Mini apple pies

Home made, gluten free, mini apple pies on a Saturday afternoon.

My mother loved apple pie. Had she been alive, today would’ve been her 75th birthday. *sigh*

Photo of a few square, single-serve apple pies with a rich, brown, caramelised crust lying on a cooling rack.

Important Sunday breakfast update (lactose free vanilla ice cream in slightly warmed pie)…

Photo from the point of view of a man holding a yellow plate. The plate contains a square piece of pie with a scoop on vanilla ice cream on top of it.

Saturday night roast

Why wait for Sunday when you can have a roast on Saturday night instead? :)

Photo of a hunk of roast beef lying on a large white platter on top of a dining table. Arranged around the beef are diced roast potatoes and carrots. To one side is a large jug of gravy. There is a two-person table setting around the platter.

Got a nice crust on the beef and the potatoes, too.

Close-up photo of a hunk of roast beef that is crispy on the outside. Next to the beef is a pile of diced roast potato pieces.

No more stinky neighbourhood (hopefully)

The Hobsons Bay green waste paper bag trial has kicked off!

I picked up trial bags yesterday, so from today we’ll be putting our green waste into these compostable brown bags – the smaller of which fit into a the green waste kitchen caddy.

No more stinky neighbourhood on bin day! (Hopefully.)

Photo of a stack of collapsed brown paper bags, one smaller and one larger. On top of the stacks is a flyer with the title ‘Paper bags for food waste’. Next to the bags is a counter-top kitchen caddy for green waste that has been lined with one of these paper bags.

Picnic at Donnelly Weir

Had a lovely afternoon with friends at Donnelly Weir in the Yarra Ranges yesterday.

Rebecca picked an excellent spot for a picnic, and the weather cooperated by giving us a a nice, cool day after the recent heatwave.

Group selfie of eight people in a wooded area.

Donnelly Weir has a picnic area as well – with a three-table gazebo, barbecue, and nearby toilets. It’s not too busy, either. Only one other table was occupied for part of the time we were there.

9/10 would recommend. But only because we had to drive across a shallow river to get to the car park, which not everyone and every car will be comfortable with.

Photo of a picnic area next to a weir in the middle of a forest. A weir is a small dam built across a river to control the flow of water. The picnic area consists of a wooden gazebo with picnic tables and benches, as well as a shared barbecue.

Weirs are always relaxing places to visit, and this one is no different.

You can’t get into the water here though. This spot is part of the rainfall catchment area that supplies Melbourne’s water supply (ie the water from here fills the dams that supply the city’s water).

Photo of a weir, which is a small dam built across a river to control the flow of water. The weir is located in a wooded area and has a log fence built to once side of it.

But that’s fine. You can still take lots of photos of the water :)

Photo of a weir, taken with the camera held out over the stone wall that’s been built to control the flow of water. Towards the back of the photo is is a small wooden foot bridge built across the river.

Both with…

Close-up photo of a weir wall that has water flowing over it. A long exposure effect has been applied to the photo, making the flowing water look smooth.

…and without the long exposure setting on your camera.

Close-up photo of a weir wall that has water flowing over it.

There are a couple of short trails you can wander down as well.

Selfie of a bald man, wearing glasses and a grey printed t-shirt. The man is standing on a walking trail in a wooded area.

But all you actually need to rest and recharge is to be surrounded by all the trees and birds and running water.

Selfie of a bald man, wearing glasses and a grey printed t-shirt standing in a wooded area. The man is looking down into a camera that is aimed towards the grey, overcast sky. Behind the man you can see the full length of the tall trees that surround him.

Not. Happy.

Melbourne’s recent, super-humid heatwave finally broke when several bands of thunderstorms rumbled through the city.

Maggie Does Not like thunderstorms. She ran to Nadia when the thunder started.

I responded to Nadia’s tweet with my own freaked-out-Maggie photo a short time later.

Close-up photo of a stressed looking red/brown dog underneath a desk. The dog’s ears are pulled back and its mouth is open, with tongue hanging out.

Fortunately, playing Midnight Oil’s ‘Diesel and Dust’ album rather loudly helped – with the music easily masking the ongoing thunder as the storm system rumbled along. [x]

Selfie of a man sitting on a chair in a carpeted room. Sitting on the carpet behind him – alert, but not scared – is a red/brown dog.

