ajft

Another hot, sultry night, the wind banging the blinds around, too hot to sleep... Nine AM and the rain has just cooled things off a little, but not enough to inspire me to do anything or move anywhere.

Rain! Torrential, cooling rain...

New Years celebrations were very laid back. Four of us went to dinner at The Gate in Church street, where we were charged a 10% NYE surchage — “Just because we can.” After the dinner we walked down to the river and stood on the footbridge half-way across, watching the taller parts of the city fireworks displays as they appeared above the trees.

>

Thirty degrees at nine in the morning, last night's cool change petered out into a smattering of rain drops and no drop in temperature. There's many things I could do with my three days off, but today, no incentive to do anything very much, just move slowly, sip cool drinks, and listen to music....

This time last year, we were just starting out New Zealand bike tour — we must get around to deciding — soon — once and for all whether we're going on the Geneva to Verona ride later this year....

Another lazy Sunday down at Lorne — I took off by myself in the morning to wander along the beach — alone in the crowds, watching as people staked out their territory for the day with towels and sun shelters and bags. Then up to the shops to rummage through the second-hand book-shops. They're not cheap, but there's plenty of choice as people discard unwanted Christmas presents and holiday reading. I nearly picked up a Lawrence Durrell novel or two — after thinking I should read some for many months — but they all seemed to be the “continued” part of a four or five book series.

The tide is a long way out again, same as yesterday, and the beach is full of people.

On the ugly side, the entire foreshore has been turned into one enormous carpark. The bowling club has been bulldozed and replaced by a carpark, but the old carpark still exists, and in the interests of rampant consumerism and packing even more people in, cars are parked across the remaining grass areas and footpaths. There's still no way of crossing the road anywhere in Lorne — the entire town is one side of the Great Ocean Road, the beach is on the other, and not a single pedestrian crossing anywhere.

Everyone is sitting around waiting for the cool change to come through — even at eleven in the morning. It's nearly 30°C, gray and overcast, and humid enough that the flies and children are driving people crazy....

Saturday morning at Lorne, the standard ritual: Toast, coffee, and the newspaper, followed by a walk down the hill then around the beach to the pier. The tide is the lowest I can remember, and we could walk out under the pier, something neither Jo nor I could remember ever being able to do. A striking view out from under the concrete piles towards the bay.

The exceptionally low tide provided us with a myriad of rock-pools that aren't normally visible. The number of people now visiting the beach seems to have resulted in all the normal rock-pools being bereft of any life other than a handfull of snails, but the pools revealed today were swarming with different types of fish, small crabs and crayfish and shellfish of all kinds.

... and in world-shattering news, I actually went for a swim this afternoon. Highly unusual, all around me were shocked! My dislike for cold water and the beach at Lorne don't usually go well together, but the weather was hot and the sea not as frigid, so in I went.

Day three of Monash-induced stupidity. Yep — back at work for the three hours from nine to noon. I'll try to stay awake... There's my most recent photos to organize and a few bits of journal to write...

To read, there's a christmas email/webpage from my cousin to her relatives and friends — an extensive list, it probably includes half the uk! It took some time to get my head around the characters and the plot... Almost as convoluted as The Usual Suspects, which Joey and I sat and watched last night — Yay! — about time we started using our TV!

Joey is grinning from ear to ear with her new toy — the Xbox — even if neither of us is very good at any of the games we've got. I think we're both suffering from reflexes that are a decade too old for video games!

A spur of the moment decision on the ride home this afternoon and I came by “Bike Track” rather than road. What should I run into but a very large council truck completely blocking the path — I am going to have to create a page/photo-album dedicated to the things that I find blocking so-called bicyle facilities... To top it off, one of the myriad of patches of glass has succeeded in puncturing my rear tyre, so I rode home with a gradually softening rear end. Hardly surprising that I've got a puncture, considering the sheer quantity of broken bottles on the path now that the school holidays have commenced.

Desperate to get out of the house for some exercise, we headed off to find the mysterious foot-bridge over the Yarra. Yesterday morning, a casual browse through the street directory showed that what we had thought was only a rail-bridge between Richmond and South Yarra appeared to have a footpath alongside. All this brought on by the trivia question “How many churches are there in Richmond?” Sure enough, once we managed to find the access track down behind the Country Road offices, there is a set of stairs up onto the rail lines, and then a footpath over the river.

Once over the river, we continued all the way back along the southern bank to MacRobertson Bridge, a two-hour walk by the time we got home, and one that was nerve wracking in places as families wobbled past on their newly-unwrapped department store bicycles — knees stuck out to the sides from seats too low and helmets on the backs of their heads. Near Herring Island we stopped to watch a heron, or maybe an egret, stalking along in the shallows. Apparently Herring Island is named after Sir Whats-his-name Herring, who had something to do with the Boy Scouts, and not after the little fish, which made sense, since I don't think any self-respecting herring would care to be caught this far up the muddy river.

Christmas day, much feasting and unwrapping. Apparently Jo had an inkling of what her large present might be, but wasn't sure until she opened it — the fact that she's been bugging me for a Playstation everytime we saw one in the shops or catalogues should have been a dead give-away. Anyway, its an Xbox, not a Playstation, since I've heard that Microsoft loses money every time someone buys one.

Tuesday; Christmas Eve — woke to hear Biggsy playing The Clash on the radio this morning and thought that all was well with the world — then heard that Joe Strummer had died the previous night. This afternoon I sat on the couch and listened to a few hours of Clash compilations.

Tonight; off to the Corner Hotel to see Mick Thomas — a Christmas Eve institution — the music between the bands was a Clash tape. Between songs, Mick observed that he'd first heard Joe Strummer here in the Corner, then launched into I Could Spot You Anywhere — a song with references to finding someone at the Big Day Out. Flashback to January 1997 — Big Day Out at Flemington showgrounds — I walked in the gate, overwhelmed and disoriented, and paused to get my bearings at the RRR stage. Joe Strummer was playing, two friends of mine walked straight up to me out of the crowd, it was the most memorable performance of the show...

...but back to today... Dinner at Silvio's, yet another great pizza and a couple of glasses of wine. The place is an institution.

Mick Thomas on Christmas eve is another — some of the songs off the forthcoming album sounding a bit odd though — I guess they'd sound alright on a Saturday afternoon in the sun, but on Christmas Eve in the Corner, the crowd seemed to want a little more. Michael Barclay was the unexpected guest, and almost unrecognisable with his hair cut neat, and an enormous grin as he seemed to be having a ball. I half-attempted to take some photos, but my camera just isn't up to it. The combination of a weak flash and a slow response from trigger to capture means that I get some interesting, and very dark, shots two seconds after I push the button — like Michael Barclay with a castanet and mike stand in front of his face!

A good night though — Jo was a little disappointed about the songs that weren't played, although I pointed out that more keep getting written, and so some old ones must be left out, and that going to a gig and complaining that you only like “their old stuff” is a sure sign of impending old-age and senility.

What a stupid day to be at work! Monash shut down last Friday, but the powers that be have decided that we'll have one staff member from each area present from 9 to 12 each day. Today I'm it. Three hours of reading email and browsing the web!

The world is too small a place — I discovered at dinner that a cycling friend of mine in Melbourne who has lived in Brisbane, is also friends with Dr Alan, a cyclist I know from Brisbane... I guess its not that unlikely, but it came as a surprise.

Last night we decided on the spur of the moment to have dinner at Kanzaman, a Lebanese restaurant that's up the street — optimistically, we chose the banquet for two... It was fantastic food, the same as the last time we were there, and there was even a visit from a local belly dancer to entertain the diners.

After sitting around lazily all morning trying not to get too hot — while the temperature climbed towards the predicted maximum of 36°C — we headed over to visit friends for an afternoon barbecue. A brief interlude of paranoia while Marko and Lesley thought that nobody was going to show up, followed by several hours of good company as we all lazed around in the garden, only getting up to move as the patches of shade moved.

