beans, beans the musical fruit

I mentioned a while ago that I had a breadmaker being geared up for something other than breadmaking...

Here's the teardown and modification session - I pulled out all the electronics and fitted a switch to run the motor continuously.

Then fill it with some green coffee beans, and whack a heat gun in there. Here's some decaf, so it starts quite brown rather than green in colour.

The cool down. A day or two's rest and it should be perfect for brewing. Yum, fresh coffee!

Napier and Taupo

Well it's been a few weeks since I've posted, mostly due to a lack of interesting things to report on: "Went to work, worked, came home, had dinner, went to bed" isn't exactly exciting news...

But anyway, we spent last week down in Napier, which is in the south east of the North Island, on Hawkes Bay. We stopped off in Taupo to break up the drive there and back. Down into Hawkes Bay is a very pretty drive (well, once you get past the endless pine plantations) - lots of windy roads (that I didn't get to drive, but Jo hustled along on pretty well), ever-changing scenery and mountains, spring lambs, and green, green hills everywhere.

Taupo has some interesting geothermal sites, including a hot spring that gets some use for bathing, and a weird valley of steaming holes, called "Craters of the Moon". Huka falls also run from Lake Taupo, cutting through a narrow gorge.

Down at Napier, we arrived to a couple of days of bleak wet weather, but it cleared up for a few fine days. Plenty of Art-Deco-ness to see around town, plus we drove around checking out some wider scenery (a daffodil farm with supposed views of the mountains, and a few wineries to gather supplies from, and sample a few along the way...). In all a nice little getaway, beats working for a week that's for sure!

Apart from overlooking the beach (and a carpark that hosted New Zealand's Crappiest Sunday Market), the apartment we stayed at in Napier was home to the World's Worst TV. Not that there was anything wrong with it once operational and set correctly, but I've never come across a TV before that:

• takes over 30 seconds to "boot up".
• Occasionally jams up and won't respond to the remote, if you try to do more than one command a second.
• responds to a volume change command by going all the way to minimum (or worse, maximum) volume.
• has a remote that also controls the heater (volume minus lowered the thermostat, channel 4 made it oscillate...)

Well, back to the excitement of work this week, so it may be a bit longer before the next update... here's some photos.

Love to all,

matt.

More random stuff

Hey all, what's been happening? It would be great if you could drop us a line or email and keep in touch! By the way, if you want to keep in contact with Jo, as a few of you have discovered already she now has a Facebook site. Her contact is via the drjoking@gmail.com address, but as I have no idea how to use facebook I can't give you more help than that...

Not much to report since my last post. Jo got really sick last week with a strep. infection and spent several days in bed and a week off work. Slowly recovering, but the best cure is apparently lots of rest.

We went down to the Viaduct (just west of the city) on Sunday to check out the New Zealand Coffee Festival. Not that I need another machine, but it was interesting to see what was on the market, and who some of the vendors and bean suppliers were. Free coffees are always welcome too.

The highlight for the day was a trans-Tasman barista competition between NZ and Australia, which involved several rounds of the teams producing copious drinks of high quality and artistic appearance in minimal time. Naturaly the Aussies dominated, much to the chagrin of the crowd (Kiwis don't like losing, particularly to Australians).

Since it was a clear day, we followed that up with a walk around the Viaduct harbour. After a several weeks of not getting out much, it was good to see some new ground for once, and get some sunshine.

We're planning on revisiting our Coromandel vacation in a few months, but in a few week's time we're heading to Napier for a week's holiday. More stories to follow I'm sure, hopefully not so dramatic as last time... (note to self: get car serviced soon!)

Cars - Part 2

As you probably know, I sold my little red car in February before we left Australia. So it was pretty unexpected to receive (last month) a rego renewal notice in the mail. Given that the new owner re-registered the car in NSW I was suprised to find it still in my name. Luckily I had some contact details for the him, and he said he'd look into it and sort it out.

But apparently that wasn't enough. This week I had a letter from the Sydney M2 tollway operators telling me that I had an unpaid toll journey to my name, and could I please pay it and the processing fee? This was pretty impressive given that I sold the car months ago, the new owner had new plates on it, and I wasn't even in the country at that time.

I would have loved to pull out the title transfer receipt to say that I wasn't responsible, but it's buried somewhere in a filing cabinet in the back of an overcrowded bedroom at the parents' farm. In Australia. From somewhere I managed to dig up the new owner's phone number, and we tried to figure out what was going on. Seems that VicRoads were holding up the title transfer whilst waiting for the plates to be surrendered (which he'd done and has a receipt to prove it). Certainly it didn't hold up the NSW RTA in issuing him with new plates...

I don't know whose car was photographed travelling through North Ryde on 29 June, nor if it had my old plates on it, but it certainly wasn't me.

Cars - Part 1

This was supposed to be the post about our weekend holiday to the Coromandel Peninsula (just to the east of Auckland). But shit happens sometimes, and so we have a different tale to tell.

