ajft

Another hot, sultry night, the wind banging the blinds around, too hot to sleep... Nine AM and the rain has just cooled things off a little, but not enough to inspire me to do anything or move anywhere.

Rain! Torrential, cooling rain...

New Years celebrations were very laid back. Four of us went to dinner at The Gate in Church street, where we were charged a 10% NYE surchage — “Just because we can.” After the dinner we walked down to the river and stood on the footbridge half-way across, watching the taller parts of the city fireworks displays as they appeared above the trees.

Thirty degrees at nine in the morning, last night's cool change petered out into a smattering of rain drops and no drop in temperature. There's many things I could do with my three days off, but today, no incentive to do anything very much, just move slowly, sip cool drinks, and listen to music....

This time last year, we were just starting out New Zealand bike tour — we must get around to deciding — soon — once and for all whether we're going on the Geneva to Verona ride later this year....

Another lazy Sunday down at Lorne — I took off by myself in the morning to wander along the beach — alone in the crowds, watching as people staked out their territory for the day with towels and sun shelters and bags. Then up to the shops to rummage through the second-hand book-shops. They're not cheap, but there's plenty of choice as people discard unwanted Christmas presents and holiday reading. I nearly picked up a Lawrence Durrell novel or two — after thinking I should read some for many months — but they all seemed to be the “continued” part of a four or five book series.

The tide is a long way out again, same as yesterday, and the beach is full of people.

On the ugly side, the entire foreshore has been turned into one enormous carpark. The bowling club has been bulldozed and replaced by a carpark, but the old carpark still exists, and in the interests of rampant consumerism and packing even more people in, cars are parked across the remaining grass areas and footpaths. There's still no way of crossing the road anywhere in Lorne — the entire town is one side of the Great Ocean Road, the beach is on the other, and not a single pedestrian crossing anywhere.

Everyone is sitting around waiting for the cool change to come through — even at eleven in the morning. It's nearly 30°C, gray and overcast, and humid enough that the flies and children are driving people crazy....

Saturday morning at Lorne, the standard ritual: Toast, coffee, and the newspaper, followed by a walk down the hill then around the beach to the pier. The tide is the lowest I can remember, and we could walk out under the pier, something neither Jo nor I could remember ever being able to do. A striking view out from under the concrete piles towards the bay.

The exceptionally low tide provided us with a myriad of rock-pools that aren't normally visible. The number of people now visiting the beach seems to have resulted in all the normal rock-pools being bereft of any life other than a handfull of snails, but the pools revealed today were swarming with different types of fish, small crabs and crayfish and shellfish of all kinds.

... and in world-shattering news, I actually went for a swim this afternoon. Highly unusual, all around me were shocked! My dislike for cold water and the beach at Lorne don't usually go well together, but the weather was hot and the sea not as frigid, so in I went.

Day three of Monash-induced stupidity. Yep — back at work for the three hours from nine to noon. I'll try to stay awake... There's my most recent photos to organize and a few bits of journal to write...

To read, there's a christmas email/webpage from my cousin to her relatives and friends — an extensive list, it probably includes half the uk! It took some time to get my head around the characters and the plot... Almost as convoluted as The Usual Suspects, which Joey and I sat and watched last night — Yay! — about time we started using our TV!

Joey is grinning from ear to ear with her new toy — the Xbox — even if neither of us is very good at any of the games we've got. I think we're both suffering from reflexes that are a decade too old for video games!

A spur of the moment decision on the ride home this afternoon and I came by “Bike Track” rather than road. What should I run into but a very large council truck completely blocking the path — I am going to have to create a page/photo-album dedicated to the things that I find blocking so-called bicyle facilities... To top it off, one of the myriad of patches of glass has succeeded in puncturing my rear tyre, so I rode home with a gradually softening rear end. Hardly surprising that I've got a puncture, considering the sheer quantity of broken bottles on the path now that the school holidays have commenced.

Desperate to get out of the house for some exercise, we headed off to find the mysterious foot-bridge over the Yarra. Yesterday morning, a casual browse through the street directory showed that what we had thought was only a rail-bridge between Richmond and South Yarra appeared to have a footpath alongside. All this brought on by the trivia question “How many churches are there in Richmond?” Sure enough, once we managed to find the access track down behind the Country Road offices, there is a set of stairs up onto the rail lines, and then a footpath over the river.

Once over the river, we continued all the way back along the southern bank to MacRobertson Bridge, a two-hour walk by the time we got home, and one that was nerve wracking in places as families wobbled past on their newly-unwrapped department store bicycles — knees stuck out to the sides from seats too low and helmets on the backs of their heads. Near Herring Island we stopped to watch a heron, or maybe an egret, stalking along in the shallows. Apparently Herring Island is named after Sir Whats-his-name Herring, who had something to do with the Boy Scouts, and not after the little fish, which made sense, since I don't think any self-respecting herring would care to be caught this far up the muddy river.

