gemfyre

So, the DC Reboot has caused a massive kerfuffle in the comic book reading world.

Harley Quinn's redesign frankly sucks and is completely out of character and generic.
Dick in red? WHY??? Nightwing is ELECTRIC BLUE and that's what makes him so damn beautiful. *whines*
I do like Tim's wings. They're kinda funky.

But perhaps the biggest change is that Barbara Gordon will be Batgirl again. She will have the use of her legs again, after 20 years being written as Oracle, the brilliant information broker/hacker for pretty much any hero in the DC Universe. Despite being wheelchair-bound, Babs could still verily kick ass. She turned her fridging around (interesting thing, not only did she get fridged by Alan Moore, in that story it was perfectly in character for the Joker to carry out a deliberate fridging himself, just to piss off his Batsy).

Many reasons have been put forward as to why other characters, when seriously injured like that have returned to full movement, (of course, Bruce's spine-snapping at the hands of Bane comes to mind), when Babs has remained in her chair with a pair of deadweight legs. Whatever the reason, she has become an awesome ambassador for the disabled.

I was originally drawn into her story because earlier that year I'd busted my knee again and running and dancing weren't an option - now that I've done the other knee in a similar manner I doubt I'll ever be able to do the jive (a dance I particularly love) again, and I mostl likely won't be able to run at any great speed. Before I'd learned a lot about her I'd already created an AU storyline in my own mind. In this story she was crippled by the Joker about 10 years earlier (in her mid-teens) and was never Batgirl at all. But she had been an up and coming ballet dancer (cliche I know, but it worked for me), and the realisation that her legs were useless was the cause of a 'Year in the dark' for her, where she spent most of her time grieving for what she'd lost. But she got past it, she became Oracle and learned how to fight despite the chair. To be cliche again - she was inspirational.

I don't know exactly what DC are planning to have Babs back playing Batgirl. It doesn't really matter. I'm not as throroughly outraged as many about making Babs fully mobile again.

I think she deserves to don her cape and cowl again. A reward for being so damn awesome in the face of adversity. Oracle still exists - 20 years of comic storylines (and endless fanfic) isn't going to erase her, but she's lucky enough to live in a world where she can be reborn.

About the only thing that bugs me is that Cass and Steph might just disappear, and that would be really sad, seeing as I've only just got to know them.

But as for Babs, I'll wait and see before I get outraged.

The other day I restocked my fresh fruit and veggies (and eggs, I'm eating an awful lot of eggs lately, seems to be my primary protein source right now). I noticed some pale coloured beetroots and asked the guy in the shop if they were the ones with the stripes inside. He nodded and indicated the price tag so I bought a bunch. I had a feeling that they probably were not going to be the stripey ones (it seems to be a language barrier thing – she asked me a question, instead of confirming what she's asking I'll just nod because 'yes' is always positive right?) I figured either way, they'd be edible.

They turned out to be golden beets, not the candy-striped Chioggia Beets I had hoped for. But seeing as I had never tried golden beets before either it was hardly a setback. I peeled and steamed a couple and was quite impressed.

Golden beets have the sweetish, beetroot taste of regular beetroot, but they lack that strong earthy flavour (honestly, fresh red beetroot is liking eating a mouthful of dirt). And being golden, they don't make a big reddish purple mess everywhere! Tonight I had one roasted with a bit of truffle oil and salt – delicious. I might have to buy some more of these.

But now I want to talk about something else – chilli. Those small relations of the capsicum (peppers to those in the U.S.) that are full of capsacin, a chemical that causes the tongue and mouth to feel a sensation of heat (and subsequent pain).

Chilli is very popular among a lot of people but not me. I can handle pepper to an extent, and wasabi, and mustard. All of those things have heat that goes away. Chilli however lingers and I just don't enjoy being in pain while I eat. The burning sensation takes over my whole mouth and I can taste nothing else apart from an unpleasant bitterness. My tolerance has increased a little in the past years, but I'm not that motivated to improve it, because I simply do not find chilli the slightest bit enjoyable.

There are two main issues with being a self confessed “chilli wuss” when you eat anything somebody else has prepared. The fact that my perception of hot varies wildly from other's perception of hot, and the use of the word “spicy” to mean “chilli” or “heat”.

On Friday I went to an Indian restaurant buffet. I really love these, because, despite my dislike of chilli, I adore every other spice and therefore love Indian food. A buffet allows me to try small amounts of all the dishes, if they are within my heat range, I'll eat more. On Friday a mild dahl on offer turned out to be way too hot for my liking, even after adding a few spoonfuls of yoghurt raita. But two of the curries labelled medium (a goat curry and the Goan fish curry) were fine for me to eat.

