Category: learning curve

Back to school 2018

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And so, the day I was dreading on Monday has come to pass. And it wasn’t so bad after all.

Looking back now (and to be fair, it is some chronological distance), I can’t recall my feelings at heading back to school after the summer break. Obviously, coming from a Northern hemisphere nation, we started back in September, but other than that, not much has is very different, and when I dropped our two off this morning, there was the usual melange of oversized school bags, new uniforms, smiles, tears and anxious parents.

Not for us, of course. Our kids were gone – Single Use Plastic-free lunchboxes in hand – just as soon as the car doors opened. They’ve headed back to school with a good deal of enthusiasm, tempered with perhaps just a touch of resignation at the end of the holiday and a smidgen of trepidation at the challenges that lie ahead. But the experience was overwhelmingly positive – they enjoy school and they react well to having more structure to their days – especially after 7 (seven!) weeks of holiday.

Last year was exceptional. Let’s see if we can do even better in 2018.

Knee

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Phases 2 and 3 of The Great Knee Repair took place today. I told you I was going to get this sorted.
Phase 1 happened on Monday when an X-ray was taken of my knee.
Phase 2 was a short, expensive, but mainly positive appointment with the surgeon, and Phase 3 was a short, expensive, but mainly positive MRI back at the Radiology Department.

Here’s one of the many hundreds of images that were taken. I know basically what I’m looking at here, but I’m not completely au fait with exactly what a good knee should look like.
If you’re in the know about these things (and I know of at least three doctors that regularly read this blog), and it shows something massively serious, rather leave it for the knee doc to tell me when I chat to him later this week.

Of course, I need something to be wrong. There’s no point in going through all these short, expensive appointments only to find that… well… there isn’t anything to find. I need something to be wrong so that they (the knee team) can put it right. Truth be told, I know that they’ll find something, because I have absolutely typical symptoms for cartilage damage. I’d just like it to be cartilage damage for the right reasons and still in some sort of repairable state.

MRI images are quite cool to look at, but if there was to be some sort of Trophy for Cool Scientific/Medical Images, they would fall some way behind electrophoresis gels:

for overall trendiness, I feel.

Such pretty, orderly lines. Glad I’m not patient number 6 though, hey?

Sewing doesn’t help

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Yesterday was nice. Really nice. A couple of light showers and drizzle for most of the day. A miserable Sunday at any other time or in any other place, but we loved it. The garden was sighing with relief, the rainwater tanks were refilled, and we got at least another 1200 litres into the pool, whose situation had, in all honesty, been looking a little precarious.

It was like someone had pressed a reset button. Wonderful.

But this was small scale, of course. Yesterday won’t have made any meaningful difference to our water crisis. It just made my lawn feel a bit happier. We need real, heavy, prolonged, regular rain to sort out our water problems.

But yesterday was nice. Really nice.

While I’m on the subject of the water crisis (but then actually, when am I ever not?), let me remind you that sewing doesn’t help the situation. Not sewing as in stitching a couple of pieces of fabric together (although that won’t assist us either), but SEWing.

SEW stands for Someone Else’s Water, and SEWing is a new concept that I have noted recently and named, like the Stable Genius™ I can like to be.

Saving water has become, in some circles at least, intensely competitive.

Bring it on, I say.

If my triumphant, vaguely arrogant assertion at a braai that “We’re down to 50 litres a day” somehow spurs you into trying to reduce your daily water usage, then that’s great. Everyone benefits.
But your reduction must be a genuine one, made by saving water in your own home. It’s no use merely SEWing. That doesn’t help anyone.

SEWing is the act of ostensibly saving water, but merely doing so by diverting your actual usage onto someone else’s account. There appear to be many ways to SEW, all of which will lower your household water bill, but won’t help the overall water crisis situation in any way. Handing your washing over to a local laundry. Watering your garden using a hosepipe attached to next door’s tap while they’re away on holiday. Showering at the gym. Washing your car at a local car wash. Saving that big poo for work.

Spoiler alert: Just because that water doesn’t appear on your municipal bill doesn’t mean it isn’t getting used. It’s all coming from the same worryingly empty dams.

Your rates bill may look good, your car may look good, your garden may even look good if (in an entirely hypothetical situation) your neighbour asked you to keep an eye on their property while they went to Europe for Christmas [nervous cough], but it’s a hollow victory.

So if you’re a closet SEWer, you’ve been rumbled. I’m on to you and your despicable, duplicitous, deceitful actions. It’s time to think again. Because you’re not moving Day Zero out by dropping the kids off at the pool at the office.
And your colleagues hate you for it too.

Ecobrick

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I said that I was going to try to use less plastic this year. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll be able to stop using plastic altogether. Don’t be daft. Plastic is ubiquitous.
Where I can then, I’ll make appropriate and sensible choices, but it’s inevitable that I will still use some plastic.

We’ve been recycling our plastic, glass and paper waste for several years already, but now I’ve come across another way to recycle our plastic waste.

Step forward, the Ecobrick:

What are Ecobricks?
Ecobricks are low cost, thermally insulating bricks that are made by simply compressing unrecyclable plastic into 2L bottles.
Why we’re in love with them
Making ecobricks is a way to save the environment whilst supporting a needy community from the comfort of your kitchen counter.
What do we do with Ecobricks?
Affordable housing for you and me
Raised beds for our gardens
Benches for parks and gardens
Boundary walls
Temporary exhibition structures

And it really is as easy as poking plastic packaging into a 2 litre Coke bottle (make sure you drink the Coke before you start poking) (messy otherwise).

It’s easy, fun and actually quite addictive. You’ll be amazed how much plastic disappears into one of these bottles once you squish it in a bit. It’s like an inverse Magic Porridge Pot – there always seems to be space for more.

And once you’ve made a few, you simply drop them off at one of the Ecobrick Exchange handy hippie drop off points in Cape Town, Johannesbeagle, Pretoria or Mordor Port Elizabeth:

Or you can build something yourself.

It’s a great, safe, fun and simple way to involve the kids in recycling, and you’re actually doing something good with all that nasty plastic.

Spring clean

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This is a suitably out-of-season post then. While the Northern and Southern Hemispheres may differ diametrically in seasons, precisely neither of them are currently in Spring.
Never mind, we’ll soldier on.

This is about spring cleaning your technical devices, and it’s important:

Like your car, or your kitchen, your tech devices will run best when they’re maintained properly — and that means finding time to do all those low-level maintenance tasks that aren’t much fun, but can keep everything stable and smooth, and avoid problems in the future.

I can’t remember the last time that I maintained my kitchen to be honest, but well, yes – the car thing stands.

So, herewith a Gizmodo guide of several things that you can do to make your tech run more smoothly. They’re all common sense, but if it wasn’t for reminders like this, you’d probably just not remember to do them.
So yes, it’s dull, but it’s worth doing and it’s actually rather cathartic.

For several different reasons, I’ve done most of them over the last month or so. We’ve got a few new devices around at home, so that seemed like a good opportunity to sort some of these basic problems out. And, I have to say, my study is tidier and my devices are (currently) working flawlessly.

Set some time aside and have a tech spring clean. Thank me later.