An Exercise In Futility

Ideal coffee making system - unit would be plumbed in to water source and drain, the only user interaction would be to tell the unit when to make coffee (either on demand or by pre-programming), to drink the coffee, and to refill the beans/grounds and soap when near empty. Soap is required for self clean. Carafe would be removable but a robotic clamp could grip the carafe during the cleaning process to dump the contents. Or spigot type dispenser. Problem with spigot system would be downtime while system self-cleans (carafe system can cycle between 2 carafes). Beans or grounds would be dispensed internally in preprogrammed amounts. System could contain both decaf and caf, and combine in desired ratios. System would have a web-based interface for configuration and operation, but unit could also be operated at the physical unit itself (one touch brew).

i bought a $100 coffee maker with insulated carafe last year and i have been disappointed. The $20 kmart special i had before made WAY better coffee.

I visited the BC Government Liquor Store at Terminal Park in Nanaimo the other day. This one has probably the best selection in town and is open fairly late, so it is really the liquor store of choice. However, as long as i can remember, they have not offered any chilled beer. In fact, no BCL store offers this “feature”. The Terminal Park store was recently renovated so i expected that they would have added coolers, it seemed like the logical thing to do. But no, the brand-new looking store still had no cold anything. So i asked someone working there, “is there a law against BCL refrigerating their beer?”. The answer is as stupid as you would expect: The lobby group for private liquor stores fought this a long time ago and won - their argument is that “cold” is what makes the private stores more unique. That my friends is bull shit. What makes a private store unique is that it is open when the government stores are not. I guess what also makes the private stores unique is that they generally charge more for their alcohol (plus cooling fee if you grab it from the cooler). Maybe if ‘cold beer’ is the defining factor for the private stores, we could lobby for them to be barred from selling non-chilled beer? That would be awesome, i guess it is unfortunate that there are more important battles to be fought.

There are two things i dislike about this camera we have, and they are both to do with manual focus. One is that the focus ring has no markings, so it is not possible to set the focus to infinity. Maybe a focus reticule would help in that case - and that is peeve number two. On our old Minolta there was a reticule in which you had to align two images that appeared in two half circles - and that would indicate that the subject was in focus. I am barely an amateur photographer but it made sense to me that this would eliminate any focus error that would be introduced by my eye (which focuses independently of the camera). On manual focus with no focus reticule to assist me, i am having to guess when the subject is in focus. Or am i fooling myself?

Went climbing at the steppes again this weekend. It was great! Tried leading a 5.11b (something on sherlock wall but not sure which one), it kicked my butt in the endurance department, i got totally pumped out by the 7th bolt and had to leave behind a couple of draws. Wanted to rappel off the top to retrieve the equipment but the bolts were wiggly in the rock and i didn’t think my life was worth $30. Maybe i can climb it again sometime soon to get them, that is if nobody has pinched them yet.

I have also updated the map for Steppes access. apparently the copley ridge road is a dead end and requires a bushwhack - so i’ve removed that until i (or someone else) can confirm/map-out a reliable route. Also added a second gate location to the map and confirmed the location of the cabin access trail.

Within a 16 hour timespan today, there have been 12 earthquakes between magnitude 4.0 and 5.2, all around the same spot about 200km WSW of Port Hardy, off the north end of Vancouver Island. This location is known as the explorer transform, a transform fault at the north end of the explorer ridge.

Update August 28 10:23am: The count for quakes in this region is now up to 32! Overnight there was a 6.1 reported (now downgraded to a 5.8). Not exciting for most people, however, because it was too far out in the ocean to be felt by anyone on land.