filthy. Actually, I don't think the word "filthy" does it justice...

The Problem:
The floor in our laundry consists of a concrete pad, covered with linoleum which in turn is covered in adhesive vinyl floor tiles. God only knows the vintage of the various components, but they had to go...

Hmmm, it doesn't look to bad from this distance...

The problem with this flooring scenario is as follows : any water on the floor seeps under the cracks in the tiles on the surface. It then seeps under the lino through the joins. The end result : Water gets trapped between the lino and the concrete, and between the tiles and the lino...

Cracks in the tiles. The old lino can be seen underneath:

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the laundry also serves as an after hours toilet for our canine friends..

Canine Friends - they look cute when they are not pissing all over your house:

There were also other issues with the old flooring...

This is where the old hot water heater used to be. It sprung a leak about 3 months after we bought the house. You can imagine how pleased we were:

My weekends are sometimes so action filled, even I can't handle it:

Walking through the laundry you would hear the floor squelching with each step. Also, brown liquid would be pushed to the surface as you walked, and you would be treated to a noxious odour usually reserved for abattoirs.

The Solution:

We decided the whole lot had to come up and be replaced with some new flooring. It would either have to be new linoleum or floor tiles (real ones, not adhesive ones). Due to simplicity, budgeting and water-proof-ness, we decided on new linoleum.

First step was to empty the laundry of appliances.

Our empty laundry. It looks so...empty:

I used a shovel to lift up the lino and scrape up the easy stuff.

It was at this point I started to gag. I had to concentrate to avoid vomiting and contributing to the mess. The black stuff is mould, the other stuff is just slime...slime that is older than me. It smelled like used baby nappies that have been left in the sun for a week. I think inhaling that stench may have shortened my lifespan:

The scraping continues, but everything is damp which makes it even harder to, erm, scrape:

Finally, all the flooring is up, now all that is left is the old adhesive, slime and mould:

An hour's worth of scraping, but the shovel just wasn't up to the job.

It became obvious to me that the shovel was the limiting factor in the equation and it was time to get serious. I could have bought a floor scraper from Bunning's but they cost around $30, or as I like to think of it, a carton of Carlton Cold so there was no way I was going to spend that kind of money (on a floor scraper at least). I would have to come up with an alternative solution on my own.

There is a line between a "tool" and a "weapon". This weekend I believe I crossed that line...I call it "The Scrape-inator" !

I had been tempted to give it a wider blade, but I figured that the more narrow the blade, the more force would be exerted per unit width of the blade. My theory proved to be correct, which is usually the case.

Built with the precision of the finest British Engineering:

The Scrape-inator, kicking arse and taking names...or something. The red area is the painted concrete that I just scraped:

Several hours worth of scraping. I stopped when I was loosening more concrete than crap (such is the power of the Scrape-inator)

After ripping up all of the old flooring I found a semi-circle shaped hole in the wall filled with concrete and dirt, reminiscent of those mouse holes you see in Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Mouse hole? Or something more sinister? I pushed a stick through it to see where it lead:

Turns out, it was the drainage hole. See the toothpick-like stick? Thats the other end of the stick in the photo above:

So not only did they fill the drainage hole with concrete, they also rendered over it. This is the kind of thing I am becoming used to with our house. It certainly explains why our laundry floor spent most of it's life submerged. It's like the whole place was built by the work experience kid. Fortunately, my skills and experience rival that of a professional builder and I am addressing these issues one at a time.

Not even concrete is a match for my mighty rotary drill with chisel attachment. That's daylight you can see there - SWEET!!!:

Thats more like it!!! :

I smothered the entire area in clear silicone, so that any water attempting to leave the laundry will only ever contact lino, metal pipe or silicone. Yay for dry masonry !!!!

Whenever doing DIY projects like this they say that prep is the most important part. I find that it is also the most tedious part. I had reached a point at which I declared that the prep was "good enough". It was time to start cutting lino.

Canberra, apparently, is suffering a lino drought. I spent much of the day driving around trying to find 2m wide lino that was cheap enough for this project. 1.8m lino could be had for as little as $7 per metre, but our laundry is 1.85m wide and I also wanted enough to go up the walls an inch or two in order to maximise waterproof-ness so I needed 2m wide. Also, I was firmly against the idea of having joints in our lino, since joints in the old flooring largely contributed to the problems we were trying to correct.

The only option was some faux-tile lino from Bunnings in Tuggeranong which was quite cheap and could actually pass for genuine tiles (for vision impaired people, anyway).

As it turns out, I had made a rod for my own back. The cutting of the lino was greatly complicated by two factors:

I wanted the lino to go up the walls an inch or two, meaning the lino would always be larger than the room I was putting it into.
I wanted the lino to be one single piece with no joints.

Until you actually attempt to do this you would not appreciate the difficulties that these stipulations impose. Point #1 means that you can't lay the lino out properly until you have cut around all the obstacles in the room, BUT you can't cut around the obstacles in the room until you lay it out properly. It was a classic Catch 22 situation, which can be circumvented by cutting the room in half and using a join, but that compromises point #2 - waterproof-ness and defeats the whole purpose of the project. Just to make it even worse the lino had a regular straight line patern printed on it (tiles), meaning that the orientation of the lino also had to be considered. You need the pattern to be parallel to the walls or is just looks shit.

I got around these issues by taking an iterative approach - cut a little, re-position lino, cut a little, and so on. This was complicated by the fact that it is very difficult to adjust the position of lino that you are standing on. It was a major hassle and gave me a whole new respect for whatever poor bastard laid the lino throughout the rest of our house.

Anyway, the end result of everything I have been crapping on for the last few paragraphs can be summarised with one photo:.

Yeah, what the hell do you do with this? I mean SERIOUSLY!!!

Between these two photos I spent like 30 minutes just looking at it and trying to figure out what I was going to do. It was like some kind 3D puzzle.

After a lot of thought and cutting and adjustment, it looks slightly less crap:

Once I got the lino cut out correctly it was time to start applying adhesive.

The second half of the gluing process. I made sure the edges had a generous dose of adhesive:

I ran out of adhesive and had to buy a second litre. Going by the coverage advertised on the container our laundry is around 12 square metres in size, rather than the 5.76 square metres my tape measure reported...

The end result:

The before and after shot. Click on it for a large-view. I think it lacks the impact it has when you are within smelling range:

The Bottom Line:

So all in all I am pretty happy with the end results. What I have effectively done is given our laundry floor a huge condom and it is free to have sex with whomever it pleases, if you see what I mean (like, it doesn't have to worry about any fluids, get it?).

Most of what you read about laying lino suggests that you use a roller to compress the lino. I didn't bother, since I doubt a roller would have been the ideal solution. The irregularities and bumps of our concrete floor would have meant that a roller would not have compressed the lino as effectively as walking around in a pair of rubber crocs, which is exactly what I did. By walking around on the lino every 5 minutes or so after laying it, any bubbles in the lino were removed because the adhesive becomes more tacky over time.
Also, I would recommend that if it is your first time to lay lino that you avoid patterns with straight lines (such as fake floorboard prints, tiles etc), since this adds another aspect that you need to consider (ensuring the lino goes down in a way that keeps the print parallel to the walls). I think I got lucky in this respect.

Update
Several months later and "minor" bubbles have appeared. I have two theories for this. Firstly, it is possible that the concrete was not clean enough. Given that I had spent most of a day scraping the crap and old adhesive off, I was not going to spend another minute trying to get it cleaner. My second and preferred theory is that I was too stingy with the adhesive. I was trying to get my cheapo container of adhesive to last for the whole job but there was no way I was ever going to achieve this. In hindsight I think I should have just bitten the bullet and bought two pots of the expensive Dunlop adhesive as it's superiority was obvious the instant I began to apply it. I believe that using it more generously would have prevented the bubbles I am now seeing.

Having said all that the job was always going to be a stopgap measure and it will still achieve the desired effect (waterproofing and beautifying the laundry floor). In think that in a year or two I will rip it all up and lay proper floor tiles which will not only be a more enjoyable job but also, I suspect, actually easier to do.

Chicken Coop and Overgrown Vegetable Garden

2011-02-26T21:44:00.000-08:00

Yeah, imaginative title I know. My legions of adoring fans have recently complained that I have not blogged anything recently, so I offer you this one to help sate your appetites...

The long awaited chicken coop construction project has actually commenced. We assessed many options, starting with flat-packed coops on Ebay. These tended to have been built in Indonesia and looked very nice, but they got a little too costly. We have never kept chickens before and it would be a good idea to keep the costs down until we are sure it is something we will stick with.

Another option was to built a portable a-frame coop which we could move around the backyard. This was an appealing prospect and we may go back to it one day. In the end we decided to build an extension to the budgie/ferret/child cage (we don't actually know what it is for) that was there when we moved in. It has a 12 inch thick concrete base and an enclosure that is large enough for them to sleep in and whatever else they do in there, so we just need to add a wire "box" to the outside so that they can walk around on grass, and presumably poop out there too.

This is the mysterious enclosure. We have no idea what it could have been for. I am about to replace the roof :

A few years ago I ripped off the roof to use on our doggy Alcatraz project, so I have to replace it with whatever scraps I can find):

Beautiful workmanship. I am available for home extension projects, call me...

The vertical posts are concreted in and give you an idea of how big the chicken-wire enclosure is going to be. I want it to be tall enough for Carrie to be able to walk into, so about 4ft give or take... ;)

So the concreting took place about 1 month ago, and the project looks pretty much the same now. Haven't gotten around to doing anything since, and my attention today was diverted onto tiling the laundry floor so it may be a while before we actually get any chickens but I am determined that we will have chickens by 2013.

Vegetable Garden

I spent some time today checking out our vegetable garden. It would seem that we may have over planted it...

Over-planted? Hard to tell on account of all the vegetation:

The dogs seem to have ignored the unprotected plants, so all the work I did on the enclosure was pretty much as waste of time:

So it seems that the dogs have no interest in our vegetables. Although this means I wasted a whole lot of time building the enclosure, it does mean that I can just go crazy digging up the garden for extra planting space, which is exactly what I intend to do. I will have a dedicated herb garden, a dedicated tomato garden, and a dedicated (insert weird vegetables that Carrie wants) garden.

Nothing to see here

2011-01-25T01:08:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I cut a channel in our concrete driveway to assist with storm water run off. I also dug up the rose bushes in the back yard. Really nothing worth taking a photo of, but I wanted a record of when I did this stuff.

New Years...Dog ?

2011-01-03T01:48:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in previous posts, the number of dogs in our household recently dropped from 3 to 1, so it was time to inject some fresh blood. We were determined to adopt an abandoned dog, simply because we are morally superior to most people. After compiling a short list of eligible pooches, Carrie decided upon a little white bundle of energy she has named "Emily".

She is extremely energetic which makes her a good companion for my dog "Meg", and they have taken to running bog laps around the back yard.

Two video examples of canine bog-laps:

Showdown at the vege patch. They were a bit unsure of each other at this point in time:

Meg and Emily trying to beat the shit out of each other. It's enough to warm the heart of any UFC fan. Note that Meg's ears are captured mid-flight in this shot, an extremely rare event:

Emily. Standing upright. Well it seemed impressive at the time...

We have decided to enroll both of our dogs in an obedience training course, which hopefully will result in our dogs having their spirits broken and have them behave in ways that we find acceptable. As a bonus, neither of our dogs are interested in tearing the cat apart, so we are able to have all our pets running free in the house at the same time :)

Varnishing Point

2010-12-31T01:10:00.000-08:00

Webster's Dictionary defines the "Varnishing Point" as "...the point at which the home owner, so disgusted by the cat urine stains, coffee stains, coke stains and general shittiness of their floors, are driven to varnish them". This week, we reached that point.

It has been more than three years since we decided to varnish the lounge room floor so it seemed like a good time to actually start the job. I have never done anything like this before so it was a little daunting to think that I could be about to totally screw up our floor. But with a new puppy on the way with questionable toilet habits we just had to get down to it. I have been researching floor sanding both online and in books for years and I came across much conflicting information. At the end of the day I decided to just treat it like any other pine-varnishing job : sand the hell out of it and keep wacking on layers of varnish until you lose interest.

Some examples of the general all-round shittiness that drove us insane for 3 years:

The first part of the job required us to nail-punch every single nail 3mm deep into the floor and apply wood putty. There were well over 800 nails and it took quite some time. Needless to say, it was fun.

The floor ready for sanding after filling all nail holes. Is there anything you would rather do on your holidays?

I had heard some real horror stories about the amount of dust that is generated when floor sanding, so I took no chances with the drop sheets. I was basically aiming for an air tight room and I wasn't far off. I had spent an entire weekend wall mounting my TV several weeks ago so there was no way in hell I was going to remove it.

Ready to commence sanding the following day:

There are many different recommendations for which grade of sand paper to use, how many times to sand the floor, the direction in which to sand the floor and so on. Seeing as we were sanding a pine floor rather than a hardwood floor I was concerned about over-sanding it and ending up with floor boards 2mm thick. The Bunnings guy (a miserable old git) advised us to use 80 grit and not bother with anything higher, as the scratches would not show up (which would not be true of a hardwood floor). We took his word for it, although we did suspect the reason for his advice actually had more to do with the fact that it was the highest grit paper that he had in stock...

