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Getting Growing
I think I might join the
Ottawa Horticultural Society. I
would really like to learn more about landscape gardening.
posted at: 23:00 |
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Soggy Lawn
Ah- spring is in the air, and with it, the return of my efforts to
rejuvinate the lawn behind our flat. Having observed it for the last few
weeks, I think I have a clue to its problems- it spent much of that time
underwater. This could certainly explain the moss explosion currently
underway. Time to investigate lawn
drainage.
posted at: 21:30 |
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Bundt Pan alternatives
Or, if bundt pans aren’t your thing, you could investigate this
microwave corn popper that Colin just bought.
posted at: 21:25 |
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I think I’m…
In love with
bundt pans.
posted at: 21:21 |
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Some Technical Details on Drying Oils
This site
explains why drying oils often contain metals. It’s to speed up the drying
process.
posted at: 13:55 |
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Drying Oils
The key to making oilcloth is the use of a
drying oil.
These are oils that dry to an elastic film. Encouragingly, corn oil is one
of these. Maybe I’ll try leaving some out on a plate and see what happens.
posted at: 13:48 |
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Making Oilcloth From Scratch
At one point, oilcloth was used as a waterproof fabric. It was made by
applying polymerized linseed oil to fabric. Some people have posted about
their experiences of making it from scratch:
Experience
1
Experience
2
posted at: 13:43 |
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Resin Floor Finish
Here’s
a
natural resin floor finish. I wonder if it is edible? I wonder what
would happen if you put it on fabric?
posted at: 13:36 |
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Plant Resins
Maybe
natural plant
resins are a step in the right direction. Obviously replacing all of
our plastics with something made out of resin would wipe out the plant
population in about one second, but the key here is re-usability.
posted at: 13:34 |
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Safe (or at least safer) Plastics
CHEC (Children’s Health Environmental Coalition) does provide some
useful information on which plastics are at least better for you.
Fortunately, we can use the handy plastic recycling numbers to help us out
with this.
posted at: 13:18 |
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Plastic Alternatives
A lot of sites that discuss the problems with plastic irritate me because
they either offer no alternatives, or offer completely unrealistic
alternatives. The hardest items to replace are plastic wrap and plastic
‘zip-lock’ bags. Latex and rubber are natural products that might have
some potential, but I think they both get brittle when frozen… this is a
tough one!
posted at: 13:00 |
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Nasty Plastics
I kind of knew plastics were problematic from a health persepective. I do
suspect that
this list is a bit over the top. Still I think its information about
which plastics are used in what is useful, from a personal decision making
perspective.
posted at: 12:56 |
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Hair Style Mania
I’m loving all of the hair discussion, I must say! Here’s something to
fuel the fire: the
interactive style
selector.
It’s a searchable hair styles database.
posted at: 16:21 |
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Another Useful Title- Consumer Consultant
This is another phrase I’m running across. That’s how
Amy Todisco describes
herself. She has called her company Green Living Now Consulting. Again, a
slightly different aesthetic…
posted at: 18:31 |
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Sustainability Advisor
Okay- all of this should really be under the work category. I found a new
term to describe this type of work- a “sustainability advisor”. Fnaugh.
Fnaugh.
posted at: 18:24 |
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Aha- Found a ‘Natural Living Consultant’
I’ve been searching the web for other people with this idea who have been
successful. The first one I’ve found is
Debra Lynn Dadd- Consumer Advocate and
Natural Living Consultant. Interesting. Her aesthetic is a bit
different from mine…
posted at: 18:20 |
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A Lot of Newsletters
I continue to look into the newsletter idea. There appears to be this
strange world of newsletters out there. As evidence, see
this site. I wonder- do I
know anyone who gets a newsletter? They are just like a little
mini-magazine, which isn’t so strange, I guess.
posted at: 17:52 |
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Spring- Time for Indigenous Plants!
Spring is on its way, so once again my thoughts turn to indigenous plants.
I’m working on a list that will allow me to translate any recipe into an
(equivalent?) recipe that uses only indigenous ingredients.
for example:
The
NativeTech site has a nice list of plants.
posted at: 15:08 |
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Unrefrigerated Rice
I tend to somewhat blase about the length of time a food is
unrefrigerated, at least up to a day or two. Which isn’t to say I
don’t care about food safety- but if something looks, smells and tastes
normal then I may eat it. I cooked some rice last night and
accidentally left it out in the pot on the stove. I was looking for some
information to back up my hope/belief that the rice is still okay to eat.
Nothing definitive, but this website at least
hints that it should be okay. I like the rice cake idea, too.