I like to make curries at home, because I can enjoy the melding of all the lovely spices and making something from scratch, but I can omit the chillies completely if I like, or at least severely limit the amount. I have made Rogan Josh and even Vindaloo with no chilli at all. It was great to actually be able to see what these curries taste like without everything being overtaken by burning pain.

Which leads me to the second issue. It would seem “spicy” is often used to describe hot food and that bugs me. Spicy should mean what it sounds like – “full of spice”. But when I ask people if something has chilli in it, I often get asked, “Oh, don't you like spicy food?” I LOVE spicy food! I just don't like chilli. It's not that tough a concept. It completely weirded me out to learn that cumin is sometimes considered a hot or warm spice – it has no heat whatsoever on my tongue, and I love to add it to many things (the latest is roasted pumpkin tossed in cumin and sea-salt). So maybe separating the meanings of “spicy” and “hot” or “chilli” would make communicating a lot easier.

There is only one person I trust these days to tell me truthfully whether a food is hot or not. Unlike me, he adores chilli and tests himself on “Volcano sauce” and “Hot sauce from Hell” just for kicks. But at least he knows my tolerance levels and will let me know honestly if something is probably going to be too hot for me. A good ballpark is that if he can taste the chilli, it will be too hot for me. I still ask others if a dish is hot or if it has chilli (because not all hot flavoured things contain chilli, I appreciate a sinus-cleansing whack of wasabi on my sushi as much as the next person), but I take their response with a grain of salt. Once I expressed my wariness over a green curry a friend made and was assured that there was no chilli at all. Upon trying it it was way too hot for me to eat. I later looked at the sauce packet and discovered the main ingredient in it was green chillies.

I've been mucking around with Google Earth and have put together a KMZ file to go with my road trip diary on LJ. It will take you to all the significant places I visited.

I recommend turning on other layers while you're going around - so you can see other people's photos of the areas and stuff like that as you look around.

The file should be downloadble from here - http://tinyurl.com/5uahseu

Let me know if you have any issues.

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Okay, I'll answer why.

Because despite the fact that they are cancer causing and make it hard to breathe for people who choose not to inhale smoke and poison, they STINK! And the smell HANGS AROUND for ages.

Don't think you go outside, have your ciggy, come back inside and everything's okay - you still stink! You will do so for half an hour or so. Everywhere you walk will also smell for a while.

And if you decide, "Oh I'll cover it up with some other smell." That also usually smells bad, and is tainted by the cigarette smoke which IS STILL HANGING AROUND! So really, it just makes everything worse.

Ugh. All smokers should be forced to use E-cigs or get thier nicotine some other way that doesn't involve smoke.

I was going to do a rant about gloves, and I will, but I'll start with the other subject matter because I have just had a war with it.

A few weeks ago King of Knives were having a sale (I assume that particular store is closing down), 40% off everything. So I bought a "Swisstar Nicer Dicer". It was a bit cheaper than the showcased "Alligator" and seemed to be more versatile. I figured it would make onion chopping less traumatic for me and hey, I could use it for other veggies too.

Take a look at the infomercial for this 'amazing' product. The brand is different, but the product is identical.



I made spaghetti a few days after buying it so tested it out. Initially I put half an onion on the device, skin side up. It would seem that you need to cut it smaller, and put it skin side down (it does mention the skin side down thing in the instructions, I'd forgotten, becuase it made most sense to put it down in the most stable way). The blades promptly got stuck in the onion. Matt came out to help and quickly decided the whole blade mount would need to come apart to extract the onion. He figured that it was meant to come apart like that for cleaning, I immediately expressed my doubts, but apart it came. Oh yes, in his effort to get the blades to cut through the onion the collecting cup also cracked under the pressure required - it's still usable, but not watertight.

In the end the rest of the onion was chopped using a good old fashioned knife. Matt had a few attempts to put the thing back together before becoming frustrated and leaving it. I thought I might want to take this back to the store the next day, so it had to be reassembled. I had a brainwave involving putting it together on a mound of play-doh - so the blades would stay put instead of falling over. The idea worked, I sat down with a head torch on for better lighting and using the tweezers out of my dissection kit to maneuver the blades and eventually got the thing back together. The I watched the above video and decided to give it another chance.

Today I made soup for lunch and decided to give the thing another try to chop carrots, celery and onion. My experiences were similar to those of the guy below - who made a Youtube clip about it. Again, the brand name is different, but the product is the same.



The carrots initially cut okay, but most of the problem was pressing the blades all the way down so the cut veggies would pop into the holding container. This really became a problem with the celery. I was finding that I had to lift the blades and pop out the stuck pieces with a skewer - so instead of quickly and neatly getting all the pieces into the holding cup, it was time consuming, and messy, because a lot of the stuck pieces got everywhere but in the cup.

The blades would sometimes end up bent. I was able to carefully pull them back into place, but I was risking cuts to do so, and I shouldn't have had to do it.