All the floor sanding guides agreed: if your floor is not perfectly level, start with diagonal sanding to get it all level. This turned out to be pretty bad advice. The only thing it achieved was deep diagonal scoring that proved to be difficult to sand off later on. Instead, I wish I had just commenced immediately with sanding in the direction of the grain of the boards. Even though our floor was not perfectly level I found that when sanding it was immediately obvious when different levels were present (the un-sanded areas remain darker than the sanded areas) and with pine being such a soft wood it only needed a little local re-sanding in the affected area to level the boards. This may result in some areas that are sanded slightly more than the surrounding boards but unless you plan to play billiards on your floor, you won't notice it.

The hired Bunnings drum sander. It's strange to use a power tool that tries to run away from you as soon as you turn it on:

So not including my ill-fated diagonal sanding, I ended up doing two complete sandings in the direction of the grain of the boards. I noticed that there was a strange line scribed right down the middle of the room and I attempted to sand it out by sanding the affected areas repeatedly but this proved to be a mistake, resulting in wood that appeared a different colour to all of the surrounding sanded boards. Fortunately the varnish has since concealed this.

How the floor looks after the sanding is complete:

About to commence varnishing:

We wanted a pale floor to help brighten up the room so we did not want to apply any stain. We also didn't want a gloss finish because I had read that scratches are more visible on high gloss finishes and our floor has to deal with a lot of abuse. We chose a Cabot's water based satin varnish. Actually, we had bought the varnish three years earlier and it had separated badly and required a fair bit of stirring to get it back to a smooth consistency. It is a varnish that requires only 3 hours between coats and has very low odour and the value of both of these qualities should not be underestimated. The can suggests 4 coats for high traffic areas but we ended up doing only three coats as we did not have enough remaining for the fourth, and we had also lost enthusiasm by this point. Our pine floors were also a lot more thirsty than the can suggested, with the first coat requiring nearly half of the can of varnish, but subsequent coats required far less. At the end of the day, we used most of a 4 litre can to give three complete coats to an area of 16 square metres of pine flooring.

We had also bought an expensive mohair roller for applying the varnish. Using the roller on an extension pole did speed up the varnishing process significantly but I think using the 100mm brush gave a better consistency and would have been better at preventing uneven application. On future floor varnishing I will only use the brush.

The completed job. You can't really tell from the photo, but the results are awesome. Trust me.

A feeble attempt at before and after:

So...yeah. There you go.

Vegetating

2010-12-26T00:39:00.000-08:00

Vegetarians, hippies, single women. There are many diverse groups who have uses for vegetables. Now there is a new group : overweight suburbanites. When Carrie and I first purchased our sprawling estate we both said to each other "We really gotta grow some vegetables out here". Well we have finally taken the plunge and actually gotten plants into the ground. But first a recap. Regular readers may recall that the raised garden bed had been built some time ago but there have been some changes...

Here is the original design, immediately prior to filling it with vegetable garden soil from the local landscaping suppliers:

...and here is the revised design, modified immediately after discovering how much it would actually cost to fill the raised garden bed with vegetable soil from our local landscaping supplier:

After making an executive decision that we don't need no fancy dirt for our garden we set off to Bunnings to find some seedlings. We ended up choosing tomatoes, capsicums, chillies, cucumbers, pumpkins, strawberries and rhubarb. We actually had too many seedlings to plant within the protective confines of the dog-proof garden, so you can see in the foreground of the above picture where I have begun garden bed #2 which currently contains unprotected tomatoes. They have survived thus far. However, the pumpkins which also drew the short straw and were evicted from the cage, seem to have mysteriously transformed into nothing more than little green leafless stumps.

As usual, I came up with fantastically inventive improvements to the standard design. In the case of our non-raised garden bed, it comes in the form of the protective mesh that prevents our dogs from digging up everything. The design is further enhanced by the "easy open" (tm) sides, shown below. The opposite side also opens in the same manner.

The garden bed, wide open and begging to be plowed. And boy did I plow it. I plowed it all night long. I plowed it's freakin brains out!!! I...wait, what was I talking about?

A small selection of our plants after being planted for 3 weeks. Bottom left is the rhubarb, bottom right is capsicum, and the two at the top are tomato plants. I mean, as in actual tomato plants, that will have tomatoes on them. Honest !

One of my beautiful tomato plants. One day they will be six foot tall and I will be making pasta sauce out of their fruit. At least, that's the dream.

UPDATE: Many of the photos on my blog, including some above, include the little brown and white dog "Jeremy". He would often participate in my outdoor projects where he would gallantly guard me against marauding magpies by...barking... constantly. Anyway, he has been around for all 5 years I have lived in Canberra, and with Carrie for 10-11 years.

A couple of weeks ago we returned home from work only to discover that he had attacked our older dog, "Willow", and killed her. After burying Willow we took Jeremy to the vet and had him put down. It was a difficult decision but Jeremy's behaviour had been deteriorating ever since having tumours surgically removed, including an attack on a friends dog that resulted in a $2000+ veterinary bill. Killing Willow left us with no choice. The vet suggested that he may have had a tumour in his brain, or be suffering from early onset dementia, or it may have simply been escalating behavioural problems.

Willow will be best remembered for her pungent odours, and her bizarre ability to sound like a monkey.

Carrie is currently looking for a homeless dog to adopt, so stay tuned.

R.I.P Jeremy: 2000 - 2010

R.I.P Willow: 1982 - 2010

Caffeinated Beverage Support Structure

2010-12-15T00:05:00.000-08:00

We've all been there. No sooner do you try to suspend your cup of coffee in mid air than gravity raises its ugly head, exerting it's despicable force and accelerating the tasty beverage towards planet earth at a rate of 9.8 metres per second per second.. This in turn causes it to impact with the ground, smashing it to pieces like the dreams of so many "Australian Idol" winners. After suffering this misfortune more than a dozen times in one afternoon, I stood up in the large puddle of coffee and declared allowed that I would not allow this to occur anymore, not on my watch !!!

What was clearly needed was some form of horizontal platform that was immune from the effects of gravity upon which my beverages could rest. Scientists continue to struggle to understand exactly how gravity works, so I knew I had my work cut out for me but I was confidant that my "can do" attitude and Aussie spirit would overcome the difficulties that had obstructed the work of so many physics geniuses around the world. After determining the horizontal platform paradigm, I set about trying to offset gravity and eventually arrived at a solution so stunningly simple I am surprised no one has considered it before : LEGS ! In the same way that our human legs are able to cause our torsos to levitate off the ground, I could attach legs to the horizontal surface which would serve to "push" it away from the ground. "But what about the issue of balance?" I hear you scream in a frenzy of curiosity! This issue was solved with the use of horizontal stabilisers at ground level. These could also be bolted to the ground if need be, providing superior stability in even zero-G environments.

The horizontal platform, supported by the "Legs" (being the vertical members of the structure). The stabilisers are clearly visible on the ground (currently not bolted to the floor):

Construction began in August using lumber I had salvaged from an old bed. Initially I biscuit jointed several planks together to form the table top but I quickly learned the perils of working with wood that once belonged to a bed - it tends to be warped from prolonged exposure to the stresses of supporting a human body. I was forced to buy a large plank of dressed pine but was able to use the salvaged bed lumber for the remainder of the structure.

In what I still consider to be something of a cosmic conspiracy, construction was interrupted by my recent bout of pneumonia In September. Perhaps gravity sensed the progress I was making and was not ready to give up it's coffee pilfering ways without a fight.

Construction re-started in late October. It had been my intention to "frame" the table top with a strip of pine and then stain it a different colour to the rest of the table. However, due to the project running behind schedule I basically couldn’t be stuffed anymore and just wanted to finish the god damn thing. I chose instead to finish it in a combination stain and varnish, which is to wood working what "Kraft Macaroni and Cheese" is to fine dining. Needless to say, my precisely machined edging is now completely concealed by the stain and varnish.

The end results are acceptable. The lack of quality in the finish is largely concealed by the poor lighting of our lounge room, and the structure has proven to be far more flexible that originally envisioned. Not only are beverages containing caffeine now protected from gravity...

...but also beer bottles...

...and even non-beverage related objects!

(I've really gotta polish our floors...)

XBMC HTPC

2010-11-19T03:07:00.000-08:00

Warning
If you are not interested in building your own HTPC, this post will bore the shit out of you (in stark contrast to all my other posts...).

Design

Although it resembles nothing more than a large black box, a lot of thought, planning and money has gone into this project. Actually, I prefer to think of it looking like one of those large black stereo amplifiers that were popular components in sound systems in the 90's but which are now the sole domain of well-heeled audiophiles since the massive proliferation of cheap 5.1 home theatre sound systems. But anyway, getting back to the topic at hand…

For the last few years, my media library has been accessible via XBMC running on an original Xbox accessing my file server via my wired Ethernet network. Although this system has functioned nearly flawlessly for its lifespan, its limitations began to make themselves known as my library grew in size and also as Matroska compression of Hi Def material became my multimedia container of choice. The poor old Xbox was simply unable to keep up, so an upgrade was clearly needed. I chose a windows based PC mainly due to my familiarity with all things Windows.

The goals of the new media system were as follows:

be capable of providing CPU based decoding of 1080P hi def .mkv files
have HDMI video/audio output, and
run near silently

My HTPC viewed from the left

Component Specs

Although the next version of XBMC will support DXVA 2.0 (meaning that video decoding can be offloaded to the GPU), I elected to go with a powerful 3.0 GHz Athlon II Quad Core X4 640 CPU anyway for the following reasons

The difference in price between the Athlon II 640 and less powerful CPU's was negligible
I did not want to limit myself to software that supported DXVA (XBMC Dharma was/is still in Beta, though my testing shows it to be functioning perfectly for my needs)
A powerful CPU would enable the XBMC library and database to run more smoothly

My choice of motherboard was based around having a quality integrated graphics chipset, with HDMI output, preferably built by a well known brand. I chose the ASUS M4A88TD-M as one of several candidates as providing all the features I wanted.

I have learned after building several PC's that aftermarket cooling is far superior to the stock heat sink and fans provided with CPUs, so I chose the "Scythe Big Shuriken SC-SCBSK-1000". It was short enough to fit into the cases I was considering, but used a large 120mm fan.

Speaking of cases, I like Antec cases for their quality and value for money. They are not the best cases available but I have never regretted owning any of them. I considered the Antec Minuet 350 because of it's small size, but ultimately settled on the NSK 2480B because of it's unobtrusive design and it's excellent cooling. The NSK 2480B is cooled by two side mounted 120mm Tri-cool fans. I have used these fans previously and they are an excellent choice for the budget minded silent computer builder. Having two of them would allow me to run them both at minimum speed, keeping them nice and quiet. Remember, a cool computer is a quiet computer.

I obviously needed a hard drive for the OS and to also contain some of my media. I normally buy Western Digital green drives for my file server as they run cool, are cheap and although only spinning at 5200RPM have never caused problems for my media collection, even with more demanding 1080P material. However, as this hard drive would be running in the lounge room I had to take into consideration the noise made by drive-head movement and my research suggested the Samsung Ecogreen drives would be better in this regard due to their "silent seek" and "noise guard" implementations of Automatic Acoustic Management (i.e. they are very quiet).

For the remote control I chose the Hauppauge MCE remote which is about as generic as they come and should therefore be simple to install and configure. Sure enough, windows recognised it as a MCE remote and automatically installed the required drivers. Event Ghost was also simple to configure with this remote. Although getting the remote to work correctly was not a problem, I found I was unhappy with it's performance which was somewhat "laggy" and no amount of re-configuration cured this problem. I ended up ditching the remote and using instead a Logitech wireless numeric keypad which uses RF rather than IR (so no line of sight was needed to operate the remote), and although it's keys were not labelled for the purpose I chose to use it for, it provided the immediate response I wanted and I have stuck with it ever since.

I wanted 2GB of RAM for the PC and chose some Corsair Value Select sticks. However it was only when the PC began to regularly freeze up that I discovered this RAM was not listed as being compatible with the motherboard. As I was not certain which component was causing the problem I chose to try different RAM simply because it was the cheapest option. I bought a 1GB stick of Kingston KVR1333D3N9/1G (much to the amusement of my local PC hardware store owner) and I found that this cured the problem.

My HTPC, viewed from the front. I know what you're thinking : "I wonder what it looks like from the right?"

Software

XBMC remains my favourite media centre software and I highly recommend it for anyone who is building a media centre who does not need to record TV. I am still using XBMC Camelot but intend to switch to Dharma when Release Candidate 1 comes out which should be very soon…

I originally chose Windows XP for the OS but found I had major headaches getting audio to output over HDMI. After several days worth of updating drivers and installing patches I simply gave up and went with Windows 7 Ultimate. It was a wise decision as Windows 7 instantly recognised the integrated audio hardware and it was smooth sailing all the way. So for all of you out there struggling to get your HDMI audio to work (and I know there are many of you), give Windows 7 a shot.

"Eventghost" and "Autohotkey" round out the software needed. These are very powerful free software packages and with a little effort you will be amazed at what they can achieve.

My HTPC, viewed from the right. The cabinet gets replaced tomorrow.

Performance

I ran Prime 95, a utility designed to stress all cores of a CPU at 100%. Running it for several hours, the fan on the Big Shuriken cooler never went above 1000RPM, while CPU temperatures remained well within comfortable limits of around 40 degrees Celsius. I am very impressed with the Big Shuriken, costing only $60 yet delivering great performance.

The CPU easily managed decoding of 1080P material, most of the workload being performed by core #1 which peaked at 80%, the remaining 3 cores happily idling along at about 25%.

