Author: andre_sberger

How to get a better shave, while saving money and the environment

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The title might sound like a bit of hyperbole, but it’s actually true.
And now that it’s dark November it’s a good time to spend more time treating yourself to a good shave, or maybe get ideas for Christmas gifts (also for gifts to yourself).

But first a bit of backstory: For many years I used the Gillette Mach 3 and canned foam that I got as a gift when I first began shaving. That worked, but having thick and stiff face hairs, it hurt a little every time. So eventually I began looking for how to get a better, less painful shave. That took me to this discussion thread (in Norwegian) that had some helpful advice and pointers on where to begin. As a first step I began to “preheat” and soften up the hairs with warm water before shaving, and I replaced the canned foam with a real shaving soap and a brush. Just doing this made a huge difference. Then later I also replaced the Gillette Mach 3 Turbo razor with a traditional Mühle R89 DE (double edge) razor and have never looked back. These days I only bring a cartridge razor when I’m travelling.

Saving money

The initial cost of a shaving brush, soap and a double edge razor may seem a little steep, but these are items that are built of durable materials and last for years with a little care. When using a brush very little soap is needed for each shave. I have literally used 5 years to use up a big block of shaving soap. The second big save is on blades. A 5-pack of Astra blades cost 2,5 €, while a pack of Gillette Mach3 or Fusion blades cost around 20€. Over the long term using traditional shaving equipment will probably save you a lot of money.

Saving the environment

Shaving soaps are typically long lasting, and can be bought as refills in a cardboard box, which produces much less waste than pressurized cans. Shaving soaps or creams can also be made with natural ingredients and without any of the chemicals that canned foam contains, and which I believe are also better for the skin. The truth is that almost any soap can be used to shave, but a soap that foams well with a brush will last longer.
The same goes for the blades. They are typically sold wrapped in paper in a small cardboard box, and the blades itself are just a piece of steel that can be recycled. Unlike cartridge blades that have the blades encased in plastic and can’t easily be recycled. The razor itself can be bought in a big range of designs, is built to last for decades and is usually made of recyclable materials like steel and wood.

Getting started

There are many resources for how to get started with traditional shaving. The before mentioned discussion thread got me started, and shaving shops also have some good resources. After a traditional razor won and gave a better shave than the latest Gillette product in a consumer advice show on TV barbershop.no made a guide to help people switch to traditional shaving. They have also made other guides and videos about shaving. And as always Youtube is a good resource. I found the videos on this channel to be helpful.

It doesn’t take much to get started out. A good soap, a brush and a razor is all it takes. For me that’s enough. But then there is also a world of soaps, aftershaves and razor designs if you want to treat yourself or someone else to some finer things in the bathroom. The equipment can easily be found online, like at barbershop.no for a huge variety, but I recommend buying locally if possible. There are more and more barbershops (at least here in Trondheim) that usually also sell shaving equipment, and the Body Shop also have some good stuff. Both my synthetic brush and shaving cream comes from them. Here’s the extent of my shaving equipment:

From left to right: 5-pack of blades, razor and brush in a homemade stand, a soap and a cream, a bowl from the kitchen to presoak the brush and a small towel that I use with warm water to warm up and soften the hair before shaving.

I hope this post inspired you to try out traditional shaving, or wetshaving as it is also called. You too can go from paying a lot without getting “the best a man can get” to a truly good and comfortable shave. And if you’re a woman, fear not! Wetshaving can also be done on legs with this kind of soaps and equipment instead of using plastic razors. Here’s an article on exactly that, and Mühle have also designed a razor now that is made to be truly unisex.

Building a Greenland paddle

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The building project for this year became a Greenland paddle. I had been interested in getting one for some time after hearing about their advantages compared with Euro style paddles. But since I’m using my bike to get to the kayak club house a one piece paddle seemed unpractical to carry. I was familiar with Gearlab Paddles carbon fiber paddles that can be split in two, but I wanted to make something myself as well. Forunately for me, Gearlab also sells just the “middle section” of their paddles, or what they call a carbon fiber ferrule. And when another member of the kayak club imports Gearlab products and could sell me a ferrule the choice was easy.

