As a part of my quest to reduce plastic, and maybe save some money, I switched over to shaving with a safety razor at the end of 2019. There was also the hope of getting a closer shave, so I wouldn’t be quite so stubbly at the end of the day.
Previously I was using disposable razors, either the Gillette type ones where you change the head (Mach 5, or whatever) or the bog standard supermarket 10 pack of twin blade razors, with shaving gel that comes in a squirty can. The disposable razors are 10 for £1, and same price for a can of shaving gel, which probably does a month or so?
Anyway, I went for a Hill and Drew Double Edge Butterfly Razor and Case, which at the time was only £10 from The Shaving Stack. This turns out to have been an absolute steal; it’s a great razor, and should last me for many many years.
I also bought a badger shaving brush (which is more or less essential if you’re not using a squirty can), which was £15, but again should last many years.
I did try shaving soap, but didn’t really get on with it, so switched to Talyor of Old Bond Street Shaving Cream. This does does come in a plastic pot, but one pot lasts me probably 9 months of shaving every day, which is pretty good. They’re not cheap at £10 a tub – but better to recycle than the squirty gel. You could probably make them go a bit further than I do as well – you really do only need the tiniest amount to lather up your whole face.
Than there are the razor blades. I use Astra Superior Platinum Double Edge Razor Blades, which I bought in a pack of 100(!) for £12 delivered. They even come in little cardboard boxes of 5, and wrapped in waxed paper.
In terms of usage, I gather it’s best to change the blades every couple of days, but I tend to use them for a week, with one day off shaving a week. This is about the same as the disposable ones, which I also usually made last a week – sometimes two.
So, objectives achieved?
Well, definitely less plastic. The only plastic I generate now from shaving is the empty pot of shaving cream once or twice a year. This contrasts with maybe 30 or 40 plastic disposable razors, and 5 or 6 shaving gel cans.
There is no doubt the shave is significantly closer (especially the first 2 or 3 with a new blade).
Cost? Well, there was an upfront cost of £25 to get going, and ongoing costs of 50p a month for blades, then £1 a month for shaving cream. The disposable ones are probably slightly cheaper than this, and the shaving gel comparable. Clearly if you use a Gilette disposable or semi-disposable then the Astra’s are a significant saving. So probably not much in it either way in terms of pounds of pence, but you’re not not really comparing like with like.
More qualitatively, shaving with a safety razor is a completely different experience. For literally the first 3 months I cut my face every day!! I was so used to dragging the disposable razors over my skin at any old angle – you have to be much more careful and precise with the safety razors. But on the other hand I find it a more enjoyable experience – it shaves so beautifully and easily if you do it properly, and is so much closer. The whole lathering up is quite fun to. I’ve always enjoyed wet shaving, and it’s even better, in my opinion, with a safety razor.
Actually speaking of nicking oneself, I also use an alum block to stop the occasional little cut which still happens. The alum stick also doubles up as my deodorant. That takes a bit of a getting use to, as you still sweat, but it doesn’t smell. The alum kills off the smelly bacteria without blocking up your pores (which is what normal anto-persperant deodorant does – and of course that usually comes in yet more plastic too).
I did briefly flirt with the idea of the full cut-throat razor, and the whole stropping thing, but decided (a) I wasn’t brave enough, and (b) it was probably just a step too far.
First, as is perhaps often the way, an “off-topic” comment of his struck me, and partially inspired this post. I paraphrase from memory.
I always think that we have a limited number of keypresses in our life, so I want to use them well. If someone asks me a question, I blog the answer so that the keypresses live on. E-mails are where keypresses go to die.
Anyway, aside from the stuff I learnt about WSL, there were a couple of other gems in this talk which I wanted to flag up.
This is a flat / peer to peer VPN topology built on top of WireGuard that looks really nice. You connect all your devices (PC, server, phone, docker container, EC-2 instance) to your Tailscale network, and they are all visible to one another with static 10.x IP addresses.
