I've been very busy this year updating my scrapbook. I've worked out that I've completed 40 pages and am now having to start a new album as the current one is getting thicker. Hope you enjoy my pages as I'm truly proud of my creations. :)
It is quite tropical here. This morning was humid and hot, and this afternoon there is thunder and lightning. A good opportunity to get some work done :)
Our new dining table arrived a couple of weeks ago, we are so happy to finally have a nice place to eat. The two long edges can fold down to make it into a side table, and the drawers can be opened from either side.
We ordered it in April. Crate and Barrel missed a couple of delivery dates (but refunded the delivery fee to compensate) and delivered a damaged table. They were not going to be able to deliver a replacement until the end of September.
If you have to deal with a company that cant seem to get its act together, I suggest you read "The Art of Turboing" before calling them. When we finally decided to use it, it saved us a month on the delivery time. Crate and Barrel finally got moving after we called them and used techniques from that guide.
Next time we place an order, we'll check that they have it in stock.
I love Optus, if you read my previous Optus post you know I do. I wanted to use Optus service for my upcoming trip to Malaysia and Australia.
I called customer service. The first person I spoke to recognised the complexity of reactivating my account from overseas and put me through to their manager. Their manager determined that all I needed was a fresh SIM and I was good to go. I had to have a local buy a SIM at an Optus shop and post it to me. Optus had a happy customer, and some good roaming dollars headed their way.
It took two more phone calls to get the SIM activated and request the transfer to postpay. Postpay is easier than prepay because it won't run out of credit mid trip.
Call four was today. This guy seemed more realistic. Optus don't provide accounts for people in foreign countries. He was in a rush, so he laid out the facts and suggested I call customer service to get my money back.
If only I had met the fourth rep first, I could have saved weeks of setup and gone straight to VOIP. I'll just have to make sure I have Internet access during my travels, which is pretty much guaranteed these days. Now all that remains is to get the money back that I have left in my Optus accounts.
It turns out that Niels Provos also makes/made sourdough bread. He made his own sourdough bread from scratch, including making the starter and experimenting with the parameters. Don't buy a sourdough starter pack if you are interested in making your own sourdough, follow his instructions to make your own. It might be best to wait until the weather warms up first, since bread likes constant warmth.
The reason I found his pages is that I wanted to clarify some of the instructions. Our last bread was a bit flat because I left it overnight before cooking and it had well and truly fallen by then. Once you add the yeast and salt the show has started and you have to cook it once it has risen (the second time).
We are making our third loaf today. To make it fit into a normal day we seperated and fed the baby sponge last night, and mixed in the yeast etc. this morning. Last time we did everything except the cooking on the first day, which is where we went wrong.
I wanted to clarify why you have to make it rise twice. You let it rise once, then you transfer it to the cooking container and let it rise again. The instructions I was working from don't make it clear whether you should knead the dough during that transfer, but there are plenty of guides on the Internet that make it clear you should deflate the bread after the first rising, as too much carbon dioxide is bad for the yeast. You should also oil the bread before the first rising so that it doesn't stick to the container, I'll try that next time.
We had a look around the rock pools, and found starfish, a crab, some sea grass and a man playing frisbee with his tackle hanging loose. We didn't take a picture of that last one.
When we first walked past Mr Tackle Happy, he was sitting on the beach looking suspiciously at my camera. I gave him my best "stay where you are camera thief or I'll take you down Aikido style" glance. We didn't realise he was wearing no undies until we had walked past and he resumed tossing his frisbee around.
The Muir area includes a forest and a beach. The forest has limited parking and as we drove towards the beach we saw signs stating that the forest parking was full (it was about 11am). There is a bus service, so if you get there too late you can take the bus to the forest.
Apart from the beach and the forest, there are a few attractions (see also) including the Pelican Inn. The Pelican Inn, as you would expect, has a pub and a few rooms available for people who would like to stay ($200-$300/night). We stopped there for lunch. The restaurant is very "English Pub" with a big fireplace, English menu and a waiter with an English accent. The smokey smell also makes it nice and homely. I had bangers and mash whilst Louise had fish and chips. The sauce was called ketchup and the mustard tasted American, but apart from that it was great.
If we ever stay at the Pelican Inn, room 7 looks like the best. It has direct access to the Snug (private bar for guests) and good views.
The Pelican Inn also had some nice cars in the car park.
Today we visited Muir Beach. The Muir Beach Overlook overlooks Muir Beach. It is the home to a number of Base Ends, which were designed as observation posts where observers could report enemy vessels as they approached San Francisco. If base ends at multiple sites observed ships simultaneously the ship positions could be triangulated for bombardment by guns near the Golden Gate bridge.
The base ends are built into the hillside facing the ocean. On the back of the hillside we found a small room with a chimney, which might once have been a bunkroom or a kitchen. If you look carefully you can see a smiley face simulacra on the ground in the upper right.
Since the overlook is a point, you can see beach from the bunkroom side of the hill as well. I tried to take a photo straight through a break in the trees, but my camera would not take it. I pointed it up and to the left, and it took a photo there, I tried down and to the right, and it took a photo there, but not in the centre. That is a bit of a mystery. I guess it couldn't find anything to focus on when it was centered, or the batteries were a bit flat, or it just plain malfunctioned. Below you can see the shots I took pointing to the top left and bottom right.
Notice also the similarities between the angles of the photos on the nps.gov web site and the photos I took today (before I saw that web site).
Louise has completed two new scrapbook pages. One of them features her QUT graduation photo, and the other is the driveway that we had built on our Adelaide house.
On my ride home tonight traffic was backed up on Shoreline for about 1.5km. One of the apartments with the brown roofs [1] was on fire. The outside walls of the apartments are clad with wooden tiles. As I rode past there were flames climbing the outside of the chimney.
