ajft

Same newspaper, same story, just check the difference in wording!

15:28 it is reported as:

  A MAN playing cricket with his family has been killed and his
  daughter's partner was badly hurt when a fight broke out with a second
  group of people on a beach.

Only an hour and a half earlier, at 13:51 it opened with:

  A MAN playing a game of beach cricket with his family has been
  killed by thugs who pelted him with beer bottles and hit him in
  the head with the bat.

Why the change? Was legal advice made to change it? What's the real story? Who knows....

They're here to help....

I'm convinced that not only is Vic. Roads determined to get cyclists off the state's roads, but that Bicycle Victoria is in league with them. Us poor cyclists are outgunned, but not outclassed.

Bicycle Victoria appears to like to have concrete things that they can point at to, so that they can prove that they are living up to their motto More people cycling more often... so long as it is on nice safe little off-road bike paths or specially painted bike lanes. Making cycling a normal part of normal life and accessible on all normal roads is way too hard, much easier to build special bicycle facilities — unfortunately reinforcing the attitude of both cyclists and drivers that you can't ride a bike unless its on a special-purpose bicycle facilities, and the much worse attitude that where such facilities don't exist, you can't ride a bike. Without X many new kilometres of bike lanes and paths to point at each year, where would all the funding come from? Of course none of the previous years' bike lanes and paths ever seem to receive even a fraction of the funding for maintenance, but that all seems to get overlooked. A lot of the new lanes and paths only seem to get built where they won't inconvenience anyone either, or provide any real improvement in safety.

Meanwhile Vic. Roads appears to have an intention of getting cyclists off the roads completely, all in the interests of improved safety and improved traffic flow of course....

These two groups periodically manage to reach a crescendo of anti-cyclist facilities, such as the newly redeveloped North road, "upgraded" from three lanes to four in each direction, and with the kerbside lane made bus-only for a couple of hours each day. Of course special “cycle facilities” are provided; this is in the form of an off-road bike path that has no drainage, no lighting, no lane markings, that ends at each of seven road-crossings and restarts on the other sides (cyclists must give way to cross traffic and cross the roads as pedestrians) and that utilises a footpath past a primary school and across a dozen driveways for the last half kilometre! With friends like BV and Vic Roads, what kind of enemies do cyclists in Melbourne need?

Being subjected to the latest hazard of bollards and roadworks this morning prompted me to investigate the exact meanings of the term “Bus Lane”, and prompted the following enquiry to Vic Roads.

As a frequent cyclist along North Road to Monash University I am concerned that recent "upgrades" to North road appear to pose a significant hazard to cyclists. My experience as a motorist along here shows that drivers rarely respect the existing speed limit (70km/hr) and the expansion from three to four lanes in each direction is likely to increase this speed.

The opportunity was present for the new kerbside lane to be made wider, enhancing the safety for cyclists and enabling motorists to more safely pass, but this opportunity appears to have been ignored, the kerbside lane is now, if anything, narrower than previously, further endangering cyclists from motorists who overtake unsafely.

Additionally, it appears that for some hours of the day, the kerbside lane is marked as "Bus Lane" which I believe means that cyclists will be forced to ride in the next most lane, being simultaneously passed on the right by most motorists and on the left by buses and by that percentage of motorists who choose to ignore the "Bus Lane" signs.

Can the "Bus Lane" signs please be updated to the "Bus/Cycle lane" signs as described in VicRoads pamphlet "Cycle Notes No. 19".

thank you, Adrian Tritschler

I await with interest the response....

[2007-12-27] An interesting response received; apart from the spurious mention that I should use the off-road cycle facilities, there is the statement that cyclists can legally ride in the bus lane at all times of the day.

After all these years of spotting the swooping magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) just in time, or hearing the whoosh as the go for the back of the head, today my luck ran out.

Damn! Ouch.

I was cruising home slowly up the Dandenong road service lane, no point in exerting yourself when the temperature is up around 35°C, somewhere alongside the sports oval where the old men play boules there came out of the blue a completely unexpected smack on the side of the head. What the #@#$%@$^@! was my immediate thought, some kid's thrown a ball at me, then glanced around to see the culprit spiralling up for another attack run. Madly waving my arm above my head I rode on, out of range, out of the nesting territory.

One bleeding ear, one bruised ego. One satisfied magpie.

Have you ever tried to take a macro photo in the mirror of your own ear? No, I didn't think so. Go and try it, that'll explain why there's no photographic proof of the damage done.

Adding to the meme, and courtesy of the ABC news, by way of the AFP, a list of the Most ridiculous British laws. I'm wary of these, how many times have we heard so called “laws” that turn out to be apocryphal? Anyway, here they are together with the percentage of surveyed people who thought it was the most riduclous:

Most ridiculous British laws

1. It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament (27 per cent)
2. It is an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British monarch upside down (7 per cent)
3. In Liverpool, it is illegal for a woman to be topless except as a clerk in a tropical fish store (6 per cent)
4. Mince pies cannot be eaten on Christmas Day (5 per cent)
5. In Scotland, if someone knocks on your door and requires the use of your toilet, you must let them enter (3 per cent)
6. A pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants, including in a policeman's helmet (4 per cent)
7. The head of any dead whale found on the British coast automatically becomes the property of the king, and the tail belongs to the queen (3.5 percent)
8. It is illegal to avoid telling the tax man anything you do not want him to know, but legal not to tell him information you do not mind him knowing (3 per cent)
9. It is illegal to enter the Houses of Parliament in a suit of armour (3 per cent)
10. In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow (2 per cent)

So, slashdot is good for something sometime!

