No Time Like Right Now - sky's journal

[guitarplayer]

Thank you, it was a good read!

[sky]

I read it again and am pretty happy with how well it stood the test of time. I wrote it about 20 years ago as a statement of my ER plan, and it worked, I am happily drawing income from my investments and haven't worked a real job in 5 years.

[sky]

Muesli

I mixed my own muesli today.

5lbs Oats, Thick Rolled
2lbs Chopped Dates
1lb Roasted Salted Sunflower Seeds
1lb Pepitas, unseasoned
1lb Dried Flaked Coconut

I think this will last about 4 months. I usually eat about 2/3 cup a day. Sometimes dry, sometimes with milk or water added to it.

I may add another pound of chopped dates, and a pound of chopped walnuts.

The canoe project is coming along slowly. The epoxy work is coming to an end, soon I will move on to sanding, then painting. When I get to the point of being able to test out the canoe, I may add additional steps to the project, such as sail rig and outrigger. I want to see how it works as an oar powered beach camper first.

I installed a high efficiency fridge in the camper van. I have added one battery to my bank of two batteries, but may upgrade my battery system. The fridge is a Truckfridge TF130. It seems to have difficulty keeping the fridge cool in hot weather, but I need to improve ventilation around the condenser. At the moment it is backed into a corner and the fan is on a side facing a cabinet wall, when it should be on the back to pull outside air in to the condenser. I will pull the fridge out and move the fan and see if there are improvements in performance. In cool, sunny weather, the 200W solar power and my 270 Amp-hour battery bank can keep the fridge going with no problems. Hot, cloudy weather may prove more difficult.

[sky]

Muesli Cookies

I mixed a 24 ounce jar of applesauce together with 6 cups of my muesli mix. Formed into "ping pong" balls on a cookie sheet and baked for 2 hours at 300F. Then let them cool for several hours.

The muesli cookies are intended as convenience food which is easily eaten with the hand. The taste is apples and oats, and quite pleasant. I definitely want to add chopped walnuts to the muesli mix next time. Next time I would bake them at 250F rather than 300F. It is more of a drying out process, there is no need to brown the cookies.

Today I ate a microwave dinner, a Mediterranean Style Chicken Quinoa Bowl. I was surprised how good it was and it seemed to be healthy. I wonder if with good, healthy recipes it would be easier to buy frozen microwave dinners than cooking on your own. I could cook, but I don't think the results would have been as good or healthy as the frozen dinner. If they were to substitute beans for the chicken, it would have been ideal for my food goals. I don't think it was that expensive either. Maybe that is the future of food? At least for someone who wants an easy way to eat good quality, healthy food.

I am trying to uncomplicate my life by reducing the things I need to maintain. It is slow going and it seems like I get further and further behind with maintenance. Part of that is caused by my laziness and my enjoying the day rather than dutifully working away. I think that reducing the number of things that I own and simplifying my lifestyle will eventually result in lower maintenance responsibilities. I do get things done at present, usually two or three little jobs a day, but new jobs materialize faster than I can get them done.

My canoe project is making me excited and eager to try out the canoe. I also want to take the canoe out of my garage so I can clean up and start to dispose of things. Three things that do not go together: Epoxy boatbuilding, Sewing of backpacking gear and Maintenance of gas engines. By taking on this long canoe project, I cannot do other things in my workshop due to the dust and the need to keep things somewhat organized. Maybe another month?

[basuragomi]

Why paint instead of gel coat or even tinted epoxy? If you're not too worried about weight, I always thought an aluminum canoe would be a better long-term option than epoxy composite since it's so much more repairable.

[sky]

Epoxy needs to be covered with something to protect it from UV radiation, it will turn white and break down in the sun. I will be using Cetol (sort of a varnish) to cover the epoxy. Plywood/epoxy boatbuilding is not the ideal boatbuilding method, it is relatively heavy. But you can make interesting shaped boats out of it. If I were going to build a lightweight canoe, I would build skin on frame. My canoe is heavier but should withstand repeated beaching and scraping along the bottom, even camping while sleeping in the boat on land, or sitting on the boat while it is on land. But my boat will be too heavy to portage, so it is more of a big lake or big river boat.

[sky]

https://imgur.com/a/Jg58nAq

[basuragomi]

Very cool! I thought you were building monocoque style from a negative mould instead of the other way around. Is the top deck structural or meant to fit a sprayskirt? Definitely wouldn't want to try and portage that beast.

