So that’s why I’ve been sniffly and vaguely lethargic.
I took a PCR test because I was at the doctor’s for unrelated reasons and figured I might as well. We live in an age of technology, and I find it cool that we can just know this stuff.
Still no idea where I got it, but I suspect it was the office.
A couple of weekends ago I took part in the Brisbane to Gold Coast 100km cycle for cancer. It was pretty rough to be honest. I wasn’t well conditioned for it and there were some stonking headwinds that destroyed me (and several others I talked to).
It was cool though. We arrived at South Bank 5am and milled around for an hour and a half, until we all filed onto the Southeast Busway and rode some 60 kilometres in the pissing rain to the first rest stop. It was pretty shocking. I was drenched through, and there were people at the first aid tent under foil blankets trying to warm up. Thankfully I’d organised to stay the night on the Gold Coast so I had a change of clothes at that point.
But after the rain, the wind picked up. 55 km/h gusts which were a headwind for most of the remaining course. It was absolute carnage. My internal monologue was particularly negative for most of it, but at the second rest stop there was only 15 km or something to go so I figured I’d be able to make it.
As I got near the finish I knew I wasn’t making good time because I spotted the crew coming up behind me packing up the route. I joined the two other people who were being ushered along by the last first aid car, and we made ok time. But in the last kilometre of the route we turned a corner and suddenly the skyscrapers forming a barrier from the wind weren’t there any more so we were buffeted with the full force of it straight off the Pacific.
I gave up and sat at a bus stop for a few minutes before getting back on the bike and getting to the finish line. Pretty pleased to have made it. I’d do it again, but yowzer.
That night I had a fever. This is apparently a thing exercise can do. I enjoyed a warm bath, had lots of protein and snacks, and slept for 12 hours.
Here’s me looking pleased to cross the finish line. Pretty happy with myself.
On my recent camping trip to Woody Head I managed to scratch the ever loving heck out of my sunglasses. I don’t know how, I just picked them up and they had deep plough marks across the middle right in the line of sight. So I walked into Sunglass Hut to see if they sell replacement lenses and the lady was like “lol no” and I ordered them online from a third party who does.
Apparently Luxottica, owner of Sunglass Hut and the monopolist in fashion sunglasses doesn’t give customers the option to repair broken sunglasses. I suppose they expect you just chuck them out and buy a new pair. The industry seems to be rife with plastic waste.
But it was pretty easy to find Sunglass Fix, an SEO friendly name for a company that makes replacement sunglass lenses for a bunch of Luxottica brands.
The replacements were easy to pop in and I took them out for a bike ride for the first time today. They’re not as warm hued as my old lenses, but there’s something so weirdly crystal clear about the world with a good pair of polarised lenses. I would recommend.
I took another ride over the weekend along the bikeway down the Western Freeway/Centenary Highway I’ve ridden to S’ place before, and that stretch between Toowong and Taringa is a long and persistent climb. But I wanted to do the whole length, partly for something to do, and partly because I wanted to write about it.
My goal was to get to Darra station and catch the train home. That would give me a handful of kilometres on the clock, and would be a nice easy day since I was just recovered from my sniffles (so I thought).
The hills out of the city were, I don’t know, kind of fun. Hard to climb, but there were some huge downhill stretches you could cruise for ages at probably too much speed.
I found an interesting looking path just on the other side of the Brisbane River and followed it to Rocks Riverside Park and the old Oxley Wharf (not in Oxley, but right on the border). A bunch of old industrial totems had been left as decoration, which was cool. Good find.
All in all did about 30 kms by the time I arrived at the train station and found out the trains were shut down for the weekend. So I rode part the way home and caught a ferry the rest of the way.
I locked my bike up and got myself an aloe vera drink as a treatIs it possible to take a good photo wearing a helmet? I don’t reckon it is.
Closer to home, my shrimps had babies. I bought shrimp for my tank in September to replace the first lot that died earlier in the year due to the unfortunate pest control incident. They started off so little! But not too long after I saw a bunch of shed exoskeletons and they got the zoomies, and it turns out one of the females had eggs.