Sunrise 5:57am (AUSEDT), sunset 8:37pm (AUSEDT) at Melbourne, VIC, AU (14:39 hours daylight)
Full Moon 6:09am (AUSEDT)
Monash: Last working day for 2002

Very strange weather this morning — quite warm, but foggy enough that we couldn't see the city. It was strange riding to work in warm fog! Summer solstice too...

The last working day of the year — except for me, since I'm down as the volunteer to man the phones next week. Nobody interested in doing anything very much.

An interesting bit of discussion is going on at the moment in one of the cycling groups regarding Hokey Spokes, and other non-standard lighting. Nobody is quite sure what the laws state — I was under the impression that the red rear and white front were mandatory, and that anything else was prohibited, much the same as motor vehicle rules. Some people seem to view that because the regulations only mention motor vehicles, bicycles can be decked out however they want — in my opinion this is getting close to stating that bikes are toys and not vehicles... the debate continues.

CMS MLP

More things about CMS:

[http://tikiwiki.sourceforge.net/]

TikiWiki: yet another Wiki, could be worth investigating.

[http://touchgraph.sourceforge.net/]

TouchGraph: Graphical browser of wiki's.

Sound, colour, excitement, food — it must be the annual ITS Christmas party. The time of the year when we must pretend that we're all bosom buddies and all working towards the same goal...

A large array of inflatable bouncy-castles had been procured — probably at great expense — in order to ensure that all of ITS had “a good time.” There was a small bouncy castle, a jousting thing, a large slide, and a horizontal bungy-jump. These were all roasting hot in the sun, and only a couple of them were used to their full! I was most dissappointed that despite the signs everywhere proclaiming that they all belonged to “Pete the camel man” — A Camel Hire there was not a single camel to be seen. Apparently after 25 years of hiring out camels, the increases in insurance have killed off that part of the business.

Apologies to viewers using Microsoft's Internet Explorer. After months of using Mozilla to view my own work I've just discovered that IE doesn't correctly interpret the style sheets and leaves my photos hanging off the bottom border. A quick change from a
; to an empty <p> and all is back in order...

This all came about because today's Mozilla daily is badly broken — it won't display anything at all.

... so many things I'd like to change on this site.

• a new logo, but every attempt I've had to create an image of my monogram has failed — dismally.
• my photos — still a mess. I want some of the features of Gallery, without all the ugly URLs and embedded tables and cruft. Change the backend without changing all the links...
• A more “CMS-like” setup. I still want text-only page content, but with the indexes and page wrappers autogeneratd — and definitely no ugly great URLs like those that seem to be generated by most CMS applications.

Ow, Ow, Ow! I think I've broken a toe... Half-asleep this morning, I managed to kick the wardrobe door and get my toes jammed between the bottom of the door and the carpet. Toe is now an interesting purple colour.

For about a week now there's been a dumped car at the side of the road in Oakleigh, the only odd thing is that the registration plates are still attached. It's gradually increasing in entropy as people smash more and more parts of it. I wish I'd got a photo of it when it first appeared — a time-lapse sequence perhaps....

One of my coworkers managed to absolutely amaze me today. I had no idea that supposedly intelligent people could come out with statements like:

“I just change my own car oil then poor the waste into a corner of my garden — it just soaks away...”

When I asked him about pollution, the fact that it drains straight into the storm-water and into Port Phillip bay, he just shrugged and said he just pours it into his garden....

This evening's entertainment was a trip to the Balwyn Cinema for the latest James Bond movie — Die Another Day — it's just too long since I last saw a good Bond movie — or indeed any Bond movie! The usual satisfying mix of explosions, evil genius bad-guys, car-chases and scantily clad ladies.... The only dissapointing scenes to me were the very unrealistic looking surfing scenes, both at the beginning and later in the movie.

A hot day at last! Joey and I journeyed into the city to visit the Queen Victoria markets — something we've been meaning to do for ages. I'm not sure what was the most fun; looking at all the fruit and veges that we don't need to buy, or wandering through the aisles of cheap clothes and complete crap that various dodgy-looking vendors try to sell. The funniest was a battery-operated toy soldier — I think he's meant to be doing a commando-crawl along the ground, but to everyone watching, they looked like weird homo-erotic groin-rubbing motions. Each time we saw one we burst out laughing.

This evening there was a Bund Christmas barbecue at the house of droo. An untimely event, since Bund christmas events are usually held sometime in June or July. The obligatory collection of digital cameras and geeky toys were present, as was some magnificent food, and some highly spicy sausages. There should be some photos, probably on cos' elsewhere, but I can't find them yet....

An invisible kind of a morning! After visiting the fruit and vege. markets, we dropped in for breakfast at Blue Heaven. Coffee arrived, the breakfast order vanished. After investigating, we got the breakfast, then were not charged for the coffees, since the order had vanished. Half an hour later, we called in at the bakery for a second coffee — ten minutes later it hadn't turned up, so I enquired. The whole order had vanished. Coffee was created, delivered, appologies were made and accepted, together with a joking comment from the waiter that perhaps today would be a bad day to go out for dinner...

Somewhere along the way we bought a new tent. It was a bit of a whim, but AU$75 for a three-man tent was too much to resist. My hike-tent is fine for one person — and excellent to carry on the bike — but is too small for two people and their luggage. For the last year we've been borrowing a three man tent (for three small korean men) from some friends, now we can finally hand it back and luxuriate on our next camping trip — whenever that is.

It sounded a little strange — “the tepanyaki restaurant in the K-mart carpark” — but the food belied the trepidation. The usual prowess that you'ld expect from the chef, the fun and games of him flicking the cooked egg at the customers, and tasty fresh food cooked right there in front of you....

Maybe, just maybe, the weather is warming up for the weekend... I'm getting really tired of wearing my winter cycling top in the middle of December!

Richmond: 144° 59' 45.3" -37° 49' 41.6"
Clayton: 145° 7' 35.1" -37° 55' 26.3"

I'm bored, here's a picture of my desk at Monash. Currently visible are all the bits of junk that I work with each day. Inspired by — and submitted to — the collection at [http://snapyourdesk.barkins.com/]

Wake up summer time! This is getting ridiculous — nearly three weeks of constant drizzly cool weather — it was 14.5°C today at noon!

This afternoon I ran a bit of a sanity-check through my journal, my bike ride notes and my website. Still not sure who the intended audience is of any of these, my writing in the paper journal has dropped right off, some of it due to me writing more here, some of it due to less time by myself. I guess there's some truth to the saying that diaries are only written by the weird or the lonely...

After much procrastination I've finished going through the scrawled notes that I took during January and the blank places in my journal, and written up the rest of our New Zealand bike tour. After emailing a guy in the UK who is going to NZ, I'd referred him to my trip — then decided I'd better finish writing so it all made sense! Unfortunately there are way too many places where I've obviously left myself a half-empty page — to be filled in later — and then never got around to it.

Do I laugh or cry? The motorists on the ride home... First was my attempted murder by the idiot driving the 2 tonne truck, rego. FPM-659, turned right straight across my path at the lights of Malvern road and Darling road — he nearly had bike and rider embedded in his door at 40km/hr. My shout should have been loud enough, but he was blissfully unaware, mobile phone glued to his ear. At least the ambulance parked right next to me would have been able to render assistance.

Five minutes later, still fuming, I got to see the funny side of the motoring idiot. On High street there's traffic lights for a pedestrian crossing, a gap one car length, a railway crossing, then the lights over the freeway. While I'm sitting at the pedestrian crossing the next set of lights went green, the 4WD Pathfinder next to me started up and drove straight through the red lights of the crossing, then the driver realised and stopped just before the railway lines. Then the level crossing lights came on, then the boom-gate slowly came down. Lower... and lower... then — BONG! — as the gate hit the bonnet. Only then did the driver put the 4WD into reverse and leap backwards like a startled cat! Myself and a few people on the footpath couldn't help ourselves, and burst out laughing.

