ajft

Escaped in the afternoon for a ride along the Great Ocean Road. Despite all my best efforts I couldn't quite manage to get my average speed up to 30km/hr. Very light traffic, surprisingly few idiots on the GOR, a clear sky and magnificent views. Average speed was 29km/hr when I got to Apollo Bay, and despite the tailwind on the way home, fell to 28 by the time I returned to Lorne.

Traffic on the way back reaffirmed my faith in motorists; first a light truck towing an unregistered caravan, the van was swerving around in gently s-bends, if I tried hard I could probably have stepped off the bike and into the van through the open door. Close behind was a ute towing a trailer load of crap, looking a lot like all the scaffolding to hold the caravan up. About 30 seconds after it passed I watched a 2 foot section of timber fly off the back and into the oncoming lane. Neither the caravan or trailer had any lights, so the next motorist behind them very nearly ran into the back going down the hill under brakes.

[http://www.typo3.com/]

another promising content management system for me to play with. I had problems accessing their demo from Mozilla, it tells me to "use a 4+ browser"

A fine sunny afternoon, time to finally go out and explore the mysterious reaches of the Docklands development. Jo and I had been meaning to go and have a look around there for months, walking nearby on the way to the football the other week had rekindled the idea, so today we set off to explore. The usual mix of absolutely lunatic motorists in Bridge Rd had us alternately laughing hysterically, swearing copiously, or just swerving wildly to keep out of their way. I was seriously wondering whether some of these people are ever likely to wake up one morning and think to themself:

“You know, I've just realised that I really don't know what the road laws are, maybe I'd better hand back my driving license.”

...but I doubt it.

Up through the city, down Collins St. Oh so tempting to shoot across Spencer street and over the Collins street extension, except for the 3m high fence barricading it off! Instead we wended our way round in a more conventional approach, then discovered that the major use of Docklands seems to be in providing free carparking for football fans who don't want to pay when visiting Docklands Stadium/Colonial Stadium/Telstra Dome/whatever it is this week. I guess they'll be in for a shock when the residents want to use their own carparks.

Lots of concrete, lots of shiny new walkways, not a single person around. It was a bit like taking a tour of a film set, or an end-of-the-world scenario where all the people have dissappeared. Pleasant enough out in the sun, it was icily cold in the shadows of the big concrete buildings with the wind whipping around the harbours. Steps everywhere too, not many, just the one or two at a time, but it made riding around the place a pain. I guess only healthy young people will be allowed to live there, no elderly, no injured.

The other feature of the whole area that we didn't notice until we tried to leave was just how isolated it is; it seems cut off from the rest of the CBD by freeways on most sides, there is no easy way in or out for people on foot or bike. Maybe that'll change as more of it is built. The promotional material is chock-full of warm and fuzzy statements of accessibility.

Evening entertainment

Home-made pumpkin soup and off to see a movie. Last Orders at the Rivoli, if we hadn't had the hot soup before hand we would have needed it afterwards, all the scenes of cold english rain had me shivering in my seat! Well worth seeing, I can't write movie reviews so I won't. I'll just recommend it to others.

Life's too short to be served bad coffee. Two bad coffees in a row and now we can't bring ourselves to call in at Via Ponte. A sad thing when both Ian and Michael are such nice guys, but with all the other cafés in the street, we keep walking past theirs and on to somewhere else.

A longish ride in the afternoon. Just like last Saturday I headed out in short sleeves, half thought of coming back for a warmer shirt but didn't. Dodged the cars in bike lanes, dodged the cars in bike boxes at the lights, dodged the same car again when he tried to drive through me at a red light. As I got closer to the bay, the wind increased, nothing catastrophic, just strong enough and cool enough to make life uncomfortable. Down to Frankston and back, more than enough to keep the legs warm and the mind occupied—dodging the 4WDs and assorted yobs around Bonbeach.

So much for the spring-like weather! Almost warm this morning on the ride to work, then cold and grey and drizzly rain all afternoon. Not the kind of weather to inspire me to leave work and ride home, maybe it was a plot created by the ITS management to make me work longer hours.

