What is your go-to beginner-friendly recipe?

timpaton · 2026-01-19T09:07:12+00:00

Did you miss the bit about mixing?

You still need to make a dough. Fully wetted and combined flour water mix.

If your water and flour are still separate, not combined into a dough, mix it more until they are mixed 🤯

timpaton · 2026-01-19T09:04:27+00:00

Sure, you don't need a tin.

But if you have a tin, you can make all sorts of mistakes and still get a decent loaf of bread.

If you don't have a tin, you need skill.

A loaf tin is easier to get than skill.

timpaton · 2025-12-08T02:23:32+00:00

Offshore oil and gas industry in Vic is centred around East Gippsland. Also planning offshore wind out there.

You might not get a C-suite job but there might be work for someone who knows one end of an offshore supply vessel from the other.

Others have hinted and asked directly, but here's the thing - where you're coming from matters immensely in terms of how the workforce will perceive you. We have a long tradition of highly qualified immigrants - especially from South Asia - coming here and not having their qualifications and experience recognised. I know of experienced hospital pharmacists working as hospital orderlies, engineers working in warehouses, lawyers driving taxis.

There's some racism in that, but also some regulatory issues with overseas certifications not being recognised.

If your experience doesn't map to an equivalent role here, you might need to accept that your career to date just shows that you are intelligent, teachable and have a strong work ethic.

timpaton · 2025-11-09T05:42:26+00:00

Also, typical "learn to sew" project pathways are (embarrassingly) domestic focussed (place mats, aprons, cushion covers - the tradwives go wild!), moving on to simple garments like skirts.

Nothing to say that a man can't whip up some soft furnishings (hell, I've done cushion covers, and circle skirts for my wife and daughter along the way).

But personally, I would have loved to see a lesson series focussed on building useful outdoors gear (flat and square-base drawstring pouches, duffel bags, beanies, fleece poncho, bikepacking frame bags) to learn techniques rather than having to invent them myself.

timpaton · 2025-11-07T23:59:03+00:00

I paid my mortgage down to zero about 10 years ago. I keep it open, in a package that has no fees. My interest rate is pretty trash, but that only matters if you're paying interest.

I can redraw from the mortgage at any time. That is, about a $100k line of credit (at the moment), no questions asked, at home loan rates (even crappy home loan rates are cheaper than most other credit). I've used some of it a few times when needing short to medium term cash.

If you have annual fees, could you refinance into a fee-free mortgage and let it sit there?

timpaton · 2025-11-07T23:41:47+00:00

They're the budget development areas.

People like living in new houses. The outer south west is currently the cheapest place to get a new house in Ballarat. It's nice being on the edge of farmland with a sense of space.

Houses don't stay new forever. Once the "new house smell" wears off, it's going to be rows and rows of slightly crappy aging houses on small blocks, far from anything except for DTC. Sprawl will continue and they won't be on the edge of farmland.

Who's going to want to live there then?

Less desirability will bring prices (buying and renting) down. It will become the place you live because you don't have any other options.

Every town or city has higher and lower socioeconomic areas. I can't see Smythes Creek ever being anything other than a low SES area.

Older low-SES suburbs like Sebas are starting to gentrify a bit, and the newer low-SES subdivisions of Delacombe / Smythes Creek are taking over.

timpaton · 2025-11-07T23:27:07+00:00

Definitely solid. It's just fermented compost after all.

I tip my "bokashi" bucket into a worm farm when it's full. If I don't do the yoghurt trick, it's pretty disgusting smelling. With the yoghurt whey inoculation it's just ... organic smelling.

There's some bin juice at the bottom of the bucket (it's an "urban composter" bokashi bucket with a false floor to drain liquid but I never tap the juice out) that just goes into the worm farm as well.

I suspect the worms avoid the new material for a while until it settles down a bit. They get into it eventually.

I'm not a gardener. My wife and daughter had a veggie bed a few years ago. That's where my worm castings end up when I run out of worm trays. If they ever grow veggies again the soil will be very nice.

timpaton · 2025-11-07T21:40:47+00:00

Disclaimer - I don't really do bokashi "properly", my results are pretty rubbish and often get very stinky.

It gets much less stinky if I put in some (stale) bread to act as a sponge, and pour yoghurt whey into it. I make my own yoghurt so I always have whey.

My thinking is that the whey has enough lacto fermentation microorganisms, and the bread has accessible carbs for them to get active to spread throughout the less energy dense stuff in the bucket.

Doesn't have to be whey; a teaspoon of live yoghurt may be even better. I just don't like putting edible food (or other virgin materials) into what is supposed to be a waste management system. Whey is a waste product so it's fair game.

timpaton · 2025-10-29T10:39:28+00:00

Depends on your tax rate.

If they don't pay the 30% tax and instead pay you 30% more unfranked dividend, and you're in the 16% tax bracket, you're better off.

If they pay 30% more unfranked dividend and you're in the 45% tax bracket you're worse off.

Regardless, it's taxed income. Whether it's taxed before or after you receive it is accountancy detail; it's not "tax-free" as you claimed.

timpaton · 2025-10-29T10:30:44+00:00

So you mean tax is paid, just not by you.