Christmas day, much feasting and unwrapping. Apparently Jo had an inkling of what her large present might be, but wasn't sure until she opened it — the fact that she's been bugging me for a Playstation everytime we saw one in the shops or catalogues should have been a dead give-away. Anyway, its an Xbox, not a Playstation, since I've heard that Microsoft loses money every time someone buys one.

Tuesday; Christmas Eve — woke to hear Biggsy playing The Clash on the radio this morning and thought that all was well with the world — then heard that Joe Strummer had died the previous night. This afternoon I sat on the couch and listened to a few hours of Clash compilations.

Tonight; off to the Corner Hotel to see Mick Thomas — a Christmas Eve institution — the music between the bands was a Clash tape. Between songs, Mick observed that he'd first heard Joe Strummer here in the Corner, then launched into I Could Spot You Anywhere — a song with references to finding someone at the Big Day Out. Flashback to January 1997 — Big Day Out at Flemington showgrounds — I walked in the gate, overwhelmed and disoriented, and paused to get my bearings at the RRR stage. Joe Strummer was playing, two friends of mine walked straight up to me out of the crowd, it was the most memorable performance of the show...

...but back to today... Dinner at Silvio's, yet another great pizza and a couple of glasses of wine. The place is an institution.

Mick Thomas on Christmas eve is another — some of the songs off the forthcoming album sounding a bit odd though — I guess they'd sound alright on a Saturday afternoon in the sun, but on Christmas Eve in the Corner, the crowd seemed to want a little more. Michael Barclay was the unexpected guest, and almost unrecognisable with his hair cut neat, and an enormous grin as he seemed to be having a ball. I half-attempted to take some photos, but my camera just isn't up to it. The combination of a weak flash and a slow response from trigger to capture means that I get some interesting, and very dark, shots two seconds after I push the button — like Michael Barclay with a castanet and mike stand in front of his face!

A good night though — Jo was a little disappointed about the songs that weren't played, although I pointed out that more keep getting written, and so some old ones must be left out, and that going to a gig and complaining that you only like “their old stuff” is a sure sign of impending old-age and senility.

What a stupid day to be at work! Monash shut down last Friday, but the powers that be have decided that we'll have one staff member from each area present from 9 to 12 each day. Today I'm it. Three hours of reading email and browsing the web!

The world is too small a place — I discovered at dinner that a cycling friend of mine in Melbourne who has lived in Brisbane, is also friends with Dr Alan, a cyclist I know from Brisbane... I guess its not that unlikely, but it came as a surprise.

Last night we decided on the spur of the moment to have dinner at Kanzaman, a Lebanese restaurant that's up the street — optimistically, we chose the banquet for two... It was fantastic food, the same as the last time we were there, and there was even a visit from a local belly dancer to entertain the diners.

After sitting around lazily all morning trying not to get too hot — while the temperature climbed towards the predicted maximum of 36°C — we headed over to visit friends for an afternoon barbecue. A brief interlude of paranoia while Marko and Lesley thought that nobody was going to show up, followed by several hours of good company as we all lazed around in the garden, only getting up to move as the patches of shade moved.

Sunrise 5:57am (AUSEDT), sunset 8:37pm (AUSEDT) at Melbourne, VIC, AU (14:39 hours daylight)
Full Moon 6:09am (AUSEDT)
Monash: Last working day for 2002

Very strange weather this morning — quite warm, but foggy enough that we couldn't see the city. It was strange riding to work in warm fog! Summer solstice too...

The last working day of the year — except for me, since I'm down as the volunteer to man the phones next week. Nobody interested in doing anything very much.

An interesting bit of discussion is going on at the moment in one of the cycling groups regarding Hokey Spokes, and other non-standard lighting. Nobody is quite sure what the laws state — I was under the impression that the red rear and white front were mandatory, and that anything else was prohibited, much the same as motor vehicle rules. Some people seem to view that because the regulations only mention motor vehicles, bicycles can be decked out however they want — in my opinion this is getting close to stating that bikes are toys and not vehicles... the debate continues.

CMS MLP

More things about CMS:

[http://tikiwiki.sourceforge.net/]

TikiWiki: yet another Wiki, could be worth investigating.

[http://touchgraph.sourceforge.net/]

TouchGraph: Graphical browser of wiki's.

Sound, colour, excitement, food — it must be the annual ITS Christmas party. The time of the year when we must pretend that we're all bosom buddies and all working towards the same goal...

