Lachlan.Rogers.name

Tau really does make more sense

Lachlan — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 12:54:46 +0000

Tau Day is celebrated with two pi(e)s, and we couldn't let that expectation go unfulfilled.

Pi is wrong. This startling assertion became so abundantly clear to me last week that I was surprised it has taken this long for me to encounter the arguments. Of course, as the number of diameters in a circle’s circumference then pi = 3.141592 653589 793238 462643 383279 50288… is technically correct. But it is wrong conceptually! Mathematically it is the radius, not the diameter, which is the defining dimension of a circle.

And so a better circle constant is τ (tau) =2π. Happily I learnt of this just in time to celebrate Tau Day.

There are many excellent reasons why tau is better than pi, and I won’t bother presenting them all here. Michael Hartl makes the argument convincingly in The Tau Manifesto if you are looking for some reading, but this video presents the salient points in a thoroughly entertaining way.

If you’re strugging to catch on to tau as the new circle constant, then maybe this musical representation of the number will help.

We dutifully and cheerfully celebrated Tau Day with two pies, and it is a shame that next June 28 is a year away. I guess that is a full year in which to extol the virtues of Tau.

And there’s another job to do. The 36 digits of pi listed above were written from memory. I have them firmly lodged in my brain as a result of a friendly competition in grade 5. Now I’m going to have to memorise at least 37 digits of tau!

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New

Lachlan — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:43:17 +0000

Quite a bit has happened since I wrote my last post here. I’ve moved from Canberra up to Cooranbong, and am still trying to unpack the last of the boxes. This move was the cause for quite a serious outage of this website, as my webserver needed to be packed and transported and unpacked. Oh, and having the internet connected to our new home took far longer than anyone expected.

Another new thing is my current position as a full-time lecturer in physics. I have returned to Avondale College of Higher Education where I did my undergraduate degree, this time to teach for a year. I’m enjoying lecturing, and it is excellent professional experience to have.

Finally, and most dramatically, we have a new member in our family. Two weeks ago Leighton Jeffrey Rogers was born, and he is currently managing to keep his parents thoroughly occupied.

New baby Leighton

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Home-made Christmas tree ornaments

Lachlan — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 07:05:04 +0000

Our Christmas tree was a small live sapling in a pot, and we hope to be able to use it again next year.

In our in our house we’ve decided to start a tradition of leaving Christmas decorations up till January 5, which means that we can continue to enjoy them throughout the “12 days of Christmas” (yes, the traditional period of “Christmastide” only begins on December 25). Appreciating this duration in our season of Christmas might even help avoid the commercial and materialistic extremes of what Bill Bailey has called the “primary gifting period”.

This all means that we took down our tree last night, which is the reason for writing about Christmas ornaments now even though its too late. Things like this could work really well for Easter too, so publishing it now gives you all time to have a go yourself.

A self-imposed rule of using only hand-made ornaments has meant that our tree has been sparsely decorated even though it is only 2 feet tall. This year I finally completed some projects that have been in the cupboard for more than 12 months, and want to share them because I personally enjoy reading about other people’s creativity. I get particularly excited and inspired reading about the crafty and creative exploits of a friend who can make nearly anything. Not only did she make some fantastic looking Christmas birdies, banners and garlands, but she managed to blog about it before Christmas day!

Home-grown lemon, cloves, spices, and a piece of recycled ribbon make this aromatic ornament.

The first special ornament on our tree was a pomander that I made from a lemon off our very own little potted tree. It is a dried citrus fruit cured with spices, and I followed this pomander recipe.

I poked the cloves into the lemon in four quadrants, leaving clear strips for the ribbon. Since the whole thing shrinks quite a bit as it dries, my strips ended up too narrow, but I don’t mind the ribbon being a bit crinkled and folded. This ornament has a beautiful spicy aroma, which mixes wonderfully with the traditional conifer scent.

Using a home grown lemon and some recycled ribbon made this an extremely low-ecological-footprint and personally satisfying decoration. It is plenty durable enough to last a few years at least, and can even be stored in the wardrobe to put its aroma to good use until next Christmas.

