Blog
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Booze free beer: UpFlow Session IPA and Flint Sukareki (сухариків)
Wow this IPA is the business! Fruity hop aroma. Deep bitterness. Body and malt. This is the benchmark now! There's a few other UpFlow brews in the cupboard so I'm looking forward to those now. Also ni…
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Booze free beer: Mornington Free
This describes itself as a "Non-Alc Pale Ale". I'm not sure it hits the notes I'd expect from a pale ale. Not enough body. However it's quite refreshing, light flavoured without being incipid. Perfect…
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Booze free beer: Eggenberg Freibier
This Austrian number gets the take on lager right. Heavy, metallic bittering hops and a rich maltiness. Lager is hard to get right with alcohol but without its super tough. This one nails it. I'd drin…
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Booze free beer: Big Drop Brewing Uptown Craft Lager
Being a lager, this isn't going for the fruity delights of a pale ale or similar. To survive being alcohol free a lager has to make up for the lack of body somehow. This one tries to make do with some…
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Booze free beer: Warsteiner 0% and Budvar Nealko
Meh. Boring and bland. You're not fooling anyone here.
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Booze free beer: Ochakovskiy kvass (Очаковский квас)
I rode to Bondi Beach yesterday for a nice leisurely swim in the hot weather. I try to do this ride once a week leaving early on Tuesday mornings but the weather in 2021 hasn't been helpful. It's a re…
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Booze free beer: Kronenbourg Blanc
Kronenbourg is a terrible beer that was available everywhere in the UK when we lived there. It's bloody awful stuff, but still better than the equally ubiquitous Fosters. Once we discovered Real Ale t…
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Booze free beer: Peroni Libera
There's a good chunk of middle-of-the-road mainstream beer brands in my selection and this tastes as expected. It's a lot like the Cooper's 0% beer. Lots of dry hops to give a crisp taste but not much…
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Dry February alcohol free beers: Vandestreek Playground Non Alcoholic IPA
Holly and I are having a break from booze for the month of February. It's a difficult month cos it's often got the hottest stretches of weather all year, so not having a cold beer at the end of an esp…
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Blogging again
Wow I can't believe I haven't blogged since 2019. I'm going to make an effort to blog a bit more, trying to crank out at least one thing per month, hopefully something thought provoking. I'll probably…
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Gong Ride 2019
Yesterday I did my second ever Gong Ride, an 83km charity bike ride from Sydney to Wollongong through the Royal National Park and along the coastline. It's a stunning ride with great scenery and a big…
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MeasureCamp Sydney 2019 wrap up
This weekend we held the fourth iteration of MeasureCamp Sydney. For those who don't recognise the term, MeasureCamp is an unconference. A slightly chaotic affair quite unlike an ordinary conference.…
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What biscuit should I eat: an analysis
This has become quite topical again with The Guardian and Good Food weighing in on the best biscuits in a standard Arnott's assortment. Of course the moral of that story is to not buy the assortment.…
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My daughter, the reader
It's been amazing watching the youngest slowly get better at reading, then suddenly become hooked. The last week she's had her nose in books at every opportunity. It feels wrong telling her to put the…
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uBitx out and about
I spent last week down on the Far South Coast of NSW camping. I got the opportunity to try out my new uBitx radio, which is an incredible short form kit transceiver. Lots of fun.
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Door alarm using Micro:bit
This Micro:bit is a small microcontroller designed to teach kids about programming. As well as the CPU, it has a 5x5 LED array for graphics, two buttons, an accelerometer, compass, thermometer, light…
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Passed my amateur radio license exams
Yesterday I passed my Standard amateur radio license tests. I spent quite a bit of time cramming lots of knowledge in my brain using the video course from the Radio & Electronics School, then took the…
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Halloween in Marrickville
Big night in Marrickville. Our area keeps getting bigger and bigger every year. We had a bunch of mates around for the festivities, quick barbecue then out onto the streets to scrounge sweets. Lots of…
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Open Australia are doing amazing stuff
I've been hovering around the open data movement for a while. I lived in London through the early development of what ended up becoming They Work For You around the amazing NTK -driven London tech sce…
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Hot damn this tune will get your toe tapping
John Peel famously took the needle off The Undertones' Teenage Kicks and immediately played it again, it was such a perfect pop song. He was, of course, absolutely right. I had the same reaction heari…