Most surprising is the memory usage. Running Windows 7, XBMC and playing back 1080P video, the little 1GB stick of RAM took it all in it's stride and I have not needed to beef it up to 2GB as I originally planned. It was quite an eye opener.

Overall the HTPC operates nearly silently and has no problem meeting the demands I place upon it. I doubt any upgrades will be needed for a very long time.

Shopping List

AMD Athlon II X4 640	$133
Scythe Big Shuriken Low Profile	$60
ASUS M4A88TD-M	$119
Antec NSK2480B with 380W PSU	$139
Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3N9/1G 1GB DDR3	$29
Samsung 1.5TB HDD EcoGreen F2	$92
Logitech Wireless Numeric Keypad	$50
	$622

So Lung and Thanks For All The...Poker Chips

2010-10-28T05:24:00.000-07:00

Well the old blog has been a little quiet lately, but I have an excuse - I had pneumonia. No really, I actually did! I anticipate either rabies or bubonic plague next year. I am mostly better now (so stop panicking) but it might be a while before I have any renovation work to blog about because just mowing the lawn is a bit much for me at the moment. As admirable as my heroic triumph over adversity may be, it is not the reason for this post.

Pneumonia. 2 weeks off work = good. Spending it with your lungs filled with puss = not good. It's an effective way to lose weight though! 4kg in 2 weeks.

In fact, this post is actually about poker. Don't worry, I will not bother you with a blow-by-blow account of my stunning coup d'état of the world's poker elite (well, unless you really want me to...). I merely offer this screen capture for you to drool over.

Me, a poker god? Well, I suppose many would think so...

So where to now? I have pretty much reached the summit of the poker play money Everest and I could just keep going and going (I already play on the highest stake tables available for play money). I am considering real cash games, time will tell. If I don't end up making a fool of myself, you may just read about it on future posts...stay tuned :)
EDIT: I just noticed my previous post, where I had only $500K on 1 September. so it took me less than 2 months to make another $500K. Damn I'm good.

P-P-P-Poker Face P-P-Poker Face

2010-09-01T02:40:00.000-07:00

Gus Hansen, one of the world’s most renowned poker players, published a book entitled “Every Hand Revealed” in which he describes in painstaking detail every hand he played during the 2007 Aussie Millions poker tournament (which he won). Yes, I have read it (hasn’t everyone ?!?!). It is in this same spirit that I commence a never ending series of blog entries detailing MY hands in online poker. I expect there have been a great many poker fans out there waiting for me to commence such an undertaking, and now I intend to deliver!

Gus Hansen - The ladies just LOVE that haircut (trust me, I know):

I have recently made the transition to the high stakes play money tables of PokerStars.com (described as “Play Money”, but I hope you will agree that these tables have all the prestige and thrills as the tables involving millions of dollars of so called “Real” money). My start the night earlier had proved to be less than impressive, resulting in my chip stack being whittled down ten’s of thousands of dollars due to bad beats. On three separate occasions I had gotten rivered by freakish Full House’s played by people Phil Helmuth would have described as “Northern European Idiot’s”. My morale was low.

An Idiot. But not a European one:

But I was not ready to quit. I decided that from now on, I would start playing hardball and would bring $40K to start at each table and bet big. This strategy paid off early and saw me about $50K ahead within hours. But I had no idea what was ahead…

I was eventually dealt an Ace-Ten of clubs. I am always a sucker for a suited hand, hoping to flop at least a flush draw, and if not there was always a chance of a high pair. So I bet big to try to reduce the number of opponents I would be facing and hence reduce the likelihood of me becoming a victim of my enemy’s good luck. A $3500 pre-flop raise saw all but two of my would be antagonists fall by the wayside. The flop came: 6 diamonds, 5 of clubs and a 6 of clubs. I now had the flush draw that has served me so well in the past with a 36% chance of hitting my flush, but the paired board left me concerned – would I get wiped out by yet another full house?

My pre flop raise left me feeling secure that none of my two opponents would be playing such low cards, but the pot was already sizeable so I decided to end the hand there and then. I fired $10,000 into the pot and patiently waited for the inevitable folds. Opponent #1 dutifully folded, but what’s this ?!?! Opponent #2 raises…$25,000 !!!!! I broke into a sweat and my mouse hand began to tremble. I already had $13,500 in the pot and here I was being forced to risk another $15,000!! That’s a total of $28,500, a sum that would take many months to recoup on the small stakes tables.

I began to consider his possible hands. Having a single six would mean he had flopped trip 6’s, a decent hand but surely not worth the kind of money he was betting, especially considering how I had played the hand. Could he have full house, a certain win? Or perhaps he had even flopped Quad 6’s. I have faced both scenarios previously and the scenes of the previous night’s bad luck began to be replayed in my mind. But no, I ruled out the Quads and Full House, the odds were just too astronomical to consider. Even for internet poker. I called.

The turn was….a club. I had hit my Ace High flush, the hand was now a slam dunk for me. I waited for him to check and then decided to finish him off. I decided on a $50,000 raise and waited for him to fold…. “ALL IN” appeared beneath my opponents name. He had check raised me. With three clubs on the board. Surely he could see I had been playing a flush draw and that the turn had delivered exactly what I needed? And yet he STILL went all in. The pair of sixes stared back at me from the table. Apparently the three clubs were of no concern to him. Perhaps he had a weaker flush? I sat and considered the call for some time. I just couldn’t lay it down. Not an Ace high Flush, not with so many of my chips in the pot. I decided that I would call and if I lost, I could live with it. I called all in.

He had trip 6’s, a pitiful hand against my mighty flush. I breathed a sigh of relief, but knew there was one more card to come. If it was the case 6 (giving him Quads), or paired the board (giving him a Full House), I would be losing years worth of scrimping and saving chips, endless nights grinding it out on the small stakes tables. Then came the river…

…it was a blank. I had won the hand. $172,000 in a single hand. My previous record had been $40,000 but now that seemed like pocket change. I clicked “Leave Table” as fast as my mouse would allow and checked my total chip count at the Cashier, and this was the sight that greeted me:

$500K. Half a million. And now, suddenly, the illusive $1M just doesn’t seem like that much of a hurdle :)

Farmville, without the crops...

2010-08-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

This is actually some work I did a while ago (sometime in May) but one of my many adoring fans recently enquired about the progress of my raised garden bed so I thought it was time to post some pictures. When Carrie and I returned from Gary and Sarah's property in Tasmania this year we were all fired up to get our long awaited vegetable garden happening. I had some old corrugated iron fencing and star pickets so it appeared it would be a cheap project (my favourite kind) so I got started!

The first step was to cut out the area of ground I was going to use. None of our block is level but I chose the most level, sunny area I could find and using my trusty garden spade I cut out a rectangle from the lawn and then removed all of the grass within it. This was by far the most labour intensive part of the job. I then banged in a tall star picket in each corner. I needed taller pickets because we will be running chicken wire around the raised bed to keep the dogs out, but if you don't have that problem then the pickets need only be as tall as the sides of your garden, plus a bit (to go underground, see?)

I made sure that the perimeter of the bed area was cut into the lawn about 4 inches deep so that the lower edges of the corrugated iron would be held in place when under pressure when the bed is filled with soil.

Jeremy conducts an inspection of the garden bed perimeter:

Ideally, the dimensions of your garden are such that you are able to reach the centre of the bed with minimal effort, hence a rectangular shape proves to be the most efficient use of ground space. I added reinforcing star pickets at the centre of each side, which is also where the sheets overlapped. I figure these areas would be the most vulnerable to soil-pressure. I temporarily added bracing to the interior of the garden bed to make it more photogenic as there is not yet any soil within it to keep the walls upright. I used my angle grinder to cut the metal sheets lengthwise. I love my angle grinder.

Jeremy inspects the corrugated iron sheeting:

Isn't it beautiful? It was completed several months ago and I have yet to get around to actually filling it with dirt, but I doubt I would have been able to grow much in the middle of Canberra's winter so I don't think I missed out on much. I hope to have my vegetable production in full swing by this summer.

There she is, in all her beauty:

...and on an unrelated note, this is how I have to get rid of my garden waste. It's not enough to have to cut down a tree, I have to also cut it into little pieces to put in the green waste bin:

It Isn't Easy Becoming Green

2010-08-09T03:32:00.000-07:00

The House of Representatives. An XJ Jaguar. Kermit The Frog. All examples of the elegance and sophistication that the colour green can provide. And now, you can add our lounge room to that list. Carrie and I spent the weekend puttying, pollyfilla-ing, sanding, and painting in an attempt to make our lounge room a little less ghetto. It was very hard work but the results were better than I had dared hope. So as usual, the before and after shots.

The bare Gyprock wall. I have been looking at that god-damn wall for 3 F***ing years:

We used an exotic blend of rare pigments (Dulux "Rodham") to come up with the perfect colour scheme:

This is my clock. I bought it because it also has a thermometer built in. Yes, BUILT IN!

But as awesome as my clock is, it looks a lot better with a green background (the marks that seem to be on the wall is actually all of the crap on the lens of my camera):

Take a good look at that horrible orange/pink door, it is living on borrowed time:

The doors and architraves will be white, creating a fantastic contrast with the walls:

So, next up will be new doors, or floor sanding, I don't know which yet but both will be very welcome additions and are long overdue. Stay tuned...

Pipe Down

2010-06-30T04:14:00.000-07:00

What's worse than having to get out of bed in below zero temperatures? How about getting out of bed in below zero temperatures and finding out that the shower doesn't work? No sooner do I mention the cold than we wake up to find our cold water tap in the shower to be non-responsive. The cause? When we painted the house some of the piping insulation was removed and not replaced. The water literally froze inside our water pipe, because the genius who built our house (the one who apparently couldn't afford a spirit level or framing square) decided to run all of the plumbing on the outside of the house, despite the fact that the house is located in the 3rd coldest city in the world (behind Yakutsk and Ice Station Zebra). $14 of supplies from Bunnings has remedied the problem, but the mental scars of a showerless winter morning will always be there.

This is what our house would look like if we had 4 feet of snow. We haven't...yet.

Cold ++

2010-06-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

Last night the temperature dropped to -4.9 degrees. While riding to work this morning the temperature was -0.3 degrees. I'm just sayin'.

Chim-Chiminey

2010-06-22T03:49:00.000-07:00

Ahhh winter. It's those months months of the year when the only time my laundry actually dries out is as I am wearing it. It's those chilly nights when I have to defrost the dogs after returning home from work. It's when weekends can be spent lounging around in front of the TV watching the rain....run down your lounge room wall. Yes, you read correctly. I was merrily watching TV the other weekend when I was surprised to see small streams of rainwater running down my freshly corniced gyprock wall. After deciding this state of affairs was less than ideal, I elected to do something about it.

Our house has a large chimney in the centre of it which is attached to a wood-fired oven in the kitchen (yes, our house is that old). Wood fired ovens are very quaint and trendy in swanky pizza-making cafes but in an average suburban house all they do is take up too much space. I had noticed previously that during sustained periods of rainfall our kitchen bench would end up with mysterious puddles upon it, and the floor would develop a stream of water also. I had long suspected the chimney was in someway responsible but the thought of climbing on the roof to conduct an inspection was unappealing due to both the severe slope of our roof and my lack of mountaineering equipment.

An example of a very steep roof. Not our actual house.

The thought of my beautiful new gyprock wall becoming water damaged was sufficient to spur me into action so I donned my favourite pair of climbing Crocs and began the ascension of our roof. Upon reaching the uppermost ridge and inspecting the chimney the problem became immediately obvious. The mortar that held the flashing within the brickwork of the chimney had deteriorated. This had allowed the flashing to not only pull away from the chimney but to also actually function as a funnel for rainwater. The flashing would catch the rain and the only way down was between the flashing and the chimney itself, which further down actually became the lounge room wall.

The trouble-making flashing

The Flooding Scenario

It was the kind of repair that should only be attempted by an experienced professional roofing plumber. Fortunately, my work on the front pergola meant I had developed all of the skills of an experienced professional roofing plumber so I was able to tackle it myself. During my pergola project I discovered "Roof and Gutter sealant", wonderful goo for which I have since found many other uses (roof leaks, clothing repairs, creamy pasta sauce and so on). It bonds to metal, concrete, plastic and t-shirts, and is also UV-resistant and water proof. It proved invaluable when reversing the effects of 50+ years of deterioration that had been experienced by our chimney.

Professional Roofing Plumbing Work

We had a brief bit of rain last weekend and everything appears to have held up. Only a prolonged 2-3 day rainy period will confirm if my repairs are 100% successful. If problems persist I have mental plans for the next stages in the repair, the first of which consists of capping the chimney opening with galvanized metal sheeting. If that also proved to be unsuccessful then I would remove the chimney brick by brick and insert a sheet of roofing where the chimney had previous been.

The view from the roof, just because.

Cool Laptop

2010-06-20T01:30:00.000-07:00

It's a situation with which we are all familiar. You are curled up in bed watching a classic 80's action movie from extensive the Golan Globus catalogue, something like "Braddock: Missing In Action III". Braddock (played by Chuck Norris) has just witnessed the senseless murder of his Vietnamese wife by an evil army general before they could make good their escape. Although Chuck says nothing, and his face remains utterly expressionless, you feel his pain as if it were your own.

Braddock, immediately prior to his wife being murdered:

Braddock, immediately after his wife's murder:

The poignancy is palpable. Tears well in your eyes. But what's this? The bloody laptop cooling fan has kicked in and ruined the moment. It's jet-engine like noise cuts through Chuck's intense emotional silence like a mobile phone ringing at a funeral.

