ajft

Last chance for a bike ride for the year — “Let's go for an easy ride down to Mordialloc,” says Evan. Yeah, right. He's been up at 6am every day for the past three months, clocking up 300km a week and getting faster and faster... I've just been sitting around or riding to work! A hot and tiring 68.3km by the time I got home, that would be, um, err... 8,520km for the 2003 year, not counting rides when I didn't have my odometer with me, or was on another bike, or it just wasn't working.

Lazy hot day at home, I'm on holiday, not feeling too guilty that Jo's back at work...

Chased up Australian Geographic, “where's my subscription?” I thundered. Not quite, just a query to find out why I haven't received number 72 or 73. No idea, they say, but there's another copy on its way as soon as the warehouse re-opens next week.

With Jo's car off the road due to the oil leak, we decided to venture out this evening to a friend's barbecue on the tandem. Only its second ever expedition — I wonder when we stop counting the individual rides? More fun and games man-handling it down the stairs, and then through the barricades at the pedestrian underpass at Burnley station. We're getting the hang of riding it, I'm remembering to warn about pot-holes and speed-humps, and to change down gears before stopping!

Naomi's barbecue was partly to catch up with friends, and partly to try out the telescope that she's borrowed for the summer. Unfortunately none of us really had any idea about setting it up correctly, and the minimalist instruction manual from the Russian manufacturer didn't really help. Still, we eventually managed to find the moon! Amazing to view the craters, but annoying to have to keep adjusting everything to keep it within view. One of the guys then tried to point it to a planet, we think it was mars, but even with it centred perfectly in the smaller site-scope, nothing we did could make it visible in the main telescope — we weren't even sure if the two were lined up properly.

With one last chance to see some nieces for the next few months it was over to my sister's for lunch, a barbecue and a stepping stone on the way back home. Drove along the back-road from Bungendore to Collector, mum warned us that the sign on one of the turnoffs was hard to spot — sure enough, I drove straight past then turned around in a well-worn gravel patch — we were not first! Too far from Lake George to see anything, just a narrow country road through the bush, degenerating into a mass of pot-holes in places.

As usual, Kathy had her hands full of twins. She's loving it, as is Cec. It's definitely keeping them both busy! They still manage to get away to shows and show-jumping, I've no idea how it all fits together. Makes me feel very disorganised. A few more photos of them all — I finally managed to finish the APS film that's been in the camera since November 2001 — and all too soon it was time to leave.

It'll be fascinating to see what's on that film, once I bought the digital camera I just didn't use the Elph much anymore. Too expensive in processing, even if it is a little bit smaller.

Driving, driving, driving... back in the car at three, off up the Federal highway nearly to Goulburn, turn left, drive for seven hours, get back home to Melbourne. Somewhere along the way Jo's car seems to have started spraying oil out under the engine, no warning lights came on, neither of us noticed, but as soon as we got to the city and slowed down we could smell it burning on the exhaust. Too tired to do anything, too dark in the garage and complicated under the car anyway.

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Last minute Christmas shopping panic — everyone else's, not mine! First day of my break, tired from last night's late finish, I wandered up the street at about eleven to gather my thoughts and look around. The more frenetic the crowds got, the more relaxed I felt, their panicing only seemed to emphasise the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do!

Called past the Tennyson building, a lovely old warehouse that's been empty for months. I'd been hoping that it would be redeveloped in a “sensitive” way, maybe keeping the entire old building, or even just the façade. But no, come the first of January, the bulldozers are moving in and the place is being demolished — presumably to make way for more non-descript three-storey townhouse apartments. At least I managed to capture a couple of photos before it vanishes.

Lunch, a little shopping, a leisurely walk and then home for a siesta — all preparation for the long drive up to Yass.

Phew! Just remembered to pay the rent before we close down for Christmas. As always when not at work, its a pain trying to use Konquerer or any other non-Microsoft browser when trying to access businesses over the Internet. After logging in about three times I finally managed to get the applet to load and display my account details!

