OffSetLab

We've had a lot of time on our hands to get better at planing meals. Food rarely gets boring and humans usually eat several times every day so there's intrinsic motivation to become better at it. It's handy to have some pre-made ingredients at the ready when you're out of ideas or short on time. At some point we were buying, I think, some ready-made dough that came with a small jar of tomato sauce. We kept the jars so now we use them to store things like seeds and nuts, almond flakes, pine nuts. Roasted or raw, they are a great addition to all kinds of meal bowls. For some reason, Vesna gets really excited about storage containers, but if you have a variety of them, you can store all kinds of goodies beforehand:

• icecubes with botanicals (for gin or some such)
• the same tray can be used to freeze fresh herbs in olive oil to have a quick ready boost for meals that require those two. For instance, fresh basil in olive oil for tomato based sauces
• bigger silicone trays or pots can house ready made frozen soups that you can thaw out
• small jars look cute and can store flavoring oils like chili oil and black garlic oil
• we've also made nut butters; Vitamix has a program to make those. Aside from pure butters (that we did), you can also make mixed (which we didn't try yet), as well as home made chocolate spread
• jams, but you should do the ones that you usually cannot buy otherwise. For instance, we made carrot cake jam
• pickling is also an option, we have a steady supply of ginger (gari), but we also pickled purple onion which looks quite decorative as well
• jackfruit cashu picked up from Wil Yeung. It's very textured and involves draining the canned pieces, marinating them in a spicy mix and baking in the oven
• vegan cheeses. Vesna usually makes them and I tag along. She uses cashews as a base with lactic acid and kappa carrageenan, which are easily available to order online
• herbal teas. Of course, if you have a garden with things like mint, chamomile, rose hip, even better
• mayonnaise with aquafaba. Don't throw away the water from the chickpea can. It can be used for various things like mayonnaise or vegan cheese
• cold brew tea. Easily made by soaking green tea teabag per cup of cold water overnight and using it in quick drinks or as is
• cold brew coffee, not much to say, I wrote about the ease of making it before
• chili and curry pastes. These can store for some time and can be used when making, well, chili or curry

Here are two quick Vitamix recipes you can try:

Vegan white chocolate spread

Essentially this is a nut butter with white chocolate added in.

Ingredients:

• 250 grams vegan white chocolate
• 400 grams Roasted hazelnuts
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 splash vanilla extract

Instructions:

Melt the chocolate in a microwave. Put hazelnuts, a splash of vanilla and a pinch of salt in a blender. Put it to a nut butter program and blend. When it's done, add melted chocolate and pulse a few times. Store in a jar.

Grated vegan parmesan-like cheese

You can put it on pasta or wherever the real parmesan would go.

Ingredients:

• 0.5 cup cashews
• 2 tbsp nutritional yeast
• 0.5 tsp salt
• 0.25 tsp garlic powder

Instructions:

Put all of it in a blender. Pulse on high a couple of times until it's powdery. Use the smallest Vitamix attachment since it's useful to make small amounts quickly.

2021 came and went. I was thinking that it was going to hinder our plans, but it didn't. We managed to see our folks. Life was good in 2021. I got all twelve articles out which was a modest success for me. There's still a ton of stuff that will get carried over to 2022, but that's OK.

The new year started OK as well. It's January, but we already got the third shot of the vaccine (with the accompanying fever as expected). I even applied for the citizenship just recently. The process will take some time.

Considering there's an ongoing pandemic, travel was limited, but in the small window of opportunity in the summer we visited our folks back in Croatia. Going there we also visited:

• Italy, Venice, Dolomites, a slight detour via our old acquaintance, Trieste. All great looking and not as touristy at this time
• Croatia, Pula, Brijuni National Park, Rijeka, Krk (actual place on the island of the same name), Zagreb and our respective homeplaces in Slavonia

I have to mention that we had six long six weeks to do this trip because we were able to work remotely, as well as take a lot of unspent days off. Venice is beautiful, so is Pula and Brijuni (that need much love).

Domestic travel suffered so we didn't travel much within Ireland, but we went to Dalkey again, this time with friends.

No events except one that we booked back in early 2020 before the pandemic hit so it was postponed several times:

• Ricky Gervais standup act, for a bit of black comedy

I worked a lot on automating the household and bought some stuff to help me. Here's the big list:

ZigBee motor for the curtains

I decided to install another one for the angle change of the stripe curtains and it doesn't look too bad hidden in a corner

ZigBee inline switches

right now on the bathroom fan, but more to be installed for the lights. The problem is that the drywall is thin so there's difficulty installing it within the existing switch

Reolink cameras

monitoring the entryways for the peace of mind

ZigBee signal repeater

for the future projects with the extended ZigBee mesh

Chromecast

Disney+ is horribly buggy on PS4 so we are using this as a workaround, as well as to cast things from the local storage

Google Nest speaker

can't figure out my accent. It confuses "on" and "off" and thinks "close" is to query online for something close instead of closing the curtains, "screaming" instead of "streaming" and not to mention that once I tried to clean the bedroom with the RoboVac and it snarkily told me to do it myself :D

Lights under the bed

work with the morning alarm at the moment, but will attach the motion sensor so we can find our way to the bathroom at night

Universal Remote from Broadlink

to replace the remotes in the house and automate their functions at the same time, works with three devices at the moment

We also fell into the trap of pandemic shopping and bought a bunch of stuff unrelated to the automation. Some more necessary than others:

Showerhead

with a dynamo powered LED for checking when the water is warm enough (Vesna loves this one, she no longer dips a toe unless she sees the red light)

Desks

motorized standing one for me and a regular for Vesna (she prefers to do her exercise away from the desk). I'll automate mine eventually to rise every day instead of doing it manually

Chairs

gave mine to Vesna because it's the same model as the one from her job and she likes it, and I bought another one that I loved sitting on back in Croatia

Trolley for wine

well, wine mostly, for now. We had to shuffle our furniture a bit for this one to fit in

Water pump for the plants

we don't want to bother our friends to water our plants every time we're away so this should cover for us instead

Laminator

laminate everything! Well, some of the things in the apartment. So far underutilized

Mechanical keyboard

so I can get NKRO finally because the existing one was giving me a headache. This one glows as well

Book reader

eInk and all so Vesna can read more comfortably, also no dead trees

Smartphone for Vesna

so it's fast and takes cool photos

Bluetooth headphones for Vesna

mostly for audiobooks on her book reader, but she uses it for other things, too

Portable drone

for traveling and taking aerial photos

Electric scooters

right now we're buzzing around the park because we're too scared to go anywhere else

GoPro telescopic grip

the 360 camera was bought the year before, but the old grip broke ages ago so I had to take another one

Webcamera arm

for increased mobility during video calls

Caster wheels

hacking the IKEA coffee table so we can move it around

Magnetic photo frames

fridge is a shrine to our travels

Fingered shoes

to simulate barefoot walking

In 2021 we also:

• changed the ISP and switched to fiber. A better deal than the previous coaxial one
• more or less I was working on the automation scripts and visuals for the dashboard in the Home Assistant
• I also started to host some services on the local Raspberry PI for the quick access
• when visiting Croatia, I had to get a new ID card with biometric functionality so I had to go through the hoops of making it work with the chip reader on the PC
• Vesna DMs D&D like a pro
• our jobs didn't change
• we paid off the apartment (and obviously started to finally implement the decor)
• Trefle died so I had to unlock the API and am currently working with a drop-in replacement on Shamrock, but more on that later this year
• we got vaccinated twice (and third time this year)
• no courses and no conventions happened
• still didn't draw and I am rectifying that this year, no excuses anymore. Krita 5 was released
• no projects were finished, but were started so I expect to test and publish a big one this year. I also had to buy several items for it

All in all, not a bad year and I can only expect that this one turns out better. I am feeling pretty optimistic.

I had a gap in publishing this year, but with this month, I'm catching up. Winter holidays are like a small hibernation. The temperature drops and we crank up the heating every now and then, when we feel cold. I like it because things slow down and get quiet. This is exacerbated with the ongoing pandemic. Still, we go outside to take a walk even though the weather is not as nice and plan out new trips that might happen. Nobody knows.

