A.C. Flory's Blog, page 118

The Piano Guys in #Petra

This video clip by the Piano Guys has special significance to me because a part of Innerscape is set in Petra…and this is the closest I’ll probably ever come to actually seeing it for myself.

Petra is located in Jordan and is one of the wonders of the ancient world. Carved out of the living rock, it was once the centre of a thriving trade between East, Middle and West. The trade vanished a very long time ago but the city lives on.

While you’re watching the video clip, please say a little prayer for the pianist, if that’s your style. His daughter went missing very recently and hope has faded. I fear there won’t be another video clip for a while.

Dreadful Poetry – more clockpunk wizardry. Bring it on!

Dreadful Poetry by Lita Burke An elf prince’s son teams up with a disgraced wizardling to clear their names with the Magic Guild. Read the back cover blurb. Book release date: November 2016 Book De…

Source: Dreadful Poetry

Filed under: Uncategorized

#WordPress vs #Facebook?

I spent five minutes on Facebook this morning, and I couldn’t wait to leave.

I commented on a couple of family posts and liked a couple of Hugh Howey’s posts, but I still couldn’t wait to get out of there.

I also liked posts by some of my friends, most of whom are on Facebook, yet it didn’t feel like a genuine interaction. That only seems to happen on our respective websites and blogs.

I know there are special interest groups on Facebook – like Indies Unlimited – that should be of interest to me, but I am so uncomfortable on Facebook that I’m never there long enough to interact with them.

I don’t know why I am so viscerally ill at ease on Facebook, but I would like to find out, so forgive me if this post turns into a form of digital navel gazing.

Okay, starting with the factual, the following graphic is a side-by-side view of my WordPress and Facebook pages. WordPress is on the left, Facebook is on the right:

What strikes you first when you compare these two pages?

If you’re anything like me, your first impression of WordPress will be that it’s visually restful. Your eye is drawn to centre stage for the main event while the ancillary functions stay modestly in the wings.

I’m no graphic designer but I have worked with images most of my life, and to me, the WordPress layout design is:

easy to read
easy to navigate
and uncluttered

By contrast, as soon as I glance across at the Facebook page, my eyes start to spin. Everywhere I look, the realestate of the page is packed with information, all of it trying to get my attention in some way. I can actually feel my body tense up as my brain tries to sort the clutter into something I can work with.

And before you think I’m a neat freak…I’m not. I love the elegant minimalism of traditional Japanese interior design, but I loath the sterile feel of contemporary interior design.

My idea of warm and cosy is this:

In case you’re wondering, this is a mockup of the website I was thinking of creating about two years ago. I gave up on the idea for a number of reasons, the main one being that moving ‘house’ would have meant losing most of the visibility I had gained on WordPress.com. I’d rather have a simple blog that everyone can find than a snazzy website that people would have to find all over again.

Anyway…the background photo is of my actual loungeroom and illustrates the kind of clutter I love – warm, cosy, intimate.

[Slight graphic correction: the walls are not dark brown as shown in the photo; they are actually a warm, olive green]

To me, Facebook is not intimate at all. It’s like walking into a barn filled with strangers having a party. There’s no room to dance or do things so everyone stands around, drinks in hand, shouting to be heard over the high decibel background noise. And even when I find a group of people I actually know, I don’t feel as if we can have a deep and meaningful conversation because you can’t do deep and meaningful while shouting at the top of your lungs.

By contrast, all of my interactions on WordPress feel like an intimate dinner party, regardless of who’s hosting the meal.

And right there, I think I have my answer. I am who I am, and I take myself wherever I go, even online.

I’m not a typical introvert though. I’m not shy. I can stand up in front of a class and give a lecture without the slightest twinge of discomfort, but I simply can’t do big, loud parties. Never have, never will. I don’t even understand why other people enjoy them so much. It’s as if I’m missing the big party gene, and when I am forced to attend one, you will generally find me in the kitchen – if there is one – or standing in a corner somewhere, bored out of my brain.

In the real world, my preferred form of social interaction is dinner with close friends. While we eat, we do catch up on the minutiae of life, but once coffee and dessert arrive, the conversation inevitably turns to issues – political, ethical, philosophical, universal – and I’m like a pig in the proverbial. My brain is on fire, and I am totally in the moment. I could stay up all night because we’re all firing off each other. It’s wonderful.

In the digital world, I frequently have dinner at Pinky’s house. Pinky runs a salon where debate is the dessert served up with coffee. Or I might pop in to the Passive Guy to catch up with the latest issues in publishing. And then there’s dancing and trips to the Museum of Modern Art with Candy, or afternoon tea with EllaDee. Anne invites me in for an afternoon of botanical drawing, while David Prosser has me in stitches with his sly-yet-gentle humour.

