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Eight degrees, howling wind, icy cold rain pelting against the windows — what else is there to do but to walk half way across the suburb to see a movie! More than worth it though, we dodged the rain and then laughed ourselves silly seeing Shrek 2 up at the concrete monstrosity — Victoria Gardens. A big surprise was having one of my all time favourite songs featuring in a big action scene — the Buzzcocks' Ever Fallen in Love.

Small things can get under your skin — yesterday I realised that my new manager's continual mispelling of my surname was annoying me out of all proportion to the degree of the “offence.” Shortly before lunchtime today two of my coworkers walked into the office laughing hysterically. The reason — the new sign that has appeared on our door, proudly proclaiming our new identity as Enterprise Workstation Services. Unfortunately, of the ten staff, two of us have had our names mispelt, and I've managed to get mispellings into both first and last names!

Trouty asked, so here they are! The Deadly Treadly T-shirts from 1995 to 1999 — or at least the ones that I bought, before I decided that there were too many t-shirts in my life. There's also a whole bunch of old maps and brochures to be scanned, some much worse for wear after four or five days on the road and four or five years in the spare room. 1995 Easter...

1996 Easter and Melbourne Cup Weekend...

1997 Easter and Melbourne Cup Weekend...

1998 Easter...

1999 Easter.

Out of the blue — a request to use some of my photos on a website dedicated to the Deadly Treadly Tours. Trouty asked nicely, so I guess its ok so long as he doesn't give them away any further.

This evening I went out for a bike ride, first time in ages! Now that the new boss has decreed that bicycles are unsightly and unprofessional looking and a fire-hazard and all sorts of other things and are not to be kept within the workplace, nobody rides anymore.

Two laps of Kew Boulevarde in the cool of the night, a few other riders were out, some going home from work, some out for training rides. A few too many motorists out who leave their headlights on high-beam too — the mentality seems to be that it is only necessary to dip your lights for other cars, not for other people.

It had all the hallmarks of a great ride until about three-quarters of the way home when my back tyre went flat. Not just flat, the tyre which had started to look a little thin had suddenly disintegrated, great flaps of rubber peeling off from the backing! Not too impressive considering the $80 price tag, ten month life and 6,500km. So much for the Hutchinson Top Slicks — even if they were nice and skinny and fast...

Yeesh, seems that Bugger Grips is a term in use — at least in use in England! To think that innocent little 'ol me had never heard of it until Saturday. Just one of the myriad of questions that Google answers everyday I guess!

Off this afternoon to visit the Abbotsford Convent for their open day. On the way we walked past more of Richmond's industrial heritage.

The magnificent old wool store building is now for lease, I pray it won't be destroyed, then further up towards Victoria Gardens we came upon one of the huge old industrial warehouses ... only problem being that it had disappeared. After learning yesterday that the Violineri on Bridge Road is closing I was determined to take a few pictures of any other buildings, to try and capture them before the whole lot dissappear to be replaced by bland new apartment developments...

The 30s-era building up near Victoria gardens is a favourite, photos were a problem with a big ugly ute parked out the front, but somehow I managed. Then came the skipping girl on Victoria street, extra degree of difficulty being the large “For Lease” sign. At least the neon sign is now heritage listed so it'll stay awhile.

Then it was over the river at the Walmer street bridge, slip and slide through the mud around the walking trails to cross back into Abbotsford, and up to the convent to view the buildings for their first open day in a long time. Finally, after years of passing by along the river bank or through the streets, I got to walk around inside and view the buildings and grounds.

A strange place really, the current convent buildings were built early in the 19th century and replace an earlier Australian-style building that had a low roof line and wide verandahs. The main convent building mimics the English buildings from several hundred years ago.

Local activism has saved the site from being bulldozed and replaced by more apartment housing, the plans are to develop it all as an arts precinct, and to retain and restore the existing buildings — one sore point seems to be that the only car-park nearby is to be replaced by housing, which may threaten the viability of both the convent and the Collingwood Children's farm next-door.

Hundreds of people were thronging the site, even with the grey skies and drizzly rain. The guide on our walking tour stated that they had been running six tours an hour, with fifty people per tour, non-stop between ten in the morning and five in the afternoon! There's obviously a lot of interest in the old convent site.

Five o'clock and the convent was closing, winter solstice and the sun was going down — it was time to retreat to “The Retreat” for a beer or two. It must be one of the snuggest and friendly feeling pubs in Melbourne. For fans of the Sullivans — an early 80's TV Soap — the walls are lined with shots from when the pub scenes were filmed here, for the rest of us, its just a warm and cosy place to sit and drink and talk.

I could have happily stayed in the Retreat all evening... if only I lived just around the corner. Since we still had to get home we continued back southwards, down through the wilds of Abbotsford until we reached familiar ground in Richmond — or at least within sight of Richmond, just over the road as we stopped for a meal in E Lounge, another favourite café, but one that is just a little outside our normal walking radius! Magnificent Calzone, plentiful wine, tasty coffee — a fine end to a great afternoon.

When reading a book about the Oxford English Dictionary I might expect to find a largish vocabulary, even in a popular book such as Simon Winchester's The Surgeon of Crowthorne there are words that make me pause for a moment — but rarely am I completely at a loss. Today was one of those days.

But their beards and moustaches were the most obvious similarity — in both cases white and long and nicely swallow-tailed beards, with thick moustaches and sideburns and ample bugger grips.

Ample WHATS? The term provokes far too vivid an idea, but its a term that I've never heard before...

Another old shop looks destined to close, the wonderful old-world looking Violineri, presided over by a white-haired gentleman who looks to be straight out of the 19th century. A sign appeared in the window today announcing that they're closing soon and moving to Ballarat. I fear that old timber front will go and another bland and shiny new premises will open — or worse, yet another café.

I can't stop some of these places closing, or being bulldozed, but I'm making a concerted effort to try and record them in pictures... The old Tennyson building last December, the ruins that hid behind a wall in Bridge road for so long. Now gone and more slickness in their place.

Spent some time with the GRDDL Demo from Sean B. Palmer, I can make it sorta-work, I can also make it break. I guess there are things in my web pages that the parsers don't like! The pages validate, so I'm not sure where the problem is ... more work needed,

Last Friday's thoughts have resulted in a flurry of activity — I think I spent half the weekend revisiting old notes and updating the online versions.

It's the Queen's birthday holiday today — holiday for everyone except those who work for a University! The roads were nearly empty, everyone either home in bed or away on holiday. Riding along the freeway this morning I suddenly realised how the billboards for the nearby business park can advertse themselves as being “Only 29 minutes from the city!” Simple really, time the trip on a public holiday. Maybe they don't even do that, just measure the distance and divide by the speed limit...

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I saw an amazingly evocative photograph today. The usual web-browsing stuff; a quick look at what Norman Walsh had to say recently, jump to a reference in something that Tim Bray wrote. Then up to Ongoing's index and the picture of the day looked familiar... Click on that and there's a wonderful collection of photos of Granada. One in particular caught my eye, the

roses

climbing a dusty, dry wall, I can almost smell the dust and feel the heat...

...and I still haven't finished writing here about my time in Spain. Six years ago and its all still in little paper notebooks — they'll probably outlast the website anyway!

After a four hour long stuff-up and clean-up, the following seems to be the most pertinent comment that anyone could make about what happened when we thought (simplistically) that since one attribute of accounts in one place were supposed to hold the value held by accounts with the same name in a different place, that automatically populating them would be a good idea...

your department field has been eaten by a grue

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Woops, I forgot to watch the Olympic torch relay as it passed by the end of the street! Earlier in the week we'd seen that the route ran along Bridge road, we just go busy and forgot at the time to walk up to the end and see it! Sometime around four I looked out the window and pondered the helicopters above the MCG, only then did the light-bulb come on — oh yeah, torch at footy half-time... turns out that the choppers will have had a spectacular view of one of the biggest punch-ups in the football season this year!

The evening came around and we bundled ourselves over to the Rivoli to see a movie — forgetting that in cold weather on a Saturday night, so would everyone else in Melbourne! Next time I must remember to book the tickets online before we go and save the twenty minutes in a crawling conga-line around the foyer.... I saw he funniest film I've seen in a long time, even if it was only the funniest film I've seen since the last time I saw a film! Les Triplettes de Belleville, French language animation, but almost silent — the digs at the Americans had us reduced to tears, the Tour de France coverage captured the event almost pefectly.