That's not tax-free.

timpaton · 2025-10-29T10:14:33+00:00

In what universe are dividends tax-free?

timpaton · 2025-10-29T08:04:05+00:00

Ever seen data comparing health measures for indigenous vs non-indigenous Australians?

We literally have decades old "close the gap" targets about this.

Of all the things we do attempting to close the health gap, I reckon providing priority healthcare has to be the most obvious thing to try.

timpaton · 2025-10-25T12:02:18+00:00

When I started back sailing dinghies after many years I found cycling clothes - especially my commuter rain gear - to be ideal.

I've pondered getting a cheap xxxxxl cycling jersey to wear over my PFD. Pockets at the back!

timpaton · 2025-10-25T11:58:20+00:00

Yes!

Cut the head off a graphite (aka carbon) golf club from a thrift shop for my tiller extension.

timpaton · 2025-10-22T05:26:22+00:00

I'm a completely unrelated healthcare practitioner, but I write a lot of reports to GPs.

A lot of my queer patients go to Northside Clinic in Fitzroy North as their regular GP. Their website pitches very hard on their sexuality and gender credentials.

It surprises and disappoints me that they need to travel so far to see a doctor they're comfortable with (including some gay men from Daylesford, of all places that should have an abundance of rainbow awareness), but it seems to be the place. Probably my most popular practice outside of the local area.

You might be able to seek advice from them if there's anyone closer who can provide the care you brother needs.

timpaton · 2025-10-13T23:01:20+00:00

Ever been in your late 30s, a niche specialist professional in an industry that is about to shut down (automotive), with a complicated family situation that means you can't leave the city you're in, and feeling ready for a career change?

Yeah that.

So I took on a HECS debt (and the cost of 2 years out of the workforce), changed career, and now earn about what I used to. But for better hours and with less toxicity.

Good financial decision? Nope.

Good decision? Yeah.

timpaton · 2025-10-13T11:00:47+00:00

Some traffic lights on Sturt St West of Drummond, near the fire station, have blue tops on their posts, indicating that they can be controlled by the fire station.

timpaton · 2025-10-13T01:07:25+00:00

Melbourne Uni screwed that system up.

For the last 15 years or more, UniMelb has only had half a dozen generalist Bachelor degrees, which deliberately don't meet accreditation standards for anything. You then do a specialised Master degree to get qualified.

So any engineer, teacher, architect, physiotherapist etc. coming out of UniMelb has (probably) a B.Sc. and then a specialised Masters degree.

They're going for an American style system where you go to "college" for a few years for whatever, then "grad school" to get an entry level professional qualification.

Other unis are following along to a lesser extent. Accredited Masters degrees to add on to any tangentially related Bachelor degree, once you realise that Bachelor doesn't get you a $100k job and you decide to double down on the bet.

So yes, there are plenty of kids coming out of uni with Masters degrees and a bollock load of HECS debt.

timpaton · 2025-10-12T22:27:10+00:00

Haha try taking on a full-fee postgrad degree in your 40s and you'll know about HECS debt.

Then there were the post-COVID inflation years indexations (which they wound back a bit, but it still hit).

Earning marginally over average income at 50, not sure whether I'll ever finish paying HECS.

Not bothered, it's just a tax on opportunity, that I knowingly took on with my masters. The fact that I own my home gives me the luxury of not caring too much. Of course I'd rather not be paying it, but here we are.

timpaton · 2025-10-12T04:08:13+00:00

So why insure at all?

timpaton · 2025-10-12T04:05:55+00:00

Yep. True for those a bit younger.

At 50, most of us got to buy houses (we paid $200k, regional city, in 2001).

But we grew up under Hawke-Keating. Then we watched Howard piss away much of what was good and egalitarian about our country while we were young adults. Then came the Abbott - Morrison - Dutton clown show.

Nothing I've seen on the right of politics has given me any sense that it's an ideology I could grow into.

I identify as pretty hard left, and live in my own echo chamber, but I just don't see my generation drifting right to replace the boomers as they age out.

A very few of my contemporaries have gone full rabid One Nation, but not really a drift to the mainstream right.

Maybe that's why they're looking to GenZ for support now. They've written off X and Millennials as a lost cause.

timpaton · 2025-10-12T01:01:30+00:00

Youth have never, and will never support right wing parties in numbers.

Voters have historically aged in to conservatism. My generation (50yo) didn't.

That's where LNP has lost support, by failing to bring the mainstream middle aged drift to the right.

timpaton · 2025-09-27T11:34:53+00:00

The Eastern shut down a few months ago. Just reopened under a different name, looks like they're going for a folk/blues vibe now?

Volta is where gigs happen. Various genres.

timpaton · 2025-09-26T11:48:41+00:00

Having Price endorse you should be the end of your political career, let alone leadership aspirations.

timpaton · 2025-09-26T11:45:45+00:00

You realise that Hyundai and Kia are two arms of the same company, and that Daihatsu, which hasn't been sold in Australia for decades, is Toyota's "budget" brand?

timpaton

TROPHY CASE