About SJPONeill

Retired(ish) and living on the side of a mountain. I love reading and writing, pottering around with DIY in the garden and the kitchen, watching movies and building models from plastic and paper...I have two awesome daughters, two awesome grand-daughters and two awesome big dogs...lots of awesomeness around me...

Daily Prompt: Mid-Season Replacement | The Daily Post

Posted on 15 October 2013 by SJPONeill

For many of us the seasons are changing, bouncing unpredictably between cold and warm. Are you glad to be moving into a new season, or wishing for one more week of the old?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us SEASONS.

via Daily Prompt: Mid-Season Replacement | The Daily Post.

Although autumn (fall to those than shunned the Empire) usually hits quite late in the year, we always has three or four months of winter where the garden is a bit of a wasteland…in nine years we still haven’t figured out what the trigger is, or even if there is one, but some time in October or November, there is an explosion of color across the ‘wasteland’, heralding the change of seasons…

The one sure sign that winter is over is when the ponga shoots start to extend into the light…usually we wouldn’t expect to see this until late November or even early December but this week they all lit off together.

This is our citrus triumph – a little kaffir lime that not only has survived nine winters on the Mountain but which also produces some fruit each year. It probably wouldn’t be bigger but it has had a few knock-backs over the years…unseasonal snow or frost, sometimes just not being good enough with the frost cloth.

The scorched earth area in the background is an area still under development that we’re still deciding what to do with. It will probably be a pathway up to the boundary fence through a developing ponga grove…

Mr Maple’s a bit slow off the mark this year but in a few weeks should be a blaze of crimson. You can see why the terra planter (it’s mate has gone the same way too) was such a good deal a few years back…the walls are simply too thin to take the internal weight of soil and tree. A summer project will be to build some more robust wooden planters to replace these ones….might have to get these guys in to give me a hand…

So that’s ‘seasons’…

Timing is everything

Video

Perhaps I should have waited a few days before rising to the ‘Saturation’ photo challenge..?

Now that all stock has been checked and is OK, and drains all checked and cleared where necessary, we’ll be sitting back for an inside day…

Going nutty

Posted on 14 October 2013 by SJPONeill

Played around with this one tonight…previously, I have been using a squeeze of lime juice (as I have a bottle in the fridge) but finding a half lemon, squeezed this in to the pot/saucepan. I also increased the ginger, having a knobby chunk handy, to a piece about acorn size finely chopped. This added a whole new zing to the flavour but interestingly, either the lemon or the ginger negated the chili. On the whole, I would say that tonight’s gingerised version is the more preferable of the two…certainly this is one of my better, quick’n’easy culinary finds…

I also substituted a quartered parsnip instead of the carrot and far prefer this to the original recipe…I’m more of a fan of parsnip than I am of carrot, and I still have few in the fridge that I need to get through before they turn gnarly…

The World According to Me...

DSCF6607-001 I went through a bit of a vegetarian phase last week…well, not quite, I looked up a few recipes at healthyfood.co.nz but this was the only one that I made…

Ingredients

For the spicy peanut sauce

1/2 teaspoon oil
1 tablespoon chopped onion
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 small pinch ground chilli
1 squeeze lemon juice
1/4 cup trim milk

For the vegetables

1 egg, hard boiled
1 medium potato, scrubbed and cubed
1 carrot, peeled and cut in quarters lengthwise
1/2 cup broccoli florets
cauliflower or other seasonal veges (I usually use 2 cups of veges in total)
snow peas or a few beans if you have them

Step 1

Steam the veges till tender (the egg can hard-boil in the saucepan of water that you set the steamer on top of).

Step 2

While the veges…

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The great rift

Posted on 13 October 2013 by SJPONeill

Open Letter to My U.S. Government – This Veteran is Mad as Hell – Listen Up! That’s an Order
This good Catholic girl is mad as hell (and I never use that word, so that should tell you just how mad I am!) Read more…

Yes, the great rift…and I am not referring to a major geographic feature in Africa…as an external observer, it has been fascinating and concerning to watch the US government slowly shake itself to pieces with impasse between both irresponsible factions in the Senate.

Impasses over budgets, national debt and welfare policy are not unknown nor that unexpected…the real concern is the manner in which the government has resorted to the most petty means to maximize the hurt and inconvenience for the people. This is clearly a campaign if not led, certainly endorsed at the highest levels – such pettiness could not be sustained otherwise. To bar survivors of ‘The Greatest Generation’ on what for some may be their first and last visit to the memorial erected in their honour is not only inexcusable, it is the sort of petty arrogance that would see governments unceremoniously evicted in almost every other western nation. It has already been pointed out that, when this happened in Australia in the 70s, the government was promptly sacked by the Governor-General.

