Eco Silliness

This has to be one of the stupidest products I’ve ever seen. Paper made from some kind of stone! So hey, no need to cut down trees! (Which grow back.) Instead, take minerals out of the earth and mix with plastic. (Neither which grow back, and plastic=oil, a contested and limited resource.) Eco friendly!

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DIY Washing Line

The washing line on my balcony was causing problems; it’s too high for MrsTrick to reach, some parts can’t be used because of the door or the bikes, and it sags when there are heavy things on it. (The span of the balcony is close to 7m)

So I built a better one. 🙂

Went from this:

Old and broken

To this:

New hotness

  • It’s got a simple pulley system so it can be raised or lowered as necessary.
  • The rigid curtain rods stop anything from sagging or needing to be retensioned.
  • Total hanging space goes from ~12m to ~15m.
  • When ‘up’, the clothes are out of the way.
  • Assisted drying! (Look at that AC compressor)

Pretty happy with how it turned out. 🙂

Heavy load of towels, drying

More pictures

Posted in DIY

Bicycle?

New bike time! The old Malvern Star has finally found another owner. Good luck to him, and I hope he remembers to carry some shifting spanners.

Walked into the local bike shop that afternoon, with the intention of purchasing two new wheels and all the fancy bits that go between them… and the store’s almost empty!

Grumble grumble… turns out their old supplier, Apollo, had been very unreliable when it came to actually delivering the bikes they’d ordered. So they’d found a new supplier, Fuji. Only they didn’t have any new bikes, either…

Was told, delivery of new bikes expected on Thursday.
“Great! Which models?”
“All of them.”
“…great!”

Except Thursday comes, and I call them up, and
“Sorry, no bikes have been delivered. Hopefully by next Thursday.”
“…great.”
So I sit here, waiting. The Fuji website has a bunch of nice-looking bikes, and of course choosing one is the tough part.

The Malvern Star was a flat-bar road bike, extremely heavy, with tyres that made you worry about the slightest bit of gravel. (In fact, the last time I went touring was cut short due to the front tyre actually exploding.) So, the requirements for a new bike are; light and durable. ‘Light’ suggests road bike, ‘Durable’ suggests hybrid.

Of the Fuji range, two look quite interesting:

FUJI Sunfire 2.0

FUJI Sunfire 2.0

 

and:

FUJI Absolute 4.0

FUJI Absolute 4.0

 

I don’t have any numbers on ‘durability’, but for weight the Absolute 4.0 is 11.78kg to the Sunfire 2.0’s 13.06. Which is better for road riding in Sydney / occasional forays into the countryside with panniers attached?