To make the paddle I followed Greenland kayak builder Anders Thygesen’s excellent instructions (in Norwegian), or here (in English with the english button on top). I found a nice piece of almost knot-free wood, and began removing material. First by band saw, then by electric plane, hand plane and finally with sandpaper. Shaving the paddle into the right shape was a more time consuming job than I had expected, but it was a relaxing, meditative and nice job. It made me think of the inuits who came up with such a perfect shape to push water with without getting tired on long hunting trips.

More photos will come of the paddle in use on the water.

The month I got paid to cycle

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My bike, with the pannier and lights I use every day.

Back in September I took part in a cycling survey and experiment that wanted to see if people cycled more if they got paid for it.

Here in Norway, if you have a long way to drive to work you can get a tax deduction for some of your driving costs. Similarly, if you use a private car for work travels you can get those costs covered by the employer. But those cycling to work or people who use a bike for work travels gets nothing. Based on this, The Institute of Transport Economics wanted to see if rewarding cyclists economically made them cycle more, and I decided to sign up to take part in their research experiment. The way this worked was that I had to to fill in a survey about my weekly physical activity and specify how much I had walked and cycled in the week before answering the survey. Then I was to use a phone application to log all my travels for the next 3 weeks. At the end of the experiment I would get 2 NOK (0,20€) per km I had cycled in those weeks. I would also compete in a lottery among the participants of the experiment to get a bigger price of money.

This application used was a Dutch application called Sense.dat that ran as a background process on the phone and logged all my travels each day. It was clever enough to automatically recognise if I walked, cycled or drove a car, and I could manually edit the travel logs if the application had done any mistakes. Based on the logs and my editing the application learnt where I travelled regularly, and after just a few days it began to label my workplace as work in the daily travel logs. On a typical day the logs could look like this:

2 screenshots of the application, the first one is a full day, and the map is one of the trips that day.

I was really impressed with how good this application worked. The application was made to use as little battery as possible on the phone, and I didn’t notice much difference in battery usage on the phone in the weeks I used the application. But I made sure to charge a little more often. The distances logged by the application also matched well to the distance I would get on google maps.

At the end of the 3 weeks I had cycled 180 km, and was told I would get 360 NOK (around 37€) as a reward for taking part. I just received the money as a universal gift card that can be used in lots of different shops and restaurants, and was pleasantly surprised to see that my reward had been rounded up to a gift card of 400 NOK. I found it interesting and cool to take part in this experiment, and I think it is a good idea to reward cyclists for being environmentally friendly and more healthy in their work travels. This also acknowledges cycling as a means of transport that is treated equally to cars. They are considering to do this in the Netherlands, and I would be happy if they did that here as well.

My gift card!

 

Climate confessions

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“See Norway. Take the train” – an electric locomotive

I want to confess on some climate “offences” I have done recently.

The weekend before this I was in Romania for a wedding. I did it as a long weekend, from Thursday to Monday. As I usually do these days when travelling out of the country I took the night train to Oslo airport and flew from there. I do that mostly so that I can take an early flight from there, arrive early in the other country and have time to continue by train or bus all the way to my end destination within the same day. I also try to not fly within the country to limit my flights for climate reasons.

Not my flight, this plane was going to Mexico.

Then on the way home my second flight was delayed and I missed the night train home. My plan had been to be in Trondheim Tuesday morning and then go to work that same morning (no matter how tired I would be). So instead of taking one more day off from work and take the train the next day I decided to spend the night at the airport and take the next plane from Oslo to Trondheim early the next morning. I arrived home just a little later than planned.

Then for the next week I was dog-sitting for a neighbour. That gave me one more thing to do in the morning as I had to walk the dog. Since I consider myself a b-type person and like to sleep in I usually already don’t have much time in the morning. So, since I had access to the family car I decided to drive to work and back. I ended up doing that for the rest of the week.

Our family car is not this old, then I would for sure not use it.

When it comes to the wedding travel the destination was far away, so I didn’t have much other choice than flying in order to get there in a day. But when I came back to Oslo I did have a choice of taking the train. I used getting home in time for work as an excuse, bought a plane ticket on my phone and slept some hours in a big armchair at the airport. It was fast, easy and convenient. Similarly, with the driving I couldn’t help but notice how easy and comfortable it is to just get in the car and drive to work even if the time I save on the way to work is only 10 minutes compared with cycling (and no time saved on the way home).

