A.C. Flory's Blog, page 53

Making tech work in the 3rd World

This is an interview between Dr John Campbell and David Davies of AgUnity. The first few minutes are about Covid but the rest of this incredible interview is about how AgUnity makes it possible for poor farmers in developing nations to work co-operatively with their villages and, for example, the Fair Trade organisation, to better their lives.

How? By providing the farmers with a very cheap, specially tailored smart phone.

This is smart tech. And yes, the bloke with the tan is an Aussie.

More love for The Egg!

Today is going to be a very good day because The Vintage Egg has received a fabulous review from Robbie Cheadle. Robbie also reviewed an intriguing little book about low cost, crafty and very imaginative ways to create Christmas:

[image error] https://robertawrites235681907.wordpress.com/2020/11/25/bookreviews-short-books-by-a-c-flory-and-charlie-lee-austin/comment-page-1/#comment-18839

Click the link below the picture to go to Robbie’s reviews or click here. You can also find Robbie’s books on Amazon. They include the absolutely delightful Sir Chocolate books for children which she co-produced with her son Michael.

The Sir Chocolate books are illustrated with characters made of fondant [icing?], and the artistry is a joy:

[image error] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08KXXTQWV/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i11

Have a wonderful day!

cheers
Meeks

Masterpiece, from Master Piece, Objet de Maîtrise,

Beautiful art, stitch by careful stitch. I am in awe.

And because WordPress didn’t include any of the beautiful pictures in the reblog – grrr – here’s the first one that made my jaw drop:

My Mazamet

Excerpt from Walter Cahn, Masterpieces: Chapters on the History of an Idea, Princeton, 1979

“The exercise of a profession during the Middle Ages necessitated admission to a guild or corporation, made manifest by the candidate’s recognition as a master. This step marked the end of a period of apprenticeship, often followed by a further stage of training as a journeyman. The ultimate moment in this process of qualification was obviously of the greatest importance to the young artisan and to the corporation alike. The former depended on its successful outcome for the possibility of earning his livelihood. For the latter, a number of contradictory pressures were involved. It was desirable for the collective prosperity and welfare that a sufficient number of new master be admitted. The new arrivals assured the continuity of an enterprise and the material security of the household following the death of the former head. In good…

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Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos

I’m so excited! I saw about five of these amazing birds…in my garden this morning!

[image error] https://www.birdlife.org.au/bird-profile/yellow-tailed-black-cockatoo

The one that caught my attention was making a loud, insistent, hoarse sound, similar to the noise made by magpie fledglings as they wait for their parent to place food in their beak.

The young? cockatoo allowed me to get quite close – maybe just a couple of metres – so I could see the distinctive yellow patch on its cheek quite clearly. The colour of its feathers, and those of the four adults, was a much deep black though. The bird in the image above looks almost brown whereas my birds were definitely black-black. Maybe their feathers change colour with the seasons or something.

I’ve never been wild about the avian species and know very little about them, but since moving to Warrandyte I’ve grown to appreciate at least some of our local birds, including the resident magpies and kookaburras. I’ll now add black cockatoos to my welcome list. I just hope I manage to save some of the fruit on the trees from their all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. lol

cheers
Meeks

Warrandyte! No scheduled power outage today…grrrr!

By rights, I should be delighted that the power outage scheduled from 9am till 4pm is not going ahead today. Trust me, on any other day I would be. Today, however, I’m really ticked off because Ausnet Services, the electricity wholesaler that supplies electricity to a huge chunk of Melbourne, didn’t think to let us know the outage had been cancelled.

To be fair, we’ve had ferocious winds since Sunday, so a lot of areas have been without power…in an unscheduled way. Clearly, getting power to them has to be a first priority. But…it’s not the guys who go out and actually fix things that send us texts and letters about our electricity supply. It is…ta dah…the office types who do that. And…ta dah no. 2…not one of those office types had the mental capacity to go…”oh, hang on, didn’t we schedule a power outage for Tuesday? Maybe we should send a text out…”

Now it may well be that as a wholesaler, Ausnet Services only has the phone numbers of people like me – i.e. people who ring up and complain. So, still to be fair, maybe Ausnet Services doesn’t have the phone number of every person they supply. But. They must know who the retailers are in their area. Right?