Woohoo! The mysterious lump in my finger has mostly gone away. I think I did the equivalent of the traditional “belt it with a bible” trick — running upstairs for a coffee, I managed to hit my hand against the door handle. Hurts like crazy, but the lump has gone!

Bah! That'll teach me to clean my bike — half-way to work this morning and it started to rain again. Yet another cold, grey, drizzly day. So much for summer time...

The Nigerians, the Nigerians... In what must be some kind of record, there are four Nigerian Business Offer scams in my inbox this morning! Its frightening that there are so many stupid gullible people in the world to make these scams work.

My “Just in time Bike Ride entry scheme just failed me. Leaving it far too late for the Alpine Classic, something I've never quite had the courage to enter previously. I tried today and found that they're all booked out. If vacancies are available, they'll be announced today... Oh well, at least I've managed to enter the Bicycle NSW Big Ride for next March, it'll be strange to be doing it alone, since Jo doesn't have enough leave. I must remember to book some leave for that....

More cycling-related news. Some friends from the France tour last year, Karen and David sent me an email today to say they've had a baby — a very small baby compared to the size of my nieces!

Another day, another wedding task... today was the day of the cake. At least cake testing is not an onerous task, especially when it's a great big chocolate mud-cake that you've decided on! Under quarter of an hour, into the shop, check the pictures, point to the preferred shape and decoration, wave arms wildly around the head and leave. Either we're easily pleased, or we know what we like...

Jo's movie with friends fell through, so the two of us headed into the city to see the Gleaners and I, something I've had on my “to view” list for some time. Unlike a lot of movies on this list, I actually got to see it before the season finished! As the IMDB says:

An intimate, picaresque inquiry into French life as lived by the country's poor and its provident, as well as by the film's own director...

I think they mean picturesque, but you get the idea. A touching film, it struck a lot of resonances with me on the subjects of waste, on recycling, and on the stupidity of a lot of foods' “use-by” dates. One amusing thing I noticed was that with the French dialogue, naturally all the units were metric — or Francs — but the sub-titles had been translated into American, with pounds, inches and dollars.

Woke to more rain and drizzle and a definite non-summer Saturday. Miraculously, our Christmas lights are still working, although four bulbs at the end of the strand are out of action and seem to be full of water.

A typical Saturday, coffee and scrambled eggs, the paper and the crossword, then a frantic dash up the road to the markets before they shut at noon! Lunch of fresh bread and delicious tomatoes, then a walk the full length of Richmond. Past the myriad of girlie-clothes shops, twisting and turning through the crowds along the path to our first stop — Richmond Hill Café and Larder, to check out their famous “cheese-room” and be overwhelmed at the selection. There's the cheese equivalent of a sommelier in residence, quite happy to talk to absolute novices, equally happy to dispense small tastes of whatever takes your fancy. All the cheeses are labelled in dollars per 250g, since the price per kg would cause heart failure — privately imported boutique cheeses do not come cheap! We left with two very small samples of a Morbier and a Montgomery cheddar, then continued on our walk through East Melbourne to the Fitzroy Gardens.

On Thursday evening, the wedding celebrant had suggested that since she was doing a wedding in the Fitzroy Gardens, we should wander past and see if we liked her style — so feeling very self-conscious, we sauntered up to the wedding and hung around behind all the well-dressed guests. No obviously obnoxious habits were apparent, so we headed off, passing another three weddings in the park on the way out!

Phew! That over, it was back to the Bridge (hotel) for a well-earned beer in the late afternoon sun — but there was no escaping them, today was a day of weddings. Across the road on the lawns of the Ridges hotel were the accoutrements of yet-another one. We sat and laughed as later and later guests arrived, frantically hunted for parking, then dashed across the road to take their places.

Sydney is busy being baked by bushfires, meanwhile, monsoon in Melbourne... Adrian, keep your day job, that's almost good enough for a sub-editor at The Age, but not quite.

Summer ... winter ... summer ... winter...

Wow, massive thunderstorms in the morning. Hail in the afternoon. Showers in between. Almost enough to make you want to stay in bed all day.

... and now a rhetorical question for all you motorists out there: If there was a straight, empty stretch of road, with free parking available along the entire length of it, not one other car in sight, and no restrictions anywhere, would you park across the cyclepath entrance, or would you park somewhere else? (Please forward your answers to the idiot who this morning chose the former)

This evening's rather scary event was a visit to see a wedding celebrant — after weeks of flicking her business card back and forth between us, Jo had more courage than I and called up to see her.

Marg has been recommended by a friend — sitting talking with her brought us suddenly down-to-earth and reminded us that we're getting married, so far everything has just seemed like large-scale event-planning. Nothing too earth-shattering, but both Jo and I had a few moments of butterflies... Marg seems a delightful person, she talked almost non-stop for the hour we were there and had so many suggestions and comments that we were completely over-whelmed at the thought of being able to ask questions!

To celebrate one more mile-stone completed, it was back to Via Ponte for dinner, yet-another of their wondrous pasta dishes, the problem being which to choose!

Bye bye bank! Which bank, I hear you ask... the Commonwealth Bank. Too many months of too many bank fees, total inaction on their part to a request to change my account to a lower-fee type (today's story is that paperwork has been lost). Walked into the office this afternoon, closed my account, walked out again. Nobody there was the slightest bit interested in why, or in persuading me otherwise. The final insult was when I asked to transfer the money from my account to an account with another bank, I was told “it'll take seven to ten days, it's a manual process you know.” I can do it myself with their Internet banking, the staff must be brainwashed into a 1930s paper-based office when they join the bloody institution.

MLP

[http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=332186.545194]

Neal Stephenson on surveillance

First I had an email from a friend, passing on the jdbmgr.exe virus hoax. Then there was yet another Nigerian Business offer sitting in my intray. The other was an hour later by a cow-orker, who received the Friend of a Friend warning of the Wallet and the Terrorist and the plot to blow up the local shopping centre. The minutest piece of cynicism or the tiniest check on the net would have shown this one has been circulating since November 2001, but no, deeply worried, it is forwarded on to all of us.

Or, if you've already received another version of this email: where the Arab drops his wallet in a cab/pub/pole-dancing club; where he gives the date as 28/30 September or 1/5/10 October; or where MI5 turn up at your door with a really big book of wanted terrorists, you might want to reflect on the net hoax phenomenon which can reduce otherwise rational people to headless chickens.

Even after we point out the previous hoaxes, she's still not convinced, just keeps reiterating that “it is better to be safe than sorry.” Sigh Some people just don't seem to get it.

To top it all off, being the start of the school holidays, the bike paths are a mass of broken glass. It looks like the schoolies must have spent most of the weekend getting pissed and smashing bottles. No flat tyres so far....

Answers

The answers to all my questions — from the Royal Australian Mint's website [http://www.ramint.gov.au/]:

When was the $1 coin first released?

1984

When was the $2 coin first released?

1988

When were 1c & 2c coins taken out of circulation?

The last one cent coins were dated 1990 and the last two cent coins were dated 1989. They were progressively removed from circulation starting in 1992.