Too early for New Year's resolutions? Maybe next year I need to tidy up all the loose ends of this site. Too many things that aren't quite right. Too many pages where I've started to say something, but then left it empty as a place-holder. I like the idea of a random photo being included each day, just as a reminder of what I've got!

Work finished early, it always seems a bit pointless on the last few days of the year. Nothing gets done, the jobs are still there, but nobody is interested. I'd feel ripped off if I took leave though — why waste a day of leave when in exchange there is only half a day of work?

Early dinner then off to the Corner Hotel for a Christmas institution — the Mick Thomas Christmas shows. It used to be the Weddoes', for the last few years Mick has been back with his new band — and visitors. There's a tension between what he'd like to play, and the audience stuck in a time-warp, all these very blokey blokes all wanting to chant and swill beer and stomp around and pretend that they're still young and single and at the old Central Club gigs.

A full page article in the Age on Mick and the shows seemed to result in sold-out audiences and far more of the old WPA fans.

First support act was a one-man play performed up on the rooftop, “A Party in Fitzroy.” Very evocative, and exceptionally well done, in what could have been a hostile environment of drinkers and talkers.

Then time for a drink and to sit and talk and watch the sun go down from the rooftop beergarden — first time I've ever managed to get up here! You can see the beergarden from the train, I've thought of heading up there a few times, but each time its either been closed or I was waylaid, or something else came up. Finally up there, a refreshingly un-renovated outdoor oasis, just far enough up from the traffic to be isolated.

Back downstairs in time to catch Nick Barker as first support with his Backyard Six — although whether that's the name of the band or just the name of the latest album I'm not sure. Good as ever, Nick and the band just looked as though they were having so much fun to be there. Covered old songs and new, finishing with a balls-out rocker of “Stone Hearted.”

Next support was Git, a band I've never really enjoyed. Just too much a whining country girl band for me. They seem fairly light-hearted, but I just can't get into their music.

Finally the moment we were all waiting for, eleven o'clock and Mick and the band came on. Two sets and an encore, finishing on the dot of one a.m. There seemed to be a lot more of the older Weddoes material than at previous Sure Things gigs, maybe that newspaper article self-fulfilled by attracting all the old fans. Sure enough, there were plenty of half-drunk neckless yobs stomping around, arms around each others' necks in blokey mateship and screaming out for songs from ten years ago! As always, the final set had the stage filled, Nick Barker, Sarah, Suzannah and Trish — the three women from Git — and Michael Barclay joining the four members of the Sure Thing for a couple of songs.

Up and out of bed early today — well, early for me! After a few too many weekends where I've managed to justify staying at home, or sleeping in, or not going riding, I think it's finally time that I really did get out on my bike and train for the Alpine Classic! Relying on native ability just isn't going to work for 200km of mountain climbs!

The Duke/Myers family barbecue at Shoreham provided the impetus, all I needed to do was ride down there and join them for lunch. Simple really, apart from Jo not being able to quite remember where I was meant to go. Tentative directions and an instruction to phone for help if I got lost!

A wonderful cool morning as I headed off down to St Kilda, onto Beach road and keep heading south. A quick hello to Pete as he was arriving at his shop and then total mayhem — a triathlon had closed Beach road from Brighton to Black Rock and everyone was being redirected onto suburban back-streets. There were cyclists and cars everywhere, nobody seemed to know where they were, or where they were heading, and it was a wonder that I didn't see anyone knocked over with the way they were all tearing along, trying desperately to get further south and back onto Beach road.

Gradually increased in temperature as we got to Mordialloc and then on down to Frankston. As usual, some idiot tried to knock me off my bike in Frankston — petrol-head central. Surprisingly, it wasn't a commodore with P-plates, this time it was an elderly bloke, he sped past flicking my elbow with his mirror — obviously too hard to pull out and go around a cyclist. His next stunt was to stop at the traffic lights and have the passenger throw open the door and step out directly in my path.

