House and Household

Just a post my mum could not get thru normal media.... Subject: Warming dilemna Peter Lea tells us (Inquirer Dec 27-28) we have to chose between human welfare and the welfare of the environment.  Does not the welfare of the environment ineluctably involve the humans within it?  He adds, that "For millenia, humans have adapted to climate change".  Indeed they have.  As a prehistorian, I know that my colleagues have shown that, in Australia, extreme arid phases involved human population decrease, the concentration of usage around reliable water sources, and the virtual abandonment of whole swathes of terrain within previously well-used parts of the centre and west of the continent.  Is this the sort of "adaptation" denialists envisage for our continent? I notice that most of those who do not regard rising temperatures as a worry live in the cooler portions of the globe - northwest Europe, or  the eastern or southern coastal belts of Australia.  

thoughts_on_social_media Thoughts on Social Media Or why I just dumped facebook I’m in shock aft er setting up a facebook account to follow the kids and communicate with my fellow conservators several years ago, I was quite wedded to it but it also bugged me. Too intrusive.. I found G+ nicer… Amazingly it was another site/app that made me dump facebook. I have previously had apps pinch all my contacts but this time it was the fact that an site/app pretending to be a message for me from someone I wasnted to talk too… I got suckered and did not uncross all of the permissions when signing up. So it spammed everyone in my facebook account. All 1400 of them. So in a fit of peek I deleted both accounts. Felt sooo good. I may eventually set up a very private account so my family can keep in touch but after having a similar thing happen with Linked-in I was not in a mood for a repeat. So sorry to all of you who want to follow my mianderings on “facebook”. I will be doing some thin

Overview as at 11 October 2014 Bought a Soma "GRAND RANDONNEUR frameset" For some time now I have lusted after a 650B bicycle. Thought about several conversions from a 700c but never got round to it. Conversions always seemed so much of a compromise. After I sold two Volvos I rewarded myself by getting a Soma frame set from Commuter cycles in Brunswick.I also acquired; 650B wheels Hub generator SKF gut axel The build Stage One I assembled the Frame with the  bits I had in shed ; Suntour headset Sugino Chainwheel 24, 34, 44 Suntour Cyclone II front changer Suntour Superb Rear Longarm changer 7 speed Suntour rear hub Suntour change leavers - indexed / friction set to friction generic aluminium seat tube generic head stock adapter and forward style headset? touring figure 8 type handle bars rear rack blackburn front bag mounts shimarno v brakes and brake levers with coolstop pads. A great rear changer Oh and 650B x 42 mm - “Hetre” (red) Gra

Updated my iMac 27-inch, Mid 2011 to 32 gig of ram. Before that I’d been running windows or and linux thru bootcamp directly on the disk partion. The box was slow no matter how I looked at it. 32 gig of ram helped no end.  The aim was to have enough ram that I could run windows and linux in VM’s so I did not have to reboot to use my favourite programs. I was septical... fitted ram.. removed partitions. installed parallels 9. Installed windows 8 - installed office 2013— installed a few lines just to be sure - ubuntu 12.04.01 opensuse fedora debian testing mint and ... all worked. windoze 8 went in and integrated well with the desktop in coherent mode as dis ubuntu 12.04 and fedora. Opensuse, Magiea and debian would once you got the tools installed so the mouse is not grabbed by the VM. Mac and win doze will be my main work tools. Ubuntu my play time. Oh have yet to overstreach the ram.

One thing about an old shop is the advertising. Below are some examples.                    

Fireplaces are essential in the Midlands. In winter it is not warm and the wins cut through from the Highlands. Traditionally the only way going of keeping warm was to burn wood in a fireplace. Nice solid sandstone fireplaces actors heatsinks and keep the house warm through the cold. When we acquired our house most of the fireplaces had been covered up. The lounge room fire had an insert into it that had been used as the main heating for the whole house. Upstairs had coal fires.   The traditional Rayburn stove in the kitchen and had been removed and replaced by Gastown and gas hot water heater. the result of this move was that the kitchen is extremely cold and leaks like a sieve.   Robin and I had a wonderful weekend where we opened up two of the old fireplaces. In the library fireplace we added a fireguard and started to use the fireplace. In the small office because the base of the fireplace had been removed we were unable to use it.