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Alternative Energy and a islanded microgrid. Lord Howe Island put in a $12 million dollar solar + battery, 3 years ago. So far they saved 360,000 litres of imported diesel ($2.6 million). That makes it pay for itself in about 5 years. https://arena.gov.au/assets/2024/09/Lord-Howe-Island-Hybrid-Renewable-Project-Public-KS-Report.pdf

I have fond memories of Lord Howe Island. When I was a musician in the RAAF, we made many visits there. The landings and takeoffs in a C-130 were always exciting. These trips were in the 80s, and from memory, we used to perform at "Founders Day" events. Back then it was a big deal, and we seemed to have some celebrity status. We would be put up by the locals and shown a good time with boat trips, etc. On one occasion, I was able to get my wife on the RAAF flight. On another occasion, after takeoff, the crew put a cargo strap across the rear of the aircraft, and they opened the back ramp as we flew past Balls Pyramid.

He's been here before. He's in the process of bankrupting the biggest casino he's been able to get his hands on. Unfortunately the unwitting players and spectators are the American public.

A big positive for me. I lost my wallet in a park yesterday in the English Midlands and today I got it back with licence, credit cards and about $400 equivalent in cash. The girl who handed it in at the police station did not leave her name.

My wife used to compare me to Chris Hemsworth. She used to say, "You're no Chris Hemsworth."

In my opinion, BOTH sides (Palestinian & Israel) need to be metaphorically grabbed by the scruff of the neck and given a shake. Further, other countries should starve BOTH sides of weaponry. Otherwise they are supporting atrocities against civilians - probably because of hidden interests. Wiping out the whole population of one country is the most uncivilised way ttotry to stop a conflict.

Sounds like hold my beer and pass the shotgun moment to me.

Tik-Tok, Facebook and Twitter to name three more.

Here's one for Octave. Yesterday's Lord Howe afternoon bliss was disturbed by a surprising roar of jet engines! Bear in mind, the runway here is 880mtrs long. Jets simply don't come here. However the RCAF happened to be in the area. Their first pass was an aborted landing - just off the deck with wheels down. Globemasters can have a landing roll of about 950mtrs. Their takeoff roll @ MTOW is well over two kilometres. At that point they dropped off Flightradar24, and didn't reappear until after the fourth pass. Note the 'back door' is open. Sightseeing!

Canada gets it.

Random Thought re: Australian manufacturing. This ABC article mentions a problem restarting manufacturing..... apart from trying to be competetive on price....there is a shortage of tradesmen with experience required for industry. They are literally a dying breed. I have long believed that our only hope is to initiate a group called Dinosaur Engineering. Gather up the remaining skilled old farts to work voluntarily to do the design, training and setup of each manufacturing project. There are many competent 'older' people languishing in a sea of retirement boredom, who would love to get their teeth into the challenge. Like Mens Sheds on steroids. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-04-28/tools-engineering-pattern-making-manufacturing-industry/105134026

My ungripe of the day..... I am sitting in Sydney domestic terminal awaiting a call to board a short Dash-8 to Lord Howe. A rare place of NO MOBILE PHONE COVERAGE.... AT ALL! I will enjoy a break from all the gloom & doom of constant news.

My wife & I posted off our votes today. 33 spots on the Senate paper, both of us marked 1-33. I see that the LNP have done a preference swap deal with Pauline Hanson now - so just consider where your preferences are going! It's why I always mark every spot. I don't want the political parties to decide where my preference is going - I'll choose that myself, thanks very much.

