Cheap Glasses for the Yearning Australian Masses

Me, I am determined to never need glasses, no matter how blind I become. I'm not quite sure how I am going to manage this, but I am confident that sometime soon someone smart will invent a "Driving By Braille" system for people like me.

One recent development that is chipping away at my steely resolve to remain sans spectacles is the growing availability of cheap glasses. More and more sites pop up that allow you to merely enter the details of your prescription and order a fresh yet affordable set of optics to suit your mood at crazy prices.

Actually, a friend of mine has recently started just such a optometrist bankrupting venture, called GetFramed. He is selling prescription specs to the discerning Australian clientele, starting for the frivolous sum of $30, climbing to the dizzying heights of $70 for the "flash ones". I'm not entirely sure how he is managing this (I am visualising hundreds of feverish gnomes hard at work in his shed), but hey, why look a gift horse in the mouth (unless of course, you like me are so blind you thought it was a drinking fountain).

Anyway, if you are in the market for some reasonably priced spectacles, give him a try at www.GetFramed.com.au.

BTW - Weird aside - I've noticed this post is showing up on a site called ikox dot net. Not sure whats happening there but looks like whoever is behind this site is ripping off my post. Weird.

World's Biggest House

I've noticed a few people seem to be drifting into my blog looking for information on the world's largest house. I can point you in the direction of the biggest wooden house (more of a cubby house for adults really), but sadly can't definitively tell you which house is the world's hugest! I can tell you that the largest privately owned house in the US is the Biltmore House. It was built after 1888 by the Vanderbilt family, and has a floor area of over 16,000 square meters. The estate itself covers over 8000 acres or around 32 square km.

This monstrous family mansion has 250 rooms, an indoor pool a bowling alley and 3 kitchens. If you were advertising it for sale it would be a 35 x 43, which is really weird ... 35 bedrooms but 43 bathrooms! Anyway, more information here.

It could be argued that Windsor Castle is a private establishment and if you felt that the British Royal family owning such a house does not constitute public ownership, it would probably win the title of World's largest house. Windsor Castle has a floor area of about 45,000 square meters. However, I reckon this one is cheating ...

Anyway, if you happen to know of a larger houses anywhere in the world, drop me a comment (please, no temples, government buildings or office blocks ... just private houses).

Reasonless Traffic Jams

I don't know about you, but the the roads seem to be me to be increasingly populated with a mix of octogenarians driving little more that battery powered wheelchairs at speeds that would have made the proprietor of Mr. Tom Chandlebutt's Steady Cart Transport Company doze off and surly faced hoods driving cars with twice as many kilowatts as they have braincells. There seems to be an attitude, at least around here, that the right hand lane is for "long term residents", rather than being the "fast lane". In fact, I'm sure some people assume that since they are turning right sometime in the next few days, they are entitled to just stick in the right lane (here in Australia we drive right hand drive cars, and so our roads are built to work opposite to those in the US and France). I have developed a desire for instant capital punishment to be meted out on those I deem to be infringing the rules of good sense, and in my less cheerful moments, feel that a line of smoking wrecks lining the road would serve to discourage those who feel the need to brake to a stop before merging onto a freeway. Not very charitable, I know, but I'm sure I'm not alone. Breath in if you've ever felt frustrated at other drivers on the roads ;)

Anyway, an article linked from Slashdot today reminded me of some cool information I found a while ago about traffic. The article described how Japanese researcher has shown how on a saturated road system, even with no traffic hazards or obstacles, jams will form and travel back through traffic like a shock wave. The Japanese experiment involved 20 or so cars, driving on a 230m circular track. Each driver was told to drive at a constant speed of 30 km per hour, yet before long, inconsistencies in their drive patterns were resulting in jams and slowdowns.

A few years back, a guy called William Beaty wrote a series of articles on traffic waves. He wasn't a traffic expert, but they are really very cool, and illustrated with animations that show the results of his experiments. Another interesting resource is this animated tool, which although a little old now, allows you to model traffic conditions and see the effect sped up.

