bloodydogooder

Testing

2012-01-25T18:59:00.001+11:00

I wonder if i can send this straight to the blog

sent via android mobile

Rubbish pile

2011-08-08T00:34:00.000+10:00

humpy (draft)

2011-07-07T00:45:00.001+10:00

woodburning- reducing my footprint? (draft)

2011-07-07T00:06:00.004+10:00

In an effort to reduce my environmental impact, I've been looking at heating my house using wood instead of gas or electricity.
Actually, that's a lie. I'm looking at heating using firewood because it feels good to have a fire inside, and because I think it's cheaper. but like all decisions, it includes an environmental aspect, and I'd drop the idea if it was an environmentally bad idea.
In year one, soon after we bought the house, we tried heating using the cute little fireplace in the living room. the previous owner hadn't thought much of it, other than as a decorative feature, so I was cautious when I first tried it. Would it fill the house with smoke? Would it upset a hybernating family of possums or microbats? Would it fail miserably in terms of heating?
As it turns out, the chimney drew the smoke out beautifully, unencumbered by wildlife or old birds nests. We used the Cypress Pine scrap timber we had lying around after renovating, and discovered that it splutters and crackles and sends spearks flying into the lounge room- but it heated the place nicely, and didn't cause the migraines that the LPG gas burning heater did.
Our next step was to buy a cast iron fireplace to hold the sparks in place. an electric fan blew masses of warmth into the house, and a friend delivered a pile of old (unpainted) decking which was destined for the tip. That winter, we were very cosy, and the fireplace paid for itself easily. The fan used a tiny amount of electricity, and we added a timer switch so it squeezed every last bit of warmth into the loungeroom before dying away in the early hours of the morning.

Correct operation: Tips to keep your house warm overnight

•Closing off all air to a fire produces very little heat and a lot of smoke.
•Only turn down the air supply when you have a hot bed of charcoal.
At least half an hour before you go to bed:

•Reload your heater with good quality wood.
•Run it on a high burn rate for 25 minutes.
•Turn the heater down but ensure that a visible flame is maintained.
•Never shut the air flow right down.
•Let the fire burn itself out over night.
Turning the air supply right down does not gain you any advantage, because the wood will only smoulder, creating little heat and a large amount of wood smoke.

Did you know?
To avoid a smouldering fire, consider alternatives to burning overnight. A portable electric heater, appropriate for size of the room being heated, switched on with a timer a short time before you wake will take the chill out of the morning air.
http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/air/woodheaters/woodheaters_house_overnight.asp

who are you in this image?

2011-07-06T22:08:00.009+10:00

I had a guest speaker come to class today. She started with a neat little exercise- asking students to look a picture of children climbing a tree, and say which one best described where they were at the moment. Some said they were climbing, some said they were reaching down to help others, some had fallen off or crossing over from a different course.
I liked the idea, but the image was pixelly and hard to see- so I spent the rest of the session drawing my own version, added here for you to share.

Escher images versions 2 and 3

2011-04-10T00:37:00.000+10:00

Here's version 2.

Seems there's a few software packages out there that can help draw this stuff, but really, cutting and pasting on a computer isn't all that difficult.

I like the way that the pelicans are all in rows, just like when they go flying home of an evening.

2011-04-08T23:09:00.002+10:00

I've been playing with Escher images lately. there's a bunch of software out there for people who do this stuff all the time, but it felt more like it would take more time to learn than i wanted to invest. Pencils and cut and paste should do me.

I was aiming to carve this onto an Emu egg, but decided it just didn't do the medium justice. I carved a simple story instead.

council clean up

2010-08-14T00:43:00.003+10:00

The annual council clean up time is coming, and the streets are lined with all sorts of almost useful things.

Styrofoam cups (draft)

2010-07-08T00:25:00.000+10:00

So, having been blown away by the environmental impact of my daily aluminium can (or two) of soft drink, I thought I'd take a look at the costs of disposable foam cups.

footprint 2- car use

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

Looking at the carbon footprint calculator provided by the EPA in Victoria, I was surprised to discover that , despite my two cars having lowgreenhouse emissions ( 4.32 tonnes each), they had higher than average carbon dioxide emissions (51 kg) and about average nitorus oxide and hydrocarbon releases.
(you can check your own at http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/air/carecometer/default.asp)

the calculators themselves are interesting though- they only calculate certain things that they see as important. Older cars, for example, score poorly because they aren't as efficient- but the calculator doesn't take into account the energy used in creating the vehicle in the first place.
According to Wired magazine, for example, small second-hand cars are less bad than the alternatives when a car is required.