The story New Robots Hunt Pirates by Sea, linking to a Popular Mechanics article is interesting enough, but as always, it is the comments that make the story. A quick read and the two that had me spraying coffee are:

  Pirate Dread

“We are the Dread Pirate Robots. There will be no survivors.”

If only we had a remotely-operated wheelbarrow... That would be something!

  I feel safer already

What could possibly go wrong? I mean, I'd love my cruise ship to get checked out by the naval equivalent of ED-209.

“YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO COMPLY”

Can someone take a cluestick to the newspeople who write gibberish such as the following:

The 2.54pm Williamstown train was expressing from Footscray to Spotswood at the time of the accident.

and:

...said he heard the train sounding its horn as it expressed through the level-crossing.

Go to any dictionary you can find and look up the verb expressing, there is only one definition that I know and it aint the one that they've made up, nor is it an act that a train is likely to perform!

Something that's been bugging me for a while as I deal with ridiculously large amounts of disk space:

Assuming a 2M capacity of an unformatted "1.44M" 3.5" disk which has physical dimensions of 3x90x94mm; 1T of data is a stack 1572m long, or 13.3 cubic metres of disks, or if used as floor tiles, enough to cover 4435 square metres.

Man these guys are fast! It seems to be a week for the Peregrine, Falco peregrinus, yesterday there was an article about a nest and chicks on a city apartment block and photos on page 5 of both the big and the little papers; then today as we were driving out of the street I saw one hurtle past overhead. I think it must be the same one that I saw a few weeks ago in Oakleigh East as I was riding home, and some months ago chase pigeons over our house.

No way I'd be able to catch them on camera, not in flight, not with my camera!

Ride-to-Work day was amusing in some small way. In the morning could I tell it was RTW day? Not really, North road was bumper-to-bumper stationary cars, in twenty minutes I saw one other cyclist, the traffic choked to a halt as the road gets widened to accommodate more cars, with a special bicycle ghetto being built in the median strip that you a) can't get to, then b) have to give way at every single cross road at then c) use the footpath past the primary school. Cyclists dismount please!

In the evening could I tell it was RTW day? Riding up a one-way lane I come to a halt as the p-plate bearing commodore screeches around the corner and comes straight at me. Me: “Mate it's a one way street,” him: “Get fucked, I live here,” me: “I guess if you live here you know its a one way street.” I then had to dive off to the side as he drove straight at me screaming abuse about faggots bicycles poofters f'en cyclist c*ts.

All this followed ten minutes later by a different knob-end throwing the door open and heaving his wobbly belly out of the car and nearly collecting me with the wine bottle he was waving as a counter-balance.

RTW day. Oh yeah. Maybe in the CBD, but out here in 'burbs the petrol-heads go on for ever

Oddness. Placing my mouth to the information firehose for a daily catchup via google reader there's two mentions of tag::pumpkin in two adjacent items — not quite adjacent, I think there were three not-so-interesting ones in between. Norman Walsh plays with Ajax and on his demo portal the first twittering is:

mattb: apparently the UK is experiencing a severe pumpkin shortage due to recent weather. what will we do? (about 8 hours ago)

Second item in a cycling group on Flickr, titled “Pumpkin Runner”, a man jogging carrying a pumpkin.

I guess the northern hemisphere's pumpkin season makes it all a little more understandable...

I wonder what movies I'll end up watching through the year? Here's hoping it'll be more than we managed to see in 2006! Somewhere in the past few years we went from being frequent cinema-goers to almost complete abstainers.

2007-Oct-12 A Scanner Darkly (DVD)
2007-Sep-02 Amazing Grace
2007-Aug-12 Black Book
2007-Aug-10 Desperado (DVD)
2007-Aug-04 El Mariachi (DVD)
2007-Jun-17 Overcoming (DVD)
2007-Jun-03 Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (DVD)
2007-May-27 My Best Friend
2007-Apr-01 A Sunday in Hell (1976)
2007-Apr-01 Vive Le Tour (1962)
2007-Mar-04 Thunderball (DVD)
2007-Mar-03 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (DVD)
2007-Feb-25 Miss Potter
2007-Feb-24 Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest (DVD)
2007-Jan-20 Casino Royale

Hmm, its been two months now, surely Bigpond have made some sort of progress on my problems with their billing system... surely...

Interactive telephone games, 133.933, 1, 1, 1, 2, 03, home phone number, #, yes, yes, yes... Aha, a human.“What can I do for you today?”

“I lodged a problem report on August the 8th, called again on the 10th and 14th,, then had it escalated on August the 21st. On August the 29th I received a call to see whether I still had the problem and I did. I have heard nothing since.”

A little time on hold, a little wait, then this classic statement:

“It's been escalated up to the helpdesk guys which is up on high and there's no telling how long those guys'll take.”