Take a look at the people in the sidebar of this post. They are all my friends, not because we’ve friended each other, but because we’ve shared moments of mutual understanding. They are all kindred spirits in one way or another, and WordPress [for all its faults] makes our intimate communities possible.

Thanks WordPress, and sorry Facebook but this square peg will never find a home on your pages.

-hugs-

Meeks

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: cluttered, Facebook, friending, graphic-design, intimate, Reader-vs-Timeline, social-media, Wordpress

#FFXIV – how to make Dreadwyrm Trance available

I finally learned how to make the Summoner skill – Dreadwyrm Trance – actually work this evening. And no, I’m not talking rotations or optimal usage, I just mean getting the bloody skill icon to light up! Grrrr…

All the forums say to create 3 stacks of aethertrails. They even explain what aethertrails are and how to create them, but they all leave out one vital piece of information, or assume that it’s so obvious it doesn’t need to be said.

Well, I’m a Dummy and I did not know it so, without further ado, here is my Dummies guide to Dreadwyrn Trance.

Step 1 Use your Aetherflow skill so you get 3 stacks of aetherflow as shown below:

AND THEN WAIT for the aetherflow skill to come off cooldown. This is critical!

Step 2 Once you have 3 stacks of aetherflow ready to go and the aetherflow skill is also ready again, apply your DoTs – e.g. Bio, Miasma etc.

Step 3 Once the DoTs are up, use 3 of the skills that use aetherflow – i.e. Fester, Bane, Painflare or Energy Drain.

These skills have the added effect of creating aethertrails and once you have 3 aethertrails, the Dreadwyrm Trance skill will light up:

Step 4 Use Dreadwyrm Trance.

Step 5 Use Ruin III [because under Dreadwyrm Trance, it becomes 10% more powerful and costs much less mp than normal].

Step 6 Just before Dreadwyrm Trance wears off, use Deathflare [level 60 skill].

Two things that make Dreadwyrm Trance fail

if the aetherflow skill is on cooldown, Dreadwyrm Trance will not be available, no matter how many aethertrails you have up.
if Fester, Bane, Painflare or Energy Drain don’t actually ‘work’, Dreadwyrm Trance will not work either. For example, if you use Fester without having any DoTs up, the skill will have no effect because it needs DoTs to work. And if it doesn’t work, neither will Dreadwyrm Trance.

And that’s it. Now I’m going to take my Dummy self to bed.

Goodnight all!

Meeks

 

Filed under: Games for big kids, Uncategorized Tagged: 2-tricks, aetherflow-skill, aetherflow-stacks, aethertrails, Dreadwyrm-Trance, Final-Fantasy-XIV, how-to, Summoner

#Solar power changing the face of poverty in India

Large, corporate power suppliers often cite baseload [the amount of energy needed to satisfy the minimum energy demands of a given society] as the reason for dismissing solar power. Solar panels/arrays don’t work at night so solar must be useless for baseload.

On the surface, the need for baseload power does appear to leave solar out in the cold, but…all baseloads are not the same. In India, there are tens of millions of people for whom baseload equates to just one light bulb. These are the people living in distant rural areas, or city slums, or simply on the pavement. They are poor in a way we in the West cannot even imagine because, despite their poverty, they have to spend a significant portion of their tiny monthly incomes on kerosene for their lamps, or batteries for their torches. All because they are too poor to tap into the electricity grid.

And this is where Piconergy comes in. Founded by a group of young, well-educated, clever young men, Piconergy has created a super small-scale solar power plant called the Helios [from the Greek word for ‘sun’]. This is the product description from their website:

Product Features

–  Strong and sturdy Power Box which can be easily carried around and/or wall mounted, housing our battery management system & a 6V 4.5 Ah Absorbent Glass Mat (AGM) technology based sealed maintenance free battery.

–  5 Watts-peak Solar PV Module with 4m cable & connector.

–  Three LED Light Bulbs producing up to 200 lumens each with 3m cable & switch to cover maximum area for illumination.

–  USB port for charging mobile phones.

–  Optional SMPS Adapter to charge battery from grid supply.

And this is the product:

Piconergy are making the Helios available to families in the slums of Mumbai:

so the children can study at night,
so cottage industries can make more products to sell,
so families do not have to live in the dark

I cannot tell you how much the dedication and commitment of the young men at Piconergy warms my heart. They are not just talking about social inequality, they are doing something practical to help. But my admiration for them goes beyond questions of social conscience – I want a Helios for myself!

Why? Why would a middle class woman in Australia with solar panels on her roof already want such a small-scale solar device? I’ll tell you why. I want my own Helios because the solar panels on my roof are tied in to the grid. When the grid goes down, my solar panels are turned off as well. In a word, they become USELESS.

