The Forgotten Few

“If you can help a child, you don’t have to spend years repairing an adult.”

Joyce Meyer

There are some classic adverts going right back to the 1980s showing a dentist but not showing a dentist.

In a similar vein, we have three foster children at the moment but we won't be showing their faces. Here they are enjoying what we mountain folk call "The Beach" aka running through a sprinkler. Kelly is watching on and generally enjoying the bonhomie.

Mountain Mayhem

We're a wee bit rusty at some things (water, hat, sunscreen; water, hat, sunscreen; water, hat, sunscreen), but slowly our old fashioned skills are being reinvigorated, and reinvented to suit the dynamic.  The kids are great, and our energy is mostly holding up at the moment.  We do miss the mindless drifting days of empty-nesting, but on the whole it's nice to be strapped back in the parent seat full time.

Speaking of full time, we will know in a week or so if our three bouncing beautiful bogans will be in residence for the remainder of the year.  Watch this space and in the meantime never underestimate how much you can love someone and how it can change their life, and that sometimes the hardest ones to love are the ones that need your love the most.

The Green House Effect (damn hot!)

The greenhouse effect is something you can observe experimentally - and most people have observed the greenhouse effect themselves, in greenhouses.

Nicholas Stern

Those paying close attention to the IOT temp/humidity data would have been somewhat alarmed by the past 24 hours of readings.  Firstly they were intermittent; and secondly was it really 47 degrees Celsius in the mountains of Tasmania today?

Dubai or Tassie?

The reason for this alarming and intermittent spike is the relocation of the electrickery box to the green house.  Apart from the longer distance for the WiFi connection, now about 25 m and through 7 walls, it gets damn hot in there (and dry - the humidity is very low in that heat).  So there are some challenges ahead.

1. Clean out all the old stuff and refit

Chop, hack and dig...

2. Hook up the green house to monitoring, the new external antenna should help with the consistency of connection (plus some recent hacking of the code), and we've got some more powerful ESP8266 modules winging their way from 中国

Little house...little antenna...

3. Collect data and figure out what we are dealing with in terms of the localised environmental conditions

One day I'll ditch the lunchbox...tacky!

4. Hook up devices to react to the monitoring, either delivering water (spray or drip), opening louvres, heating, cooling, etc., all powered either by a robot monkey or more likely a few solar panels and some 12 V batteries.

It's the TARDIS!

OK so maybe it won't look like the picture above - but it's nice to dream, eh?  In the meantime for those wishing to see what the greenhouse effect is all about, go get yourselves a glass box and enjoy some elementary science.

How the effects of anthropogenic gases have become a benchmark of political stupidity here in Australia is perhaps an exercise best left to the misanthropic!  47 degrees in Tasmania!  It's a scandal!

80% of people don't use mathematics

England is a nation of shopkeepers.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Chatting to a (teaching) colleague the other day I was rather stunned to hear him expound that as a nation we spend way too much time teaching the hard stuff like mathematics, and we should be doing more in the Arts instead.

He remarked that "80% of people don't use mathematics".  Oh the irony of using percentages to "prove" this particular point!  And I must admit I love the random amount of 80%.  It reminds me of an old mathematics joke: "34.78% of statistics are made up on the spot".

Another STEM colleague opined that we shouldn't be attempting to teach the little ones coding because we needed more tradies in Hobart.  Cough, splutter!  He reckons that we can always import our coders from overseas.  Apart from the long term problem of importing increasingly technical goods and services, and only having rocks to exchange for them, there is the niggling little fact that industry is crying out for more coders.  To the keyboards little ones!

On top of that little gem was more news in the SMH today that the big new thing in innovation is refitting a caravan used for food dispensing - you know, like my mates in College were doing in the early 1980s.  One such newly minted purveyor of culinary delights is an aerospace engineer.  Not much call for that in our third world agrarian economy we surmise.  One of our neighbours in Tasmania has quit his lecturing job in Health Sciences at UTAS to run a coffee van.  Apparently UTAS are lousy employers - who would have guessed that after hearing of Kym's experience banging her head up against the local numpties at said same formerly august institution.

Anyhoo, whilst we seem content to imitate the Old Dart back to the future and sell wares to each other at an increasingly frenzied rate, it was heartening to hear Annabel Crabb describe the Federal Parliament circus in these terms: "why are we endlessly searching for crazier hamsters when we could be redesigning the wheel itself?"  Good one Annabel, spot on as usual.

Down on the Hobart waterfront with Jonathan Livingston Seagull
doing some expert photo-bombing

Fly me to the moon

There's a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more.

Dave Grohl

A wonderful weekend in Perth for the nuptials of Mitch and Chels.  Lovely ceremony and so authentic and considered.  Thank you to all of our friends (family) who not only joined us for the wedding but also met up with us at various times during the weekend to help us celebrate the occasion.

Just another walk in the park for these two

Upon our return to the sanity of Tasmania the garden showed us how much it had pined for our company by bringing forth buckets of goodness.

Welcome home!

Congratulations to the newly married wherever you are, and congratulations to those of us who agree with Dave Grohl.