So, my apologies to anyone trying to reach me by phone today.  Google has updated my phone to the point where it's stuck in a boot loop and won't turn off.

The intertubes tell me if the phone can be powered off, a soft reset will occur, but for that to occur the phone will have to stay in the boot loop until the battery is discharged.  Probably only a couple of hours.

I still am very skeptical this will do anything as the phone was already somewhat pooched this morning anyway.  I tried to send a text message to a friend, but the idiots at Google insisted all text input would have to be done by voice.

Thanks Google, very nice if I'm hiding in a closet trying not to be kidnapped raped or killed.  I definitely want to be talking and not typing.

So once again the intertubes to the rescue.  Apparently you can resolve this aberrant voice input nonsense by disabling this that or the other thing.  Fine and good if all the user controls aren't greyed out and you are prevented from disabling all the little things.

I eventually found a way to enable the ability to disable the things and so, disabled them.  That is when the fit hit the shan and I was standing right there, face close and filled with hope.

I pause here, momentarily, to recommend the reader locate and read an interesting book by George Orwell entitled 1984.  Also, pretty much anything written by Philip K. Dick.

So, now the phone is quietly booting and rebooting, sort of like the dead husk of a winter housefly as it circles the drain.

Shit, barely afternoon on a Monday and I need a drink.

Off Grid and Sustainable Living

A couple of items have crossed my path in the past week to prompt this particular post.

To start with, I was lamenting to myself the demise of the paper straw.  I still have no idea why it fell out of favour to be replaced by the plastic straw.  The plastic straw has now become the latest target of the sustainable living shotgun.  Indeed, I thought paper straws were so much memory fade that the second occurrence blew my mind.

I was at my favourite sustainable food store/butcher shop and wanted to try a sample of Kombucha and lo and behold right beside the tap, a box of paper straws!  So, obviously they are still being made so what the hell world, why the switch to plastic?  Unbelievable.

Then I saw an ad or article about a product called Final Straw (see below) which as you might expect is a reusable straw.

The final prompt that pushed me over the edge was a new show on Netflix called The Joy of Techs.  The shows centers on one really nice BBC fella named Alex, trying to convince his dense and hate filled BBC colleague Marcus, that tech could improve his life.

Well this reminded me of a couple of things in which I've been interested in the past and so here we are!  Let's have a lookie loo shall we?

Final Straw

If you are resolved to lead a fully sustainable lifestyle then this may be the straw for you.  Rather than just using a bio-degradable paper straw or eschewing the nasty little buggers altogether, Final Straw launched a Kickstarter for this stainless steel, reusable, collapsible straw.

If you are a straw user this is a better than average solution, although there is still a lot of man-made material in there like silicon tips, the plastic lining of the straw and the carry case that is made of recycled ABS plastic (wouldn't a biodegradable option like a cloth sack or bamboo case be better?).  No mention of what materials are in the bungee cord that keeps all the pieces together.

It does fold into a small package that can reside on your key chain because who doesn't already have a key fob the size of Manhattan.

You can still pre-order one for 20 buckeroonies, 10 bucks off it seems and they seem to be very popular - the Kickstarter raised 1.8 million dollars for this thing.

Flash Torch by Wicked Lasers

So you're hiking along, dusk is falling, a bit of rain has started and in all this you have to find a camping spot, pitch your camping gear and get a fire going.  Well obviously you pull out a flashlight!

Not just any old cylinder of dry cells, the Flash Torch can easily banish the duskiness and because this 100W flashlight cranks out 4100 lumens, it can also dry out your firewood and ignite it too!

Unbelievable I know.  The site has some very convincing videos of things getting melted and burned including an iPhone (sorry I wasn't there for *that* one).  Constructed from aircraft quality aluminum ...blah blah blah... yeah we get it.  You need some puffing up so you have a reason to sell a flashlight for 200 dollars.