Ok, we've done it now. The TV has been purchased — and what a comedy that turned into! It seemed to take a quarter of an hour for the staff in Dick Smiths to find one in their store-room and get it to the checkouts. I was amazed at the size of the box, concerned that it wouldn't fit in the car, but since the washing machine went in, just assumed that the Astra could take it... As the young lads were wheeling it out to the carpark I realised why it looked so large. 76cm screen vs. the 66cm one we'ld purchased. Then came the fun part, around four iterations of “That's the wrong TV, not the one we wanted, followed by “are you sure? Eventually we got the right one, and loaded it into the car. I guess if I wasn't so honest — or not quite so quick to comment — we'd have walked off with a AU$1600 TV for AU$800 — me and my big mouth... (TEAC CTW2850S, no manuals in the box, no warranty card, no receipt, but apparently a 3 year warranty)

Added excitement was provided by the girl driving the Budget Hi-Ace rental van (PWO-869), driving straight into the back of us as we sat at the traffic lights on Warrigal road. She refused to give her name or license details, saying it wasn't necessary as there was no visible damage — probably terrified of what Budget would do if she admitting to crashing their van.

Farewell; Paulus, it was nice knowing you... Or whatever else is appropriate to wish someone on their bucks night. He doesn't look too concerned, we all enjoyed the procedings. Most of them went Go-Cart racing in the afternoon, I joined for dinner at the Napier and then beers at an assortment of pubs in Fitzroy.

Far more interesting than the travesty of the State election held today. The Liberal party appears to have self-destructed over the past few weeks, the Greens don't seem to have any policies, just a general “be green” message. It being a “time of trouble” it was predicted that the populace was likely to vote for the incumbents anyway — and so it happened.

Time to be a feral unemployed bike-activist asshole (according to one posting in that bastion of petrol-headed free speech, news:aus.cars). After several years of reading the Critical Mass mailing lists, but not going to any of their rides, I decided to head into the city for the 7th birthday ride. The last times I was there, years ago, I became quite disillusioned that there were a small number of people who were pro-bike, a large number of people who were anti-car, and a medium sized number of people who were just anti-everything. My feelings for CM just keep on oscillqting about. Some cyclists hate it, BV seem to hate it, on the other hand, conditions for cyclists are basically what scraps are thrown to them, and are frequently inappropriate. Civil Disobedience may at least raise the point that some people aren't happy...

5:30 meeting time at the State Library, the 6pm start time came and went, the whole assemblage resembling a mighty herd of cats — and about as easy to control. There were normal bikes, decorated bikes, and some highly customised one-off examples of the frame-builders art and fevered imagination... Sometime around 6:15 we headed off, tearing through the city streets at around 7km/hr. Much fun and laughter, no obvious aggression from any motorists, and many smiles and waves from motorists at some of the incredibly decorated bikes. One of the most impressive was a four-person vehicle of two riders and two drummers — the latter riding in a chariot-like contraption behind the riders, and protected by a large canopy.

After an hour of riding that included circling around through the city, splitting the group in two over two different routes, heading down St Kilda road and through parts of South Melbourne, I ended up missing the ride over the Bolte Bridge. I was starting to feel that the group had lost its way and wasn't going to get there, and I had other appointments for later in the evening, so at Flinders street I departed, heading home at a more normal speed. Amusingly enough, as I cycled down Bridge road, all three intersections with “forward bicycle boxes were unusable due to the motorists parking in them. So much for BV's “pot 'o paint approach to bicycle facilities.

Apparently the ride did go over the Bolte bridge, if I'd only stayed with them for another half-hour or so.

Later in the evening was a catch-up drinks and dinner with friends I hadn't seen for ages — about 18 months in a couple of cases. A late arrival and too much standing around talking and drinking beer meant that we missed the kitchen closing in the restaurant and Jo and I ended up with growling stomachs and a late supper when we got home around midnight.

Browsing a few Motorcycle-related bits and pieces I found a BMW Boxer to make me drool. Just the kind of vague ideas I've had of what I might like in a café-racer style of bike.

[http://www.teamincomplete.com/boxerintro.htm]

Team Incomplete's boxer

The mud is still there this morning; MarkO rang me at work to thank me for warning him about it, apparently when he got to the underpass there were three cyclists crashed in the slime, one with a suspected broken wrist. He has spent half the morning playing telephone tag between City of Buroondara council and Vic Roads, nobody wanting to take ownership of the problem or clean the path. A bit of digging around and I found the council website and their email address (mailto:boroondara@boroondara.vic.gov.au) — I've emailed them and asked them to clean it up.

[http://www.boroondara.vic.gov.au/]

Boroondara City council

[http://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au/]

Yarra City council.

Something must have worked — no response to my email, but riding home this evening there had obviously been a front-end-loader through and it had cleared out all the mud from the underpass — until the next time it rains....

Not quite the end of the drought — but it was pissing down all night. There was about half an inch of water in the containers on the balcony, and Gardiners creek was a churning mass of mud, water, and polystyrene run-off from all the surrounding suburbs. My timing was perfect this morning — the ride was humid, but there was no rain. Then half an hour after I arrived, it started pouring again.

... about 12mm according to the weather bureau. It certainly came down in a hurry though, on the ride home Gardiners creek had flood marks nearly two metres above the current water level! Heading down into the underpass at Toorak road a rider coming the other way yelled out and warned me about the mud — a thick, black, slimy, stinking coating of evil black goo, slippery as grease. When will the idiots start to design bike tracks, rather than just squeeze them in along storm-water drains?

Another day, another homicidal maniac...

Dear Sir,

Just in case you're reading this, the reason that the cyclist smacked your car with an open hand — making that remarkably loud sound — was that as you drove through the give-way sign and straight into his path, he had just had to perform an emergency stop to avoid riding into your drivers door at 40km/hr.

Oh well, he certainly jumped. Now if only he learns from the experience....

It certainly wasn't going to hit 33°C today — so much for the forecast. On the other hand, there were no more excuses, it was finally time to perform a vigorous house-cleaning. After a mere half-hour, the carpet was located beneath a thick layer of read, unread, and partially-read newspapers, numerous unwashed and discarded clothes were returned to their respictive stores, and a couple of kilos of toast crumbs removed from the kitchen floor...

Uh oh! We've nearly bought a television. After nearly ten years without one, I think the temptation to own a TV is getting to me... a few too many documentaries are looking appealing, and it is getting embarrassing to have DVDs and no way of watching them other than on my (work's) laptop. Dick Smith have a 66cm widescreen TEAC that seems to be about what we're after — so long as we can find somewhere to put it, without having to rearrange our whole lives around the damn thing.

Speaking of rearranging things; we nearly had the front of the car rearranged by the usual idiot — yes, a P-plater in a WRX, screaming past a tram at a tram stop, passengers leapt left and right out of the way, somehow he didn't hit anyone, then slid to a halt in the middle of the intersection, heading straight at us. A big laugh from the driver and his mate, back into gear, and off he goes. Hopefully he'll put it into a large concrete barrier soon and remove himself from the gene pool.

And to think that we actually went out shopping for a CD rack — an object that seems to be missing from every shop we visit. You can find any number of cheap plastic ones that'll hold forty or so disks, or ornate stylish numbers taking up twice the space and holding half as many — but try to find a simple shelf for two hundred or so, not a chance....

Mr Curly, the duck, Vasco Pyjama... Michael Leunig's famous cartoon characters brought to life in a series of short animations. They've been screening in-between TV shows on SBS, tonight at the Astor there was a full length show of some of the 50 short films, an interview and chat with the artist, and a documentary of the making of the animations. His cartoon “Sunset is one of the defining Leunig items to me — a single panel showing the inside of a room in a house, a man proudly showing his son a magnificent sunset on the television, outside the window the exact same sunset is playing in real life.... Around ten years ago I was camping in a caravan park on the NSW South coast and felt that I was living in that frame — sitting by the fire as the sun went down in magnificent colour over the lakes, not a soul was outside, and every window of every caravan was flickering in time, as they all watched the same news program on television....

Somewhere, someone must have decided that today was summer. The hazy cloud lifted while we were at the markets and it quickly heated up to around 30°C, with nothing much on the agenda for today, it all lent a very lazy summer feeling to the day.