[sky]

The hatch is intended to keep out rain, insects and rodents when the boat is stored on a trailer. I will try it on the water, but don't know if it will work. I will probably make a spray skirt and tent eventually, after I see how it performs.

[sky]

I ate my way through the muesli cookie batch, so I made another. This time I added a pound of chopped pecans to the muesli mix remainder and repeated the recipe above. Baked at 250F for 3 hours, then let it sit for another hour before packaging. I am trying to dry them out for a long shelf life.

I enjoy the cookies as an easy breakfast each morning, for the past week. I am quite happy with them as a complete breakfast.

Next time: Bake at 200F for 3 hours, then let sit in oven for 2 additional hours to cool down before storing in a tupperware bowl. I would like the cookies to have a more even form. Now the bits of oats stick out and they are kind of rough. Its not a problem for eating, but I would prefer a more smooth outer texture. I will take 1 cup of the muesli mix and run it through the food processor until it is flour-like in consistency, then add it back to the muesli before mixing and baking. I form the cookies using a small ice cream scoop, so a finer texture should work better and leave less bits and pieces on the baking tray.

I may make a solar oven to bake them rather than using the gas oven.

The goal with this recipe is to make an alternative to energy bars (Clif, etc.) that has less syrup and is cheaper, with the ingredients that I like and no disposable packaging.

[Western Red Cedar]

The goal with this recipe is to make an alternative to energy bars (Clif, etc.) that has less syrup and is cheaper, with the ingredients that I like and no disposable packaging.

You might consider looking at Lara bars for other ideas. Dates tend to be the binding agent in many bars, but they are often only 3-4 ingredients and quite tasty.

[sky]

I am impressed with applesauce as the binding agent. It takes some hours to dry, but really holds the cookies together well. It does not have that syrupy taste that I get with Clif bars.

When I experiment with this recipe in the future, I will probably add more chopped nuts, more sunflower seeds and more dates. That might taste better and be more chewy/nutty, but it also makes it more expensive. The chopped pecans were $10 per pound from Gordon Foods (very high quality). Sunflower seeds and dates are not as expensive. I have not done a cost calculation yet. What I really want is the most healthy mix, so I am testing my body's reaction to the cookies as a staple food. So far nothing negative to report. The fiber in the oats is good as long as you don't eat too much, then your gut feels too full. Dosage is important.

[sky]

I turned 60 years old this week. I made a number of things to do on my checklist to be a responsible old man in preparation for my death. Things like checking my wealth/income source for impacts due to inflation over the rest of my projected lifespan, considering the impact of social and economic disruption about the time I may need healthcare and old age care, my behavior related to climate change, both in reaction to the effects of climate change and responsibly living to minimize my impact on climate change, my desired political activism strategy, where to direct my wealth after my death, how to minimize the impact to others having to clean up my accumulation of stuff after I pass, how to clean house and get rid of stuff before I die, and how to make it easier for me to move if or when I decide to move from my current residence. After considering all these things I got really depressed and in my usual backsliderish way, said F it and went camping at the beach. No one really knows how or when they will die, so too much advance planning is futile.

The big financial change is that my pension kicks in next month and I no longer will be living off of savings and investment. I will leave my investments where they are to act as a future inflation hedge. My pension is about a 1/3 increase over what I was drawing as income from my savings, however with increased income comes increased taxes so it will not be as big of an impact as 33% increase. Still, it is a substantial increase in monthly income. I will probably end up having to buy a car soon, so that will suck up any increase. I am OK with continuing the same lifestyle and expense level, in fact I would like to simplify but would incur spousal opposition.

[7Wannabe5]

Happy Birthday! If you guesstimate (or consult actuarial tables ) that you will make it until 84, that means you still have as much life time left as you’ve experienced since age 36 until now. So, while yet until you need to hurry up clean up the messes you may yet gleefully make like the Cat in the Hat.

[sky]

Haha, yes, and also will I really care whether I left a clean basement after I'm dead? I like Cat in the Hat as a retirement goal.

[sky]

August finished up as a very good month. I started out kind of down and with an oncoming ear infection, and stopped walking and working on my boat. Eventually I got a prescription for ear drops and after eliminating the infection, I had lots of energy.