On close inspection I discovered what was behind the issues. The big problem is the plastic grate you push the blades onto. If it is slightly offline (which is easy to do because the 'hinge' allows for sideways and back and forwards movement), and the blades don't sit precisely flush with the gaps, it will give resistance which you naturally respond to by pushing harder. This causes the blades to CUT the plastic below, so now you have little flaps of plastic sticking out into the gaps. The blades will continue to catch on these little flaps until they eventually manage to chop them off altogether (leaving tiny bits of plastic in your chopped food). Because of all this resistance and extra force required, the blades sometimes bend and go out of place. I've found that the blades are actually quite hardy (and sharp). Once you put them back in place they're okay to use again. With rough treatment I wouldn't be surprised if one eventually snapped though.

I chopped the onion next, cutting it into sixths first. It worked pretty well, but got stuck frequently. I'd still say it may be preferable to chopping onions with a knife, which I simply hate doing. But my eyes still stung.

So yes, instead of quick, easy and neat as the infomercial claims, this product was tedious, complicated and quite messy. I wonder what device the guy in the ad was using, or what special effects they used - because that is NOT the experience of some people who have actually used the product. Man false advertising pisses me off - I thought there were laws against it? I think I wasted $23, but at least it was only $23 and not $40.

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No. Although it would probably be an awesome opportunity, I think I'd be very uncomfortable and probably freaked out by space travel and having to live in a spacecraft. The fact that I can't take off my suit/helmet and breathe the air is also not something I think I could deal with.

Besides, if I had $10,000.00, I'd have been saving it for a trip to Costa Rica instead.

25/3/2011

I actually slept pretty well out at Billabong. Of course the flies appeared in droves as soon as the sun did, so I must have packed up the fastest I ever have. Due to the infuriatingness of the flies and the fact that I wanted some good roadhouse food, I opted for breakfast at the roadhouse – a chicken and cheese crumbed sausage and a bottle of V8. Worked for me. I was on the road by 7:30.

( More gorgeous gorges )

( Today's bird list )

All of today's photos are hidden behind this link.

23/3/2011

Well. Today I went serious snorkelling. And it was amazing and I want to do it again!!

The tour I went on can accommodate up to 40 people, but our group consisted of 10 people. I was the only 'local' on board, the others were from Slovakia, Switzerland and Germany – I told you this place is chokkers with European tourists.

I explained that my knee was a bit dodgy and Jacqui, one of the guides didn't seem at all worried about the fact. She found me some fins that fitted and told me I was going to need them when we got to the Manta Rays. I figured hey, I'll give them a shot.

Coral Bay Ningaloo is a fringing reef - which means it begins very close to shore and ends a few hundred metres to a few kilometres offshore - the wave break marks the delineation clearly. Beyond this the water becomes deeper - this is whale shark territory - it's a lot more expensive to venture out there.

( Snorkeling is remarkably easy to learn - especially here )

( Today's bird list (would have a fish list if I could ID them!) )

Not many photos today, as I spent most of it underwater, but here are the rest.

Originally posted to abandonedplaces. I'm posting it in my own LJ too because I don't want to lose it.

Wittenoom was once the largest town in the Pilbara - a region of Western Australia now most famous for it's stunning national parks (Karijini and Millstream/Chichester) and iron ore mining. As early as the 1940s concerns were raised over the dust caused by the processing of blue asbestos - the livelihood of the town and it's reason for being.

By the 1960s many workers and townspeople were coming down with abestosis and mesothelioma due to inhalation of the deadly dust. CSR, the company that owned the mines continued to operate them for 6 years after the health authorities confirmed that the dust was the cause of these fatal diseases. A large lawsuit ensued. Midnight Oil wrote a song about it all - Blue Sky Mine.

From the 1960s onwards the population started to dwindle. Come the 1980s the government was deliberately phasing down the town, demolishing old buildings and gradually cutting off services. In 2006 power was finally cut off to the towns, it was de-gazetted and mention of it removed from signs and maps. A few tenacious residents still live there however, refusing to leave thier homes. I remember staying here overnight in 1987, when I was just a kid.

I was there again just a few weeks ago on a solo road trip covering most of the state. I couldn't resist the opportunity to go and take a few photos. I was a little blase about the risk, but by the time I got to the town I decided to play it safe and closed the vents on my car and kept the windows up (hence the reflections in some of the photos). A later look at the town and nearby Wittenoom Gorge on Google Earth revealed the main danger - huge tailing piles still in the gorge. I wouldn't want to visit on a windy day.

The (quite detailed) Wiki article about the town is here.

Wittenoom - Gemstone Gallery Even the name sounds eerie now. Wittenoom was a town that rose up around the asbestos mining industry. I believe the Gemstone Gallery was the last business to close, catering to curious visitors until the very end.

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