An empty egg shell makes an ornament light enough to hang from the smallest branches

Decorating eggs is a tradition in many cultures, and is an excellent way to make light Christmas tree baubles. I drill the egg shell through at each end with a 1 or 2 millimetre bit in a battery drill, which is much easier than trying to delicately poke around with something pointy and sharp. The drill at fairly high speeds will get through the shell with hardly any pressure, and this helps avoid smashing the whole thing.

With a hole in each end, the contents of the egg can be blown out and made into breakfast! It does require quite a lot of pressure, and doing lots at once can leave you with sore lips and light-headded. It is a good idea to rinse the shell out with water to make sure that no potentially smelly contents are left inside.

The full set of baubles from this year. The red and blue egg in the middle was decorated with permanent marker and white-out, and the bottom egg has punched pieces of Ferrero Rocher wrapper as leaves

My first trial was decorated with coloured permanent marker, which was surprisingly successful. However, the best way to put a solid base colour on the shells is with nail polish. This has a nice gloss, and strengthens the egg shell at the same time. I used gold metallic acrylic paint (water-based) to put a thick and chunky pattern on this set, but there are plenty of other options. The really nice thing about egg ornaments is that it is trivial to find storage boxes for them!

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Gadget packaging for a future without wrap rage

Lachlan — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 01:30:48 +0000

I’m sure you’ve experienced the frustration of trying to extract a small gadget from it’s plastic clamshell packaging. If not, then you have avoided one of the great curses of our high-tech culture. These tough plastic cases are fused together in a factory, in an apparent attempt to prevent any purchaser from actually being able to access their new toy. Trying to open such packets invariably leads to a furious anger which, I was delighted to learn, is known as “wrap rage”.

This large clamshell package with two cardboard inserts was simply to hold a 1 metre audio cable until I had it at home!

Beyond being almost impossible to open, this sort of packaging leads to a deeper fury about resource management. Hard plastic clamshells add weight to products while they are transported, so their distribution costs more energy. If they are ever actually pried open, they are immediately rubbish. Hopefully they will be recycled, which still requires further energy, but too often the refined transparent plastic is just sent to landfill.

A while ago I was on a holiday and decided to play a video off my laptop. I was able to connect the computer to the large television display, but my gadget travel-bag didn’t include the required audio cable. Since my laptop speaker is poor, I went and bought a short wire to do the job.

The cable was only 1 metre long and would have fit in a small paper bag, but instead it was housed in a typically enormous clamshell package. Being on holiday meant that I was not suitably armed to penetrate such a sturdy exoskeleton, and much wrap rage ensued.

I had seriously entertained the idea of asking the shop assistant to open the plastic and deal with the rubbish in-store, and I think I will make that my policy from now on.

Recycled cardboard packaging, with natural string and paper loops holding cable in place.

Buying an HDMI cable recently threatened to be a similar experience, but became an epiphany when I saw a cardboard box gleaming out from between the garish plastic clamshells. Not only was the box recycled and recyclable, but the cable was made from “components which comply with the Regulation of Hazardous Substances directive” in a factory that has an “Environment Management System certified under the international standard ISO14001″.

They even donate $1.50 from each pack sold to Landcare Australia, who empower volunteers to “breathe new life into waterways”, “bring back trees”, and “restore wildlife habitats”. Even if only half of these claims are true, this is an exciting future for wrapping gadgets.

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When the chips are down

Lachlan — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 04:30:00 +0000

As I began looking at what goes into food I was surprised by the ingredients in packets of chips. It turns out that different flavours vary wildly in terms of ingredients and additives, and there are general patterns that apply across many brands. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that good old plain salty chips are remarkably simple and natural!

Smiths Original crinkle cut chips contain only three ingredients, and no additives; Salt & Vinegar chips of the same brand contain many more ingredients, including MSG

One of the food additives that many people recommend avoiding is monosodium glutamate, or “MSG”. This is a common flavour enhancer and has the number 621. The list that I am currently using suggests avoiding other glutamate additives and flavour enhancers with numbers 620-625, 627, 631, and 635.

I know from experience with asian take-away noodles that MSG leaves me with a dry feeling in my throat. This “unquenchable thirst” is apparently quite a common indicator of MSG, and is rather unpleasant. This flavour enhancer has a long association with asian restaurants, and in response to changing attitudes many of them are now advertising “MSG-free” menus.

It seems almost universal that Salt & Vinegar chip flavouring involves MSG. In fact, additives are included in most of the flavours other than plain or salted. It doesn’t make much difference whether the product is being marketed as a healthy or natural alternative to “ordinary” chips, which is disappointing.

Once I started looking, I was able to find a few flavoured chips without the long list of additive numbers. I will be choosing these preferentially from now on, and trying to avoid the MSG enhanced varieties. This same rule of thumb applies to corn chips, where the plain or salted flavours have much simpler ingredients.

This is not a detailed analysis of which chips are the most healthy (or should that be “the least unhealthy”?), and I’m sure there are important factors other than additives. Even the most plain chips probably have large amounts of fat and salt, and should therefore be consumed in moderation.

Potato Grills are marketed as a healthier alternative to ordinary chips, but still have the same pattern of additivies in the Salt & Vinegar flavour

Even with natural corn chips, the plain salted flavour is much simpler than the cheesy one

Red Rock Deli makes a flavour without MSG, but even here the plain chips are much simpler

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Thinking about what goes into food

Lachlan — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 13:47:35 +0000

I have not written much here about food. In fact, the only post that would come close was a report on the success of our verandah-garden some time ago. Recently I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about food and what goes into it, which all started with some research into those little numbers that typically appear in the “ingredients” list on the side of food packets. I was sure that lots of those numbers stood for fairly ordinary food items, but I had a suspicion that some of them were hiding nasty un-foody chemicals.

It is fairly easy to identify the numbers which are simply shorthand for regular ingredients, as their names are familiar. Number 330, for instance, is nothing more mysterious than citric acid. Trying to sort out the more unpleasant additives is a much more difficult challenge. Chemicals must be approved before they are allowed to be used in food, but there are some officially approved additives which can be linked to health problems. The difficult part is that most of these cases are only documented anecdotally, and it is easy to find conspiracy theorists who massively over-react to the more sensible data.

The best discussion of harmful additives, exploring the science as well as many personal anecdotes, is the Food Intolerance Network website. They have a handy summary of additives to try and avoid, which I have printed off and placed in my wallet. I’m not claiming this list to be the definitive judgement on food additives, but it is a good enough starting point for me to perform an experiment every time I go shopping for groceries. I’m trying to find out how easy it is to live without eating “bad numbers”.

Making food from scratch is the best way to be sure of what goes into it.

I have to admit that I’ve been surprised by the ubiquity of unpleasant additives. Preservatives are especially widespread, and can be found even in many “health” foods. There are some particularly interesting “results” of my experiment that I will be writing up and sharing here over the next little while.

Perhaps it isn’t obvious why I’ve chosen to write about food in this “Changing the World” category. However, I believe that global health and personal health are related. It seems apparent that sustainable interaction with our natural environment will maintain the most abundant way of living. There’s little sense aiming for a planet that will support life to the full, if we’re eating ourselves to death or depression or distraction.

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Shaving the bristles off a prickly eco-dilemma

Lachlan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:46:12 +0000

Two years ago my quest for the most eco-friendly shave led me to the Straight Razor. I bought a reconditioned 70 year old razor to give it a try, and was soon convinced of its supremacy. Although they are sometimes called “cut-throats” by people who wish to denigrate their safety, there is no better way to shave.

My 70 year old reconditioned razor, with wooden soap box and shaving brush.

I wanted to share my findings and some of the useful information that helped get me started, but thought it best to wait until I was sure that I could actually use a straight razor day after day. It didn’t take me long to decide that my straight razor was here to stay, but shaving with it became such a normal everyday activity that it hardly seemed newsworthy.

But then, on a weight-restricted cycle adventure, I temporarily switched back to disposable razors.

It was terrible. The silly plastic handle felt all flimsy in my hand. The shave was sloppy. The pathetic little blades got all clogged up after every stroke. The plastic safety frame made it difficult to trim edges, and didn’t stop the razor from cutting me regularly. On top of all this, I had to throw it into landfill after just a few shaves. The experience convinced me that straight razors certainly are worth writing about.