I cannot tell you how many times we have sweltered during a 40 degree day because the grid was down. No aircon, no fan and no landline telephone. If our mobile phones aren’t charged then we are literally isolated from the outside world. And then there are the nights when we need torches and candles just to get to the bathroom. Again, because the grid is unreliable.

After the fire that destroyed homes south of the river a couple of years ago [in Warrandyte], SP Ausnet is finally putting in heavy duty powerlines and some underground cabling, but for now we continue to lose power, and I continue to keep torches and candles dotted throughout the house.

For us, the potential for sudden, energy poverty is very real, and I intend to do something about it. More on that later.

For now, though, if you care about those less fortunate than yourselves, may I suggest you give Piconergy a boost in social media. After all, ‘Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.’

cheers

Meeks

Piconergy:

http://www.piconergy.com/

https://piconergy.wordpress.com/about/

care@piconergy.com

Filed under: My soap box Tagged: Australia, baseload, Helios, India, Mumbai, off-grid, Piconergy, poverty, Solar, Warrandyte

October 23, 2016 6:01pm and it’s finished :(

I know I shouldn’t be sad, but I’ve literally just finished Innerscape, and I feel bereft, as if I’ve lost some of my best friends.

The Innerscape journey began with nano 2012, so there’s a kind of pleasing symmetry in finally finishing it just before the start of nano 2016, but I feel no sense of triumph. No fireworks, no champagne, just The End. Bugger.

Converted bus #TinyHouse

When I was a kid I was fascinated by the idea of Gypsy caravans. Now, I’m fascinated by Tiny Houses, and this converted bus is one of the best I’ve seen!

My favourite part came almost at the end when Andrew demonstrated the storage under the bed. Did you notice the cat? If you didn’t, go back and watch that bit again. It’s hilarious!

Have a happy weekend,

Meeks

 

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: bus, compact, conversion, house, pets, storage, tiny, wood-heater

The Breathtaking Nature Landscapes of New Zealand

New Zealand – truly a land of wonder.

ALK3R

Rachel Stewart is a talented self-taught photographer and traveler based in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand. Rachel shoots a lot of nature, travel, landscape and adventure photography. Her use of long exposure photography brings another dimension to her images setting them apart from the rest.

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Filed under: Uncategorized

#Recipe – Stuffed Tomatoes

This is a superb, vegetarian dish by Maria Luisa Taglienti, dating back to 1955. I’m a committed carnivore and not a huge fan of cheese, but even I love this dish. And it’s not hard to make.

Ingredients for the tomatoes

4 large tomatoes, the firmer the better
1/4 cup of rice
6 tablespoons butter, melted
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 tablespoon chopped continental parsley
1/3 cup diced cream cheese [Neuchatel or Philadelphia]
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper [white]

Method

Pre-head oven to moderate [just under 180C in a fan bake oven].

Cook the rice in salted water for 10 minutes. It should still be a little hard in the middle. Drain.

Mix the rice with 4 tablespoons of butter, the two cheeses, parsley, salt and pepper. This is your ‘stuffing’.

Take out the core of each tomato, including the seeds/pulp, [and set aside if making the optional sauce]. You should now have 4 ‘cups’.

Sprinkle the inside of each cup with salt and pepper, then stuff with the cheese mix.

Butter a baking dish and place the stuffed tomatoes inside with a knob of butter on top of each one.

Bake for approx. 25 minutes or until golden on top.

Optional green beans and simple tomato sauce

While the tomatoes are baking, lightly fry a small, chopped onion and 2-3 cloves of garlic. When golden and aromatic, add 1 sachet of tomato paste [approx. 1 tablespoon] and the pulp taken from the inside of the tomatoes. Add a pinch of salt, stir and cook on a low heat until the stuffed tomatoes are done.

While the sauce is simmering, top and tail a handful of green beans per person and steam until cooked but still firm.

To serve

Serve the stuffed tomatoes with the steamed green beans, the red sauce and crusty white bread. Enjoy!

Meeks

Filed under: Food glorious food, recipes Tagged: cream-cheese, Italian, Parmesan, parsley, recipe, red-sauce, rice, tomatoes, vegetarian

To the mothers of Yarra Warra Pre-school in #Warrandyte [1]

Ladies, I know you have small children, and I know you’re run off your feet. You never have a minute to yourself, and sometimes you can’t even go to the loo on your own.

Am I right? I know I am. Nevertheless, as a mother too, albeit a very old one, I ask that you have a look at the questions below:

Do you live on a bush block – i.e. a block with a lot of native vegetation, including eucalyptus trees?
Can you see dead fall [broken branches] in your garden?
Has the wind blown eucalyptus leaves up against the house and fence?
Does your partner work during the week – i.e. is your partner away from the house from Monday to Friday?
Is your bushfire plan to leave?
Have you ever tried to reach the bridge over the Yarra during peak hour traffic?