How hard would it have been to ring up a few retailers and let them know? Then at least there would have been the possibility that the retailers could have diverted some resources to letting us know.

Or…! Failing all else, someone at Ausnet Services could have changed the automated message you get when you ring them about outages. You know, the one where you have to pick dinky numbers that never match the reason for your call…-cough-

Because I was expecting an outage today, I haven’t checked Twitter to see if Ausnet Services left a notice there. If you’ve seen such a notice, I’d love to hear about it in comments. Whether they did or didn’t though, I’d just like to point out that not everyone is on Twitter, or Facebook [makes the sign to ward off evil]. In fact, there are probably a lot of people who are on neither. So where does a large corporation’s responsibility end?

I could go on about how corporate culture has killed the concept of customer service, but I have to go mop the laundry floor again. Why? Because I was stupid. Thinking the power would be off any moment, I decided to fill the washing machine via a hose. While it was filling I thought I’d check with Ausnet Services because it was closer to 10am than 9am and we still had power. The rest I’m sure you can work out for yourselves.

-sigh-

Meeks

p.s. has anyone else noticed that WordPress is distorting images from the Media Library when you insert them into a post?

Music is life

Being on Twitter usually makes me angry. Today it made me cry with joy:

Watch her face as the music takes hold. For a few, precious moments, she’s young again and doing what she loves most in the world. This is the power of music.

Have a wonderful weekend,

love
Meeks

New Knees, using 3D printing

I’m not at the point of needing to get my knees fixed yet, but they definitely ain’t what they used to be, so I was fascinated by the idea of using 3D printing to build the implants. More importantly, I was thrilled by the idea that the bioinks used in the 3D printing process could actually encourage the body to create new cells itself:

‘…the researchers used several bioinks together to print the entire fibrocartilage tissue layer by layer, in an interleaved crosshatch pattern. The first was a composite gellan gum and fibrinogen ink, which encourages the body’s own cells to repopulate. The second bioink is a silk fibroin methacrylate, which helps keep the structure strong and flexible.’

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM)

You can find the whole article on the New Atlas website. It’s quite short and not super technical, so if you’re like me and starting to creak, check it out.

I have to say I’m quite looking forward to becoming a ‘bionic’ woman in the years ahead.

Congratulations, America!

I’d like to wish all Americans the very best for the future under the leadership of the 46th President of the United States.

You have a lot to be proud of. You’ve broken voting records despite Covid-19. You’ve elected a Woman as your Vice President, and that woman is Asian-African-American. Most importantly, however, you’ve shown that democracy is not dead. The rest of the democratic world salutes you.

The road ahead won’t be easy, but I hope that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris really will care for all Americans, not just those who voted for them. Americans of both persuasions have to learn to like each other again. Or at the very least, to show compassion and justice towards each other. Without compassion and justice, there is no glue to hold society together.

Kind regards from Australia,
Meeks

ESO and my digital house

I’m trying hard not to think about what’s happening in the US at the moment so here’s my version of a distraction – in-game house building, with pics!

But first, a bit of info. about what I mean by ‘in-game housing’. Probably the best way to describe it is to say it’s like playing with a 3D dolls house except that your digital character is the ‘doll’.

The motivation for wanting such a 3D house is similar to what drives us to buy houses in the real world. My character may not be able to ‘live’ in this house, but she can still enjoy it. Plus, let’s be honest, having a house is a bit of a status symbol because you have to work for it. The same applies to in-game housing. You have to pay for it by performing ‘work’ in the game. The house can also be filled with ‘special’ things that can only be gained by performing some hard-to-do task or event. And finally, players like me who love crafting can also do a lot of DIY to personalise their ‘home’.

My in-game character[s] aren’t rich by player standards, but because I’m a Master Crafter and gather most of the materials I need, I can ‘build’ things I would otherwise not be able to afford. So think of me as a DIY-er.

The US election

I’d just like to wish all the thoughtful, caring citizens of the United States of America a thoughtful and caring President. Humans are never perfect, but those given the greatest power should at least aspire to wield that power for the betterment of their people. All of their people, not just some.

Good luck, America. -hugs-

Meeks