Treasure Island 2

 

Jim Hawkins and the Curse of Treasure Island by Francis Bryan (Frank Delaney, Irish novelist) [2001, ISBN 1- 84255-213-9]

The great joy in this book is the use of language in the spirit of the original Treasure Island. It has a pursuit, capture and escape; violent action and parley; disguise and mystery.

A  modern criticism of this book is that there is no gender/cultural diversity, all characters are english or scottish men apart from Hawkin's mother and the mysterious woman. 

At the conclusion attentive readers will realise that not every mystery has been resolved. Maybe the author left open the option for a sequel. 

I urge the reader first re-read the original tale by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Tak...tak...tak

 

The playing pieces I made myself by slicing up a stick and a piece of rail. The board is a piece of cloth cut with pinking shears to stop it fraying. It is a homemade game of Tak.

The rules to Tak are simple as they are in all the best games. But the play is complex.

Tak was once an imaginary game in the fantasy book A Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss [2011, ISBN 987-0-7564-0407-9]. I have read the book many times, it is a great adventure - but I cannot recommend it. It is volume two of a trilogy and the third volume is yet to be published. 

The story is told in flashback, each volume is covers the tale as told over one day in a remote inn. It is a the tale of a talented child who witnesses his parents murder and then overcomes extraordinary hardship to become a talented musician and adventurer. So far a common but well told fantasy story. The twist seems to be that he is a broken man - he has failed to avenge his parents' death, he has lost his love, and he has unleashed horrors upon the world. Volume Three is expected to be one more day so how can anything be resolved in the protagonist's favour.

But Tak is fun.

Lilies of Brisbane Valley

 

A friend gave me a couple of plants - Brisbane lilies - Proiphys cumminghamii. He said his mother used to grow them and they were easy to care for. They have flowered after a year and now there are plenty of seeds to spread around.

Infinity and beyond

 A simple book that explains some important concepts about infinity. It makes it all easy to understand.

How to count to Infinity by Marcus Du Sautoy [ ISBN 976-1-78648-497-0 ].

I have added it to my prepper library to help re-build civilisation after the fall.

Drying Out

 

In the wet weather I set up a clothesline in the workshop. I set up a floor fan to reduce the drying time.

Dumb meter

 After an prolonged delay the electricity retailer visited my house and replaced the spinning meter with a new electronic "smart" meter.

No instructions were provided with the meter, so I went to the internet. The retailers web site showed a single pdf page for three different makes of meters with confusing terminology and it did not cover what I wanted to know. Next I searched for and found the manufacturers instructions which included some standard definitions.

I learned that IMPORT means imported to the grid so what all the consumers call exporting power is defined to be importing because the terminology all is from the utility point of view. All perfectly understandable except that the information provided by the retailer does not explain it.

On my meter - EDMI Altas Mark 7C - there are tiny arrows in the upper left of the display window. 

The big red arrow points to the tiny left arrow - The left arrow means power is being imported to the grid. So when this is showing my solar is making more power than I am using.

The big blue arrow arrow points to the tiny right arrow - The right arrow means power is being exported from the grid to my house. So when this is showing I am using more power than my solar is making.

When I was engineering I was often hunting down the technical data for products and then analysing it. A sure sign of a poor product was a lack of technical data.

Caravan Improvements #5

 The first thing I broke on my caravan - within 2 hours of owing it - was the ventilation hatch winder handle. Of course it was plastic. I looked up the web site and saw that it was a prominently displayed spare part - obviously these things broke all the time.

So I made my own wooden handle by modifying a wooden knob for drawers from my local hardware warehouse [ Bunnings ]. The larger diameter of the wooden knob made the ventilation hatch easier to open and close.