The cause is simple enough. XBMC has not yet implemented DXVA, meaning all video is decoded purely by the CPU. This leads to the CPU heating up, and the cooling fans kicking in. So until XBMC is updated to support DXVA, all your favourite Chuck Norris movies are going to be ruined, right? Not necessarily...

Of course, you could buy an aftermarket laptop cooling pad, but what fun is that? Instead I decided to build my own. The cooling would come in the form of my trusty 80mm Antec Tri-Cool fan which is normally meant to be used inside a desktop PC case. I also modified it's power plug so it could be powered solely by USB. Powering by the laptop's USB port (rather than an external power supply) means that when I shut down the PC by remote control, the fan also loses power and shuts down. Although USB can only deliver 5v rather than the 12v most fans are designed to run off, the Antec is a PWM fan (Pulse Width Modulation) and hence it is designed to continue running at lower voltages, albiet more slowly. Actually, this is the way the Tri-Cool fan usually modulates it's speed, via a 3-position switch. Keeping the speed switch set to maximum allows all 5v to be sent to the fan. Any of the lower settings are too low for the fan to rotate at all.

The fan mounted in the base:

I built the case out of 16mm MDF. The first step was to map out the area of the laptop's base which actually have air inlets. Ordinarily the laptop would use it's own fans to suck cool air into these inlets. My base would instead blow air through these inlets, hopefully preventing the laptop fans from needing to activate at all. As you can see from the photo below, a channel has been cut out of the base which would allow the higher pressured air to access all of the laptops inlets.

The fan in the air-channel, and the air inlets under the laptop:

I left the rear of the base open to feed air to the fan and also to allow me to store a power supply beneath it if required.

Underneath the base:

The laptop in place:

So, the end results? To be honest, improvements are required. The most noticeable problem is resonance, the enemy of silent PC builders the world over. Even though the fan is built to run nearly silent, it is mounted on thin MDF so very minor vibrations are amplified. In addition, the base is not insulated from the surface it stands on at all, creating further amplification of minor noises. There are cheap and easy solutions to these problems, specifically rubber feet on the bottom of the base, and insulating the fan from the base through rubber grommets rather than directly bolting the fan to the timber. I also think large gains could be had by using a 120mm fan instead of the 80mm fan I had on hand.

Future upgrades would include painting the timber, mounting a USB hub on the front and a mains power outlet on the side for the laptop power supply. Stay tuned...

Super Command Centre

2010-05-15T00:39:00.000-07:00

I think this may be getting out of control...

Post-Holiday Motivation

2010-05-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

After returning from Tasmania Carrie and I are all motivated to finally get our act together and setup our long awaited vege garden and chicken coop. There are no photos for this post, largely because after two days of back breaking labour it all still just looks shit. But stay posted, soon the fun stuff will begin and it might be worth taking photos by then.

In the mean time, This old post may be of interest : http://thehumanpotato.blogspot.com/2008/08/coop-is-no-more.html

The reason this is relevant is because it details some of my weeks-long war against the old chicken coop which I eventually managed to destroy. I am once again having to clear the area of overgrown vegetation (it has all grown back in the two years since I last killed it) which also allows me to play one of my all time favourite games - "cut-down-the-tree-and-then-cut-it-into-little-bite-sized-pieces-so-that-it-can-be-crammed-into-the-green-waste-wheelie-bins-because-we-don't-have-a-ute-or-a-trailer-or-a-tow-ball-or-any-other-way-to-get-the-crap-to-the-tip". Why am I once again clearing this area? BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THE CHICKEN COOP IS GOING !!!!!!!

Life can be so funny some times. I laughed till I cried...

Tasmania - Phase 5 (The Humans, and other stuff...)

2010-04-30T00:11:00.000-07:00

The nights on the farm sometimes consisted of excessive consumption of alcohol. On this night we were slamming down shots all night. Well, 4 shots anyway. Between us.

Sarah could barely stand:

Carrie, impersonating a very large jar of vegemite. Very convincing:

This photo was not staged, it is a farmer playing Farmville. When Gary mentioned that there were onions to be planted I don't think this is what he had in mind...

Synchonised urination whilst sight seeing. Maybe this is why the ocean is so salty?

Our main means of conveyance. The car, not the tractor:

Gary and Sarah have bought another block in the middle of nowhere (like you do). The previous owner was a crazy 70 year old dope-fiend who decided to build himself a house, which is shown in the picture below. He died before completion. It's like a glimpse into my own future...

Formwork for his shed was in place. Looks like his shed is further along than mine is anyway:

A fishing Boat or something:

The farm is completely self sufficient, including water and electricity. Here is the solar setup. Judging by own own electricity bills this would pay itself off after 7 years. It's surprising that more solar power is not being used in suburban housing, since this is able to power a house for a family and the surface area of the panels is actually quite small. Surely these could be mounted on our house roofs?

The turkey, checking us out:

Gary and Sarah trying to get some private time to themselves. They failed.

Tasmania - Phase 4 (Farmville)

2010-04-29T23:00:00.000-07:00

With all this talk of "The Farm", I guess I should actually show some of it. Of the entire goat herd, this is the only guy who had the guts to question my presense. The others ran away like school children do when you try to drag them into a car:

This is a baby goat. I felt like shooting him so that I could look to the heavens with tears in my eyes and proclaim "He was just a Kid !!!!":

Ducks. These guys just wander around in a group (technically, a "Murder" of ducks) like they own the place. I consider them to be the "bogans" of the farm:

The lone turkey, who I like to call "Jive". Whenever he heard a loud noise (e.g. someone sneeezing) he would make his gobble-gobble sound, simply hilarious. His appearance seemed to change daily also:

A chicken. Carrie has decided that it is time we grew our own chickens, as it is something we have been considering for about 3 years. I think we need to think about it a little more:

This is a new addition to the pack, "Gilgamesh". A nice affectionate dog. I can't remember the name of the breed but apparently when they mature they form a bond with the other farm animals and then they act as a sort of body guard for them. I read an article in a farming magazine where one of them formed a bond with a pack of free-range guinea pigs. Thats not a joke, it actually did happen:

This is junior, who now spends his time in solitary confinement when people are visiting, on account of the fact that he now likes to eat people:

Dozer has lost none of his charm (or his saliva, or mucus, or...)

Tasmania - Phase 3 (Touristy Stuff)

2010-04-29T22:48:00.000-07:00

During the middle of our stay at the farm, Carrie and I decided to head out east of Launceston to check out some more touristy stuff. This included the Platapus House and Echidna Garden:

The echidna's had their own habitat in which they were free to roam. You stand in the middle of the room and they start hassling you for food, just like homeless people except covered in spikes:

Two Echidnas, as viewed from above. Apparently they can burrow themselves into the ground really quickly, meaning that the would be predator has nothing to bite but a spiky arse:

This is the best shot we could get of the platapuses (platapie?) because we were not allowed to use a flash:

We also went to see "Seahorse World", which turned out to not be a world at all, but in fact a large warehouse containing a Seashorse breeding program:

Once again we were not allowed to use a flash, due to the fact that sea horses have no eyelids and the flash causes them to get cataracts or something, so they go blind and then eventually starve to death. Sounds like a practical joke waiting to happen if you ask me:

These are the babies. They actually come out of the male at this size. Yeah thats right, the male gives birth. But do you think the mother pays child support? Not bloody likely:

These are the "teenagers" who gathered around us because they have learned to expect food from people:

This is "Batman Bridge", which is hilarious on so many levels. Well, one level, really, and that level is not all that funny either. Not funny at all actually. So, to revise, This is "Batman Bridge", which is not funny on one level..?

The map on Carrie's iPhone showed a thick purple highway cutting straight across Tasmania, leading us back to the farm in what we assumed would be half the time it would take if going by the usual route, so we decided to be adventurous and let the phone lead the way. It turns out that the iPhone actually uses thick purple lines to indicate small gravel tracks that meander through isolated moutainous regions that no tourist wants to visit. Oh well, we got to see a little mroe of the countryside at least...

Tasmania - Phase 2 (Enroute to the Farm)

2010-04-29T01:49:00.000-07:00

The farm we were going to spend the rest of the holiday on was in North-East Tasmania, while our hotel in Hobart was on the southern cost, which suggested some travel was in order. On the way we decided to do a little more touristy stuff, starting with the Cadbury factory.

One of the Cadbury employee's bikes, a Suzuki DL650 Vstrom which I have now all but confirmed will be my next bike. This was a fine specimen, featuring a Madstad adjustable windscreen bracket, bash plate, Suzuki hand-guards, pannier racks and, if I am not mistaken, a custom shaped saddle. Very noice:

The Cadbury factory. So many empty calories, so little room left on my body to store them:

If you recognise this, you are officially old. Sorry:

After the Cadbury factory it was time to head to a small town called "Richmond" which seems to exist solely for tourists. This is a good example of one of many small artists shops in the area. There was a painting of a hermit crab for $150 that I liked, and Carrie encouraged me to buy it. Instead I bought the $4 post-card version, which I hope to frame shortly (stay tuned!):

For lunch we each bought a $20 beef and Guiness pie. This is the first example of a beef and Guiness pie that I actually enjoyed. The chips were good too. It just isn't real photogenic I guess:

So after stuffing ourselves stupid it was time to hit the road. We had to get the rental car to the airport and find the second car that had been left in long term parking for us by Gary. I felt like some kind of drug dealer or secret agent.

Tasmania - Phase 1 (Hobart)

2010-04-29T01:37:00.000-07:00

Carrie and I recently went on our second trip to Tasmania, and we lived to tell the tale. This time we decided to spend a few days in Hobart and do some touristy type stuff. So we got ourselves a room above a pub ("Customs House", I think it was called), overlooking the harbour.

The Room:

The room had views of the water. People like views of water. Here you can see the view of the water, from the room:

A few minutes after we arrived we decided to check out the local markets which are held every Saturday afternoon ("Talemanka Markets", or something...). There were some old cars on show also, as evidenced by this photo of an old car:

The markets were actually a fair bit bigger than I was expecting. Due to the absence of motorcycle accessories and computer hardware i managed to escape without actually buying anything other than a "Viking Style" icecream.

That's Carrie's head you can see, wandering through the markets (her body was also present, it is just not in the shot):

The following day we decided to check out the tourist attractions so we hopped onto a ferry that does a circuit around the area:

Here is a bus that we wanted to go on, but actually didn't. Which makes this photo kind of pointless really. Nice bus though:

Leaving the jetty, this is the view of Hobart:

...and this is the water. I know how much people like to look at water:

The famous "Brown Cliffs of Hobart". They piss all over the ones in Dover:

This is a picture of a really big bridge. Apparently, one day a captain who was piloting a ship who lacked confidence requested assistance to clear the bridge but was denied. Sure enough he ended up driving straight into one of the legs of the bridge and it partially collapsed. People died as a consequence, including some people who were driving over the bridge at the time of the incident. Some people say that every year at midnight, on the same day of the accident, supernatural manifestations can be seen, desperately thrashing about in the waters. But that's just BS:

A protest ship, obviously trying to prevent the slaughter of innocent plankton that is perpetrated everyday by unfeeling whales:

The "Arunta". We were going to go on it's cruise, but they didnt offer morning tea:

Getting Plastered Again

2010-04-10T23:27:00.000-07:00

Carrie was going away for the weekend so I decided to take the opportunity to empty the lounge room and finally finish all of the sanding and plastering work that I have been dreading for long time. Of all the DIY jobs, sanding has to be the very worst, and it is even worse when you have to sand the ceiling, from the top of a ladder. What makes it even worse is that at the end of two days of ass-busting work you can't really see that anything has been accomplished. Fortunately I had enough time to do some painting which does provide evidence of progress, however slight.

This was the hole left by the Actew air conditioning installers when then installed it in the wrong location. It is also the reason I will not hire tradesmen anymore:

I cut the patch out of some spare gyprock and then enlarged the hole (it is easier and more accurate than doing it the other way round). I have also glued a support for the patch, shown on the right of the hole:

The patch inserted and glued in place:

All bogged up. The idea is that the actual patch is hidden beneath a low "mound" and the edges are very gradually "feathered" out over a much larger area, making the protrusion invisible to the naked eye. Also added the corner moulding:

This is an example of the holes that were left when we replaced the original cornices with smaller 90mm cove:

Expanding foam filled the hole which provided something to press some polyfilla against, followed by the inevitable sanding. Not perfect but good enough:

Meg fulfilled her usual role - keeping an eye on would-be invaders:

Removing the skirting boards and original cornices meant also removing the corner mouldings, leaving a nice gap between walls...

...so I installed some Tasmanian Oak "Scotia" mouldings. I would have used pine but for some reason they were not available at any of my usual suppliers. It's a shame because we are just going to paint over them and they cost $15 each !! :

And finally, the whole reason we had to dismantle the lounge room in the first place. This wall suffered from termite and water damage and consequently the ceiling and wall are warped. It just looked like shit. Here is a photo from the early days:

We installed new cornice but because of the warped and damaged timbers large gaps were evident:

I first filled the area behind the cornice with Selleys "Space Invader" expanding foam which provided backing for me to use Pollyfilla, which I then finished with "No More Gaps" to allow for future ceiling movement, and finally slapped some paint on:

So they "waviness" of the ceiling is still visible but it is far better than how it was, and short of replacing the entire ceiling it is our best option.