This evening I explored the strange behaviour of tra. Or maybe I'm just not understanding how it works yet. Two config files, work and sng-work, corresponding to the directory $HOME/work both on my home machine on at Monash.

bash-2.05b$ cat ~/.tra/work
#!/bin/sh
trasrv $HOME/.tra/work.tradb /home/ajft/work

bash-2.05b$ cat ~/.tra/sng-work
#!/bin/sh
ssh sng.its.monash.edu arch/SunOS/bin/trasrv .tra/sng-work.tradb /cc/ccstaff1/a/ajft/work

A subdirectory, FRED containing a single file.

bash-2.05b$ ls FRED/
log.txt
bash-2.05b$ rm -r FRED/

Run minisync from here to Monash, and nothing happens. I would have expected it to remove the file and directory.

bash-2.05b$ minisync -v work sng-work

Run minisync back the other way and sure enough, it copies back the missing files.

bash-2.05b$ minisync -v  sng-work work
copy /FRED/
copy /FRED/log.txt
bash-2.05b$

Remove just the file, leaving an empty directory, and then sync.

bash-2.05b$ rm FRED/log.txt
bash-2.05b$
bash-2.05b$  minisync -v work sng-work
remove /FRED/log.txt

Ok, that behaved as expected and deleted the file from the destination. Now remove the directory and sync.

bash-2.05b$ rmdir FRED/
bash-2.05b$
bash-2.05b$  minisync -v work sng-work
remove /FRED
bash-2.05b$

Again, that behaved as expected. So it looks as if tra only removes empty directories, and chickens out from removing them if they go from non-empty to non-existant.

It must be springtime. Whooosh, KLACK! and the first magpie of the season swooped me as I rode along the Yarra boulevarde this morning.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has announced a $2.66 billion profit and says it will axe 1,000 jobs as part of a restructure.

Banks! They still haven't managed to process my change of account request from June! I wonder if they can manage to replace my credit card before it expires and renders me moneyless?

It was with great apprehension that we informed Jo's parents of our engagement—actually that's not true at all. This evening we finally managed to visit them now that they're back from their holiday and let them know!

Monday morning; traffic banked up along the freeway all the way back to Warrigal Road. Nudging the motorbike along behind the lady in the Honda Accord—she weaves from side to side, mostly staying within her lane, the phone's in her left hand, or sometimes resting on the passenger seat, she's busy chatting. Flashing the high beam does nothing, she glances up and continues babbling. To top it all off, the left rear tyre of her car is so flat she's just about driving on the rim. But she's not speeding, which is all that's important, because, as we all know from the television ads, Speed Kills.

Tried to compile tra this evening to see if it fits better with what I want to do with maintaining my home directory and replicating it between multiple machines. Only problem is, I can only get it to compile on one machine! Linux is fine, but there's no Windows port, and it fails on sng since the assembler is missing.

A very slow day. A little too much Pinot Noir last night, or maybe it was the Guiness or the champagne... In any case, neither of us felt inspired to do much today except lie on the couch and read the paper, or in my case, Graeme Fife's history of the Tour de France. A fascinating mix of his personal ride and historical anecdotes.

“A Sunday Afternoon Drive in the Country,” just the phrase seems to be enough to make me cringe, but we decided that we had to get out of the house for a while. First part was easy “to go,” the second part, “where to go,” was not so easy. We ended up driving out to Sylvan Resevoir and going for a walk in the forest. An annoying amount of beer cans and plastic bags littered around, together with the large proportion of 4WDs in the car park and the number of people taking their dogs (illegally) into the nature park reminded me that this is rural Australia, or at least outer-urban Australia.

Leaving the dam, we detoured up through the forests to Olinda Falls, where very new walkways and lookouts seem to have been built to view the falls, a great idea to get away into the forests and the quiet. Driving home we headed back up into the Dandenongs, popping out at Olinda in the heart of tourist country, suddenly being confronted by milling hordes and traffic everywhere—quite an astounding contrast.

I don't think I was ever intending to get up to go riding at seven this morning, I'm just not cut out for the early morning rides when I can stay at home warm and comfortable. After some morning household chores I headed out by myself at the far more civilised time of about half past noon to ride down to Mordialloc and back.

It almost looked like a warm spring day. Almost, that is, until I got half way through the suburb and realised that a short sleeved top was foolish. If you sat still in the sun it was ok, but moving in the open it was still very much winter! Once down at St. Kilda, Beach road was the usual mix of cyclists, tourists and cars everywhere, I guess that's why people get up and ride earlier in the day.

Dropped in at Pegasus on the way home to top up their coffers and get myself a new tail-light—the bits of packing tape and cable ties that are holding the busted one together keep failing. I also treated the household to the track pump that we've been promising ourselves for a few months, then had to carry it home tied to my rack and rattling like crazy.