If a new Prius were placed head-to-head with a used car, would the Prius win? Don't bet on it. Making a Prius consumes 113 million BTUs [140 GJ], according to sustainability engineer Pablo Päster.... Buy a decade-old Toyota Tercel, which gets a respectable 35 mpg [6.7 l/100km], and the Prius will have to drive 100,000 miles (160 000 km) to catch up. Better yet, buy a three-cylinder, 49-horsepower 1994 Geo Metro XFi, one of the most fuel-efficient cars ever built. It gets the same average mileage as a 2008 Prius, so a new hybrid would never close the carbon gap.
---Matt Power, Wired, 19 May 2008

Using this logic, there's more environmental gain to be made by keeping a car roadworthy, rather than scrapping it and buying a new one. In fact, even an old inefficient car, destined for the scrapheap and using 13.4 litres/100km would be able to run for 80 000km before break even point. The key is to make the vehicle less disposable by treating it well, making it last and, I guess, taking it to be responsibly recycled when it finally gives up.

Should I recycle?

2010-07-06T22:47:00.001+10:00

If you've been following this blog, you'll know that I've been thinking a lot about my personal energy use lately. I was fascinated to discover how much energy is burnt creating a simple aluminium can- lots of websites claim that you can run a TV for four hours on the energy saved by recycling one can. Since this is a bit of a vague measure, I prefer the quote that it is the energy equivalent of 1.9 litres of fuel. that means that, although I save a bit of energy by walking about a kilometre home, I save far more if I pick up a can on the way and recycle it. Or if I pick up the can, I can drive to and from work for the next two weeks (20 kilometres) and pretty much break even in terms of energy used.

Alternatively, I could say that I have undone two weeks walking by drinking from a can when I get home...

testing (again!)

2010-04-08T23:06:00.000+10:00

blah

know of any good conferences coming up?

2009-06-08T19:36:00.001+10:00

Hello people
I'm sending this email to a select few people whose opinion I trust.

First up, if you didn't already know, I've finally been given permanency in TAFE. Technically this means I'm in my first year of employment, so I can't accept any secondments to other interesting stuff until 2010, but I'll stik around here for now.

Perhaps by way of consolation prize, I was recently told I've won the TAFE Western Institute's Jonathon Pratt Memorial scholarship, which gives me a few hundred dollar towards the staff development opportunity of my choice in the next 12 months. Most people in the past have taken this to mean 'going to a conference', but it sounds like 'staff development opportunity' hasn't been defined that closely. It's only given to one person each year, and it's only been going a few years.

The reasons I am telling you this are:
1. to show off (did I mention that it's only given to one person each year?)
2. because I have no idea of what is worth going to. Since I've been in Dubbo and not offering direct services, I'm not looking out for opportunities like this, so would really like it if you could tell me of any you think are good value, or are seriously worth avoiding. It seems like anything welfare related or teaching related would fit the criteria. TAFE's on a bit of a greeny kick at the moment, so anything environmentalish could also work if it looks interesting.

If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

oh, and while I'm asking favours- I'm also organising a welfare workers conference in Dubbo in November, so if you know of any worthwhile speakers, let me know.

People can read my stuff. How reassuring.

2009-06-07T00:15:00.003+10:00

I've just tested some of my work against an on line program called Writing Tester, at http://www.writingtester.com/. It tells me that my work could be read and understood by a US seventh grader, which is about the level I was aiming for.
Apparently there's an established Readable Score & Grade Level formulae, used for working out how readable text is, by counting the length and type of words and sentences that are used. Ideally, of course, I could (and do) use real live humans to read what I have written, but the software versions can give a quick 'heads up' when the writing deteriorates into technobabble.
The struggle is always to find a way of using simple words and language to explain complex terms. How do you simplify legal requirements to a point where they are understandable to most of the population, while still keeping it accurate and complete enough to explain the concept in full? I think this is why, without having thought about it too much, I have enjoyed using stories with morals and simple analogies as teaching tools in the past. I'd love to, but haven't the time for, converting some of my lessons to comic book form, but perhaps that could be a direction to explore in future.