Up Oliver's Hill, then through the hills to the Mornington turnoff, pausing to fall ungracefully off my bike at a set of traffic lights. Major embarrassment — the rains of the last week had made one of my cleats a little rusty and I was just a fraction too slow in unclipping when I stopped!

Mornington was busy, café goers and shoppers, then through the hilly twisty bit around the coast to Dromana. Safety Beach was another surprise — the entire road had been dug up through the middle of the town, so once again I had to detour through back streets — and I didn't realise that Safety Beach was big enough to have back streets!

Just after Dromana is the left-turn for Arthur's Seat. Rounding the corner is a very demoralising sight, the road seems to go under the freeway and then straight up the hill like a ski-ramp in reverse. Luckily that isn't the way to the top, the road up the hill is hidden behind the freeway and zig-zags its way up through four kilometres of forest, gaining about 300 metres in altitude. Steep climbing, and hot, since the sun was now beating down. I was going slowly enough to marvel at the size of the bull-ants crossing under my tyres. Also had plenty of time to check out the chairlift pylons and cables, now repaired after their collapse a year or so ago.

From the top of Arthur's Seat it was about ten kilometres to Shoreham, rolling downhill most of the way — shorter and quicker than I'd expected. Only the final turnoff at the end of the Redhill-Shoreham road nearly fooled me, I couldn't see the signs and didn't realise at first that I had to go straight ahead. Turning left, I glanced back and spotted the sign, crossed the road and coasted the last few hundred metres down to the town. Just over a hundred kilometres, less than I'd expected, three and three-quarter hours, and maybe there's a chance that I'll be fit enough for the Classic!

Perfect timing, I arrived just in time to chat and cool off before the barbecue was lit, and just as the clouds started cooling everything down. Over lunch the clouds turned first to a few spots of rain, gradually increasing and forcing us under cover. Two small, excited, noisy and very tired nephews occasionally forced us back out into the open.

After a long hot day, I was glad to be getting into the car to be driven home. Especially since the rain kept increasing, becoming a solid downpour by the time we'd returned to Melbourne. Drivers on the freeway were doing their usual frightening best to tail-gate at 100km/hr in pouring rain and low visibility. Worst of all were the semi-trailers, up higher their drivers could see, or just didn't give a damn, and kept on thundering past, intimidating everything and everyone slower out of their path — Professional Drivers indeed.

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Apache Junction Fire District — Fire, EMS, Safety and Health. They also have the domain http://ajfd.org/. One letter difference, and today I'm on the receiving end of a well-meaning, but miss-addressed Christmas greeting!

Little things that stick in your mind, trivial things, but curiosities nonetheless. For the last twelve months — at least — there's been a flattened beetroot can squashed into the road on Clayton road. I see it every day. It first appeared as a row of four or five purple smudges, ending in a bent tin where it had fallen off a truck. Gradually it moved to its resting place, becoming flatter and flatter, more firmly embedded into the tarmac. Once or twice a week I ride over it — clack, clack. Today it's gone. A trivial amusement.

Another stinking hot day. Cicadas screaming in the trees as a rode to work.

The ITS Christmas lunch was held today, three hours of fun and excitement and a short speech. A sit down affair in the University club, with too much red wine and undercooked rissoles — ok, the ones I had were raw. A truly revolting feeling biting into a mouthful of luke-warm raw mince under a burnt crust.

What started as an accidental photo of the back of a colleague's head turned into a minor challenge — to capture portraits of the entire Communications and Networks group, from behind. Not sure how successful I was, or even if I can identify them all now I've got them!

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Oh dear, I just haven't been paying attention to the important things going on in the world — that latest batch of spams purporting to offer me nude videos of Paris Hilton, seems that there is one... somewhere. I guess it made a change from the 30 or 40 a day offering to clean my colon for me, what that says about the American publics' obsession with bowels I don't know — for we all know that the Internet is American, and that everyone on the Internet is American....

Oh damn, I said nude video and Paris Hilton together in one web page. Google bait for sure. Hi there spiders and search engines!

