Blind Guardian Concert

Last night I went to the Blind Guardian concert at the Forum with O and P. It was a fantastic show. The crowd were in a good mood and the band were excellent. There was no fancy light show or special effects, just really good music. The band worked to get the crowd involved and the crowd was happy to respond. It was easily the best concert I have ever been to, and I will definitely go to see them again if they tour Australia again.

Tasmania 1

I recently travelled to Tasmania, to attend my sister's wedding. I then toured around for a week. Part of the time I was travelling alone, and part of the time with family.

To start with, I was staying with family at a place called Brickendon, in the "Coachmans Cottage".

The place was very picturesque. This is the bedroom I was staying in:

The cottage is one of several on the Brickendon historic farm. The original farm buildings are open to the public (for a small fee).

The primary advantage of Brickendon however is that it was close to the location of the wedding, just outside of Longford, in Tasmania's north.

The wedding went very well, and all the participants and guests seemed to have a great time. I won't be publishing any pictures of the wedding on this blog, as my sister may want to keep them a bit more private.

Window Repair Part 3 (Catch up posts)

It was actually several weeks after replacing the glass before weather and life combined to give me a chance for the next steps...

Step 12: Strip or sand paint on whole window frame.

I discovered that the top layer of paint on most of the window frame was in poor condition, and needed to be stripped back. I used a chemical paint stripper to do this, and discovered that yes, chemical burns hurt! Don't get paint stripper on your skin! If you do, wash it very thoroughly! I got a few small strips of paint stripper on my arm, and immediately got down off the ladder and went inside to wash it off. To be extra carefull, I soaked my arm in a bucket of water (moving it around to "sluce" off any remnant paint stripper) for about 20 minutes after the initial rince. This was probably overkill, but I didn't feel like taking any chances. The result was a mild burn, similar to brushing against one of the metal shelves in an oven. Fortunately I had been wearing safety goggles, a dust mask, and heavy duty gloves, so my arm was the only part of me where I got any burns.

I didn't try to strip all the layers of paint, although in theory I should have done. But the lower layers of paint seemed to be in good condition, so I decided to take a chance on them.

Alas! I discovered that the paint stripper tended to disolve the newly applied putty wherever it came in contact (fortunately only a little). The result was not disasterous, but the putty is no longer so nice and smooth. So note to self: Next time strip the paint off the frame BEFORE replacing any damaged panes of glass.

Step 13:
Once the top layers of paint were stripped, I washed the frame thoroughly with water, and then sugar soap, to make sure there was no remaining paint stripper. I then lightly sanded the frame, and then washed it down again.

Step 14:
During the paint stripping process, a small amount of metal had been exposed. So I painted over these sections with metal primer.


Step 15:
Masking: I masked the window frame with a combination of masking tape and cardboard.

Step 16:
First coat of paint. Once masking was complete, I applied the first coat of paint. I used Wattyl Solarguard, which has a good reputation. I was careful to paint over the putty onto the class a little bit. Apparently this seals in the putty and preserves it's flexibility.

Step 17:
Second coat of paint. This was actually easier than the first coat, as the coverage was better.


Step 18:
Remove the masking tape. A bit more difficult than it sounds on the glass section. The trick is to remove the tape without pulling the paint away from the glass. In the end, I used a ruller and a cutter to cut the paint next to the masking tape, before stripping away the masking.

And here is the final, painted, product! I still need to clean the glass, but I will do that after I have finished painting the wall.

Water pressure good! (catch up posts)

Late last year (after my PC started acting up), I got the rusting iron cold water pipes in my house replaced. I now have actual water pressure! And the water comes out clear when I turn the taps on, instead of brownish red! Although, the water does taste strangely bland now....

Best of all, I no longer need to worry about a pipe bursting and causing a lot of damage and wasting a lot of water.

Loooong time between posts...

Well, it has been a long time between posts, owing to the sad illness of my computer. And the very slow response of the computer shop in fixing it. I made the mistake of thinking that it would be quicker to let the computer shop find the problem, than to try to find it myself. Apparently the RAM module was flaky, and it took several weeks for the shop to find this, then several weeks for the RAM manufacturer to verify this and replace the RAM module (grrrr!).

However, today I finally picked up my fixed PC!

Now that I have re-installed the operating system, and spent several hours downloading security patches, I can read my email and blog again.

Many catch up posts will follow :)

Window Repair - Part 2

Having dealt with the bird in my fireplace (see previous post), and finished my coffee, I returned to the window repair job.

Step 8: Overcoat primer with 2 coats of outdoor paint. Unfortunately, it was raining outside, which made for less than ideal painting conditions.