I managed to get the entire ceiling painted, this photo shows how the original paint had discoloured (new paint is on the left):

So here is the after photo. Pretty underwhelming but it was all work that had to be done. All up it took me around 20 hours of work and $120 of supplies to get this done. Next job will be painting the walls which should be a lot more rewarding:

Command Centre Evolution - Command Pad

2010-03-19T03:39:00.000-07:00

Of the many thousand admiring responses I get from my international fans, one of the most common asks "How do you maintain control of the myriad projects you oversee?". I have to admit, it's not easy, and has as much to do with an unparalleled intellect as it does an innate sense of organisation. But even a sub-par human is able to exceed their limitations with the correct equipment, and I offer the following project to assist those people.

My command centre continues to evolve. Originally it consisted of my laptop on a coffee table sitting to my left, but I found that with the many hours of research I need to dedicate to my work that a stiff neck would often be the end result. So I decided to rectify the situation, whilst utilizing my existing infrastructure.

The "Command Pad", made of 2 layers of laminated 12mm MDF and coated with primer:

The "Lip" of the Command Pad. This will hook under the coffee table and prevent the Command Pad from being lifted up no matter how extreme the load:

The Command Pad located upon the Ikea coffee table, after having received 3 coats of gloss enamel black from a spray can:

The underside of the table showing the Lip in action:

My laptop, connected to a 19" Chimea LCD monitor, supported by a $60 monitor arm I found on EBay. The weight of the Command Pad, combined with the lip provides sufficient support to keep the monitor supported. The Command Pad is not physically attached to the coffee table in any way and can be simply slid off as required:

A different view of the Command Centre in it's entirety:

A typical day at the Command Centre - 19" Monitor on the left, 50" Plasma on the right, and 24" furry love-muffin between my legs:

I guess that when seen in the context of my command centre the vastness of my projects become a little more comprehensible. Hopefully others will be able to follow this project and hence commence their own journey towards greatness.

Pergola - The Short Version

2010-01-25T02:31:00.000-08:00

I realise that it is possible there may be one or two of my fans who are unable to invest the time and effort my longer-winded posts deserve, and for these I have composed this highly abridged version.

I built a pergola over my Xmas break. Here are the before, sort of before, and after photos (click on the pics for a larger version, it is worth the effort!):

This is the house when we bought it, July 2007:

We painted it December 2008:

Pergola completed 25 January 2010:

Pergola - The Verbose Version

2010-01-25T01:55:00.000-08:00

As the great pharaohs of ancient Egypt came to realise, there comes a time when a man needs to build a lasting monument to his greatness, to put a stamp on the world that will outlive his mortal body, to declare to the world in a voice loud - "I am a god". The pharaohs had their pyramids, and I now have my pergola.

The pyramid of Cheops. A nice little monument, but no pergola to relax under with a cool beer. A little more planning would have helped here.

Originally the project was going to be built on the rear of the house but due to budget constraints I decided to build on the front of the house. Not only would this be a smaller project but it would also allow me to experiment with my revolutionary building techniques.

Here is where we begin our journey. The blank slate of our concrete veranda/porch/balcony. i.e. ground zero:

I was not confident enough of the strength of the facia to depend on it to hold up the roof of the pergola on it's own so I decided to first attach a ledger, attaching it to both the facia and the roofing rafters of the house itself. i.e., I stuck a plank of wood under the gutter. It is shown here with the joist hangers attached, each of them ready and waiting to have their respective orifices filled by rigid members:

I used the usual Pryda stirrups in which to mount the 90 x 90 posts. They are attached to the concrete pad with roof and gutter silicone to help prevent water from sneaking underneath them. In case the silicone is not enough to secure them I also added 10mm x 100mm dynabolts but I am sure that was overkill. I actually had to visit multiple Bunnings stores to find 3 matching stirrups of the variety I wanted and I suspect they have been phased out. True story. The photo below shows one such stirrup. Notice the holes that remain unused. These were originally going to be where the posts were going to go, but in the end I preferred to keep them further away from the edge of the pad. Nothing a dab of concrete can't fix.

The posts could now be put up, sort of upright... I pre-painted pretty much all the timber prior to using it as I figured it would be a lot easier painting it all on saw horses than spending hours on end hanging off a ladder doing it after the completion of construction. It worked out to be a pretty good idea although I negligently allowed some of the pre-painted timber to lay in saw dust and it stuck to it like glue, necessitating a second coat of paint.

Speaking of paint, Carrie came up with the idea of painting the posts the same colour as the walls of the house and all of the rest in blue. The blue paint you can see in the photo above was actually the paint we bought a year ago to do the window frames with though obviously I never got around to it... Good thing, too. I ended up using all 4 litres of paint on the pergola, that treated pine soaks up fluids like a Centrelink employee sucking on a soggy beer coaster.

Due to shoddy technique these posts went up and down several times until they were right. I should have used a water level to mark the heights and this is a big lesson to learn for all my future projects. However, working on a house which is not level, plumb, square or anything else makes precision difficult because doing it perfectly may make it appear to be wrong because the rest of the house is wrong, and so on. I was often forced to decide between doing it right or making it appear right. Minor compromises were sometimes required.

With the posts up I was able to attach the beam(s). Since the beam was spanning more than 6m I decided that for ease of transportation I would have the beam cut in two parts, joined on the central post. I temporarily clamped the posts to the existing handrail to keep them perpendicular. It turns out that this was not actually required because when I tried to make minor adjustments to them the post stirrups held them so strongly I was pushing against the posts with most of my body weight to get them to move. It seems the silicone was doing it's job.

With the posts erected the fun stuff could begin. First off were the 90 x 45 rafters. Having these in place would finally hold everything in place well enough for me to get rid of the clamps and also allow me to stop trying to keep everything level every few minutes...

These were followed closely by the 70 x 35 battens.

Now the only thing left to do was attach the roofing. We considered a few options but after finding that quality shade cloth was not much cheaper than solid roofing we went for corrugated zincalume (I think thats what its called) to match the roof of the house. I attached the roofing while standing on my step ladder as I did not want to test the structure's integrity by requiring it to hold my significant body weight and this increased the difficulty of attaching the roofing. This is because in order to get the type-17 screws to drill themselves through the roofing I was having to use all of my (significant) arm strength, rather than simply leaning my body weight on top of it the way you would if you were standing above the entry point. It was all for nought, however, as I had to end up standing on the roof of the pergola to attach the final sheet and to also put the flashing in place so I should have just climbed on top to begin with. Fortunately the structure showed no signs of strain.

Refer to the post above for the final before/after comparison photos.

So, now for some facts and figures:

Start Date: 27 Decmber 2009

Planned Completion Date: 2 January 2010
Actual Completion Date: 25 January 2010

Projected Cost: $600

Actual Cost: $791

The project took quite a while longer than anticipated mostly because it ended up being so much god damn work. I also had to do several things multiple times due to inexperience and my own high standards. The first week of construction was during my holidays, after which I could only work on weekends. Also being the middle of summer meant I was working through extremely high temperatures that would have killed the average tradesman, but even with my super human stamina and pain tolerance I was limited to working about 3 hours per day. In Canberra there are only two temperatures, fucking hot and fucking cold. Of course, I save all the outdoors work for the former.

The amount of work involved should not be under estimated. Someone who does this kind of thing for a living could probably knock it out super quick, but if it is the first time you have attempted something like this then you can expect to make a few mistakes and have to redo stuff. Also, get yourself some power saws (circular and reciprocal). I did most of my cuts using a $10 hand-powered panel saw which is not something I would recommend.

The cost over runs were due to several factors:

Painting the posts a different colour meant buying a can of paint ("Seed Pearl" - $37) but I think it was money well spent.
My original estimate did not include the cost of battens because at that point we had not yet decided on the final details for the project and I expected them to be a minor cost ($56).
At the last minute I decided to add an additional sheet of roofing to the pergola in order to maximise the possible shade area, which in turn meant extra timber for battens and another rafter, as well as the extra sheet of roofing of course ($22 + $7). I had to buy a 2.1m sheet because we had already bought all of the 1.8m sheets.
I did not factor in the cost of flashing ($19) because I was not sure at what height the roofing would meet the house, i.e. if it would be above the gutter I would not need flashing. I had also overlooked the need for flashing at all...
The original estimate did not include the ledger ($28) because there was a possibility that we would be using shade cloth which would not require the additional re-enforcement of the ledger.
Nuts and bolts cost a lot, especially when they are large.

So if the structure is still in tact tomorrow morning, I think the whole thing went rather well. Here is the spreadsheet I used to keep track of costs (click on it to make it readable). It gives a good idea of how much it will cost to build yourself a pergola of these dimensions (about 7m x 1.8m). I should also add that I pretty much did the entire thing on my own (because I wanted to see if I could) so if there is no one around to help you or you simply have no friends, you should not rule out doing it on your own.

So, where to from here? I have already begun research to build a replacement handrail which will afford us more privacy. Also I think some kind of lattice combined with climbing plants are in order, as is repainting the concrete pad to something more palatable. Some retractable form of awning might also be needed. And when all that is done, I need to build myself a deck chair. Hmm, I could be busy for a while...

Internet Filter

2009-12-15T23:23:00.000-08:00

It would seem that the internet filter has recently been approved by the Australian Government after it's farcical trial on several un-known ISP's (the results have not been released to the public). I guess changing society should come a lot more easily in the near future.

On a completely unrelated note, I recently came across this quote:

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

- Joseph Goebbels

Swift and Deadly

2009-12-10T00:03:00.000-08:00

I have been quiet for the last few weeks because of the amount of stuff I have been working on. The most interesting project would be my "Swift of Death", a swift being a device that is used by fanatical yarn addicts to wind yarn onto after it has been spun, and then wind off of to create a ball of yarn. Carrie has been working with skiens that were too large for regular swifts so I built one that was adjustable to cater for pretty much any size skien. By the way, a skien is a big loopy loop of wool as shown on the swift in the following pictures:

My Swift if Death, ready for action with a Skien of wool/yarn. Note the large wooden (hand crafted) hooks on the end of each arm. Each arm can be adjusted to increase the diameter of the swift, hence allowing it to cater to almost any size of skien.

The backside of the Swift of Death. Butterfly nuts allow tool-less adjustments to be made, including the height of the stand in order to allow for very large diameters.

So why is it called the "Swift of Death"? Because it has the capability to kill cats that are a little too inquisitive for their own good, as shown in the video below (squeamish people should not watch the video, it may contain scenes of cats being dismembered (it also may not contain those scenes...)) . "Swift of Death" also makes it sound a little more interesting, something that is difficult to do with knitting apparati. My next swift will have razor blades attached to the ends and will be named the "Swift of Carnage".

Video below

What a Rubbish Day Off

2009-11-01T22:03:00.000-08:00

I took the day off work today so that I could prepare all of the crap I want to have taken away by the curb side collection that I have booked in for tomorrow. The problem is, everything had to be under 1.8 metres in length. The sheets of corrugated iron needed to be folded in half, the old timber needed to be cut in half (by hand, coz I didn't want to ruin my power saws on any hidden nails) and the metal pipes I had to angle grind in half. Then everything that was loose needed to be bundled together. It doesn't look like much but that's only because I have compressed it so skillfully.

The rubbish. I haven't laid my eyes on such a huge pile of garbage since that movie Oprah Winfrey was in.

I was working from 10am and the temperature ended up above 31 degrees which came as a surprise. I was sweating like a Sumo wrestler at a Jenny Craig meeting. I knew from watching Bear Grylls that in order to survive in extreme heat, you can suck the juice out of animal dung (Elephant dung apparently is quite good for this purpose). Unfortunately meg's poopie provided no such sustenance, just a mild nutty flavour.

Meg. Her poopie is not moist enough to suck on.

And even though it is not related to todays events, here is a video to show why Meg is sometimes referred to as the "Brown Torpedo":

Saw III

2009-10-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

Finally finished (well, almost) my third attempt at a DIY table saw and have finally ended up with something useable. I have yet to add a splitter or guard and I am also going to cut recesses for some metal rulers in the table surface but all of this is unessential and I will get around to it when I am bored.

Most importantly I came up with a base for the table saw to sit upon which will also be useable by my router table. The weight of these appliances will hold them in place and I have added some strips of wood to the undersides of the tables to prevent them from sliding off the base. The base also provies a powerpoint so they can be switched on and off rather than having to yank the power plug out as an on/off switch.

The fence was created using a framing square with aluminium angle along each edge, held in place by coun tersunk 1/8" bolts. The fence is held in position by quick release clamps at either end. The blade is a 40 tooth Irwin which I have found gives a very smooth, almost finished edge. Preliminary tests have been promising.

Laptop Stand

2009-10-13T02:13:00.000-07:00

I quickly knocked out this prototype laptop stand just to try out some of my new gear (and I also needed a laptop stand). A year ago it would have taken me about 4 times as long as it did yesterday. Thanks to my ingenious improvisation of otherwise worthless tools, masterpieces like this are simple for me.
As I said, this is just a prototype for what is eventually going to be a monster of a laptop stand, including but not limited to, a silent 120mm triCool cooling fan, X, Y and Z axis adjustability, and colour matched gloss black paint. Stay tuned.

Route-orama

2009-10-10T05:05:00.000-07:00

Started out the day by extending my bike's gear change arm to offset the loss of leverage I incurred by shortening the gear change lever. It worked out great and my bike is almost at a point where I feel I can stop changing things.