I thought I would give a quick review of some practical EV experience. As an EV enthusiast who doesn't own an EV, I can only go on what others tell me, but in this case, this is first-hand experience. We have just arrived back from a 3-week trip in NZ, visiting our "favourite" offspring (he is an only child). We spent a week driving around the South Island in petrol-driven rental cars. I have often been told by the anti EV crowd that it takes forever and it is impractical to go outside of the city coz it take a fortnight to charge - Bollocks! From my son's home we departed with around 90 something per cent charge. This was from his overnight charging, which due to a deal from the electricity company (they have to much power overnight, I think they sell it for about 10 cents a KWh). This electricity is generated from hydro. We had to make a stop in town because son and business partner had to pick up some merch to flog at the races. Mrs Octave and I opted to stay in the car rather than to go with them. Although it was not super hot, the sun was quite strong, so my son put the car into "dog mode", which kept the aircon running. Actually I am pretty sure you can do this some other way, but I think he thought "dog mod was humorous" We then drove for another hour and stopped at a supermarket which had a Tesla supercharger in the car park. He plugged it in and because it was a Tesla charger, there is no need to muck around with apps or credit cards, just plug it in and it charges the car and your credit card. From memory, the car was around 85ish %. We went into the supermarket to buy some nibbles for the journey and then located a cafe for the caffeine requirements. We probably would have been about 30 minutes. When we returned to the car, it was at 100%. We drove for a couple of hours and then needed to stop for a toilet break. We stopped at a Tesla supercharging site, plugged in and by the time we had all relieved ourselves, the Tesla was back to 100% ( charges about 280km per 15 minutes in ideal conditions). When we reached our destination, the power was down around the 20% level. The car directed us to a Tesla charger, and we plugged in and went to find somewhere for dinner. We found a pub with a rooftop dining area overlooking the lake. My son had one drink and then went to retrieve the car as it was approaching full. You can just leave it, but it is bad etiquette to leave a fully charged car taking up a charging spot. The next day the car was not needed by my son, so Mrs Octave and I went on a bit of a jaunt in it. We got back with 85% left. The car was plugged into the power point supplied by our accommodation with a 10 amp "granny lead" Next morning car at 100%. We drove from Taupo to Napier and stopped for a late breakfast. I was assuming the car would have been charged whilst we went to breakfast but this was not necessary. We later had a toilet stop at a golf club where the car was charged for a few minutes. A couple of hours later, we stopped at a town whose name I can't recall. We drove into a shopping mall car park and plugged the car into the Tesla charger whilst we went in search of more caffeine. I don't recall how much charge this gave us, but it took us the rest of the way home. It seems to me that at least with this car and in NZ, which is possibly ahead with charging infrastructure, road trips are incredibly easy. Now I imagine someone is going to say that in Australia we have much longer distances, and this is true. This is somewhat balanced out by the stupidly steep terrain in NZ and my son's shall we say, "enthusiastic" driving style.

I like the Dave Allan burial benediction - "In the Name of the Father, the Son, and in the Hole He Goes".

This is probably the best opinion I've seen yet on why people vote for idiots like Trump. (Or Clive for that matter). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/13/trump-populists-human-nature-economic-growth Basically it boils down to the ever-growing gap between the rich and poor, referenced in posts above. If you're disenfranchised and struggling to survive, and you see people around you doing a lot better, then you may just want to destroy the whole unfair system - and this is the feeling that right-wing populists latch onto. They're not ACTUALLY going to make your life any better, in fact they will likely make it a lot worse, but they'll also make other people's lives worse too. A type of self destructive desperation. So maybe we should be taxing the rich a LOT more. How can we do that? Start by getting the money out of politics so there's no incentive for parties to do special favours for them.

I wouldn’t trust Clive with Australia’s bank accounts.

I think that the "anti-Semite" label is applied too easily when reacting to the actions of the government of Israel. Isn't the situation in Israel more of a civil war, or war of independence, or preservation of an ancient homeland? Compare the colonisation of Australia with the establishment of the State of Israel. Europeans came to a land uninvited and set up a system using the advantage of better organisation. Something similar happened when the displaced European Jews moved into Palestine post-WWII. Note that the area at that time was known by one and all as Palestine, implying that it was the home of the Palestinians who were of the Islamic faith, plus a few Jews and Christians. The Palestinians, having been shafted by the French and British after WWI, and more so after WWII, naturally arced up. But the Palestinians, having been a subjected subjugation for centuries by the Ottomans and then being "invaded" by people backed by the big powers, were unable to halt the takeover. The takeover did not seem to provide any benefits to the Palestinians. In fact, the more of the newcomers there were, the greater the losses the Palestinians suffered. What the Israeli government is doing is unacceptable to the civilised world. They are cracking walnuts with a sledgehammer. To call the Israeli government out for its actions is not being anti-Semitic. It is exactly the same as what has been done many times before, and in fact, isn't the condemnation of Russia's actions in the Ukraine much the same thing?

The worst part of his Alcatraz idea, is that there will be no due process, just incarceration because the trials of that many people would take too long. what a dipsh!t. we need a world wide go fund me page to hire a pest exterminator.

I suspect their recent demise has more to do with their policies and their political strategies than your curse. Still, I’m impressed by your ability to hold a grudge for so many decades even though your curse seems to be be taking a while to work against people who actually had nothing to do with you being conscripted.

If you didn't vote, you can't complain about the outcome.

Besides the big end of town complaints and Duttons bullshit tax free entertainment plan for bussiness- basically to boost the biggest pub owners profits. He had no clue about the real world, esp. the 12 mth only excise drop compared to all taxpayers getting a permanent cut. That just fostered more car/ mega ute use. So more traffic and greater commute times with more pollution and oil profits. Work from home has actually increased productivity, reduced traffic peaks, reduced pollution and greatly added to family life. It also saved a lot of travel/ car expenses. For working parents it meant not needing to spend most of your wage on childcare, if you can get a place. Fundamentally it has been a social policy boom and economically a success. It also provides a more balanced life for parents and kids. For tradies it means lower travel times and owners are available when you come to do work at homes. It's a Work to Live policy. Live to Work is LNP DNA, they hate the idea of workers having any power. For a so called liberal/national party of small government they sure love telling us how to live, what to think and spending public money on private profits.

