Narrow Bed

I often don't remember my dreams after I wake up. This morning was an exception. It was long and detailed. 

I was going to a residential school at a university in a bay. My first task was to get there, so I had to look up a street that I could set into my GPS. I eventually found one which I knew led to an underground car park.

The trip was surprisingly short - where I was was only a short drive from where I wanted to be.

Of course, I was late. I couldn't get my choice of rooms, but a couple of friendly women let me room with them. They would take the double bed, and I could use the incredibly narrow single. Seriously, this bed was about a foot wide. 

I tried to unpack, but realized that instead of a suitcase containing clothes and things I'd need, I only had a box that was packed for moving house. In other words, it was full of all the junk that was lying about my old place, and nothing that I actually needed. 

Then I woke up. 

In Defence of Top Stories

From time to time a post shows up in my Facebook News Feed which says something like "Facebook, stop filtering my newsfeed! Just show me all of my friends' posts in order! Blargghababll" (paraphrased).

You see, Facebook by default uses an algorithm to determine what to display in your News Feed - it's called Top Stories. No, it doesn't show you everything. Personally, I don't think that Top Stories is as bad as all that. Here's how it works.

For a start, Facebook assumes that you have a lot of friends. Personally, I have 193 friends, and I'm quite particular about who I add as a friend. I don't add someone if I don't know who they are, for example. Facebook also assumes that your friends engage with Facebook and post a fair bit. I also have Liked 361 Pages, and each of those pages will be posting as well. I don't think these numbers are too far of representative of the population as a whole - I know people who have less, and I know people who have a lot more. So let's make an assumption about the average Facebook user (note: this assumption may be wildly inaccurate, but I don't think that matters too muck for my argument)

Say I have 200 friends and 300 pages, and they each make an average of five posts per day. I think that's a reasonable assumption - in fact I think it's conservative. That's 2500 posts every 24 hours - a little more than 100 posts per hour, or one every six seconds. There's absolutely no way I can read all of that, even if I spend all day simply scrolling down my News Feed, which I don't. Nobody does. Hence, Facebook filters the list.

For a start, it shows me more posts from people and pages that I've engaged with in the past. This means people or pages whose posts I have Liked, Commented or Shared. People and pages I generally ignore don't get shown to me as often. I don't think that's wrong.

Secondly, it shows me more posts that have been engaged with by others. Again, this means posts that other Facebook users have Liked, Commented or Shared. These posts are obviously more popular, and it's likely that I'm going to want to see them too.

A lot of people seem to complain about how Facebook works without actually demonstrating any understanding of how Facebook works. There's also the security thing, but that's totally another topic. Some people seem to want Facebook to read their mind while not engaging with it in any meaningful way - specifically, not Liking, Commenting or Sharing the things that they like and want to see more of. Complaining about seeing peoples' food photos, when they choose to see them by going to Most Recent.

Oh, and you can also block games and ads that you don't want to see. That's another thing that people are constantly complaining about, apparently without realising that this problem is easy to fix.

Deknitting

I've never been really interested in puzzles. Apart from the odd crossword, word search or logic puzzle, the intricacies of cypher breaking or the kind of puzzles Martin Gardner used to write about never really got my interest.

Part of the problem is that I get tired very quickly of things that are too hard. It's the same with video games. I'll usually play games on an easy setting, because being repeatedly kicked in the head until I get it right doesn't strike me as being fun.

When I'm trying to figure out a puzzle, if I can't work it out within a few minutes, I give up and move on to something more interesting. But there is one exception.

I was a scout. I don't admit that very often - scouting for me was far from a consistently positive experience, but there is is. One of the very few things that scouting taught me that I thought was in any way worthwhile (apart from how to hate camping) was knots. I am very good at knots.

Where knots and puzzles cross over is when you want to try and untie knots. There's an old, old story about a thing called the Gordian Knot. The legend is a little involved, but basically the Gordian Knot was one that no-one could untie. Alexander the Great reportedly came along and cut it with his sword rather than try to untie it - that being amazing or something.

I reckon I could untie the Gordian Knot. I can untie anything, given enough time, so long as I can see what I am doing.

So when Terri asked me to unravel a dog coat she'd made a while ago - it was too big for badger - I was more than happy to.

