Author: Jason

I’m not quite sure why, but I had this urge to watch Monkey Magic. I was watching episode one when the narator was talking about some of Buddha’s teachings. I stumbled uppon this site that I found interesting.

I don’t know why, but the range of contact management software that is available is crap imho. As far as I know, there is Act!, Maximizer and Goldmine at the bottom end of the spectrum. For one, none of them integrate with IMAP servers. Act! doesn’t even work as a relational database for gods sake, and to top it all off, it uses a propriatry database. I long for a decent contact manager, surely its not that hard to write?

I think last night was the first night I really slept right through the night since I got back from over seas. I felt very refreshed this morning.

I was amazed to discover that you can now buy 0.4Tb hard disk drives. How much longer before we start measuring hard disk drives by the terabyte?

Yesterday we ventured to Haberfield. For those in the dark, Haberfield is the real little Italy of Sydney. I know you can find all the glitzy expensive Italian restaurants in Leichard, but real Italians do their shopping in Haberfield.
My original plan was to get up early and head down there on my own or with Tate and just quickly buy some stuff for the bbq later that night, but as everyone was up, we (Hind, Tate, Zac and Tamara and Maissa and me) decided to go together, have some breakfast there and get the shopping at the same time.
When we arrived, there was this very nice looking cafe which we decided to have breakfast in, but we needed a slightly bigger table in the window to fit us all, so we just moved one of the tables, but the waitress barked “you can’t move that table, there won’t be room to get through”. So we asked her where we could sit and the only option she gave us was in the back of the restaurant. We looked, changed our minds and decided to sit outside. Once we got outside we decided unanimously that the hag of a waitress had put us all off and we went across the road for some awesome bacon and eggs. I know its not very italian, but they did include an italian sausage on the plate.
Anyway, we wandered around after breakfast and bought some shopping including some lovely white fluffy ricotta cheese, some freshly greated parmesan, some delicious tomatoes, cuecumbers and basil, and some lovely italian sausages which we cooked up on the bbq that night. I have to say they were realy bloody good and I think I’m going to have to go to Haberfield next weekend to get some more.
Oh… that reminds me, on the same night, I finaly used up the last of the charcoal I bought ages ago. Thats like 20kg of charcoal gone in a few months. I must get some more.

I’m not sure where I got this desire from, but since we got back from over seas, I have had the urge to grow tomatoes on our balcony. So today, we went to the hardware shop and bought the necessary equipment and a grafted tomato plant. Apparantly, the grafted ones are much better. It’s a Might Red veriety (how can you go wrong with a name like that?) We bought a huge self watering pot for it, and some nice big bamboo steaks to support it when it gets a little bigger, and then I planted it this evening. It looks kind of cute, the little tomato plant in its huge pot, but I’m sure it will grow pretty big.

Last night I tried to start up the lantern to show Ed, but once the blow torch was going, and heating up the vaporiser, the cracks in the glass just started to get bigger. I didn’t think it was safe to proceed so I turned off the blowtorch. I’ll be going to the lantern supply shop on Saturday to hopefully get parts for it.

This is a photo of the lantern working.

Since we got back, Maissa and I have been wandering around in this kind of post travel depression. I’m not quite sure why we are both feeling it. Maybe it’s a kind of culture shock? or maybe its a combination of jet lag and having to face going back to work and getting back into the grind?
Whatever it is, it’s been effecting both of us. We have been going up and down like yoyos. Unpacking was a major stumbling block for us and to top it off, the bloody crap water heater has sprung a leak while we were away and had gently moistened all the boxes we kept in the cupboard where the heater is, nicely incubating some sort of black fungus that grew all over everything..

As night fell tonight, I was looking forward to having another go with the pressure lantern. This time, I wanted to try the slow light method, which is supposed to be a little more gentle, and requires less pumping. Basicaly, you fill this special resevoir with metho and light it and let it burn out, then do it again, and this time, before it compleetly goes out, you turn the valve on to let the kerosene start flowing.
The only problem for me was the metho appears to have over heated the knob and melted it a little bit so it no longer turns the shaft of the valve. Of course, I didn’t realise this until it was too late. I tried to light it by adding a little more metho, lighting the resevoir again and then turning the valve with pliers. But I think by the time I got it going again, the evaporator part had cooled down too much and the top of the lantern burst into flames, indicating liquid kerosene was coming out (instead of vapours). Then just to top it off, the glass cracked from over heating *sigh*. I’m not very happy.