This one is cool if a bit of overkill, but I have since spent considerable time daydreaming about my house getting broken into, and me defending my castle by pressing a flashlight up against the back of the perpetrator.  Sure, he'll laugh when you tell him you have him covered with a flashlight.  But just imagine your joy as his peals of laughter turn into shrieks of agony as you char your way through his kidneys.

A tool like this may well be perfect for you doomsday preppers out there.  It's a serious bit of gear from a company that has come closer than anyone I know to making an actual working light sabre.  Check the site for details but be careful.

PS - I would have shown a picture but the site has prevented the ability to link to one.  I could just grab one from their site and use that, but I don't want to be A Bad Man(TM).


eStream

You may well have seen the ads all over the internet for this baby.  It's a collapsible and portable water turbine for a stream or to tow behind your canoe.

When I saw the first mention of this gadget, I thought it was a joke until the ad started getting some traction and a following.  Such a following that almost 150,000 dollars has been raised to fund this nifty little spinner.  However, it appears my first estimation was closer to the mark.  Check that eStream link above to see all the jilted backers that can't seem to even raise a whimper out of parent company Enomad.

We'll just leave that one there.


Biolight

Here is my favourite bit of kit so far.

When Hurricane Sandy wrapped it's gentle arms around New York, the Biolite folks were one of the first to respond with their twig burning, food cooking, USB recharging device.

The Biolite Camp Stove is exactly what I just described.  Whip it our of your backpack, jam some twigs in the top and light them and you'll soon be emergency charging your phone while you brew a nice warm cuppa or perhaps fry up a weenie or two for supper.  There was even coverage on the news showing several Biolites lined up on a table on the sidewalk with a line up of people anxious to get a charge so they could phone loved ones and let them know they were still alive.

Seriously though, this is the real thing.  Since then they've added a grill top, a kettle that also can be used as a coffee press and the dielectric guts have been revamped to make the whole unit more efficient.  There are more accessories but I'll leave you to explore the ins and outs of the pizza dome on your own.


The Yeti Power Station by Goal Zero

If you're travelling about and have a bit more stowage than a hikers backpack, consider the Yeti Power Station.

This little lunch box can take a charge from a wall socket or can be coupled with Goal Zero's portable Solar Panels to provide a steady flow of power for your devices.  There are several sizes to suit your needs and the higher end models might actually be used for some off-grid applications around the house.

For instance, do you have essential medical equipment that needs power during an outage?   The ability to collect and store the sun's power without having the noise and filth of a gas generator is priceless.  The Yeti 150 and a set of Nomad 7 portable solar panels (both items the smallest in their respective lines) will set you back less than 350 bucks.

Each model has at least 1 12 volt outlet (like your car cigar lighter), 1 USB port through which you can charge a variety of items, and at least one standard 120v outlet.  I can see using several smaller models or one of the bigger ones to keep things like fridge and freezer running, or any other appliance which you will lose the use of, when the power goes out.

Pretty handy to use in the van, in the trailer, in the boat, at your cottage or even just out in the backyard providing the power for some chill tunes around the firepit.

I really like Goal Zero as their prices are bloody fantastic and they have a much wider range of products running from the Yeti and solar panels, to portable USB power banks, lights and lanterns.


Water Filters

My final entry in this lenthening fan letter to off grid life is a look at water filtration.  Many of the above products have a definite slant toward the hiker/camper.  Just the same they can be adapted to every day use and clean safe water is right at the top of the list (okay we're at the end of the story here - sue me).

This is not water purification although some products claim to remove heavy metals and other carcinogenic chemicals.  Water filtration is about using a material with such a small pore size that things like amoebas and other disease causing critters are just too big to get through.

There are a *lot* of different products on the market, most of which do the same thing but there are three that I have settled on.

Sawyer Mini

It doesn't look like much, but I think it's the best to be had at the moment. Easy to use, clean and reuse, this baddie will set you back a whopping 24 -30 bucks.  It can filter about 100k gallons of water, doesn't require you replace any cartridges and it can be used in a variety of ways.

You can screw it onto your favourite water bottle.  It can be used inline with your backpack hydration system.  You can slap a 'straw' on it and slurp diredtly from your favourite murky lake.  You can use a bottle to collect the dirty water and then filter it into your favourite drinking vessel.

What you'll mostly see when someone reviews portable water filtration systems is the Katadyn Pocket.  Lovingly created by the crafty little fingers of the Swiss, it also costs 350 dollars and you have to replace filters and whatnot.  Not the kind of thing you want to have to dick around with in the mountains or woods when you're just trying to get a drink of water.

However, ceramic filters like the Katadyn are most often a two stage filter that also uses an activated charcoal component.  Sometimes the water you filter will retain an unpleasant smell.  The water's still good, safe and will keep you alive but.......that charcoal filter would just get rid of that so easily.

Lifestraw Universal

For those of you who want safe water with that sexy safe water aroma, there is the Lifestraw Universal.

Lifestraw is an award winning company in the water filtration system playground and the 'Universal' is their very fine two stage ceramic and activated charcoal filter system.  It comes packaged with some fancy bottle caps that let you use the system with your favourite brand of water bottle.  Apparently water bottles these days use the same size of screw thread making it easier for a few different caps to work for them all.  You get all of those with the Universal.

Water Purifiers

It's important to note that water filtration is just fine for most areas in North America.  However, the water supply in some countries carries a lot more disease and filth than we ever see her in the land of white privilege. So the my final water treatment recommendation, in addition to one of the above filter systems, is a UV water purifier.

SteriPEN Classic 3

It seems SteriPEN is the king of the woods and no wonder.  They've been at it for 15 years now.

The Classic 3 appears to be the flagship of the company or at least the best know of their products.  It will kill everything in a half litre of water in about 48 seconds - 90 seconds for a full litre of water!

Because a UV purifier will kill every living thing in your drink of water, it can probably be used in place of water filters,  However, it does require the use of batteries and if you aren't equipped to recharge them or carry them, I think a filter combined with a UV purifier is the best deal.

SteriPEN makes a less expensive model called the Aqua, but it doesn't have a "pre-filter", as does the Classic 3, which is used to screen out those big chunky bits of particulate in the water.

Final Words
So there you have it!  My love letter to the outdoor off-grid world that is steadily opening up to even the least experienced hiker/camper/prepper out there.

Are you a hiker or wilderness camper?  Have you used any of these items or are you using similar but differently branded items?  I'd love to hear what the prepper in you has to say about all of this stuff.

And the reality of gardening sets in

The Reality of Gardening

There is no doubt that gardening can be a ton of fun!  After the Christmas crush has passed is usually when gardening dreams start to grow.  How to fix last year's problems, planning crop rotation for this year, companion planting, fancy shaped beds, plant stakes, compost pile amendments, oh the list goes on.  Each and every piece contributes to your plan to end world hunger, look good doing it and will bring you the fame and notoriety which you so richly deserve.

Oh yes, tables and charts, spreadsheets and dense documents all have their place.

Eventually though, you will have to go outside and some point, get cold, get dirty, and have joints and muscles who are trying to hire a lawyer to end your abuse of them. And you will feel the despair of "How will I get it all done".

That is where I am now.

As of retirement I vowed my next plot would be 2 to 3 times larger.  I am planning to eventually produce as much if not all of the vegetables my table requires.  It's a big piece to bite off but I believe after the initial toil of creating a garden bed, the rest is comparatively easy.

So like I said, 2 to 3 times bigger and yesterday this happened:

World Famous Nonagenarian farmer David Lister is my across the road neighbour and frankly, one of the best humans I've met.  He kindly dragged his magical soil busting farmer thingy across my garden making it possibly 4 times the size it used be which was a roughly 5x10 foot plot that looked something like this:

The dark patch you see here is a tractor bucket load of finely rotted bovine manure.  To this will be added 5-6 wheel barrow loads of compost from the pile and one bag of peat moss.  The combo will add nutrients as well as fine and coarse material to "fluff up" the soil.  PEI soil is very clay-like but does a very good job of incorporating whatever vegetable matter you want to add.  In turn, these amendments will absorb and hold some water, rather than the clay letting it pool and runaway.  Better for the pants and less work for the human.