It was kind of exciting even though I assumed the fish would eat them all. But I set about getting more hiding places and twigs and rocks and things just in case.
I didn’t see anything for ages until the other day I looked in the tank and saw some tiny, tiny little shrimp on top of the rock. Two new babies. Evidently the only ones to survive the tank and get big enough that the fish wouldn’t hassle them.
Since then I’ve found another female with eggs, so there will be possibly more shrimp in the future. Or more tasty snacks for the fish. Either way, how cool!
The new babies acclimating to their new homeThis lady is full of eggs.The tiny, tiny baby. Maybe a centimetre long.
As I laid in the tent listening to the midnight thunderstorm rumbling ever closer, I wondered if my luck was about to run out.
A month earlier I’d been contemplating where my next camping trip would be. After a few solo runs I thought I’d invite some friends along as well, and we eventually settled on a date and location at Woody Head in mid October.
Woody Head is a partially accurate descriptor. It’s three hours drive south of Brisbane, halfway between Grafton and Ballina. It sits on a rocky headland in between beaches with rainforest on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, and has plenty of amenities and even a little shop if you’re so inclined. I picked it because I went here as a kid, and once as an adult, and it’s one of the only National Parks I know where you can camp directly by the beach. It’s a little slice of paradise for $34.85 a night.
I picked up S and drove the EV down, stopping for lunch and a recharge at Ballina, and with a discombobulating timezone change we arrived around 2pm and set up camp.
Here I am doing the incredibly important task known as “faffing”
After camping with a string of leaky, awkward tents I decided to get something with a vague whiff of quality about it and bought the Coleman Instant Up Darkroom 4 Person Tent. It doesn’t quite thworp and pop out instantly like the foldable tents, but it’s pretty easy to just extend the legs out and pull a fly over the top. The benefit of this tent is I can actually stand fully upright in it, so I can get changed or whatever without having to contort myself into an aching pretzel after a mediocre sleep. It’s slightly larger when packed up and I haven’t worked out where to store it in my apartment yet, but it’s so much more comfortable than anything I’ve tried thus far.
My good friends An & Ax arrived shortly after and unloaded their gear, including a big 3×3 gazebo which was perfect to set up a kitchen underneath. In the usual camp tradition, now I have gear envy want to get one for myself. After we conquered nature through sheer grit, determination, and mass produced mod cons Ax went to (unsuccessfully) start a fire in the adjacent fire pit and I unpacked the milk frother and plugged it into the EV to make hot chocolate for everyone.
By the time we’d had a chance to relax into a communal cheese board the sun had gone down. Probably something to do with the time zone change. We chatted for a while, explored the rocky beach in the dark, and took this album cover in the pitch darkness.
We’re not on Spotify but u can buy our cassette
The forecast called for rain, but in the end it was totally fine. Until close to midnight when S spotted lightning on the horizon. We thought maybe it was the flash of a torch but soon after it happened again and this time we all saw it and figured it might be time to fortify the campsite and go to bed.
After unplugging the electronics and putting everything undercover we retired to the tents.
My little blow up mattress was surprisingly comfortable, but with the windows closed to the rain the tent was stifling hot, and my big fluffy sleeping bag was no help. I was exhausted and fell asleep almost instantly, though it didn’t last long because the thunder kept creeping closer and closer.
When it transmuted from low pitch rumbles to high pitch crackling I heard the boozy campsite across from ours start to panic, moving cars and hammering in pegs. Shortly afterwards the wind picked up and big fat drops started to fall on the canvas. The thunder was almost directly overhead when a huge crack freaked everyone out and the rain turned from drops into a deluge which I expected to feel dripping through the tent fabric onto my body at any moment. But it didn’t happen. The trusty Coleman held its own just fine.
I listened to the thunderstorm as it passed over and rolled out to sea, then fell asleep until morning when I woke to the sound nobody wants to hear.
It was a sort of scratch-scratching in the campsite. A wild animal was clearly enjoying something we’d left out the night before.
