ajft

Ouch! Canon's ZoomBrowser program crashed while starting this morning and deleted the entire database of photos on the laptop. Luckily it didn't touch the photos themselves, just the database of details. Thanks Mr Canon — good thing I don't use it to record titles, dates, etc...

Out for an afternoon walk in the cold and the wind, took photos of the Bridge and the Nash — two more to add to the pub picture collection. Then it was time to hurry home to make it to the Spiegeltent on time, or least in time for a beer, then to see the Gadflys. A far more lively show than Thursday night's — the band's party trick would have to have been the passing of a double-bass from one member to another ... between notes and mid-song! Four guests up and down to join them at various times, at one stage all seven musicians were crowded into the tiny space.

Up the road to the markets this morning — and first steps in taking the photos of all the pubs. Unfortunately, the best place to photograph most of them is half-way across the nearest main road, or risk having passing traffic blocking the view. The Royal Oak, DHR, the Spready, three down, twenty four to go... Down to the Burnley post office to pick up a parcel, oh no! What has happened to the Grand? A thick coat of drab olive paint on the outside, and a remodelled interior all decked out in mission brown. Too much of a shock, it was far too ugly to capture against the grey sky.

The weather forecast for tomorrow sounded worse than today, so off for some cycling this afternoon — and a visit to the Sydenham, the mystery twenty-seventh pub that neither of us could ever remember seeing. A couple of back streets and detours, captured the Royston and Earl of Lincoln along the way, then west along Elizabeth street and there it was, now renamed as the Richmond Tavern. Down along Punt Road in heavy Saturday afternoon traffic, I can never remember whether there are two pubs or only one along here... sure enough it's two: the Royal and the Cricketer's Arms.

Enough pubs for one day, we continued down to the river and along the bike track past the ca$ino and down to Port Melbourne. Out onto Station pier for the full effect of the cold wet wind off the bay, old men bundled up and fishing at the end, the Spirit of Tasmania looming alongside. Grey skies turned to drizzle, drizzle eventually turned to rain. Time to head home by the shortest route possible.

Melbourne between spring rain storms: Grey skies and a thick brown river.

I tried to find a little about the architecture of Richmond, and found a website all about walking in Melbourne. Then was reminded, sadly, that the St Kilda pier had burned down while we were away on holiday.

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

Walking Melbourne

Decided today to take a photo of each of Richmond's pubs. Earlier in the week I'd seen a collection of photographs of English pub signs somewhere on the web, and I remembered how Jo and I had challenged each other to name all the current Richmond pubs — 17 I think — or was it 27.... Vaguely starting from nearest home and spiralling outwards:

1. the Bridge Hotel

Closest to home, just up the end of the street.

2. the Royal Oak

Flashing lights and poker machines, home of the Richmond Tigers AFL.

3. the Spreadeagle

Good food, Guiness on tap, a large hot fire in the winter.

4. DHR — the Dover Hotel Richmond

A quiet and friendly kind of place.

5. the Royston

Always reminds me of Walter Burley Griffin or Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. Circumstance keeps conspiring to prevent me ever getting inside for a beer.

6. the Grand

Second closest to home, recently changed hands and there seemed to be some funny business with the opening hours during the changeover.

7. the Rising Sun

Smoky

8. the Cherry Tree

Out of the way, rarely visited.

9. the Great Britain (the GB)

10. the Prince Alfred (PA's)

You used to be able to wheel a bike straight into the beer garden, then it was renovated and the garden closed over.

11. the Vine

Flashing lights and poker machines, studiously avoided.

12. the Swan

A quiet place for a drink during the day, bouncers on the door and yobs inside on Friday and Saturday nights. The old drive-through bottle shop is now a sunny room full of trestle tables.

13. the Vaucluse

More poker machines and old men watching the dogs and ponies on the TV screens.

14. Central Club Hotel

Used to have quite a live music scene, complete with legendary Christmas shows by Weddings, Parties, Anything. In the last few years it seems to only have heavy metal bands for music.