And while I’m at it, this recipe for
Sushi Rice Salad/Roll-it-yourself Sushi sounds pretty fab.
posted at: 17:38 |
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Newsletters Only
Interesting- Here’s a
business that specializes in helping other people with their newsletters.
So the other people provide the content and they create the newsletter.
This site also has some advice on starting your own newsletter, although
obviously they would like you to then use their help.
This whole
‘newsletter as business’ idea is new to me, although I did help a lot of
people with their school newsletters when I worked for the Halifax School
Board.
posted at: 14:16 |
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NEPA
One of my long term goals is to start an environmental consulting
business. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. A while ago,
when I was working on my website, Colin suggested that I start a
newsletter. I was reminded of this when I came across the site of the
Newsletter and Electronic Publishers
Association. Could be a good way to get started- I could build up my
information resources by publishing a newsletter and then use those
resources for the environmental consulting work.
posted at: 13:57 |
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Mathematics Encyclopedia
The
Prime Mathematics Encyclopedia
is an online encyclopedia.
posted at: 13:30 |
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The Math Forum
The
Math Forum looks like it has some nice
resources. I would like to have a list of all mathematical operators and
all mathematical axioms. Maybe a math encyclopedia?
posted at: 13:27 |
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Recipes of The Damned
This site has
“Real scary recipes from real scary vintage cookbooks.” The recipe on the
site when I found it was raw beef sandwiches, from The Metropolitan Life
Cook Book, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, (undated).
posted at: 18:18 |
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Insta-Mexican
I did find this nice
site with a list of foods to have on hand if you want to be able to
easily cook Mexican. I’m a sucker for such lists.
posted at: 17:47 |
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Salsa Shelf Life
Colin and I are having a disagreement about the fridge life of salsa.
According to
this
site salsa should be ‘axed’ after one month. But Colin says that the
‘AskMen’ website should not be considered the ultimate authority. I tend
to agree.
Unfortunately for Colin, most of the other sites (like
this one) state that opened salsa should be removed after one *week*.
posted at: 17:38 |
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Euclid’s Elements
You can’t get more basic than
Euclid’s Elements, geometrically speaking.
posted at: 11:13 |
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Geometry
I have moved on from number systems to the Cartesian Plane. Once again,
some weird stuff going on here with hidden assumptions. Basically, the
Cartesian plane is a special case of Geometry, and some of its very basic
assumptions come from
geometric
proofs, although this is not made
explicit.
posted at: 11:06 |
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Hairagami
Hair toys…
posted at: 22:06 |
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negative*negative=positive … Aha!
Okay- finally the
Wikipedia entry tells it like it is:
“Multiplication of two negative numbers yields a positive result: (-3) B7 (-4) = 12. This situation cannot be understood as repeated addition, and the analogy to debts doesn’t help either. The ultimate reason for this rule is that we want the distributive law to work:
(3 + (-3)) * (-4) = 3 * (-4) + (-3) * (-4).
The left hand side of this equation equals 0 * (-4) = 0. The right hand side is a sum of -12 + (-3) * (-4); for the two to be equal, we need (-3) * (-4) = 12.
Actually, the first site on the history of negative numbers mentions this,
but in a more confusing way.
posted at: 15:54 |
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minus * minus = positive - But Why?
There’s seems to be a concensus among different mathematicians that two
negatives multiplied together should equal a positive. For instance, the
Indian mathematician
Brahmagupta also came to this conclusion, apparently independently, in
the 17th century:
“The product or quotient of two debts is one fortune.”
So there must be something handy about this, that shows up when you are
working on math problems. That’s fine with me- but what is it?
posted at: 15:50 |
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History of Negative Numbers
This site gives an excellent discussion of the historical confusion
and consternation generated by negative numbers. It also discusses the
issue of the product of two negative numbers being a positive number, in
a historical context.
(Note: the site is a bit confusing to read. I think it is
written in an English dialect a bit different from ours).
posted at: 15:08 |
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Ukulele Blog
Dan sent me
this blog of all things Ukulele.
Thanks Dan!
posted at: 15:02 |
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Mathematical Symbols
Even our current symbols for mathematical operations (+,-,* etc.) haven’t
been around that
long
posted at: 14:56 |
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Negative Numbers in History
I’ve been reviewing my basic math, with an eye to its historical
development. Some of the decisions of mathematicians have an ad hoc feel
to them. For instance, why did they decide that two negative numbers
multiplied together should give a positive number? Presumably they went
“Well, these negative numbers are useful sometimes, and it would be nice
to have them work with all of our basic operations…” And then they had
to make some decisions.