The toilet block had a sign warning campers to protect food from goannas, and there was no way I was going to mess with one of those danger units before breakfast. So I kind of just imagined how good it would be if the goanna would just go away of its own volition as I avoided the problem and slipped back to sleep.
Thankfully it wasn’t a goanna. Instead it turned out to be a bush turkey that got into the flimsy garbage bag and spread detritus all over the camp which An had the misfortune of being first to discover, and thus clean up. Turns out the native animals are all clued into where the food is, so we learned quickly never to leave a garbage bag unattended.
That morning for breakfast I just had a hot chocolate and disappeared to the shoreline for some alone time and glute stretches to undo the rigours of sleeping on the ground.
The tide was too high to swim so we decided to go later.The forest in the distance is eroding and falling into the ocean.
C, unable to get time off work, rolled into camp at about ten o’clock. The sign says you can only set up from 2pm but there was nobody there so we set up the tent anyway. Ask forgiveness not persimmons, etc.
After that we cleared the campsite of anything the turkeys might like to rummage through and piled into Ax’s Jeep and drove ten minutes into the small beachside town of Iluka for ice creams and adventure on the high seas.
The ferry runs from Iluka to Yamba five times a day and costs $11.30 each way. It’s a small catamaran painted blue and white, and a surprising number of people were waiting at the top of the gangway holding take away coffees from the cafe next door. The overly charismatic deckhand invited everyone onboard and we staked an outdoor seat at the rear so we could watch the trip up close.
The diesel engines grumbled to life and we started our circuitous 30 minute journey down the river, around several islands, and in to Yamba.
The serenity was a vibe. The sky was intensely blue with puffs of cumulus suspended lazily in the salt haze, and the water shifted through every colour from blue to green. Shortly after we left S saw a dolphin, which the deckhand jokingly claimed would cost $15. I got the impression he’d used that one many times before.
“You’re lucky, it’s $100 if you see a whale!”
After forty-five minutes we docked at Yamba and started out on our adventure. We didn’t get far before we decided to stop at the bowlo for lunch.
The lunch was good value, but the bowling club was a tacky monument to gambling and had no charisma whatsoever. So after finishing lunch we stopped at the Wobbly Chook Brewing Co for coffee. The Chook in contrast was an open air bar in a cute country town high street nestled among cafes, bike shops, and other tourist oriented businesses. Although the fudge place was closed for the day to everyone’s disappointment.
I wanted to hike up to the lighthouse to check out the view, and I’d convinced everyone else to come along despite the high UV index. But after seeing the disorientingly steep street up and getting lost trying to take a detour, we decided to stay at sea level and walk around the foot of the cliffs to explore the beaches and rock formations.
After getting more than enough sun, we headed back in time for the last ferry of the day.
“It’s a $160 dollar taxi ride if you miss it” informed the deckhand, before rattling off the taxi prices from all the nearby towns to Iluka.
When we arrived back at the camp there was a mess of all over the table and a bush turkey in the distance gorging itself on a plastic bag of powdered milk. I made an inappropriate gendered slur and chased it away, and picked up the mutilated bag of yellow dust between thumb and forefinger with a look of sheer disgust before plopping it into a fresh bin bag.
Thankfully we picked up actual milk while we were in town, but I couldn’t believe a turkey was even interested. Can they digest lactose? Or would it puff up and start to lactate forming an entirely new branch of the evolutionary tree?
My sense of indignance was short lived because in an earlier act of self-sabotage I offered to make chilli for the group that night. The electric cooktop can plug straight into the car, and I have a vegetarian recipe with (almost) entirely shelf stable ingredients so I didn’t need to keep things in the cooler. It’s not a complicated recipe, but it takes about two hours so I had to make a start by soaking the TVP.
After dousing the TVP in water and securing it firmly lest any turkeys try their chances, we headed to the beach for a swim.
The tide was out so the beach we thought would be there was mostly rocks. But we found a nice spot around the corner which was perfect. It wasn’t freezing, but it was sufficiently cold that I took a good 15 minutes before I felt confident putting each subsequent body part under the water.