I couldn’t help but think that I was the kind of car driver that I like the least while cycling as I think it is wasteful to use a whole car just to carry one person and a lunch box (or lunch box drivers as I like to call them). I would have felt better if our car is electric, but it’s not and I could see the exhaust fumes in the side mirror. I tried to tell myself that a few days of driving isn’t that bad and doesn’t matter much when I cycle year-round the rest of the year.

In the same week I could read in the news about a new report from IPCC that states that rapid and unprecedented action is required to stay within 1.5ºC of global warming. In the same week as I was flying across Europe and driving within the city centre. For a whole week I did not take personal actions to make the climate better. It is just too easy and convenient to fly or drive, and I think that touches on a part of the climate issues. I think too many thinks “I only take a few flights per year” or “a few days of driving won’t matter”. But we should all try our best to limit our emissions, and also tell our politicians to do the same. For being a member of the green party and the Cyclists Association I feel ashamed of myself, tomorrow I will cycle to work!

The 2017 reversed Christmas calendar

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The 2017 reverse Christmas calendar

So, this year I decided to try out something completely different. Instead of a Christmas calendar where I get something everyday I will try to get rid of something everyday. I will try to give away, sell or recycle something I own/have in my apartment every day until Christmas.

The reason why I’m doing this is because I have too many things, many of which I don’t need or don’t use. Some things are simply things that I can recycle or dispose of, like some glass bottles I have kept or old batteries. My apartment is filled with stuff and I want to downsize a little by reducing the things I own. I have no ambition of becoming a minimalist, but I see that I can reduce what I have. Also from an environmental perspective, reducing or recycling is good and hopefully someone else can benefit from some of the things I no longer need.

To not make 24 individual blog posts I will update this post and replace the numbers with the updates for each day.


December 1st

Recycling glass and metal

To start with a simple task I wanted to do something I have been postponing for far too long, which is recycling glass bottles, jars and cans that have accumulated over some time. Some of the bottles are nice empty beer bottles that I have kept on the top shelf of my kitchen, like one that was specially made for a wedding I was in two years ago. Here in Norway most people sort their trash, and here we have several trash cans for each house for waste, paper and plastic. For glass and metal I had to go 500 meters to the closest recycling station.

December 2nd

Giving away a big suitcase

Today I’m putting this massive suitcase (which once cost me a lot in overweight fees) out on the biggest Norwegian buy and sell page. This is the same suitcase I mentioned in this blog post.

December 3rd

Selling Simpsons dvd boxes

Today I have the first thing I will try to sell, and that is six dvd boxes with complete seasons of the Simpsons. I’m never watching them and I have more movies than I have place for, so these can leave my movie collection. I also recycled lots of plastic bags and boxes that I had in the kitchen.

December 4th

Testing and sorting batteries

Another thing that accumulates over time is batteries. Electronic devices regularly needs new batteries, and then the old ones pile up. Thankfully more and more devices are now rechargeable, but for the things I have that run on AA or AAA batteries I regularly get new batteries. I had rechargeable some AA and AAA batteries for some time, but due to lack of use they sadly died from resting on a shelf too long. I will not have to go far to get rid of the batteries, here in Trondheim every household have a red garbage box for dangerous/hazardous waste, like chemicals, paint, batteries, light bulbs or small electronics. Most shops that sell electronics here now also have a recycling station for electronics, batteries and light bulbs.

This box is by the way a box they give away for free at IKEA, it’s meant to be used for light bulbs. When it is full it can be taken back to IKEA and then they give 10 Norwegian kroner to WWF.

December 5th

Giving away a “rocket launching” alarm clock.

This alarm clock counts down to ten, then releases a small plastic rocket that has to be put back in place to turn off the alarm. I don’t have much more to say about it.

December 6th

Giving away a light table

This is a light table used to watch film negatives or slides on, that I bought for almost nothing at a flea market some years ago. Since I’m not doing much of analog photography work at home these days and it was collecting dust I gave it to a coworker.

December 7th

Trying to sell an ice cream maker

I have had this ice cream maker since I was much younger, but I have only used it a few times. So that will be today’s thing.