15. the Richmond Club

16. the Nash (National)

up on Victoria street, on the border with Abbotsford. Seems to be making a name for itself with local bands.

17. the London

a newly renovated beer garden and rebuilt bistro.

18. All Nations

Famous Melbourne-wide for their food, a cosy old place out of the way near the towering ugliness of the housing commission flats.

19. the Kingston

Another up-market eating place.

15. Prince of Wales

16. Earl of Lincoln

17. Mountain View

18. Cricketers Arms

Right on Punt road, packed after any match at the MCG.

19. the Corner Hotel

a corner-piece of the independent music scene.

20. the Depot

Friday night drinks, cover bands and queues to get in.

21. D.T.s — previously the Batchelor and Spinsters

Does it count still as a pub?

22. Spargo's

I guess it doesn't count either, but the bar and restaurant are what was the old Town Hall hotel.

23. the Sydenham — now the Richmond Tavern

I had to resort to reading through the Melways for this one, never knew it was there!

24. the Royal

Another one that I thought had closed. Established 1848, I hope it makes it to 2048!

A possible favourite would have to be the Loyal Studley, sadly it isn't a pub anymore, I've no idea when it closed, but the building is still there and the sign on the wall.

Off this evening to the Famous Spiegeltent for an early show, time to see the Blackeyed Susans. The venue was packed, the queues were long, the seats were hard but the show was good. Ran into Cos and David while we were hanging around waiting for the — very late — appearance of Jo's sister and friend — they turned up just as the show started. Bad mood gave way to good as the Susan's played their way through a range of songs, from very old to material off the latest album — Shangri-La — the one that's been sitting in the CD player since I unwrapped it for my birthday.

Springtime, wildly variable weather. I really should be used to it now after seven years of living in Melbourne!

DAML — Dam what?

[http://www.daml.org/2001/06/map/]

DAML Map

Nearly had an all-in brawl across the street this evening. I'd just got home and was wondering what all the screaming and shouting was — three blokes were shoving each other around, chests out, swearing shouting and waving their fists in the air — “You F'en started, it ya C***,” “Nah, you F'en started it, coming round here ya F'en C***...” Meanwhile, three or four women shrieked like harpies telling their menfolk to lay into each other and “F'en kill the C***.” All the while half a dozen young children alternating between screaming and being screamed at to go inside... Charming bunch.

...

OK, this takes the cake for the weirdest spam to arrive in my inbox for quite some time:

Dear Portal Administration!

I have recently come across your site and liked it very much.

I suppose that the visitors of our resources belong to the same social group and my site could be useful for your audience so I suggest to exchange our links. This will help both of us to increase Link-Popularity and accordingly get top positions in many searching system, Google for instance.

My site is dedicated to guns.

More fun and games with Norky bike today. Off I went to deliver the spare wheel to the bike shop so that Jo's dud wheel can be replaced with a spare — the infamous evil replacement wheel from hell (or Devizes in the UK). Casually mentioning that my gears aren't quite working properly, investigation reveals that old bottom bracket and the new cranks don't quite agree with each other, and a narrow bottom bracket is required... The shop is then turned upside down and many a box is emptied trying to find appropriate sized parts, and a quarter-hour quick visit turns into a leisurely hour and a half.

Then on the way home some idiot decides to run into me. I was stopped at the traffic lights, parked in the “forward bicycle box” when a car pulled up behind me, parking inside the bike box markings. Pale blue sports car, registration Vic. NOY-007. The left-turn arrow went green, and without indicating, the motorist started off, then turned sharp left, pushing me sideways off my bike and left me sitting on my arse on the ground! No idea what (if anything) was going on in his head — he stopped around the corner and sat there looking at me in the mirror, then drove off.

Babies, babies, babies... blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... One work colleague has just announced that he's pregnant. Four or five of them then sat around gossiping for the next two hours — blah blah blah, babies babies babies... SHUT UP!

Bravely they entered Ikea, a place where many have ventured, but few have kept their cool after being herded, sheep-like, round vast and twisty passages... We survived, and even found a suitable thing to put the TV on, no longer must it sit on the temporary table, as it as done for the last eleven months!

Many jokes have been made about flat-packed furniture and “easy-to-follow” instructions. Very boring, I found them easy to follow.

123 days uptime, reset back to zero. All courtesy of CitiPower I guess. Damn, after checking logs, maybe the machine didn't crash, maybe just the video and keyboard disappeared... Maybe its time to upgrade wyvern's kernel since I've no incentive now to keep it running!

Busy day. I must be getting over whatever it was. After a slow start in the morning I ended up spending most of the afternoon spring cleaning — we now have the cleanest springs in the street. Paid Mr Tax Man, paid a pile 'o bills, put away a month's worth of receipts and papers, threw out a bunch of old magazines, consigned another assortment to a well-ordered pile hidden under the spare bed. Even threw out some well-loved, but unworn-in-the-last-decade clothes.

Out walking this afternoon, another taxi (ST-1531) drove past with the driver merrily smoking in his cab, pausing to flick the lit cigarette out the window as he turned into the Rydges hotel to pick up passengers. I wonder how many of them don't smoke in their cabs? Maybe its time for another letter to the EPA and the Taxi directorate...

Another day at home, two hours sitting reading, one hour sleeping in bed, repeat...

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/32732.html]

Bill Joy leaves Sun.

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/32780.html]

Bill Joy, creator of vi.

I think this is the first time I've ever snarfed an entire Slashdot article, but I found so many of the subjects referenced interesting that it seemed the easiest way. I've just about given up reading anything below the article itself, 99.9% of Slashdot seems to be crap.

SmellsLikeTeenGarlic writes "Seth Nickell (of Storage and Gnome HIG fame) has started a new project which aims to replace the aging Init system on Linux. OSNews has more details on the project, directly from Seth. The new Python-based approach will make booting faster and it will talk to the D-BUS daemon, freedesktop.org's leading project. And speaking of freedesktop.org, it is important to mention the release of HAL 0.1, an implementation of a hardware abstraction layer for KDE, XFce and Gnome, based on a proposal by freedesktop.org's founder Havoc Pennington and being implemented by David Zeuthen. It is innovative projects like Storage, SystemServices and HAL that can bring the kind of integration to the underlying system that current X11 desktop environments lack."

Later in the afternoon I head up the street for some groceries, then stopped on the way home for a drink and a snack. Sitting watching the traffic go by, seeing everything that is ugly about Australia. The view is dominated by the width of the road — town planning twisted so cars are more important than people. Drivers cursing, swearing, hooting at each other, then in turn stopping where they shouldn't, turning where it's forbidden. One, two, three... half a dozen... ten... I quickly lose count of the number yacking away on their phones, minds in neutral, inches from the car in front. Amazing that they don't run into each other more often.

Disease 1, Adrian nil. Staying home today to wallow in self indulgent cold remedies — and old CDs that I haven't listened to for months. While I'm here I might as well try and clean up some of the last month's mess. All those newspaper cuttings and little jotted notes, for example.

I never did buy a replacement PDA. The Palm Tungsten looked attractive, but not enough research before we went overseas, so I had no idea what prices were good, bad or average. I came close in Singapore, but a small matter of the price for a Tungsten T, but with the spec. sheet for a Tungsten T2 made me a little wary. Now I read that the Tungsten T3 is due out this month. Oh well, next month's model is always better and cheaper... Oh, and I just saw that the T3 has a three hour battery life — not helpful!

Ugh! Inundated with web-browsers and assorted other software, I've been using Konquerer on my home PC for a while and today it decided to stop displaying double quotes, ellipses and em-dashes. A font thing. SSH-agent has decided not to run either, so I have to keep reentering my private key password.