Still, once the worst of the showers had cleared, I lightly sanded the metal primer, and applied a coat of outdoor paint. It was supposed to be touch dry in half an hour, and OK to paint over in 2 hours. However it wasn't touch dry for 1.5 hours (probably because of the rain and the resulting high humidity), so I wasn't able to put the second coat on until after lunch. Here is the result:

I waited until about 5 pm to let the top coat dry.

Step 9: Use Caulking gun to apply silicon sealer to window rim, then put glass in place. Press down to remove all bubble in sealer.
Step 10: Apply putty. I had done some research online, so I had some idea of what to do with the putty. It was a bit lumpy, so I kneaded it a bit until it was smooth (very much like kneading dough). I then took lumps, rolled them into strips and applied them to the window. The putty reminded me a lot of play dough to work with. Here's what it looked like:



Step 11: smooth down putty. Apparently putty is made up of calcite mixed with linseed oil, so it is recommended that the putty knife be wiped in linseed oil to stop it sticking to the putty. Apparently linseed oil is another name for flaxseed oil, which I had. So I wiped flaxseed oil onto the putty knife and got to smoothing. I think the end result was pretty OK. Probably not as good a glazier would have done, but not bad for a first try.


When the glazier sold me the glass and putty, he warned me to let the putty dry for a couple of weeks before painting over it. So it will be a couple of weeks before I can finish the job and paint the whole frame. Still, I am pretty happy with how it has turned out.

There's a bird in my fireplace!

This morning, as I was sitting in my living room drinking my coffee, I heard a loud skritching scrabbling noise from the chimney over my wood heater (the wood heater doesn't actually get used much).

Suddenly, a beak poked out from the top of the glass door. Then the whole bird appeared:


It was a reasonably big blackbird.

I did what I normally do when this kind of thing happens. I phoned my mum. (I know, but she has a good 30 years more home owning experience than me, and definitely more wood fire experience). She said that in her experience (see, usefull), birds are exhaused by the time the get down the chimney, and can't get back up. She suggested using a towel to trap the bird and take it outside.

So I got set up with a drop sheet outside the fireplace, to catch any ash (which turned out to be a very good idea), and a large towel to try to catch the bird in. By this time the bird had moved to the back of the stove and I couldn't catch it. So I left the door open and stood back, to see if the bird would make an appearance. Sure enough, it came flying out. Fortunately, I had the main door and a window in a side room wide open. The bird flew down towards the door, spotted the window and obviously liked the look of it better, and flew straight out. So that worked out well.

I am thinking that given that I have athsma problems, and therefore have problems with wood smoke anyway, that removing the fireplace, and also the chimney, might be a good idea. One bird in the fireplace was interesting, but I don't want this to be a regular occurance.

Window Repair - Part 1

I am going to try a new feature. This post will include (wait for it) < drumroll> PICTURES!

Well, that's the plan anyway.

I own an old concrete house with steel frame windows. One of the windows had a cracked pane of glass. Below the crack, water had obviously gotten into the frame, because it was starting to rust. Heres what it looked like:


I decided it would be a good idea to replace the glass, sand down, rust proof and repaint the window frame.

Step 1: Measure the window frame. Check.
Step 2: Find a glazier who will cut me a piece of glass to size on a Saturday morning. Check. I found a nice bloke in East Bentleigh, who not only sold me the glass but also a big blob of putty to use in installing it. He flinched a bit when I told him it was a steel frame window and told me that they were more work to deal with than timber frames.
Step 3: Stop by Bunnings and purchase some tools I was missing: a putty knife and a cold chisel. It turns out that a Cold Chisel is not just a band name, it is a type of chisel (unlike a wood chisel) designed for use on hard surfaces such as concrete. Many thanks to dad for that useful piece of info (he didn't know that Cold Chisel was a band, so there was an information exchange there).
Step 4: Remove putty and Glass from window:


This was much harder work than it sounds!

Step 5: Remove all remaining putty, and scrape with paint scraper and metal brush.
Step 6: Overpaint rust with Rust converter


Step 7: Paint with Metal primer, to protect the sections of bare metal without rust:



Now, wait 4 to 6 hours for the metal primer to dry. In this case, that means wait until tomorrow.

Earthquake!

Well, it was only a little one (which is good!) but it's the first earthquake I have ever experienced, so to me it was pretty cool. Especially as it was small enough (2.9 on the Richter scale according to the papers) that noone got hurt and there wasn't any real damage.

I was sitting in my living room, watching TV, when I heard this loud crash (like someone had dropped something really heavy on the street outside), and then felt vibration through the floorboards. It was a bit like having a large truck drive by outside, except that I live on a quiet side street, and we don't get big trucks driving by.

I didn't know what it was at first, and spent a few minutes looking out of windows trying to work out what had happened. It occured to me then that it might have been an earthquake, but I wasn't sure until I saw the papers the next morning. So there you have it, I have now experienced an earthquake.