Its either a sure sign of senility, or of hanging around with a two-year-old nephew for too long. Tonight we went off to the HiFi bar to see Mick Thomas and the Sure Thing play, supported by Gorgeous and the Drowners. During the Drowners set, Stewart (Stuart?) from the Sure Thing was standing near Jo and I watching them. The conversation between Jo and I was something along the lines of:

“Isn't that one of the …”

“Yep, Stewart, one of the Sure Thing.”

“So, is he Thing One or Thing Two?”

Half the audience stood around looking like stuffed fish all night long — looked like they would like nothing better than for it to finish so they could go home to bed. Too much effort to be out to a gig on a Friday night. There was one song that caused a bit of confusion, I could have sworn I'd heard it before, yet Mick announced it as a new song — I guess I'll just stay confused.

The encore was “Made of Stone” by the Stone Roses, and odd choice, but one that Mick has sung a few times before. I nearly laughed when I looked around and saw all the old people in the audience singing along, and all the young ones who weren't around in the mid 80's looking puzzled.

We thoroughly enjoyed the Drowners, as well as Mick and the band, so on the way out treated ourselves to a copy of their CD (Far From Home), together with two No Sleep Til Richmond tee-shirts — in anticipation of the Christmas Eve gig at the Corner.

Some idiot of a politician is proposing that Muslim women in Australia should be prevented from wearing traditional garments; due to the possibility of them carrying concealed weapons or explosives — fine, I'll agree with it, so long as it applies equally to all other clothing that could conceal any kind of weapon. I think the first place to enforce it would be in Parliament — “for their own protection from terrorists” — just think how quickly the sittings would take place if all those fat old men had to face each other naked and shouting....

A quick jaunt up to the shops before breakfast to get some bread, and — surprisinly — there was only one car ilegally parked in the clearway on Bridge road, and it even had a parking ticket on it. Normally there's at least one car per block!

The cool and drizzly weather has cut down on the number of other people riding in the mornings, and on the number of wandering people-with-dogs on the path. Makes it a pleasant trip heading in to work. On the downside, the evil smells from Gardiners creek are much more apparent!

I never knew that trying such a simple thing as moving mailing lists from my work email address to my private one could be such a hassle — yesterday I though that I'd done it, today I found that some of the subscribes worked and some of the unsubscribes worked. I'm getting two copies of some stuff, and one (at various places) of the other. I don't think there's anywhere that I've managed to lose a subscription completely....

Cool, drizzly morning rain;
Eucalyptus smells along the creek.

[http://mesa3d.sourceforge.net/]

Mesa 3D toolkit has released version 5 of their software.

[http://www.doxpara.com/]

assorted interesting stuff: Black Ops of TCP/IP: Paketto Keiretsu

1. 0

I went through a number of my email mailing lists and changed the subscriptions from my work address to my private one — not that I'm planning on changing jobs anytime soon, it just seemed more appropriate. Along the way I added the hooks into spamassassin on the mail processing on bund, and changed from spambouncer to spamassassin on my home machine. Spambouncer just didn't seem to be staying up-to-date enough.

yawn. For some stupid reason I woke up at around 2:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, it wasn't helped by not getting to bed before midnight — so now I have to try and survive Monday without falling asleep on my feet.

Interesting fun and games across the street at breakfast time — as I sat down to coffee and toast I noticed two of Victoria's finest Police officers standing around waiting at the door. Eventually the occupants came out, she in pyjamas, he dressed, and a great arm-waving discussion took place with the girl. Arms were waved, mobile phone calls were made, documents were shaken about. The most interesting part of it was that one of the coppers was quietly having a cigarette the whole time, cupping it out of sight in his hand like a naughty school kid. Unfortunately my camera isn't quite up to surveillance standards, so you'll just have to take my word for it!

Now I wonder who was the genius who put the application for a car-park permit on my desk at work? $50 to battle it out with the students in the blue areas, $316 for the exclusive staff-only parks... on the other hand I could just stick to riding the bikes and park for free.

... and a quick visit to the doctor has reassurred me that the mysterious lump in my left ring-finger is scar tissue on the flexor tendon sheath— probably from vibration or gripping handlebars too hard on the tandem! It should go away in a couple of weeks, I'm to take it easy on the handlebars...

Off into the city this afternoon to shop around for Joey's birthday present — I know what I want, I just can't find it! Eventually successful, not only that, but the shop in question had the book on sale! Along the way I checked out the Lego Mindstorms that Dick Smith has — it's getting very tempting as a present to myself! None of the other chain stores had it, so price checking wasn't possible, but I did get to see all the current cool bits of Lego that they do have — like the Bionicle robot thingies. Of course, like every other piece of merchandise these days, they have their own website at www.bionicle.com.

Two new CDs also managed to fall into my hands; Rob Snarski and Dan Luscombe's “There is nothing here that belongs to you as a present for Jo, and Death in Vegas' “Scorpio Rising for me. The first one was hard to find, filed under S where I'd been looking under L, the second was a bit of a wild card, without hearing anything other than the single “Hands Around My Throat I was hoping I'd enjoy it as much as “The Cantino Sessions.

Viewed from the tram on the way home: a 20-something girly, arms waving wildly around as she was freaking out in Bridge road. The source of her problem — her car bent neatly around the nose of another tram. I guess she didn't see it....

Birthday dinner for Jo with Jo's family — Jack still happily believing that all birthdays are for him, leaping in and blowing out all available candles.

The Spiegeltent is back in its box, back home to Belgium for some R&R. That'll teach me to not quite get around to visiting it. Maybe next year...

Hmmm, maybe its time to get serious and compare the KHS Alite and Cannondale MT800 tandems:

So there it all is. As Pegasus Peter has said, there doesn't seem to be much between the two, is the Cannondale frame and name worth an extra 33% on the price?

Weird stuff is going on in the Melbourne Critical Mass “community.” Flames, etc appearing on the mailing list, and the sound of personalities clashing in the night....

There has been an interesting discussion on bells and the sounding of same prior to passing pedestrians. The argument for is in the interests of peace and harmony of all human-powered transport, the argument against is that most pedestrians on cyclable paths either know the bikes are there, and so don't need the bells, or don't know the bikes are there, and are such dopey idiots that making a warning noise is not in the best interests of cyclist or pedestrian.

The law requires me to have an “approved sound maker “affixed to my bicycle. Is my voice, capable of a large dynamic range, considerable volume, and wide variation, an “approved sound maker? Is my 85kg mass, attached at seat, pedals and handlebars, better “affixed than a bell or tweeter held on by a clip or one phillips-head screw? These questions and more can be asked of your local magistrate...

Woo! Bicycle Victoria has redesigned their webpages. It still amuses me that Bicycle Victoria has a “.com domain while Bicycle NSW has a “.org registration — and it seems to reflect their focus as commercial ride organizers rather than bicycle activism. Oh well, it looks like I'm out of luck with respect to the bells, below is a direct quote from Bicycle Victoria.

Bells are of little use in alerting people in motor vehicles but can help alert people who are about to step onto the roadway.

The rules

Traffic regulations require a rider to have a bell fitted. The penalty for riding a bicycle without a bell is $50. The penalty refers specifically to a bell. The old definition of an audible warning device no longer applies - so you can't argue that your voice meets the regulations.

I wonder how the law regards air-horns, since they obviously aren't “bells?” Strangely enough, the requirements don't apply to tandems or other non-standard bicycles!

It's too nice a day, I should be outside riding my bike.

[http://www.criticalmass.org.au/]

[http://www.criticalmass.org.au/stkilda]

[http://www.urbanbicyclist.org/]

[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bicyclesexcepted/]

Bicycles Excepted.

In keeping with the day's bicycle orientation, I went and attended Bicycle Victoria's Annual General Meeting this evening — something I've never done in the past. I have my own views on BV, and of how they've changed over the years, and of what their focus is these days, after five years as a member I thought I'd see what the AGM was like.