Trip to Nyngan

2009-05-29T22:11:00.003+10:00

Another roadtrip to introduce people to the (draft) toolkit this week- this time to Nyngan. I'm not sure if I was imagining it, but people seemed to be cautious in their elation at the rain that fell while I was there. There is still a drought, but most residents remember the floods of 1990 as well.
Going by the feedback, people found it to be something they will use, as well as finding it to be something they could navigate their way around and find what they needed.
Sadly, there were also a couple of technical glitches. It seems every time I try the CD on a new computer, there is something different that affects the way it opens. I thought I'd covered all bases by testing it on macs as well as Windows 98, XP and Vista. Files were opened in Office 2000, 2003 and 2007. Still, they behaved differently on these machines, because the default settings within these applications were also different. Some open Powerpoints as slideshows (the way I'd like them to), while others open them for editing (which I most definately didn't want them to do).
The solution, I found, was to insert images of navigation buttons ('next slide' and 'previous slide') with hyperlinks to the relevant slides, and then save the whole thing as a pdf file. OpenOffice handled the conversion brilliantly- kept the hyperlinks in place so the whole thing worked, and made it easy for me to tell it to make the pdf a certain size and to behave a certain way. (I like the way this is a setting within the file itself, rather than on the user's computer, so I knew how it would behave on all computers.) Of all the free pdf converters I tried, OpenOffice was the only one that kept the internal hyperlinks by default. Maybe Powerpoint 2007 could do this as well, but it wouldn't do it for me without a whole lot of mucking around, which I could do without.

Here's a look at (sort of) what it looks like- the navigation buttons don't function in this example, but the do give some idea of how it looks.

Induction Slideshow Privacy And Confidentiality

View more Microsoft Word documents from locustplague.

trip to Goodooga

2009-05-15T22:05:00.002+10:00

Took a trip to Goodooga to test out the Youth Services Toolkit on behalf of the various NSW departments that asked me to write it. It was a long drive and, as expected, I learnt a whole lot more than I taught. Students at Brewarrina and Goodooga all seemed to get a lot from what I had to offer. That said, there were a few glitches that meant that my time was only effective for about a third of the time I was out there. While I have learnt to expect this, it is still frustrating to drive all that way to have people not show up. Those that I did meet, though, amazed me with their passion for their communities and their eagerness to learn.

(This is my first attempt at blogging via mail2blogger. If I've got it right, there will be a photo somewhere around this entry.)

Allligator lizard

2008-09-18T19:01:00.003+10:00

Just completed this drawing of a Thai goanna. couple of years since I was there, but still. Normally, I'd never chase up an animal on the web just so I could include it in my travel diary, but this guy was different. I'd see him some days, foraging around the pond near my room, swimming unlike any lizard I'd ever seen before. I watched him for ages, gracefully swinging his whole body, about 1.2 metres long. He was gliding through the water with his arms and legs by his side. Not like the frantic paddling of the water dragons at home. On days when I sat there with a camera, waiting, he'd keep away. Still, sitting by a pond, hunting dragons was a peaceful way to finish the working day, which was otherwise occupied with post tsunami messiness. Way too great an image not to be recorded in the diary.

Flight of a pelican v2

2008-08-23T23:18:00.002+10:00

... so now I know that gifs aren't animated in blogger... these are alternative, static versions, which I kinda like for the way they catch the movement in different ways. The top version taught me a lot- made it by accident, while making the animation. The second is how it appears on my wall- a true life photo of the original pastel. I'm still playing with the best way to get the feeling of movement in place.

Flight of a pelican

2008-08-23T23:06:00.000+10:00

Another drawing, of sorts... an animated gif of a photo of a pastel is still classed as a drawing, right?
I love pelicans. Love to watch them fly. Cumbersome bodies which if you looked at them objectively, you'd you say 'no way, that thing can't fly', then they spread their wings and are a graceful as anything you can imagine. Ideally, this image would capture their flight- the way they soar across the water, powered only by momentum and maybe catching the thermals closest to the water's surface, hundreds of metres with barely a twitch of a feather. Cool. I'll try again one day.

Blue Tongued Lizard

2008-08-15T23:23:00.000+10:00

Here's a drawing I did a while back of a bluetongue lizard I found in my backyard. It's part of a collection of images I thought I'd lost forever on a dead laptop under my desk. I managed to fire it up for half an hour last night- long enough to extract a flash drive's worth of music, images, stuff.

He was a peaceful little critter, who I found while digging a vegetable space, and nearly cut in half with a spade. The leaves were from an entirely different place- a plane tree in Richmond, which I drew while waiting for friends to get home and let me in.