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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 here; possible variations have been Reed and Reid's lookout, Zumstein and Zumsteins, and McKenzie and MacKenzie falls. Most of these seem to have optional apostrophes, depending on which brochure, map or road sign you happen to be looking at at the time. A guy in the kiosk at McKenzie falls claimed that it was because of the confusion between the National Parks and the local authorities, but on the wall behind him were two hand-written signs, in the same hand writing, offering both spellings of McKenzie!

McKenzie falls is one of the more popular tourist destinations and it shows. Large car parks, already full, with people spilling over into other roads and parking in driveways. There's a kiosk and icecream stand, picnic tables and toilets. One family arrived with their dogs in tow, despite all of the Grampians being a National Park, where pets are forbidden — they were persuaded to put the dogs back into the car for the duration of their stay. Even the walking tracks have had to be concreted in order to minimize the erosion from the tramping of thousands of visitors...

I wonder how much longer the park can be free access, or accessible to private cars, there surely must come a time when the vehicle traffic makes it necessary to put restrictions on getting there — maybe an hourly shuttle bus around the sights is needed...

Since most of the other people were heading directly from the carpark to McKenzie falls, we decided to turn left and visit Broken falls, smaller but nearer. A good decision, when we got there we had the lookout to ourselves.

Off along the main path to the main falls, we could tell we were on the right track by the sheer number of people — not that there's any chance of getting lost on a concrete path through the bush! The last few hundred metres are down a very steep, very narrow staircase, there's only room for one person at a time, so people heading in opposite directions have to stop on the landings to pass. Down at the base of the falls it was crowded, 30 or more people walking around, clambering over the rocks, or just sitting drinking coffees and smoking. These last group seemed unaware of the need to not litter, and were quite happy to drop plastic cups and cigarette butts anywhere they happened to be — I grabbed about three cups on the walk back to the kiosk.

Who should we meet on the climb back up than Mr Noisy from <a href="/journal/2002/09/28" class="datetime" title="2002-09-28">yesterday</a>, only this time he was sitting very quietly on a bench, looking quite red in the face, and not saying a word.

With impeccable timing we got back to the car just as the rain started again, and headed off past Zumstein (or Zumsteins or Zumstein's) to Mt Zero and Hollow Mountain. One of the postcards that I picked up on Friday has a picture of three kangaroos on a grassy paddock and is labelled “Zumsteins; presumably that is the name of the area, but Jo and I were laughing all weekend at the thought of overseas tourists seeing a photo of three furry animals and assuming that these were named “Zumsteins. All afternoon we kept pointing to the Zumsteins in the paddocks.

At least we were now into a less popular area of the park, only a few vehicles passed us on the roads. Just before the Mt. Zero carpark a trio of emus wandered across the road in front of the park, adding to the feeling of remoteness.

There are two walks marked, the first is past a disused quarry and on to one of the Koori cave painting areas that is open to the public. No pictures of the cave paintings — a vague feeling that maybe the owners might not like it, combined with the ugliness of the steel cage protecting the rock from the visitors deterred me. Reddish-brown child-sized ochre hand prints and emu tracks covered the overhanging roof. On the way out there a rustling in the bushes to the side of the path attracted our attention, carefully peering through the bush revealed this echidna desperately trying to hide itself from our prying eyes. We checked on the way back, but it had retreated to parts unknown.

The major walk was then up to the top of Hollow Mountain, first through the bush and wild-flowers, then up and around the mountain. The path is clearly marked with small orange-red arrows painted on the rocks, but is a bit of a scramble in places — and definitely not for those afraid of heights!

Spectacular views and icy winds greeted us once we reached the more open ground at the top, the higher slopes also had a group of ten or so rock climbers busily practicing their technique on some of the overhangs. What amazed me more were the number of family groups climbing up their with very young children, a couple of babies in carry pouches and a few four to six year-olds!

After a while on the summit the chill wind and hunger started to outweigh the magnificent views, so it was time to head back. Scrambling back down we passed even more groups on their way up, then waded through the wild-flowers back to the car, cursing ourselves for not bringing any lunch!

Unfortunately it was time to start heading home, just as the weather seemed to be clearing up and we were getting into the spirit of the walking. Out to the highway with the intention of stopping in Ararat for a late lunch — last night's visit to Stawall hadn't inspired us to try there for lunch. Of course no highway trip in Australia would be complete without a sighting of one of the “Big things, so as we passed through Dadswell Bridge we had to laugh at the giant concrete ugliness of a three-storey Koala that leers down at passing traffic and attempts to attract passing tourists.

Lunch was a magnificent stroke of luck. We parked at random in the main street of Ararat, then looked across the road to see “Café Kerry” beckoning. Nearly empty, and just starting to pack up for the day, but Kerry had a magnificent home-made beef, vegetable and red-wine pie, and equally delicious sausage roll/meat-loaf to serve us.

From Ararat onwards it was just a case of driving back down the highway to Melbourne, the only excitement being the speeding South Australian motorists who seemed determined to run us off the road from behind. We nearly suffered the embarrassing fate of running out of petrol between Ballarat and Melbourne, partially due to not really knowing how much fuel Jo's car uses, and mostly due to the idiot road signs that direct you off the freeway into small towns for fuel — and don't point out that some of these petrol stations shut at sundown, and some have shut months ago! Eventually we ended up back on the freeway, heading back towards Ballarat, just to get enough fuel to get us home! The car's handbook isn't very helpful either, with the message “when the low-fuel light flashes, you are about to run out” — we later calculate that there was 6 litres left and we could probably have driven all the way to Melbourne with the stupid light flashing at us!

A toss-up this morning between the Black Panther and the Emu Café for breakfast — the Emu won with the salmon savoury eggs on the menu.

Bad choice — no salmon! Bacon and Eggs instead, which came served on an icy-cold plate, together with bad watery coffee and a stuff-up with the bill. (This was the second time this month I've tried for salmon and eggs for breakfast, and the second time that it's not been available — I'm starting to suspect a conspiracy)

Down the road to the tourist centre for a look at the maps and national parks exhibits — trying to work out what to do today, then a visit to the Brambuk Cultural Centre for a Koori perspective on the area. The Brambuk building is magnificent, built of sandstone, timber and iron-sheeting on a plan of five interlinked circles, and with a wavy, circular roof reminiscent of a turtle's shell, or low hills. I just wish that the local council would insist on more buildings like this that fit in with their environment, and a lot fewer of the motels and gift shops that they've allowed. In the grounds between the two buildings there's a garden of local plants, together with a few pieces of sculpture, including this one by Chris Booth, the description I've found states that it was influenced by the crest of the cockatoo — a local totem animal, I thought it reminded me of the head and neck of one of the mythological giant emus depicted in the stories inside the building.

We spent the rest of the afternoon dodging rain showers, with varying levels of success, driving between lookout points in the park and walking to visit lookouts and waterfalls. Silverbud falls, interesting in that the water just vanishes into the ground at the base, its all just loosely packed rock. Even right at its base the ground is dry, and quite solid-feeling rock. An annoyingly loud party of three tourists followed us in there, although only the male of the party seemed to be making all the noise, either talking loudly or whistling through the forest.

From Silverbud we drove up to Sundial carpark, there are at least two walks leading off form here, we chose to walk to Lakeview Lookout, since Mr Noisy had just arrived and was heading off down the other path. Unfortunately they must have turned around, shortly afterwards we could hear him shouting through the bush, chasing away the Eastern Spinebill that was sitting 1m from me as I tried to photograph it. Windy and damp out at Lakeview lookout, the view was still impressive, it must be fantastic up there on a clear, sunny day. We could see right across the valley to Lake Bellfield — mostly empty while they attempt to fix leaks in the dam wall — and the eastern ridge including Mount ???. Tiny white dots below us in the valley as the flocks of Corellas flew about. On the way back we were literally wading through the wild-flowers along the track, without intending it, we've arrived here at almost the peak of the spring wild-flower season. Retracing our steps we then attempted to reach the Pinnacle, one of the more famous lookouts, and got to within a few hundred metres before the rain hit. We had just passed this impressive mushroom of a rock formation when the grey clouds turned to mist and then to rain. Up on the exposed hill tops, me with no waterproof clothing, Jo folded up into a ball and sat under her umbrella. I retreated to the rock formation and sheltered under an overhang, admiring the view and hoping for the rain to ease off.

After quarter of an hour or more it lessened up enough for us to head back, hungry and a little too damp to head out to the Pinnacle, we'll have to make do with the postcards taken on the sunny days! Back in the car and up to Reed's lookout (or Reeds or Reid's, depending on the map). By now the outside temperature was down to 4.5°C and the cold misty rain made it quite an effort to get out of the car. As it was, once out of the car, all we could see were the 15 shivering asian tourists, taking photographs of each other in various combinations against a backdrop that might include spectacular views on a good day...

Enough tourism for the day, back to Halls Gap for a late lunch, hot soup and a glass of red, arriving just in time to see the last quarter of the AFL grand final on the television. The flickering images proved too addictive, so we had to wait and watch as Collingwood lost to the Brisbane Lions — no big loss, neither team means that much to me!

Our accomodation was at “Walsh's on Wildflower,” a B&B at Pomonal, 10km or so out of Halls Gap. True to their name, there are wildflowers everywhere, a large native garden and magnificent views of the easternmost range of the Grampians.

For something a little less tourist-oriented we drove into Stawell for dinner at the pub. The rest of Stawell seemed deserted, but inside the pub it was lively and warm. This decision worked out well, the Town Hall Hotel was laid-back, full, and served excellent steaks. Strangely, they seemed to refer on their menu to a website for the pub at http://www.townhallhotel.com.au/, I laughed and commented at the time that there were probably quite a few hotels of that name in the country. Checking up on this two days later shows that the website is of a pub somewhere in Sydney — I must have remembered it incorrectly, or they forgot to re-register their domain.

Friday, holiday.

Listening to the new Death In Vegas track, “Hands around my Throat” on the radio, something in it keeps reminding me of “Fade to Gray” by Visage. Its bugging me, I'm going to have to try and dig up a copy and compare them.

Breakfast has been dealt with, its time to start packing, we're off to the Grampians for the weekend. Maybe I'll even manage to finish off the roll of APS film that's been sitting in my camera since last year!

Yay, a holiday. Time to mentally unwind and get away from things for a while — regrettably during the school holidays, because neither Jo nor I thought to check this before booking the time away!

Breakfast was easy, packing less so — I muddled around at home for a while unable to work out what I wanted — and ended up forgetting my rain coat and losing my sunglasses. Off into the glare with an old pair of cheapies that I'd bought a couple of years ago digging into my ears.

Snuck around Ballarat on the freeway and continued on to Beaufort for lunch, I remembered the café from the last Deadly Treadly Ride.

Back in the car and on to, and then through, Ararat, marvelling at all the old pubs and 19th century buildings. Our first “holiday stop” being at Pinky Point, to find out why there was a monument at the side of the road. It was one of the first gold finds in the area, and a tiny park has been created on the corner of the main road and “Better Route Road.” We never did find out why it was a better route, although ten minutes later we drove through the intersection where the other end rejoined.

The rest of the way to Moyston and then Pomonal it grew gradually darker, the clouds thicker and more ominous, and by the time we reached Pomonal it was raining heavily. Of course it hadn't occurred to me to bring my rain jacket, I guess I'm getting too used to lazy weekends around the house.

Halls Gap seems a strange place, the town is all strung out along the one road, there's no real “town center,” just one long line of tourist-oriented souvenir and fast-food shops and a board-walk of more gift shops and cafés. As with everywhere else in the country, the gift shops stock 50% local souvenirs and 50% uniformly crappy non-specific Australiana. School holidays hit us with a vengance in the town, every carpark was packed, and everywhere we looked there were families with kids; camping, walking, shopping and shouting.

Late lunch at the Black Panther café, or maybe it was lunch part-two, and then checkin time at the Kookaburra Motel. Our luck was in, despite being a typically non-descript motel with no charm, at least it was off the main road and reasonably clean — and the view from the rooms was spectacular. Kangaroos and cattle grazing together with a few deer, the paddock started at our back door and extended straight across the valley floor to the mountains.

To try and get some circulation back in our legs we walked off down the road into the drizzle, then south along the walking track that parallelled the road. With the drizzle and gloom of late afternoon there were kangaroos everywhere, coming out of the forest to graze on the open lawns and fields. We looped across the creek and back onto the steeper, eastern side, heading back through thicker woods and gradually increasing rain. The path was heavy goind in places, recent storms have brough down a lot of trees, and there's fallen timber everywhere. Along the way a Black Swamp Wallaby leapt out from almost underfoot, but shot off into the bracken and scrub before I could get my camera out.

Trying to dodge the rain we called in at the Halls Gap Tavern for a beer, and to scout the place out for dinner, no atmosphere, not much of a pub, it resembled more an upmarket family restaurant — and at 6:30 it was already packed with families. The prices seemed steep too, so we decided on the short walk back through town to the other pub...

A considerable time later we found the pub, much further out of town than either Jo or I had remembered from the drive in, it seemed to be several kilometres away and had all the ambience of a large brick footy-club shed. Dinner involved lining up at the bistro with several hundred other people, dodging the squealing kids as they ran riot through the room to the “Brat Shack” to play, then ran screaming back after being hit, chased or picked on by other kids. Good warm pub-food, it was just a little too bright and a little too noisy at the end of the day.

The funny part was leaving the pub and stepping out into the pitch darkness to stumble the 2km back to town! There was no moon, no stars and no lights — just the low overcast and a very faint gleam of the white lane along the edge of the road to guide us.

Eventually we made it back to Halls Gap, and called in at the Black Panther for a glass of port — and then another — and sat chatting with the staff as they packed up for the evening.

Woopee, I paid the rent. Nothing else interesting happened.

There are 1440 minutes in the day, roughly 100 of them I spend on my bike riding to and from work, 500 of them I spend at work. That one hundred minutes riding are far more enjoyable than the rest.

Speaking of cycling, I just tried to have a look around the CTC's website [http://www.ctc.org.uk/] — it seems to be gradually crumbling to pieces. I think if I were them I'd be tempted to just bin the whole thing and start from scratch. This all came about following a comment in news:uk.rec.cycling about the horrors of cycle paths, and my experiences last year in trying to find the, and the difficulty in getting a response out of the CTC to enquiries.

Yikes! We're going away this weekend and I haven't booked any accomodation. In typical lazy fashion I was relying on just turning up and finding some — forgetting, of course, that its the school holidays and the place will be packed. Frantic phoning around and I've found somewhere for Friday, for Saturday we'll just have to trust in the patron saint of last-minute accomodation.

Maybe a challenge to myself: take at least a photo a day. Stage one was to actually carry my camera around with me, I guess stage two is to convince myself to use it more often....

Yet another “Bike Path Surprise” this morning — rounding one of the corners after going under Toorak road I found myself hitting the brakes to avoid running into the back of a very large council truck. I'm not quite sure why it was on the path, but it seemed to be ripping branches off the bushes on both sides as it passed. Maybe it was some bizarre kind of gardening experiment. Maybe it was driving down the bike path to repair the damage that's been caused by all the trucks that drive down the bike path....

More bike path excitement on the way home — the nearly futile attempt to find, and not lose, the bike path from Mt. Waverley back to home. I'd made a detour leaving work, then found myself darting down backstreets, ocasionally sighting “Bike Path Ends” signs, and having to wait at intersections where the tiny side-streets cross main roads (a sure sign that I'm on a preferred bike route). Add in a liberal sprinkling of broken glass and a detour through the loading bays of Holmesglen Tafe — not sure why the signs directed me in there — and its just another typical piece of bicyle facilities.

I really should take some photos of some of the more outlandish bike-path stupidities that I run into....

It's been tempting for a few weeks — ever since the old Mamod steam engine was dug out of the cupboard as part of the “Jack Entertainment Equipment, we've been dying to fire it up and see if it still works! A bottle of metho. purchased especially for the job, a large clear patch of floor, some muttering and incantations over the half-remembered start-up procedures, a long drawn-out pause as we waited for the steam pressure to build up, then we're off! Round and round the kitchen floor, hissing and rattling before all too soon coming to a halt.

[http://www.mamodspares.co.uk/]

I should have known that Mamod would have a webpage! Everybody has a webpage. Every thing seems to have a webpage as well.

Off for a much-needed ride in the afternoon ... down to Mordialloc and back for a late lunch in the sun, a lazy quarter of an hour spent sitting watching the boats. Its not a particularly imaginative route, down Beach road and back, but it does have good views.

I should have gone out cycling today, but somehow laziness just crept up on me as usual... A visit to the markets, brunch in the sun, there went the morning. The afternoon seemed to disappear quickly enough too, a hike up to Victoria street for some last-minute ingredients for dinner, and before we knew it was time to head home and clean up for visitors.

Dinner was a family dinner for Kath's birthday — but don't tell Jack. As far as Jack is concerned, all parties are Jack's party. Chicken Provençal followed by Chocolate Pavlova, complete with Jack singing “Happy party to you, Happy party to you...

Browsing around from place to place, I happened upon http://www.experimentalstuff.com/. An amusing name for a whole bunch of material available from Sun.

Sitting around this evening I found a couple of good 'ol fashioned demos that will run on my WinXP laptop. Made me all nostalgic for the Amiga and all those old demos that sometimes sort-of half-worked, because I never quite had the exact same A500 or A1200 as all the demo writers.

Yay! Monash has processed the change to my bank details... one more step on the way to dumping the Commonwealth Bank. Probably be another month before the other companies manage to process the automatic deductions — then I guess I find out whether the devil I knew was better than the devil I half know...

Oops ... I saw a reference to David Brin's web site, which reminded me of a book he's written that I'd like, which reminded me of other books I'd like, which had me visiting Amazon.com and ended up with me spending money. It's all just too easy.

It must be book day. At lunch time I went to get some money out of the bank, on a whim I ducked into the bookshop in the Student Union, quarter of an hour later I walked out with “A Parrot in the Pepper Tree” the sequel to a book I like, and “Warrior Class” a trashy novell ... but at $5.95 it was a very cheap trashy novell.

News Flash — Nigerian Business Opportunity, I don't know whether to laugh or cry, I've just received my third Nigerian Busines Opportunity this week. Two purporting to come from Congo, one from Nigeria.

MLP

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

David Brin's site. Science Fiction author.

[http://www.facilitate.com/ray2002/]

some photos of a cycle tour around the UK midlands by Ray Swartz.

...mumble, mumble... rode to work, spent the day at work, managed to install the VPN client despite the installation instructions, did battle with weirdnesses in the anti-virus software, rode home... Tuesday over.

...and as I go to bed, a bizarre drinking incident. An ice-cube — carefully placed in a small glass of whiskey — explodes violently, spitting whiskey straight into my eye. I must have offended the little-known god of whiskey and ice.

The howling winds have ended, today's weather installment calls for torrential rain.

There've been some upgrades on Bund, and I seem to be having problems with SSH and CVS — not sure yet whether they are temporary, or a sign that the cygwin SSH and CVS don't want to play with the new Bund machine. I guess if they don't work, then nobody will get to read this! Hmm, narrowed it down to cvs blah works, cvs -z n blah fails.

A gentle rant. Variations on a theme. Words from the motorist to the cyclist.

Sorry Mate I Didn't See You, I was on the phone, but Sorry Mate I Didn't See You, and I only looked down for a second, and Sorry Mate I Didn't See You, and the road is dangerous mate, but Sorry Mate I Didn't See You, and the light had only just gone red, but Sorry Mate I Didn't See You, and the kids were arguing in the back, but Sorry Mate I Didn't See You, and I was only going a bit over the limit but Sorry Mate I Didn't See You and you should wear brighter coloured clothes, and Sorry Mate I Didn't See You, you should ride on the bike path and Sorry Mate I Didn't See You AND ITS YOUR FAULT.

28.5°C, winds gusting to 100km/hr — yep, sounds like a perfect day to go for a bike ride. My one intelligent decision was to head north, into the wind, in the vague hope that this would make the ride home easier. Out towards Wittlesea on a dead-flat road the head-wind was holding me down to 18km/hr, occasionally slowing to 14 in the stronger sections — on a good day you can average 30 along here! Every magpie in Victoria seemed to be out to swoop me as well, an experience I haven't had much of since leaving Canberra six years ago.

Turning off just past Wittlesea and heading to Humevale and up through the forest was as picturesque as ever, and a blessed relief to be out of the wind — I actually went faster up the hill in the shelter than along the flat in the wind. 21 minutes up the hill won't set any records, but I think it's the first time I've ridden up on my mountain bike. I surprised a swamp wallaby along the way, it didn't hear me approaching, then bounded off into the forest.

Riding home was certainly faster, at least until I reached the city, I covered over 35km in the first hour after leaving the top of the ridge, and for around 10km out of Wittlesea was sitting on 44-48km/hr! From Mill Park onwards it was the usual mix of petrol-heads in Commodores and 4WDs back to the city, smoking tyres and shouting witty comments. Finally home at 2pm, four hours twenty minutes on the bike, tired and covered in dust!

A successful visit to the Prahran market — Spanish food and drink were on display, and despite the mindless spruiker with a microphone, we managed to taste an assortment of olives, oils and drinks, find a source of the Pedro Ximinez sherry that so took my fancy. The spruiker was a woman seemed to have been lifted straight from a large department store — able to talk constantly, without actually knowing anything about the products she was promoting.

This evening at the Corner Hotel, Died Pretty played their final-ever gig — unless they decide to reform some time in the future and play some more. The place was packed, most of the crowd were quite old fans, some obviously enjoying their first gig in months or even years. I was amused a the number of people who seemed to be having a “rebellious cigarette — they just looked as though they didn't normally smoke, and were having one for a special occasion. All the old favourite songs, all Ron Peno's more bizarre dance moves, and apart from having my foot stamped on by an over-eager pogo-ing fan — and didn't she look silly — the night was good.

For some stupid reason I woke up around 2am and couldn't get back to sleep all morning. I got up around four and read for a while, then tried to go back to sleep, but it was getting light and the birds were calling, so in the end I just gave up and got up early.

As expected, the batteries ran down somewhere around two in the afternoon — I groaned my way through the rest of the day, then came home for a later-afternoon sleep!

Then after being dragged out of bed at seven it was time for some atypical Friday night entertainment — I accompanied Jo and some of her work colleagues to the Australian netball finals at the Rod Laver arena. One of their other colleagues was in the Melbourne Phoenix team, so the decision of who to support was easy. Amazingly fast, and I guess it would have helped if I had some idea of what the rules where — I was constantly having to ask why various whistles had been blown, and what it all meant!

Cold again, and rain...and wind — Melbourne spring time.

t was a dark and stormy night... and as a result, the rain and hail kept me awake for most of it! Clear and sunny by morning so I cycled in to work, then sat and watched the clouds roll in for the rest of the day, heavier by the hour.

A minor scare on the bike track this morning—just past East Malvern station there was an empty twin baby-stroller parked on the grass. It was where there's a gap in the barricade to keep people off the tracks—I had visions of seeing a depressed young mother and her two kids on the tracks—a quick look around and there's nobody in sight. I guess it's just been stolen and dumped there...

I'm still fiddling around with style sheets... I like the look of waferbaby's site [http://www.waferbaby.com/] — and he (or she) does say to use it if you like it. I might try an adaption of same.

Riding home this evening I think the cold weather was affecting peoples' brains. There seemed to be a large number of idiots on bikes; first one of my favourites—a near-miss with someone with the red-light on the front, shortly afterwards I had to swerve around a stationary cyclist parked facing the oncoming traffic, yabbering on his mobile phone, the final one was an oncoming rider with a dim yellow flasher not being able to see the path and riding around a curve and straight at me.

Some bad habits are so easy to slide into — and so easy to get out of. I think its over two years since I last spoke to a very good friend of mine, we just got out of the habit of meeting or calling up. I wasn't even sure if he was still living in Melbourne. In a fit of action this morning I looked him up in the phone-book, called up, and we've arranged to meet up on Wednesday. The bizarre aspect of it all is that he's apparently doing some contract software development for Monash University—and is having weekly meetings in the same building that I work in!

MarkO, Leslie, Joey and I headed out to Scienceworks for the afternoon. Neither Jo or I have ever been there, and its been on our list of things to see for ages. An ad. in yesterday's paper for their steam-engine day guaranteed that MarkO would be interested, and so off we all went.

There's far too much to see to go there for just half a day, especially when you arrive after 2pm! Next time I think I'll try and get there as the doors open in the morning. We did manage to see the steam engines, a phenomenal old Bulldog tractor—with something like a 9.5 bore and a 10 stroke, it would run on anything that you could pour into the fuel tank—and a steam calliope, now running on compressed air but still deafeningly loud.

Some fantastic examples of Victorian era engineering are on display in the old Spotswood (sewerage) Pumping station. I had no idea that this was here!

Back inside the exhibitions we had time for a brief look in one of the halls at some of the sports exhibits before we were all asked to leave as it was closing time. Amongst the exhibits were one of Oppie's bikes that he used to set some world records on, and the bike pictured, wired up to an exercise-bike, but with a motor driving it so that you can see how the skeleton moves on a bicycle.

While walking up the street this morning and passing “the door that is never open” we noticed that it was open. Peaking inside shows a fascinating piece of Richmond falling into disrepair. The front of the shop has been boarded over for as long as I've seen it—probably four years at most—but there's no indication of any development, any owner, or any activity whatsoever. I wonder how long its been like this, and what its future holds....

Fun and games filling out YHA membership renewals online. The stupid website designer makes you enter all of your name and address details, then sends you to a page where you enter your membership number, which presumably is already part of a record of all that information. You can also register for a “membership” on their website, this is completely separate and has no link with your YHA membership. Then every time that you make a booking or a purchase, you have to enter all of your name and address details again!

Evil wedding chores caught up with us for the rest of the day—driving around to assorted venues checking their suitability. In true Jo and Adrian fashion, the first one we saw ended up being the one we decided on—I think the subconscious had done a lot of pre-selection before we actually visited anywhere. The venue itself was made even more appealing by their cider and apple brandy, together with brochures and maps for their holiday house in Belvés, southern France—I think I rode past on our days near Sarlat in June last year.

Reminder to self: Kellybrook winery, 12th April, 2003—be there.

I found myself struggling through some of the material on A List Apart—trying to find all those pages about style sheets and how to make them work in all browsers. Along the way I found a few typography articles and took to heart some of the comments about the poor old em-dash and en-dash, and their much over-used companion, the hyphen.

8212

em-dash

8211

en-dash

8220

open double-quotes

8221

close double-quotes

8230

ellipsis

Oh bugger, guess who forgot to shut the freezer last night.  The freezer now contains half-melted meaty things in bags, soggy bread, and some rather leathery looking ice-cream.

Still itching to rework some of http://ajft.org/. I want to use a proper CMS (so long as the resource hit isn't too high), and I want to redo the styles–neat and clean but interesting.

MLP

[http://billgatliff.com/]

Cross compilers and using GCC for embedded systems.

[http://oswd.org/]

Open Source Web Design. Yet more styles and themes for websites. Most of them use a hideous mess of tables within tables to do anything.

Wow, what a wind last night! It was one of the times when I was wishing for a recording anemometer. Assorted crashes and bangs seemed to indicate that various neighbourly tin-sheds and garbage bins had come loose, this morning there were large trees down in all the parks, both near home and Monash.

Dinner with señor MarkO, the poor lad was exhausted–the wind yesterday and today meant that the SES had over 3000 jobs to do, removing fallen trees from anything and everything, and running around putting roofs back on.

Monday, back 'a twerk. I need to get more inspired and write less rubbish.

QOTD

While there are strict laws on driving while intoxicated, strangely, there is no law against “driving while stupid.” And you know, the intoxicated person will eventually sober up, while the stupid person will go on being stupid.

Spring weather for the first day of Spring — almost unheard of.

Walking along the beach this morning there were even kids swimming, I know this isn't proof of warm weather, but to a casual glance it makes it look like it! The low tide was I think the lowest that I've ever seen, flat expanses of sand, the whole of groyne exposed, weedy rock pools that are normally hidden. In addition the water was incredibly clear, from the pier we could see the bottom where it was at least 2m deep, again, something I've never seen before.