A few observations from the meeting:

• Out of a membership of around 30,000, approximately 50 people attended the AGM.
• The motto “More People Cycling More Often might well be amended to “More People Cycling More Often — so long as we can make money off the events they're cycling in.”
• The crisis in public-liability insurance is causing much consternation, both to BV and to the related BUGs.
• Owing to “commercial sensitivity, the majority of BV's financial information is not available to its members — whether there is a real or imagined threat to their income is not known, but it only serves to hilight any suspicions that members have.
• The statements “All organized rides were financially successful and “Easter-bike is no longer held since it is not financially viable seem a little circular. It appears that the money is more important than getting “more people cycling in this instance, and that the one main family-oriented event cannot be cross-subsidized by other events.
• The closing of BV's office the day before an important special meeting was explained as incompetence, rather than malice or any sinister motive to rail-road through changes to the constitution at that meeting.
• The councillors, old and new, seemed to be predominantly business people, or “recent new cyclists. It appears that once you are a regular cyclist, you are no longer the primary focus of Bicycle Victoria. This seems to be reinforced by their emphasis on off-road paths and recreational facilities.

The old and the new — restoration of St Paul's cathedral and the newly opened Federation square.

I'd been wanting to take a look around the square, I like the design, the architecture. I also like the fact that it inspires people enough to detest it and write scathing letters to editors, rather than just being blandly uniform.

There was a fashion shoot going on in the main atrium, and we didn't get there until 4:00pm, but even so there was plenty of time to look around the galleries and open spaces. It should be even better when access to the river, and Birrarung Marr is opened up.

None of the cafés are open yet, so over the river to Southbank for a snack, then off to see a movie. Ten Vietnamese spring rolls were ordered, ten appeared on a plate, both Jo and I swear that we'd eaten five each, yet one remained.... The only possible explanation is that aliens had teleported an eleventh spring roll onto the plate.

Being good, civic-minded citizens, we attempted to purchase train tickets for the trip from Flinders Street to South Yarra — machine number one took our money and issued tickets, but machine number two refused to take our tickets and validate them. I guess we just put them in our wallets for later....

There hasn't been much on at the cinemas recently that has inspired either Jo or I to go out, but in order to use up my free Palace pass, we headed over to Como to see Time Out. Very, er, “French,” or “arthouse,” or whatever else you'd use to describe a movie that was intriguing, but seemed to drag on interminably. The last scene was a surprise, after what I thought was the end, a particularly black ending, there was a final scene that all too neatly tidied things up — almost as if some test audiences hadn't liked the original ending.

Flat battery? Need a mate to start your car? Where do you think you should park. No worries — park right across the middle of the bike path, she'll be right!

Just another of the myriad uses that bicycle paths seem to have in the public mind...

In case its not quite obvious what the content of the photo is, I was sitting at my least favorite set of lights waiting to cross Malvern road to continue up the bike track. The car on the opposite side has driven onto the bike track and parked, bonnet up, to jump start the broken down station wagon parked in the middle of the lawn.

After four days on the tandem, riding my own bike this morning was a bit surprising. It felt so light and manoeuvrable! I realized as well how much my seat has slipped down over the last couple of weeks, put that back up to normal height, hopped on and nearly swerved into the kerb in our street — the steering seemed that twitchy! The tandem must have helped the fitness though, the ride along the Boulevard was a lot quicker than it usually is!

Traveling home, today's “Idiot of the Day” award goes to the rider of the orange 100cc Honda motorbike, registration ZO-097. Passes me on the road, then turns left onto the bicycle track, sped off along the track and over the pedestrian/cyclist bridge over Warrigal road, before disappearing up behind the houses along the cycle track towards Chadstone.

  Today: 37km
  Total: 192km

Day 4, Cup Weekend Deadly Treadly Tour: Rutherglen Red Ride.

Myrtleford: 146° 43' 39.1" E, 36° 33' 35.8" S
Milawa: 146° 25' 53.4" E, 36° 26' 45.4" S

  Today: 62km
  Total: 154km

Day 3, Cup Weekend Deadly Treadly Tour: Rutherglen Red Ride.

Beechworth: 146° 41' 10.7" E, 36° 21' 41.4" S
Myrtleford: 146° 43' 39.1" E, 36° 33' 35.8" S

  Today: 52km
  Total: 92km

Day 2, Cup Weekend Deadly Treadly Tour: Rutherglen Red Ride.

Rutherglen: 146° 28' 0.5" East, 36° 3' 0.1" S
Beechworth: 146° 41' 10.7" E, 36° 21' 41.4" S

  Today: 40km
  Total: 40km

Day 1, Cup Weekend Deadly Treadly Tour: Rutherglen Red Ride.

Wangaratta: 146° 19' 34.4" E, 26° 21' 19.4" S
Rutherglen: 146° 28' 0.5" East, 36° 3' 0.1" S

Are there prizes for bizarre motorist behavior? Is the warmer weather affecting their minds? Just how many people believe that only other drivers need to obey law regarding mobile phones and driving? Sadly, I don't think I'll ever know the answers to these questions, but after managing to make it to work on the roads with them this week, I'm getting more amazed by the day.

... there must be some way that I can hook up the USB webcam to the laptop and get some “commute-cam” footage....

I don't know whether this should make me feel better or worse. Yobs don't just abuse cyclists from their cars, they're quite happy to scream at pedestrians as well... “Get a f#$%ken haircut C#@T,” rang out loud and clear from the occupants of the white Ford XD wagon, rego. PDF-374 as I walked along Beach road in Brighton, on my way to pick up the tandem for the weekend.

Wyvern is operational again. After spending far too long getting eye strain from reading the 5pt printing in the green guide of today's paper, I discovered that the computer shop on campus has power supplies for much the same price — $60 and a ten minute at lunch time was much easier than running half-way around town to save a whole ten dollars! I did end up with a supply that can support a P4, should I get around to upgrading the box — and the Abit IT7-RAID motherboard is looking kinda nice....

... and after seeing yet another mention of the CODA file system on one of my mailing lists, I tried to install the coda client on my laptop: Simply run the installer, pick C:\win32\cygwin, restart the machine, run a shell and start the services:

$ net start coda

The coda service was started successfully.

ajft@NBK-9978 ~
$ net start venus
The venus service is starting.
The venus service could not be started.

A system error has occurred.

System error 1067 has occurred.

The process terminated unexpectedly.

It was even more interesting when I then tried to stop the coda service... instant blue screen.

All part of the grand scheme for one decent, replicated, file store of everything I have!

I removed wyvern's power-supply this morning and had a look inside — no wonder it isn't working too well — the circuit board is blackened and warped, and it looks as though half the components have been cooked. Definitely time for a new one!

I've now recovered from whatever tried to kill me, but Joey had to leave work early and is now in bed with the same thing. At least we both didn't get it at exactly the same time!

To make life even more miserable, I had a rather desperate call from a distressed friend to come and pick him up from work this afternoon. Seems that a friend and colleague of his has been arrested for something remarkably stupid and could be in big trouble — It's happened, but I'm not writing about it.

Uh oh! Four in the morning and I woke up with mysterious rumblings in the stomach. A mad dash to the bathroom and I spent the next twelve hours being violently ill, or collapsed in bed! Probably not food poisoning, so I guess it must be whatever has been killing off my work colleagues for the last few weeks.

A morning at the markets, an afternoon shopping for unmentionable material in relation to 2003-Apr-12. Along the way I dropped in at Christies, ostensibly to look for cycling shoes, in reality to ponder the tandems — that matt black MT800 is sure looking tempting...

A more prosaic form of transport was employed get around the back yard while MarkO was cooking the barbecue for dinner. His pride and joy, an old Cyclops scooter destined for the dumpster before he rescued it paid good money for new tubes. I can remember having one of these back in about 1973...

Despite the best attempts of the weather to rain on us, we managed to have a successful first barbecue of the summer, probably one of many.

?huh?

Just a little too much excitement at Monash this morning...

Two dead, eight injured in Monash Uni shooting

Helicopters buzzing overhead for two hours or more, all the phones stopped working as everyone tried to call in or out for news. The mobile networks couldn't cope either, probably because every student seems to have a mobile phone.

Still feeling a little stiff and sore from yesterday's exhertions. Walking down stairs wasn't too hard, I'm guessing that it was neither the easiest or hardest of my three “round the bay's.”

Four fifteen a.m. is a completely ridiculous time to be getting out of bed. I hadn't really slept since about 1am, neighbours seemed to be coming home steadily between two and three, a cat was yowling outside the window the whole time, and then the birds started chirping around 3:45... I think I'll stick to more sociable bike-riding hours in the future.

Once outside and on my way I yawned my way down to St Kilda, catching up with another rider in Church Street who then kept me company down Chappel street — with vastly reduced traffic from it's Friday/Saturday night jams. A few cars passed carrying bikes on racks or the roof, then as we got nearer to Fitzroy street the density increased, bikes and riders were everywhere, mixing it with the departing clientel of the bars and clubs.

With near-perfect timing I reached the start at 5am, in time to see the first bunches ride off. There didn't seem to be much point in milling around in the darkness, especially since I hadn't arranged to meet anyone, so at 5:05 I was heading off down Beach road, yawning continuously.

The ride down was in large bunches, I seemed to spend most of my time surrounded by a team from Alcoa and a very large group wearing shirts advertising Dean Woods. As usual there was every mix of bike and rider and rider skills possible. Three tandems, a couple of full suspension mountain bikes, even a guy with a toddler in a baby seat. The majority of people were on road bikes, and most of these seemed fairly up-market versions. Arrived at Sorrento at ten past eight, plenty of time to gather lunch — ridiculous time for lunch — and get onto the eight thiry ferry.

Queenscliffe to Geelong has never been a ride that I've enjoyed. Usually I've ridden too hard for the first half, then stiffened up in the ferry crossing, and then can't seem to find a reasonable group to ride with. Today it was all these plus strong head-winds and a dash of rain.

Luckily, after Geelong we turned so that the wind was at least partially behind us, I found myself in a group of about ten heading up the road towards Lara at around 38km/hr! By around this stage I was starting to get a little tired of the “you must be doing it hard on a mountain bike comments.

After falling off the back of their group I was mostly by myself on the roads towards Altona, unfortunately being shadowed by a wildly erratic guy on a Peugeot. His jerky pedalling and strange half-overtaking maneuvers from the left were quite disconcerting. Topping this off was the quick release wheels fastened incorrectly, the release levers tightened up like big wing nuts. Unfortunately I couldn't drop him and he wouldn't take the lead, just sat somewhere behind me, drifting in and out of view on one side or the other.

It was a good feeling to be crossing the Westgate bridge, coasting down for the last couple of kilometres back to St Kilda. Not an easy ride though, by this time the wind had picked up across the bay and was buffetting us about. Finally got back to Catani gardens at 13:55 after about seven hours forty minutes on the bike!

233.3 km, 8hr 32m, 27.3km/hr average speed (once I'd ridden home). Not a bad effort for the day!

The rest of the afternoon was spent dozing on the couch, listening to the noises of protestation from feet and ankles, legs, knees, bum, back and shoulders. Then early to bed!

A Saturday to myself since Joey had to go off with her mother on secret Joey business.... Highly successful secret Joey business, since with the minimum of fuss they found and bought a wedding dress!

I did much more interesting things — like fruit and vegetable shopping at the markets, and visiting the bicycle trade exhibition at the Carlton Gardens.

Actually, the bicycle exhibition wasn't very interesting — it might have been due to the fact that I'm not after a BMX bike or downhill MTB, since that's what seemed to take up the majority of the stalls. Lots of boutique imported racing frames, and a number of very cheap looking Chinese toy/bicycle stands. Nothing much about touring, and only one very pricey tandem — AU$5000 for a Trek that didn't look like it had very speccy gear on it. Just keep looking I guess...

Bizarre things that I should have taken a photo of: A Bingo board sitting at the side of the road in a park, looking just like it had come straight from a 1950's bingo parlour.

...last night's lesson is: three pints Guiness good, four pints Guiness bad. I shall try to remember this lesson for the future.

A very slow day — surely by this time in my life I should know better!

Out to dinner at Flor in Carlton. We both got a surprise walking in the door, from the review in the paper I thought it was more of a restaurant — turns out to be quite small, and predominately a wine-bar. An impressive wine list with entries from all over Europe and Australia, and enough variety in what was available by the glass. Chicken and Leek pie was very tasty, followed by Orange and Pecan pie, coffee and a liqueur. I was in an experimental mood so tried some of their grappa — contrary to previous advice I had received, grappa is not an Italian word for petrol, it was quite tasty and went very well with desert and coffee.

Happy birthday to me...

This evening a celebratory Guiness seemed in order, so Evan and I headed up to the Terminus for one ... or two ... or even more. While there we were talked into participating in the weekly Bingo games — hilarious fun, with the couple running it knowing all the traditional wise-cracks for each number, along with a whole section of Melbourne-specific ones regarding footballers and trams. I foolishly tried to play sixteen games at once, frantically scribbling from one end of the table to the other. Evan took a more relaxed approach with only four games — a much better choice since he then won the first round, becoming the proud owner of a jug of beer. Not wishing to mix free beer with Guiness, the jug was donated to a party of young girls at the bar. Deeply suspicious of a no-strings-attached donation, the girls bought me a fourth pint. This proved my undoing...

Wow, what a shed! I'd heard about the shed, Kathy had talked about the size of the shed, but it didn't really sink in until we drove out there and saw it. Kathy and Cec appear to have an aircraft hanger in their paddock! I guess when you need to ride and exercise your horses all year round, a really big shed just might be what you want.

...and then the long drive home to Melbourne....

Dead quiet out on the highway, we left too early for the truck traffic, and being monday afternoon after the school holidays, there was no private traffic either.

Paused in Holbrook to wander around and look at HMAS Otway — 400km from the nearest ocean, I'll let you look up the story yourself! Even out here we couldn't escape the World Master's Games — a bus load of eastern-european guys from one of the teams was busy taking photos as well.

Spent the day visiting my newest nieces. Too lazy to take a photo of them, appologies to anyone who wanted one. Casey has a curl, Zoe doesn't — other than that, I can neither tell them apart from each other, or from any of the other three-month old babies that I've seen. Two at a time certainly are a handful, but they all seem to be coping.

In the background for the whole afternoon was the Bathurst races — I can remember when I used to be interested in it, when it had a variety of production cars that bore at least some resemblence to what was on the roads. This year it was fifty percent Falcadores and fifty percent Commofords — the only interest was when rabid plastic bags kept blowing across the track and blocking air intakes, causing cars to overheat and expire.

Next year's NSW Bike Ride will be staying in Bungendore and then Yass, so we were curious what route it might take. If it uses the Yass River Road, which is likely, knowing the organizers' pathological fear of main roads, then we'll be riding straight past Liz and Colin's house! The night before, we'll probably be camping at Bungendore showground — just over the road from mum and dad!

We made like tourists and got lost driving towards the Floriade in Canberra — followed the signs through the city, along Constitution avenue to the lake, off towards the east, down under Constitution avenue, then missed the carpark turnoff and ended up heading back towards the city! Ended up driving around and parking near the pool, where I tend to head automatically, since that's where the bike path would take me!

Floriade is the same as always, a great place to stroll around and gaze at the colours and the work that must have gone into it. Not such a great place to get anything to eat though! Ridiculous prices and lousy food, we walked back into town for a late lunch.

On the way out of Commonwealth Park I took pity on a poor Canberra Uni student who was conducting surveys and offered to answer his questions. We managed to find one question where none of the available multiple-choices were appropriate, and generally shot down all the others, since they whole survey seemed based on the premise that we had come to Canberra solely to see the Floriade.

Hmmm, very tempting! A second hand MT3000 for just over the price of a new MT800! I wonder how much shipping from the US is?

FOR SALE 09/12/02: Cannondale MT3000, Team Race Yellow, 1999 with less than 60 miles on it, wife don't like it, been in storage for 2 years, never seen water, looks better than show room condition, this was the best tandem that Cannondale made that year, it has all the top components, XTR's, Magura Hydraulic Brakes, Triple Clamp Cannondale front Suspension, rear seat post suspension, size Large/Medium(19"/16"), awesome bike, a steal at US$2,500.00 O.B.O. You will not be disappointed. Check it out at this site for a pic and more info on it, http://www.cannondale.com/bikes/99/model-9mt3.html.

  Mike
  Home Phone: 269-435-4010
  Work Phone: 269-580-2676
  MikeJitjaeng@aol.com

Hurried home after work so that we could leap in Jo's car and try to get out of town ahead of the rush. Luck must have been on my side because we managed to leave by 5:15, and were out on the Hume by about 6pm. From there it was just the usual long and boring drive for six and a half hours — up the freeway through Victoria to Albury, country highway to Holbrook, then Tarcutta, skirt around Gundagi, on to Yass, then the Barton Highway to Murrumbatemen and a twisty country back-road at midnight from there to Bungendore.

The bizarre quote of the day would have to be the one I just found in today's Herald Sun newspaper. In reference to a proposal to further restrict smoking in public places, and introduce “Public Substance Inhalation Rooms;” one smoker is quoted as saying:

“If I smoke I want to do it outside in the fresh air...”

Personally, I don't mind where people smoke, so long as they:

1. Don't exhale
2. Remove all ash, cigarette butts and rubbish
3. Don't stick the hot end into my clothes

Judging by the sea of butts that surrounds every restaurant door in Melbourne, it appears as if the average smoker is the filthy pig that has always been presumed, and that they don't consider cigarette butts to be litter.

Off for the week's bike riding in a vague hope of maintaining some fitness before Around the Bay in a Day. It was such a calm, still morning that I hurried off down around the bay to Frankston and back, deciding to climb Oliver's Hill for a little extra exercise. As usual, some petrol-head in a rusty old bomb tried to run me off the road in Frankston, but that's Frankston — it happens every time. On the way home the breeze picked up, and by the time I reached St Kilda it was blowing hard enough to be causing considerable distress to some of the riders out on the road for the afternoon.

In desperate need of food I called in for a large (and suspiciously healthy-looking) apple crumble in Albert Park, then headed home for a much-needed beer or two. The beers were in the Dover Hotel, since Joey pointed out that she's never been in there, they have a pin-ball machine that looks like her favourite one, and they have a new beer garden that needs investigation.

A quick browse through the papers in the evenings to try and find a decent movie — nothing seemed to grab our attention — then we found it. The Great Escape, at the Astor. A magnificent piece of entertainment, and one that just has to be seen on a big screen for full enjoyment. James Coburn as an aussie was a bit bizarre, I didn't realise until right near the end when he told someone that he was Australian, that that's what he was meant to be!

Rain all day... apparently October is Melbourne's wettest month. Half of Victoria has had a drought for the last three years, the dams are 52% full, and still there's no water restrictions for anyone in the city. “Yah just turn on the tap and the water comes out.” Maybe one day the government will have the guts to introduce the water restrictions...

One more tiny step on my way with Plan9... Today I managed to upgrade the T21 from the CD, maybe I'll be able to compile a kernel that can use the embedded 3com network card and not lock-up the machine.

9660srv
mount /srv/9660 /n/dist /dev/sdD0/data
replica/pull -v /dist/replica/cd

Flicking through the Green Guide section of The Age I was happy to see that the feature on digital cameras pretty much agreed with me, the Digital IXUS was the camera of choice in that range. The other interesting device was a stand-alone hard drive that I saw in an advertisment, 20 or 30Gig in a device about the size of a paper-back book. Has a card-reader slot and doesn't need to be attached to a computer — when your camera's memory card fills up, plug it into the drive and it automatically down-loads all the images. [http://www.powerinnumbers.com.au/]

A little detour on the ride to work this morning — I headed into the city for Bicycle Victoria's annual “Ride to Work” day and free breakfast. Everything there was all sweetness and light, in some contrast to the ride to get there!

One car parked in the clearway/bike lane on Bridge Road. Seven cars and a tow-truck stopped in the bike lanes at traffic lights. Two out of four “forward bike boxes” at the lights had cars parked in them. One taxi double-parked and disgorging passengers out both sides, and a motorist who attempted the “overtake and then turn left” manoeuvre. Heading to Monash afterwards I'd have to add the solid mass of vehicles blocking “Swanston Walk,” the couriers' vans parked in the St Kilda road bike lane, and the woman who reversed out of her driveway without looking, and then drove past too close for comfort while yabbering into her mobile phone.

Oh well, at least BV will have their camera footage, parliament will see that there are a few bikes around — at least for today — and I managed to get my drivers license number engraved in my bike frame. Its supposed to aid recovery in the event of theft; I think I'd much rather prevent the theft in the first place since the proportion of stolen bikes that is recovered is very low.

Woohoo, I'm an uncle. Weird that I was congratulated, its not as if I've acutally done anything! Jo's sister has had one of those “two o'clock in the morning babies. I can remember when I was at primary school everyone used to think it was really cool that they'd been born at strange times — I was boring, born somewhere around three in the afternoon.

Evening found me round at the hospital visiting Kath and for the first time in my life holding a very small new-born baby. Young William is much quieter than his two and a half year-old brother Jack...much lighter too!

Wow, impressive response to a usenet posting! In a discussion of UK cycle routes and Sustrans routes I made the comment that when searching I hadn't been able to find any information about them, and then when I looked on the CTC's website it was rather “hostile,” and that when I sent email enquiries I had never receieved a response... today I find an email from the Director of the CTC asking for feedback on how I believe they can improve their service — I can think of a few other organizations that could do with that level of customer care!

A clearer day today, still not picture-postcard weather, but more conducive to tourism than yesterday! Over a home-cooked breakfast of bacon and corn-fritters we examined the maps, and decided to head to the northern reaches of the Grampians, possibly re-visiting some of the lookouts if the weather was clear.

First stop after leaving Pomonal was the tunnel — one end of a 2.5km long tunnel that brings water through the ridge from Lake Bellfield on its way to Stawell. The water was originally carried in wood or steel flumes, now in a pipe underground. This wallaby sat quite unconcerned and watched as we looked around, possibly because we were in the gully and down low, it didn't feel threatened.

Back down the road to Halls Gap, a few jokes along the way about nobody believing us since it was obviously not possible that we were able to drive out to the tunnel on the dirt road since we didn't have a 4WD. Along the way we passed two older women on touring bikes, full panniers on, also heading into Halls Gap. It looks like a great place to either tour to, or to ride to and camp, going out on bush walks.

Today at Reeds Lookout the sky was almost clear, panoramic views for miles to the south, and chaos in the carpark with cars, busses and camper-vans packed side-by-side, not helped by the idiots who had parked on both sides of the access road leading in. I'd hate to be here in the summer — it must become almost impassable. The Balconies looked just like the postcards, against a grey sky rather than blue, and the track out onto them is closed off, no more standing in the jaws for a photo for the friends — either too much erosion or too many tourists were plummetting into the forest below...

Eventually we managed to extricate the car and get out onto the road before heading off for McKenzie falls...

Spelling seems to be a matter of opinion around he