December 8th

Selling an old double cassette stereo set

I took over this old stereo set from my grandparents, but as I have not had space for it and don’t listen to cassettes anymore these days it has lived in (my parents) attic. Which is a bit sad as it still works great. According to this website it’s a model from 1985, and it’s even made in Austria!

December 9th

Sorting old school note books

Now this thing is like last day’s item also from my parents attic and a bit embarrassing. It’s all my note books for every subject I had in secondary and high school (or 6 years of school work). I have never used them since as I have not needed the information in them and there is no system to find a particular topic in the notes apart from one notebook of maths notes I made before an exam. I will keep some written material, but hopefully I will be able to not be nostalgic and recycle most of it.

December 10th

Giving away a camera underwater housing

I bought this camera underwater housing on sale once thinking it would fit a Casio camera I have. It sort of does, if I put some foam around the camera to keep it in place inside the underwater housing. But the buttons does not match up, and I have used it only once.

December 11th

Discarding of old wrapping paper and envelopes.

I had kept old Christmas wrapping in a hope of reusing some of it, but sadly once the good parts are reused I’m left with small pieces that has holes and tears from tape and unwrapping. I have also kept a small pile of bubble wrap envelopes (mostly from small on line purchases) thinking that might be useful. But since they are covered in labels and tape they can’t easily be reused. Due to the mix of paper and plastic and the high level of ink used in gift paper I will not be able to recycle much of this, but the trash here gets burnt and the energy gets used for heating buildings in the city.

December 12th

Sorting the 1st shelf

I have 4  tall shelves of boxes, books and other things, and now I have sorted the first one and in the process thrown a little away. There used to be many things on top of these boxes.

December 13th

Returning two Stormberg jackets using their recycle scheme

I have two older Stormberg jackets that I never use anymore because they have seen better days and are kind of worn. So I’m thinking of using Stormbergs clothes return scheme. Stormberg, as an environmentally conscious company wants to reduce clothes being put in the trash. So they have a return scheme where you can bring back your old Stormberg clothes to a store, and then it’s reused or recycled by them and then they give you a small gift card as a “thank” for bringing back the clothes.

December 14th

Giving away many books

I have loads of books, so I will give away some. I have read some of them, but most are books I have either thought was interesting at some time or got as gifts but not read (sorry).

December 15th

Sorting and giving away or recycling magazines

I get magazines from three associations that I’m a member of every month, and these quickly pile up. In the middle of this picture is also a pile of National Geographics from when I subscribed to that for some time. If no one wants them I will have to recycle them as I have done once before with old magazines.

 

Sorry for the backlog in posts, time is limited now before Christmas and I might make more posts when I find time for it.

On the topic of luggage, or to luggage or not to luggage?

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And when I write luggage I mean of the physical, carryable type, not the figurative baggage (but that’s not any less interesting). As I have travelled my relationship to the luggage I bring with me and the stuff I put in it have changed over the years. I have gone through a few levels (or stages), and I’m beginning to feel ready for the next level.

Level 1 – beginner

Back in 2010 I became a member of EGEA, and that gave me a reason to travel all over Europe. As a newbie I thought a suitcase, and a backpack as hand luggage was a perfectly fine way to carry stuff while travelling. But not just any suitcase, the one I used back then was a big plastic monster that weighed a few kilos by itself. And next to it, I used to bring my Boblbee hardshell backpack as hand luggage. This suitcase was big, bulky and seriously annoying to carry for any distance due to the small wheels and the low handle.

 

 

 

 

 

Which brings me to:

Level 2 – more experienced traveller

The last time I used that suitcase was in September 2012, when it was so full that I had to pay for overweight and I had to walk home from Trondheim train station with it. After that I told myself to stop using that plastic beast and go over to use a big backpack for my travels. By that time I already had a Bergans Rondane 85, which is a very useful backpack for travel as it has panel loading. That means that the full front of it can open up like a suitcase so I don’t have to get to everything from the top.

 

 

 

 

I have travelled with that backpack many times now and also hiked with it, and when travelling I have used a Mono Producer shoulder bag (that I have written about here) as hand luggage (as I’m not a big fan of carrying two backpacks). It’s on the big side for a hand luggage, but it means I can bring everything I have wanted to bring for working away from home (which is why I call that bag my mobile office). And that have worked well and been easier than hauling a suitcase as I then can actually walk with the luggage on me, and a backpack is also easier to fit in trains, buses and cars.