We stayed until the sun started to set, the headed back to shower and finish cooking. In the end the chilli was excellent. I made little chilli quesadillas paired with cheese and sour cream, and a handful of corn chips on the side. Despite an impromptu cheese board forming beforehand and nobody claiming to be particularly hungry we didn’t leave any chilli left over. This made me very happy indeed.
That night we all tried our hand at getting the fire alight before former girl scout An finally got it going with a little assistance from the firelighters we bought from IGA earlier. Then we all sat around, exhausted but satisfied to the core.
The next day we packed up early, made breakfast on one of the barbecues by the shore, and headed into Iluka for coffee before parting ways and starting the 3.5 hour journey home.
My retrospective thoughts are:
Originally I wanted to bikepack, so my camping decisions were based around small size and weight. But I think I’ve realised I prefer comfort. This was a comfortable trip.
To that end I really want a gazebo of my own. It’s such a practical piece of camping equipment, and it’s so fast to put up. Tentworld sells white ones which presumably reflect heat better.
Next time I’ll take a crate or box to put gear in. The camp table was barely visible under the miscellaneous crap that we brought. And it’s not a particularly grippy surface so things kept sliding off. Having a place to put em all would help a lot.
Don’t forget to bring kindling. And firelighters. But I don’t think I care to cook on a fire when the cooktop used less than 2% of the EV battery for a couple of hours usage. Especially considering how much easier it is. I think it’s safe to say it’s fine to use for a weekend away with no problems.
After filling out and submitting the lengthy and repetitive Microsoft Word drone permission slip, NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service sent me a wildly patronising refusal to fly in the national park, so next time I won’t even botherrrrrr.
Overall it was a great trip and I’d do it again.
There’s something about the ocean, the actual ocean, that puts you at ease. Waking up to the sounds of rainforest birds (turkeys excepted) is a pretty good way to do it. And at a time when living just costs more, you can’t beat camping with good friends. I feel very lucky.
I wrote a few weeks back about the opening of a local queer bar, Come To Daddy. I really like it, it’s nice to have it just down the road, and they do food and a decent mocktail.
But it’s been my bugbear that they don’t have a website and I have to go to Instagram to find out what’s happening. I had to sign up for an account because it seems half the internet is behind Meta’s paywall these days.
Anyway I just checked my bank statement and guess who has a website after all?
That’s right, cometodaddy.au (West End gay bar) has existed all this time, just it hasn’t shown up in search results. So I thought I’d link to it and maybe prompt the spiders to start spidering.
We went for lunch this Sunday. We rocked up at 1:30, which is when their brunch menu ends and their regular menu begins. We saw a couple of massive big breakfasts go past, but I was more interested in the parmi (parma on the menu).
The food was alright. The Croque Daddy wasn’t super crunchy, and the schnitzel was on the cheaper side, but the chips were great and the coleslaw was the star of the show. It really surprised me because I don’t usually even like it, but this was super fresh and the dressing was really nice.
I rate the place. This wasn’t fine dining, but it was about what I expected. I’ll have to head back for the brunch sometime. Want to come with? Hit me up.
It starts as an indeterminate sound, I don’t even know how to describe it. But shortly after you get the high frequencies and you know it’s a plane. As it gets closer you hear the air start to tear apart, the echo all around the concrete canyons of the apartment complexes. Until finally, the bass rumble in your chest.
As it passes overhead, or even as it passes a suburb across, I can look out my window and see the planes. My bedroom window.
Then, as soon as it’s arrived, it’s gone again. Fading out into the distance and you’re left wondering, when will the next one come? Is that it, can I hear it? Or is it my imagination?
Sometimes, the next one will arrive immediately. You’ll have plane after plane after plane, a constant roar like the other morning starting at 6am. Sometimes there’s only a couple, like tonight.
A couple at midnight.
Again at 1am.
The 01:55 flight to Dubai.
No rhyme or reason.
I’m laying here trying to get to sleep, but my chest is just filled with anxiety. It’s a terrible sound. It’s a terrible thing to live with these machines flying across your home at all hours.