The more times you answered ‘yes’ to these six questions, the more this post relates to you.

Questions 1 – 3 relate to how bushfire prone your house and land may be.

Questions 4 – 6 relate to what you intend to do if a bushfire threatens. In a best case scenario, the bushfire strikes during the weekend when your partner is home. You all evacuate early and the traffic moves in an orderly fashion. The fire has been an inconvenience, but it never even got close to the house so after a couple of hours, life continues as normal.

But fires do not respect human schedules, so it is far more likely that a bushfire will threaten you on the five days of the week your partner is not at home. You still plan to leave with your children, but you get stuck in the bottleneck around the bridge, along with all the others planning to leave. What then?

Or in an even worse case scenario, what if you’re human like most people, and decide to ‘wait and see’ whether it’s worthwhile packing grumpy kids into the car along with even grumpier pets. By the time you do decide to leave, getting stuck in the bottleneck over the bridge may be a million times more dangerous than staying put.

But…you always planned on leaving so neither you nor your partner bothered reducing the fuel load around your house. Now you’re stuck. You can’t leave and you can’t stay. To my mind, this is the worst possible scenario and it happened, on Black Saturday.

I’m not trying to be a scaremonger, but I am trying to burst the ‘she’ll be right’ bubble. If you want to live in Warrandyte you must plan for the worst case scenario, not the best.

And that brings me back to questions 1 – 3. Even if you plan on leaving very early on every single high fire danger day over summer, you must make sure you have a fighting chance in case things go pear-shaped and you can’t leave.

In order to have that fighting chance, you must make time to:

gather deadfall into heaps – in clearings, not under trees, and
burn the piles off while the weather is cool, damp and NOT WINDY!

Yes, ladies, I’m using the word ‘you’ for one, very good reason – no matter how conscientious your partner may be, he is only going to be available on weekends. That’s 2 days out of 7. What’s the chance that the wind is not going to blow on the day he has free? This year? Less than 50/50.

I don’t know what’s happened to the weather this year but it seems to have been blowing a gale every second day. That, or it’s pouring with rain. Clear, calm days on which it’s safe to burn off have been rare, so it’s become vital that burning off happens whenever the weather allows. Sadly that may only be during the week…when your partner is at work.

“What? You expect me to light fires with tiny children hanging around my feet? Are you crazy? Not possible!”

Sadly, I’m not crazy, and it is necessary. It is also possible, but not without effort.

I don’t have a small child anymore, but at 63, I know exactly how tiring this job can be because I’m the Mama-Papa in our family. In your family, you may need to ask slightly older children to help Mummy pick up sticks and put them in lots of little piles. You may have to light those tiny piles while the kids are having a nap, or are at pre-school, or with Grandma. You may have to form groups with other pre-school Mums and help each other with child minding while the rest of you do the burning off.

However you do it, though, reducing the fuel load is a must because Warrandyte is a tinderbox waiting to burn. Most of the area is densely covered in Red Box and we are only allowed to clear trees in a ten metre radius around the house. To clear any further out, we have to apply to Nillumbik council for a permit and those permits are never granted.

Red Box are eucalypt trees, and like most gums, their leaves contain volatile oils that burn exceedingly well. The idea behind this evolutionary development is that the oils help the fire sweep through quickly, burning the branches and leaves but leaving the trunk intact. Once the fire is over, eucalypts can re-grow from the trunk, not just the roots. Great for the trees, not so great for us.

The following excerpt is taken from gardening advice developed for NSW but is appropriate for Victoria as well:

Plants in the Myrtaceae family, such as Eucalyptus, Melaleuca and Leptospermum, contain oil glands in the leaves and are more inclined to burn and to spread fire. Plants such as these should be well away from houses. Tall trees, at an appropriate distance from a house can make good barriers to ember attack. The key is to not plant a grove of the same species, but to have trees such as a gum tree or tea-tree in isolation with a well-cleared area below.

Here in Warrandyte, we don’t have the option of not planting ‘a grove of the same species’. For this reason, clearing the fuel load beneath the trees becomes vitally important. If we can stop a fire from getting up into the canopy, we have a fighting chance.

In the next article in this series, I’m going to assume that many women with pre-school children are as clueless about burning off [safely] as I was. I’ll explain about the best weather conditions in which to do domestic burning off, and I’ll detail how I do things.

cheers

Meeks

 

Filed under: bushfires [Australia] Tagged: 2016, burning-off, bushfire, North, October, pre-school, Research-Warrandyte, Warrandyte, who-does-it?, Yarra-Warra