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Last day of the year, last chance of a bike ride for the year. I think the same thing happened last year, a ride off along the Great Ocean Road. It started out with the idea of gently stretching the muscles from yesterday's hike with a ride out to Wye River. Along the way I chatted to another cyclist heading to Wye and he decided that it wasn't far enough and would continue to Kennett River. That seemed like a good idea to me so I did the same, then when I got to Kennett River the weather and road and traffic and state of mind all seemed conducive to just keep on going, so onwards to Cape Patton Lookout. Stopped at the lookout talking to a few tourists in their cars, all heading on to Apollo Bay or the Twelve Apostles, then I decided it really wasn't that much further to Apollo Bay, a good spot for lunch before heading back....

Surprisingly, the traffic was fairly light and I didn't have too many idiots to contend with, only a small number of arrogant 4WD owners too lazy or stupid to pull out as they passed, and three motorcyclists on unregistered dirt bikes overtaking head-on at me. The usual number of tour buses big and small, and plenty of traffic around Shrapnel Gully where a dozen cars had parked while people were photographing the Koalas in the trees beside the road.

Similar mayhem in Apollo Bay to Lorne, hundreds of people milling around and bumper to bumper traffic, I grabbed a spot at a table and ordered my lunch. I'm not sure if they are normally this disorganised, or if its a special summer feature caused by too many new casual staff, but actually getting your orders seems to be a major undertaking. You have to order inside, quoting your table number, although nowhere on the menu, tables, or window, does it tell you this! The problem is, when the waitresses come out with the food and drink, none of them know which table it is for, so they just walk around and around asking each person "Cappuccino and a milkshake?", "Cappuccino and a milkshake?".... Sitting at the table nearest the door I was asked first each time and could have acquired half a dozen orders in five minutes!

Back on the road to ride home, I discovered that the gentle easterly that had made the ride out so pleasant had increased a little and was making the trip back more of a chore. The traffic had also increased, and between Apollo Bay and Cape Patton lookout I had to put up with far more than my share of idiots and boy-racers.

I decided to get away from people for a while and go for a walk up along the Erskine river, the town and the beach are packed cheek-to-cheek with New Year's revellers or people here for the Falls Festival. Ten minutes along the banks in the cool and I couldn't remember whether the sign had said 3 hours return o r 3 hours one way... I guessed I could walk up to the falls and then catch the shuttle bus back (I'd seen the bus in town advertising free shuttle between the Erskine Falls car-park and the Tourist Information centre).

I reached the falls at five o'clock to discover that not only did the signs say it was three hours one way, but that the shuttle bus only ran from 8 to 5 and that they had to be booked from the Tourist Information centre, in person, back in town! Debated for a while about trying to hitch a lift with the festival traffic, but with the idiot P-plate drivers and amount of drinking decided to take the easier option and hike back the way I'd come. Another hour and a half and two tired legs and I was back where I'd started. Seems I'd taken three hours twenty minutes for two three hour walks!

Plenty of birdlife to be seen and heard, in a strange coincidence, a brilliant yellow male, and drab grey female, Golden Whistler (Pachycephala pectoralis) shot out of the scrub and perched for a few seconds only a metre from me — odd since I don't think I've ever seen them previously, and on Boxing day at Kathy and Cec's house we saw a Rufous Whistler (Pachycephala rufiventris) for the first time. White, Black and Gang Gang cockatoos screeched about in the forest overhead, while numerous small hard-to-identify brown birds flitted around.

Sadly, also met two feral cats in the forest; the first was a tiny scrawny thing, the second much larger and darker, not quite up to the purported size of the Otway Panther, but equally devastating to the local wildlife.

...The Owner

There's not much more I can add to who I am.

...The Site

I experiment. I play. I write and I take pictures. Some of the site is organised around topics, other parts are organized by date, then there's always the cross-references between them.

• I use Mozilla, IE6 and Lynx to check the appearance of my pages, if you are using an older browser, or one that has poor implementation of style-sheets, then you may find that things are very ugly indeed.
• As far as I know, I've written everything using valid HTML and CSS. Page should validate when submitted to the W3's validator.w3.org, and the style sheets when submitted to http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
• Most pages are static HTML, there's a bit of server-side includes, and a bit of PHP. It all seems to depend on what I'm doing at the time.

...The ISP

• Hosted by my friends at bund.com.au.

...The Grue

Home seems very quiet after four days of niece-and-nephew filled activity! Time to catchup on a few of the outstanding chores, put away some of the Christmas loot and buy some much-needed provisions, then time to get off the couch and get out on the bike — far too little bike riding has been done this year.