Heatwave afternoon napping

It is clearly too hot to sleep in the fuzzy orange dog bed today. Of course that means Maggie must sleep right behind me as I stand at my standing desk.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

High-angle selfie of a man wearing a headset and a black, printed t-shirt standing in front of a desk in a carpeted room. Close behind the man is a red dog fast asleep on its side, its nose pointing towards the man. Next to the dog is a fuzzy orange dog bed.

Annual Australia Open selfie 2022

What time is it? It’s time for me and Nadia to take our annual Australian Open tennis tournament selfie!

Selfie of a man and a woman sitting in the stands of an outdoor tennis arena. They are both wearing geeky, black, book-related t-shirts; sunglasses; N95 face masks; and blue Australian Open lanyards.

With the 50% capacity limits placed on attendees this year, we even managed to find a totally empty section of Kia Arena in which to take a slightly less pandemically themed selfie :)

Selfie of a man and a woman sitting in the stands of a large, open air tennis arena. They are both wearing geeky, black, book-related t-shirts; sunglasses; and blue Australian Open lanyards.

One more in our full “hot day at a sporting event in the post-vaccine era” regalia.

Selfie of a man and a woman in front of Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Australia on a sunny day. The man and woman are both wearing black t-shirts, wide-brim straw hats, sunglasses, and N95 face masks, and have blue Australian Open lanyards around their necks.

Speaking of hot days, Nadia was reunited with her happy place at the Australian Open :)

A woman wearing shorts, t-shirt, sunglasses, large hat, and an N95 face masks walks up to a large fan that is spraying a fine mist of cool water onto people walking by.

Meet Millie!

Meet Millie – our new mailbox spider!

Millie was a little startled when I checked our mailbox this afternoon, but she’ll get used to it.

Huntsman Pat from last year took our daily chats in stride – and he used to spend his time on the mailbox lid (inner flap?) itself!

Photo of an adult huntsman spider sitting at the bottom of a wooden, residential mail box.

Rushing out to get our COVID-19 booster shot

So Nadia and I rushed out to get our COVID-19 booster shot immediately after we became eligible for it a few weeks ago.

Turns out I took the “rushing out” bit a little too literally because I drove there too fast and earned myself a speeding fine!

Given the Australian Government’s omicron omnishambles do you really blame me for zipping over there to keep myself as safe as possible? :)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Photo of a letter from Victoria Police titled ‘Infringement notice’ with a subheading that reads ‘To the operator - offence detected by a road safety camera’. The letter is addressed to Ameel Zia Khan and the photographer is holding his thumb over the recipient's mailing address.

Year in review 2021

Every January I do a review of where I spent my time, money, and attention in the year just ended. This lets me add or remove subscriptions, memberships, recurring payments, and social media follows. It also lets me see if I have any biases or blind spots, or if I’m unknowingly stuck in any kind of echo chamber.

This year I’ve decided to document and share some of my 2021 review.

Podcasts

I subscribed to 41 podcasts in 2021:

  • I listened to every single episode of 83% of them

  • 46% of them I supported financially in one way or another (eg memberships, recurring Patreon support, digital subscriptions, one-off donations)

  • Women and non-binary people hosted 54% of the podcasts I listened to

  • I mostly listened to technology podcasts (eg This Week in Tech, Security Now, Rocket, Command Line Heroes, Darknet Diaries)

People

I directly supported 12 people through recurring payments in 2021:

  • Most of these people are YouTubers (or at least started on that platform)

  • 67% of them identified as female or non-binary

News and information

I paid for eight news and information sources (through recurring subscriptions):

  1. The Guardian

  2. The Conversation

  3. Wired

  4. Quartz

  5. The Sizzle newsletter

  6. CHOICE magazine

  7. Offscreen magazine

  8. Hodinkee magazine

Given that list, it makes sense that Blindspotter thinks my media diet:

  • leans left + centre (with the Conversation, the Guardian, and ABC Australia as my top 3 news sources) and

  • is somewhat narrow (since its sourced mostly from independently owned sources).

(This analysis was based off 53 of my most recent tweets that contained a link to a news article, by the way, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Do I want to engage more with media sources that lean to the right or are owned by large media conglomerates? Not really. Which means I’m quite happy with my current media balance.

My current media diet matches the latest ABC Vote Compass analysis of my political leanings (from the 2019 Australian Federal election) which puts me somewhere between the Greens and the Australian Labor Party. So that checks out.

