A.C. Flory's Blog, page 47

Jo Blankenburg – Bitter Sweet

This track came out in 2018, but I’ve only just discovered it. Blankenburg has to be one of my absolute favourite Indie composers of all time:

Enjoy.

Meeks

She’s a monster – by Adam Taylor

I read the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood a long time ago, and loved it in the way you love something so horrifying you can’t stop reading.

I knew there was a TV adaptation, but I’ve never wanted to watch it, so this music is completely new to me. And I love it. I’ll be listening to ‘She’s a monster’ a lot today as I write the scene in which Hands discovers that it’s been betrayed.

If you’re still enjoying your weekend, have fun. If, like us, you’re yawning your way through Monday morning…take heart, the sun’s shining!

cheers
Meeks

We’ve got this, Melbourne!

To all the people of Greater Melbourne – we’re almost half way through.

We can do this because we’ve done worse. Much worse.

Just like Black Saturday, no one else really understands. Only other Victorians do. That makes all of us one family. We look after our own. That is our ‘gold bloody standard’!

I love you.
Meeks

An excerpt from Kahti

Before I begin, I’d like to apologise for being MIA lately. I discovered, or should I say, re-discovered that I write best first thing in the morning, when this ageing brain is still fresh.

As a result, social media has taken a back seat. But I’m happier than I’ve been for quite a while because the second book of Vokhtah is happening again.

So, what have I been up to? For starters, I went back and re-wrote the character of Death. Without meaning to, I’d made it too, um, nice. That’s the awful trap when writing about a race that’s varying degrees of sociopath.

Anyway, Death is now more like one of our corporate CEOs – not totally bad, but definitely driven by expediency rather than empathy.

In the following shortish excerpt, the Master Smith knows something that could get Death killed.

Enjoy!

From Kahti, book 2 of Vokhtah – not quite gospel yet but very close.

Early the next day, Death made time to visit the storage caverns and pick up three small gourds of pippa juice. That night, it shared two of the gourds with its escort but drank only enough to wet its lips. Once the second gourd had been opened, it excused itself and retired to its pallet, leaving the Messengers to finish the pippa juice on their own. Face turned towards the wall, it listened as they laughed and joked, their voices gradually growing more raucous as their speech slurred.

At some point, the Messengers must have decided they could stand guard sitting down, because when Death eventually crept out to check on them, it found them both slumped against the wall, fast asleep.

Knowing firstlight could not be far off, Death quickly opened the last remaining gourd of pippa juice and poured a generous pinch of the yellow powder inside. A quick shake and it was done.

More relieved than it cared to admit, Death returned to its pallet and fell asleep with the gourd cradled in its arms. The next morning, it rose early and headed off to the forge, to fulfil its promise to the Healer from the South. As before, its escort stayed out in the passage, a safe distance from the noise and heat.

The old Smith accepted the gourd with pleasure and took a healthy swallow before promising to give the Healer’s chain a higher priority.

“Thanking,” Death said. “Healer being difficult and expecting Yellow to intervene!”

“Pah!” the old Smith cried, shaking its head in disbelief. “Healer being too long from Settlement!”

“Thinking so too,” Death replied as it watched the old iVokh take another long swallow. By the time it left, the gourd was empty. Smithing was thirsty work.

Death was in the feeding cavern a few days later when it heard two Healers at a nearby table gossiping about the death of the old Smith.

“Being sick?” one of the Healers asked as it opened the cage by its side and reached in for a fresh akaht.

“Ki, just old,” the other opined as it bit down on its own meal. “Although some saying not being well day before.”

“S’so? What happening?”

“Going to sleep and not rising.”

“A good death then.”

Over at the next table, Death silently agreed. It had always liked the old Smith, and was glad its end had been peaceful.

Have a great Tuesday, Australia! And good night to all those in the Northern Hemisphere.

cheers
Meeks

A different ‘tiny house’

I popped in to Stine Writing’s blog this morning and found this:

I love mini houses and couldn’t resist sharing the post.

You can also buy this little work of art on the writer’s Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/StineWriting/listing/1020425313/going-home-villa-miniature?utm_source=Copy&utm_medium=ListingManager&utm_campaign=Share&utm_term=so.lmsm&share_time=1621211511616

To see more of Stine Writing’s work go to : https://christinebialczak.com/about/

cheers
Meeks

Electric vehicles that charge as they drive

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to afford an electric car, but I would love one, so the idea of being able to charge the EV from the road itself is incredibly exciting.

