Product Presentation

One of my ongoing interests is how products are packaged. This began when I was about fifteen and my birth family hosted two Japanese engineers who were in Australia to install and test a huge new Japanese generator (or transformer) at the power plant where my father also was an engineer, and who brought us lots of presents.

During the week these men lived in a boarding house, and weekends Saturday or Sunday, they came to our place at Berowra, in the outer northern suburbs of Sydney in the 1960s.

At the time we had a garage which served as living and dining room and my parents bedroom, while kids had two bedrooms in the house built by my father on weekends, one room for three boys and one for three girls.

I don’t recall the power station. It could’ve been Lidell and that would’ve been a family shorthand nickname.

Lol, getting mired in backstory there!

Japanese packaging has always been superb! Classy! Stylish! Rave rave rave!

I saved all the wrappings of all the presents they gave us and kept them for years. And when I was in Japan, in 1976, I saved all packaging from vending machines and the like. I think at the end of my four months travel through Asia, Siberia, Russia and Scandinavia, a good bit of my luggage was souvenired packaging.

All to no avail, of course. My first night in London, the house where I was staying was robbed. All my precious collection was trampled through the mess left by two perpetrators breaking through the plasterboard ceiling, and getting away with all cameras, the family’s silver and jewellry. They even nicked my feather-down sleeping bag.

But. Getting back to the subject. Packaging. Enduring interest.

These cardboard ‘zippers’ fastened the lid of the box to the underside and nothing was torn taking them off. Bet they can be used again.

The laptop was covered with this simple envelope. The paper of similar weight to greaseproof paper. And similar to greaseproof paper, is coating-free, safe for recycling in the composting bin. (So called ‘baking paper’ is NOT safe!)

Several other bits of cardboard and paper wrapped the cord and power plug. All of it calm, plain, and functional.

People will say we pay for all that. True. And I’d rather pay for good design than bad. I’d rather pay for paper than more plastic bags. The bag handles in the first image are probably the only non degradable parts, but will be re-used as long as the bag lasts. And possibly after that if I can find a reuse for them.

Flickering Touchbar …

I’m on my mobile phone … cell phone to some of you! So I can’t insert the 5 second video clip illustration of the above … either because I can’t find the instructions to achieve it or it’s not available.

Have to make do with a still photo of the problem

So you’ll need to imagine it. The whole touchbar—at the top of the keyboard in certain models of Macbook Pro—is now flickering the whole time the laptop is being used. For all that I know it continues to flicker when the lid is closed.

I’ve been putting up with it since about September 2022, when it began with a couple of centimetres or an inch. After trying to have it fixed, the malady extended to 5 or 6 centimetres, which was when I stuck some blue electrical tape over it. This year that spilled into the rest of the bar, and became unbearable to use.

Hence went out Monday afternoon to purchase a new laptop … thought I caught Covid that day … but it was probably earlier.

Covid

Finally have it. Four years of obsessive isolating and six vaccinations were not enough protection.

I got sloppy, I guess, went shopping for a new computer not wearing a mask. Couldn’t face talking hi tech through a mask.

Hopefully the vaccinations will help prevent a full blown attack, though I am in the highest category of danger, being old, sick and immune compromised.

Trying to get some anti virals now, there’s misundestanding between the med clinic and the pharmacy.

Watercolour Painting …

I’ve been doing booklets using free form paintings for a while … producing these for eventual sale at a residents open day.

After two or three, it became difficult to replicate methods while staying original.

So—big think later—decided to paint structured pre sketched scenes where I could practice perspective, and revise different techniques on a small scale.

Also to be made into little books eventually

A front door … a couple of things that can be improved on next time …

A back gate next, where I did a bit of wet on wet …

Mistletoe

Australia has 97 native mistletoes at last count. None grow in Tasmania, the author of the Wikipedia artice quotes that they died out in Tasmania during the last ice age.

Mistletoes don’t kill their hosts, though with a heavy infestation might shorten its host’s life. What I think will happen to this host.

I have not yet found the species or genus name of this one infesting the ‘big’ tree in my patch. New growth on the mistletoe is rust brown while the long eucalyptus-style leaves are a cross between sage green and grey, despite what they look like on this photo.

Nor have I seen anything that looks like a bud, flowers might give me an indication of its genus. The only field guide I know about Australian mistletoes is for the temperate southern half of the continent.

Plantnet doesn’t know it. If Mangroves to Mountains (field guide for local plants) has an online presence I might find it there. We’ll see.

Lodestar 54: Ahni & Kes

A brand-new connector chapter. It’s like I’m sketching in branches …

54.-sly-dealings-lp298 Download

Insects at the ‘Patch’

The jury is out on the bug’s ID. Just found a similar looking one in the Wildlife of Tropical North Queensland, a cockroach probably immigrating from Asia.

Or it could be a sap sucker related to the bronze stink bug. There is a sap sucking bug species, like this one on the Angophra sp, for all major tree species in Australia.

European honey bees very busy among the Tuckaroo flowers …

I had a little video clip here, but guess I need to negotiate with WP on that, and am on my mobile just now. Think of the above as a place holder.

A bunch of tiny blue butterflies skipped in amongst the grasses

Fast fliers that never sit still they are one of approx 63 similar little blue butterfly species in the region, according to Helen Schwenke in her Create More Butterflies. I saw them among the above grasses.

If they were the Common Pencilled-Blue variety, they would’ve had plenty of food for their caterpillars for the Tuckaroo is a common host plant.