Subscriptions and donations

I like getting and using things for free, but I pay for what’s important to me and what I can afford at the time.

So over 2021:

Twitter

The social network I participate in the most is Twitter.

Over 2021:

  • I posted 1,010 tweets, 33% of which were replies

  • I tweeted the most in June and August (131 and 139 tweets in those months, respectively)

  • On average my tweets get 198 impressions, and 5.8% of people who see my tweets engage with them (like, reply, retweet, etc)

  • My most popular tweet in 2021 got 45,237 impressions

  • My most engaging tweets in 2021 (of which there were a few) got 33.3% engagement

Overall, I’m happy with how much energy I put into Twitter and how much engagement I have with the people on this social network.

Over the year I also used tools like (the free versions of) Followerwonk and followerAudit to analyse my Twitter graph, which told me interesting things like:

  • I follow more female users (29%) than male users (22%) – though this tool only estimates within the gender binary

  • That said, gender isn’t relevant to most (49%) of the Twitter users I follow (eg they’re not personal accounts)

  • 5.6% of my followers are estimated to be fake, which is lower than the 7% world average

  • 92% of the people I follow have been on Twitter for more than 5 years (I myself have been on Twitter for more than 13 years)

Finally, to get the most out of Twitter, I did these things:

  • I followed really good users and several interesting topics

  • I maintained a bunch of lists to keep my main feed from being overrun by stuff I didn’t want to see all the time (and then I used TweetDeck to track what’s been said by users in those lists)

  • I audited the users I follow, and then did at least two bulk unfollows last year

You have to put in the work if you want to have a good experience on your social network of choice. That’s what I did with Twitter, and that’s why it continues to be one of my favourite places to hang out.

(FYI. Most of the rest of my online energy goes into YouTube, Reddit, tumblr, and the broader decentralised, RSS-based web via NewsBlur.)

Where to from here?

I did do more analysis than this, but I’m not going talk about it all here.

Though maybe I should mention that the ‘Wedding song lyrics’ page on this website continues to be the most popular page year after year. I’m glad I refreshed it a few months ago, correcting some lyrics and adding audio references for all the songs I’ve catalogued there.

What I’ll do now is spend the next few days unfollowing and unsubscribing on Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, NewsBlur, and email. That should be fun, and it’ll help get 2022 off to a good start.

I intend to have a fantastic 2022 and I trust you do too. I hope this year exceeds all your expectations and that you have a truly fantabulous time!

Fifth Maggie-versary!

It’s our fifth Maggie-versary! We adopted Maggie — a red heeler, kelpie, staffie mix found wandering around the bush near Dubbo, NSW — five years ago today.

Photo of a red dog sitting on the floor on a green mat, looking somewhat nervously at the photographer.

Sadly our little doggo spent this morning and early afternoon at the vet getting some non-urgent dental work done. She’s back now, but is still worn down from the general anaesthetic.

At least she’s been reunited with her pack so she can rest properly.

Photo of a weary looking red dog who is resting her head on her paw, eyes closed, while lying next to a human.

The folks at Hobsons Bay Veterinary Clinic are fantastic, by the way. 10/10 would recommend.

Also, I love the design of the crepe bandage they used to hold the drip needle in place :)

Photo of a dog’s foreleg that has a green crepe bandage wrapped around it. The bandage has large blue paw prints stamped along its length.

The nurse said to keep Maggie warm but she’s managing that just fine on her own – given it’s a bright and sunny 34 degrees in Melbourne this afternoon!

Photo of a dog sitting on the grass in a residential garden on a bright, sunny day. The dog has its eyes half closed.

When she’s indoors, though, we give her a bit of a hand.

Photo of a red dog asleep on a towel that’s been placed across a leather sofa. The back half of the dog is covered with a soft blanket.

Overall she’s a little tired and a little stressed, but she’s eating well and is recovering nicely.

Christmas barbecue FTW!

All clear for the Christmas barbecue!

Photo of two rapid antigen tests lying next to each other on a counter. Both tests are showing a negative result for COVID-19.

The barbecue itself was a great success. This here is just a photo of the meat tray taken halfway through the meal. Not shown are the snacks, salads, vegetarian options, pile of haloumi, and desserts! :)

Photo of a tray piled with barbecued meats, including sausages, burger patties, cutlets, and ribs.

Thank you James for the barbecuing and Bec for the hosting! #ChosenFamily