On the way back I briefly thought of visiting the Spirit of Tasmania I and II, the two new Tasmanian ferries that were tied up at Station Pier, but the wind around the bay changed my mind and headed me home. After all the fuss about the government subsidies so cars travelling free yet bicycles cost $27 each way, I was wanting to go and make some comment.

We barely had time once I was home to get changed and head back out for drinks and Nettie's birthday dinner down at Port Melbourne. I was hoping that the 7:30 dinner would make up for no lunch, but the 7:30 booking meant a 9:00pm dinner, so I was getting a bit hungry by then! Everyone oohed and aahed to see Joey's ring, it seems there's a bit of a rash of it going around, a whole bunch of people we know are either engaged or getting married soon. The food was good, a fixed menu with four entrées and four mains, it seemed that about two thirds of us had the one kalamari entrée, Jo's lamb rump was much tastier than the battered fish and chips, which seemed all batter and no fish.

Headed out this evening to see the Importance of Being Earnest at the Como. We were both surprised at how few people went out to the movies there on a Friday night. The cinema was half empty and there was hardly anyone turning up for the session next door.

Funny, whitty, and true to the play—a play that I've never seen or read—when we got home I read half of it sitting in bed before realising I couldn't keep my eyes open any more! As I had been invited to go on a 7:00am bike ride tomorrow, I thought it time to go to sleep.

Interesting ride home this evening. After a random comment yesterday about Gardiners' Creek path being far too windy and slow I decided to try the road today. The distance was slightly less, the average speed while riding was higher, but I spent so much time sitting at red lights that I think it ended up taking me longer. That was using a combination of Dandenong Road and Orrong Road, I'm sure there are other ways.

It also let me observe some more of the motorist inhabitants of this city. I guess I'm fairly lucky in that I can commute on a bike path, and that the path does seem to actually go where I want it to. There's currently a discussion raging in news:aus.bicycles regarding 4WDs, specifically stereo-typically Toorak-tractor urban 4WDs, owned as status symbols and only ever driven to and from work, or to take the kiddies to school.

Blah, not much to say. Wow, how did it get to be half way through the month already?

After scanning through wyvern's Apache logs I noticed that I've been Nimda'd recently and it irked me, so I rummaged around and have installed EarlyBird on the box. Only time will tell if it actually performs a useful function.

MLP

[EARLY BIRD]

A real-time HTTP worm attempt reporting utility.

Proof that television is bad for you: After lugging the TV down the stairs and into the boot of Jo's car, I've managed to pull a muscle in my back; and after a rotten night's sleep, today decided to stay home and rest it rather than try to hobble in to work.

One thing I did manage to do today was to fill in a lot of the missing details of last year's bike trip in June and July. Not all of it has been uploaded yet, after reconnecting and keeping the modem online twice I gave up when it dropped off for the third time. Bring on cheap broadband access!

I also managed to have the joy of hanging up on a telephone direct marketer. I'm not quite sure what is the greater pleasure; not having them call me in the first place, or the satisfaction of hanging up on them and making it abundantly clear what I think of their tactics.

A slight chill in the air, a vague threat of rain and hail in the morning, a sore back from the weekend. They all added up to the decision not to ride the bicycle to work. This evening as I went to leave, boy was I glad of that decision! Strong winds and icy rain made the ride home unpleasant on the road, rather than potential lethal on the bicycle track.

Riding home with the wind hammering me from side to side, the rain so hard against the visor that there's no hope of seeing anything on the road, just hoping that anything big enough to be dangerous will also be big enough to see. Trying to balance the desire to slow to 80km/hr with not wanting to be rammed by the 4WDs and semi-trailers that are still travelling at 110km/hr. Snug and dry inside my waterproofs, except for below the ankles where my feet are soaked. Icy cold water seeping in through the seam in my lap as it always does, I never can quite seal it off completely. Finally making it home, almost exhausted after twenty minutes on the road. Then undress for a shower in an expanding pool of rain.

The grocery shopping isn't meant to get exciting. Normally its a very routine event. Today it was looking perfectly ordinary until we got home, I tried to get the eggs out of the egg carton, and discovered that they were cemented in with dried yolk from one that had leaked. Attempting to prise them out of the carton, one exploded, showering me with rotting egg, and filling the kitchen with a truly evil stench.

It was in poor humour that I took the carton of eggs, firmly sealed in two plastic bags, back to the supermarket and politely requested a replacement. I nearly had the last laugh when the Coles rep. started to open the bag at the service counter, in front of all the other staff and customers, but self-preservation got the better of me and I advised them not to open the bag inside, but to escort it gently to the hazardous waste area.

This afternoon we went to the footy! Joey had acquired some free tickets courtesy of work, so Rosie, Jo and I went off to the footy. St. Kilda vs Geelong at Docklands Stadium, err, Colonial Stadium, err, Telstra Dome. It's all getting very American and corporate, football held inside under floodlights so that the TV cameras get even coverage, advertising everywhere. I had to laugh at the quarter and three-quarter breaks when they unroll banners advertising the team sponsors, leave them out for all of five minutes, then roll them back up again. My life is now complete with the true Melbourne experience of having a pie at the footy and hearing the large Cats fan next to me scream out “Yer white maggot! at the umpire. As we pointed out, it isn't real footy since we're not out in the cold and the rain with a beanie and a scarf, shivering at a suburban oval in the drizzle. As Rosie pointed out though, there are now only four AFL ovals in Melbourne, all the original club ovals have been closed, or no longer hold “premier league events.

Oh, the actual football? After trailing dismally for the first three quarters, St. Kilda woke up in the last quarter and finished only one point down, 101 to 102.

A post-match beer at the Celtic club, disappointed that on a Sunday they've closed off half the rooms, the only one open is the one chock full of traditional Irish poker machines and a large-screen TV showing American sitcoms.

On the way home we were in a hurry to get out of the wind, and jumped on the first tram without checking carefully what it was. Two out of three that we could have picked one heading up Bridge Road, we got the wrong one, down and along Swan Street. It made up for it by being chock full of skimpily dressed, shivering Kylie fans, all out for a big night at the Kylie concert, and by threatening to fall apart at any moment. A very worried looking tram-electrician was poking around behind a panel at one end of the tram, and every time we stopped there were all sorts of weird clunking sounds before we managed to start up again. When Jo and I finally got off we saw that we were being followed up the tracks by a very large truck equipped with a tram-pushing bull-bar.

With some misgivings I dragged myself out of bed this morning to go riding with Mark. Evan and Kelvin turned up on time, I couldn't think of a better way to get from home to Carnegie so we rode up Gardiners Creek bike path, Kelvin muttering that he'd only been on his new bike an hour and here I was taking him around a myriad of right-angled bends on poor surfaces, determined to tip him off.

After a wake-up coffee we headed out along Waverley Road towards Ferntree Gully, being honked at by the first petrol head of the day shortly after turning onto the road. Rolling up and down the hills to the police academy, then screaming down the descent towards Jells Park. As usual on descents, Evan was well in the lead, clocking around 80km/hr and passing a four wheel drive and its rather stunned looking driver. From Jells Park out to Ferntree Gully it was windy and noisy, the usual mix of Saturday morning traffic on their way to the shopping or sports. A little bit of excitement turning off into the hills, someone had stopped their car in the middle of the lane and walked off, leaving it sitting there with the hazard lights flashing. It had either died so completely that they couldn't move it to the side of the road, or they were of the common opinion that hazard lights let you do imbecile things like this. Either way, we managed to squeeze past and commenced the climb up the mountain.

Everyone settled into their own rhythm, Evan and I gradually getting further in front, Kelvin and Mark at the rear. Unfortunately somewhere along the way the latter two took a wrong turn and ended up on a side road going over the ridge and past a telecommunications station, meanwhile Evan and I sat at Ferny Creek shop and waited and waited for them to catch up, wondering what was taking them so long. When the miracle of modern telecommunications eventually allowed their two non-Telstra mobile phones to work, we found that they had gone over us while we waited, and were two kilometres further up the road!

Reunited a few minutes later, we continued on along the ridge to Olinda for a large, warming lunch of home-made soup and pies before considering the descent to civilisation.

Back outside the café we quickly realised that the warmth inside was due to the fire, not the sun! A quick chat with the motor-cyclists who were also leaving at the same time and then it was back down the road to Sassafrass, hauling on the brakes to avoid running into slower the motorists. Turned off down the Old Mountain Highway and had an almost perfect run down to Bayswater, the wind dropping as we did, and the temperature climbing. About a third of the way down the motor-bikes caught up after their regrouping in Sassafrass, and there was some good natured racing between the two types of bikes.

From there it was just a long boring slog homewards. MarkO was worn out and kept threatening to catch a train, Evan and I told him to shut up and just ride along behind, that it wasn't too far to Syndal, our first possible stop. It seemed to work, before too long Mark and I were turning off down Blackburn Road, leaving Evan and Kelvin to continue in towards the city. I was surprised at how quickly we got to Kath and John's place in Syndal, Mark was just glad to get off the bike and call Leslie to come and pick him up!

Jo came over after washing her car and we spent an agonising ten minutes with her walking around hiding her left hand in her pocket before we could get both John and Kath in the room at the same time. Once the news was sprung there was a mixture of “Ooohs” and “Aaahs” together with “and it's about time too!”. Unbeknownst to us, it seems that people have been taking bets on when we'd get engaged every time we've been away for a weekend, or off on a holiday!

“Would madam like a ring with her breakfast?”

I don't think the two of us could stop grinning or laughing. Half of it is relief that we've finally got the bloody thing and don't need to spend out weekends surreptitiously shopping.

Jo decided not to wear it to work, not just yet, she felt strange not having told her family.

This evening we hit the phones and I called my parents and brother, I tried my sister first, but as usual she was outside with the horses, so she didn't get to be the first to know. Calling mum and dad was funny, all the normal bits of conversation regarding the weather and health and work etc all seemed to drag out to an eternity before I could find a gap to drop the news into.

To celebrate we walked up the street and had dinner at Saragosa. As usual their food was impeccable, the unexpected bonus this evening was the after dinner drink suggested by the waitress. An incredibly dark, flavoursome Spanish sherry — “Leyendra Pedro Ximinez” from Jerez, Spain, I'd love to get hold of a bottle to have sitting on the shelf for sipping on those cold winter evenings.

A memorable day. My “quick trip into the city at lunch time” turned into a bit of a nightmare. There was a parade to celebrate the home-coming of the Australian Commonwealth Games team, so Collins Street was closed off, assorted side streets were closed off, traffic police were directing traffic every which way, and general mayhem was in the air. I eventually managed to park on Elizabeth street and walk up the road to pick up the mighty secret which can now be revealed to the world.... Jo's engagement ring. Eek! There it's been said in public now. I even managed to get soaked on the way back to work by misjudging the rain clouds.

The ride home almost became traumatic too. Only a block from home in the dark, in the wet, as I started to turn right into Khartoum Street I slowed, wondering what had caught my eye, then hit the anchors as the unlit cyclist turned across in front of me! I yelled out "get a headlight" as I went past, he got angry and put on a massive sprint up behind me, screaming abuse. Fine with me if he wants to leave the gene-pool, I just hope he does it in front of someone else.

Spent a frustrating night sitting at home by myself. Jo was caught up at work and didn't have time to come home before going out to the theatre, leaving me facing a small box containing a small ring. As punishment, when she did get home I pretended that I hadn't had time to go into the city and didn't have it.

I just finished reading Tim Moore's “French Revolutions” this evening and have been struck by a great longing to go away again on another bike tour... so many of the things in his writing were so evocative — the slug tennis for example — or just the descriptions of the riding.

Joey is getting all twitchy about the length of this week and the great secret to be revealed...

House cleaning. House cleaning. Then a little more house cleaning.

Somewhere in the past few weeks we seem to have omitted a few of the routine chores. This morning they all caught up with us! There was a frenzy of domesticity, followed by relief at being able to see the kitchen bench, comfortably walk across the floor in bare feet, and enter the bathroom without needing a full decontamination suit.

Escaped to walk up the river in search of lunch, we tried out e lounge (I think its name is) on Victoria Street in Abbotsford. The only European café in the street, they made a fantastic bianco pizza — roast potato, olives, Spanish onions and semi-dried tomatoes with a dash of chilli-flavoured olive oil.

Jo has just pointed out that one year ago I was leaving the UK at the end of my holiday. It must be time to start planning another trip... Maybe I can convince her to come on Wide Open Road's Geneva to Verona trip next year.

Incredible for a Saturday—we were breakfasted and out of the house by ten o'clock. The secret shopping mission kept us occupied for most of the day, was completed by four pm, so we adjourned for a well-earned glass of wine at South Bank, closely followed by an equally well-earned pint 'o Guiness.

Somewhere along the way I succumbed to an advertised “sale” and bought 256M more memory for wyvern, turns out that Dick Smith's sale price is still well over the average green guide price, but at least I've finally bought some, so there's no more excuse.

Just to make sure I don't forget, Casey and Zoe are now firmly recorded in my address book. I even sent their birthday present.

Wow, there was a huge thunderstorm this evening while we were up the road having dinner. Getting home involved leap-frogging from shelter to shelter along the street. Thunderstorms aren't meant to happen here in the winter!