I decided to go east in search of Lysterfield park, site of the Commonwealth Games mountain biking circuit, and ride around some of the trails out there. Not at all familiar with the area, our street directory in the kitchen shows the whole park as one big empty space since it predates most of the development out there.

North road then Wellington road, far too much traffic and noise, not a single one paying any attention to the lowered speed limits for the construction works... construction works that had narrowed the lanes in places and led to some interesting moments when two obnoxious semi-trailer drivers passed within inches, too lazy to pull out into the adjoining, traffic-free lane.

Somehow I managed to skirt almost the whole park, following the main road south and then winding my way around through endless suburban streets, eventually finding myself at North Hallam road and heading back north towards the parkland again! Finally found an entrance to Churchill park and rode in, then tried my best to memorise the very complicated network of fire-trails, walking, and riding paths! I think its the first off-road riding I've done for years, straight off along Bellbird track and gradually up hill.... Then gradually uphill became steeply uphill and it really hit home how long it is since I've been off road! Tyres slipping and sliding in the gravel as I tried to keep traction, trying to keep my eyes on where I wanted to go, and an unfit heart hammering away telling me how unfit I've become! I have no idea what my maximum heart rate really is, going by the simplistic old 220 minus your age then it shouldn't have been allowed to get up over 180 — the Edge GPS/HRM happily telling me that it hit 183 at some point!

Finally back down hill, a slow cruise in the gravel with the road tyres, taking my time to admire the views and listen to all the bird-life — and to get my breath back. The track finally ended at a 2m fence and an enormous locked gate, so back half-way up the hill to try a different way, and finally out into the back streets of Rowville. I then tried for a while to get back to the park by following the roads, but the whole suburb seems a maze of dead-ends and circuits, with very few through roads, so I didn't seem to be getting anywhere. The endless blocks of enormous hideous McMansions in all their brick ugliness were an ugly shock too — such massive houses packed almost fence to fence, no eaves, brick cubes, and the gaping maw of double or triple garages filling the front.

Time to leave this place and return to known ground... a bit of guesswork and a few turns hopefully in the right direction, then follow what seemed to be a main road through the suburb and I found myself back almost where I'd started, at the corner of Stud road and Wellington road. I took a meandering way home, where Wellington road crosses Dandenong creek I detoured off onto the cycle path, then followed it up to Jells park and attempted to get home along the Scotchmans Creek trail, but abandoning it somewhere in Mount Waverley — infuriating that after ten years of riding around these bike paths I can still lose them as they cross roads and zig-zag on and off road through the suburbs! The Dandenong creek path had dried out from its Christmas flooding — as with many paths, it was built as an after thought at creek level under road crossings — all I had to contend with were a myriad of helmet-less families wobbling their way along the paths on the left, on the right, or straight down the middle towards me.

I really only rode through one very small section of the park, discovering afterwards that I was nowhere near the main trails and Lysterfield lake which were even further east! Maybe next time I'll take a copy of the map with me!

Presents, food, family. Grandchildren being completely spoilt as usual, but that's what grandparents do to grandchildren!

Waiting...

Waiting...

A bunch of Christmas cards to post and a parcel to collect, I know that its a 15kg case of wine so I hopped in the car and drove over to the post office in North Road to collect it before work.... There was a careful selection of route so that I didn't have to try and turn right across morning grumpy-traffic, but even so I was stuck for five minutes at less than a walking pace inching along North road towards Warrigal road.

I don't know where we got the square Christmas cards from, but they're not an Australia Post approved size. In the nasal whiny words of the unhappy woman serving: “They're too big, I'll have to charge you double.” Wow, $0.90 to post a card, that's some markup for something 1mm too wide to fit through the slot in the guide!

“...and the parcel?” No, I can't have it. It doesn't matter that I've just posted ten cards with both my and Jo's names on the back of them, that I've got the card for the parcel, that I know what the parcel is and who its from, I'm not Jo and I CAN'T HAVE IT. No, I can't ring Jo up and get approval verbally either.

Thank you for your helpful smiling customer service, I guess I'll try to come back tomorrow with my name and Jo's name written into the official “sign it to my agent” box, the box that they have no chance of verifying!

Too much grumpiness, too much stupidity. I made my way home, got changed and went out for an enjoyable circuituous bike ride on the way too work.

Melbourne's little paper outdoes itself today, with a headline and article reading:

Military goat toll mounts

THE total number of goats killed after experiments by British military scientists since 2001 stands at 69, the Ministry of Defence said today.

:

Ministry of Defence scientists use goats in the tests because, it is claimed, their reactions are similar to those of humans.

Hmm.... maybe some of the website application developers should use goats for testing their user-interfaces before releasing the applications on us at work.

Bushfires are raging across Victoria and the forecast for the weekend is two days of high thirty temperatures and strong winds. Woke this morning to stiffling heat, thick smoke filling the air and a dull orange sun shining down. Visibility is down to a couple of kilometres and there's no incentive to go outside and do anything at all. This is in the city, 150km from the fires, it must be terrible out there fighting them.

The one thing I did was try to fix a few too many punctures in too many inner tubes. Last night on the way home I felt the back tire go down a suburb from home — a toss up whether to change the tube or catch the train, since I was almost at Murrumbeena station. I chose to swap the tube, then watched in frustration as my spare that I've been carrying around for the last few months went down as fast as I pumped up. Of course the train went past while I did this, at a frustrating distance of “if I'd not tried to change tubes I could have caught that...”

This morning I patched the first of the tubes, one down, then out to the bike to get the other one back off the wheel. While I was there I saw that the mountain bike had a flat front tyre as well! It certainly hadn't when I put it away a couple of weeks ago. Later in the day I put a patched tube back into the road bike wheel and watched half an hour later as it went down again — another pin hole in a different place in the tube! Another tube swap and another tyre pumped up. The mountain bike tube didn't seem to have a leak anywhere in it, so I just shrugged and fiddled with the valve, pumped it up and hoped I don't have to do this too often.

Gradually creeping up to 28°C inside, the thermometer sensor hanging out the lounge room window says its 44.9°C outside on the western side of the house! Back to the couch to sit and read and drink cold drinks.

Something is getting me down today. Either I ate too much last night, or Christmas is bugging me, or I didn't sleep well or something. I know I ate too much, the Chicken Parmagiana from Groove Train was a ridiculous size, I've never seen a chicken that size, it has to have been from an ostrich....

It didn't help that when I went out for a ride this morning before work some idiot drove into me in the last kilometre before I got to work — he thought he could squeeze his Hyundai Excel between the stationary row of traffic and me, it didn't fit. Thumped me into the kerb, I bounced back and came down on my hand on the back of his car, then he swore and waved his fists at me for daring to touch his car!

Christmas this year is a real pain. Jo and I just don't want anything. I want to visit people, to see them, I don't want to get anything. We don't need anything. The World Vision Give-a-goat scheme is looking more and more attractive.

Bah. Humbug.

Absolutely amazing! After just over a month of the Bigpond usage meter not working, when I checked it today it has miraculously come back to life. Still no mention that it is broken, the best I get was a confused verbal message when I rang up half way through November when I was told that some of the usage meters are incorrect for some of the accounts.

The department is experiencing a no-growth period in its operational budget

For #@$A@#$@#$ sake! The entire bloody university and every person in it is pathologically incapable of using the English language to say a single thing in plain ordinary terms. I've sat through meetings where each of the three managers say "at the end of the day" so many times to each other that I start to think that they are taking the mickey, I've heard "going forward" used four times in a single statement, and we are inundated with "issues" because apparently "problem" is now a forbidden word.

Shock Horror News! The Herald Sun excels itself at magnificent Capitalised Attention Grabbing Headlines.

On a related note, why are motorist deaths always reported as "the motorist died after hitting a tree" and with motorcyclists it always seem to be "the motorcyclist lost control and died after hitting a tree"? Don't motorists lose control? Do the trees just run out and hit them in the middle of the roads?

Why is the little paper so bad, and why do so many people read it? It scares me that this is the major source of “news” for so much of the population.

First day of summer, last day of the week, thirteen weekdays to the end of the work year. Mayhem, madness.

Its starting to be a bit of a Friday thing; leave work at around five-thirty and ride in to Richmond to meet Jo for a beer somewhere, pretend that we still live in Richmond. An odd feeling to be riding back in to the city at the end of the day when most of the commuters are heading back out to the suburbs — a chance to see again the guys I never knew the names of, but who I saw almost every day on my way to and from work!

Indecision in my route choice tonight; Malvern road rather than the bike track, everything external vanishes and the world narrows down to a single sharp-focused tunnel of bumper-to-bumper traffic snarl, jaywalkers and swerving cars, spin the bike through the gaps and don't glance away for a second. Almost a video game brought to life, by the time I've negotiated Malvern road and Chapel street the work week has faded considerably, nothing but the now remains.

Beers at the Great Britain, good company, good conversation, then walk up and over the Church street hill for dinner at Silvio's. Good pizza — again, as always — wine, pizza, coffee. A brilliant end to the week.

The ride home so peaceful and quiet, moonlight from a half-moon along an unlit bike track. No street lights, no lane markings, no traffic, no noise, no people. So different to the ride in. I wish I'd made the detour home to pick up the tandem so Jo and I could be riding along quietly under the moon. In the distance the mayhem of Friday night traffic on the tollway, so close, but so far away....

A snippet via Digg, I don't normally like Flash, and I think it could be done as a plain graphic anyway, but here's a map that shows just how little of the world I've seen.

• [http://www.travbuddy.com//flash/countries_map.swf?id=4707]

[2007-12-31] Ugly, and it seems to break my publishing stream, so I've removed it “for now”.

So what else is new?

A day at the maze.

• [http://www.goatbeer.com.au/]

Several years ago Jo and I joked about needing to do a weekly audit of the shops — and especially the cafés and restaurants — along Bridge road in Richmond. You would think that you knew what was where, but a new place would appear and all of a sudden we found we couldn't remember what was there previously. Now that we don't live so close and only see a smaller set of the shops less frequently, it seems even more changeable. Tonight a pre-dinner walk from Church street to Burnley street showed changes we knew, and some we didn't!

There are old favourites that seem to be a permanent part of the landscape, and there are newcomers that seem to open, struggle on for a few weeks or months then close. On the other hand, there are old favourites that suddenly vanish, leaving a sadness and a hole and the nagging feeling that we wish we knew where they'd gone, or why, whether they've moved or closed....

Starting at the corner of Church street and Bridge road with a ceremonial beer in the Vine, then off to take notes, mental notes at least.... Vietnam Town still there, check, even if the sign-writing does make it look as though it says Vietnam Tour. The crap local photo-processor who stuffed up my films from the 2001 trip still there, check. Blue Heaven still there, although we've no idea what happened to Rainer who used to own, run and manage the place.... Silvio's still there (phew! not sure what I'd do if it closed, definitely my favourite pizza). Oh, the clothes shop next door down has emptied; Bar Humbug is now Plan B but otherwise looks unchanged, Rainbow Silence Heart still as oddly empty and uncomfortable looking as always; then on and on....

Richmond Continental has a new name but doesn't look much different, only two customers and they don't look real happy, it looks as though the kiss of death has visited. I think there really are too many restaurants along here.

Mr Tandoor has vanished, a month or so ago it seemed to be shut on a Thursday night, then we saw it was shut on the following Thursday, this week there's a new Indian restaurant in its spot with different staff... maybe I should go in and ask them if they know anything about their predecessor, which some friends of mine say they can remember visiting back in the 1980's.

The Dover Hotel Richmond has had a major rebuild; no longer a casual scruffy corner pub, they've gone all up-market, polished timber and bright lights, gasto-pub meets wine-bar sadly it now reminds me of the Bridge, the Vine or Spargos. The regulars all seem to have moved up the road to the Spreadeagle.

Saragossa has closed too; that was definitely a favourite, a restaurant that when it opened sometime around 2000 I thought would never last — wrong side of Bridge road, I thought. Excellent food and fond memories of the waiter who suggested one night we try a Pedro Ximinez as an appropriate drink after the desert. Mr Tandoor had started these thoughts turning around, it was seeing Saragossa closed that prompted me to write all this, I guess I should keep reading through the restaurant sections of the newspaper and see whether there's mention of staff from one place opening another.

Discovered an amazing thing this week from a software vendor who is currently changing all their documentation and website to the American spelling of English from the English that is used in England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc, etc. Apparently their market research has shown them that if people from non-American English places see American spelling they just think “Oh, that's American spelling”. The Americans, on the other hand, see non-American English spelling and simply think “That's wrong, these guys can't spell!”. Bloody typical!

One cold-chisel, one hammer, two hours, Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin in the background, and the strength of ten because my heart is pure... or something like that.

End result is two very sore hands; one aching from holding the hammer, the other aching from being hit by the hammer, not once, but several times, and a water meter free of its illegal concrete embrace. South East Water can now come and replace the damn thing at their convenience. Now if only I could get hold of the concreter who did this in the first place....

An odd letter appeared in the mail yesterday, two very brief paragraphs:

I refer to your recent enquiry to South East Water regarding your account for the above property.

My what? I've no idea what they're on about, the other paragraph merely asks me to telephone between 1pm and 5:30pm Monday to Friday. Unless....

Of course, how stupid of me! My recent enquiry was the telephone call I made to South East Water in May, six months ago reporting that I thought the water meter was faulty!

I rang and was told “we have tried to contact you,” when I asked how and when, they changed the subject. I asked again, and was ignored. Apparently I have to make an appointment with the meter replacement crew since it was reported that “access is difficult.” No idea what that is for since the meter is a metre from the footpath, and anyone except the fattest of aussie tradesmen should be able to walk between the car and the fence. Then I asked if it was likely that I would have to move the car so that they could jackhammer the old meter out of the driveway, that was when the problem started ... you see it's forbidden by law to concrete it in, apparently, so along with all the other idiot things that happened to the house before we bought it, concreting the meter in was one of them.

I am now expected to un-concrete the meter and then arrange an appointment with the meter replacement crew. When I asked how, I was told it's not their problem....

So I get to jack-hammer a water meter out of a concrete slab, and if I break the water pipes I get to pay for the damages and for the emergency call out, not to mention paying for the jack-hammer!

Last week the gas meter was replaced, this week they want to do the water meter, maybe next week we'll get the trifecta and the electricity company will call....

Third gig in less than a week; Mark Seymour tonight. Not sure what it is about the Spiegeltent as a venue but the artists always seem to be in a great mood and very light-hearted. Amazingly, there were no CDs for sale, an oversight that I'm sure had Mr Seymour kicking himself with the happy mood the punters were in as they left!

A cold grey dismal day. A public holiday across Melbourne, most of the rest of Australia is either on leave or slacking off and not doing much either. Everyone is either at home or gone to the races to see the Melbourne Cup. Traffic this morning is non-existant, cold drizzle as I ride to work. Blah, grey day and a grey mood. Listening my way through old favourites and the last two day's new purchases. Music reminding me of past times, reminding me of travelling, reminding me of being outside and not stuck in a half-empty office on a cold, wet, miserable day.

Woops! One of the CDs bought last night was a duplicate, the cover looked familiar, but not familiar enough obviously! Anyone want an unopend copy of Anythings, Sure Things, Other Things?

Sometimes amidst all the spam and trash something happens to remind you that this Internet-thing has its good points, that information sharing can work. Today was one of those days.

A student in New York who's involved in creating an online bulletin of monitor lizards found one of my photos from last year's central Australia trip and pointed out to me that it isn't a fairly common Lace monitor, but a relatively uncommon Perentie, Varanus giganteus, Australia's largest lizard.

Dredging through my memory I answered a few questions on where and when I'd seen it, and what it was doing, the photo and a brief blurb may appear in their monitor lizard bulletin sometime in the future.

Two CD launches in two nights, some kind of a record I guess.... Tonight Mick Thomas and the Sure Thing launch Paddock Buddy.... Its the first time I've been to the Spanish Club since it decided to become “a venue” and start booking bands, been meaning to get there for ages, but Fitzroy always seems so hard to get to.

A curious mix of a crowd, lots of old Weddoes fans with bald patches reliving their youth. As for the venue; I'm not sure what the room is normally like but the tables for the dinner show seemed to take up two thirds of the space, leaving the rest of the crowd crammed in standing up at the back. The sound system was pretty poor too, or maybe it was the guy on the mixer, muffled booming bass overpowering everything else and making the vocals almost indistinguishable. After a few songs they seemed to work it out and it improved a little, but was almost drowned out by selfish idiots in the crowd around me — I don't expect a reverent church-like silence, but gabbing away non-stop to your mates like an old ladies' sewing circle is a little bloody rude. Rude enough that one of the guys in front of us turned around and asked one of the offending groups if they could move into the front bar for a chat and let the rest of us listen to the band. He should of guessed the reaction — if they're rude enough to gabble away over the band, they're probably rude enough to tell him to go get f@Q#$fed, then proceed to harass him for the rest of the night!

Two CD launches in two days, two new CDs per day. This could be a busy week for the music library! Paddock Buddy has joined the library, together with an older disk — Anythings, Sure Things, Other Things — from the back catalogue.

An early rise — most unusual for me — and out and onto the bike for some much-needed hill climbing. Shivering in the cool air I was regretting leaving my warm jersey back at home, definitely not a morning for the short sleeves! An eye watering descent down Richardson boulevard to the main coast road, over the river and commence climbing up the Dean's Marsh road.

It always seems to take me about half an hour to climb the hill to Benwerrin, sometimes a little more. I'd forgotton that the Edge GPS doesn't like the forests and so it kept losing signal and cutting out — 24 minutes to the top is much faster than I've ever done and way above my current fitness! I hadn't even glanced at the ordinary clock either, not wanting to know just how early it really was.

From Benwherrin its a left turn onto the dirt road, then follow it along through the forest about ten kilometres rising and falling and watching out for wallabies that come crashing out of the bush. Another right turn and south for a few kilometres, then rejoin the bitumen at Erskine falls for a screaming ten kilometre descent down through the forest back into Lorne. A great ride, and at this time of the day hardly any traffic at all — only three idiots on the road, all 4WDs, all came flying around blind bends head-on at me on the wrong side of the road....

Lorne seemed nearly deserted when I got back to the main street, it was bizarre to see it so empty of cars, a dozen motorbikes outside the Arab, riders with coffees sitting around at the tables. I kept going around to Kafe Kaos for a table and a coffee of my own, enjoyed it so much that I had another, sitting in the morning sun and feeling gently tired in the legs. While I was sitting there between coffees Jo rode past, the early morning cycling bug must have bitten her as well, she was out for a gentle ride to Wye river to shake off her cold and give her mountain bike possibly its first ride since the winter.

Coffees over, I decided to loop out to the pier before facing the hill back up to the house, once at the pier I just kept on going along the Great Ocean Road... at first I was just going to go around to the river, then I decided to keep going until I met Jo on her way back. The wind had picked up and it was surprisingly strong and straight in my face on all the little climbs. A few motorbikes went howling past, hired campervans lumbering along as well. At one of the many lookouts I finally took a photo of the roadsign that has been making me laugh for the last few months; “Drive on Left in Australia” — a few too many overseas tourists stop to admire the view then get confused when they get back in their cars! I caught up with Jo just as she'd decided that the wind made up for the distance as she turned around a few km short of Wye river.

The ride back to town was much quicker than the ride out! That wind blows straight in off the Southern Ocean, its hardly surprising there are so many shipwrecks along here!

It felt odd driving back from Lorne to Melbourne in daylight — normally we don't leave until after dinner — today was not normal. An early evening CD launch for Phil Moriarty and the Paris Brests in the Spiegeltent. Phil, ex. of the Gadflys, has a voice and a style that I've loved for years, the new band played well. Mikelangelo of Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen a guest appearance on guitar, clarinet and repartee.

Songs I knew, songs I remembered, songs I half-remembered, and songs in a distinctive style so even if I haven't heard them before I thought I had... not surprisingly, we left the CD launch with the new CD!

There's only one way to cap off a near-perfect Sunday and that was dinner at Silvio's. Piping hot pizza, excellent pizza, pizza on your table so quickly you start to wonder how it happens. Friendly staff and a glass or two of red wine and a good coffee. Simple, quick, perfect.

Lining up for a free feed on the balcony, out of the forest they came!

Woken by strange sounds overhead — yes, it is rain. With so little rain in the last few months there's no way I'm going to complain that I might get wet on the way to work! As it was, a half hour lull arrived at just the right time. Just over twenty millimetres of rain between about eight a.m. and six p.m. — that's four times the rainfall we had for all of October!

While the rain may make the garden grow, it certainly doesn't do much for the building industry. One sign of precipitation and no sign of work. The under-construction boxes next door sat unattended all day, while across the road a semi-trailer load of scaffolding was unloaded in preparation for refurbishing one of the empty buildings. Heading out the door I was offered a day's labouring work putting up scaffolding because the labourers didn't turn up due to the bad weather!

Some days you just have to escape at lunchtime and get away. Normal lunch breaks are far too frequently spent at my desk, or not very far away. The better lunch breaks are spent sitting under a tree on the lawns, or walking around the grounds of Monash or the streets nearby. Today was one of the better ones — no wind, warm sun, get away from the screens and the hum and walk down to the pond under the trees at the north-east corner of campus. I nearly lost count of the number of birds around me; Magpies, Mudlarks, Noisy Miners, a Butcherbird and a White-faced heron, a pair of Little grebes diving in the dam, a pair of Ravens stalking around in the bushes, and half a dozen Black ducks paddling about, one with half a dozen ducklings.

With so little rainfall the water level is falling, but what remains is very clear. I lost myself for ten minutes or so watching at the ducklings chase each other around in the shallows.

Last night as we drove home from the semi-ritual of “Thursday night dinner out somewhere in Richmond”, the Saints, an old favourite band, were playing on the radio. RRR's "The Australian Mood" always seems to be music I like — two weeks ago it took me back to my almost-underage ventures into the Civic hotel and bands like Tactics and others whose names I've forgotton. Enough rambling, the Saints' Walk Away was playing, for once it wasn't just the opening few bars being used as an introduction or station promo. This afternoon I decided to listen to the song again while flicking (flickring?) through the Melbourne photo pool on Flickr. There in front of me is a photo titled Down The Drain — another Saints song from the same album.

I don't normally get that far through the newspaper in the mornings; front page up to the end of the world news, then in the evenings start from the back and read the comics and the quizzes. This morning the obituary caught my eye — Eric Newby. 1919 — 2006, from steam trains and tall ships to the twenty-first century, and authored some fascinating books of his times and travels.

It's that time of year again — TARDIS-like, the Spiegeltent appears in the Arts Centre forecourt and brings joy and good things to Melbourne for a month or two. Tonight was the first of hopefully many gigs I'll be seeing there, “My Friend the Chocolate Cake” were playing. Highly accomplished musicians and a packed crowd, the one drawback was having to sit at an odd angle and crane my neck around to see them!

It took almost three years, but finally the trip that Jo and Lesley have been talking about came about, find a suitable date that includes the third Sunday of the month, then a weekend away, stay in a B&B in Ballarat, then drive over to see Mooramong — a National Trust owned homestead out near Skipton or Beaufort.

Where?

Mooramong 37° 39' 16.8876"S 143° 15' 3.4092"E

Why is it always so windy in Ballarat?

Whoa, we're definitely getting hot around here. The temperature is 35°C and still only in October, we're in for a very hot summer.

Hot, damn hot... as it says in the classics. Not just hot either, gusty, blustery dry and dusty northerly winds as well, the kind of winds that blast a cyclist back and forth across there-quarters of a lane while filling his eyes with grit. The kind of wind that for the second day in a row rips a great branch off the Callistemon in the front garden. I guess it solves the dilemma of how we prune it, and how much we remove!

MBW

Lunch spent under the trees in one of the university courtyards, the almost summer heat and blustery wind makes everything smell of dust and eucalyptus — the Australian bush in suburbia.

Global warming or just an unusually hot spring? Who knows, the aussie government is stuck somewhere in the 1950s, so they should be able to analyse the historical data! As for the rest of us, we just have to live here. Damn.

Shut out the world and sit in the shade, I started reading Burton's The Arabian Nights, the short stories fit nicely into workday lunch breaks, unlike the 800+ pages of Quicksilver that was the last book I read at work.

Please stand by...

I broke it, I'll fix it....

Copies of photos I've taken, mostly just snap-shot quality, but some are worse! Here they are organised by which roll of film or date-based upload they are on, elsewhere they are used on other pages. The folder titles are loosely related to the contents, I had a habit of taking photos so infrequently that film-based rolls lasted for ages, so the title of a roll of film might apply to some or all of the contents.

Its all undergoing a bit of a restructure. Initially I had folders of all the photos from a roll of film, then when I started using a digital camera I was loading photos in here in folders that corresponded to the date I emptied the camera. Completely arbitrary, so as of about December 2004 I started splitting the photos up by the day that I took them, and linking them into each day in the journal. So I haven't stopped taking photos — I'm just putting them somewhere else. They're all tagged to varying degrees of accuracy; time, date, location, contents — I'll add in some searching here one day... and along the way I promise not to break any existing links.

June 2006 and it was still all a mess. It wasn't just me that noticed the mess, I was asked whether I still put my photos here, and why were they so hard to find. That's it then! Definitely time for a rethink.

While I fiddle about here, I also keep some of my photos on Flickr — because everyone has photos on Flickr, some on Fotothing — because I fell in touch with Fotothing's developer while finding out about annotating photos, and some on Fotonomy.

When I get it all written and working, you'll be able to look at photos individually — but that's easy — or by album or collection, and hopefully by who or what is in them, or when or where they were taken.

MBW

Ok, it does sound very nerdish! Today was the 100th anniversary of the first electric tram becoming operational in Melbourne — there'd been cable-trams running before 1906.

Thoughts on riding the tandem in to Docklands evaporated in the rain and howling wind, so public transport was used to go and see the public transport — a train in to the city, then nearly blown backwards as we struggled our way from Spencer Street station (that I refuse to call Southern Cross station) down to Docklands for a bit of tram-spotting.

There was a band and a marquee, and a dozen trams or so. Nothing too spectacular really, over half the trams on display are ones that you can see on the road any day of the week, only the oldest models seemed interesting — except to the enthusiast I guess.

Out of work and onto the bike to ride home, run inside and grab a pair of jeans and other essentials, then back out to ride in to Richmond for a beer.

Sunset commute ride, sun in the eyes, bugs along Gardiners creek, manic motorists all around. The majority of other cyclists are heading out from the city, here I am again riding against the flow.

Past the DHR and a surprise to see it all closed up, tape across the door and builders' ladders and stuff filling the bar. Up the road to the Spready and in for a pint. Damn, I managed to leave my lock at home, so its the Belgian bike lock¹ on the front wheel and a seat by the window where I can keep an eye on it....

People watching.

People listening.

Snatches of conversation float past; a strong London accent at the end of the bar, "Me arm 'urts when I lean on it like dis", an indepth discussion on lightning strikes on trucks and truck drivers, two girls complain about their boss...

A blind man and his guide dog arrive in a taxi, so relaxed as they negotiate the croweded bar, amazing.

People watching, second pint of Goat.

A Dover regular, a local character, walks in and meets his friends,not really surprising with the Dover closed. I wonder why, it was renovated only a couple of years ago?

Feeling quietly melancholy and a little homesick for Richmond, so many faces I recognise, quite a few who nod and recognise me back.

A chance meeting in the gents' with a garrulous local and I learn all about the Dover, there's been a buyout and the new owner has big plans. The old back bar has moved into the front bar, the unused upstairs is becoming a function room, it's all changing... so long as it doesn't change like the Bridge Hotel did — comfortable local pub to brighly lit soulless trendy bar.

1. Put the bike helmet strap through the front wheel and cross your fingers. Stops, or at least slows down, any casual theft.

Woohoo, ride to work day! Um, I guess that'll be just like any other day, except with Bicycle Victoria pumping wildly in the background.

As they asked, and as I replied, in their questionaire: How will you celebrate Ride To Work Day?

The same way I celebrate every day, happy to be alive after the idiots in the tin boxes yabbering on their phones haven't killed me.

You Are Here...

The two contenders that I can seem to find for tools to help me write and publish my website are pyblosxom and muse. If I was going to use pyblosxom it would be to publish static pages, which doesn't seem to work 100% and isn't really what it's intended for. My main requirements are:

• consistency of appearance
• no change to existing URLs

OTOH, it seems I can use muse to publish to blosxom source files, then use pyblosxom to publish these to html. A long and convoluted path, but maybe it'll get me to where I want to be.

birthday,railway

Are we ready? Picnic blanket — check, lunch stuff — check, camera — check, non-open-toed shoes to appease the lawyers — check, sunglasses, sunscreen, hat — check, off we go then! Half-way up Warrigal road.... Aarrgh! The birthday present! It is not advisable to go to a four-year-old's birthday without the present! Back home we go, race inside, then off again, quarter of an hour late.

A fun afternoon celebrating, all the family headed out to Eltham for a trip on the Diamond Valley Railway, followed by a picnic lunch and chocolate cake. It would be a close run thing whether the first or the last of those three was the most important for the guest of honour.

Hilight for me was definitely the ride on the train, these guys have one serious model trainset! Oops, apparently it is a miniature railway not a model train. Four dollars a ride, twice around on what must be a fairly sizeable figure-eight folded over on itself, I hate to think how much money and how many hours have gone into building and maintaining it all.

One of my many bicycles.

What is it?

A Norco Java that doesn't spend much of it's life off road. Instead it gets used most days for commuting, touring, or just having fun. As befits the successor to Spotty Bike it is covered in spots, originally applied by a group of my friends one night on tour when they decided that it just didn't look right without them.

Purchased from Ashburton Cycles in Ashburton, Melbourne in October 1996 following the demise of Spotty bike, and delivered in November. It was end-of-model time, so I got a reasonable deal, with a mix of LX and XT parts, and XTR brakes because they were the only ones available.

A bit like grandfather's axe, various parts have been replaced over the years: Rockshox SID SL forks replaced the Manitou Mach Vs and in turn were replaced by a pair of Springer Talons, A split rim meant the purchase of an ugly tempory wheel, then Mavic Cross-max replacements.

Where has it been?

Inside Australia: Victoria, NSW, ACT, Tasmania and South Australia.

Overseas: New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, England, Jersey, France, Switzerland and Italy.

Seems that Apple have actually noticed that the iTunes 7.0 update from a fortnight ago doesn't work so well! Updates today to iTunes 7.0.1 and Last.fm 1.0.7. Now if only the damnable Quicktime installer wouldn't insist on ignoring my preferences every bloody time the bloody thing is updated or installed and re-enabling the system tray icon!

I haven't discovered yet whether it fixes the w-w-w-warbling and g-g-g-garbled music....

At what point does researching and reading up on how to better Get Things Done stop being useful and start to be a form of procrastination of its own? I'm not sure, but I do know that although I've made some inroads on my mess and plethora of inboxes, calendars, todo lists and notes, I've still got too many of them and I'm always a sucker to try out the next one I see.

Especially liked Patrick Rhone's Org-Fu Überpost - Productivity Whitepaper with his discussion on how he handles paper notes in his notebook, it seems to match up well with what I try to do in my PAA, only with a little more structure. Local copy below for reference:

- (Dash)

Undone Action Item.

+ (Plus)

Done Action Item.

<- (Left Arrow)

Delegated (with a note to whom and the date).

-> (Right Arrow)

Waiting - (i.e., for another action).

^ (Triangle)

Data Point.

O (Circle)

A circle around any of the above means that it has been carried forward, moved to another list or otherwise changed status - i.e., a “Waiting” item has now become an Action Item elsewhere (with a note about where that item has gone).

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