I haven’t had a play with Tailscale yet, but I did set up WireGuard on a raspberry pi, and put the client on my phone, so I can now access my home private network from my phone even when I’m out and about. It could barely have been easier to set up (did have some fun and games with some of the dependencies on the pi, but reddit saw me good). My use case is probably more allowing my kids to play Factorio or Minecraft together even when they’re not in the same house. Obviously there are many other ways to solve this problem, but this one is essentially free.
Tailscale looks even nicer – my reading is that is is essentially adding a management layer to WireGuard, so all your devices can automagically join the network without needing to know all the other devices certificates and IP addresses ahead of time.
Windows terminal basically brings the command prompt up to date, with multiple windows/tabs, configurable menus, and so on.
I’ve been using at work this week, and it is just a much nicer way of managing the varioius command prompts I usually have open for Docker, Git bash, Powershell, SSH, etc. Possibly my favourite thing is the ability to add the Visual Studio command prompt as a menu item. While I hardly ever use it, it alwys seems to take me ages to find it on the Windows start menu.
Apologies for radio silence – it has been a super super busy couple of months; starting a new job, finishing my curacy, getting work done on the house… and that’s before the ongoing covid excitements.
I do have a backlog of photos to upload at some point – I haven’t given up on it all together!
The Bishop of Leeds is pleased to announce the appointment of The Revd Dr James Handley, currently Assistant Curate of Harrogate St Mark, as Associate Priest of Harrogate St Mark in the Ripon Episcopal Area.
The licensing will be conducted by Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley on Sunday 25th July 2021
I received the letter today from the Bishop signing me off – my initial ministerial education is complete.
Like the rest of the world, the past 12-18 months have been like nothing I’ve ever experienced or could have expected, and I don’t think I can even start to do it justice in a short piece like this. But I did want to mark the occasion.
The massive thing about my curacy for me has been the discovery of Self Supporting Ministry as something other than Stipendiary-Lite, and this is a journey I am still on. “There is no one way of being a priest” (++Rowan Williams)
As for next steps – I am going to become an Associate Minister (SSM), and continue to explore workplace ministry in my new software job, and hopefully continue to publish my theological thoughts and reflections along the way.
For now it is celebration and a sense of achievement, and enormous thanks to all those who have walked alongside me on the way, not least of whom is my wonderful wife and children.
I’ve just noticed a little milestone has come and gone.
On the 9th May 2011 – i.e. ten years ago – I posted my first ever 365 photo, which was (I think aptly enough) a signpost:
Since then I have posted 2,006 photos (so picture 2,000 was another milestone I guess), clearly not 365 a year (more like 200), but still pretty good going I reckon.
I really enjoyed the Lent Challenge, with a word to inspire every day, and I am now doing an ABC challenge, where each week is inspired by a different letter of the alphabet.
I do have some other (good) news of a more personal nature, but that needs to wait just a little bit longer…
As I have now entered the fourth, and hopefully final, year of curacy, I thought it was about time for an update (seeing as this blog is supposed to be a record of my curacy journey)!
As I posted in the September last year, I have been trying to think and reflect a lot more about Self Supporting Ministry, and reading as many books as I can find on the subject (and there aren’t an awful lot). Part of the upshot of this was a realisation that I needed to give my day job (and ministry there) more respect – it isn’t something I can just fit in on top of a leadership role and parish ministry.
So my final year of curacy is going to have a somewhat different shape – instead of working 4 days a week in paid employment, and then spending on day a week at church doing parish things, I am rather going to continue in my 4 days a week at work (albeit different days), and then have the other day a week to build in some time and space. To be honest, curacy has been a real struggle in terms of my own head-space, and I have found it really hard not having time on my own to process stuff. I guess the final straw came for me when I realised that I wasn’t giving my best at work, or behaving in the way I wanted to towards my colleagues, because I was essentially running on empty.
I’m anticipating that this change will allow to me to be a bit more intentional in both resourcing and exploring what (priestly) ministry in the (secular) workplace might be about.
