Syngas Follow-up

Back in September last year, I wrote a post about a submission I had written for Syngas, which won them R&D funding for field trials for the collection of waste biomass for use as a potential supplementary energy feedstock.  Afterwards, I edited the Report of the field trials.

The client has since created a renewable/clean energy subsidiary company to progress this work and has recently published this short film about the field trials. Stay with it through the introduction and brief powerpoint presentation to get to the live footage of the on-farm trials.

It’s great to see the fascinating work they did with the funding that my submission helped win for them and to actually see the activities and outcomes that the Report described.

Time Flies

When I was born on this very day not so many years ago, a pint of beer cost eleven pence. A loaf of bread was four pence ha’penny and a pound of butter cost one shilling and four pence.

King George VI was on the throne, Harry S. Truman was President of the United States and Ben Chifley was Prime Minister of Australia. The Governor-General was Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Thomas Playford IV was Premier of South Australia. Clement Atlee was Prime Minister of Britain and Winston Churchill was Leader of the Opposition.

You could buy a three bedroom house for £1,365 and an average car for £372, a bit more than the average annual wage of £348. A gallon of petrol cost two shillings and a penny ha’penny and 20 cigarettes were one and ten. The Australian pound was worth 16 UK shillings. One UK pound would buy $4 US.

The most popular band that year was The Ink Spots, the most popular singer was Perry Como, the most popular song of the year was “Love Letters” and the best musical was “Annie Get Your Gun”.

In that year “Foundation Day” was renamed “Australia Day”, Trans Australia Airlines made its first flight, the movie The Overlanders was released starring Chips Rafferty. The first Tupperware was sold in department and hardware stores and the electric blanket was invented.

The first meeting of the United Nations was held in London and Project Diana bounced radar waves off the Moon, measuring the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon and proving that communication is possible between Earth and outer space, effectively opening the space age.

Also born that year were Bon Scott, Tim Fischer, John Hewson (former Federal politician), Alan Jones (racing driver) and John Bertrand (yachtsman who skippered Australia II to America’s Cup Victory).

On the actual day I was born, Ho Chi Minh, future President of North Vietnam, left Paris after being forced into signing an unfavorable agreement with France, nine men who escaped from Stalag Luft III received MBEs in Britain, and Reuben Fogg was born, although it would be some years before we eventually met.

Bikes for Humanity

Sponsoring my daughter in the Sydney City2Surf Run to raise money for a great little charity "Bikes for Humanity".

They send shipping containers of bikes from us (when we upgrade) to people in Africa who can use them to get to study or work or to lighten the load of carrying stuff.

We just moved the river aside...

Some of the Tunnel documents

“So we just moved the river to one side, built the motorway tunnel through the river bed, then put the river back on top”.

It was the Project Manager speaking, explaining the basic concept for building a motorway tunnel underneath the major river in Singapore – a sort of engineer’s poetry.

The actual project was of course huge and took several years to complete. It generated masses of paperwork and it is strangely absorbing to edit the reams of reports and follow-up documentation.

Speech at Daughter's Wedding - 17 March 2012

Ladies and Gentlemen, Ann and I would like to welcome you all and thank you for joining us today to help celebrate the wedding of Megan and Aron on this beautiful autumn day in Adelaide.

We’d also like to give a special thank you to the friends and family members who have worked to help make sure that today’s ceremony and this reception have gone smoothly and successfully.
Particular thanks to those friends and family members who have travelled long distances from interstate and overseas to be here with us today. We are particularly pleased to welcome our visitors from New Zealand, with a special welcome to Aron’s Grand-mother, Chris Coleman.

And a very special welcome and thank you to Aron’s mom Linda who has come down from Darwin and to his father Carl who has travelled here from Switzerland.

I’m delighted that the newly-weds’ parents are able to be here together today.

When a child looks at a parent, they see, hopefully, someone important to their lives but separate from them.

But when parents look at their child, they see part of themselves. When their child is happy, they are filled with joy. When their child is sad, their hearts break.

As Ann and I watched Megan grow, we experienced a whole range of emotions with her.

And we were always ready with some advice, guidance and support if she wanted it – or if we thought she needed it, whether she wanted it or not.

Everything from cleaning up scratched knees, and questions about why the sky is blue, through school and study, and how to build web sites, to the best way of handling customer relations and creating strategic plans.

And we watched her grow and mature into the confident, professional woman she is today and of whom we are very proud.

And during those years, from time to time she would bring home a boy – and that was fine.

Then one day she brought home a man. And that’s when a parent realises that things have changed.

And Aron was such a man - confident and mature himself, well-established in both his social and professional life. This was a serious contender.

For a while it was a bit like the old bull and the young bull, wary and weighing each other up.

But I’m glad to say that Aron showed himself to be a man we could like and respect. And we were delighted and honoured when Aron, in a very traditional way, asked Ann and me for permission to ask Megan to marry him.

Although that delight comes with a slight pang, when you realise that you are no longer going to be the number one go-to person for support and advice.

But there are many, very welcome compensations - like gaining another member of your own family, and bringing two families together.