I switched over from my Raspberry Pi 4 to a Raspberry Pi 400 as my main personal computer. The 400 is built in to a keyboard. You connect it to power, an HDMI monitor and add a mouse, and it is ready to go. One annoyance is that it does not have a headphone or microphone jack, so you have to go with bluetooth connected products, use an hdmi monitor jack (which I don't have), or use a usb soundcard device to connect headphones and microphone. It takes some time to transfer large file batches, but if you are patient, it can handle Gigabytes of file copying. I am satisfied with it as my main pc.

While I was not feeling well, I started playing around learning python and opencv. My 'apprenticeship' application is to build a device that records vehicle speeds and saves an image of vehicles travelling faster than a certain speed. I am using the Pi 4 with a camera from my front window. It is working quite well and I will be adding a function to email the image when a vehicle exceeds a certain speed. If I can get the device to work reliably enough, I will send the images to the chief of police.

More muesli geekness: I bought the ingredients for my next batch of muesli. Total cost $28.06 for 12 pounds. I am trying out barley flakes instead of rolled oats this time. I went through the nutrition tables and discovered a few things to change next time: Roasted, salted sunflower seeds are way too high in sodium, so use unsalted next time. Chopped dates are nothing but sugar, so only use as much needed to make the muesli taste good. They are fruit sugar which is not as bad as other sugar, but still, sugar.

Recipe:
Barley flakes, 5 lbs
Chopped dates, 3 lbs (next time 2 lbs)
Sunflower seeds, 2 lbs
Coconut flakes, 1 lb
Chopped walnuts, 1 lb

My serving size is about 2/3 cup or 80 grams. This makes for 68 servings per batch, for a price of $0.41 per serving. The serving provides 345 calories and 7.5 grams of protein.

I am making muesli cookies as well, pretty much the same recipe as before. They are a convenience food. If I get tired of baking them, I can just eat muesli out of a bowl like normal people. But its nice to be able to grab 3 or 4 cookies for breakfast. In my opinion they are far superior to energy bars and much less expensive.

As a test, I ate muesli cookies and refried beans with triscuits every day this month. I can report that there were no problems with appetite or digestion. I also ate other things, this was not a test to see if I could survive on only these foods, but just to see how they affected me. A serving of muesli, a can of refried beans and triscuit crackers comes to about 1,000 calories, so half a days worth of food.

My boat project is progressing. I am working on a lot of detail stuff and finishing, which takes time. I may be able to splash in a month or so.

I started walking again after my ear infection cleared up and am very happy to be moving again. I am trying out some minimal shoes, which gave me a hot spot on my toe, but that was wearing them without socks. More testing needed.

I decided to end my amish hippy style phase, and gave myself a trendy big city haircut. I actually got a compliment on my hair, so my self-hair-cutting skills have advanced a few levels.

My wife wants to travel out west again, but I am not willing. Too many unknowns regarding the pandemic at this point. I am pretty happy where I am right now. Maybe in February I will want to travel to see the sun and escape winter, if covid allows. We have talked about going to Europe but once again, covid makes things too risky, in my opinion. Plus, I hate the traffic there and it is expensive. So I don't want to go but may end up having to. So much stress, just let me stay at home and go on my own little adventures in the woods.

Otherwise, just hanging around in the air conditioned comfort of home at the moment.

[mountainFrugal]

Your RaspPi CV/camera project sounds really fun. You will likely need to do some controlled speed testing with you and some friends with different sized vehicles. Bending the law for the greater good! Please post your progress.

[sky]

Here are example images:

https://imgur.com/a/N7JxfgN

The camera is behind a window screen, that is the odd background grid shape.

Code: https://github.com/skyl4rk/carspeed.py/ ... 820_1-5.py

[guitarplayer]

Very inspiring @sky!

[zbigi]

While I was not feeling well, I started playing around learning python and opencv. My 'apprenticeship' application is to build a device that records vehicle speeds and saves an image of vehicles travelling faster than a certain speed. I am using the Pi 4 with a camera from my front window. It is working quite well and I will be adding a function to email the image when a vehicle exceeds a certain speed. If I can get the device to work reliably enough, I will send the images to the chief of police.

Cool idea, but I suspect your evidence may get ignored by the police. Since the speed measurement is coming from an non-certified device, it probably won't hold in court in case anyone challenges the fine.