Disposable razors are inherently distasteful for anyone trying to minimise their resource footprint and live sustainably. When Gillette invented them in the early 1900s, he sold the razor handles at a loss and then made his money off the disposable blades. In other words, his business model depended on the inherent generation of waste.

And disposable razors come in award-winning levels of gratuitous packaging that also gets thrown straight out.

My original thought had been to try and find a traditional double-edged safety razor, which only needs new blades rather than bulky cartridges. But I quickly came to the same conclusion as this Sydney Morning Herald article: why not go all the way to a straight razor?.

Of course, like anyone else who calls a double-edged safety razor “traditional” I had absolutely no idea about where to start with straight razors.

I went looking for help. This Mother Nature article about how to use a straight razor was helpful, as well as being a fun read. A website called the “Knifecenter” provides solid instructions for straight razor use, and includes some useful details about razor types. However, it’s probably hard to go past RazorCentral for the definitive straight razor reference.

After a false start with an old razor on eBay that needed lots of work (and I still haven’t sharpened to a usable state), I found reconditioned shave-ready razors at The Invisible Edge. In the same parcel I bought a strop and some Kent (“by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen”!) shaving soap. There is no stronger protest against the disposable culture than a vintage razor!

Here’s a casual visual guide to shaving.

The first step is to lather up some shaving soap on the brush. I've been using this tub of soap for more than two years, and only recently began to see the bottom.

After a few swirls around the shaving soap pot, the soap can be lathered on with the brush. This can feel a bit weird if you're accustomed to shaving cream from a can, but is a lovely face massage.

Brushing the razor on the strop restores the microscopically sharp edge that you want for a good shave. I do this while letting the shaving soap soften my beard.

After re-moistening the shaving brush and lathering up the soap again, it's time to shave. Pulling the skin tight helps give a smooth result and prevent cuts.

Make sure to move the blade perpendicular to it's edge, not slice it sideways. The exposed blade of a straight razor makes it easy to trim edges and shapes.

And that’s all there is to it. Obviously practise helps build these skills and increase speed. At the beginning I would lock the bathroom door to make sure that nothing could disturb my serious concentration, but now I can plan the day while shaving half on autopilot.

There is no big punchline here to finish on. I’ve already given my verdict right at the top: I think straight razors are the best way to shave. They are long lasting and environmentally friendly, they give the best possible shaving results, they are fun and rewarding to use, and are interesting and elegant tools.

I’m going to keep on shaving with my razor till it wears out. Considering that it’s already had one round of three-score-and-ten years, I could be in for a long wait.

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Seeking international aid policy as election approaches

Lachlan — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 06:59:10 +0000

As Australia approaches a federal election with scarcely a decent option on the ballot paper, one of the issues that I wish would receive more attention is international aid. Australia has committed to the Millennium Development Goals, which involve serious effort to eliminate extreme poverty by 2015. That deadline is rapidly approaching, and will be upon us by the end of this next term of Australian government.

I sent the following letter 4 days ago in response to a Liberal Party announcement, to make sure that politicians are aware that this issue matters.

Dear Foreign Minister Smith and Prime Minister Gillard,

This afternoon Julie Bishop committed to appointing a Minister for International Development in an elected coalition government.

I am well aware of our globally privileged position in Australia, and am anxious to use this position of wealth to help those in our international community who are less fortunate.

A Minister for International Development may improve the effectiveness of our aid, but I see that you have a wonderful opportunity to surpass the Liberal party’s proposal.

Will you commit to policies that achieve the Millennium Development Goals by their 2015 deadline?

I don’t claim this to be the best possible letter, but I was trying to ask for more than just a matching announcement about appointing a new minister. I was (and remain) concerned that such an appointment might end up being more about show and noise than about genuine commitment to action. Thus I asked more generally for policies that achieve the MDGs.

I have just received the following response from the Australian Labor Party.

Thank you for your email about the future of foreign aid.

We agree that foreign aid is an important issue in this election campaign. We think that it’s vital that Australia upholds its obligations as a good international citizen.

As Prime Minister, Julia Gillard is committed to an aid program that is generous, effective and in Australia’s national interest.

This year, total Australian aid is forecast to increase to $4.3 billion, up from $3.8 billion in 2009-10.

Federal Labor has made a strong commitment to increase official development assistance to 0.5 per cent of Gross National Income by 2015-16.

And beyond 2015-16, we are committed to progressively increase Australia’s foreign aid, as economic and fiscal conditions permit, until we reach 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income.

Labor has placed the Millennium Development Goals at the centre of Australia’s aid program, directing more funds to education, health and other basic services.

We have made education a flagship of the aid program to give children in poorer countries a chance to go to school and improve their opportunity for a better life.

Tony Abbott and the Coalition would undo much of this good work.

That’s why many people who care about foreign aid are saying that it’s too much of a risk to put Tony Abbott in charge of Australia’s foreign aid programme.

Throughout the former Howard Government’s term of office, the Coalition’s contribution to foreign aid averaged only 0.27 per cent of Gross National Income, and hit a low of 0.25 per cent.

Already this election, the Coalition has announced a $300 million cut to the foreign aid budget (‘Make Poverty History’ Policy Report Card, 2010).

This seriously calls into question the Coalition’s commitment to assist the world’s poorest people.

And Tony Abbott has not ruled out more savage cuts to foreign aid if he is elected as Prime Minister.

At his campaign launch, Tony Abbott committed to the establishment of a “Debt Reduction Taskforce” with a commitment to identify further cuts to Australian Government expenditure, with no guarantees that foreign aid will be exempt from further cuts.

The Coalition’s promise to appoint a junior Minister for Development Assistance, sitting outside of Cabinet, is an attempt to distract from its real plans to cut foreign aid.

The Government has already acted to strengthen Australia’s overseas development assistance agency, AusAID. We have made AusAID an Executive Agency directly responsible to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, a Cabinet Minister, assisted by a dedicated Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance.

If Julia Gillard is re-elected as Prime Minister, there will be comparable arrangements – that means an empowered aid agency and strong representation in Cabinet on foreign aid issues.

There is so much more work to be done.

Through Australia’s development assistance program, we can make a difference and improve the lives of millions, and it is our intention to do more.

We’re proud of what we have achieved so far and what we will do if Julia Gillard is re-elected as Prime Minister on August 21.

You can read more about Labor’s policy on international development
assistance at: http://tiny.cc/yg0q5

Thank you for your email.
ALP Information Services

P.S. Tony Abbott has already promised to cut Australia’s foreign aid. If
you don’t want to see more foreign aid cuts, don’t risk Tony Abbott and
the Coalition.

This response sheds a bit more light on the situation, and confirms my suspicion that a Minister for International Development is a distraction from the real issues involved. I do like the emphasis on education (which I believe is one of the few things that can really make a long term difference), and I like the promise of 0.5% GNI by 2015-16. I’m not quite so excited by the “increase to 0.7% as economic and fiscal conditions permit“, as I suspect this looks like a fairly hollow promise. But 0.5 is already double 0.25, and so counts as a fairly good start.

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Interactive maps of trike adventure

Lachlan — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:38:40 +0000

As well as the typical photos and video, I also recorded gps traces of our recumbent trike cycle adventure. Sorting these trip records has been takiing up most of my spare time since arriving back home, and I now only have the video to go. That will be a significantly longer job, I suspect.

But the exciting thing about having gps traces put together is that I can put interactive maps into my daily update blog posts. Starting with our first day riding from Whitehaven to Keswick, you can now explore the map of our route on each of the 11 days. Feel free to zoom in, pan around, and change the map underlay as much as you want.

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Sorry about website outage

Lachlan — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:29:11 +0000

While I was in the UK the power must have cut out for a while at home. As well as causing oven timers to beep in protest, this black-out stopped my webserver. Frustratingly, a hard drive check warning prevented the server from rebooting normally, and so this website has been down for the last week or so.

But I am now home, and this server is buzzing along happily again on top of the filing cabinet. It’s good to be home.

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