We got out of town early on Friday afternoon to try to beat the traffic (still got a fair bit of it down the motorway), for a few days near Hot Water Beach. The weather forecast was pretty abysmal, but not enough to discourage us, after all, we could just dig a hole in the beach sand and sit in some thermal waters. But about halfway there, things went pear shaped...

Two hours out of Auckland, the car's battery warning light came on as we were cruising on the highway, shortly followed by Jo noticing the power steering had gone AWOL. We found somewhere to pull over (just as the temperature gauge clocked the top of the scale), which as luck would have it was right out the front of what we later found out to be the only open garage within about a 40km radius. So if we'd called the AA for roadside help, they would have towed us here. Diagnosis: a failed fan belt idler pulley bearing, and two thrown belts. No chance of getting replacement parts til Monday, but it was fortunate that we'd planned to take Monday off work anyway.

It was in a little town called Maramarua (from the Maori translation: mara - nowhere; marua - to be in the middle of). Naturally with a non-functioning car and dark closing fast, we were left figuring out what we could do for the next few days.

Whilst the idea of sleeping in the car was proposed, fortunately the place we were supposed to be staying called aroud and found a nearby B&B in Mangatarata (Maori: 10 miles east of the middle of nowhere) who could come and pick us up and accommodate us for the night. So we spent the night crashing someone else's dinner (which they were nice enough to share with us), and finding out about their little B&B and family story. By this stage we figured that a rental car would be good to see us through the rest of the weekend and we'd continue on in the morning.

At about midnight Jo had a nausea attack and dashed to the toilet feeling pretty unwell. That seemed to pass relatively quickly, but not before I was sent on a mission to find a bucket; a nice challenge in a strange house in the dark.

Then at about 2:30 a loud beeping noise started. The smoke detector in our room had at that moment decided that its batteries were flat and that we needed to know about it, so I had to find a chair to stand on and pull it down.

I don't know what all this means but sometimes you just get the feeling that you're not meant to be going somewhere. By the morning we had pretty much given up on thoughts of continuing our journey, and decided to head home for a couple of days of relaxing. Jo had a date with Harry Potter anyway. We did take the time to go for a walk aroud their little bush plot which was a nice enough distraction, then found a local rental car to get home in (a Toyota Carib - a car just as bland as its homonym).

I was waiting for some punchline/epilogue to this, like that the place we were supposed to be staying had been struck by lightning and washed away in a flood, but no such luck. I guess we'll just have to chalk this one up to a series or random coincidences. Luckily our car was fixed by Monday night, and we took a round trip to pick it up and drop off the rental.

Espresso heaven

My birthday present was finally ordered and promptly delivered this week. And frankly, who needs bench space? This is far more important...
Here it is in all its brand-new glory. Henceforth, it will never look so shiny as fingerprints and scratches start to develop, so enjoy it...

I've been practising pulling shots for the last few evenings - getting the technique developed, learning how it works, tweaking the grinder - so it's fortunate that the machine came with 2kg of coffee beans to start with, that will keep me busy for a while.

Meanwhile, we picked up a sofa bed a few weeks ago, so for those who want to go somewhere for a hoiday, we have the venue if you have the time...

Tanks for the memories...

...what's going on? Have I stooped to bad puns? Things must be getting pretty shallow here. Oh well, must be the weather. (Cold, wet, windy, in case you were wondering. At least it's not flooded like Northland; the cousins up north have no power at the moment...)

I spent a few days last week in Australia doing a vehicle survey in Bandiana, which is out the back of Wodonga (there's an engineering training barracks there). Started with an ASLAV AS4 (at Vic Barracks in Melbourne actually), then an M113, and finally an M1A1 Abrams and an M88 Hercules (which is in essence a big tow truck). The pictures linked really don't do justice to these things, the latter two particularly are bloody huge. Read the stats, then go pace out how big that is...

Unfortunately we spent a day and a half with the latter vehicles waiting for the proper security clearance (which had been promised in advance) to see inside the vehicles. This is a fairly necessary part of what we were there for! Even the staff accompanying us weren't supposed to look in them...

We weren't supposed to look in the engine bay either, but that's a bit hard when every Abrams we saw (about 6 of them) had the engine out and on the floor, and we were standing on top of the turrets half the time. (You can see what the engine unit looks like at the bottom of the M88 page linked above - it's a gas turbine, sounds awesome on startup, which happened a couple of times while we were there. Not as cool sounding though as the Herc's engine, which is a massive V12 air-cooled diesel; loudest motor I've heard this side of a top doorslammer...)

By the middle of Wednesday, we were given an official "no" (which was probably just a lack of an official "yes"...) so we cut short the trip a day and flew back to NZ on Thursday. I think by then we'd had our fill of huge country pub meals anyway... Not sure what they put in the water up there, but I'd hate to see the size of the chickens that those parmas came off...

Not much exciting to report since then. Jo caught up with Anne (the fellow Aussie psych) again last week while I was away. I've got some mudguards on the bike now, so consequently it's rained every day. But they do work very effectively. We hired a tip truck last weekend (it was the only thing on the lot) and picked up a sofa bed last weekend from up north a bit, so now you have no excuse to come visit! (except maybe that weather...)

love to all.
matt and jo.