My own thoughts on the matter are that governments need a few things done. There is no way that the world can afford to continue to widen roads to accommodate more traffic. Both economically and environmentally this is mad. Governments need a better program of driver education that trains people on how to merge effectively and at speed, change lanes safely and how to handle a traffic hazard (have you ever noticed how if there has been a traffic accident, even though the vehicles and emergency staff a now well off the road itself, all the traffic still slows almost a stop? I just don't get that ... Who wants to look at an accident ... Oh look there! Theres a victim on a stretcher. I spy with my little eye something beginning with "Ambulance"). Insurance companies could be the point of entry into re-education for existing drivers, forcing people who have made certain types of insurance claims to attend the program.

Another thing that would help would be if GPS systems were better equipped to tell me traffic conditions on my route. I don't just want to know where I am, but where all the other cars are and how fast they are traveling. That way, the load could be spread better among alternate routes. Even if government traffic authorities were to have the control to put recommended quota levels on roads in real time, so that roads with ongoing work or traffic hazards could have their quota reduced so that GPS systems recommend drivers away from that route after the quota is reached.

I reckon a light on the roof of every vehicle that indicates if they are traveling at or above speed or not would be good. Green for at or above the speed limit, orange for below. This would mean that rather than breaking when I see the car in front braking, I could see the line of amber lights ahead of me, and chill out about going any quicker. So rather than breaking suddenly and causing a shock wave of traffic, I can help lower the average speed a little rather than a lot.

Anyway, clearly I worry way too much about this and have spent way too much time thinking about this.

Airconditioning for Renters

Hello long suffering audience. I am very grateful for the continuing patronage of all three of you. As a token of my gratitude, behold! My latest post!

Pointless theatrics aside, we have just invested in a new shiny silver box thing. While the regular reader of this blog may worry that this might cause some jealousy amongst the existing silvery boxes in our house (e.g. our very zealous fridge or our toaster), it's all going to be fine ... This one will reside in a different room. This one is an air conditioner (in case you hadn't managed to deduce this from the title).

We are renting at present, and as a consequence are not in a position to make too many radical changes to the house we are in. Given we have had a couple of months here with the temperatures hovering in the high thirties, we decide we want, nay, needed some aircon. But as we have never met our landlord, we were a bit uncertain as to how he would react to us punching large holes through his walls for a split system. So we opted for a portable air conditioner.

After reading Choice magazines review, we settled on a Electrolux Portable unit with the classy moniker of EPV12CRA (how do they come up with these? ... so catchy, so fun!). All sarcasm aside, this unit looks awesome in the pictures, but is a little disappointing ensconced in my bedroom. In person, it reminds me of those individuals you meet who look amazing from a distance, but don't look so good in profile. Like all portable air conditioners, it looks a little bit over-weight, as it bulges to accommodate all those fans and coolers and pumps and so on, but somehow the pictures had led me to believe that this unit would be different, all svelte, shiny and slim. Sigh.

And like portable air conditioners, setting it up is a bit of a let down, as you arrange a large hose to vent the hot air out a window, its grey length looking more like an anaconda that has just consumed a hummer than a "decorative feature in the bedroom".

Other than that it seems to work pretty well. It has 5 modes - cool, dehumidify, fan, vent and a turbo mode that just cranks the whole thing up as fast and cold as it can go. It has an internal reservoir to hold the condensation that builds up in all refrigerative aircon units, and while you can run a hose from the unit to a handy receptical (another classy touch ... a hose running into a bucket) or out the window, it run for about 12 hours before needing to be emptied. All the controls are on the remote, so don't lose it, but the controls a relative intuitive and obvious. It also has a thing called a Plasmacluster Ion generator. When this on, a very blue square is illuminated on the front panel, and other than, it smells a little different but seems to run the same.