So I am knocking off the old compost pile because it's been run over at least twice by two different tractors and may not be in the best place.  It presented a problem though.  My barn is literally within ten feet of the house and the current decade old compost pile has lived up against the side of the barn.  Easy proximity during the winter but in the summer I am forced to wheel barrow my compost about 100-150 feet across the backyard.  So this year I will make summer and winter piles.  They will individually be smaller and therefore each spring when I empty the winter pile into the summer pile there will be less material to move to the summer pile and therefore less work.

Here is the current ten year old pile:

And here is the new temporary summer pile:

The new pile truly is temporary.  After I get through the panic of getting the garden setup and planted
I'll be into the barn and the saws to cut some lumber to build a proper compost bin.  For now I am using rosebush canes I harvested from the Island Primroses along the driveway, which had grow stupidly wild!

I don't have a pic from before the Great Slash, but you can see how far back I had to prune them in this next pic:

You can also tell how far overgrown they were. Basically that big dirt patch in from of the actual flower bed and rose bush stumps is dirt because the roses were so thick, the grass was shaded right out!

So I used the trimmed and de-thorned canes, pushed into the ground for upright stakes with longer bits woven between the uprights.  It would almost be worth cutting the canes longer as they make a pretty good compost bin.  The weaving of the canes leaves lots of holes for the pile to breath and shed any excess rain.  Otherwise, they are destined for the fire pit.

Yes, the whole darned operation out here looks like a disaster zone right now.  So many changes underway and coming later this summer.  Needless to say, I'm really enjoying retirement and being In the Garden.

Tar Sands politician stamps oily black feet

There was this:

Alberta passes bill 'to turn off the taps' to B.C. over pipeline delays

Yeah, it's more about the oil pipeline squabble, but at this point who really cares?

To be sure there is nothing I find redeeming about the Tar Sands.  It's a dirty filthy way to make money and the oil industry can starve for all I care.  Similarly, no sympathy for those rich hippies who buy a hybrid "because it's just the right thing to do", and are incapable of finding a practical halfway point through which the rest of us can transition to the post-oil world.

What I wanted to post today is a plea for them all the shut the fuck up.

Everyone in the country knows BC and Alberta make a hobby out of pissing over the border on the other guys' flower garden.  It's no longer about whether one party or the other has the right of something or not, it's about cowardly politicians waving their wieners around and threatening each other rather than actually doing something more than bleating into the darkness.

If you want to turn off the tap, then do so. Just shut up about it.

The rest of us are sick of how such an insignificant and localized issue has been blown out of proportion.  The Tar Sands oil industry is not the center point around which the rest of the nation revolves.  It's a quick and dirty money grab by those who run it, those who regulate it and those who work in it.

Western politicians should grow something to go with their wieners and take a stab at diversifying their economy rather than sucking harder on the collapsing straw of the past. Or maybe you'd prefer eating Tar fed beef.

I first posted this on Facebook, May 13th:

"Those of you aware of my adventures with Car Jumping Guy, will be amused to hear that auto oriented misadventures may now be trying to visit me at home.

"I'm out in the driveway doing yard work, with my back to the road. Suddenly there is a commotion behind me, the sound of a huge amount of road gravel taking part in a skid. I look around and there is this giant cloud of dust in which I can barely detect a silver Saturn sliding sideways down the road and coming to a gritty halt at the end of the driveway.

"It sits for a moment, starts forward as though intending to invade the ditch across the road and then comes to another stop. At this point I yell out "Is everyone okay?" expecting physical distress, but the car straightens out and makes a couple of abortive leaps forward before settling down and on it's way.

"I could see a young man at the wheel pulling back and forth trying to accustom himself to pedals and wheels and a very very patient Dad in the passenger seat.

All I could think as I laughed was, "Good job Daddy. Very very brave Daddy!"