But I have began to think that I want more, in that I want to bring LESS. I want to travel lighter, more flexible and without the hassle of checking in luggage. Which finally takes me to:

Level 3 – onebagging?

Onebagging is, as the name says, about travelling with just one bag which is a hand luggage bag. Some resources about it can be found here and here. What got me interested in this in the first place is first of all that I want to carry less, simple as that. I very recently went on a four day trip with only hand luggage and that was really nice. I could arrive to the airport one hour before my flight, get through security and not have to wait at arrival for my luggage. But I have also been a long time reader of this excellent blog that reviews carry on bags and writes about minimalist travelling.

So now I’m in the process of finding out if one bag travelling can be something for me. I know I can make do with only a few sets of clothes in a week, I do that every week. And then theoretically if I have a few spares and wash the other clothes on the way if needed I should be able to travel forever like the minimalist travellers rave about. I have read many posts on the blog mentioned above, seen a few video reviews and read a longer review by the excellent review site Wirecutter. As I walked into a sports equipment store today to see if they have one of the winners of this review I found out that they not only have one, but two of the review winners there in the store for me to look at. Is it a sign? Should I take the big step of carrying less? All I can say now is that it’s very tempting.

The boat building project

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Last year, as I was home in summer I decided to use some of my free time to build a boat. I wanted it to be a small, lightweight and preferably folding or stacking boat as I would have to keep it at home in a bike shed. I had for a long time been fascinated by the geodesic airolite boats at gaboats.com, and I also very much liked the designs at woodenwidget.com. I found the Stasha design particularly interesting, with its combination of skin-on-frame construction and the ease of storage due to its nesting capability. The fact that it is described as “the worlds lightest nesting dinghy” also contributed to choosing this boat to build. So I bought the very-well written plans for it, then bought or ordered the materials needed and began building. It was a nice and interesting project which made me better in woodworking, and I also learnt some new techniques and how to use epoxy. Here are photos from the building process, and of the boat on the water.

 

GIS Christmas calendar – day 24

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I have written earlier about how I used the Great Circle Mapper to find out how far I have travelled by plane to events and meetings for EGEA (so not including family travels) between September 2010 and October 2015. I found out that I have travelled over 80 000 km, or over two times around the world in this period. But how does all those travels look on a single map?

That easy to find out, again using the Great Circle Mapper. Instead of entering the individual travels like I have done earlier I have now entered all the itineraries at once. The string of paths for the map below is like this:

trd-ams,ams-otp,otp-clj,otp-ams,ams-trd,osl-hel,hel-led,led-tll,tll-osl,trd-osl,osl-muc,muc-osl,osl-trd,trd-osl,osl-rix,rix-osl ,osl-trd,osl-txl,txl-beg,beg-txl,txl-osl,ryg-crl,crl-ryg,trd-cph,cph-trd,trd-osl,osl-waw,waw-bgo,bgo-trd,osl-rix,rix-otp,otp-dtm,ams-cph,cph-trd,trd-osl,osl-fra,fra-osl,osl-trd,osl-ams,crl-ryg,osl-hel,hel-osl,trd-ams,ams-trd,trd-ams,ams-trd,trd-osl,osl-muc,muc-cph,cph-osl,osl-trd,ryg-tll,tll-ryg,trd-osl,osl-waw,waw-osl,osl-trd,ryg-lrh,lrh-ryg,trd-ams,ams-vie,vie-ams,ams-trd,trd-ams,ams-muc,vie-ams,ams-trd,ryg-crl,crl-ryg,trd-osl,osl-muc,muc-osl,osl-trd,trd-osl,osl-ams,trd-osl,osl-vie,vie-osl,osl-trd,trd-osl,osl-ams,dus-osl,osl-trd,ryg-mla,mla-ryg

Which then gives this map output.

Another website that can be used to map flight paths is GPS Visualizer. On this page it is possible to enter paths in the same way, and then get a map output as a jpg, svg or png file, a Google map or as a compressed Google Earth KML file. These maps also have different colours on the paths, but I noticed that even if all airports were on the map some of the paths to them were missing. I plan to edit the KML file manually to include these paths, but that’s for later. Now it’s Christmas, and I wish all my readers here a merry Christmas!

Maps generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.