“Wireless power transfer is based on the same underlying physics used to send messages through radio waves to spacecraft in deep space, things like Voyager,” the researcher said in a statement. “Except now we are sending much more energy across much shorter distances, to moving vehicles.”

https://futurism.com/roadway-charges-electric-cars-while-driving?mc_cid=93c2f6287b&mc_eid=bbf5c06f50

The technology is still some way off, and even when it’s finished it will take time to re-engineer our roads and sort out a way for users to pay* for the electricity their cars consumer, but the idea is so elegant I hope it happens in my lifetime.

cheers
Meeks

*I’m no expert, but it occurs to me that Blockchain would make it possible to charge the right amount to the right person without fear of the transaction being hacked or otherwise misused. Time will tell.

Internode & Vodaphone, a match made in hell

Trigger warning: major rant ahead.

I’ll start by saying that I have been with Internode [broadband ISP] for a very long time, maybe as long as ten years. In all that time I’ve always been 100% satisfied with both the product and the customer service.

Like most customers though, I paid absolutely no attention to Internode’s internal business, so I had no idea it had ‘partnered’ with Vodaphone [mobile network provider] until the screen on the Offspring’s mobile phone broke.

As both our phones are the cheapest smartphones money can buy, it was cheaper to buy a brand new phone than attempt to have the broken screen replaced. So the Offspring bought a new smartphone from Amazon.com.au. It arrived within 48 hours. Colour me amazed. Unfortunately, our good luck ended there.

After unpacking and decontaminating everything, I spent over an hour getting the old SIM card out of the broken phone. I’m pretty handy with tools but this damn SIM simply did not want to ‘slip out’. And of course, I was scared of getting tough with it in case I accidentally damaged it.

Long story short, I finally got the old SIM card out only to discover that it was miles too big for the new phone…

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So…I hopped onto my mobile phone and rang Internode [our mobile phone accounts are also with Internode, kinda]. I discovered that since moving our mobile phones to Internode, the company had left Optus [one of the major mobile network providers here in Australia] and moved to Vodaphone [another network provider]. Just as an aside, according to the Internode person, Internode ‘bought’ Vodaphone so they could have a mobile network of their own. According to the Vodaphone customer support person I spoke to today, Internode is only ‘partnering’ with Vodaphone.

<<whatever….>>

Still with me? Maybe grab a cup of coffee or a stiff drink; things are about to get a lot worse.

So…me to support: “The SIM card won’t fit.”

Support to me: “We can’t send you a new SIM card because your accounts are with Optus and we can’t source SIMs from Optus any more.”

Me to support: “What?”

Support to me: “The only way we can do it is if the account is ‘moved’ over to Vodaphone with a new plan. Then we can send you a new SIM from Vodaphone.”

This ‘move’ would prove to be $5 cheaper than our current plans, but only for 6 months. After that, the cost would become $5 more expensive than the current plan.

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As getting to this point had already taken over a week, I authorised the change and waited for the new SIM card to arrive. It took a week and only arrived today. So all up, the Offspring has been without a phone for over two weeks. That’s meant we’ve had to share my mobile phone because we no longer have a landline.

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But at least the new SIM finally arrived, right?

The documentation that came with the SIM said that it had to be activated online. Fine, I login, get to the relevant screen and discover that step 1 of the activation process is that an activation code will be sent, via SMS, to the OLD PHONE. The phone that’s broken. The phone that triggered this whole mess in the first place.

<<What. The. Fuck?>>

Apologies, but I did warn you.

So…I get on the phone to the support number written on the documentation and eventually get put through to someone we’ll call ‘Mary’. After explaining everything I outlined above, I told Mary that there had to be some other way of activating the new SIM.

After looking up the procedure manual [???], Mary said that no, there was no other way: the activation code had to be sent to the old SIM card to verify ownership of the phone.

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Me to support: “But the phone is broken!“

Support to me: “Could you put the SIM into another phone?”

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The only other phone capable of taking the Offspring’s old SIM is mine. Unfortunately, getting the SIM out of the Samsung Galaxy J2Pro is bloody hard. You can’t just ‘slide’ it out. It’s in waaaaay too tight. I had to use a pin to dislodge it, then I had to use a pair of tweezers to get it all the way out. But I finally did it.

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The new ‘nano’ SIM is finally in the new Nokia 2720 Flip Phone, and we are a two phone family once more, but I’d like to say a word to Nokia about the phone: Getting SIM cards in and out looks easy until you actually try it. I wasted yet another hour attempting to ‘lock’ in the nano SIM card. The mechanism doesn’t ‘just’ slide.

I know it’s the cheapest phone in the Nokia stable, but for godsake, can’t you design something better? This is basic stuff.

And finally, before I end this rant, there are a few more things I’d like to say. The first is about the Vodaphone network:

outsourcing tech support to countries with a much lower minimum wage may be cost effective, but when that tech support consists of people reading off a script, or out of the procedures manual, the quality of the support is generally terrible.

The second thing I’d like to say is to Internode.

Guys, your support has always been excellent on broadband. It’s why I’ve been such a loyal customer. But on mobiles? Not good.

I now know that tech support for the mobile network is Vodaphone’s responsibility, but I bet most Internode customers don’t know that. I know I didn’t. All we know is that when we ring up for tech support [on mobiles] the quality plummets. If this keeps happening, Vodaphone won’t be the company blamed; it’ll be Internode. This is a problem you have to fix… somehow.

Okay, to all my online friends, thanks for letting me rant. I do feel a bit better now.

Meeks

Happy Mother’s Day!

The Offspring and I went OUT today. Armed with masks and 1/2 a litre of hand sanitiser, we spent four hours visiting two local plant nurseries and indulging our love green stuff.

Now, we’re pooped. lol And my feet hurt! I’d forgotten what it was like to walk around for pleasure. Not complaining though. This has been the best Mother’s Day in a lot of years.

I hope you have a wonderful day as well.

Massive hugs
Meeks

More Jet suits!

I’ve posted about jet suits before, but I still get a thrill every time I learn a bit more about them. In the following video, a jet suited marine takes off from a pursuit vessel, boards a gigantic naval vessel, and flies back to the pursuit vessel again. That manoeuvrability is what caught my attention. And the speed. The marine in the jet suit is flying a heck of a lot faster than the boats can power through the water. Love it.

cheers
Meeks

Coffee & peanut shortbread

As always, apologies in advance for the poor quality of the photos.

I made the peanut shortbread in celebration of the Offspring getting the first jab of Pfizer! [Recipe at the end of the post].

The cup, saucer, and side plate I chose this time share colour tonings but are not ‘a set’. Very few of my pretties match because I collected them one by one, over about thirty years. So, first the side plate. There are no marks of any sort on the back, so either it’s quite old, or…it wasn’t considered worth marking? No idea, sorry.

The cup and saucer do have a mark. It says ‘Foreign’, which leads me to wonder whether the design was made in Japan for the Western market :

Awful photo, I know. Couldn’t hold the damn phone still.

What I can say is that the cup and saucer are what’s called ‘Lustreware’. The pieces I have are all made from a porcelain so fine, you can see through it when you hold it up to the light. They also have a kind of translucent irridescence that I love. You can get a sense of that in the pic of the cup below:

And now for that recipe! I can’t take much credit for it as it’s basically the same one you can find on the back of the packet of McKenzie’s rice flour, but here goes:

Shortbread with peanutsIngredients225 grams plain flour [all purpose flour], sifted [I didn’t]115 grams McKenzie’s rice flour, sifted [I didn’t]115 grams caster sugar, sifted [I didn’t]1 pinch of salt [as I was going to use salted peanuts, I did NOT add the salt]225 grams of butter, at room temperature [I forgot to take the unsalted butter out so had to use it cold]1/3 cup of salted peanutsMethod

Preheat oven to 150C [302 F]. If using the fan forced or fan bake setting, make it a few degrees cooler.

The next bit says you should grease a baking tray and line it with baking paper. I didn’t. I cut a piece of baking paper to size and simply lay it inside the baking tray.

From here on in I’ll just tell you what I did. So, I put the plain flour, rice flour and sugar in a bowl and stirred with a fork.

Next, I cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients and kept cutting it into smaller pieces until they were small enough to rub between my fingers. Rubbing involves pressing the butter/flour mix between the tips of your fingers as if you were trying to wash just your fingertips. Keep ‘rubbing’ until the mixture becomes granular. Sometimes you’ll hear people say ‘until it’s like breadcrumbs’. You really don’t have to be too precious about it, just mix the ingredients together.

Add the peanuts and mix in to the rest of the ingredients.

This next part is easy. Squeeze the mixture into a ball and bung it down onto the middle of the baking tray. Spread it with your hands, trying to avoid having a big clump of peanuts in any one place. I patted the shortbread dough into a rough circle because it was quick, and I was lazy. The thickness of the circle was about the size of a peanut lying flat – i.e. I wanted the peanuts to be covered by shortbread without the whole thing being too ‘fat’.

Press the tip of a fork all over the dough to allow the mixture to expand sideways.

Place the shortbread in the middle of the oven and allow it to bake for approximately 40 minutes, or until it’s a pale, golden brown. If you have any doubts about the temperature of your oven, check after 30 minutes.

Take the shortbread out of the oven and immediately ‘cut’ it with a knife. The shortbread will still be quite soft. Once it cools you won’t be able to cut it.

Leave the cut shortbread on the baking tray until cool. Eat with coffee, tea or cold milk.

cheers
Meeks