A large array of inflatable bouncy-castles had been procured — probably at great expense — in order to ensure that all of ITS had “a good time.” There was a small bouncy castle, a jousting thing, a large slide, and a horizontal bungy-jump. These were all roasting hot in the sun, and only a couple of them were used to their full! I was most dissappointed that despite the signs everywhere proclaiming that they all belonged to “Pete the camel man” — A Camel Hire there was not a single camel to be seen. Apparently after 25 years of hiring out camels, the increases in insurance have killed off that part of the business.

Apologies to viewers using Microsoft's Internet Explorer. After months of using Mozilla to view my own work I've just discovered that IE doesn't correctly interpret the style sheets and leaves my photos hanging off the bottom border. A quick change from a
; to an empty <p> and all is back in order...

This all came about because today's Mozilla daily is badly broken — it won't display anything at all.

... so many things I'd like to change on this site.

• a new logo, but every attempt I've had to create an image of my monogram has failed — dismally.
• my photos — still a mess. I want some of the features of Gallery, without all the ugly URLs and embedded tables and cruft. Change the backend without changing all the links...
• A more “CMS-like” setup. I still want text-only page content, but with the indexes and page wrappers autogeneratd — and definitely no ugly great URLs like those that seem to be generated by most CMS applications.

Ow, Ow, Ow! I think I've broken a toe... Half-asleep this morning, I managed to kick the wardrobe door and get my toes jammed between the bottom of the door and the carpet. Toe is now an interesting purple colour.

For about a week now there's been a dumped car at the side of the road in Oakleigh, the only odd thing is that the registration plates are still attached. It's gradually increasing in entropy as people smash more and more parts of it. I wish I'd got a photo of it when it first appeared — a time-lapse sequence perhaps....

One of my coworkers managed to absolutely amaze me today. I had no idea that supposedly intelligent people could come out with statements like:

“I just change my own car oil then poor the waste into a corner of my garden — it just soaks away...”

When I asked him about pollution, the fact that it drains straight into the storm-water and into Port Phillip bay, he just shrugged and said he just pours it into his garden....

This evening's entertainment was a trip to the Balwyn Cinema for the latest James Bond movie — Die Another Day — it's just too long since I last saw a good Bond movie — or indeed any Bond movie! The usual satisfying mix of explosions, evil genius bad-guys, car-chases and scantily clad ladies.... The only dissapointing scenes to me were the very unrealistic looking surfing scenes, both at the beginning and later in the movie.

A hot day at last! Joey and I journeyed into the city to visit the Queen Victoria markets — something we've been meaning to do for ages. I'm not sure what was the most fun; looking at all the fruit and veges that we don't need to buy, or wandering through the aisles of cheap clothes and complete crap that various dodgy-looking vendors try to sell. The funniest was a battery-operated toy soldier — I think he's meant to be doing a commando-crawl along the ground, but to everyone watching, they looked like weird homo-erotic groin-rubbing motions. Each time we saw one we burst out laughing.

This evening there was a Bund Christmas barbecue at the house of droo. An untimely event, since Bund christmas events are usually held sometime in June or July. The obligatory collection of digital cameras and geeky toys were present, as was some magnificent food, and some highly spicy sausages. There should be some photos, probably on cos' elsewhere, but I can't find them yet....

An invisible kind of a morning! After visiting the fruit and vege. markets, we dropped in for breakfast at Blue Heaven. Coffee arrived, the breakfast order vanished. After investigating, we got the breakfast, then were not charged for the coffees, since the order had vanished. Half an hour later, we called in at the bakery for a second coffee — ten minutes later it hadn't turned up, so I enquired. The whole order had vanished. Coffee was created, delivered, appologies were made and accepted, together with a joking comment from the waiter that perhaps today would be a bad day to go out for dinner...

Somewhere along the way we bought a new tent. It was a bit of a whim, but AU$75 for a three-man tent was too much to resist. My hike-tent is fine for one person — and excellent to carry on the bike — but is too small for two people and their luggage. For the last year we've been borrowing a three man tent (for three small korean men) from some friends, now we can finally hand it back and luxuriate on our next camping trip — whenever that is.

It sounded a little strange — “the tepanyaki restaurant in the K-mart carpark” — but the food belied the trepidation. The usual prowess that you'ld expect from the chef, the fun and games of him flicking the cooked egg at the customers, and tasty fresh food cooked right there in front of you....

Maybe, just maybe, the weather is warming up for the weekend... I'm getting really tired of wearing my winter cycling top in the middle of December!

Richmond: 144° 59' 45.3" -37° 49' 41.6"
Clayton: 145° 7' 35.1" -37° 55' 26.3"

I'm bored, here's a picture of my desk at Monash. Currently visible are all the bits of junk that I work with each day. Inspired by — and submitted to — the collection at [http://snapyourdesk.barkins.com/]

Wake up summer time! This is getting ridiculous — nearly three weeks of constant drizzly cool weather — it was 14.5°C today at noon!

This afternoon I ran a bit of a sanity-check through my journal, my bike ride notes and my website. Still not sure who the intended audience is of any of these, my writing in the paper journal has dropped right off, some of it due to me writing more here, some of it due to less time by myself. I guess there's some truth to the saying that diaries are only written by the weird or the lonely...

After much procrastination I've finished going through the scrawled notes that I took during January and the blank places in my journal, and written up the rest of our New Zealand bike tour. After emailing a guy in the UK who is going to NZ, I'd referred him to my trip — then decided I'd better finish writing so it all made sense! Unfortunately there are way too many places where I've obviously left myself a half-empty page — to be filled in later — and then never got around to it.

Do I laugh or cry? The motorists on the ride home... First was my attempted murder by the idiot driving the 2 tonne truck, rego. FPM-659, turned right straight across my path at the lights of Malvern road and Darling road — he nearly had bike and rider embedded in his door at 40km/hr. My shout should have been loud enough, but he was blissfully unaware, mobile phone glued to his ear. At least the ambulance parked right next to me would have been able to render assistance.

Five minutes later, still fuming, I got to see the funny side of the motoring idiot. On High street there's traffic lights for a pedestrian crossing, a gap one car length, a railway crossing, then the lights over the freeway. While I'm sitting at the pedestrian crossing the next set of lights went green, the 4WD Pathfinder next to me started up and drove straight through the red lights of the crossing, then the driver realised and stopped just before the railway lines. Then the level crossing lights came on, then the boom-gate slowly came down. Lower... and lower... then — BONG! — as the gate hit the bonnet. Only then did the driver put the 4WD into reverse and leap backwards like a startled cat! Myself and a few people on the footpath couldn't help ourselves, and burst out laughing.

Woohoo! The mysterious lump in my finger has mostly gone away. I think I did the equivalent of the traditional “belt it with a bible” trick — running upstairs for a coffee, I managed to hit my hand against the door handle. Hurts like crazy, but the lump has gone!

Bah! That'll teach me to clean my bike — half-way to work this morning and it started to rain again. Yet another cold, grey, drizzly day. So much for summer time...

The Nigerians, the Nigerians... In what must be some kind of record, there are four Nigerian Business Offer scams in my inbox this morning! Its frightening that there are so many stupid gullible people in the world to make these scams work.

My “Just in time Bike Ride entry scheme just failed me. Leaving it far too late for the Alpine Classic, something I've never quite had the courage to enter previously. I tried today and found that they're all booked out. If vacancies are available, they'll be announced today... Oh well, at least I've managed to enter the Bicycle NSW Big Ride for next March, it'll be strange to be doing it alone, since Jo doesn't have enough leave. I must remember to book some leave for that....

More cycling-related news. Some friends from the France tour last year, Karen and David sent me an email today to say they've had a baby — a very small baby compared to the size of my nieces!

Another day, another wedding task... today was the day of the cake. At least cake testing is not an onerous task, especially when it's a great big chocolate mud-cake that you've decided on! Under quarter of an hour, into the shop, check the pictures, point to the preferred shape and decoration, wave arms wildly around the head and leave. Either we're easily pleased, or we know what we like...

Jo's movie with friends fell through, so the two of us headed into the city to see the Gleaners and I, something I've had on my “to view” list for some time. Unlike a lot of movies on this list, I actually got to see it before the season finished! As the IMDB says:

An intimate, picaresque inquiry into French life as lived by the country's poor and its provident, as well as by the film's own director...

I think they mean picturesque, but you get the idea. A touching film, it struck a lot of resonances with me on the subjects of waste, on recycling, and on the stupidity of a lot of foods' “use-by” dates. One amusing thing I noticed was that with the French dialogue, naturally all the units were metric — or Francs — but the sub-titles had been translated into American, with pounds, inches and dollars.

Woke to more rain and drizzle and a definite non-summer Saturday. Miraculously, our Christmas lights are still working, although four bulbs at the end of the strand are out of action and seem to be full of water.

A typical Saturday, coffee and scrambled eggs, the paper and the crossword, then a frantic dash up the road to the markets before they shut at noon! Lunch of fresh bread and delicious tomatoes, then a walk the full length of Richmond. Past the myriad of girlie-clothes shops, twisting and turning through the crowds along the path to our first stop — Richmond Hill Café and Larder, to check out their famous “cheese-room” and be overwhelmed at the selection. There's the cheese equivalent of a sommelier in residence, quite happy to talk to absolute novices, equally happy to dispense small tastes of whatever takes your fancy. All the cheeses are labelled in dollars per 250g, since the price per kg would cause heart failure — privately imported boutique cheeses do not come cheap! We left with two very small samples of a Morbier and a Montgomery cheddar, then continued on our walk through East Melbourne to the Fitzroy Gardens.

On Thursday evening, the wedding celebrant had suggested that since she was doing a wedding in the Fitzroy Gardens, we should wander past and see if we liked her style — so feeling very self-conscious, we sauntered up to the wedding and hung around behind all the well-dressed guests. No obviously obnoxious habits were apparent, so we headed off, passing another three weddings in the park on the way out!

Phew! That over, it was back to the Bridge (hotel) for a well-earned beer in the late afternoon sun — but there was no escaping them, today was a day of weddings. Across the road on the lawns of the Ridges hotel were the accoutrements of yet-another one. We sat and laughed as later and later guests arrived, frantically hunted for parking, then dashed across the road to take their places.

Sydney is busy being baked by bushfires, meanwhile, monsoon in Melbourne... Adrian, keep your day job, that's almost good enough for a sub-editor at The Age, but not quite.

Summer ... winter ... summer ... winter...

Wow, massive thunderstorms in the morning. Hail in the afternoon. Showers in between. Almost enough to make you want to stay in bed all day.

... and now a rhetorical question for all you motorists out there: If there was a straight, empty stretch of road, with free parking available along the entire length of it, not one other car in sight, and no restrictions anywhere, would you park across the cyclepath entrance, or would you park somewhere else? (Please forward your answers to the idiot who this morning chose the former)

This evening's rather scary event was a visit to see a wedding celebrant — after weeks of flicking her business card back and forth between us, Jo had more courage than I and called up to see her.

Marg has been recommended by a friend — sitting talking with her brought us suddenly down-to-earth and reminded us that we're getting married, so far everything has just seemed like large-scale event-planning. Nothing too earth-shattering, but both Jo and I had a few moments of butterflies... Marg seems a delightful person, she talked almost non-stop for the hour we were there and had so many suggestions and comments that we were completely over-whelmed at the thought of being able to ask questions!

To celebrate one more mile-stone completed, it was back to Via Ponte for dinner, yet-another of their wondrous pasta dishes, the problem being which to choose!

Bye bye bank! Which bank, I hear you ask... the Commonwealth Bank. Too many months of too many bank fees, total inaction on their part to a request to change my account to a lower-fee type (today's story is that paperwork has been lost). Walked into the office this afternoon, closed my account, walked out again. Nobody there was the slightest bit interested in why, or in persuading me otherwise. The final insult was when I asked to transfer the money from my account to an account with another bank, I was told “it'll take seven to ten days, it's a manual process you know.” I can do it myself with their Internet banking, the staff must be brainwashed into a 1930s paper-based office when they join the bloody institution.

MLP

[http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=332186.545194]

Neal Stephenson on surveillance

First I had an email from a friend, passing on the jdbmgr.exe virus hoax. Then there was yet another Nigerian Business offer sitting in my intray. The other was an hour later by a cow-orker, who received the Friend of a Friend warning of the Wallet and the Terrorist and the plot to blow up the local shopping centre. The minutest piece of cynicism or the tiniest check on the net would have shown this one has been circulating since November 2001, but no, deeply worried, it is forwarded on to all of us.

Or, if you've already received another version of this email: where the Arab drops his wallet in a cab/pub/pole-dancing club; where he gives the date as 28/30 September or 1/5/10 October; or where MI5 turn up at your door with a really big book of wanted terrorists, you might want to reflect on the net hoax phenomenon which can reduce otherwise rational people to headless chickens.

Even after we point out the previous hoaxes, she's still not convinced, just keeps reiterating that “it is better to be safe than sorry.” Sigh Some people just don't seem to get it.

To top it all off, being the start of the school holidays, the bike paths are a mass of broken glass. It looks like the schoolies must have spent most of the weekend getting pissed and smashing bottles. No flat tyres so far....

Answers

The answers to all my questions — from the Royal Australian Mint's website [http://www.ramint.gov.au/]:

When was the $1 coin first released?

1984

When was the $2 coin first released?

1988

When were 1c & 2c coins taken out of circulation?

The last one cent coins were dated 1990 and the last two cent coins were dated 1989. They were progressively removed from circulation starting in 1992.