I pointed out that it has now been two months. Another little wait on hold while Shannon investigated further.

“There's no phone access to them, only email, so you'll just have to wait and there's no telling when they'll get back to you”.

So it could be two days, it could be two months... it could be the middle of next year in which case the two year contract will be expired and I'll be finally rid of them for good and they can keep their broken billing system for all eternity for all I care.

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Ah, I guess that settles it then, it is now definitely time to get my ride-to-work bike to the mechanics for some much-needed TLC. All winter long I've been looking at the great lack of teeth that is the cluster and chain-rings and thinking that I'll do something about them once the weather improves....

Last week I was starting to think that the weather had improved and I really needed to do something about them....

This morning on the way down the street there was a loud metallic SPANG followed by the unmistakable feel of a rear wheel wobbling from side to side. A spoke has snapped, and in true spoke-snapping fashion it is hidden behind the cluster.

It is now definitely time to do something about it...

The Rosstown Rail Trail is all a bit of a sad joke really; there is no longer a railway, there was only ever one train on it, and there is no rail trail — just a handful of signs at semi-random locations at road intersection, some pointing one way, some pointing the other, and the odd place where there are signs that point in both directions. The general feel is that someone somewhere once got some funding to put a few signs in. That this was done with much fanfare and hurrah, then it was all ignored and has been left to gradually decay. The one information board on the entire route is buried under a thick mound of vegetation and almost completely obliterated by graffiti.

I've ridden sections previously, I think on one memorable occasion Jo and I managed to traverse the entire length when a few random corners turned out to be the correct random corners. This afternoon I thought I'd try again, taking my camera along for company.

The start at Oakleigh station looks promising, a distinctive red arrow in the station underpass pointing proudly off to the south. Just note that you aren't allowed to ride here, even though it is a section of Melbourne's Station Rail Trail and a major commute track, cyclists aren't allowed to cycle on the cycle path where it goes through the stations. So get off and walk up the ramp and along the footpath to where local knowledge and previous experience shows me that the plaque is buried under the bushes! The arrow here points off along the footpath, but it is of course illegal to ride on the footpath so you have to cross the road and continue on the far side, under Warrigal road and along Carlisle crescent. At Richardson street you turn right into the cul-de-sac and continue along the Station Rail Trail towards Hughesdale station, admiring the broken glass and dog turds on the path, and the graffiti murals on the rear fences of the houses along the rail line.

A very loud CRACK alongside my right ear served to inform me that the magpie nesting season has commenced, as usual, they half scare the life out of you but unless you're unlucky, or the surprise makes you crash, don't often draw blood. Here also was my first navigational mistake, at the unsigned tee-intersection in the park I turned right to follow the trail to Hughesdale station, expecting to see a sign there telling me where to go. There is no sign — apparently you're meant to just know that you need to go straight ahead, then down Freda street, then left into Poath road and follow Poath road to the roundabout. I got to Hughesdale station instead, then turned back onto Poath road and headed back to the roundabout and the directions off down Murrumbeena crescent — from previous experience I already knew that somehow I had to get to the roundabout.

Murrumbeena crescent ends at a tee-intersection with Murrumbeena road, of course there are no signs, so I guessed — correctly it turned out — and zig-zagged left and right and into Rosanna street, then past the large construction site of yet-another old-peoples' home.

You have the choice here of riding along a nearly deserted quiet suburban back street here, or the bike path alongside in the narrow park which is a magnificent shade of pale yellow concrete. I wish more of the bike tracks where made of that concrete since it is fairly smooth and can actually be seen at night, when the typically black tarmac paths cannot — for of course it is exceptionally rare for the bike paths to have any lighting.

Amazingly, at the end of Rosanna street there are arrows not only pointing back the way you just came, but to the left, indicating where you should go! You should treasure this, it is one of the few times that it will happen on this trail.

...

It is here where the park ends and the road goes under the Frankston rail-line that I lost the trail for good. The path you are on ends at the tee-intersection, one road stretches off north-south, a minor road curls under the railway line and a path heads off north alongside the rail line. The arrow seems to point somewhere half-way between the path along this side of the rail line and the tunnel under it. If you choose to go under the railway you can either ride off into the carpark of a suburban footy ground or curve around north and ride towards Glenn Huntley station hoping that each side road you pass will have an arrow directing you west and back onto the trail. You will search in vain, I think you are meant to detour through the footy ground carpark, but I'll have to leave that for another day...

A Telstra Bigpond technician — presumably of the second level in support — telephoned to see if my problem with their billing system has been resolved. A short answer: No, since they have not yet resolved it!

Interesting in that I was told last Tuesday they would contact me in "about four to five days", with the implication that it would be fixed by then, but the first contact is in six days and that is pretty obviously just to verify that they have to start working on the problem!

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Always such a tedious task, but I have to find the gems amongst the dross:

“I am MR. Gray Norman, an accountant”

Gray Norman, a gray name for a profession gray by reputation... how very appropriate.

“I am a straight forward person”

The wonders of the English language... given all the sexual innuendo in the spam, is he really meaning that he is a straight, forward person, or a straight-forward person?

