ajft

Ah, Friday night in the 'burbs, dinner with the parents in law and a 9:30 ride home from Mt Waverley to Oakleigh. A simple task it seems!

It was cold, damn cold. Less than 10°C as I left the comfy warm house, then 58km/hr down Forster road is an eye-wateringly shocking wake up.

Onto the bike track from Mt Waverley to Oakleigh, No moon, no lane markings, overhanging bushes and no lights on the path. Of course there are no lights — its a bike path sillly, and everyone knows that these are only used on nice sunny Sundays for recreation! The 5W Nightstick light helps, but on an unfamiliar track it all gets very exciting. Go slow and watch for stealth dogs 'n joggers.

...and then there's the people you meet.

WTF is this guy doing standing in the middle of the bike track in a duffle coat? As I cruised carefully past, his invisible mate spraying graffiti up on the freeway underpass screamed abuse down and nearly scared the crap out of me.

Across Dandenong road at the lights at Atkinson street and start the last stretch up the hill, more adrenalin as the white P-plate decorated Commodore screeches around the corner behind me, passenger sticks his head out the window screaming "KILL THE C### ON THE BIKE!", driver swerves at me but is going too fast, misjudges, almost goes up the kerb 2m in front of me, spins the tyres plastering me with gravel and burning rubber and tears off over the hill. The adrenalin keeps me warm for the last kilometre or so home.

Topped the night off with the Nightstick battery going flat two blocks from home, very little warning, just a brief dip in the light then a quick fade to yellow to orange and off. I really must get myself a backup LED light….

Aint riding a bike in Melbourne fun.

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated books by Leslie Charteris have also purchased “Operative Surgical Procedures: DVD and Handbook” (A Hodder Arnold Publication) by Mo S. Baguneid.

For those who don't know, Leslie Charteris is the author of "The Saint" novells, rollicking good pulp adventures from the 1930-1950s.

I think they don't have a large enough pool of people who bought X also bought Y, so small oddities can propogate through the system. Either that or their software is simply broken.

Favourite Amazon ads anyone?

I think I buggered Facebook's advertising analyser by have a status message saying I was "reading advertising on facebook about advertising on facebook." For about three days I got some very blank ads for incredibly generic things, nothing focused at all.

Now how is this for serendipity, up until today I had never heard this magnificent new verb(?), then all of a sudden it appeared in a mailing list that I read... and was promptly shot down by the grammar police. Incentivise.. now what the heck is that meant to mean and who on the planet made it up?

Half an hour later and I find that the BBC has compiled a list of the top 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate and there it is at number four! I expect to see the list in The Age in about a week and the Herald Sun a week or so after that, but I could have the order wrong.

“My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel.”

Sheik Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_bin_Saeed_Al_Maktoum

Amazing! The combination of a very short commute and the cold winter weather means that on any given day I generally see no other cyclists, or around one or two a week. Maybe the rising petrol prices, a glitch in the statistics or a fluke of my timing, but in the last 24 hours I've met ten other bicycle commuters while riding to and from work! Maybe I should keep a log of how many other riders are about through the colder and then warmer months... Three on the cycle paths in Oakleigh last night, an older Chinese couple and then a woman who nearly fell off in front of me at the sharp-right into the station car-park — its a pain of a corner, she got her wheel caught in the channel off the concrete path, but its never made easier by the dumped shopping trolleys that get pushed to the end of the car-park and occasional beer bottle, syringe or illegally parked car.

Then this morning riding up North road there were another two guys, one fast in lycra on a road bike, one slow in jeans on a mountain bike, both riding up the bus lane and likely to be abused or attacked by the bus drivers. Had a chat to the roadie as we rode along and he was astonished to find that its illegal to ride in the bus-lane, that VicRoads has redecorated the road so that any cyclists have to ride in the next lane out, being overtaken on the left and right by faster vehicles — he claimed it was ridiculous and stupid, then carried on riding right where he was.

This evening there were another four or so, three of them riding home up North road in the bus-lane.

I wonder what would happen if the police started policing along here, booking every cyclist and motorist who illegally uses the bus-lane? Perhaps then a few more people would give a damn about the lanes and the laws if they found that they were actually enforced! The general Aussie attitude on the road seems to be "pass as many laws as you want, I'll ignore 'em and you won't enforce 'em."

What a magnificent use for the internet The Twat-O-Tron, sieving through the detritus that is the public's responses and rantings on the BBC's "Have Your Say" feedback.

For a piece of its magnificence, I quote you:

global warming climate change no such thing its just another tax does anyone realise that the bastions of political correctness are trying to kil lus all because they want to destroy us from within all englishmen should get out of the eu and get our country back soon this country will be majority muslim with a mosk in ever yvillage

No, I do not agree with the views above, the spelling, or the idiot who wrote it.

Now if only someone could write an equivalent that takes as input the vitriol and ignorance that rains down whenever there's an article in the press on cycling in Australia and daring to use a bike as an ordinary piece of transport, and not as something that is transported about on the 4WD for a Sunday ride in the park.

“Bumper stickers reveal link to road rage”

Hardly earth shattering, but their research shows that people who most strongly identify with their cars are the ones that get the angriest and are most prone to road rage.

“Hating cyclists: some preliminary findings”

Not much in the way of interpretation, but a large body of analysis of the feedback to any media stories on cyclist-motorist interaction in Australia.

“Road Safety and perceived risk of cycle tracks and lanes in Copenhagen” (pdf)

Fascinating reading, a safety report from Copenhagen, home of those "Copenhagen lanes" that Bicycle (paths) Victoria are obsessed with — when they're not obsessed with other bicycle paths. Reports what many cyclists already know or believe, that while cycle paths encourage more people to ride, they also increase the collision and injury rate.

Ah, the pleasures of a slight misreading of a news headline.

"Do not panic-buy petrol, says PM"

or is it

"Do not panic; buy petrol, says PM"

From $100 a barrel at the start of the year to around $139 this week, the "Australian motorist" screaming blue murder at the government that "someone ought to do something" as petrol prices rise from $1.33 a litre to $1.66 over the same period. My, my, even some of the Americans are starting to notice that their god-given right to drive a big truck is costing them a lot of money. Riots in Nepal, Indonesia and elsewhere as the price goes up, strikes by truck drivers and fisherman in assorted parts of Europe. Um, what do they want to have happen, a government mandated low price? I really can't see that having any workable effect.

There seem to be two opposing views to the source of the price rises; one is that its good 'ol "supply and demand", as two billion Chinese and Indians haul their economies into the first world, they want resources... lots of resources. Lots of demand and a finite amount of oil. OPEC responds by putting up the price. The other point of view seems to be that it is all completely artificial and driven by speculators, that the "real" price should be around $60-$70US a barrel and that it'll all come down to that in a year... two at the most....

Hmmm, a bit of the latter and a lot of the former I suspect. If I knew then I'd be very rich, but I'm not very rich so I guess we can infer that I don't know. Throw into the mix the elephants in the room of peak oil and global warming, together with appease-the-public governments with two-year maximum attention spans. Interesting times.... I'll just have to watch, live and learn.

From Bruce Schneir's Schneier on Security, possibly one of the best articles I've ever read on the increasing harassment of anyone who dares to wield a camera in a public place:

... The 9/11 terrorists didn't photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn't photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren't being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn't known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography. ...

Thank you Bruce.

We seem to see fewer and fewer movies as the years go by, after starting 2007 with the best of intentions I think seeing a couple of movies at Chadstone sitting ankle-deep in rubbish while obnoxious people talked through movies, answered their phones through movies, or played with lasers through movies, put us off for the rest of the year. Maybe 2008 will be better...

2008-Apr-23 The Painted Veil
2008-May-30 V for Vendetta (DVD)

Is it my suspicious mind, or does the following Flickr Mail seem a little bit dodgy?

Hello

In a dutch magazine we would like to publish your photo of the ambulance in victoria. You have it verry small online, is it possible to send me a large size of the photo. We would like to publish it on 20cm wide. So we need it verry large. We can offer you a fee of 50,- euro for the photo.

You can contact me on my e-mail: X.XXXXX@gmail.com

We do need it on wednsday or thursday 29 may at the latest, so I hope you can answer me quickly.

Best regards, XXXXX XXXXXX

Seems to me that:

• there's no mention of which photo they're referring to (there is one that matches, but any search on http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ambulance/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/victoria/ would find it)
• there's no mention of which magazine it'll be published in
• the "we need it verry large" sounds a little simplistic, rather than "we need at least X pixels wide"
• there's only a generic gmail address to respond to
• there's a sudden urgency to make me respond quickly
• there's no mention of how they'll pay

Or do I just have a suspicious mind?

Everyone loves a baby... including the government so it would seem. The government in all its myriad forms; Federal, State and Local, they all want in on the act, they're all here to help...

An inundation of glossy brochures and photocopied fact sheets, two DVDs, registering with local health care, state records, national medical insurance.

This morning the regional maternal health nurse came to visit, to record, to instruct and book us in for further visits at our "local" maternal health centre. Except it isn't our local centre, the local one is easy to get to and about four minutes walk — we've been allocated to one that's three times as far away, and on the far side of a six-lane main road. At least we managed to get reallocated, then had to sit and listen to about half an hour of an interesting mix of useful advice, the bleeding obvious, and what I think are personal opinions, all mixed in as one. She handed over a great sheaf of photocopies of local guvment advice, then carefully took her pen and crossed some bits out and made her own annotations. I guess that like all free advice, its worth what we pay for it.

Paperwork step one, register the baby with the Victorian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. You have two months, and if you do not all sorts of dire things will happen. Hating to be caught with an unlicensed baby, we leap at the chance to placate the government.

This one's not so bad, just four pages of questions that must be filled in, then signatures from both parents, both witnessed. One of the nurses from the hospital had told us we're allowed to witness each other's signatures, so we did. On the back of the form we then found a footnote saying that we're not allowed to witness each other's signatures. Oh well, we'll send it off and see what happens. Now on to the next one...

Half-way through filling out the four pager paper form to register the new baby with Medicare we find that you get to a certain point and then have to do part of it either online or via the phone, then transcribe some receipt number onto the paper form in order to continue. Typically convoluted. I started by going to the website, http://familyassist.gov.au/, but of course there is absolutely no indication of what you have to do! Fumbling around found a page that looked promising, but surprise surprise, you can't go any further without "registering" and creating yet another bloody account on yet another bloody website. I started filling this out, meanwhile Jo simply picked up the phone and started to call. She'd was in touch with a person and starting the process before I'd even got the rest of the way through creating the account on the website.

Hey, dearest government, if the only websites you can make are this bloody convoluted and hard to use, PLEASE DITCH THE WEBSITES and stop pretending you have an online presence!

Second surprise; despite us having sent any number of Medicare claims in to them in the past nine months, indeed quite a few over the past three years, they claim that there's no record of us at this address! This is despite them somehow managing to send us refunds TO THIS ADDRESS for the past three years!

Anyway, after giving out a whole lot of details over the phone, we are now in possession of a magic registering number which we can enter on the paper form, together with re-entering half the details already given out over the phone! We can then send off the form where all the details will be transcribed from paper back into someone's database — hopefully without too many transcription errors.

OK, we now think the paperwork has been dealt with. What's the next surprise in store?

At 18:07 Cameron was born after a very full day. I'm now a father, I'm now very tired, I'm now over the moon, I'm now having trouble expressing myself. I'm now very busy.

Hello world, Cameron Fidel Tritschler.

I defy anybody to make sense of the following gibberish:

Today's enterprise network landscape incorporates numerous discrete but interrelated infrastructure elements - applications, databases, services, and hardware - and encompasses a variety of management disciplines, interfaces, tools, and dashboards. Typically, these elements are lashed together with chewing gum and baling wire. Nevertheless, the expectation is that such a patchwork assemblage will work cohesively, even though in practice the cohesion among such diverse sets of components is seldom transparent and never seamless. Run Book Automation (RBA) represents an emerging technology space architected around various sets of standards. Early adopters turn to RBA to address basic enterprise needs for coherent, end-to-end task automation across the IT landscape. These early adopters also typically seek to fill the gaps using turnkey solutions instead of patching site- or system-specific solutions together.

...with apologies to the vendor who sent it to me.

Weddings, Parties, Anything know their audience well; they're all getting older, they're all getting fatter, many of them have kids... so for the last show in the series of the ten-year reformation Christmas in April it was a matinee show. Quite odd to walk in from the bright autumn sunlight to a dark pub bandroom and see not only a room full of punters but young kids darting about here and there, dancing on whichever of the two stages wasn't currently in use, and generally putting everyone in a good mood and making them laugh.

Even the merchandising was in tune with the audience, amongst the t-shirts, Hawaian shirts, CDs, DVDs and footy scarves there were bibs for babies! Your choice, either "Weddings, Parties, Anything.. 10 year reunion", or the magnificently tongue-in-cheek titled "Spawn of the Women."

I'm no good at writing gig reviews so I'll give it a miss, they opened with Wide Open Road, I think everyone had a good time, I ran into an old friend from years back and we all left contented.

If they all jumped off a cliff would you follow? From tbray.org:

nidhogg:~$ history|awk '{a[$2]++} END{for(i in a){printf "%5d\t%s \n",a[i],i}}'|sort -rn|head
   42	cd
   34	ls
   10	grep
    8	make
    5	svn
    5	./ftqviz.py
    4	p9
    4	./ldapstaff
    4	export
    4	du

Hmm, cd, ls, grep, make, then yesterday I was fiddling with svn for a while, trying to get hold of the source for something interesting. The pything was analysing some numbers from a system performance utility, p9 invokes the rc shell of plan9ports. Then right down at number 8 we get to an LDAP wrapper script I use for work-related porpoises!

During some browsing around this partially migrated mess that is my website I've discovered that entries from June and July 2007 seem to have vanished. Did I do that? If so, how did I do that and when did I do that?

Where did they go, and can I get them back?

There must be something about their "professional training", I really can't think of anything else to explain it.

Every day I ride up North road, usually with no problems

Every day I am passed by several hundred cars, usually with no problems.

Every day I am passed by one or two buses from other bus lines, usually with no problems.

About once a month some maniac in a Grendas bus seems to want to kill me.

January, run off the road, then told to G* F*d by Grendas management when I wrote to them.

February, abuse screamed at me by a Grenda driver for being in the adjacent lane 3m from the bus wanting to do a hook turn!

Today, 6115-A0 passed at I guess 70-80km/hr with about 10cm clearance, blew my bag off my back and helmet half off my head. Any chance of pulling out a bit into the (vacant) adjacent lane next time? At the Clayton rd/north rd set of lights I pulled up alongside the bus in the middle lane, 'cos I thought he would be pulling into the bus stop after the lights, but instead WHILE CHATTING ON THE PHONE, he swerved out half a metre into my lane while pulling away from the lights then tore off up North road and through the Dandenong road lights as they went orange to red.

[2008-Apr-08] Revisited: Hmm, maybe someone at Grenda's is getting the general idea. Maybe I just met the other 29/30 day's bus drivers who don't have a problem. This morning Mr Bus driver of 6116-A0 was quite happy to go past with over a metre clearance, even though he had to almost change lanes to do so.

Before

After

We're getting there! Slowly, every so scarily slowly, the front room is progressing from a disaster zone to a bedroom.

The floor is in, the skirting boards replaced or reattached, the timberwork has all been primed, now the walls have been painted. Carpets and curtains and painting the trim remain... and the deadline gets closer.

Now that definitely leaves a bad taste in the mouth Mr Garmin.

You purchase a GPS in good faith, one that comes with a 12 month warranty and so when it breaks you send it back to be repaired. You can't send it to Garmin since they don't have a presence in Australia, instead you have to send it to GME, who are the “sole repair and distribution centre.”

When it comes back you assume that the replacement one has a warranty, then nine or ten months later that one breaks too... that's when you discover that according to GME “they're not real reliable,” but since its a repair unit it only has a 3 month warranty and it'll cost you $AU209 to have your unrepairable GPS replaced! Staff at GME claim to be "only a repair shop" and that I have to discuss it with "Garmin Australia" if I'm not happy with the warranty, or that fact that two out of two Garmin devices have failed in under a year.

Searching about shows that there is no such entity as "Garmin Australia", all references to a Garmin presence in Australia are directed straight back to GME! Garmin's "international office" in the US won't help, since I'm not in the US, and helpfully directed me to contact Garmin South-East Asia, which have a website in Taiwan that is solely in Chinese characters.

So two years of endless firmware hangs and two broken Edge 305 GPSs can be summarised as: nice concept, crap product, crap firmware, crap warranty and crap support.

Thanks Garmin.

There I was, riding up Beddoe avenue to Monash uni. on my way to work, slowing for the roundabout, looking left, right and straight ahead for motorists, checking for ijuts riding on the footpath who shoot across in front of you, watching for some of our less knowledgeable overseas students who drive, ride or walk unpredictably or on the wrong side of the road, indicating right an' all — employing all the usual safeguards at this tiny little roundabout... then out of the blue whump

The attack of the jaywalking uni-student, he launched himself out from behind the power-pole, eyes on the ground, not looking left, not looking right. Straight into the front wheel, stopped me dead as I flipped up and over and down ontop of the bike. He apologised profusely, claimed he only looked for cars, left me a scrawled name and phone number and continued on his way.

The road bike is now unridable until I get new handlebars, and since the forecast is for 39°C it'll be a hot walk home.

Miscellaneous small bruises, and aching shoulders and wrists from the hand-stand in the middle of the road, but thankfully no major damage.

Yet another in the endless daily stream of people not watching where they're going, and finally the odds caught up with me and I failed to avoid him.

Playing around with google Docs. I can't seem to find a way to make an X-Y chart that has a date along the bottom. That graph should be from September 2002 to March 2008, but I can't figure out how to make the dates appear.

What's in a name? An awful lot it appears... especially if you're seven months pregnant, don't know the sex of the baby and have no real idea of what to call it.

Canvassing some outside assistance we appealed to the nieces on the weekend; according to one set of twins our options now seem to include Charlotte and Prancer — from Saddle Club I believe — try explaining that one to the kid when they're at school “Mummy, why am I called a reindeer name?” The other twins are quite firm in their belief that only babies have names, “It can't have a name while its still a lump inside, silly!” The silly aunt and uncle retired, suitably chastised.

Nephews had previously proposed Ann and Zac for a girl or a boy respectively, an impressive pun on the due date of April 25 (ANZAC day).

Driving home we thought that Reality was a good option, similar in style to a lot of translated African and Asian names that seem to sound slightly odd in English, but open to any number of puns like “You can't handle Reality...” and “There's no escape from Reality.”

Boy, Girl, Giraffe? Who knows. Currently known by the temporary name of Marty monster and apparently trying out for early admission to the Socceroos as striker.

Ugh, why did I volunteer for this? I admit it, I was hoping that BV's offer would put me on North road so I could see first hand just how few people really use the useless "bicycle lane". “Volunteer to take part in a bicycle commuter survey, tell us where you live and work and we'll place you somewhere nearby”. I volunteered, I specified Oakleigh and Clayton — 5km apart — they put me down on the Nepean highway 10km away in Moorabbin in the opposite direction!

So, a free orange tee-shirt in size extra-bed-sheet large and a $50 donation to the bicycle user group of my choice. That's what I get for standing on the corner of Nepean highway and South road for two hours being deafened by truckages. Below follows a very unscientific summary of two hours of my life from 7:00 to 9:00a.m. this morning:

One cyclist said hello, but she's a friend and she recognised me.

One commodore, 6:55am, P-plates, three lads, front passenger screamed C*#NT! while rear passenger spat out the window — I retired to higher ground in case they returned.

There is no coffee, bakery or toilets nearby.

Bicycle Victoria supplies nice neat sheets showing four roads and Left/right/straight for each of those four roads — 12 combinations to tick for each rider.

Melbourne supplies cyclists who ride up the footpath, the wrong way up feeder lanes, or diagonally across arbitrary combinations of pedestrian crossing and road — this makes ticking the tick boxes more interesting and open to interpretation.

In every given 15 minute period I saw more motorists illegally on the phone than I saw in cyclists.

128 cyclists in 2 hours, 1 recumbent, no penny farthings, 1 cyclist ran a red light, 7 had no helmets, 31 either arrived or left the intersection riding on the footpath.

...and surprise surprise, the most popular direction was the 41 people going straight north heading for the city.

Ah, yet again the wonders of the two newspapers. Same story, reporting the same court result, just look at the slant each gives:

Slow service killer gets 7 years

A restaurateur has been jailed for seven years for the manslaughter of a patron who complained about slow service.

...more

'Slow service' killer may be out quickly

A RESTAURATEUR who stabbed a patron to death after he complained about slow service could be free in little more than two years.

...more

So do you know what is going on in the world, or is your News Limited?

On it goes...

  Drivers find cyclists a road hazard
  from Herald Sun; State News

MORE than 60 per cent of Victorian motorists find cyclists are a road hazard, according to research carried out by insurer AAMI.

...

Anything to sell more newspapers, split the population into "us vs them", pick a minority and stir, this is the way of the little paper.

It contains such gems as "47 per cent of Victorian car drivers have had a close call with a cyclist", but somehow seems to neglect to ask what percentage of motorists have had a close call with another motorist.

Amazingly, in amongst all the diatribe and hate-mail posted in the feedback and followups, a few voices of reason have been allowed to be printed, and not (yet) removed by the editors.

Still the aggro continues.

Seems some bright spark decided a little vigilante action was called for on the weekend and spread tacks on Beach road, in amongst the reports from the police calling it callous, stupid and dangerous, and yet more diatribe offering to simply kill people on bikes, someone came up with this gem:

We may have finally found a use for all those new terrorism laws the Howard government was so keen on.

Provided we use the basic definition of a terrorist act as violence against civilians used in the persuit(sic) of a political aim (in this case getting bikes of Beach rd), then this should fit the bill.

So it goes on....

Meanwhile, outside it is magnficent late summer weather just perfect for cycling, the sun is out, its not too hot or too cold and there's not much wind, but inside, malignant spirits attack their keyboards and vent their spleens.

For the first day of semester it was amazingly uneventful; the mass of bods queued up for the bus at Huntingdale station delayed the bus for so long that I'd made it the entire way to Monash uni without being caught and buzzed by a number 900 "smart bus"

One brief hair-raising moment came in the carparks of the uni; the self-important security staff standing in the middle of the roads "guiding" traffic, telling people who wanted to turn left to turn left, telling people who wanted to go straight ahead to... um, go straight ahead. Unfortunately one of these geniuses told someone driving towards me to turn right straight across my path, then spun around and laughed as I slid to a stop to avoid going over the bonnet. A little traffic management training would be helpful guys...

Looking forward to my first encounter with "new student in shiny car going wrong way round ring road", it happens each year, somewhere before week 3...

Worst part of the day was the coffee machine — nearly three months old and its out of action again. Couldn't possibly be due to the rather haphazard weekly cleaning its been subjected to, could it?

I'd love to believe that Garmin's Edge 305 is a great piece of equipment, but unfortunately my experiences with the device — two so far — have left me unconvinced.

From day one it has been subject to battery draining hangs if you don't switch it off and disconnect it from the PC in precisely the right order, and even then sometimes it'll just hang. You get into the habit of switching off, unplugging, then switching it back on briefly just to check. A number of firmware updates haven't cured the problem, perhaps lessening the frequency though. Its the only USB device I've ever heard of that has this problem.

Another design flaw seems to be a loose mounting bracket and a mount almost at one end — it always seemed wobbly and eventually my first one fell out when I hit a bump and smashed the display. Just under ten months life for that one.

Four weeks later I received a replacement, still subject to the software hangs.

Nearly ten months into the life of the second unit, in early December 2007, and I noticed that one of the buttons didn't work anymore, but I don't tend to use the up/down arrows so I've no idea how long that was the case, then a few weeks later it started to randomly turn itself off if I hit a bump in the road. I resisted sending it back to GME until after the Alpine Classic in late January, then today posted it off for repair or replacement.

Now the wait, hopefully not another four weeks, until I get it back. A dodgy product or just bad luck and two bad items?

Updated: Ah damn, I guess I should have read all the data off it before I shipped it off, I think it unlikely that they'll send it back with the memory still full, especially if it gets replaced. Oh no, I've lost all records of my commutes since Feb. 8!

One chopper anyway. I wonder what it was all about? From before noon until at least four o'clock the police helicopter went around and around and around Oakleigh, there were no sirens, no fires, the trains were still running, but the chopper just kept going up and down Warrigal road, past the shops, sometimes right over the house, other times a bit to the south. Later in the afternoon we watched the police board a train at Huntingdale and go from carriage to carriage while it waited at the station, then get off empty handed and allow the train to proceed.

I wonder if we'll ever find out what it was all about?

[2008-Feb-20] Aha! From the little paper, the mystery revealed:

Cops keep track of train gangs

HUNDREDS of menacing youths from rival gangs spread fear across Melbourne's east as they rode trains and threatened violence yesterday....

I guess we must have missed the fear and threats of violence, all we saw was the helicopter and coppers. Amusingly, in reference to the police media spokesperson:

He was unable to confirm reports from several residents that the police chopper had been hovering overhead to monitor the movement of the youths.

Well Sen-Constable David Fitzgerald, you may be unable to confirm it, but I certainly can!

After what felt like such a hot summer its already starting to feel like autumn is on the way. The mornings are getting cooler, its not quite as sunny when we get the up, the air a bit chill and I start to debate whether the summer jerseys are enough for the ride to work.

Then around mid-morning we realise there's still a way to go, it's still hot outside in the middle of the day, here at work the cicadas sometimes sing, the birds are madly screeching in the trees and the sun beats down.

At home there's plenty of summer fruit around and the gardens are still dry. Plums hang over the back fence and figs ripening on the trees in the neighbour's garden — the lorikeets knew exactly when they ripened and there's been endless shrieking from the trees for three days or so. Nothing much in our garden though, a handful of tomatoes from a dozen bushes, a small handful of chillies, the corn all stunted with some small half-ripe cobs, the beans died off without flowering, the olive tree nearly dead. Maybe next year we'll have more success.

...or watermelon pips through the fingers

Sometimes it seems that just when you've found a favourite restaurant that isn't too expensive, isn't too far away, that serves good food and has good service, sometimes it seems that they just don't stay open for very long.

I've no idea how long Gasi Busi had been there on Poath road, from the freshness of the decor only a year or so I suspect — a suburban Korean restaurant with a little more atmosphere than the all-too-common laminex tables and bright fluorescent lights. The food was fantastic and the staff always friendly.

Tonight we went to visit and were surprised to find that although still a Korean restaurant the name has changed — they're now Kimchi Country, the owners and staff are new, the lights are turned up as bright as they'll go, the repainting makes it look a little too much like a factory floor, the food isn't as good as it used to be and the service could definitely be improved.

There's a lot of Korean competition in the nearby area, I guess Gasi Busi had their day and have moved on. I guess we'll be moving on too.

Do I feel inspired with confidence by this organisation?

Half-tempted to book an inspection of the house by Archicentre, to see what they have to say about the sloping floor and other oddities in our house, I had a browse around their website. It all looks a little amateurish and out-of-date, half the pages are on http://www.archicentre.com.au/, the other half appear as URLs off http://www.greenweb.com.au/. No proof-reading in evidence, the typos. are proof of that.

Apparently you fill out a web-form with your details and phone number and they then phone you back to arrange the inspection. Half-heartedly I filled out the request form — noting carefully that they've omitted all mention of costs from every part of their website — then hit submit. Internal Server Error

Bugger.

Tried from a different PC, different web browser, once again:

  Internal Server Error

  The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was
  unable to complete your request.

  Please contact the server administrator,
  webmaster@archicentre.com.au and inform them of the time the error
  occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the
  error.

OK, I'll send an email to webmaster@archicentre.com.au, letting them know.

Ten minutes later:

  Deliver Notification: Delivery has failed.

  Your message cannot be delivered to the following recipients:

  Recipient address: webmaster@archicentre.com.au
  Reason: Remote SMTP server has rejected address
  Diagnostic code: smtp;550 5.1.1 User unknown

So the website doesn't work, the email doesn't work either, and the only person we know who has had an Archicentre inspection of their house and got the report and ticks of approval had the hot-water heater fall off the wall three days after they moved in.

I think we'll save the $495 and not book their inspection.

Welcome to Hulas2, decalcification necessary

Pah, I shouldn't have bothered to even open the envelope. After writing two weeks ago to Grenda's buses to complain about being run off the road and shouted at by one of their drivers, today I received a response.

Our office has received your correspondence dated 9th January 2008. You have raised an issue of immense interest. Our policy is very supportive of your sentiments that we must all do our best to share the roads and respect the road laws. However, it is from this point on our interpretations diverge.

Three more paragraphs stating that in their opinion the bus lane along North road is a lane for the exclusive use of buses.

No mention of me being run off the road.

No mention of what, if any, action they'll take regarding the driver of 6114-A0.

No mention of what, if any, action they'll take to stop other drivers attacking people with their buses.

Pathetic.

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During the post-Christmas cleanup I found a piece of the cardboard box from a rather dubious fruit mince pie in a “Christmas hamper.” The ingredients are:

Wheat flour, Fruit Mince 30% (Sugar, Dried Fruits 32% (Sultanas (Vegetable Oil from Soy), Citrus Peel (Sugar, Citrus Peel), Food Acid (330), Preservative (223)), Currants (Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil), Apple Pulp, Glucose Syrup, Humectant (320), Water, Thickeners (1442, 440), Spice Extracts, Acidity Regulator (320), Colour (150c), Salt), Margerine (Vegetable Oils (Palm, Palmoleum, Soybean, Cotton Seed, Rice Bran, Sunflower, Sesame), Water, Salt, Emulsifiers (471, 435), Antioxidant (319)), Shortening (Palmoleum, Rice Bran Oil, Sesame Oil), Vitamin A, Vitamin D), Sugar, Glucose Syrup, Egg, Milk Solids, Raising Agents (450, 500, Wheat Starch). MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF NUTS

Not surprisingly, it tasted revolting. It took a second bite to verify, then spat it out and threw the whole thing in the compost. I am impressed by the multiple levels of brackets in the paragraph, it starts to look like a lisp program!

How odd... as I was riding along North road this morning I was thinking that I really should write back to Vic. Roads and thank them for their clarification of the use of the bus lanes. Less than a minute later I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing as a Vic. Roads maintenance vehicle drove out of a side-street, safety orange light busy spinning around on the roof, assorted warning signs all sitting in the back... and the driver chatting away on THE MOBILE PHONE. Bloody typical. Debated jotting down the details to forward them to Vic. Roads for comment, but then it all went out the window, and out of memory, in a frantic bid for self-preservation.

The driver of the 9 o'clock Grenda's route 900 bus, rego. 6114-A0 then tried to run me off the road. Blasting on the horn as he went flying past without pulling out, forced me completely out of the lane and onto the 20cm wide, debris-filled concrete kerb. When I caught him at the Dandenong road intersection he told me that it was "bus lane, you not allowed to ride in it". I informed him I had been told by Vic Roads that I could and was told "You not allowed to ride after 8:30". I informed him again that Vic Roads had told me that it was legal for cyclists to use the bus lane at all times and he changed his words to "I just letting you know I was there".I pointed out that I was fully aware of his presence and that his actions were aggressive, dangerous and unnecessary. He told me I should not ride on the road. At this point I realised it was pointless to continue attempting to discuss it with him, and as per the recommendations of the two other cyclists at the intersection, I recorded the details of his vehicle.

I've written to Grenda bus lines, with Cc to Bike Vic and Vic Roads, asking for their response to this drivers actions, and what they intend to do to prevent it recurring. I have asked that they not introduce specious arguments to the effect that I should use off-road cycle paths, as under no circumstances do their presence, however unsuitable they may be for commuter cycling, excuse road rage in other vehicle operators.

...as for the "bicycle path", well it still isn't finished, and it still has all the design problems that make it appear more of an after-thought designed from a viewpoint of getting bicycles off the road and not with any view of providing all road users, be it by car, bicycle or bus with a safe and effective route.

So far this year I've seen about twenty people cycling along North road, in all cases they've chosen to ride on the road, since it appears that the incomplete and unsuitable "bicycle path" doesn't provide any advantages — and in many ways, its presence reinforces the dangerous belief in many people's minds that cyclists have to get off the roads.

1. [2008.01.11] — Damn! Just saw on my scribble pad notes that although I'd written 6114-A0, in the letter I've written to Grenda I typed 9114-A0, probably because it was route 900 at 9 o'clock.

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Slightly different to last year's ride — instead of a stinking hot, dry, dusty northerly blowing, this year we copped a rather bracing cool southerly. Made the last 20km North from Breamlea to Geelong a "breeze", but certainly was a demoralising slog for most of the second half of the ride along the southern side of the Bellarine peninsula.

For a ride that seeks to promote cycle safety and good relations between motorists and cyclists, and indeed between all people on the roads, two incidents stick in my mind from the day. Neither from the ride itself:

The first was during the drive in to Geelong in the morning; close to eight a.m., increasing traffic, nearly every car seemed to contain one or two bikes and riders. As the traffic slowed from an 80 to 70km/hr section and slowed further for some traffic lights I saw an idiot approach from the rear. Swerving through the three lanes of traffic he was obviously very important and on a very urgent mission. As he passed I saw that not only was the idiot on the phone, steering with one hand and zig-zagging through traffic, but that the bike was on the rear seat and he was on his way to the start of the ride.... Approaching the lights he must have received last minute phone instructions as he served from the right-most lane, across three lanes of traffic, over the start of the traffic island and made it, tyres screeching, around the left turn and towards Corio bay.

The second was on the ride back around the bay from the finish to where I'd parked the car. A massive blast on the horn as an old Ford passed, four yobs hanging out the window, waving arms and fists like mad and screaming abuse.

Unfortunately I can't see the Amy Gillett foundation changing anything much around here in a hurry.

[2008-01-07] Update: Cadel Evans, runner-up in last year's Tour de France, who guest commentated at Amy's ride:

“THERE is nowhere on Earth that Cadel Evans feel less safe on his bike than here at home.”

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/evans-laments-dangerous-attitude-on-the-roads/2008/01/06/1199554486502.html

Indirectly, via Kevin Marks, irresistable!

1. The first article title on the Wikipedia Random Articles page is the name of your band.
2. The last four words of the very last quotation on the Random Quotations page is the title of your album.
3. The third picture in Flickr's Interesting Photos From The Last 7 Days will be your album cover.
4. Use your graphics programme of choice to throw them together, and post the result.

I got 1, 2, 3, 4 resulting in:

Munroethuruth's "Of Whom are Absent"

Interestingly, the meme takes no account of any copyright present in the photographs from Flickr, and as the one I found says "All rights reserved" all I feel comfortable with doing is presenting the image as is.

Time to bite the bullet, out with the old looking site and in with the new. Not just the look either, the mess of pages generated in myriad different ways had been annoying me, it was all just too unmaintainable.

Page the first… now to back-fill with the rest.

If there's anything in particular that someone is looking for, it should return shortly. If you're in a real hurry, let me know which page you're missing and I'll transmogrify it into the new system.

…please stand by…