Hi!
I'm an educator, physics student, city farmer and biofuels consultant currently living in Victoria, BC. I practice many skills which allow me to live a free and rich life without spending lots of money. I like to grow my own food and make things myself.
I write a BLOG where I share my thoughts on science, education, environmental news, and politics. I also talk about projects that I'm working on and share some personal life updates (though I'll try to keep those to a minimum.)
Check out my Straight Vegetable Oil fuels page to learn about how you can run your car on straight vegetable oil
Blackberry Mead
Fall in Victoria is always a wonderful time, but the thing I love most is the free berries that grow just about everywhere! In past years I've managed to pick a few small bins to make a bit of blackberry wine, but this year J. and I went out and pulled in a huge harvest. After washing, processing and filling our freezer with berries, we thought about what to do with them all. It didn't take long to decide...
Blackberry Mead
I beat third year!
The end boss was hard. And getting marks back online is the academia equivalent of "Thank you Mike!!! But our princess is in another castle!"
Still a good feeling. Quantum turned into a B, by some voodoo magic of grade curving. Apparently failing the midterm and the final is just accepted as normal. That means NO MORE MATH CLASSES! I got B's in my complex calculus and partial differential equations classes, and that's the end of that now.
FREEDOM! :)
Container gardening
Going from a full backyard to a tiny balcony has been a bit of a shock. Now that spring is here, I'm trying to see how we can make the best of it. With the Adanac st house sold (bye-bye to all our garden efforts) there were a few plants up for grabs.
Here we've got (top row from left) yarrow, more yarrow, lavender (J. bought this one), mint, parsley, and a pot with cilantro seeds. (middle row) lemon balm, sage, chamomile. (deck level) kale, arugula, chives and chard
Winterfest Ale redux
That winterfest ale? Never decided to carbonate :(
It seems my yeasty friends either decided to take a hike, or else something caused them all to meet an untimely end. Sunlight can kill yeast, and with the longer daylight hours the little apartment has been a lot sunnier....
Adventures in apartment beer + wine
Having newly found myself with less space to work with, making my own beer has required some creative solutions. Gone are the giant laundry sinks and endless shelves for holding carboys and bottles. A trip to my local homebrew shop shortly after moving in solved a lot of issues. I came back with a sink attachment that will pressurewash a bottle, a "bottle tree" for drying bottles, and new iodine sanitizer that doesn't need 15 minutes of soaking time to do its job.
War on SPAM
Anyone who's had a website with user-generated content knows that this is a problem. Forums, picture galleries, BLOGs and whatnot are just magnets for useless ads. The SPAMbots are getting smarter, and they can often pass the test which are designed to filter them out.
Intermittant blogging syndrome
Hey internets. Sorry I haven't wrote in a while. I know you've heard it all before, I'll spare you the lame excuses. Only thing worse than an out-of-date blog is the lame "sorry I've been busy lately" posts that follow it.
Out with the old:
Farewell to our chickens
It's a sad day on Adanac St. Turns out our chickens weren't quite bylaw compliant after all. Bantam chickens need to be purebreed bantams, not just small-bred chickens. Apparently there is a difference
So, we've given our girls away to a new home - a nice family from Chemainus who has a flock of chickens already, plus several goats and sheep. It's not the end of the world, since we wouldn't have gotten eggs through the winter anyway without some complicated heat lamp setup.
I have data!
TL:DR version: I have data. I'm excited. YAY! :)
Long version: It's only mid-July and I have preliminary results for my summer research project! "Only mid July"?? I can't believe I'm writing this - summer is flying past, as only hot and happy summers can do. But the point here isn't to mourn the passing of summer, but to celebrate some data!
