FYL'z Brainz

I ended up reading an interesting article for a very different reason that anything related to Afghanistan. And my intent with this blog is to offer good, useful information rather that get drawn into "political slime". But, this article just tells so much I felt it worth the link.

The article is about Craig Murray, a 20-year veteran of the British Foreign Service whose career was destroyed after he was posted to Uzbekistan in August 2002 and began to complain about Western complicity in torture committed by the country’s totalitarian regime.

Baruffa and Carlos have a new family. Three "children". Now, Baruffa and Carlos are Samoyeds so, right now, we have three little round babies that are transitioning from looking looking like little pigs to little polar bears. They are eight days old today.

I now live in a concrete dome. In describing it, there doesn't seem to be a word here (in Spanish) that really describes this. The closest we get is is el horno meaning the oven. That is because there are outdoor ovens, made of adobe, that people use to cook rosquillas (a "cookie" for which there is no word in English).

My solution is to just say that I live in la casa redonda, the round house.It makes sense as the base is round and even the top is round.

In my Nicaliving blog at http://www.nicaliving.com/node/16195 I wrote about how I needed a NicaLiving equivalent for Costa Rica. Now, I know, NicaLiving isn't perfect and I am actually working to address a lot of the issues. But, it is just different from so many commercial sites.

For example, there are lots of sites that will tell you how wonderful Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belize or whatever is.

Not grapes. While they can be grown in Nicaragua, it seems like other wines make a lot more sense. About 35 years ago I made some great banana wine. The recipe? Um, can you find things that were on a sheet of paper in your desk 35 years ago?

I have also made apricot, cherry and blackberry wine. But while those are good Washington State options, I am thinking more along the lines of guava, mango, papaya and, of course, banana. Lacking a recipe, I will "fake it". I do remember one of the tricks is, no matter what you are using, you need to get the tannin level right.

All so often I hear people say "oh, it doesn't work like that anymore because of the Internet." The implication always seems to be that everything worked one way for a long time (there never is a measure but you get the feeling it is supposed to be since the beginning of man) and then the Internet "broke it". Well, the Internet is just the current step in evolution.

The Peace Corps was created by the U.S. to bring help to countries less fortunate. Clearly it has done that to many people all over the world. For example, I have a friend who brought Tilapia farming to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica almost 30 years ago. On the other side, the volunteers learn about other cultures, other places and other people and bring that knowledge back with them. Or, in the case of my friend, what she found in Costa Rica inspired her to stay.

I have been living off-grid for about six months. Usually there is no shortage of electricity here. My solar array produces between six and 10 kilowatt hours per day most days. With consumption in the 5-6 range, I generally end up with full batteries at the end of the day.

What I find particularly interesting is how I budget power without thinking about it. It's a lot like when you realize you drive a stick-shift car but never think about shifting or, in my case, just start talking in Spanish because the other person started talking in Spanish.

What started out as a request by my wife to build a "guest latrine" turned into a study of world sanitation methods. While I don't claim to be an expert, I have learned a lot and have found a lot of on-line resources. I also now understand that while the initial focus of most of the projects was to clean up (pun intended) third world sanitation, it it very clear that there are good reasons to make some serious changes in how human waste is dealt with in the first world as well. I suggested this in a previous post. Here I want to fill in the blanks.

I live off grid so I have been installing lots of 12 volt lights but there are many other reasons 12 volt lighting makes sense, whether you have a grid connection or not. As my main battery system is 24 volts, not 12, there is actually little difference between having 12 volt lights in my environment or where 120 or 240 volts AC is the main power source.