It’s terrible that someone made the decision to deliberately change the flight path.
There are tens of thousands of people living in this suburb, let alone all the others.
And I wonder how much the noise pollution is taking its toll on them. As it is me.
I took this week off to unwind. What better way than out in the bush, adjacent a creek, sitting next to a campfire watching satellites spin past?
I’ve wanted to get back into camping for a while now. I figure it’s a good way to get some downtime without spending a fortune on accommodation. The national parks in Queensland are seven bucks a night, which is a cheap weekend away these days, and there’s plenty of them.
The Qld Government has a website listing all their campgrounds, and you can filter by things like toilet availability, whether or not you need a four wheel drive to access.
I was originally planning to drive north but after checking the forecast figured south had less likelihood of wet and I landed on a little campground called Spicers Gap Campground.
It feels like a lot of things went wrong, but I figure the best way to approach them is with a sort of zen mindset. The first omen, I ordered a V2L cable for my EV so I could power my cooktop and assorted bits. It was sent express post last week but Australia Post managed to lose it somewhere in Melbourne. So I picked up a small gas stove instead.
Then I forgot to bring my water bottle AND the 15l tank of water, both sitting on my kitchen bench. So I had to stop in and get some bottled water.
One cool thing was finding an EV charger on the way at the Queensland Raceway, and it’s completely freeeee. It’s advertised as some ridiculously high speed charger, but I only got about 80 kilowatts, enough to charge the EV up while I ate a sandwich (ham cheese & tomato, stale, from the same fuel station I got the water).
Once I’d topped up to 80% I drove the hour or so south to the campground, only to hit a dirt road up a steep hill with a sign saying “4×4 ONLY”.
I checked the website and yeah, it says it’s only accessible by four wheel drive. But it’s also listed as a regular 2WD accessible camp. So I checked to see if there were any other access roads (there weren’t), then had a look to see if there were any other campgrounds nearby (kinda), before practising my calm and driving off.
Manna Gum, the nearby camp was only 13 km away, but the drive up through the Great Diving Range and looping back on a long and windy road was 85 km.
I arrived about an hour later and un-thworped my pop-up tent in a little spot the furthest away from the only other people at the camp.
Some observations:
There’s no mobile signal (Spicer’s Gap would have been on the cusp of service, so I bought a Telstra SIM specially for the occasion)
There are cows! Lots of them, just chilling around the place.
It’s really nice, it’s a eucalypt rainforesty looking place, and I can hear the creek flowing nearby. Can’t wait to check it out.
It was also much further away than I thought. I went from 80% to 43% battery after the little detour. I know that the cooktop doesn’t use THAT much power, but I’d still feel a bit of that range anxiety getting back.
Especially because there’s no signal I can’t look up nearby chargers hahahahaaaaa oh no.
It was at this time I realised I forgot to bring the ropes for my tarp, and the eggs for breakfast. Almost like I should have a checklist for this stuff.
It was a nice afternoon though. I didn’t really do anything other than set up the campsite and sit around watching cows while trying to get the fire going. It took a little bit of coaxing, because I didn’t really have any kindling. But I got one of the thinner logs to catch fire eventually and it kept itself mostly going all night.
When the sun started to go down, a big swarm of cockatoos tore open the sky with their screeching. A couple of wallabies came out of the trees to snack on the grass, and a big fat possum jumped on the ground right behind me which gave me a fright. Can’t get away from them it seems.
So it was only myself and the campers up the hill at the campgrounds. At the other campsite it was only going to be ME all by myself. Shawn asked if I’d get scaredy out in the wilderness on my own, but there’s not really any wildlife to cause troubles here. Maybe overinquisitive cows?
Though when I went to book the original booking the site told me there were a certain number of campsites at the camp, and also that the same number of campsites were available to book, and I realised that anyone could just scrape that data and find campsites with 1 person staying by themselves. And go steal their nickels or whatever tech savvy criminals might do. So probably not great opsec there, so I booked for two people instead of one because I figured it’s not that much more expensive and it might give said crimbinals pause. I’m thinking about mailing the department behind it to suggest they don’t do that any more.
But overall it was fine, and I’m happy to say that my first night was tranquil AF watching the animals, the stars, the fire. Brain off, relaxation.
Dinner was sausage gnocci.
Around 8 o’clock the fire sort of gave up firing and I decided to go to bed to write some blog.
It was that point I realised the tent I bought is too small. It looked alright by the specs. It’s longer than I am, therefore all good? Turns out nah, I can’t lay down and type without both the laptop and my feet brushing the canvas. I think it’ll be alright to sleep in. A bit squishy, but alright. But I think I’m gonna have to upgrade at some point in the future.
So I’m laying here, finishing up, listening to the creek running down the hill and I’m pretty happy.
Also I forgot to bring a pillow.
The next day I woke up to the sound of a strange bird calling and warbling outside my tent. There were a few of them, and I heard them crashing around outside. Or maybe that was the wallabies.
I didn’t look because it was 6 o’clock and I desperately wanted to sleep. Also it was raining and I desperately didn’t want to get wet.
My choice in tent didn’t help there. It’s the Pavillo Cool Mount 2, another cheapy after my last one leaked. This one also leaked, with droplets beading in where the drizzle was pooling, and also where the front zip just wasn’t sealed at all. Also because it’s smaller, I couldn’t get dressed properly without rubbing all over the wet canvas and getting even wetter. I don’t rate this tent highly, I’m just waiting for it to dry out before I take it back and complain. If you have a favourite small tent for big people that can withstand a light drizzle, let me know!
But ultimately the rain was more than I expected and I wasn’t going to do any hiking or exploring in that weather so I packed up and headed back, considering it a very wet dry run for a proper camping trip another time.
The EV made it back to the free charger with 20% battery to spare. I think it ate up a lot of power defrosting the windows, but it also regenerated 3 kilowatts driving down the Great Dividing Range, so I was pretty stoked.
All up, I had a great trip even though it was a bit chaotic. I’m looking forward to doing the next one properly. Let me know your favourite camping spots!
This weekend has been a blast. It’s the Brisbane Comedy Festival so on Friday I went to see Josh Thomas’ Lets Tidy Up.
Comedian, gay, neurodiverse, and ex Brisbane kid. I loved his TV stuff and I just find him endearing, so I booked two tickets and couldn’t find anyone other than Ben who would go with me.
This is a show where Josh tidies up. Tidying up is not normally the stuff of gripping drama, it wouldn’t be a propulsive narrative for most people, but for Josh it’s Everest, a fundamentally impossible task, like trying to defy the moon and control the tides.
Brisbane Comedy Festival Program
We had Korean for dinner, then decided to drive because the Powerhouse is not well connected to public transit (the CityCat takes AGES) and it was threatening to rain.
We couldn’t get parking so we ended up driving around and taking scooters the rest of the way anyway. But it was a fun night.
The next day I was going to have breakfast with another friend and I’m actually kind of glad it was cancelled because I was not prepared to wake up that morning. Thankfully neither was she, so I had a bit of a sleep in and sat around doing not much until the afternoon.
Then I caught up with Dan who was in the area for the grand opening of a new local queer bar Come To Daddy. Hilarious name, puns abound.
It’s a 5 minute walk from my place but I hadn’t heard anything about it! It’s not really in Google and it seems like they’re only on Instagram. And even so, only barely ¯_(ツ)_/¯
But we wandered down shortly after opening, grabbed a drink and a seat, and people filtered in until it was standing room only. Then there was an amusing welcome to country to christen the bar (yarma!), and I saw my first ever drag queen pianist (playing “Daddies Everywhere” to the tune of “Love is in the Air”).
The queue for the bar was super long so we only had a couple of drinks before calling it a night. But I’m keen to head back soon.
The next morning I went to the little “health food store” and bought some “health food” (chocolate coated freeze dried strawberries and ginger), then headed down to Amanda and Colin’s place in my new EV.
I got the MG4 EV because I’ve been doing a lot of travel back and forth to my parents place in Maryborough, which emits about 70 kilos of CO2 round trip. Apparently when you burn fuel in an engine it doesn’t just disappear, who knew! Also it’s a lot more comfortable than the Hyundai Getz I was borrowing from my folks, with all the mod cons like cruise control and headlamps that actually illuminate the road.
I arrived a bit early so when I took a wrong turn I was happy to just meander around the streets admiring how much the suburbs of the Gold Coast look kinda just like the suburbs where I grew up north of Brisbane. I also went up a hill and cruised right back down, excitedly watching the regenerative braking put a bunch of power back into the batteries.
I said I would bring “some sausage rolls or something”, but Amanda really wanted to put on a Scottish lunch. So we had scotch pies with mash and beans, and Irn Bru as a palate cleanser. It was amazing and I felt very special.
I don’t have any pics, other than this one where I found the cap for the charger had been flapping around where I forgot to replace it for the past week.
By the time I got home it was already kinda late so I made dinner (I got the tastiest turkish bread from Coles yesterday after visiting Daddy), then started faffing around with my web site.
I wanted a place to share links to stories I’ve enjoyed reading, or would like to refer back to. So a few weeks back I set up a bookmarks page, as well as an RSS feed that you can subscribe to wherever you get your feeds.
But as I was testing the RSS feed I had to go digging around in my subscriptions, and it was kind of nice to go back and see all the feeds from various people I’ve subscribed to over the years. If I stumble on an interesting looking personal site I try to subscribe, and keep that small web spirit alive.
Some people post once every few years. Some people never post again. And long story short that’s why I took a moment to write about my weekend. Also it’s #WeblogPoMo2024 (HT rachsmith.com).
The TLDR is that it’s chock full of plants and critters that maintain the water quality without needing to do lots of cleaning, water changes, or filtering. And it’s cute!
First the plants went in the bucketthen when the gravel arrived they went in the tank
Sometime last year I was admiring the betta fish at Mappins and Ben encouraged me to get one. But I wanted to read up on them first, and it turns out bettas prefer larger tanks, lots of space, things to do. Don’t we all?
So instead of getting a betta I decided to set up a planted aquarium because it seemed like a cool hobby.
Given it’s full of soil and some people haven’t had luck setting up this style of tank, I was cautious about the potential for the water quality go weird and gross. But it was perfect from the moment I set it up. There was a tiny nitrite spike at the start, but it settled down and I haven’t even registered any nitrates. It’s been a pretty steady PH around 7.6 which is about what the tap water is. So all the numbers have been super stable, presumably because of the plant load!
I did a 50% water change maybe a month in. Not because I needed to, but because I wanted to give it a try. It did improve the colour of the water, but it’s been fine since.
A bladder snail floats on top of the waterSeed shrimp and snails demolish a piece of broccolini stem
One of the coolest things were the critters that hitched a ride along with the plants.
I had a population of bladder snails (they can float!!!) and seed shrimp (so cute!!!) explode in the tank. This was a great way to start off the ecosystem, because the snails and shrimp were a great cleanup crew. I can’t stress enough how much detritus used to be on the bottom of the tank, but now it’s perfectly clean.
After I was sure the water quality was stable, I picked up some shrimp. They’re yellow cherry shrimp (neocaridinas), and I also accidentally picked up a transparent one which I didn’t realise until it was in the bag.
The shrimp are great. They scrounge around the looking for tasty treats, and clean up lots of dead stuff. They swim and crawl around the tank, and sometimes make me think they’re dead when they stop moving in weird positions. They’ve got a lot of personality.
Maybe a month after the shrimp were settled in I went back to Mappins because I saw they had ember tetras – a teeny tiny fish that I was hoping wouldn’t eat my seed shrimp.
I was wrong, they ate the seed shrimp. But they’re the perfect size for such a small tank at up to 2cm long. And once they’re comfortable they’re quite an outgoing and social fish.
They also never sit still so they’re impossible to get a photo with my phone camera.
Anyway, it’s been three months and the tank has gotten overgrown. So I gave the tank a bit of a trim. I didn’t do all of the plants but took a lot of them down and replanted them to make a thicker forest.
I think I freaked the fish out, because they’re all schooling again, rather than out exploring by themselves.
I also found a bunch of the shrimp that were in hiding. I’ve definitely got at least five in there. A bunch of them were chilling under the pump, I guess they like cleaning out the gunk in there and it’s a good hiding spot 😌
BeforeAfterGood hiding spot
I also threw together a quick Walstad style jar. Partly because I thought it was cute, and partly because I know Ben wants to start a tank and it’s a good way to keep some cuttings alive. I’m very curious if the jar will work out or not, but from everything I’ve read it should be fine.
Cos they sucked me into a free trial and charged my card a year later without my realising. I didn’t even know I was subscribed.
Further, as an Australian there’s no way to contact them because they work on US business hours. So I was up at 2AM the other night hanging off a chat box where Vincent was apologetic, but kept pasting prefabricated blocks of text telling me to get fucked.
It’s enshittification at its best. They’re beholden to investors, and have to invent junk services to get that sweet recurring revenue. And their policy is no refunds, ever. So it’s obviously deliberate.
So basically, fuck em.
Insta360 and DJI both have excellent products in this space that may have their own ideological foibles, but at least won’t brazenly steal money from your card.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the problem of garbage AI generated content on the web. It’s a problem that erodes trust and makes everyone look bad. So how do you combat that?
Web buttons, of course!
I took a minute to make a colourful web button, I hope you like it.
These were popular in the early 2000s as a way of adding pieces of flair to your website, to link to friends, and to show off your W3 validated XHTML and CSS.
And given my web site is of a certain vintage I thought I’d do something up in the style.
I think it worked out really well. The little robot is very cute, and the colours were kind of inspired by the old Amiga button. And as was common at the time I exported it and closed before remembering to save my sources, so this is it now.
If you want to download and use the button on your own website, go for it. It’s all yours. Use it as you wish:
I’ve decided to upscale it here for effect, but the original version is indeed 88×31 pixels.
If you want to upscale it, you can add the css image-rendering:pixelated; to make it render pixel perfect, rather than using a more blurry modern scaling designed for photos.
I have two weeks off so I’m spending the giftmas period with my parents. It’s hot, and I’m sitting on the veranda while Charlie pesters me to throw the ball. There’s a decent breeze, but it looks like we’ve missed the storms.
Dark mode fix: I fixed a bug on the site where it was always defaulting to dark mode. It’s been that way since I first implemented it because I was checking the truthiness of window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme:dark)") instead of the boolean window.matchMedia("(prefers-color-scheme:dark)").matches. It should now respect your system preferences, and you can use the little icon in the bottom right to toggle between them.
Missing images: The backend of this site is running on WordPress, and there was a period of time where I was using it to photoblog. Anyway, some of those posts only contain a featured image and nothing else, and the featured image wasn’t showing up on this frontend site. So now feature images will show unless they’re already elsewhere in the post.
Dessert upgrade: I have acquired my mum’s family trifle recipe. It’s not beautiful, but it is my favourite. We made it together on xmas eve, and I’m so happy with it.
Hardware acquisition: I placed a late night ebay bid on an old Thinkpad and put Arch Linux on it, inspired by Josh‘s recent blogging. It’s a lot of fun and even though it’s a few years old, it’s way faster for day to day tasks than my M1 mac. Obvs not for video work, but I want to use it to get back into vector art. Though I see the Arch community has AURs for DaVinci Resolve which is shockingly difficult to get running on Linux, so I might dust off my desktop and put it on that as well.
Beyond that I made rum balls in my parents Thermomix and they came out alright. I blitzed up some almonds for a bit of health, and I think I’m gonna start making protein balls at home as a healthy snack. Do you have any good recipes?
I’ve also booked accommodation for my second week of holiday so I’m gonna take my new bike for a spin out to Bribie Island for a few days. No vlog cos it’s gonna be public holiday and kids everywhere. But I’ll post some bits on Mastodon.