Oh well, back to work...

Another trip through Canberra airport, once more I'm selected for the “random” additional security checks. I think I've worked it out though, on a Sunday evening there's so little to for the security staff to do that their “random” person selector picks every third person, and anyone who stands out in the slightest gets picked on.

At least this time they were civil about the whole deal, although I am puzzled about one aspect of the whole metal-detector thing. I walked into the airport wearing shoes, socks, jeans, underpants, a belt, tee-shirt, fleece vest, fleece jacket and a hat. For some reason I have to remove the hat and it has to go through the metal detector seperately. I guess I prefer it to be my hat to my underpants…

Ho hum, on it goes...

Three weeks, one problem, four phone calls, nine emails — today I spent 45 minutes on the phone and they reproduced the problem I first reported on the 8th, then again on the 10th, and will escalate it to a higher level of support!

The woman in support that I spoke to was very helpful, she expressed complete amazement that nothing has been done in three weeks and confirmed that the unpublished "wide-spread login problems" on a Friday afternoon two weeks ago was a typical "go away and stop bothering me" answer.

Unfortunately, all I've got to show for three quarters of an hour on the phone is a sore ear, a fault escalation, and the knowledge that my Bigpond password is now written down in the fault report (I didn't know they were allowed to ask for it, don't care, if my account is misused I can show that they are using it)

I've been told I should hear from them in "about four working days". I chose not to ask how whether four working days in Telstra corresponds to four calendar days, or four calendar weeks...

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A weekend away from Melbourne down along the coast, there's just so much birdlife compared with in the city. I still saw the airborne rats that are the Sparrows, Starlings and Indian mynahs, but off the top of my head I can remember: Magpie, Pied Currawong, Kookaburra, Crimson Rosella, King Parrot, Sulfer-crested cockatoo, Mudlark, Wood duck, Black duck, Dusky Moorhen, Pied cormorant, Little black cormorant, Black cormorant, Silver gull, Mystery grey seabird, Pacific gull, White ibis, Superb blue wren, New-holland honeyeater, Brown thornbill, Black-shouldered kite, Black hawk, Nankeen kestrel, White egret

Two new books:

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien ASIN: 0006754023 Buy at Amazon

On Mexican Time, by Tony Cohan ASIN: 1863591303 Buy at Amazon

Normal Thursday evening social events were thrown into disarray by Jo working late, we met up for a beer or several in the GB to make up for it and ponder out next move. Such a great pub, and always a variety of interesting beers on tap.

A blackboard above the bar advertised a “Black Wattle Superior Ale” and I couldn't resist trying it, even the bar staff didn't seem to know anything about it. Very tasty, I'll have to find out where it comes from and who makes it... and maybe where I can buy some more!

[2007-Aug-27] Revisited: Aha! Barons Brewing Company is the creator of this fine beverage.

A quick check of the map today and I saw that the aerial photo of home had changed — a closer inspection has me puzzled.

Up until a few weeks ago, the Google Maps and Google Earth view of Oakleigh showed our neighbours as a vacant block — not surprising, the house was bulldozed last May. There was also a huge flash of light reflecting from a parked car's windscreen, which made it very easy to find!

Today I noticed that the flash of light has gone, the photo has been updated and we've got a neighbour again... or have we? Something odd seems to be afoot since I could swear that the photo shows the old single house rather than the two new town-houses, and that all of the bulldozed garden is back.

Yep, definitely! The building sites on Warrigal road have gone away and been replaced by vacant land. I wonder what prompts Google to do this?

Customer support my ass!

Second round of the Bigpond battle. Between lunch time and now I've exchanged six emails with the Bigpond help staff and gone over the same ground — I can login to http://my.bigpond.com/, I can see my bill, but I cannot email my bill to myself. Once again the email query has reached an impasse and I have to telephone 13xxxxxx whatever and play the interactive menu games.

Once again I have to identify myself and give a full verbal description of the problem and then the technical staff tell me that it is a billing problem and that they can't help me.

Once again I'm transferred to the billing people and have to again identify myself and again describe the problem, then they tell me that its a technical problem and that they can't help me!

I explain that I've been around this loop before and it isn't fixing the problem — this time I get both a technical and a billing person on the line at the same time and once again tell them the story.

They start trying to talk me through the procedure in Mickey-mouse words for flushing the Internet Explorer cache and clearing the cookies and I explain — again — that the problem can be reproduced on any one of six different computers, over four days at two locations, three operating systems, three web-browsers, any computer of any OS or browser that I walk up to.

Then I'm told that there is a current problem with the Bigpond website that has been going on for a few days that some people can't even login and to wait a couple of days and try again... I pointed out that it would be nice if this service outage was listed on their service outages page!

I'm almost suspicious of these mystery unpublished service outages, I get the feeling that they're quite handy for fobbing off customers who have odd technical problems — especially on a Friday afternoon.

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Yay Telstra (again). Since their account management system is incapable of handling my work address, I have to have my bills emailed to me. Due to "security reasons" they have to be emailed to my Bigpond account and I cannot have them emailed to any other address. (Note, I can have the physical bill mailed to any address). However I can have my Bigpond email forwarded to another account, so I send it to my normal work account.

The Bigpond bill for the 1st of August didn't turn up, it might have vanished with the spam, but that's unlikely, since I review the contents of my spam folder before deleting it all.

No problem — I thought — simply log onto the http://my.bigpond.com/ website and email myself a copy of the bill. Haha, not so fast.... Every time I try I am presented with the following:

  Technical Failure

  An error has occurred while trying to provide the page you
  requested. This may be due to a problem with your browser or may be
  as a result of a current system outage. You can check for outages
  using the Service Status page. If there are no outages reported on
  the Service Status page you may be able to fix the problem by
  closing all of your browser windows and reopening them.

Over the course of four days, three computers, two operating systems and two web-browsers I've tried to email myself a copy of the bill — with the same results every time.

Two days ago I lodged a query with Bigpond support asking for it to be fixed — a query that they said would be answered within 24 hours. The 24 hours came and went and I received another email telling me that my query would take longer than 24 hours. The second 24 hours came and went and I received a second email telling me that:

  We will need to attempt to replicate this error on our test
  machines. Please contact Help Desk by phone on 133 933 (Selecting
  Option 1, Option 1, Option 1) quoting your ADSL username. Once we
  have verified the account holder, we will be able to assist you
  further and forward the issue to our Server Complex department if
  necessary. Due to security and privacy procedures, we are unable to
  assist further via email correspondence.

I called and played the voicemail games, then I got to a person. The technical assistance was uninterested in "replicating the error" and told me it was a billing problem and that they couldn't help me with and transferred me to the billing staff. The billing staff then asked for name, account and date of birth again, since they can't have these transferred with the call from the technical assistance!

The billing staff can't help me with the website not sending me emails — that's a technical problem and I'll have to contact technical support! I explained that technical support were unable to help and had transferred me to billing support and that I wanted two things; a copy of my missing bill and the my.bigpond site fixed so I can send myself other bills. The billing support staff are unable to email me a copy of my bill, apparently because I am unable to send myself one!

There is a copy of my latest bill in the post being sent to my home address, and as for fixing the website so I can email myself other bills... “Other people are able to use it so there can't be a problem with the website”.

I guess I wait for the first of September and see what happens with the next bill....

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Sadly, illusions I've had about cycling just keep on being broken. Today was one of those days that really starts to get you down.

After all the mess and fuss about drugs in sport and drugs in cycling especially, capped off by last year's Operation Puerto affair with naming of 200 European athletes — 30 or more of the cyclists, assorted suspensions and fines, I had thought that this year's Tour de France would be free of it all. Surely with all the publicity and all the testing there wouldn't still be riders being caught during the event? Whatever did happen to all those other athletes named? The soccer players, basketballers, track and field people?

Sadly, this morning I hear the Alexander Vinokourov has tested positive and been suspended, and that the whole Astana team was asked to leave the tour — and that they did. Why? You just have to ask why, not why the suspension, but why they did it.

It just puts such a bad taste in the mouth, all that good feeling you've put towards the riders through the weeks… are they all on it, are only some, have only the unlucky ones been caught, are they really unlucky and subject to a false positive from the test? I just don't know, but the trial by media and pontificating by all and sundry left in the event just adds to the indignity.

The other illusion? Oh, that'd be the stupid belief I have that maybe one day people will stop being absolute obnoxious lethal idiots the second they step into their cars; that maybe just once I can ride to work without having to take evasive action because of some idiot in a big metal box. That once wasn't today, the asian-looking woman taking the kids to school who drove into me on Haughton road didn't even glance round after the bang — she passed and pulled in, belting my hand with the mirror and knee with the door.

G524, 1201, N461, wtf? Oh dear, those are the trains I saw on the ride to work today! I only wrote them down when something else came up with 461 in it and reminded me... then I wondered what the name of N461 was — the City of Ararat, ah, of course! Scary thing is that I could find a fan-site that lists them all! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear....

Yes or no? Will we ride into the city for the second Melburn-Roobaix or not? Last year it was heaps of fun; a day out riding around the city with all the more interesting cyclists you can find, single-speeds and fixies of all shapes and styles, together with all the other more ordinary bikes... but last year the weather was great, and this year is different.... Its been four days now of icy cold rains, alternating showers, clouds and sun.

Woke to a very cold, but cloudless clear day, an omen, we shall go. Bacon and eggs and shopping and coffee and home and get changed and go! — the couple of hours before we needed to leave vanished in a bit of a blur. Out the door at at 11:00 on the tandem, bound for Federation Square and a noon start....

A supposed noon start... a lot of standing around waiting, the clouds thickened and a gentle mist started falling as people began to feel the cold. Thoughts of coffee, thoughts of schnapps, thoughts of a warm pub and an afternoon in front of the fire....

Finally time to queue up for registration and instructions over the megaphone; “See this guy with ballons on his head, find him, shortly we'll tell you where he his and you'll go find him. Then you'll get your route cards, then at each checkpoint find the balloons and stamp your card!” Ugly rode off and there was more waiting while people started trying to second-guess the first checkpoint, “to church” Jo guessed Rod Laver arena, where the Mormons were meeting, but no, it was light tower #3 at the MCG, the mighty church of football.

Take care everyone, play nice, watch the pedestrians... and we were off, en-masse around to the river and on all sides of bemused pedestrians, through Birrarung Marr, past Circus Oz and up over the footbridge to the MCG. Two hundred people on bikes picking their way around the stadium as several thousand on foot arrive for the St Kilda Collingwood match! Shouts come over the PA telling the cyclists to slow down, pretty much all travelling at a walking pace anyway and I couldn't see any close calls — just the footy people wanting to appear in charge of this new oddity.

Here's your map, thirteen checkpoints and a finish at Brunswick Velodrome like last year. Nothing over near Richmond this time, but checkpoints #1, #2, #2 and #3 are down to the south of the river — yep, there's two number twos, but thats ok because number four is missing.

A few minutes to work out a plan of attack, then down to the river and over Morrell street bridge, the first point challenging as Jo and I had no idea where “Airline Bank lane” was — chancing on following some others, sadly picking the wrong others! A bit of crossing back and forth and we found the bottom end of the lane of dreaded pavé— the first of the thirteen cobbled lanes. Started up the climb and all was going well until the timing chain flew off the tandem — that's never happened before, and its definitely not meant to happen today! Quickly slipped it back on and got it mostly right, one tooth out I think, then slithered our way up the hill on the wet cobbles to the first checkpoint.

Easy route from here to #2, down around Albert Park via Domain and Kerford roads then left into Little Page street and block after block of endless pavé — we'd come in at one end and the checkpoint was right at the far end — a bit of sneakiness with the grid reference of the checkpoint not matching the house number, forcing a few blocks of extra pavé! One of the number twos complete, now for number three! A little light had come on and Jo suggested that we use the sealed road parallel to Ashworth street, then cut across when we got to the far end — 'tis a wondrous thing having a clever navigator on the tandem!

Checkpoints three and two and now time for the other two; thoughts of Stuart O'Grady's win in the Paris-Roubaix as we rode up O'Grady street (sealed), parallel with Little O'Grady (pavé). A bit like a movie chase scene — at each cross road we could see riders who gone for the more classic route riding the length of Little O'Grady.

One third done and there was nothing left south of the CBD, the next few points are all in the city — almost unknown territory for me — but easy to get to, simply follow the trams.... Unfortunately it was as we were passing through South Melbourne that the fickle finger of fate struck — the dreaded puncture fairy. One punctured tube and one spare tube is happiness, two punctured tubes and one spare tube and icy rain and two thirds of the event still to gois not so good. The nearest bike shop I could think of was over on City road, but when we got there we found it had closed up and vanished. This was a definite sign from above to head for somewhere warm for a bowl of soup....

Up City road on foot, wheeling the big blue beast, then back across the river, then it was up to DeGraves street for hot soup, red wine and strong coffee. End of the Melburn-Roobaix for us for 2007! Maybe next year we'll come better prepared, either way, many thanks for the day's event to the guys from http://fyxomatosis.com/ to any of the 195 starters and who finished.

There's also a few photos on Flickr and the route from the GPS on motionbased — see, we didn't really get lost!

Looks like Schmap would like to use some of my photos for their next map about Melbourne, nothing special, but its the first time anyone has asked to use them! I guess I'll see them on http://www.schmap.com/Melbourne if they do get used.

Checking on drivers from http://support.asus.com/

BIOS

203 453.17kB

Audio

V6.0.1.5334

LAN

V6.186.1103.2006

Modem

M:V1.8_D:V6.11.13.1

TouchPad

V9.1.5.0 11.32M

Wireless

V10.6.0.46 3.61M

Video

V8.33 CCC 113.8M

What on earth is there in a video driver that makes it 113M in size!

Installed drivers

Video

ATI Mobility Radeon X2300

  8.33-061220-040818
  2D — 7.01.01.569
  3D — 7.14.10.0464

After a serious hour or two's use of the newish (now two months old) laptop, I've decided that some of the bugs are too buggy and need sorting.

• ASUS auto-updater shows a blank window with blank pop-up items
• ASUS single-sign-on is appalling slow, and more of a hindrance than a help.
• Norton Security Centre just appears to suck in general

The last one is pretty much a given, I think that's the general feeling everywhere regarding that product, but I thought I'd let the three month free licence run its course and get some experience using the product — the three months can't end soon enough.

The first two seem bizarre, you would think that in a laptop where the vendor ships the vendor's programs on a machine where the vendor installs everything that it would work... stupid of me to expect them to ship software that actually did anything!

The ASUS support forums seem pretty hopeless, no presence from ASUS, just a bunch of postings from people with problems and no solutions. Not to mention a user interface which doesn't seem to distinguish between read and unread messages, and a really annoying tendency to open every single link in another window.

On my second attempt I managed to lodge a request about the laptop, no idea if they'll respond since I can't give them the serial number because I'm at work and the laptop isn't. The support request form doesn't seem to work in Firefox so I had to go find a Windows machine with IE and retype the damn thing. At least they give me a response code to follow up on:

Case Code :WTM200705311451226266

Our system has received your mail enquiry. ASUS Technical Support Engineers will be responsible in replying your mail within 48 hours on Mon~Fri (except public holiday). If you have not heard any response from ASUS TSE, please check for mail reply status from the link below. Thanks very much.

http://vip.asus.com/eservice/techmailstatus.aspx?ID=WTM200705311451226266

The second of the two houses built on the block next door is full now, I'm not sure how many people have moved in but they had all their friends helping unpack the truck — the only way to move house, the more friends the better!

That makes two houses with three car spaces that now contain somewhere between six and eight people and who knows how many cars... I guess parking in the street could get even more shambolic than usual if they start parking out the front where customers of the singing school park illegally.

More rubbish though; just like when the people in the other house moved in, they've bundled up all their house-moving rubbish and dumped it out on the footpath — its in a bin — but they've picked the council green-waste bin, and they've put it out four days early. Seems to be a common problem; “chuck it out on the street, not my problem any more.”

I don't know if it is a result of the drought, general changes in the bird population, or me just being more aware of what lives where in Melbourne now that I've lived here for ten years!

For the last few weeks, I leave work nearly every day on sunset and there is an enormous flock of crows or ravens in the trees and buildings around the north-east corner of the campus. They whirl around, screeching and cawing, resting for a while then rising up to swirl around in an enormous flock for a minute or so. Very noisy, very strange, a little like something from Edgar Alan Poe.

I tried to photograph the birds against the sky as I left this evening, the light was too low and all came out blurred...

More fun and games with Telstra; phone, email, phone — no, yes, no.

Seems to be differences in the emphasis in the email and phone calls as to the whether it can be relocated (email from sales department) and who requests and pays for it (support and faults department)

Today's call, I stated the same question as last Friday and was again told verbally: The lead-in cable is Telstra infrastructure and neighbours are forbidden from touching it ($50,000 fine if they do so).

I then explained that I'd received an email from Telstra stating that our lead-in cable would have to be relocated, and that the neighbours did have this right:

  Thank you for your email dated 18/5/07, regarding your lead-in cable.

  Your lead- in cable will need to be removed or relocated onto your own property. Your
  neighbours do have the right to remove this cable as it is on their property.

  For more information on this matter please phone us on 13 22 00.

Telstra staff on the phone said "Huh?"

I expressed my concern that this appeared to be the opposite of what she'd just told me, and of what I'd been told on Friday. She discussed this with her supervisor and returned to state that:

• the cable can be relocated, if arranged between neighbour and Telstra
• as we have not requested the relocation, we will not be billed
• the neighbour cannot pass the Telstra bill on to us

Aw crap, what are they playing at? We found the following unsigned letter with quasi-legal wording in the letterbox today:

  16th May 2007

  Owner
  XX XXXXXX XXX
  Oakleigh Vic 3166

  The Residents
  XX XXXXXX XXX
  Oakleigh Vic 3166

  Dear Sir/Madam

  It has come to our attention, that you have a Telecommunication wire, trespassing
  across our property. As we have never given you permission for this to happen, we
  want it removed.

  We noticed that you already have a pole outside your house, which would be more
  suitable for that wire to be attached to.

  We will therefore give you seven (7) days from the date of this letter to remove it
  from its orginal site and have it re-attached to the other pole. If that has not taken
  place by the expiration of the deadline, then we will be removing it ourselves and any
  cost that is born as a result, will naturally be passed on to you, so it will be in your
  best interest, to act promptly.

  We thank you in advance for your anticipated co-operation in this matter.

  Your faithfully

  OWNERS

The cable they're talking about is the Telstra phone cable, it has quite possibly been there for forty years! I was fairly sure that there's nothing wrong with it, but rang up Telstra anyway to check.

It caused a bit of fun and games with the enquiries line, not your routine query it seems!

Yep, the Telstra cable is Telstra infrastructure, and in a magnificent quote “The infrastructure can go where it wants.” Any "issues" that they have with it are between them and Telstra and they should contact Telstra about it.

The cable can be relocated if they wish, however the costs will be born by them, not by us and not by Telstra.

Of course, none of this could possibly have anything to do with the fact that we keep asking the building company to come and finish fixing the fence that they half took down months ago, now could it...?

Quite amazingly, the TAC has finally decided that their 100% obsession with speed being the cause of all collisions is not the be-all and end-all of road safety. There's a new campaign telling motorists to — shock horror — pay attention and put the phone down, stop fiddling with the radio, stop playing with the children and DRIVE THE BLOODY CAR WITHOUT KILLING PEOPLE.

A good start, but sadly reality intrudes. Another day, another ride to work, another dickhead in a 4WD on the phone on the road.

There I was sitting at the lights at Dandenong road and North road. There he was sitting next to me — big shiny BMW 4WD, (rego. Vic. SUB-116), chatting away, SMSing away. I point and shout out 'put the phone down', he swears and gesticulates and swears some more. The lights go green and I ride off, then he roars past, swerving in to give me a scare.

All the campaigns in the world are meaningless when the vast majority of Australians believe its their god-given right to do what they damn well please the instant they get in their little metal boxes.

You think that we're being shafted by Telstra and the government now? Just wait till they've finished bending over backwards to pat each other on the backs with this one. At least some people are prepared to analyse the name caling and full-page fora and against ads in the papers and look into why Telstra wants the government to "rein in the ACCC" (that rogue regulator) and let Telstra have monopoly access to $9Billion worth of not-yet-built broadband network.

From Charles Wright, the final paragraph sums it all up:

Selling out to Telstra

:

No government in Australia's history has demonstrated a fraction of the contempt for the electorate implicit in virtually every thought, word and deed of the Howard Government. No Prime Minister has been able to get away with mouthing one lie after another, while doing precisely the opposite of what he pledged. No political party with any conviction or the slightest claim to integrity could contemplate the shredding of principle in such a fashion. What a truly shameless mob they are.

Seems that May is bike month in America, not only that, but in Motionbased's blog I get a mention as one of the two runners up for logging the most number of "commute" bike rides for the year. Hardly record breaking distances with my 5km ride, but there would have been another month's worth of entries if the Edge 305 hadn't been off being repaired for all of January!

Interesting that the second, wamble, and third, ajft (me), are both Australian, while number one, mallfellow is in the US.

Fun and games over the weekend attempting to get the Motionbased software working on the home laptop. Minor problem is that the laptop is running¹ Windows Vista, major problem is that http://www.motionbased.com is almost unusably slow.

Downloaded two updates, but had to leave prior to installing them:

MBAgentInstall_release_2.3.0.1.exe

Existing version 2.3.0.0

Garmin-USBDrivers_221.exe

Existing version is 2.2.0

I managed to read data from the Edge 305 and upload it, but couldn't login to the website, either the password is wrong or its just timing out.

---

1. Of all the verbs in the English language, "running" doesn't quite seem appropriate when applied to the speed of Vista; I think I'd prefer anything from the following list: walking, crawling, meandering, dawdling....

After yesterday's V/Line farce, what wonders would the train home bring? At least we'd be spared the platform announcements, Garfield's station is rather sparse — a small half-enclosed shelter on an open platform is all the protection you get, there's a timetable pinned up away on the other side of the line, and a confusing sign telling us that the trains travel through Garfield on either the left or the right... depending on what time of day it is!

Prior to 2pm on a Sunday they drive on the left, so platform two was correct — although this was the same platform we arrived at yesterday!

We sat in the sun and waited... and waited....

Yay, a minute or so after noon and the train appeared, we're not sure whether it was meant to arrive at 11:41 or 11:51 so I've no idea if it was ten or twenty minutes late.

There seems to be a constant amount of stuffing about that has to be added to any trip I make on the trains, it just isn't worth it for a trip of only an hour!

That's enough from the both of you V/Line and Connex, stop appologising for the lousy service, please just fix the damn train system!

Oh well, “it seemed like a good idea at the time”. Famous last words... Jo and I decided to catch the V/Line train out to Garfield to visit friends for the evening, a chance to try these shiny new purple V/Locity trains and see what all the fuss is about and whether they live up to the gov'ments hype about the “fast rail” service or the opposition's “farce rail” retaliations.

So far I'm tempted to go with the latter. A month ago my first ride on one was appalling; a two-carriage train put on from Geelong to Melbourne in the school holidays, crammed in so tight that people sat in the aisles and were packed sardine-like in the exits. Today we only had to endure a 50 minute trip that started life 45 minutes late! By the time we finally got on the train in Caulfield we could have been comfortably sitting at Mark and Lesley's house if we'd chosen to drive... and it wouldn't have cost anywhere near $12.20 in petrol!

Quarter past four we left home for the suburban train back to Caulfield, to then sit and wait on platform four — the V/Line trains always use platform 4... Then there's the announcement that it is running late and will use platform 2, so we troop down through the underpass and the stench of greasy fried things and up to platform 2. From about five to five until quarter past we had at announcements at ten minute intervals telling us that the train was having mechanical problems and that it had “just left” Southern Cross station.

Bah, hardly a great start to the evening.

Once (finally) on the train it was comfortable and quick and a pleasant trip, but the stuffing about that accompanies it will make me think twice...

The evening's company, the food, and the red wine were as good as ever and its always good to catch up with friends... but next time we'll drive the car.

From http://www.hunlock.com/blogs/Attach_icons_to_anything_with_CSS

A few days ago, while using stumble-upon, I stumbled on a site which showed how to conditionally append icons to the end of hypertext links using css. What made the article interesting was that it used CSS conditionally. For instance...

a[href $='.pdf'] {
   padding-right: 18px;
   background: transparent url(icon_pdf.gif) no-repeat center right;
}

Finally done it! The home PC has been thrashing for ages with “only” 512M of RAM and more and more greedy software.... Another 1G has been on the cards for quite some time. The catalyst was Jo deciding to finally buy her camera, which then needed some memory itself, and a trip to CPL for a 1G SD card for her, and 1G DDR 3200 DIMM for me.

A healthy 1.5G now, and no swap in use, yay.

Attempting to import photos into my Ubuntu system with f-spot, the import window opens, but contains the text:

An error occurred in the io-library ('Bad parameters'): Could not find USB device (vendor 0x4a9, product 0x30f2). Make sure this device is connected to the computer.

Something is definitely wrong with the permissions, my account can't read the camer