Before the advent of renewables, I was strongly in favour of nuclear. But now as I travel about I see the profusion of solar panels both in domestic and commercial situations. I also see wind turbines in many places. Clearly these renewables are the way of the Future. It seems we have the technology for generation in hand. What is needed now are advances in storage technology, which I feel sure are being made. Siso brings up the topic of long distance transmission, but isn't that in place already? As I mentioned earlier, there's a paddock full of solar panels on the edge of my town. Transmitting power from them into the local area surely should not require more infrastructure.

A report on a recent meeting between Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, by a WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, someone who was present in the room, quoted below: From a WH Reporter: “ I’ve covered a lot of Donald Trump's press conferences over the years. I’ve seen him lie, deflect, and embarrass himself in countless ways. But what I just witnessed in the Oval Office may have been the most off-the-rails, unhinged display yet. Trump sat down with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte — a serious figure there to talk about security and alliance unity — but Trump wasn’t interested in that. No, Trump used the opportunity to fantasize about annexing Canada. He actually said, “Canada only works as a state,” and gushed about how the U.S. would look on a map if we just erased the border and took Canada as our own. This wasn’t satire. This wasn’t a joke. This was the president rambling about absorbing another sovereign nation — while the NATO secretary general sat there watching this clown show unfold. And it didn’t stop there. Trump started pushing the idea of conquering Greenland too, saying NATO might need to get involved in helping the U.S. take it over — as if it’s a game of Risk. He literally said we "need it for international security" and tried to rope NATO into his imperial fever dream. The look on Rutte’s face said it all. Then, Trump pivoted to his usual bigotry. Instead of talking about defense cooperation or global security, Trump bragged about how he uses transgender people as political pawns to rile up his base before elections — saying Republicans should “bring it up a week before the election” to win votes. In other words, he openly admitted he sees cruelty and manufactured culture war nonsense as a campaign strategy. Despicable. When asked about American small businesses hurting from tariffs, Trump did what he always does: lie and bluster. “You’re going to be so much richer,” he said. Meanwhile, Medicaid is being gutted, Social Security is under threat, and Trump’s billionaire cronies are cheering as the safety net burns. Oh, and then Trump suggested we start sending drug dealers to the Netherlands — yes, you read that right — in a bizarre attempt at humor that landed more like a diplomatic insult, especially considering the NATO secretary general used to be the prime minister of the Netherlands. He kept rambling about how the U.S. doesn’t need anything from Canada, said the European Union is “very nasty,” claimed we can’t sell cars in Europe (not true), and then told an utterly deranged story about how he “invaded Los Angeles” to turn on the water — another lie pulled from his fantasyland. What actually happened was that he diverted water from Northern California, destroying farmland and hurting his own voters in the process. To top it off, he said our allies shouldn’t worry about Putin, brushing off any concerns about Russian aggression with a shrug. Let me be blunt: This is not normal. This is not politics-as-usual. This is a dangerous, unstable person with authoritarian fantasies, spewing nonsense in front of our closest allies while the world watches.” Keep speaking up. Don’t accept any of this as normal. Ben Meiselas

I'm not a gun nut. I don't own a gun, and see no reason to do so. I do, however, like guns as examples of ingenuity of design. I cannot wait to get my daily dose of https://www.youtube.com/@ForgottenWeapons The presenter is not some red-necked Second Amendment twit, but a person who has a deep love of the history of firearms. His access to many firearms museums and manufacturers worldwide is an indication of the esteem with which he is held in the field of firearms history. His presentations have a serious background, but are given with an air of a friendly chat. I have never heard him sprout any of that rabid Second Amendment stuff. At times he takes a firearm to a shooting range to demonstrate its action, and sometimes he will use a subject firearm in competitions. It is unfortunate that the rules for posting on YouTube prevent him from demonstrating firearms that can operate in fully automatic mode but, in his videos, that does not materially detract from what he is presenting.

Poor Ukraine. Having to put up with Trump's stupidity after being invaded by Putin is just adding insult to injury.

One can only imagine the hell sufferers of this abuse go through.. As I recall, the Queen ended up paying her £12m to stop a civil case from going to court to protect her son. Although this was hailed as a victory to Giuffre, it probably shows any of these compensatory vcitories, which includes a tacit admssion from the Queen that her alleged favourtie sone was more likely than not to have lost the case, are very hollow to the victims. May she rest in peace.