Some one's Mother's Day gift will be her man-folk getting home safely."

---

There has been a very slight update.

Later that day I crossed the road to check for mail and got a good look at the tire tracks on the road.  I think Dad thought this was a good long road straight road and a good easy first time behind the wheel.

You see could where the car came over the slight rise in the road and things out out of hand. There was a slight swerve as the driver made a steering correction that was just a bit too much, followed by a swerve in the other direction with the same effect, slightly magnified, followed by another swerve and it's about there where you can see the start of the sideways slide as I imagine inside the car Dad is screaming braaaaaaaakes!

As a famous broadcaster said on many occasions, "And now you know, the rest of the story."

The "Good Old Days" were for dinosaurs

I don't think I've mentioned this before but I've always been very suspect of nostalgia. Mostly, I hate that "good old days" shit because no matter what era, the good old days mostly means "knuckle dragging barbarism of the recent past."  But I have a very specific hate on for the sort of nostalgia embodied in mindless-completionist-object-worship.

I'm sure you know this conversation:

Book-tool: I can't loan you that book because it's special.
Victim: Ah, it's a favourite story, is it?
Book-tool: Nope. The story was crap, actually.
Victim: Oh, then it must be especially nicely bound or illustrated?
Book-tool: <exasperated> Nooooo. It's a paperback from the local bookstore!
Victim: A special gift?  From a special someone?
Book-tool: <beyond-the-edge-of-sanity angry> NO! It's a BOOOOOOOOOOOOK!

Any of the actual reasons you might want to keep the book, tossed to the winds in favour of worshipping the mere object.

I know, I should quit being a bully because everyone has become some sort of collector at some point in their lives.

Like my friend Marc.  He plays rock n roll bass guitar and he loves him some bass guitars. He has enough now they can be counted by the dozen.  The thing is, Marc doesn't just have them "because BASSES!"  He has them because as a bassist he loves playing the bass or the sound of the bass or because bass players get laid more often.  I see it in his eyes.  How that particular bass looks - that colour, those shapes. How it feels in his hands - the heft of it, the balance or lack of balance. It's the beautiful sounds such a shit looking instrument can make. Or how such a beautiful piece of craftsmanship can sound like a dog barking in a metal trashcan.

To keep a thing without merit or relevance is the road to an early old age. It's living in the past and not moving onward. Like generations before us we've watched new generations rise.  Like generations before us we've ridiculed their newness, their innovations and their fresh demands for justice on issues for which we took to the street.  Like generations before us we are using the past to beat down new generations with our meaningless nostalgia, leading them to believe nothing will ever be as good as back then, they'll never be as tough and hardy as we were back then, and like all the generations before them they are consigned to a future where the lessons of the past are never learned and we're destined to cling to the Good Old Days.

The past decade or so has seen wicked-fast and magical changes unprecedented in human history.  It's been a time where either the best or the worst is yet to come. Whatever is left for me in those ahead-times, I don't want to miss it, pining for the "knuckle dragging barbarism of the recent past."

So, I've been purging all winter like a Spartan. I've been sifting through everything trying to attach each item to a treasured memory.  If that can't be done then it is a mere object whose clutter is in the way of experiencing true memories captured by objects of true meaning.

If you are honest with yourself and committed to the purge I think you can be surprised at how much junk is pressing in on your from all sides.  It's like two days after you host the big party and you have finally got through all those dishes.  You look around the cleared off counters and suddenly the kitchen looks three times bigger and you feel you could do *anything* there and it would be so fucking fantastic!  It's a great example of how physical and mental clutter is so tightly intertwined.

Although less junk also means more room to acquire new junk, I'm building the sort of filters that will greatly reduce the mindless-completionist-object-worship in my life.

Thus, the stage is set to bury the old and out-dated and to safely pasture the new ideas of new generations.  I'd rather ride that horse into the ahead-times always learning, always seeking. I'd rather my third act not be a long, quiet, lonely descent into darkness as taken by that plastic bag they recently found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.