It ships with a window sash kit to help you permanently install the exhaust air outlet in a window frame, a hose to drain the water, and the exhaust hose, as well as a couple of rolls of insulating foam for use around the window sash. The window sash kit also has a aperture for the condensation hose.

One thing that did surprise me is that warranty seems to indicate that it is covered for 5 years. Don't quote me on this, as mileage may differ, but the generic appliance warranty we got with the air conditioner stated that air conditioners are covered for 5 years.

Cutting to the chase here, this unit does the job of cooling a room, but if you are paying extra because it looks shiny and silver and slim, don't bother. Its a bit on the over weight side, looks bad in profile and has a pet anaconda.

Chilling Stuff

We bought a new fridge recently. New us, not new as in just laid. All the same, the wonder of Ebay allowed us purchase a second hand Fisher & Paykel E440T 447 litres Iridium Stainless Steel fridge, to give it the full name on it's pedigree papers. So far I'm quite impressed with it. The thing is, this fridge gives me the impression that it takes the task of keeping my food coolish very seriously.

For example, I had a chilly bin/esky full of food from the freezer unit in the fridge in our old place, and was about to load it into the new fridge, which had been installed and switched on only 30 minutes before. I opened the fridge door and began to place items into the fridge, and noticed a strange sound. It was a very faint cracking sound, almost as if the fridge was saying, "You know what you're doing here, buddy?! 'Cause thats permafrost melting, ya know! Think global warming and icecaps dying. So hurry up, ok!"

Well, I disregarded the warning and kept loading at a leisurely pace. After about a minute the fridge began beeping, as if to say, "I'm beginning to lose my cool here, mate. Close the freezer door and no one gets hurt!"

Finally, after about 2 minutes of me loading, all the lights in the fridge went out and the beeping became continuous, as the fridge attempted to convey a final warning that if I didn't close that flipping door this instant, there would be hell to pay, or at least uncool food.

I finished and closed the door, and was immediately greeted with the sound of a small but very intense turbine winding up to high speed, doubtless blasting the interior of the freezer with freshly ground snowmen and essense of polar bear. The noise seemed to convey a message, saying "Great, now I'm going to have to work overtime. I mean, this is what you've pushed me to, buddy. Listen to me work. It's not like I've got nothing else to be doing here, ya hear. Loser!"

I like that in a fridge. Most of the time it just sits there placidly, looking all silver and calm. But get it narked and it really lets you know that keeping this food cold is a sacred mission, so just get out the way. If you've got any other questions about this fridge, let me know.

Red Light District

Given I have neglected this blog for some months now, I thought you might need something a little more than the normal mundane title to shake you from your torpitude. Hence the somewhat misleading title. Monster and I happened to be in Singapore recently, and after a bit of research decided to stay in the a hotel named "The Scarlet Hotel". It's one of several new boutique hotels in Singapore and was, apart from our taxi drivers having some difficulty finding it, pretty good.

The Scarlet is in fact a converted row of shops that slope gently down a little crescent near the Big Red Pagoda in the Chinese Quarter. The internal walls between the old stores have been knocked out, and hotel rooms installed, creating a rather unusual hotel in which the corridors follow the slightly sloping, slightly curved path of the street outside. Each room is decorated with real attention to detail, the styling being at once evocative of a French palace mixed with modern touches. Its a little hard to describe, but picture brocades and velvets mixed with dark wood and sharp lines. Very cool.

One thing that really impressed me was the room service. We arrived in the early morning, about 3ish, after spending 7 hours on a Tiger flight (not at all fun ... more on this on a later date, but unless you are blessed with very short legs, and I do mean legs no longer than about 6 inches, or have recently escaped from several years incarceration in a mid sized esky, avoid Tiger like you would any other dangerous animal) and ordered some tea from the in-room menu. I was informed over the phone that the bar was closed and they wouldn't be able to mix me a drink. 3 minutes later the concierge called to say they had found someone who knew how to mix drinks and was it OK if they still sent it. Within 15 minutes we were tucking into a rather nice meal, grateful to have escaped bits of card mascarading as food on the air flight. Any hotel that can rustle up a decent meal at that time gets kudos.

On our first time there we were upgraded from their Deluxe room to an Executive room. Very nice. However, they neglected to tell us this, so on our return trip when we got the room we had booked, a Deluxe room, we were a little confused. The Executive rooms are large and, well, roomy. They are very stylish and ornate. The Deluxe rooms are much smaller and simpler in style. However, they are still pretty comfortable.

One final comment. The staff didn't seem ultra keen to help us haul our luggage down to our room ... so if you do ever decide to stay here (and we would recommend it), make a point of telling the staff you want a porter to take your luggage up ... They might not think of it otherwise.

Now for something a bit more high brow

Too much rank silliness, really. Coffee, safaris and the weather. Nope, today we are posting something a lot more intellectually stimulating. Allow me to recommend to your perusal and careful attention a fascinating article entitled “Why does Fiat Money seemingly work?”. Even if you passionately disagree with the rest of this article, it’s a interesting read.

Now some of you will be wondering what fiat money is. I can see you all now, squinting, head cocked, thinking extra hard, with a little thought bubble above your heads enclosing a picture of a $5 note with 4 wheels and a Fiat badge in the place of queen’s head. Nope. Fiat money or currency, is money which derives its value from the fiat or command of a government or other authority. The dollar bill is a great example of fiat money. As a piece of paper or plastic, pretty much worthless. But valuable because the government says it is.

The article recommended discusses both the origin of the fiat currency, its history, and most significantly, its fragility. In the view of the author it must eventually fail. Here are a few tantalising quotes to whet your whistle (or spike your spyglass if that’s more your thing).

“Since the central bank’s balance sheet is largely composed of government debt, it has an incentive to manage the public’s ‘inflation expectations’ and inflate the currency as inconspicuously as possible.”

“…free market tends to consistently lower the prices of goods and services over time. That is the logical result of increasing productivity. This is why the widely accepted tenet that we "need some inflation of the money supply to enable the economy to grow" is a complete lie.”

“In a nation of debtors, inflation is the politically most palatable form of monetary policy – after all, everybody is focused on the short term (politicians and bureaucrats on their terms of office, consumers on their debt and their desire to buy more things they don’t need with money they don’t have, and so forth). No one considers for a moment, that in the long run, this policy means ruin. Over time, the middle and lower classes will see their real incomes and living standards shrink ever more, while the true beneficiaries of inflation – those who get first dibs on every dollop of newly created fiat money – amass more and more of the wealth that is stolen from its producers by inflation.”

Have a read.

Now for the digression. For those of you who are not Christadelphians, this could be a little much. If so, leave me a comment, and I will either explain further or not. Anyways … I’ve always wondered about fiat money. The Lord, in the Olivet Prophecy, told us that the believers would be eating and drinking, buy and selling, oblivious till the very day they were taken away to the judgment seat of Christ. This language has, to me, always implied a time of incredible economic prosperity. Why would the believers be unconscious of the nearness of Christ’s return if the times were bad. Rather, in bad times, the faithful are watching and aware of the need for and the real nearness of Christ. It’s in good times that we forget.

Coupled with my view that Christ would return in prosperous economic times, I feel that the removal of the believers will be marked by the beginning of some very bad times for the world at large … a time of trouble such as never was will dawn. I think that this time arrives when for some reason, and I have no idea about the actual mechanics of this, the world realises that dollars (fiat money) are really worthless. Such a realisation, experienced simultaneously globally, could easily destroy the worlds economy in a matter of days. And the article above shows how this could happen. As the author states

“Government mandated fiat currency simply does not work in the long run. We have empirical evidence galore – every fiat currency in history has failed, except the present one, which has not failed yet.”

When then? Soon.