Author Archives: Peta Guy

Why I went offline

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The short story is that Servage sent me a message telling me that there were pages on my blog that were infected with malware. I checked and they were disabled test sites that may have been infected with something so I deleted them. Problem fixed I thought. No.

Servage blocked the site completely so it looked as if it was disabled. They then refused to allow me to have the site re-enabled and every request I made was responded to with a form letter telling me to take security precautions that I had already taken. If they bothered to check this would have been obvious.

So I have extracted the files and recreated the parts of my website I can conveniently do so but the blog itself is now not able to be used because of a bug in an upgrade script that corrupted the database, disabling access to the admin interface of wordpress. I could only see the public part of the blog. My plan was to cut and paste the content to another blog to recover content. Servage put paid to that idea.

So am I annoyed with Servage? Yes I am. I found their service approach to be dreadful. What they offer is attractive but is it really worth the trouble it causes to have such poor service? I decided not.

I may write more about this but for the moment I will leave you with the simple message. Avoid using Servage.

Hello Again World!

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Starting to get back online.

The headline is that after a failure at Servage, my blog was corrupted. Several things could be fixed but others could not.

On a new host now at Go Hosting and things are much better. I will reconstruct old posts as I am able to retrieve the content.

Night Soldiers

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Night Soldiers Book Cover Night Soldiers
Alan Furst
Europe
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
2005-05-01
511

Suspense fiction. Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night soldiers masterfully re-creates the European world of 1934-45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944.

Another book by Alan Furst that I have greatly enjoyed. This is the originating book for the series focusing on the lead up to and during the second World War. It is about the minutiae of espionage and it seems to me to be the most authentic of all books on the subject (at least fictional). The scope is enormous and the ideas resonate for me.

  • How war and conflicts of ideology can corrupt good people.
  • Understanding your place in the world as an adolescent.
  • How loyalty can overcome brainwashing.
  • Mobilising the disaffected to a cause.

I felt for a young man trying to make sense of a world that was mad. Then doing what needed to be done to survive it… as one would. I read this book after reading almost every other book in the series. In some ways I am glad I did because the scope of the book needs some context to ground your understanding of what is happening.

As a first major writing effort, it has to be one of the best.

 

Who needs Oil and Coal?

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Essential for the Industrial Revolution but what about today?

Having a look at some of the oil exploration figures and pricing for electricity last weekend, I thought I might see how much the cost of oil might need to be before it is more economic to run cars and other transport on electricity. With the sun shining brightly and lots of electricity going into the grid from my PV panels, I started to think of how far away it might be before we are living in a very different world. A world as different as it was when my father was born into a world where private transport was by horse or walking, telephones were rarely in private homes and electricity was only just becoming commonplace for lighting.

As any reader (there are some of you) would know by now, I am firmly of the opinion that the most reliable and economic way to supply the energy needed for a fair and equitable world (this means a roughly even standard of energy consumption globally that matches the middle ranks of OECD countries) is to generate electricity from solar thermal power plants and also take advantage of geothermal energy sources. The impediments to these technologies are industrial inertia (because the dominant paradigm is to dig up and burn coal) and the relative cost differential for solar generated electricity vs fossil fuels.

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Young People Today …

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Who is at fault?

Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.

Marcus Tullius Cocero

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. AKA – The Golden Rule

My mother. Her mother ... and so on

If young people today are so bad (eg the Cronulla Riots) then it is because they have us as an example to follow… The debacle in our Federal Parliament over what is a relatively small number of refugees coming to Australia by boat is just shameful. These people are elected to represent their constituents, sure. That does not mean that they lose all responsibility.

The argument that they represent the views of their electorate is a poor one. It is a minority of their electorates who would make the decision themselves to let hundreds of people die when they could save them. But vocal minorities who do not want anyone “to jump queues” get to make the decisions because they get heard in the media. Since when was queue jumping punishable by death? Rather than find a humane and sensible approach to processing people trying to enter the country without a permit (legally by International conventions Australia has signed up to), the political parties prefer to allow hundreds of people to die. Why? Sadly it is to score political points and nothing more. May history condemn you, who by your failure to act humanely, cause others to die.

Sunshine is the best heating

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Well into Winter now and the very short days are here. Paradoxically this is the best time for heating the house from sunshine. Walking on the slate with bare feet when it is -4 degrees outside and opening curtains to let the sunshine in is a great pleasure. With sun coming in to nearly 4 metres almost all the floor is warm now. Late afternoon in the sun is t-shirt weather inside while it is 12 or so degrees outside. This is good and happily the double glazing works very well for the sunny days.

I still think there is some further benefit to be gained from increasing insulation in the roof and walls. That looks feasible before the next summer. Add the increased sunlight from removing shadows cast by the existing pergola and it could add 4 kWh of heating and reduce 12 kWh of cooling (heat leakage) to the daily winter heat budget – when I complete these improvements.

With energy costs approaching 15c and 25c for gas and electricity (per kWh) respectively that amounts to over a dollar a day in gas saving. Effectively $150 a year which is significant but secondary to the sheer comfort and joy of being in a warm and sunny place. Compared with 5 years ago, when I needed to have heating of some sort all of June and July all through the day or be quite cold, the difference is remarkable. 21 degrees inside with no heating on compared to 18-19 with heating on – guilt free :).

Dear Australia Post …

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I used to really like it when parcels delivered to my home, when I was not there, would be taken to the local post office where I could pick it up on a Saturday or late afternoon. So why do you now send the parcel off to a depot where they are only open during hours when I normally work (more than an hour’s round trip away too!) and not open at all on the weekend?

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Growing about 30% of my own food

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A rough calculation shows that I grew around 30% of the food I ate in the warmer 8 months of the past year. Most of that was from vegetables grown in Summer and then stored one way or another. I am still eating zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant and chilli from before the frosts. Raspberry jam from two weekends ago should last about a year. There is a kilo or more corn in the freezer and I made tomato puree that will do for a few weeks. If I am lucky I might be able to increase this percentage for next year with more garden beds and a better approach to growing corn and capsicum.   What I cannot conveniently grow myself are dairy foods, cooking oil and most grains. So for the next two years I will experiment with:

  • Nut trees/bushes. Hazelnut and walnut seem appropriate for this climate
  • A small amount of grain crop – yet to be determined
  • Starting capsicum seedlings early in the glasshouse and transplanting in October
  • Starting tomatoes from seed and transplanting in November (glasshouse again)
  • Growing more basil and coriander in a mini greenhouse and/or inside
  • Add another 3 sq metres of garden bed for more vegetables
  • Better distribution of plants so that they get more light and are less crowded
  • Plan my corn two per week over 8-12 weeks so I get more over a longer period (and don’t have to pick and freeze)

Slightly exciting to plan this.

Energy update

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Not much really but I used 5.2 MWh of electricity in a year and generated 3.4 MWh from the PV panels. Predicted generation was 2.6 MWh from the supplier so all seems good to me. Getting the electricity usage lower is going to be hard because of an electric oven and running a lot of electrical equipment. Still I think I can get below 5MWh per annum easily and perhaps to 4 if I replace some appliances and/or install some building automation to control some things.