Deep fried my chicken wings this morning. They were perhaps a little firmer than in the
past, but I can't make up my mind whether that's a good or a bad thing. As expected, the
broth had gelatinized (here slightly torn in the middle):
And there was much less broth than I had experienced in the past, only about 480 g instead
of 800 g. Is that just because of the lacking sous vide cooking?
It was also the first time that I used my new single-egg frying pan. It was an experience.
First, I pre-heat the pans before I put anything in them. But this one is so light that it
heats up almost instantaneously on the induction cooktop, in a matter of seconds. So the
egg frothed up:
Taking photos of the chicken wings presented more challenges than I expected. I take my
kitchen photos with studio flash, and I've established the exposure needed for each area of
the kitchen. The cooker was in the brightest area, near one of the flashes, and my exposure
for that is f/16. With electronic flash the shutter time is almost completely irrelevant.
The Unix Heritage Society is an interesting
organization. We're registered as a charity in Victoria, but nearly all our
expenditure is in the USA. We
clearly need a bank account, and as an Australian organization, it should be in Australia.
But transferring money to the USA costs money just for the transfer. Who charges the least?
I went through this exercise five years ago. The cheapest was “Wise”,
formerly (and more understandably) “Transferwise”, and the most expensive was the Commonwealth Bank of
Australia, who would have charged fully 5.4% more than “Wise”.
What's the situation today? After considerable research, I still don't know. Five years
ago I was able to establish the exchange rates on which the banks based their charges, but I
can't find that any more. All I was able to establish was that most banks charge 3% fees
over and above an unspecified exchange rate; only CBA charges 3.5%. But are they all based
on the same base exchange rate? One thing is sure: despite advertising to the contrary,
“Wise” will not accept us as a customer, so it looks like we're going to have to bite the
higher fees.
Checking the weather this afternoon, discovered that the weather station had stopped
logging. What a pain this device is. Into the lounge room, where it's located,
planning to hard reset the device. But that wasn't necessary:
I never cease to be amazed how late our tomatoes ripen. I'm told that they should start
yielding in early summer (December, say), but in practice we don't get much before the
beginning of autumn (March). But today was the first time that I picked some after the
beginning of spring:
We've had late tomatoes before, but not this late, and not this good. And they were bitter.
This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have
a horror of reverse chronological documents, so
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but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in
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