That is why Ann and I and Rebecca are delighted to welcome Aron as a member of our family, and why we are happy for Megan to become a member of his. Through Megan and Aron’s marriage, our families are brought together and both gain.

We hoped you like the symbolism of having the ceremony in the New Zealand section of the Botanic Gardens, then walking through the South Australian section to the Reception.

And so, on behalf of Ann and myself, I ask you to raise your glasses and join us in wishing the bride and groom happiness in their future life together.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Bride and Groom.

Interesting Start to the Year

2012 has kicked off with two interesting projects.

First was editing a short report about a civil engineering project in Darwin and its construction plan.

The second was a fascinating exercise to write a submission to the Biodiversity Fund, part of the Federal Government’s Clean Energy Future Program. The submission seeks funds to reforest and revegetate a large area of farmland on the Eyre Peninsula to improve biodiversity and create potential carbon offsets.

Busy Time

It’s been a busy couple of months since returning from holiday, with some interesting pieces of work:

• helping the Australian Institute for Loss and Grief to determine pricing schedules for its range of workshops and related training services;
• reviewing and editing content for SAGE Automation’s new web site;
• editing documents for a large mediation/arbitration for an Extension of Time Claim for a major international civil engineering project and
• reviewing and editing a Field Trials Report on the collection of post-harvest biomass for energy production for Syngas, an outcome of the previous submission that won Syngas $300,000 in R&D funding for this project a year ago, almost to the day.

Technology Divide

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be all right really.

(Douglas Adams, 1999)

A Win for Allwater

It’s good to play a small part in another winning project.

The ALLWATER Consortium – a Transfield Services joint venture with Degremont and Suez Environnement has secured a new 10 year alliance contract worth approximately $1.1 billion with its new customer, SA Water, to operate and maintain water and wastewater services for the City of Adelaide and the surrounding metropolitan area.

I am delighted to have made a small contribution to the winning bid by editing and rewriting parts of the extensive and complex tender documents, including those dealing with water and wastewater treatment plants, leak management and R&D. Congratulations to Les, Ben and their expert teams for their successful submission.

HGT Funding Submission Completed

Congratulations to the team at Hospitality Group Training for completing and lodging their Application to the Commonwealth Government’s Industry Skills Centre Fund. I enjoyed working with them on this submission for funds to help establish a commercial training kitchen in Adelaide’s CBD.

The proposed project is to provide a modern, eco-friendly and environmentally sustainable commercial kitchen and associated training facilities for hospitality students to complete certificate and work skills training and gain general and technical competencies to be effective Chefs, Cooks, Waiters and Bar Persons in the high demand area of Hospitality.

Thanks go to Wendy, Jodi and Janet for their energy and focus and for including me on their team for this bid.

Mega Millions

Fought my way through the milling crowds of hopeful NY punters to get a last minute ticket for a shot at the second biggest ever Mega Millions lottery jackpot of $355 million. The guy next to me was absolutely certain he was going to win the big one. Maybe he will, after all, the odds of winning the jackpot are only about one in 176 million.

NYE in NY NY

Not long to go until midnight and the start of 2011. (It's 10.20 pm Friday.) Just been talking to someone who got here over 12 hours ago to bag a good spot for the NYE party. Said New Year's Eve in Times Square was on her bucket list.

Snowmaggedon

First time outside in 2 days into the white chaos of NY's Snowmageddon III, in time to head over to Bryant Park and its 100+ temporary "holiday shops" festival. Just the thing to ease the end-of-year chills.

Before and After – the new MTA Workshop

Before - the Funding Submission and Business Plan

Congratulations to the Motor Traders Association and its Group Training Scheme on the official opening of their new apprentice training centre for heavy vehicle maintenance at Royal Park.

On the left is the “before” – the submission I wrote for the MTA back in March 2009. It won $1.359 million in Federal Government funding. The MTA matched the funding and built this new $3 million Apprentice Training Centre shown on the right – “after”. 

After - the outcome, the new MTA-GTS Workshop

Chris Evans, Federal Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations officially opened the centre today. It will be a great asset to help kickstart the careers of the many young people who train here.

Dongle Wars - Broadband on an eeePC

They said it couldn’t be done – get wireless broadband via a dongle on my netbook running Linux.

Hah!

Go to any high street retailer of mobile broadband services such as Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, Three and Virgin and ask if their gadget works on Linux.

“Sorry”, they’ll say, “it only works on Windows or Mac”.

They are wrong. It was like being told in 1985 that you couldn’t access the embryonic internet with one of those new fangled Macintoshes. They said Macs didn’t have the F keys that you needed at that time for the log-on process. So I just telnetted around a few archives until I found a software F-key emulator, FTP’d it across and used it to log onto their system and send them emails complaining that I could access it on a Mac when they promised me I couldn’t.

Nowadays I have one of the early netbooks, a very cute, very tiny, Asus eee PC. In the days before Blackberries and iPhones, a netbook with a cheap, pre-paid wireless broadband “dongle” (a thumb-sized, plug-in broadband modem that looks like a fat USB memory stick) was an ideal solution for occasional use. I still use it when travelling. No bigger than a slim paper-back book, it is still very convenient and prepaid wireless broadband is much cheaper than the internet fees in hotels and the like.