Knitting is very interesting. And in fact it doesn't involve very many actual knots. There are some, but the bulk of knitting consists of a single length of wool that is wrapped and twisted around itself in specific repeating patterns. Usually, a block of knitting comes unravelled if you pull on one end. You have to untie the knot at the end that keeps it all together, but the rest just comes free.

Except... that knitted objects (except for scarfs) aren't simply one basic block of knitting. There are multiple pieces fastened together by stitches in sometimes quite elaborate ways. This particular dog coat consists of one main part which is a tube, plus sections around the neck hole and arm holes that were done in separate sections, and a pocket on the back with a button.

Furthermore, wool frays and twists, which in the end makes unravelling the whole thing quite a complex and interesting puzzle that I am quite enjoying getting to the end of.

On Cooking

I've always rather enjoyed cooking, though most of the time I've only ever cooked for myself. However, with the change in my circumstances I have been needing to do more cooking for others as well. So it was with pleasure that Terri and I signed up for Hello Fresh.

The idea is that once a week, a box of groceries is delivered to your door. Each box contains three recipes and enough of the right ingredients to cook the recipes provided - three full meals. You can choose between a vegetarian or a non-vegetarian box, and between two- and four-person recipes. We're doing a vege box for 4 as we're cooking for my parents as well as for ourselves.

So far we've had some pretty good results. We've had two week's worth so far, which is six dishes. A couple of the first week's weren't that successful - we had zucchini fritters which didn't stick together because they weren't drained well enough. I know how to do that now. And we also had a tofu coconut stirfry that didn't work all that well either - it needed some acid to cut the stodginess (that's a technical term). I'd probably add a lot of lime juice if I tried it again.

Here are some of our successes.

This is a black bean and chilli chocolate soup:

The main ingredients were pumpkin and cabbage, and it was extremely good. This is the pot after four peoples' dinners had been taken from it. It actually went on to provide another four full meals. This was a case of the ingredients being well in excess of what was strictly required. I considered this dish my first real success.

Here is an eggplant ginger stir fry:

This was also quite delicious. Hello Fresh provides all ingredients except for things that should be part of every pantry like oil and salt. Here, the recipe called for 2 eggplants and 6 yellow squash - and the box gave us 3 eggplants and 5 yellow squash. And I didn't use one of the squash. Another thing is when at least one of the three recipes in the box calls for at least one clove of garlic, they provide a whole head. So we have excess garlic. Not that that's a problem. I do love garlic - it's one of my favourite ingredients.

This was tonight's dinner - warm lentil and blue cheese salad:

If I were a proper chef, I would have cleaned up the plate a little, but I'm not. This was the best yet. Next time I'd probably use a few less tomatoes, but I don't consider that a flaw. This dish was full of flavour - from the crispy potatoes on the base to the juicy tomatoes, to the bursts of blue cheese flavour through the spinach, lentil and red onion. It was absolutely delicious - I would definitely do this one again. If you're not a fan of blue cheese, you can just leave it off and it's still good.

My son and his girlfriend are coming over for dinner on Sunday night, and the menu calls for pumpkin mac 'n' cheese. I expect that it will also be excellent. Though we are stretching a 4-person recipe to 6 people, so we'll probably need to think of some side dishes.

One slight issue happened this week. We got a vegetarian box but the non-vegetarian recipe cards. This wasn't a problem since all the recipes are available to download from the website.

I already have some cooking skills, so these recipes aren't particularly challenging for me. If you've never cooked before, or you want to learn, I expect that these recipes would be quite easy to accomplish. I heartily recommend this as a way to learn to cook. It also gives you an excuse to cook and something of an obligation - once you have the ingredients, you don't want them to go to waste, after all - which gives motivation.

This is an entirely unpaid endorsement.

Highlights

Well, I've been back for a couple of days now, and I'd like to take a moment to highlight some particular moments that stick in my memory.

• The Somewhere Cafe
• Breakfast with Tessa in a tiny place opposite the Wangaratta railway station with 70s-era chairs and tables, and blankets for the people sitting outside
• The town that consisted almost entirely of antique shops
• Experiencing the Melbourne tram network
• Lord of the Fries
• Jellyfish at the aquarium
• Lions at the zoo
• SO MUCH FOOD at Missy's American Diner
• Walking up Chapel street, then back down again. Then back up again, then back down again. Twice.
• The Chapel Street Bazaar - they should film an entire Dr Who episode there
• PENGUINS!!!
• Snow on the way home