Apparently, the negative numbers themselves were viewed with
some
suspicion until quite recently.
posted at: 14:53 |
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Electric Grill
Due to some significant abuse, my trusty old mini-BBQ has kicked the
bucket. I’m a bit embarrassed about this- I’m sure it would have lasted me
many years if I had been a bit more careful. Colin even tried to repair it
for me, but it seems to have cooked its last burger.
While I could replace it with another version of the same model- small,
effective, cheap and portable- I’m now thinking about getting
an electric grill.
If I had an electric grill, I could BBQ on the balcony, or even in the
kitchen. I’ll have to think about this…
posted at: 14:47 |
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Cordon Vert
I like this
Cordon Vert idea. Bring on
the gourmet food.
posted at: 17:52 |
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BBQing fruit
Last night Carrie and Kevin graciously let Colin and I monopolize their
barbecue. I really love barbecuing! Last night I tried to BBQ some fruit-
I wasn’t *too* pleased with the initial results, but it definitely has
potential. These recipes
are just the tip of the iceberg, I hope.
posted at: 17:47 |
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Bamboo Steamer Cooking
There always seems to be another method of cooking to experiment with,
which makes me happy. I’ve been meaning to try out steam cooking for about
a year now, and it could be the time to give it a shot.
This
site is certainly encouraging!
posted at: 17:31 |
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Passion Plays
I inadvertently stumbled across this
information on passion plays while looking for something unrelated.
It
pointed the way to a further
very interesting document published by the Bishops’ Committee for
Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs
National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1988.
This is of more interest recently because of the recent release of the
movie “The Passion of Christ”. This movie qualifies as a passion play, and
as such falls under the jurisdiction of the Nostra Aetate. Apparently, it
also does not abide by the mandate set out in the Nostra Aetate (see the very interesting document above for information on this mandate).
posted at: 17:15 |
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Basil Algorithm
Dan, an LSU
AgCenter horticulturist writes:
“Individual basil leaves may be harvested for use, but more typically the
plant is pinched or cut back. Cut or pinch basil just above a pair of
leaves,
removing no more than a third to a quarter of the plant at one time. This
leaves plenty of foliage to keep the plant healthy and productive.”
posted at: 16:57 |
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Pinching Basil
As some of you may know, the more you cruelly pinch back your Basil
plants, the more leafy they become.
Here’s why.
I’ve also been looking for some Basil pinching algorithms. I know when you
pinch off the top of a major stalk, two new stalks grow where one used to.
However, I’ve only tried this with the first set of leaves, so I don’t
know what happens if I try variations on this. Thus the need for the
pinching algorithms.
posted at: 16:57 |
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Most Excellent South Park Generator
Thank you Keltie for sharing your discovery of the South Park Generator! I love it!
It is so eerily accurate…
Keltie made South Park portraits of various individuals. Before I realized she had done one of me, I made one of my own. The bizarre thing is- they are quite different but also both me. Hmmm… is there some CatWoman thing going on here?
posted at: 14:18 |
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Appliances in the garbage
In
Dakota County they have the following law:
“It is illegal to place the following in the garbage: washers/dryers, hot
water heaters, garbage disposals, trash compactors, ranges/stoves, air
conditioners, heat pumps, refrigerators/freezers, furnaces, microwave
ovens, dehumidifiers, dishwashers.”
Consequently, the county provides a list of places were such items can be
dropped off for proper disposal and, where possible, recycling. I need one
of these lists for Ottawa.
posted at: 18:22 |
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City of Ottawa- Garbage and Recycling
There are a few possibilities
here, at least for the old speakers. I’m still working on the
microwave.
posted at: 18:15 |
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Meetings will save the environment…
EPSC has proven to be a bit disappointing. Some samples from their
website:
“Saskatchewan announces public consultations on approaches to effective e-waste management, and identifies EPS Canada as key partner (see Press Release & Fact Sheet)”
“At the CCME meeting of November 25th in Victoria, Environment Ministers from across Canada agreed to develop Canada-wide principles for dealing with waste from electronic products, building on the principles currently being developed by the western provinces.”
Woohoo.
Okay, I’m sure they are doing good things… but where do I recycle my microwave?
The two links on their ‘Resources’ page are:
Reports and Papers and
Speeches
posted at: 18:06 |
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Electronics Product Stewardship Canada
I’ve been looking into recycling electronic products and appliances, since our old microwave and Colin’s old speakers are now taking up valuable floor space in our apartment. I hate the idea of chucking them into the landfill- although the comforting thought that perhaps in the future we will build scavenger robots that can reclaim the vast resources trapped in landfills does cheer me up somewhat… as long as the robots stay in the landfills… hmmm….
Anyway, my search begins
here with EPSC.
posted at: 18:01 |
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All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.