How do you get to close Mount Rushmore or shut off the sea or prevent people from living in holiday homes on federal land? Yeah, sure, I get that government agencies have to close when staff can not go to work but closing websites and preventing photography or access to memorials that do not require staffing? Puhlease! Give us a break…

The scary thing about all of this is it displays the almighty rift between government apparently from the people, by the people and from the people and the people themselves – representatives who appear more interested in playing petty political games than actually doing their level best to ensure that the best interests not those they present – the actual people, not the endless and mindless lobby and special interest groups – are looked after. Big fail, Congress, epic fail, Senate, super epic fail, Mr President.

It is good to see people getting angry about this but will it do any good unless the system itself is changed, unless political representatives are made responsible to the people they apparently are from, by and for, unless that rift is closed…? As one of the comments on Cynthia’s blog states ‘…time to take your country back...’ And that’s not a call to war, it’s a call for change, to return to your core values – and that includes putting big business back in its box – in all fairness to the reigning president, he did give the banks a thrashing when he first came to power – and perhaps a period of introspection about your place in the world…

That is all.

Carry on.

A battle lost…

Posted on 12 October 2013 by SJPONeill

Don’t Use the ‘D’ Word: They’re ‘UAVs’ or ‘RPAs’ But Definitely Not ‘Drones’

I came across this article on the Information Dominance Corps Self Synchronization (yes, it is bit of mouthful) Facebook feed…once upon a time this argument may have mattered but now it is nothing more than ambient noise. We have far more important things to worry about in the UAS world than mindless semantic games…

Does it matter really if I call this a plane, an aircraft or an airplane?

Or this a helicopter, a whokka, a helo, a rotary-wing aircraft or a whirlybird.

Or this, a car, an automobile or a vehicle?

No…it doesn’t, not in normal colloquial speech and writing…many years ago, I remember great battles ranging over whether vehicles like LAVIII and Stryker were medium infantry, mech infantry or some weirdo thing called heavy infantry. This went on for months and about the only points of agreement were that they were neither the light infantry or tanks so dear to our hearts. In the end, the general issued an all-points stating that he didn’t care if they were called the Third Pink Flying Pig Brigade and that he was more interested in what we could do with these things.

Dictionaries have already added the unmanned aircraft definition of ‘drone’ so there is not much point arguing the toss anymore. What is important is that we use the correct terminology when we talk about unmanned aircraft within our community and when we engage with external audiences. The general public can quite happily refer to them as drones, just all of us equally happily refer to cars, planes and choppers…

Personally I think that we need to stop treating UAS as something mystical and special and start to treat them simply as what they: unmanned aircraft…aircraft that do not normally operate with an onboard pilot…and within unmanned aircraft, we have , in our technically correct lexicon, remote-piloted aircraft, optionally-piloted aircraft, remote control aircraft, drones (in the technical sense), etc,etc…

The more that we treat UAS as something special, the harder we make it to employ properly and integrate them in to our airspace. Do we really need Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle or UCAV, or would unmanned combat aircraft suffice? …and unmanned fighter, unmanned bomber, unmanned transport etc? Hmmm…

Just call me Al

Weekly Photo Challenge: Saturated

Posted on 12 October 2013 by SJPONeill

My first thought for saturated was colors but while we have green all around us here, it does not feel like we are saturated in green; my next thought was food-related but saturation and food often lead to fun-killing conversations…I was going to give ‘saturated’ a miss until I went for a drive yesterday.

Normally when it is stormy and wet, I drive south down SH1 as SH4 through the Paraparas is prone to closure in bad weather. Yesterday morning I was too engrossed in my Audible book (it wasn’t even that good!) and missed the ‘Kune turn-off (no eclairs for smoko). Fortunately by midmorning, the crews were already well into slicing and dicing the trees that had fallen across the road, and clearing away some minor slips.

What got me thinking along saturation lines were a number of uncharacteristic waterfalls torrenting onto the roadside – not something that you would normally see and a sign of how saturated the ground further up must be.

This was the only one that was anywhere that I could safely pull over and take pictures – much of the road is quite narrow with high cliffs on one side and steep drops on the other. Descending into Wanganui and droving along the river, it was easy to tell just how much water must have been dumped into the catchment over the last day or so…

How do you interview a hitman?

Posted on 10 October 2013 by SJPONeill

I was sad this evening to hear of the passing of Mark ‘Chopper’ Read…and this short piece from Caron is a nice mark of his passing…

The Crayon Files

The news that one of Australia’s most notorious underworld figures, Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read, 58, died of liver cancer today, has prompted me to reflect on a series of interviews I did with him 10 years ago.