Gerard Kennedy. actor best known for his roles in early television series, in particular the espionage series including Hunter and the police procedural Division 4. Kennedy also appeared in film roles during a career that spanned 50 years in the industry, has passed away at the age of 93.

Well, it's not a surprise to anyone with more than 1 brain cell.

He's mourned because he is not around to further bless us with his good works and will be missed. PS I'm an atheist. He exerted a good influence, empathy and caring for the earth and the needy and scorned "Show and wealth". His coffin is a simple wood box and he won't be buried in the Vatican but a nearby Italian churchyard.. He questioned Trumps "claimed" Christianity based on what HE did. Reasonable? Nev

This is a series of screenprints of the map on the EV Charging Stations website, zooming in from Australia wide, to Victoria, to Melbourne and right down to one station. Australia wide stations Victorian stations Melbourne stations Eastern suburbs stations The station at Canterbury Rd , Vermont and Gippsland. Map Legend. Selecting a station, click on the marker and an info panel with hours of operation adapter type, phone number and sometimes price will open

Attitude matters, race doesn't - that's my philosophy anyway

Grumpy old Ted Bullpit.

Trumpet of patriots is coming dead last on my vote, and I'd suggest also anyone else's who is capable of coherent thought

I met Richard Clapton in the lift at St Margarets Hospital in Sydney the day my twins were born ,he was there to see his newborn child, had a chat seems like a nice bloke , went to viewing area and had a chat about being a Dad to him (scond time around for me )he was a bit stunned at this this (his child) being ,so tiny ,,his music is always good to listen to.

It doesn't matter what he does, they will not charge him. We have the incredible situation that a greedy sociopath convicted felon is given a position that he can abuse in a thousand different ways to profit himself and his cronies, without fear of consequence.

What are the chances the Justice Department or SEC will investigate this? Not good.

Interesting response: A circle, and hence a sphere, is a special type of ellipse (oval). Also, a square is a particular type of rectangle, and an equilateral triangle is a special type of isosceles triangle. My Dad had a near-feral tom cat which was a champion rodent catcher. Dad called it a ball-bearing rat trap.

I have said this before, in terms of policy, there are quite a few things I agree with, but I haven't said them all: NATO contributions (from his previous reign): Absolutely right to demand all members pay their membership dues (increase spending to the committed level). Undocumented migrants. These are illegal migrants. Refugees are not illegal, but a refugee has to register in the host country and state their case, and then be assessed. These are not registered and haven't been for a long time. Therefore, a we would expect at home, they should be deported or processed as refugees. The problem has been that previouos administrations have allowed the economy to become to depend on them. Tariffs - There is nothing wrong with tariff equalisation. The US had largely tariff free trade, but have had tariffs on their goods into their trading countries. The US us not required to subsidise other countries' manufacturing at a cost to theirs. Even if, with automation, it would not be a return to previous job levels, intellectual property, employment, indirect positive effects to the economy, etc., are lost. And,m tariffs can be used to convince other countries to fix their human rights abuses, for example. Seeking an end to the middle east and Ukraine wars. Deporting criminal gang members Of course, there are things I disagree with: Political favours such as pardoning criminals who go on to kill or be killed Removal of DEI Destruction of education Tax custs to the wealthy Climate (or lack thereof) policy And a few others I can't think of right now. In fact, on the things I agree with, in some areas, such as immigration and NATO, Biden was actively working on.. his approach was a little soft. What I disagree with, though, is his methods. and some of his motives, which is more about consolidation of authortive power than improving America. But, He has shown other weaknesses in the current global order. For example, the operation of equities markets is banal - it is literally sheep herding. Algos aren't helping but if I were a fundamentals investor, I would be treading very cautiously. It also makes abundantly clear the corporate workd has no morals (as if we didn't know this). Since Chump's election, Apple and a few others have colelctively agreed to spend $1.3tn to move manufacturing back to the USA and thris is driven purely on protecting profit... Also, just how reliant the western world has become on the USA.. it is like it is the heart pumping the blood around the wetern world's body; or maybe it is a siamese sibling to every western country. I found it inconceivable not one other country has its own aerial refuelling tanker, for example. And there is an, albeit late, positive. The west has realised that it can't take for granted absolute reliance on the USA. This means countries (and hopefully Australia) are starting to put in place plans and actions to wean themselves off the USA. This will also mean that the USA's benefits from that reliance is watered down and will give the rest of us and adult's seat at the table rather than the high chairs, if any, we currently have. Of course, it will require a lot of will power and staying power of our governments. Something which may be lacking

Oh, how appropriate! "Snouts in the trough"?

I think the bronze is fine, it is the patina that has rubbed off. And maybe the novelty.