After I got home Louise and I walked back to have a look. There was plenty of smoke, and possibly the whole complex had been evacuated because there were a lot of people out in the street. At least 6 fire units turned up (more were arriving when we left) and 4 helicopters were up getting news footage. By then the chimney was just a skeleton, as you can see if you look carefully at the top photo.
[1] Roofs or Rooves?
We went for a drive to half moon bay. It was a bit cold and foggy so we didn't see the beach. Instead, we had a look around town.
There are all of the usual tourist shops; trinkets, antiques, candles and soap, books. There are also an unusually large number of hotels on main street above the restaurants. Off the main street we found an interesting looking old jail (built 1911) and church.
Most of the beaches are state parks with entry fees. While we were looking for a beach that didn't have an entry fee, we found a place that you can hire horses and go for a ride on the beach. When we have visitors next, we intend to go there for a sunset beach ride.
There are some the shops on the highway, so we stopped and had a look on the way back home. One of them had iron statues of dinosaurs out the front, which we got photos with.
One of the shops had old ornate doors imported from Egypt. I can't find a reference, but a friend once told me that in some countries (inc. India) people spend a lot of money on their front doors. It is a kind of status symbol. Anyway, old ornate doors are salvaged when the house is torn down or renovated, and are often exported.
One of the shops also had 900 year old pots for sale.
I thought I would follow up on some of the comments from previous articles.
Alamo Square:
Anonymous asked how much a "painted lady" townhouse is likely to cost, and if they are heritage listed.
zipreality.com has four properties on Alamo Square listed in their historic search results, but does not specify which properties. The prices range from $399,000 for a 1 bedroom 1 bathroom to $3,395,000. homepricemaps.com has a Google Maps interface where you can zoom in and see sales details, revealing the following sale (which I think is one of the painted ladies):
818 Steiner St, San Francisco, 94117, CA sold for $1,620,000 on 2004-05-14. It was built in 1890, has 4 bedrooms and 5,250 square feet of living area.
The ladies are part of the Alamo Square Historic District, and their image features twice on the Alamo Square Neighbourhood Association Planning and Preservation page. Modifications apparently have to be approved by the SF Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board. They had quite a view during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Optus Bills:
The bill was an eBill, which is how it managed to reach us. I don't know if the California Victoria postmaster is getting our $0.00 paper copies though.
Ted Stevens:
The "Internet is a series of tubes" lecture by Ted Stevens, chairman of the senate commerce committee, has been circulating the Internets. Ted Stevens' lecture was used as a comedy skit on the Daily Show (video). There is a remix in case you missed the point of his original performance. Somebody should tell Teddy what the Internet is for. Just don't download 10 videos at a time or you will clog your tubes.
Santa Cruz Boardwalk:
Yes, off-sites are like team building exercises with beer.
We've baked our first loaves of sour dough bread.
It took almost 24 hours. We had to seperate a baby sponge from the mother sponge, feed it and wait 6-8 hours while it soured up. Then combine the ingredients and knead them into a ball which rests for 6-8 hours. After that we put it in the bread tins and let it proof for 4-5 hours. Finally comes the cooking and the eating. That all adds up to 21 hours.
We seperated the baby sponge at about midday, made the ball at about 7, put it in the ceramic loaf "tins" at midnight and started cooking at 5am. We wouldn't have gotten up so early had the pager not gone off. I'm secondary on-call this week and something at work needed attention. We couldn't get back to sleep, so we cooked the bread.
The dough was rising and falling all night. It rose to fill the bowl whilst it rested, then it shrunk again when I put it in the tins, then it rose and filled those containers. The first loaf burnt a bit on top, and we didn't cook the second loaf for quite long enough, but they are both delicious. It's a shame we don't eat much bread :)
We still have the mother sponge, and will continue to make bread on the weekends. We'll see if we can make the schedule fit a normal day.
We have a new pet; Bubbles, the sourdough sponge.
We are trying our hand at making sourdough, just like the early Californian gold miners. We picked up a starter pack at the Farmers Market in San Francisco a few weeks back. The starter pack contained a powdered yeast mix and instructions, such as:
"Think of the mother sponge as a sort of pet, you want to feed it, and keep it acclimate to its environment."
The main mix is called the mother sponge. We feed it twice a day with a mix of flour and water, the more frequently you feed it the more sour the final bread becomes. We needed somewhere warm (but not hot) to keep it, and the top of the fridge is consistently the right temperature (we guess). 
To make bread you seperate off a baby sponge, feed it extra flour, and use it to start bread about a day later. When you feed the mother sponge you take out and discard a cup of the sponge, so rather than throw it away we used the first feeding to make a baby sponge, which will be used to make bread tomorrow.
Overnight Bubbles doubled in size, as it bubbled into life.
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This is the view from the 4th floor of The Metreon in San Francisco across Yerba Buena Gardens to the Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA). We saw the the Titanic Exhibit at the Metreon, and we saw the Xefirotarch exhibit (and some Andy Warhol pieces) as SF MOMA recently.
At Alamo Square in San Francisco is the famous Six Sisters (also known as the Painted Ladies). They are a group of townhouses that were designed by the same architect. Remember Full House? Well in the opening scene, the six sisters are shown as where the family lived. These houses are worth big bucks, but I just love how quaint they are!
We have recently discovered or rediscovered some old games that we love(d) to play.
Sean found SimFarm on sale at a book store, and knew that Louise loved this old game. She has been building up her farm by farming strawberries and gladiolas.
Colin mentioned that he had been playing Warlords IV, a turn based strategy game. Sean has been enjoying building up his heroes as he conquers maps in single player. Hopefully, he will play Colin some time soon.