The modified gear change mechanism

Affixed to the bike

I also made some improvements to my router bench in the form of a mains on-off switch and a fence, which I expect to use when i begin constructing the new fly screen frames tomorrow.

My on-off switch. The pamphlet that came with the gear I used said it should only be installed by a licensed electrician, and then went on to explain how to install it so I knew they didn't really mean it

A fence. It's for guiding bits of wood and stuff

I had a chance to try out some of my new stuff including a biscuit jointer which I want to marry on account that it is so damn good. Using my saw guides, router bench and biscuit jointer I was able to quickly knock up the first half of my laptop stand in about 1/10th of the time it would normally have taken.

Latptop stand with biscuit slots cut

Waiting for the glue to dry

So yeah, nothing that will interest anyone but take it from me, it's all really fascinating...

Getting Plastered

2009-10-04T05:29:00.000-07:00

Two years ago we pulled down some of the cornice in the lounge room, and though it is amusing to be able to see into your ceiling space while watching tv, we decided that it was about time we finished the job we had started.

What I had originally expected to be a 4 hours job ended up being 2 days of arse-busting labour. Putting the cornice up wasn't to blame, it was pulling the old stuff down and then repairing the damage that took the time. Everything in our house is from the late 50's, which means plaster is impregnated with horse hair or some such, and intead of using nails to assist with the installation of the cornice, they used nails to actually hold the cornice in place. Once it was torn down, I had to sand all of the surfaces the cornice had covered because the old cornice was much larger than the new cornice. I won't go on, but suffice it to say my body is having trouble moving today.

The good news is that the next lot of work in the lounge room will be a lot more pleasant and will improve it's appearance dramatically. I am hoping that as far as the lounge room is concerned, the labouring is over.

Before

After

Useless Lumps

Get Routed

2009-09-25T01:50:00.001-07:00

In my eternal quest to save some bucks I decided to make myself a routing bench out of my cheap old plunge router. Initial tests have been encouraging and with a little tweaking I think I am onto a winner. This handy little device will allow me to move timber around the router bit whilst keeping it perpindicular to the blades of the bit, something that I find far more tricky when using the router in hand-held mode.

A close-up of the business end.
Ready for action

The router, suspended

The safety switch was easily bypassed with some yellow insulation tape.

It is really quite an effective setup, which makes me wonder why people spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on Triton work stations. I mean, sure, there are all the safety features on a Triton. And I guess there is the precision and quality construction of the Triton. And Tritons can be expanded into a fully functioning all in one professional carpentry workstation. But I mean, when you can build something like my router table by yourself, why would you go for anything else?

8th Wonder of the World

2009-09-03T02:17:00.000-07:00

The Great Wall of China is considered one of the wonders of the world, but I think it is fair and accurate to say that my Even Greater Wall of Cola Cans taks a huge steaming dump on it. Built up over many months of brain-tumour inducing cola drinking, it serves as a potent reminder of what one determined man can accomplish and within the office it also serves as a rallying point for mankind (and also chick-kind).

Video Below

Control Centre Support Mechanism & Laptop Pillow

2009-08-30T00:28:00.000-07:00

This project was designed to prevent the loss of drinks, remote controls and dogs between the arms of the couches. It is just a part of my "Command Centre" renovation that is taking place since the arrival of my new laptop.

Here is the support shelf "au naturel", as the germans would say. Note the subtle curve of the double routed edges, intricately carved from gently varnished pine. The curves seem to ask a question of the observer, and that question is phrased "Is this a question?", to which the answer can only be "No!".

The support shelf in action, sustaining the total 4.5kg of remote controls I require to run the command centre.

The support shelf showing it's versatility, here it holds an icy beverage, a suitable reward for the artisan who busted his nads all day working on it.

The laptop pillow below consists of a large chuck of foam lovingly carved to fit my Givi top box. I am concerned about the effects of vibrations on my laptop when transporting it to work and back each day, so this should ensure my laptop is even more comfortable on my bike than me. (it's a shame it means I can't fit anything else in there...)

The Life and Times of a Carpentry Masterpiece - pt 2

2009-08-30T00:15:00.000-07:00

I have been inundated by figuratively thousands of requests for more information on the coat rack I was making, so I will document that today. It has taken a while for me to complete the project, due to all of the factors that need to be considered by an artisan such as myself.

A photo of the project during the mounting phase. Note the fixing points on either side of the rack, which will be cunningly concealed by the hooks.

The rack completed. Note the beautiful contrast of the stunning chrome hooks with the satin finish of the pine base. It is this attention to detail that makes this project not only a work of art but a family heirloom to be passed down through the generations

Here is the rack in action, in this case holding a sock and some dirty underwear. The rack will double the amount of dirty laundry that can now be suspended from the bedroom walls rather than left of the ground, demonstrating to the observer that the home is clearly occupied by a man of class.

Get Farrrrrrrrked

2009-08-25T03:31:00.000-07:00

I was so incensed by this hand of Poker that I just had to post it. I was dealt 10 king offsuit, and the flop came 2 2 2. The next card was a king, giving me a full house. An opposing player went all in, and knowing that it would be a split pot if they also had a King, I called. The odds of flopping quads is 9799 to 1, a probability that is so low that most poker odds tables list it as 0.0% (it is, in fact, 0.0001%) so i could safely assume that there was no way they would be holding a duece (especially seeing as there were multiple pre-flop raises).
Needless to say, the player did in fact hold a deuce, meaning he flopped quad deuces. It also means that I lost everything.
This is an ongoing thing with poker stars, ridiculously unlikely hands appearing, an unbelievable mix of very high cards, flushes and full houses being more common than simple pairs or sets. rrrrrgggghhhhhh.

Shelving

2009-06-14T21:37:00.000-07:00

Put some shelves up in the laundry for storing Carrie's wool-dying materials.

Super Circular Saw Guide Summary

2009-06-11T23:48:00.000-07:00

Since my previous post I have been unindated with hundreds of thousands of requests for me to explain the saw guide in more detail, so here it is. Remember, clicking on the pictures will make them larger.

Bird's Eye View

Frontal View

In all it's glory

The idea is that all you need to do is mark a line on the timber where you want to cut, place the saw guide so that the inner edge of the rectangular "cut out" is on the line, clamp it down and saw along, keeping the edge of the base plate of the circular saw butted against the aluminium angle.

So why not just clamp a straight edge along the cut and butt the saw against that? Because the blade of the saw is offset from the edge of the saw's base plate. You could allow for that offset when clamping a straight edge to your timber but why bother? The saw guide I made allows you to mark exactly where you want to cut and just line up the guide with the one line. Measure once.

The Life and Times of a Carpentry Masterpiece - pt 1

2009-06-07T02:26:00.000-07:00

I have dedicated this long weekend to the construction of a coat rack. It is designed so I can simply throw my clothes at the wall and have them stay there, rather than falling onto the floor for the dogs to sleep on. Click on the pictures to make them big !!

Making the first cut with my v 1.0 circular saw guide

It also gave me an opportunity to build and use my 2nd prototype circular saw guide.

The v 2.0 circular saw guide was sensational. I can honestly say that it is entirely my own invention, based entirely upon the same idea that some other guy on the internet did. The v 2.0 is better because, as you can see from the photo, the saw-plate is supported on both sides, ensuring the cut is perpendicular to the surface of the wood being cut. I made it very over sized so that it will also be able to be used for cabinetry which is going to be a part of my not so distant future (kitchen reno). Who needs a table saw ??? (well, I do , but I can't afford one so this will do in the meantime).

All marked up and ready to cut

I originally cut the ends by hand, but due to the dodginess I decided to turn to my trusty mitre saw.

Ready for routing

The coat rack begins to take shape, and is laying down and begging for a good routing, and routing is my specialty. If I don't get a good route once in a while, I get irritable. I am particular about my routing, and if your have a problem with that, you can get routed.

To be continued...

Weighting for the rain to pass

2009-06-06T01:39:00.000-07:00

My "Manic Salamanders" arrived this week and I installed them this weekend. They are designed to reduce handlebar vibration by being a lot larger (and more importantly, a lot heavier). I have noticed that although my bike is amazingly smooth, when riding for more than 2 hours at around 100 km/h my hands begin to go numb from the minor vibrations. Manic Salamanders work by increasing the inertia of the bar ends, hopefully in a way that makes the bike more ride able.

Note the all-metal fixings on the Salamanders, designed to transmit vibration more directly to the weights than the rubber mounts of the stock weights.

With the Salamanders installed. They are butt-loads larger.

Unfortunately, in my case they actually exacerbated the vibrations that I was trying to get rid of, no doubt due to an unfortunate harmonic resonance or something scientific sounding. I have been experimenting with ways to dampen vibration in bike handlebars for a couple of years now (going so far as to fill the handlebars of my Bandit 1200 with molten lead) and in my experience it is a very hit and miss science, more miss than hit. It's OK though, coz I know that the Salamanders will be needed on my next bike, which I can now officially reveal will be a V-Strom 650.

The V-Strom 650, on a typical Canberra afternoon.

I think I will keep my current bike for another year or two and then get myself a 2007 V-Strom for a year or two to see if it is a bike I can commit to before getting myself a brand new one and take a hit on the depreciation. It's an ugly bike but I think its ugly in a pretty way, sort of like a two wheeled Hum Vee. I know no one is interested in all this, but I need to document my thought processes for my own future reference.

Cold Weather

2009-05-27T02:08:00.000-07:00

It is Meg? Or is it an Ugg-boot. I prefer to call it simply "Mug-boot"

Alternative Meg Names:

Megabite
Megahurts
Megaliscious
Megatron
Brown Bullet/Torpedo
Meggy Moo
Megsy

Footpegs Downunder

2009-05-23T23:01:00.000-07:00

My constant quest for motorcycle ergonomic excellence has seen me turn to an old trick - foot peg inversion. This increases the legroom for the rider by dismantling the footpeg hangers and turning the footpegs upside down. This also moves the pegs slightly more forward. My test ride had promising results and I believe all that is left now is some fine-tuning of the gear shift lever.

"After" shots

Stupid Karen

2009-05-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

I have finally finished Carrie's "epileptic Dorothy" and she was able to use it this weekend to spin some wool, and it was a resounding success.

The routed edges and walnut finish transform the piece from a purely functional tool to a work of art to last generations.

The rubber-lined base ensures traction, even when faced with the most aggressive wool-spinning style

The "slothful Renee" in use, in this case making two-ply yarn.

Carrie showing off - 3 ply

Workin for the weekend

2009-05-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

It was perfect weather for painting the exterior window frames today, so I went out for lunch instead. Once I got home I continued work on the "lazy susan" (or something) for Carrie's wool-spinning obsession. Today I got as far as sanding it down and applying the first layer of stain. It is looking OK and gives me an opportunity to experiment with laminating layers of MDF and some stain experiments. It also allowed me to use a prototype circular saw jig for cutting perfectly straight lines. It will do until I can afford a table saw.

The "Dopey Susan", ready for it's first stain

All of this wood-working goodness is possible because I sorted out my shed a few weeks ago so that I am ready for action.

The workshop of a Master Craftsman...(would probably look better than this one)

Painting the Town...Seed Pearl

2009-05-05T03:29:00.000-07:00

I actually did get around to painting the front of the house on the weekend and after surveying the final result a few days later I am happy to say that I am satisfied with the final results. The coming weekend will be spent painting the sides of the house, after which there will be no more painting required...except for window and door frames, and the roof, and the balcony. Actually thats kind of a lot of work left but it will be a lot easier than what I have just finished.

To Tazzie and Back

2009-04-30T01:14:00.000-07:00

Due to popular demand, I now publish my holiday snaps:

Passing thru Victoria we saw some signs of the recent bushfires

Waiting for the "Spirit of Tasmania" ferry, which was handily located near the ocean.

Carrie also took this opportunity to take a photo of all the red objects she had accumulated...(it made sense at the time)

And there is the Spirit of Tasmania, a ship too grand to fit into a single photo. They say if you have never sailed on the Spirit of Tasmania then you have never really been on a cruise at all

Us waiting to drive onto the ship

Other people waiting to drive onto the ship

Me chillin on the aft-deck, lookin all nautical 'n shit (aft means "rear")

Photos of Melbourne (Carrie took this, so I won't say anything...)

And off we went, ready for a voyage of a lifetime, and absolutely no sleep

On the way to Gary and Sarah's joint, this is the view from some kind of lookout. Looks a bit like the Motherland methinks. There was free coffee here too, but we were guilted into making a donation. Thats $1 we will never see again.

This is "Little Blue Lake", an old mining site that has since filled with water. I guess it get's it's name from the mine owners "Blue Scope", or perhaps from the Midnight Oil song "Blue Sky Mining".

It is very acidic so there is a complete absence of life in it, much like Canberra.

This is a kind of beach-like place

The entrance to Gary's place, and the welcoming party (Dozer, Junior and HN). Nice cladding Gary!

Me doing my best Dozer impression (he's the one on the right, I'm in the middle) . Junior (the Rottweiler) is on the left.
Sarah's Horse. I watched it for a while and I think it should be named "Deadweight", coz it really does nothing much at all. It's overdue for a bullet.

Some roasts...errr, I mean some goats.

Sarah wants her goats to breed, so I had to hold one of the females while a male attempted to rape it. That's how things are done in Tasmania

Bush bashing in the 4WD thing. Junior had to be restrained from jumping out the window to chase the wildlife.