In practical terms, it means I have now stepped back from parish ministry and being a member of the staff team at church (which has been an interesting experience in itself). I am very much still a licensed member of clergy, and continue with leading services and preaching – these are things which I believe are at the heart of the ministry God is calling me to. However I am no longer particularly involved in the pastoral and occasional offices, or indeed any specific area of ministry, or church governance (except that I still serve on PCC and Deanery Synod).
Of course, this beautiful new plan was all pre-covid19 – and while I have indeed stepped back from parish ministry, it has been replaced with a perfect storm at my paid job, and home schooling on my days not at work, as well as supporting my wife as a front-line worker. The picture since the start of term in September has been slightly better – work has calmed down, and I have had a couple of Fridays to myself; but to be honest life is still pretty tough in our household, as I know it is for lots of households.
My “365” project has had a fresh lease of life recently, since I started almost entirely using my phone camera. It hugely simplifies the workflow (as the photos are auto uploaded from the phone), and also means I’m not lugging around my DSLR.
It does mean that the photos are more like snapshots, and perhaps less considered, but I’m quite enjoying the freedom of not really having many options around aperture, shutter, etc. It’s kind of the instagram philosophy I guess.
I recently did a live streamed church service from home, and along the way learned what is needed to get certain types of microphone to work.
I have a couple of microphones I use for video work – I have a Rode VideoMic GO shotgun microphone and a Rode SmartLav+ label microphone.
I use my Canon DSLR for filming stuff, and almost any external mic is a huge improvement on the built-in one, so this has worked well.
However, when I plugged either of these into my laptop for the broadcast, I had to boost the gain, which in turn introduced a hum/buzz, and it was also picking up some internal computery noises. No problem, think I – I have an old mixer with mic pre-amps, let’s use that, and provide a line level input to the laptop.
No joy at all – no signal. These mics both have 3.5mm TRS jacks (actually the SmartLav comes with a TRRS, but I have a converter). My Mixer has XLR or 1/4″ TS or TRS inputs, so I try various converters. Absolutely nothing.
I then discover that these sort of microphones (unlike, say, an SM58) need a power supply, in the form of a voltage between the tip and the sleeve – called a DC Bias. This is only around 3v, and if you try to run phantom power down it, you will most likely fry the mic.
I found a few old YouTube videos of inline power supplies people has bought on eBay – but my searches brought up nothing. Until I found this page: Powering Microphones by Tomi Engdahl. I had a look at his circuits, and thought to myself, “I could make one of those”, so I did, and it worked!
It does give a bit of a “thump” when you plug it in, or turn it on, which I guess is due to the capacitor (presumably I have the wrong sort), but it provides a solid, if slightly low, level from the smartlav to the mixer pre-amp. I wonder if 3 AAs might have been a better bet, and 3V is a little low. Or maybe the 2.2K resistor is to high (or low), and provides too much (or too little impedance)? I confess I lose my way a little with microphone impudence, but figured it was worth a shot, as I was unlikely to blow up either my microphone or the mixer from 2 AA batteries.
My final circuit is shown below. I ordered all the parts from CPC Farnell, as follows:
Black ABS Potting Box – 100x50x25mm
Black Potting Box Lid – 100x50x25mm
3.5mm Jack Socket, 3 Pole
6.35mm (1/4″) Jack Socket, 2-Pole
2x AA Battery Holder
Rocker Switch, DPST,
LED, Blue, 3mm, 3.5V
300 Ohm Resistor, 0.6W
2.2 kOhm Resistor, 0.5W
Capacitor, 10 µF
I originally designed it with a single 3.5mm jack, however the order quantity was 2, so I decided to have a stereo 3.5mm output option, with the rings of the 2 jacks directly connected (shown in blue).
The only purpose of the LED is to show when the box is switched on.
A days work drilling out the mount holes for the LED, jacks, and switch, and the job was a good ‘un. It was all a little bit tight in the potting box, and I don’t think a 3 AA battery holder would fit inside, but I’m quite happy with it, and it even works!