However, the Linux operating system is Open Source software, and that is anathema to Microsoft and Apple who own the proprietary Windows and Mac operating systems. And it seems as if the retailers are either colluding with them or have been competely conned by their propaganda.

There is nothing intrinsically ‘wrong’ with any of these systems, they are all fine for a great range of business and personal computing activities. But to be told in 2010 that my Linux netbook could not use wireless broadband was bizarre.

None of the retailers nor their help desks could even begin to get their heads around using their products on Linux. Their “best” advice was to change the operating system to Windows XP. Yeah, right!

Many simply didn’t want to know – for them it was simply a case of “It can’t be done”. That was the ‘deja vu’ moment of being told that you couldn’t access the internet on the early Macs.

But it can be done. I have posted a fairly detailed explanation of the relatively straight-forward process on EEE user forums. If you are interested, this link will take you to a copy of those notes.

Anecdote for Fathers' Day

It was the 60s, and I was in a Linguistics tutorial.

At that time, a new breed of student was beginning to go to university in the UK, thanks to the recently introduced grants system – clever kids from ordinary families who otherwise could not have afforded it.

In this session we were talking about accents and dialects. As the only member of the group who had a regional accent (Birmingham) I was a ‘person of interest’ in a good sense. I was also the only male apart from the tutor. Everyone except me “spoke posh”.

We had talked about accents as they related to geographic areas, now we began to discuss accents as they related to social class.

To make a point, the tutor went around each member of the group in turn and asked, “What do you call your male parent?”

The responses from the young women varied: a couple of “Dad”s, a few “Daddy”s, a “Pop” and even a “Pops”.

As the answers went round the table I pretended first to be puzzled, then surprised and eventually mildly shocked.

By chance, I was last. He fed me the line beautifully. “And lastly Mr Short, what do you call your male parent?”

“Sir.”

Poor sucker. He didn’t see it coming. A good tutor, not much older than us, enthusiastic and knew his stuff. But he couldn’t read the sub-text, even as it happened.

He might have understood the theory and mechanics of regional accents but I understood the dynamics. In those days I used to speak like Ozzy Osborne, for pity’s sake. And of course I understood the dynamics of class accents, far better than the tutor or any of the young woman in the group, all of whom had upper crust accents and came from well-heeled families.

He took it at face value. He couldn’t see that I was making a statement about the dis-connect between academic understanding of a concept and actually living the reality; that I was ironically telling him “Yes, I get it” at the same time as sticking it to the posh chicks; and that I was letting them know that they shouldn’t make assumptions about a person’s background or capabilities based on his regional accent, just as they shouldn’t based on the jeans and tee-shirt I wore compared with the up-town frocks they wore.

There was a moment of embarrassed silence, then the now flustered tutor muttered, “Yes, well…” and hurriedly went on to the next topic. The posh chicks were eyeing me with peculiar interest.

Funding Win for Syngas

Congratulations to Syngas who have just won a $300,000 R&D grant for field trials of their ‘biomass to liquid fuel’ project.

This is one of the submissions I worked on with the Syngas team (see my post for 7 Aug 2010).

Biomass is organic material from plants which use sunlight to grow. It is a store of energy which can be converted into heat, electricity and transportation fuels.

Syngas will use waste biomass (organic material left over after harvest) and convert it to synthetic gas which, after a cleaning process, can be used to fuel engines or gas turbines or as a feedstock for liquid fuel production such as low-sulphur diesel.

It is great to be able to contribute to a project with potential for economic and environmental benefits.

Pedal Mod

Fed-up with the sound bleed-through on my Boss SD-1 Distortion pedal when it’s supposed to be off, I’m half way through modding it to true by-pass, so that when it’s on, it’s on and when it’s off, it’s off.

Home Again

Our trusty Ducato van

It’s good to be back after six weeks travelling in France, Italy and England. Ever tried driving a small truck through tiny Umbrian streets? Thank goodness for folding wing mirrors.

Highlights included: the house in Soubes in the Languedoc; three classic bridges in two days (Roman Pont du Gard, medieval Pont d’Avignon and the futuristic viaduct at Millau); train ride from Montpellier to Florence; the house in Umbria; driving the Ducato in Italy; Assissi and other Umbrian towns; lunch at Brian Chatterton’s olive farm near Orvieto; sharing our travels with good friends Greg & Rae and Bob & Pat; the late Spring in the UK; being with with family in England; the steam train to Bath; catcing up with good friends (Christie & Sheena, Chris & Mike, Rod & Lindsay, Gill & Kevin, Mick & Gill).

As always when I return after a time away I am reminded of one of my favourite quotes:

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. (T.S. Eliot)

Confused Reverend

Astounded by televangelist Rev. Pat Robertson's claim yesterday that the Haiti earthquake was a result of that country's pact with the Devil. According to the confused Rev., Haitians swore a pact with Satan in times past to rid their country of its French colonial masters. This is from the man who said liberal civil liberties groups and homosexuals were at least partly responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks.