I started with 1 litre of UHT milk and a small tub of yoghurt from the local supermarket.

First, I boiled the milk, then cooled it down to what I thought was the correct temperature. I didn’t have my food thermometer, so I had to use the dip-the-finger technique that was first taught to me a few years ago by my Sri Lankan friend when I first learnt to make yoghurt. I blended some of the heated milk with about half the tub of yoghurt, then mixed it all together.

In my early yoghurt-making days, I used an EasiYo yoghurt maker, essentially a glorified esky, to maintain the optimum temperature of 40°C-ish for as long as possible. These days I use an oven, turning it on and off at two/three-hour intervals to maintain that temperature. But there was no working oven, so I had to improvise. I looked around and found a bucket and cushion that looked like they could do the trick to insulate the yoghurt during the fermentation process.

It was a sunny 32°C in Bekasi, so I decided to ferment the yoghurt outside. I added my op-shop Harry Potter scarf for good measure. The bucket-cushion-scarf combo didn’t quite work. It needed something to weigh it down, so I chose a nearby pot plant.

Five to six hours later, I had smooth yoghurt (see videos below), but it wasn’t as solid as I liked. So I decided to bring it inside and let it ferment further overnight (there was still some residual warmth thanks to the hot day).

The next day, it still wasn’t as solid as I liked, but it was definitely an improvement. I served it with banana and peanuts, Mum liked it so the experiment was a success.

So not my finest batch, but considering it was made with improvised equipment away from home, it’s pretty good. Making your own yoghurt ticks the boxes: you know exactly what goes into it, without the thickeners/stabilisersetc., and you avoid yet another plastic tub heading for the recycling bin.It’s also fun to do. There is something quite satisfying about turning milk and a spoonful of yoghurt into breakfast for the next week.

Videos

Aside from my regular Repair Cafe IT help duties (helped someone connect his Bluetooth headphones to his smartphone, advise on reading Mac floppy disks, figure out how to put an M.2 NGFF SSD into an enclosure), I did actually have someone walk in with a Linux problem. Not that she knew it was a problem Linux could solve at the time. Jane (not her real name) came in with a 2011 Lenovo G570, and wanted to retrieve some files from it (so not a full backup) and get it running well enough to watch YouTube. Windows 11 was out of the question on a 2011 laptop, so installing Linux was the perfect solution for this. Luckily I had the 2013 MacBook Air on hand, so I could demonstrate how a 2013 device could be brought back to life with Linux. This made it easier for her to believe her 2011 Lenovo could also be rejuvenated. In the past I’ve brought back a 2007 Fujitsu laptop from the dead, so if Linux works as expected, Jane’s 15 y.o. laptop should once again be capable of web browsing, email and YouTube. Unfortunately, she had lost the power supply. So I gave her instructions on how to find a power supply either at Centre Com or eBay, and asked her to come back to me another day.

So no crowds (like the one in Westerville Ohio last month), no queue stretching out the door, no dramatic laptop rescues (the host Repair Cafe chose not to publicise my little Linux corner, as they were apprehensive of inundation and a lack of on-hand Linux expertise other than myself). That’s understandable, new ideas take time to find their footing. But a 2011 Lenovo may soon get a new lease on life, and every old computer that remains in use is one less device headed for recycling/landfill, one less replacement needing to be manufactured. For a first outing, that’s enough for me. I’ll continue flying a flag with Tux on it, and will explore establishing a dedicated Linux Repair Cafe at Burwood Neighbourhood House, where I work.

NotebookLM: A First Glance

NotebookLM was released in 2023, it was is billed as a learning tool: “Understand Anything - Your research and thinking partner”. So you give it some inputs on a given topic in the form of URLs, PDFs and so on, and NotebookLM can generate summaries of the topic, based on those inputs. The output can be simply a text summary in the form of a blog post, but it can also be a video explainer(!). Or a talk show. This is what intrigued me most out of all the outputs, because the AI would have to generate a conversation and banter between two characters, and make it flow.

Getting Started

NotebookLM is billed as a learning tool, but to kick the tyres, I decided to test it on a topic I already knew a lot about: me! I chose the inputs to be my websites over the years, some current, some that have been defunct for over a decade:

• Guangzhou TV interview from 2008
• Music website circa 2012
• Music lessons website circa 2020
• Current LinkedIn profile
• This blog.

For good measure, I also added a website that included a significant musical achievement: being in the top 10 (jazz category) in a 2005 songwriting contest.

Entering these inputs was straightforward, start with clicking ‘Create new notebook’:

Then, click ‘Add sources’ and enter the URLs in.

OK maybe not so straightforward, with my LinkedIn, it complained that it didn’t have access (because it couldn’t sign in). No worries, I only wanted it to access the ‘About’ section anyway, so I simply copy-pasted that text into ‘Copied text’.

And… Go…

Now that the inputs are there, it’s time for the output. There’s a myriad of options:

But I went straight to the one that intrigued me the most, the talkshow (NotebookLM calls it ‘Deep Dive’, under ‘Audio’). HOT TIP: if you’re trying this at home, like me, you’ll excitedly click the ‘Audio’ button. Don’t! Make sure you click the pen icon inside the button, that way you get options to tailor the Audio.

Now when someone says ‘in minutes’ I usually interpret this to be under 10 minutes. If something took 11 minutes, I don’t believe one can say that it took ‘minutes’. As promised, the talk show was generated in about 8 minutes.

The Results

So what do you think?

I was quite impressed, an AI generated talk show about myself! While billed as a learning tool, it turns out that Notebook LM is quite good for encouraging people who wonder what they have been doing with their lives 😅. I decided to go all out and put it on SoundCloud, along with a matching tacky thumbnail image. AI generated, of course. Funny, the most time-consuming part of this whole process was generating the thumbnail image, prompting, refining, prompting again, refining again.

Conclusion

What I just did would more appropriately be classed as ‘party trick’. However, it does illustrate the capabilities of NotebookLM. The non-learning possible uses are endless, just have a look on YouTube to see what people are doing with it. Some are even using it to generate monetisable content, e.g. finding book summaries that are in demand, getting NotebookLM to summarise it (text, audio or video), and then sell it. I hope this has got you interested in trying it out, if you already have a Google account, just go to notebooklm.google.com.

A bit of background: in my apartment block, I have designated myself the role of ‘recycling angel’. It was a natural progression from my previous job in Perth, where at that community centre I seemed to be the one who had the clearest idea of what should go in the yellow bin and what shouldn’t, making me the guy (‘angel’) who ended up sorting the trash.

With Christmas 2025 a few weeks to go, recently at my apartment’s collective recycling tubs I have noticed many cardboard gift boxes come in. And despite clear instructions that ‘boxes must be flattened’, it seems that Christmas revelry has diminished some people’s ability to see/read. When recycled boxes aren’t flattened at Christmas time, the tubs can’t shut, and in Melbourne’s southern summer, this invites nasties into the recycling tub (let’s face it, people who recycle beer cans tend not to rinse them, leaving traces of beer for ants and slugs to enjoy in their own Christmas revelry).

To be fair, some boxes are quite difficult to flatten. Most delivery packaging are easy to flatten: the weak spot is the packing tape holding it all together. Slash your house keys through this tape, and Bob’s your uncle. However, gift boxes can be sturdily built, and thus quite difficult, sometimes seemingly impossible, to flatten. This is particularly true of gift boxes from luxury brands such as Gucci, Chanel and Tiffany & Co. They’re premium brands, so the goods come in premium sturdy boxes that are hard to flatten.

The technique I came up with is most applicable to these luxury brand boxes. I reflected that with ordinary packing boxes, without thinking we all usually go for the weak spot first: the packing tape. A Gucci box however is not held together by packing tape, it is very sturdy. But I thought that it must have a weak spot. After some experimenting, I found that the weak spots in these sturdy luxury boxes are the corner edges, they are the easiest part to pry apart and break.

Having said that, it still took quite a lot of force to pry the sides and break these corner edges. I therefore refined my Gucci box flattening technique by using my foot and body weight. Prying apart the luxury box corner edges was difficult with my arms, but it was easier to stand on it, putting my whole body weight on the sides of the box, with one foot on one side, and the other foot on another side.

This Gucci box flattening technique is best illustrated with this video:

So as this 2025 Silly Season continues and Christmas gift boxes keep rolling into the rubbish room of my apartment block, I’ll be out there doing my small part as the self-appointed apartment recycling angel, jumping, prying, and flattening with festive determination. If you ever find yourself staring down a particularly stubborn box, remember: every box has a weak spot, even the poshest of them. And with a bit of technique (i.e. a well-placed foot or two), we can all help keep our recycling bins & tubs tidy and bug-free.

I decided to give Victoria’s latest CDS a spin (we had a CDS in the 80s but it collapsed in 1989), collecting eligible cans and plastic bottles from my apartment block, and taking them to three local collection sites. Here is my experience.

Burke Road Cellars - Camberwell

I looked up the Victorian CDS website, and found that the closest collection site to my home was Burke Road Cellars in the CDS North zone. Turns out that there are three zones, with each zone being run be a different recycling company (CDS North is operated by Visy). Burke Road Cellars was quite a disappointment. I arrived on a Saturday morning before opening time, so waited outside in the cold with my two grocery bags of containers. Upon entry, the shopkeeper informed me “we aren’t accepting containers at the moment, come back in maybe a week’s time”. Clearly there are issues with the scheme, I had found a listed site that would not take my bags of containers.

Tower Hotel - Hawthorn East

I moved on to another bottle shop, Tower Hotel. It was not obvious where the CDS receptacle was, so I went into the bar and enquired. They said that the guy in charge of the CDS wasn’t in yet, but he would be in 45 minutes. That’s about the time to nurse a beer, so a beer was nursed, in the name of caring for our dear Earth. 45 minutes went by, but still no CDS guy. The first guy said to me that he would ask permission from his manager to leave his post at the bar and process my containers downstairs at the drive-through bottle shop. His manager was good with that, he took my cans and plastic bottles, and gave me cash. Pretty low tech, but hey, it works.

Scouts Victoria CDS Depot - Burwood

I happen to work near a CDS depot, so for my next batch of containers collected from my apartment block, I visited the Scouts Victoria CDS Depot in Burwood (this is in CDS East, operated by Return-It). I was greeted by Sophie who explained the process to me. She started the machine with her access card, and I placed my containers one by one, as the conveyer belt whizzed them away (very ASMR). I wondered if any of my aluminium cans would end up in an aeroplane. I stopped the machine when I was done, and it printed me a docket. Took the docket to the redemption machine and ka-ching, out came the cash.

So it seems that your mileage may vary. The depots look like your best bet, but they tend to only be in light industry suburbs. The bottle shops can be handy, if they haven’t happened to abandon the scheme (but are still on the site register). I hear there are reverse vending machines as well, but I haven’t come across one so far.

Despite a few hiccups, Victoria’s container deposit scheme is certainly a step in the right direction. Each container returned is one less piece of waste in landfill, and a small but satisfying way to make a difference. As more of us get involved and the system smooths out, dropping off bottles and cans for cash will hopefully become second nature. Victoria’s Container Deposit Scheme may be new, but it’s a simple way we can all play our part in creating a more sustainable future.

Apple first came up with the All-In-One computer in 1984 with the original Macintosh, the CPU and the monitor were in the same unit, at a time when most consumer computers had these components separate. Fast forward to 2015, the C20 was Lenovo’s 2015 spin on the concept. The design had clear nods to Apple’s ground-breaking flat-screen iMacs of 2004. Having said that, it had an extra design feature: the kick stand doubled as a handle that enabled me to easily lift it out of the e-cycling dumpster where I found it (take that Apple, post 2000 iMacs were all difficult to move around, no such handle).

I couldn’t find a matching power supply in the dumpster, but was pleased to find that the power input was compatible with the Lenovo Thinkpad laptops, which I could cater to using my trusty Targus Universal Laptop Charger. Installing Linux was quite straightforward, I loaded it with Linux Mint 21.3. Upon checking the system specs, it disappointingly sported a Celeron (stay away from Celerons everyone), which immediately lowered my expectations. It was sluggish to be sure, but it sat on my desk for a few weeks as my daily driver running multiple browser tabs checking emails on Gmail, using Trello project management, managing eBay sales and Google Photos (which was the repository for my eBay item photos).

I loaded it with my 50GB Apple iTunes music collection, which it played without a problem using the stock Rhythmbox in Linux Mint. Another disappointment was however the audio, it was not as good as my older 2008 iMac. The audio on This C20 sounded small and tinny, something you would expect to come out of cheap laptop speakers. But I enjoyed having easy access to my music collection, and mostly played it through an external Bluetooth speaker. A software/OS problem with Rhythmbox was that it would stop playing when the screen went to sleep, something that perhaps hours of Linux research and tweaking could have fixed (I did not persevere because forums were discussing recompiling Rhythmbox from source to solve the problem, sorry, not at that level yet).

All in all, this All-In-One was surprisingly capable for a 10-year old computer pulled from a dumpster with a big ‘X’ scratched on the screen. There was however one dealbreaker for me: it did not have the original keyboard. I only had a generic external keyboard, and this meant I could not control the screen brightness. This wasn’t a Linux Mint issue, I have installed LM on various Lenovo laptops, but because a laptop keyboard is of course compatible with itself by default, the screen responds to the brightness controls on its keyboard (usually Alt F5/F6). I tried a software solution using a screen brightness program, however this merely darkened the pixels, the screen was still on full blast and glowed brightly even though the pixel brightnesses were turned all the way down. Because of this, using it at night was most uncomfortable. At night, excess blue light badly messes up your circadian rhythm, and for me it was to the point of slight nausea when using the Lenovo C20.

So, after several weeks of comfortably using it in the daytime but nights of slight nausea, I decided it was time for us to part. It was a good exercise and I learnt a lot, but ashes to ashes, dust to dust, back to the dumpster it went. I reserve hope on one day finding a dumpster All-In-One together with its matching keyboard, because I certainly am a fan of the form factor, no messy cables, and (sometimes) decent speakers built-in for playing music. Until that day, it’s back to the small screen of a laptop for me.

UPDATE MARCH 2026: I found another Lenovo with the same screen brightness issue. Turns out there is a fix, and it worked, here it is for your convenience, copy-pasted from Claude:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

**Step 2 — Find this line:**

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”

**Step 3 — Add one of the following parameters** (try them one at a time, starting from the top):

The most commonly recommended first attempt is `acpi_backlight=vendor`, added before `quiet splash`: 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash acpi_backlight=vendor”

If that doesn't work, try `acpi_osi=Linux` either alone or combined:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor”

Another option that has worked for some users is an empty `acpi_osi` value, which disables the `_OSI` method entirely: 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash acpi_osi= “

At around Christmas time last year, one of the participants of the monthly volunteer-run Repair Cafe Belmont session brought in a 1 metre long tray of chips and fish cocktails. He said it was leftover from a Christmas party that morning. We all tucked in, but there was still much left, I was persuaded to bring some home, and being a food waste activist, I complied.

At work the next Monday, the 2-day old refrigerated fish cocktails didn’t look like they had much life in them left. Heating them up in the microwave warmed them up, but they ended up soggy, as microwave-reheated crispy fried foods are wont to do. And here is where my hack came in: I placed them in the toaster.

Having already shorted out the kitchen power with the toaster before (I was trying to light a student’s birthday candle, couldn’t find any matches), I was careful not to let any of the fish cocktails touch the sides (elements) of the toaster. I was also careful to have my finger at the ready on the ‘Cancel’ button just in case anything started catching fire.

The result: crispy fish cocktails, brought back from the dead.

They were clearly not quite in the delectable state they were in when they were first lifted out of the fryer, however they were as close to that as could be, given the implements available in the office kitchen of South Perth Learning Centre where I work.

So, with a bit of lateral thinking, 200g of potential food waste was saved. That’s 7,599,999,999.8 kgs to go, I hope you can help contribute!

We are part of the global Repair Cafe movement that advocates repair instead of consuming more by replacing items that just needed a little handyperson TLC.

Run by volunteers, we have several repair stations, and we also provide tech help to assist you with your smartphone, tablet or computer woes.

Belmont Repair Cafe
1:00 pm - 2:30 pm Every 2nd Saturday
Perth Alliance Church
324 Belmont Rd, Kewdale WA 6105
Find us on Facebook

Having an interest in sustainability, I had to try and cook the nasturtium that was growing abundantly in my driveway. I had already experimented with growing and eating my own herbs since 2018 (parsley and coriander), and was ready to try something more substantial. I had also read about the nutritional benefits of nasturtium.

The result was to me something like a cross between watercress and kale, it worked well as a side to scrambled eggs.

Here is the recipe, enjoy!

Sautéed Nasturtium

Ingredients

Nasturtium (200g)

Garlic (1 clove)

Lime (1 squeeze)

Vegetable Oil (1.5 tbsp)

Method

1. Harvest, wash and chop the nasturtium
2. Slice the garlic
3. Fry the garlic until it is just turning brown to flavour the oil
4. Add the nastrutium
5. Stir fry for 8-10 mins adding water and covering occasionally for an additional steaming effect.
6. Stir in a squeeze of lime, then take off the heat

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When I tried doing this on Linux Mint 20 Xfce however, the built-in DVD playing software Celluloid gave an unsupported format error. I tried downloading venerable VLC, same thing. Hunting through the ‘net, I found and compiled a list of utilities to make DVDs play on Linux Mint 20, mostly from this post.

So if you have had this same problem, you have come to the right place! Here for your convenience are the list commands that I ran, and soon after that I was watching DVDs on my ex-Windows XP laptop, no worries (both Celluloid and VLC worked):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install udftools
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2
sudo apt-get install libdvdnav4
sudo apt-get install libdvdread4
sudo apt-get install mencoder
sudo apt-get install libdvd-pkg
sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg