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  Today: ??km
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  Today: ??km
  Total: ??km

Where?

  Today: ??km
  Total: ??km

Where?

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  Today: ??km
  Total: ??km

Where?

Binalong 34° 40' 0S 148° 39' 0E
Holbrook 35° 43' 60S 147° 19' 0E
Jingellic 35° 55' 60S 147° 40' 60E

Photos

Okay, I've collected the CD of my last two rolls of film, that's the last of my 21 rolls of APS film completed, and not before time too! QFL have excelled themselves this time. No, not by missing a frame or some other stuff up like that, this time they've sent me back the CD, two empty APS cartridges, and the exposed film rolled up, squashed and loose in the envelope! How the hell am I meant to get it back into the cartridges?

I'm glad the whole business is over because I doubt very much that I will ever have anything to do with QFL again! Appalling care and attention that the seem to have with everything they do. I rang up to ask them what on earth they were doing and was told I'd have to send the lengths of film and cartridges back so they can have a look at them! Told them no way was I sending any film to them ever again, and have been told that “a service manager will call you back.”

Providing they haven't stuffed the images up as well — I haven't checked fully — after titles and dates and resizing are completed then and #698-464 will be visible here.

Photos

From both the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age, the latest motorised moron to be caught attacking people with a car as a weapon:

A man has been charged after allegedly trying to run down a group of cyclists in a road rage incident in Sydney's south.

An argument broke out after the 50-year-old man allegedly almost hit a group of about 20 cyclists on General Holmes Drive in Brighton-Le-Sands shortly before 6am AEDT yesterday as he drove out of a service station, police said.

The man then allegedly drove up behind the group and across three lanes of traffic, narrowly missing the lead cyclist.

The Rockdale man will face Downing Centre Local Court on March 17 charged with dangerous and negligent driving.

Chris Sutton, a champion Australian cyclist riding professionally in France, and an off-duty police officer were believed to have been among the group from the St George Cycling Club.

....

So he not only tries to attack twenty people at once, but picks on a professional racer and police officer! I guess for once the cyclist will have a few witnesses. Shame about the number of times its one-on-one and the police then refuse to take any action.

There'll be a short delay in updating any part of the site. Seems that something broke on the host and ssh no longer works. Not even for the owners, so they can't fix bund without visiting it! Please stand by....

Another week and another three rolls of film completed. Even more amazingly, after two trips back to QFL, they've successfully rescanned all the photos — including the missing two — on the 379-986 roll from a fortnight ago. More date stamps, more titles, resizing and uploading and then #711-119, #855-129 and #902-122 will be here. Only two rolls left!

Six weeks and counting.... The six month old camera has now been six weeks at Canon Australia with the dreaded "E18" error, an error that Canon Australia claimed they have never heard of.

Its now two weeks since the "parts should be here in two weeks" statement so I called them up again.

Quotes from today's phone call:

"No, the parts haven't arrived yet and we have no known ETA for the parts."

I stated that I found it slightly ridiculous that they kept no parts for cameras that they service, having to then order these from Japan for repairs.

When I asked them to tell me when the parts had actually been ordered, they couldn't say, "probably the 17th of January". I think she then read the saga on the job card, because rather than the normal offer to take my number and call me back, I was asked to hold while she went next door to find out.

"We have to order parts in bulk, they were ordered on the 16th of January but it takes a long time to come here from Japan and through the docks."

"Try again in two weeks or so, about the end of February."

I pointed out that I'd been told two weeks two weeks ago, and that at the end of February I was going on a holiday — a holiday I had hoped to take my camera on. I guess I just wait another two week, that'll make two months!

The best part of all of this? Knowing full well that although they may take two months to repair my camera and eventually get it back to me, judging by all the other reports I've read of the dreaded E18 error on all the mini IXUS-like models, there's absolutely nothing to stop the camera failing again a week after I get it back, or worse, failing a week after the 12 month guarantee runs out. Canon, my APS IXUS was fine, my IXUS300 was fine, but this whole business of spending $700 for an IXUS700 camera with a built-in fault sucks!

The end is in sight! Three rolls back on one CD, and the CD that I returned last week to be rescanned — I'll get to that one in a minute. The 2000 Bike NSW Big Ride, a few weeks in Johannesburg, and the miscellaneous cruft that fills in the spaces in between. Once again, there's date stamps and titles to be manually appeneded, then they'll be available for perusal — #647-551, #374-343 and #700-204 — and then there'll only be five rolls to go.

I would have thought that after a phone call last week explaining the problem; then returning a CD that contains 23 images together with a film that contains 25, and a note stating that 2 images were missing would be sufficient to get it rescanned. Apparently not, its been returned with a note stating: “We have checked the CD and all photos appear on this. Do you know which two were missing?” Um, 25 minus 23 is two missing, why can't they find them?

Either I'm going crazy, or the printed index sheet from five years ago shows photos 1 to 25. The CD that I've got here has 23 images, but images #23 and #24 are missing. Surely if I can spot this then so can the staff at QFL? Guess I've got to send it back to them a second time, together with the index print and a note asking them to count to twenty-five...

Smart people will usually be at the alienated right extreme of the bell curve, praised for being smart but not actually listened to.

Over half-way complete in the APS-digitising project. Three more rolls completed, that's thirteen rolls scanned and eight remaining. Annoying though, QFL ignored the request to scan the three films onto one CD, according to the chemist it is completely arbitrary whether they read any instructions at all! The hair on the scanner that I saw a week ago is still there, now that is bugging me. Captions and dates now needed for 201-383, 379-986 and 647-548.

Damn, I'd forgotten that 17 to 44 of the first roll were all out of focus — the Elph had decided that it's auto-focus was broken and ruined all my photos of Rae and Alex's wedding, a camera fault that Canon couldn't find, but must have fixed while they were looking! Oddly too, there appear to be 44 photos on the first roll of 40, 23 images on the second roll of 25! Guess I'll have to check out the prints from back in 2000 and see what happened when they were developed.

Laziness and beer-poisoning meant no bike riding yesterday. Enthusiasm took hold this morning, together with the knowledge that the around-the-world yachts have been in Melbourne for a few weeks now and will probably leave before I manage to get off my bum and see them!

Out on the tandem and down to Blackrock, a big sweeping roundabout to turn around at, then back up the bay to head in to Docklands. Standard tandem comment floated our way, “the one on the back's not pedalling”. Seems that the one on the back must have been, since we then passed them doing 40km/hr up the hill.

Around Port Melbourne and zig-zag down some likely looking back streets — surprisingly finding that we could cut through a tiny segment of path at the end of a cul-de-sac and onto the main cycle path that parallels the 109 tram route! Up past Jeff's shed and around to Docklands, then slowly slowly cruise around the myriad of pedestrians meandering along the shared pathways.

Amazingly, after yesterday's promise Canon have called me back in only a day and a half. That's the good news.... The bad news is that they're waiting on a part and the parts have to come from Japan. Apparently Japan is a long way away from Australia and parts from Japan travel very very slowly. They expect that the parts will be in Australia in another two to three weeks, but they will mark on the job sheet that it is urgent, so I should manage to get my camera back in around two months total! They'll extend the warranty for the time it's been in for repairs too — very generous — but I think they're legally required to do that anyway.

Six months use of the IXUS700 then two months repairs. Hooray for Canon!

Damn, damn, damn! Today I went to work and left my modem switched on and the home PC connected up — it was synchronising the latest bunch of photo files. I got home to find that the synchronisation hadn't completed because it had been disconnected. Unfortunately my home PC is configured to dial-on-demand (something I've never got to the bottom of and disabled). The PC dialled up the modem bank, the modem bank answered, then failed to authenticate the connection, so it hung up. The PC waited two minutes and dialled up... repeated 91 times before we got home and turned the modem off!

Turns out that one of several systems that was decommissioned at work today was a box that runs a copy of radiusd. One of the three modem pools authenticates to that box, or tries to... the box had been switched off but the modem bank left on, hence the $30 phone bill.

Its been four weeks now, and two since my last call, it must be time for another call to Canon. I'd really like to get my IXUS 700 back before I go away on holiday at the end of the month! 13 13 83, 3, 1, “All our operators are busy, please stand by....” A long wait since I've foolishly called up at lunch time, then a friendly, helpful Canon person on the phone. She's friendly and helpful, but “I've got no idea why it isn't repaired yet. Someone will call you within three working days.”