After the mandatory Covid-19 scare (because the nearby store was packed before holidays) and a home test after a few days, we came up negative so it's OK. The plans for the New Year's eve are ongoing. We'll be playing pen and paper RPG with friends on a video call. In the meantime, we decided to prepare by having some snacks around and home made cocktails. Mind you, we have no fancy glasses so they're not really super-presentable. Here's the list:

Cranberry Mimosa

This one is quick to assemble and I've been assured is a holiday cocktail. For it, you need to prepare a simple syrup beforehand and you augment it with sparkling wine. Here's the version we tried. Nothing fancy.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cane sugar
• 1 cup cranberries (halved)
• 1 cup water
• 1 bottle prosecco wine
• several sprigs rosemary (optional)
• several pieces fresh cranberries (optional)

Instructions:

Combine water, sugar and cranberries in a saucepan and bring to a boil constantly stirring. Remove from heat and cover. Refrigerate. If you make it in the morning, you can make cocktails in the evening. To assemble, strain the syrup and put 1 shot in a glass. Add 2 shots of sparkling wine (we used prosecco). Garnish with rosemary sprig and some fresh cranberries on a stick. You can also go wild and put the sugar on the glass rim.

Spicy Hot Toddy

This reminds me of mulled wine. Essentially it's a hot whiskey that can warm you up. It's commonly served in pubs around here. Here's a version with a spiced tea that serves two.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups water
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 piece star anise
• 3 pieces allspice
• 1 piece clove
• 4 pods cardamom
• 1 thumbsize piece cinnamon stick
• 2 bags black tea
• 2 shots whiskey
• 1/2 piece orange (juiced, optional)

Instructions:

Put water and spices and sugar in a sauce pan. Have it boil for five minutes, then remove from the heat. Add in the black tea bags and simmer for another four minutes. Remove and discard the spices and the teabags with a slotted spoon and add two shots of whiskey, maple syrup and a juice of half an orange. Whisk and put in mugs. Serve hot.

Homemade Cream Liquor

Of course, a vegan version. For this one you'll need a blender. We have a Vitamix, which is high powered and can make quick work of cashews and can turn the whole thing very smooth. This should give you about half a liter.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup whiskey
• 1 carton plant based cooking cream (250ml)
• 1/3 cup cashews (soaked overnight, or raw if using Vitamix)
• 3 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup oat milk
• 1 pinch nutmeg

Instructions:

Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend away for a minute. Probably longer in a weaker blender. Serve chilled.

As this year wraps up, this is the first time we've had so many days off in a row and not used them to travel somewhere. It takes a bit of effort to fight the restlessness and take it easy. Planning out things for the next twelve months helps with that. Into the new year we go.

Our place just got smarter ;) First thing to sort was a fiber optic connection. Getting the router to behave was a pain. One ISP had an abysmally bad router and I am very tired of dealing with the technical support that knows less than me and should know more. I could avoid this, scratch that, I should avoid this by always going with a provider that would either allow a personal router or have theirs act as a bridge so I don't have to destroy my local network every time. We canceled the existing contract with the ISP providing coax network and switched to fiber optics with another ISP. This second ISP was, as said, bad, so we had to cancel them as well within two weeks and switch to the third one using the same infrastructure. The speeds are still not as promised, but are at least a bit more stable, with a router that has miles more options than than I expected. I hooked up one external drive so it behaves like a simple NAS now, as well as streamlining the devices connected to the internal network. For the ones who want to know more, it's a Fritz!Box model.

Moving on from there, I've set up CCTV with Reolink cameras using ONVIF Home Assistant integration. I was able to hook into streams on that side with Picture Glance card showing it. The motion sensor had to be interfaced through the local REST endpoint because it wasn't available out of the box with the integration. Fortunately, configuring it was not complicated. It looks something like this:

binary_sensor:
  - platform: rest
  resource: http://camera.local.ip.address/api.cgi?cmd=GetMdState&user=username&password=password
  name: My Camera Motion
  scan_interval: 2
  value_template: "{{ value_json[0].value.state }}"
  device_class: motion

It can later be added in the Home Assistant for display and automations. I'd need to tweak movement detection so I can record and send notifications properly when away from home.

In other news, we also got some additional Tradfri lighting under the bed (but alas no sensor yet), a shortcut button to switch scenes (even though the same can be achieved with a phone and Home Assistant scripts, which we did, but we don't always have our phones on us), a signal repeater for ZigBee so I can extend the range of our mesh (for future projects), and this cool showerhead that is powered by dynamo so it shows the temperature of water both numerically and in LED color (I know, we've got nothing better to do).

We also got a Chromecast to skip overloading our Raspberry with things. It proved to be OK and it works. Disney's application on PS4 constantly crashes on us after 10 minutes and this is a workaround so we can watch the shows over there. It also works with the NAS because we can stream videos on it through BubbleCast app on Android.

There are things in the pipeline that I'm to do in the coming months regarding home automation. I am aware that I need to wait to get all the equipment that comes to mind, but it only means that I'll have more things to write about. With another COVID-19 variant out there and the increasing number of people we know getting sick, we're staying put this year. Who knows. We might end up watching Home Alone. Not just live it :D

So COP26, right? More greenwashing, more broken promises. Abby Martin of the Empire Files asked Nancy Pelosi about military being exempt from the climate change talks and got a ridiculously evasive answer. Even more ominously, the answer implied that the primary way military was going to be involved in fighting climate change was to enforce security when inevitable unrest due to migrations and conflicts over reducing resources erupts. So, of course it needs to be extra funded. Nobody batted an eyelash.

At this point it's really hard to stay composed looking at the world go to waste. Aside from putting the pressure, people should also offer solutions. All of the activist efforts start to look like an exhaust valve, a catharsis. The pressure is not doing much. I was optimistic about the Paris agreement, but was ultimately disappointed, as noted previously.

Aside from the world being agonizingly slow to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the biodiversity loss promises also not being kept (seems like we're constantly going down because they weren't kept under control a decade ago either), there's another pressing issue that does not get enough attention - the ongoing soil erosion. For instance, where it's easiest to observe - the struggle to contain expanding deserts - there are concrete efforts undertaken, like the Great Green Wall, with varying levels of success. These efforts do, however, demonstrate that once we set our minds to things, we can do them. But there's a less obvious aspect of it, where we're going about our business as usual, which is overfarming and the related topsoil loss.

Topsoil is the upper layer of soil with the biggest amount of the organic matter where most of biological soil activity occurs. To put it simply: no topsoil, no food.

We're originally from a place that is a part of the Pannonian Plain. It's not a mountainous area and is fit for growing crops; especially the staple foods, which are the basis of agriculture. They like to say it's the granary of the country, although with all the import/export activities, it's just one piece of the larger puzzle of food security in the world. However, I've heard it said from the people working the land that there's only around a hundred years of crop harvesting left in the region and that's it. They're being optimistic. Back in 2014, that is seven years ago, FAO notified that we have around 60 years of topsoil left. Right now it's closer to 50.

One of the largest influencers on the modern world is dr. Norman Borlaug. He's not studied in history, but he should be. A Nobel laureate holding a peace prize received in 1970, also called "the father of green revolution", he is credited with saving over a billion people from starvation. Quite amazing. He was an agronomist that developed a strain of high-yield wheat that greatly improved food security. Especially in developing nations. Talk about singular achievement in saving the world. However, I am afraid that our farming practices are failing the civilization and high-yield crops won't be enough anymore if they have nowhere to grow.

So, erosion of topsoil obviously leads to worse crop yield and food scarcity, but that's only part of the problem. The soil loses its filtration properties and allows pollutants into groundwater, damaging water quality. Erosion increases sedimentation in waterways. Water and land wildlife habitats are destroyed, biodiversity takes a hard hit and the cascading system failure gains momentum bringing about undesirable changes in things we think are not affected, yet they are. Once these changes affect human communities and their ability to survive where they've lived for centuries, these populations will be forced to move, igniting new societal and economic pressures. Topsoil loss affects systems across the board. It's all interconnected.

The World Soil Day was conceived for raising awareness of such catastrophes. Greta Thunberg's campaign is raising climate change awareness, the biodiversity loss is not being stopped in the second decade in a row, but I am pretty sure that topsoil loss gets relegated to less pressing issues as humans suffer from present bias. There's food now, but one cannot see past 30 days, let alone 50 years. This is not talked about enough. As is our custom, we'll start wondering and hand wringing when the food shortage becomes a very real situation, but I'm very afraid it will be too late. Our approach to food growing and consumption practices have been slow to change and very reluctant to accommodate environment conservation and restoration efforts. The time to act should have been yesterday, but better late than never.