At the time, and then known as Caron James, I was Melbourne Editor of Woman’s Day magazine. The story was to be about his wedding to childhood sweetheart Margaret.

At first, I was reluctant to do the interview. My editor asked me if I would like a body guard! I declined, saying it wasn’t that I was in any way scared, just that I had problems with the ethics of doing such a story.

Anyway, I did do it. I met Read and Margaret at his favourite pub in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood. He was personable and insisted on buying me a gin and tonic. Carefully, I called him “Mark”.

“Aww, call…

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Sausie and ‘mato noodles

Posted on 7 October 2013 by SJPONeill

We made my poor people’s spagboll for dinner on Saturday night but I erred in describing the ‘ghetti to the girls as ‘noodles’…noodles apparently those which you can suck into your mouth with lots is slurping sounds and, if you get it just right, flick the sauce-laden tail across your face before it disappears …and, well, you just can’t do that with ‘ghetto, certainly not the sort that comes out of a Watties can…

So I was kinda committed to noodles for Sunday dinner with two of the world’s pickiest eaters – who sometimes run risks of being two of the world’s hungriest when they turn their noses up at what has been prepared for them – but as always google is your friend and it did not take much to turn up one of the simplest and fastest dishes that I have found yet.

So how simple is it?

OK, you’ll need a whole three major ingredients:

4 sausages, your choice of flavour

1 can of spicy Herby diced tomatoes – you know, the sort with garlic, oregano, basil, etc

Noodles, the long thin ‘ghetti ones

Makin’ it…

Put a pot of water on to boil – enough to cook the noodles – and toss in the noodles with a dash of oil once the watrer’s boiling.

Cook the sausages – don’t have to be fully cooked as they’ll finish off in the sauce.

Slice the cooked sausages into thin slices, and toss into a fry pan with a bit of oil.

Toss the tomatoes in once the sausages are sizzling (take the ‘matos out of the tin first!).

Simmer for 5-10 minutes or until the noodles are done.

Drain the noodles and mix into the sauce.

…and voilà, there you go…the girls were even up for seconds…

The original recipe also called for 1/4 cup of pesto – that is a serious load of pesto – which we didn’t have any of which is possibly not a bad thing as the girls haven’t had much exposure to herby or spicy…we’ll try that next time once I’ve grown a decent stash of basil…

Easy as and thanks to readyseteat.com for the inspiration for this super-quick and tasty recipe…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Good Morning!

Posted on 5 October 2013 by SJPONeill

THIS WEEK, SHOW US A PHOTO THAT SAYS “GOOD MORNING!”

It could be a shot taken during your morning walk, the morning vista out your kitchen window, your cat doing a pre-breakfast stretch, or a textured close-up of your oatmeal bubbling away at the stove.

Most mornings, I wake just before sun-up and get to see the sky slowly lightening over the dark skyline. This silhouette heralds my new day. Already this morning the native birds are singing and, in the other room, Elisabeth and Lily’s sleeping murmurs will soon be the excited babble of a new day at Poppa’s: that’ll be my cue to start on breakfast. Outside, in their house underneath the stairs, Kirk and Lulu, scramble to investigate noises in the bush…a deer perhaps. It’s a clear sky, a good laundry day is on its way for me and for the girls, looking good for more games of Skunk in the Road, and lots of giggling as they play in the ‘jungle’ around the Monkey House.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/photo-challenge-morning/

Filling Frittata – take deux

Posted on 2 October 2013 by SJPONeill

Filling Frittata.

So…take two of the New World sausage frittata…quicker and easier the second time around; didn’t have any basil handy so just used the usuals stand-bys of garlic and parsley which added a different flavour set as did mixing the stated potato with kumara and parsnip. We have a bulk of eggs at the moment – the ‘girls’ are producing five to seven eggs a day – which is maybe the effects of Spring? It seemed like a good idea at the time and I broke three eggs over the top before sprinkling the cheese on…this turned out really well…

So six sausages, nine eggs (only six required), two potato’s, a parsnip and half a kumara later, I have a yummy filling dinner that will keep me going for the next few nights…as I type, I am mentally kicking myself: with the advent of the warmer weather, we already have a decent take of spinach from the stalks that survived the winter. If I’d been thinking, I could have added a few leaves to the frittata or made a simple salad side dish.

…and washed down with a bottle of this nice Monteiths Golden Lager, courtesy of a recent Monteith’s Breweries give-away….

Slowly getting the hang of tablet-based authoring: while the hardware may be well-integrated, the software isn’t add this is an area that the Android engineers need to spend some serious time distinguishing between the core software and the built-in apps so that the latter can not only be disabled but also removed.