(Of course, this actually happened a few weeks ago and I have only just gotten around to blogging about it, but hey, better late than never :) )

Picasso Exhibition

Well, I think it is time I finally got around to describing the Picasso Exhibition.

To start with, I am not a big fan of Picasso. His work doesn't really appeal to me. That said, the exhibition was fascinating. As well as paintings there were a large number of studies, so that I could see the gradual development of a number of the works. In particular detail was the photographic history Dora Marr took of the painting of Guernica. Some elements which were dominant in the initial sketches were completely gone by the final version.

There was a gradual change in style over time, from a more "natural" style to a very stylised, disjointed style. Some of the studies of Guernica reminded me a bit of M. C. Escher's work, mostly in the style of sketching rather than in the subject matter.

The photographs of his friends and lovers were especially sad, once I knew that some of them died in concentration camps. WW2 really was a terrible time to be alive in Europe.

I enjoyed the exhibition and I am glad I went.

Da Vinci Machines Exhibition

I went to two exhibitions recently, the Da Vinci Machines exhibition, and the Picasso Love and War exhibition. I think I'll blog about them in chronological order, 'cause it seems so nice and logical :)

The Da Vinci Machines exhibition http://www.visitvictoria.com/displayObject.cfm/objectid.4F0E53E6-1ECC-4830-9C7C89AD0882093D/vvt.vhtml features (or featured, the exhibition is finished in Melbourne now :( ) models made from his designs, constructed using only materials that would have been available in his era. It was fascinating! The man really was a genius, and not just for his paintings. The engineer in me was especially impressed with the ball bearings. In the models they were constructed from wooden balls, instead of the more familiar metal, but it was easy to see the principal of reducing friction between two moving surfaces. These days we take for granted the technologies that make use of ball bearings, but they are just so fundamentally useful!

There were a lot of amazing uses of gearing systems, including da Vinci's design for a car with its approach to converting rotational enery in one direction into rotational energy in another direction, allowing a drive shaft down the centre of the car to power axles at the front. More advanced versions of this principle are used in cars today.

There were a number of models that you were allowed to interact with, usually by turning a handle, to see the mechanism working. They were a lot of fun, and made it much easier to understand how the machine worked.

The list of workable inventions Da Vinci came up with is long and impressive, including a parachute, pitons for climbing walls, a bicycle, gliders, and a number of machines for lifting heavy materials. He also came up with a number of improvements to existing mechanisms.

There were also the ideas which wouldn't have worked as Da Vinci envisioned them, but are still amazing ideas, such as his idea for a helicopter.

I had some issues with the exhibition layout, the pages of information about each model were on A4 paper, positioned close to each model, and contained a lot of information. The problem with this was that the exhibition was crowded (probably because it was nearing its finish) and it took a while for each person to read each information sheet and move forward. Larger information sheets, which could be read from a greater distance by more people at a time would have helped a lot with the crowding. That said, the models themselves were wonderful.

All in all, a most excellent exhibition.

Plumbing

Well, I am now the proud owner of a new dual flush AAA rated toilet cistern. It has the particularly important advantage over my old cistern of stopping the flow of water into the bowl after flushing has completed. Yay!

Judging a book by it's cover

A blog on the age website had this link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A23664PX3VILKS/103-8552712-7852618?ie=UTF8&display=public&page=1

This is a page of book reviews on Amazon by a man who has not read any of the books. The reviews are very funny, and all start with the phrase "I have not actually read this book but..."
Here is a sample:
"I have not actually read this book but I think (the author) has hit on a very interesting idea. Most people nowadays write non-fiction books with bits of fiction secretly interspersed throughout, sort of like Where's Waldo for adults. But (the author) has brilliantly turned this idea on its head and written a fiction book with bits of non-fiction secretly inserted into the text. I wonder if Oprah knows about this unique innovation."

I liked this a lot :)

Book Reviews

I am not really sure what to put in this blog, but a friend suggested book reviews. I like this idea, so I will give it a try :)

I recently read the latest Nightside novel by Simon Green. "Sharper than a Serpants Tooth". I really like this series. The books are short in terms of number of pages, but have a very high information density. They are a good mix of black humor and action. In this novel, a number of long running plot threads are resolved, in my view satisfactorally. The series reminds me a little of Jasper Ffords novels, where the universe is patently rididculous, but the characters and action are taken seriously. The Nightside universe is a lot darker and nastier however.

"Sharper than a Serpants Tooth" is really the continuation of the story from the previous novel, "Paths not Taken", so it is probably not a good place to start. In fact, the obvious place to start the series is Book 1, "Something from the Nightside" :).

First go at this blogging malarky

Well, lots of people I know seem to have blogs, so I thought I would give it a go.

After all, I may not have a mobile phone, but I don't want to be too far behind the times :)