Low impact logging at it's best. This is just outside the border of the property

Heading off to the Boag's Brewery tour in the morning we were greeted by this sight

It was decided not to try to move it ourselves and just take an alternate route. The beer was waiting

The alternate route did not work out as well as planned. Carrie asked me to pull over because there was a funny sound coming from the back of the car. Sure enough, we had had a blowout. Strange thing is, it didn't affect the handling of the mighty Echo! We would later try to get the tyre patched.
Gary demonstrates how to change a car tyre (WHAT?!?!?! I ride a motorbike OK? I can't know EVERYTHING!! Besides, someone had to take the picture...)

This is the bar at the Boags Museum. I intend to model our loungeroom on this photo - including the bar, and the beer on tap.

The view from the golf-course restaurant place

A distant view of Gary and Sarah's place (it's amongst the white bits in the middle)

Their dam, so named because it is DAM COLD.

Akasha fleeing into the wilderness. Thats a big backyard

It's a shame that the financial crisis bankrupted the Tooth Fairy

Jarel gets ready for some firearm-fun

Sarah has seen it all before

Ready for the revolution

Gary teaching Carrie how to kill stuff

Carrie about to kill stuff

Carrie about to kill me

Me taking aim on a water-filled cordial bottle - one shot, one kill

Video of my stunning accuracy. The big white rectangle is the wooden target, the cordial bottle is the smaller white object on top of it.

Jarel displays the carnage

This is me at the end of the voyage home, having been deprived of sleep for the entire night. Never again. From now on it's a cabin or I'm stayin home.

An entertainment unit at Ikea, the design of which I intend to copy

So life has now returned to it's monotonous repetition, counting down the days till I die. Well actually, I feel pretty refreshed after the holiday so it's not so bad.
A big thanks to Sarah for cooking for and feeding us, and to Gary for letting me play with his toys. Seeya next time !

Nomad, Vagabond, call me what you will

2009-04-27T01:07:00.000-07:00

I have returned from Tazzie, and the biggest lessons I learned were:

When they say it is illegal to do your own plumbing, they dont really mean it.
I need a GPS unit.
Dont use a hard drive in an uncooled hdd caddy.

In order to fix the final problem (after destroying 750GB worth of hard-drive) I purchased a $7 USB fan, and configured it thusly:

Being a long weekend I decided to finish the final coat of paint on the house. Alas, it was cold, overcast and rainy, so I spent the time drinking beer instead. OH, but I did tidy up my shed which means I can begin some of the projects I have been delaying. Details to follow...

Old Man Riding

2009-02-07T03:59:00.000-08:00

Bought myself a fluorescent vest today to wear when I am riding in the summer heat with a lack of appropriate safety gear. I see it as one more step towards middle age. Harley riders don't wear fluorescent vests (or wet weather gear) coz they are too tough.

I also visited an old friend, Ru. Many socio-political views were expounded upon, as were opinions about various gardening techniques. I may employ the knowledge I gained in future gardening ventures.

My camping in the lounge room continues, and Carrie has joined me in an effort to avoid the superhuman heat. It occurs to me that there is a parallel between our relocation to the coolest room in the house, and the behaviour of reptiles when they move to the rocks that are exposed to the sun, or our dogs who spread themselves out on the cool floor tiles. As humans we can offer complex explanations for our behaviour but to any outside observer the things we do can be explained by the most simplistic...explanations.

It is a trifle Warm

2009-02-06T02:41:00.000-08:00

It is 9:45pm and the temperature, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, is currently 30 degress FOR FUCK SAKE !!!!!!!!!!!! End Of Message

I May Have Been Wrong About Global Warming

2009-02-05T21:57:00.000-08:00

I continue to lounge about the house waiting for the weather to get better, and subsequently my house painting and shed renovating have been delayed. This weekend is expected to have maximums of 38 and 39, so I have decided that I will setup camp in front of the air conditioner in the loungeroom. I shall also drag my matress in there and sleep in coolness, not for my sake of course, I just worry about poor old Meg...

Yesterday a mysterious package was located where I work which triggered a full scale evacuation involving police and what I assume to be the bomb disposal squad. It was a false alarm, but i think i would have preferred to be blown apart than to have to stand outside in the heat. We were told we could go home, but of course I had left my keys in the office so I was going nowhere.

Tomorrow I will be upgrading Spudnet with an additional Terrabyte of storage while also implementing my new back-up strategy with the use of a new Hdd dock. I shall also be posting off the Tasweigens Xbox, filled with freshly FTP'd digital goodness and a brand spanking new DuoX 3.

Wealthy People Invest, Poor People Spend

2009-01-23T04:06:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything for a while, simply because I haven't done anything for a while. Most of my recent thoughts have turned towards the test-ride I took the other day and the discomfort that resulted, hence I am meditating on what to do about the situation. Is a new bike in order? Are there further modifications that can be made to rectify the situation?

What it boils down to is this question - "what kind of riding do I plan to do?". If commuting to and from work is all, then I should stick with what I have got, or perhaps switch to the M50.

The M50 - Style, reliability, but long distance comfort?

If I am serious about racking up some serious mileage, then the ever practical, pig ugly V-strom 650 is the way to go. Mind you, I think Carrie would need step-ladder to get on the back. It appeals to the accountant in me, the same part of me that bought the Honda CB250 (a shitty bike in almost every way, yet of all my steeds it was the source of the most fond memories).

Comfort, ultimate reliability and endurance, but certainly no chick magnet

I don't expect any of you to be interested in any of this, I am just documenting my thought process for future reference. There is a 90% chance that one of these will be this years bike...

I'm a cowboy, on an alloy and plastic horse I ride.

2009-01-17T20:28:00.000-08:00

Went for a ride today to test out some mods I have done to my bike (Sargent seat and handlebar risers).

It was 200km from Queanbeyan to Goulburn and back with a nice combination of winding country roads, and smooth highway to drone along. My butt still went numb and my hands also went numb from the vibration which was a little disappointing, since 200km is not really that long a ride. I am starting to think that touring is out of the question.

On the upside it did allow me to avoid doing any house painting. I would do some tonight but I have a bbq to attend.

Shoe box, Xbox

2009-01-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

I went and looked at the units next door as they have a home open. They are not yet finished but I have seen enough to remain unimpressed. The 2 bedroom ones are selling for more than our entire house cost just 1 year ago. They are little shoe boxes that you stuff people into. PVC cladding and a 2m x 2m rear deck (offering expansive views of the rear colourbond fence) round out an overpriced package. I never thought I would say it, but I am glad we bought the house we bought, when we bought. I simply would not want to live anywhere that is in our price range anymore.

In other news, I have bought another Xbox in the hopes of being able to use it to repair the xbox that has been sent to me for repair by the Tasweigen and Tasweigen Jnr. Carrie will be away next week so I hope to use this period to fix it, which will put me well ahead of schedule (the revised schedule that is, I had to abondon the original schedule when it became 3 months overdue).

Poker Everywhere

2009-01-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

I went to one of my local poker tournaments tonight, but my enjoyment was hampered by my inability to indulge in very large quantities of cheap beer and....well, thats about it really. I started out in a turbo tournament which increased blinds at 5 minute intervals. This format did not favour my tight aggressive style and despite being chip leader at one point (thanks to a big bluff on the flop, followed by my all-in with a pair of aces on the turn) I was eventually whittled away by the increasing blinds and a bad call by someone to my left that got lucky on the river.

To be honest, I wasn't really into it, and I withdrew from the main event and got my $10 back (which I then spent on a nice bottle of white). I just really dont like being around a crowd of people, and I know that I can play about 5 times as many hands online. I know that it is a different experience in live games and I will play again (I have a membership now) but I just don't like poker when it involves real money. It bestowes an advantage on people who do not value their cash.

In other news, my boob job (ehh...I mean, sink repair job) appears to have worked and I was able to wash the entire stack of dirty dishes without a single drip appearing under the sink. I hope that it lasts until we decided to completely demolish our shit-house kitchen (probably a year from now)

A Table for One

2009-01-12T00:36:00.000-08:00

Did some more painting on the front of the house. It isn't too bad when you are doing it in small batches, in the shade without the noise of an air compressor or neighbours screaming at you about the possibility of you destroying the paint job of their $50,000 4WD (but then what kind of loser spends that kind of money on a 4WD?? Apologies to those of you who have...)

I took a photo of my new workbench in the shed. Unfortunately budget constraints mean that the railway sleepers will have to wait, so instead I just inserted an old trestle table top and re-enforced it with jarrah bearers. Ignore the blue legs underneath, those are my saw horses conveniently stored beneath.

So what was the point? Well, the new work surface is rock solid, could stand the weight of a horse and is the same height as it's adjacent benches. I am almost ready to create my masterpiece, whatever the hell that is (but I am toying with the idea of making some genuine fake antique timber hinged fly screens, pending a cost benefit analysis).

The shitty old table

The shitty new table

The End of Freedom

2009-01-10T20:10:00.000-08:00

Got a little more painting done on the front of the house. God I am sick of painting white. I will be glad when it is all done so I can get onto the next job (painting window frames and replacing guttering).
I also did my dodgy sink fix, but the silicon takes 72 hours to cure so unfortunately the dirty dishes will have to wait (again).
Was gonna go for a ride to Bungendore for lunch but decided to drink beer instead. Trisha and Steven's little boy "Thomas" got christened today, but I don't know what he was christened. Carrie is Godmother, so I had better watch my step or I could end up wearing concrete galoshes...
Here is a picture from Carries blog, just coz I don't have any pictures of my own to post today.

Jeremy at Xmas

Goes to show, that a fashion, can survive, so beware! (courtesy Adam and the Ants)

2009-01-10T02:50:00.000-08:00

My mowhawk has reached a length such that I now feel it expresses my individuality, just like everyone else with a mowhawk. I particularly like the effect I achieved by shaving the hair on top of my head to make it look as if it is thinning...

My plan for today was to get up early, fix the leaking sink in the kitchen and spend the remainder of the day putting on the final coat of paint on the house. Instead I slept till lunchtime, wandered around the shops and came home to spend the day drinking beer. Tomorrow I plan to try a cheap fix to the leaking sink problem involving the most gratuitous use of silicone seen since this:

However I doubt that this is going to be successful so I imagine I will end up cutting out the 50 year old copper piping with my trusty angle grinder and replacing it all with beautiful new PVC, just like I did in the bathroom.

I have a dream...

2009-01-08T02:08:00.000-08:00

I developed a new appreciation for scotch on Tuesday night. I have since calculated that if I move out of my house and sleep on the street I could afford a bottle of The Glenlivit and a McHappy meal every night of the week. Well, it's something to aim for anyway.

I see a brown house and I want it painted white...no poo-brown anymore I want it to turn white

2009-01-04T23:50:00.000-08:00

The remainder of my holidays were anything but restful as we continued to attempt to convert the poo-brown exterior of our house to something a little less vomit-inducing. I will summarise the progress thusly:

Day 1 (Wednesday 31 December 2008)
Forgoing the usual festivities we decided to commence painting using the rollers and paint brushes we had purchased several months previously. After several hours of painting it became apparent that the apparatus available to us were not suited to the job, since the walls are concrete-rendered fibro and soak up paint faster than a public servant soaks up alcohol.

Day 2 (Thursday 1 January 2009)
We headed off straight to Bunnings to purchase a paint gun which would make the work so much easier. We sprang $100 for a Wagner electric paint gun. It vibrated like a jack-hammer and made about the same amount of noise. It also put out very little paint, and within an hour or two the thing had seized and was no longer useable. We concluded the disappointing day using rollers and brushes.

Day 3 (Friday 2 January)
We headed off straight to Bunnings to return the paint gun we broke the previous day. Who would have guessed they would give us our cash back after not only had we broken the tool, but left it covered with crap from the previous days work. God bless Bunnings. With the $100 cash in our hot little hands we headed off to the tool hire place and got ourselves an industrial paint sprayer. The thing was so powerful it had wheels built into its compressor and was quite obviously a beast of painting equipment, and it was costing us $191 per day. If it couldn’t handle the job, nothing could. We jammed it after 2 hours work…

But before we jammed it, we had managed to experience the joy that only a high pressure high volume spray gun can offer. During those 2 hours we were able to cover the same area that had taken us two days previously.

Day 4 (Saturday 3 January)
We headed off straight for the rental place to get them to check the spray gun and get it working again. It took very little time for the tool guy to get it working again, so off we went back home with 7 hours of spray-gun time available to us and 4/5ths of the house to paint. Jacintha joined us in the fun as we hurriedly painted the house as quickly as possible, trying not to cover everything and everyone in sight with our chosen colour. We ended up using more than double the paint we had anticipated we would require (which we based on the formula on the tin), 4 tins each costing $165 containing 15 litres. We own a very thirsty house it seems.

We managed to get the entire house covered in the allotted time and it has made a huge amount of difference. It is still patchy, but the rest we will finish off with rollers because the walls have now been sealed by the first coat and the rollers will be able to handle the job from here on out.

I expect the walls will be finished by this weekend at which point we can start thinking about the window and door frames (all of which will need to be stripped), balcony, roof, and garage door. It has been quite an interesting project so far and I think it will raise the value of the house more than anything else we plan to do. Which is good, because so far it has cost us in the vicinity of $1000 (thank god it’s not real money…)

New Years Eve

2008-12-31T02:15:00.000-08:00

Today we had several social engagements , one of which was an early lunch (pre 3pm). Afterwards Carrie and I felt very motivated by the great weather to start painting the house rather than to go to the party we had originally planned to attend. After all, we figured painting the house would be a lot more fun. We were wrong. The exterior surface of the house is extremely absorbent and there is no way in hell we are going to get the whole house done in the 4 days of holidays I have left...unless we hire a spray gun. And that is the plan for tomorrow. It's gonna be a while before I post pics of this project, I want to wait until we have also done all of the trim so it is gonna be at least 2 weeks.

Stay posted, this is gonna be huge.

XMAS Morning

2008-12-24T11:25:00.000-08:00

Well here I am, at 6:20 in the morning ready to head out for the beginning of the days festivities. I think it has been literally years since I have been up this early (Web Essentials Conference 2005?). I am sure it will be a good day but I think it is essential that we all remember what XMAS is all about - a celebration of the resurrection of the Easter Bunny. May we all have a merry day and so forth.

Shed Beautification Project

2008-12-23T22:55:00.000-08:00

It has begun. Yesterday I removed the large concrete double trough from the shed, freeing up about 25% additional space. In order to remove it I had to smash it into 3 wheel-barrow sized pieces. It had also been mounted on two brick and concrete pedestals which also had to be destroyed. I cannot overstate the difficulty involved in this task and when I had finished (after several hours of breathing concrete dust, angle grinding though steel supports and sledge hammer work) I was finally able to remove it and the shed had been transformed.

I looked at some paint today (much to the amusement of Carrie) so that the shed will be as pretty outside as in. I also plan to add a skylight to it, and replace the benches. I added re-enforcement to the lock today also.

The Shed. From humble beginnings grow..great...stuff etc.

The Shed again, from it's good side

The inside, after the big cleanup

The Extension plan (click on picture to enlarge)

Clicking on the picture makes it bigger !

Got Some Pussy

2008-12-19T21:25:00.000-08:00

After listening to Jeremy barking incessantly for the last few days and watching him stare out of the NW corner of the Alcatraz we discovered that we had a feral kitten in our back yard. I had seen it's mother running around the outer perimeter of the fence-line (somehow dodging the pressure sensitive landmines I planted there) but never imagined she would have had a litter, despite the fact that this is actually the second time we have been in this situation.

We contacted the RSPCA who told us we could have a cat-cage for $100 deposit and a nightly rental fee. So long story short, stuff 'em.

Example of a feral kitten

I have also found the first failed escape attempt and will re-secure the area tomorrow.

In other news, I have checked out the sun lounges available around the place and none of the sub $100 ones meet my quality standards, so I am gonna have to go ahead and make my own. Fortunately I found a design I liked in Bunnings and have decided to copy it. I have wanted to make some decent looking furniture for a long time so I will give this project my best shot and see if I am up to the task. Once done, I can recline on our front veranda sipping beers while looking down on the passing n'er do wells.

The sun lounge in Bunnings. Mine's gonna piss all over it.

The Alcatraz - Exposed !!!!!!

2008-12-16T00:52:00.000-08:00

Well the time has finally arrived, here are the long awaited results of the Doggy Alcatraz project.

Before:

After:

Click on the image below for a stunning 3-D panorama shot !

Whore Whore Whore, Merry Xmas

2008-12-10T01:47:00.000-08:00

Well i have been overcome by the Xmas spirit, so much so that I made a crazy decision and bought my first Xmas tree as seen below. It has built in lights and everything, so the entire house is now overflowing with festive cheer and we aren't even drunk yet.

Work on the Alcatraz continues but it is in it's final stages and the dogs are able to run around to their hearts content, barking merrily as they do so. I know the neighbours look on with joyous expressions on their faces, as do I.

I have included some pictures of the end results of the Alcatraz as seen by Google Earth. The area the dogs have available to them is shaded in yellow, and the borders of our property are shown in red.

Pre-Alcatraz

Post-Alcatraz

Doggy Alcatraz pt. 12

2008-12-08T01:15:00.000-08:00

The Doggy Alcatraz journal is coming to an end, and I expect that two more posts after this one will bring it to it's conclusion.

Today was spent putting the final touches on the Alcatraz which I expected to take about 3 hours but ended up taking the entire day. Today was meant to be spent with the dogs in the garden and me checking on them periodically to see if they had managed to escape or not, but instead I was working my arse off. It has been 3 days of solid ball busting work but tomorrow will see the final security measures being added, and the following day will be for cleaning up the work site (it currently looks like a war zone).

With the back yard now semi-secure I have started thinking about what my next project will be, and here are the possibilities:

Rear Pergola
Finish lounge renovation (started more than 1 year ago)
Vegetable garden
Shed extension
Front pergola
Outdoor furniture

I would really live to do something that does not involve digging this time, so I think it is time for the lounge to get it's long-awaited makeover.

I have no photos for today, my arms are too weak to hold up a camera.

Doggy Alcatraz pt. 11

2008-12-08T01:10:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this yesterday:

Busted my hump getting the final security measures in place and cementing the final posts in place. I have warned Carrie that any dogs that escape are not welcome to return. I am going over the top tomorrow.

Walked around Canberra Centre and checked out the remote control helicopters (IR) that you can get for $50. I think they would be great for tormenting the dogs, who already go crazy the instant they see a fly buzzing around (it's the closest they get to hunting). Then I saw the larger Apache AH-64 one for $160. Then I thought that for a hundred more or so I could get a proper RC something-or-other. I think I will put this on the backburner until I have reduced my list of chores somewhat.

Doggy Alcatraz pt. 10

2008-12-05T01:31:00.000-08:00

I came home from work today and started moving rocks into my work area by hand. It reminded me a lot of the opening scene from Rambo 2 where he is working in a quarry in maximum security prison. And just like Rambo, I applied my special forces Zen training to ignore the pain.

So will the Alcatraz be finished this weekend? I aim to try.

The rocks in my backyard, all moved by hand (may or may not actually be my rocks, or my backyard)

Doggy Alcatraz pt. 9

2008-12-03T22:08:00.001-08:00

I took the day off so that I could sleep in and go and see the doctor. For the last two weeks or so I have exhibited the symptoms of a cold but I haven't felt at all sick. I figured it was either hay fever (which I have never had before) or and actual cold. The doctors verdict was definitive - "it's either a cold or hayfever".

I spent the remainder of the day working on the garden, trying to prepare for the big push on the weekend. My plan to finish the project this weekend may have been a little optimistic. I felt extremely unmotivated today for some reason and it was all I cold do to drag myself outside and do yet more work on the Alcatraz which has taken over my life.

I did manage to concrete in the major posts for the chainlink, and I also managed to erect 4m of fencing next to the shed. This means that all that is left is for the chainlink itself to be moved. But there are always problems and I am not sure that Saturday and Sunday will be enough to resolve them all. Perhaps I should have a long weekend? Anyway, photos are below:

Progress Diagram - nuttin left but chainlink !

Like little wooden festivus poles, all lined up.

The newly installed fence, leading to the garden shed (for which I have grand plans...)

The base of the new fence. Fortunately, the base of the fence is resting on a concrete path, so no anti-digging measures will be required here. These materials were sourced from a prototype of the Doggy Alcatraz that I built several years ago. I have come a long way since then when it comes to restraining the freedom of furry friends.

Planning

2008-12-01T03:46:00.000-08:00

Today was non-productive in a "reality" kind of perspective, but I made the most of my time in the meta-physical space by mentally mapping out my future actions. I am considering finalising the doggy Alcatraz project this weekend, which in DIY terms is the equivalent of the D-Day landings in respect to co-ordination and large scale strategic movements. Those of you who have seen the opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan" will know what I mean, but add to the mix a bunch of rabid dogs in frenzied states of mind. Yeah, It could get nasty.

Also, I suspect my Taswegian friend is growing impatient to have his xbox fixed. All things come to those who wait, including death caused by old age. But I hope to have the situation resolved before then.

"Jacintha". There, you have now been mentioned and are famous.

Doggy Alcatraz pt. 8

2008-11-29T16:54:00.000-08:00

Well, the sheet metal part of the project was officially completed yesterday. While I was finishing it off my nieghbour mentioned that he was still looking into getting a quote for the colourbond replacement of the same fence and suggested that I would be upset if all of my work got bulldozed. I re-assured him that I would not be sad to see the old fence go, but I actually do hope that I get at least 1 or 2 months of use out of it, seeing as it has taken me about that long to get to this point.

Here we see the infamous chain-link fence, and behind it, the corrugated iron fence I have just completed.

Enough to break the spirit of the most determined canine escapee

The project in it's entirety. I don't want brag, but I think it shits all over the "Great" Wall of China, and no-one died during it's construction either (though I did come close)

The plan in real-life

Let's check the new, updated, progress chart:
The aqua areas are the areas that will be chain-link fence. I have measured it out and it would seem that I will be a total of 5cm short of fencing, but I think I will be able to work around it.

So that leaves me with 2 things left on my "to do" list:

Move chain link fence
Find some kind of meaning to my existence.

Spudnet Expansion

2008-11-27T21:22:00.000-08:00

I had a minor victory last night. I decided to try re-flashing my Mobo's Bios in a bid to see if the updated SATA stuff had any luck with the (faulty) Samsung 750GB hdd. It turns out that it was in fact successful. So anyone using a GA965P-DS3 having problems with a 753LJ hdd, give it a go. However, my Jihad against Samsung will continue regardless, placing them alongside LG on my shit list.

Canberra just received a storm warning and a few minutes later it hit our building. Fortunately I had decided to remain late this friday (after 4pm) and I wasn't on my bike. I don't like to exagerate but I think I can honestly say that watching the wind and rain, it was reasonable to expect the end of the world. However, I am still here, so obviously this was not the case. It will be interesting to see if my fence project is still standing. One of the things that occurred to me (well, OK, it occurred to Carrie, who then caused it to occur to me) was that the sheets of corrugated iron would catch more wind and would be at more risk of blowing over. For this reason I have limited the height of the fences to 160cm (still taller than the original wooden fence) rather than the 180cm I had originally intended. Of course, they are easily extendable...

Quiet Day

2008-11-25T15:40:00.000-08:00

It's a quiet day, so I decided just to post some pictures of the developments occurring on our street that I took a few weeks ago.

"From $349,950" - we paid $318,00 for our crappy house 1 year ago, and we could fit 4 or 5 of these shoe boxes on our block. Something to think about...

This is where we are located in relation to one of the developments. I look forward to the day when we have neighbours who can see straight into our backyard. Time to start growing a 20m tall hedge.

The pictures look like they will be some nice townhouses but I am really glad we are not forced to be looking for a place to live right now. It seems that the era of separate houses with back yards is drawing to an end (in Canberra anyway) and we got in just in time. Living in one of these places would be like living with 20+ housemates. No thanks.

Spudnet Expansion

2008-11-25T03:41:00.000-08:00

I had the day off work so that I could once and for all finish the doggy alcatraz but it was not to be. A quick visit to the doctor with Carrie ended up becoming an all day saga, in addition to which I seem to have developed a severe cold. Not even the self discipline I developed during my special forces training was sufficient to give me the strength to go outside and cut sheet metal.

Spudnet, my home media network, has reached critical mass and without additional storage will soon grind to a halt. I had attempted to solve this problem last weekend by buying a Samsung Spinpoint 753LJ 750GB hdd, only to have it refuse to format. I don't know if it is the hdd's fault or if there is some incompatability with my mobo's chipset, but I will be returning it to exchange for a western digital on Saturday.

My estimates for the project suggest that a total of 4TB of storage will be sufficient for my needs over the coming years, by which time I expect solid state hdd's will be the norm and I will have to upgrade all over again. I have now blacklisted Samsung and will not ever buy any of thier products again. TAKE THAT SAMSUNG!!!!!!

Doggy Alcatraz pt. 7

2008-11-22T17:06:00.001-08:00

Well today was gonna be huge, but unfortunately I have been rained off. Instead I shall spend the day drinking beer, watching movies and eating junk food.

I just came back from Bunnings after using the gift voucher Carrie got me for my birthday with a large assortment of equipment that is essential for the professional handyman such as myself. I think I am going to need a new shed just to hold all the gear I currently have stashed in my bedroom.

And for no reason in particular, here is a photo of the motorbike I am going to buy in a year or two (credit permitting). Yes, I will make the transition to cruisers to put the final nail in the coffin of my youth.

Plus I need a big wide seat nowadays to fit my big wide ass (I work in a office, gimme a break). Of course, riding a cruiser will mean that I will have to adopt a different persona by frowning more often, not waving to other riders and wearing gear that makes me look like a nomad outlaw renegade drug-running bad-ass (as I commute to my public service office-job...).

Doggy Alcatraz pt. 6

2008-11-21T23:43:00.000-08:00

My work on the fence was limited by a lunch at the pub, bad weather and old age. But I soldiered on regardless and managed to get 5 sheets of fencing up and had some fun with the angle grinder. I think the neighbours suspect our backyard has turned into a shipyard.

It's too early for photos, but it is time to update the progress map. I have also added in the areas that were already dog proof, and the remaining areas of work are now highlighted in aqua.

Doggy Alcatraz pt. 5

2008-11-21T01:48:00.000-08:00

Left work early so i could get a head start on the weekend's frivolities. I spent the extra time adding chicken wire to the base of the fence and managed to complete the job, meaning that the corrugated iron can go up tomorrow. This is the most fun part of the job coz it means a day of angle grinder pleasure and a good deal less kneeling in dirt.

There should be some quite spectacular photos from tomorrows work. I think I could actually finish the entire project this weekend if I put my mind to it, but I need to leave some fun for next weekend.