Need to get out more! So out we did go. Out for a walk around the river, downstream to the Burnley wharf redevelopment. I was curious whether it was all still there after the floods last week!

Its an old quarry, left over from excavations of the river channel, building works in Richmond, and construction of the freeway. For years there's just been a large stagnant pond hidden between the freeway and the electrical substation, with a small wharf and some of the river maintenance craft moored. Recently the grounds around it have been landscaped and opened back up the public, and access is possible either from the road or cyclepath.

Then off to catch up with some of Jo's friends in the beergarden at PA's, and a chance to get one step closer to photographing all the pubs of Richmond!

Spent a lazy few hours sitting in the shade under the vines, drinking beers and catching up with friends. We hadn't seen Neale since our wedding in April!

Then this evening, finally! Off to see Matrix Revolutions this evening. Ho hum, what a dud. Blam, blam, blam. Explosions. Shootings. No style, no suspense, but plenty of action for the fourteen year-olds.

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MLP

[http://www.markschenk.com/cssexp/]

CSS / Experiments

Our benevolent leaders lashed out and paid $25 for the group to go out to lunch to celebrate Christmas — food only, no alcohol to be paid for. A couple of people had suggested Maxy's in Glenhuntly road Elsternwick — mostly because it was near to where they lived, not necessarily near to work! Off we trouped, in we went, down we sat, then out came the food.... Wow! The large trays of assorted dips, breads, salads and calamari were sufficient to fill nearly everyone, but that was only the entrée! These were whisked away and out came two massive trays of meat. Ribs, chops, sausages, schnitzels, kebabs... more food than I think I normally see in a month.

Completely stuffed, we somehow managed to waddle out the door and make it back to Monash to attempt to work for the rest of the afternoon!

Actioned — my least favourite word of the moment. Some colleagues seem to insist on using it, its one of those bureaucratic nonsense words, like the euphemistic, wishy-washy issue that is used by those too mealy-mouthed to say what they really mean. If something is a problem, then say that its a bloody problem!

Browsing around more geography resources, stumbled on MultiMap again. I guess the following is useful:

Address:         Johannesburg, Gauteng (PWV), South Africa
X:3125000 m Y:-2999900 m    26:09:34S (-26.1594), 28:04:21E (28.0724)

Now I need to go back and re-anotate all my South African photos and journal entries for December 2000, January 2001!

I think I've got enough of a hang of this RDF stuff to start adding it in here.... My FoaF file has been present for quite a while, but now it's got links to http://ajft.org/index.rdf. One thing I can't seem to make up my mind about is whether to munge together all the RDF data about individual pages, images and indexes into one big file a'la Norman Walsh's “knows.rdf”, or to keep all the bits seperate, and link between them with rdfs:seeAlso. I think I'll choose the latter.

Ho hum, another day, another stupid motorist tries to drive into me while she's chatting on the phone. White Ford, a Festiva or something like that, PRZ-291.

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An early start to the day — finally I've been convinced that I really do need to train for the Alpine Classic — that day-to-day rides to and from work just aren't likely to be enough preparation! Six o'clock wake up, breakfast and wait... and wait... and wait some more. The phone rings; Kelvin has had another puncture — of course — and so they'll be a little late to pick me up. I sat around outside watching and listening to the morning's bird-life, spotting a butcher bird that I'd never seen before on the neighbour's roof.

Off to the east towards Launching Place, navigating by memory since Evan's melways was lost in Wednesday's flood. A moment of confusion and we end up almost back at Lilydale before finally finding the right turn-off, then events conspire against us with the local CFA blocking the road since someone has just managed to drive head-on into a tree. More detours down back lanes, finally back on the main Warbutton road, finally get to Launching Place for the 8:30am start — only about an hour and a half late!

As we're getting the bikes off the roof racks, the mist over the hills promises a cool ride. Much discussion takes place on what people should wear, and there are further delays as arm-warmers and long nicks are donned. Failing to bring anything other than the nicks and jersey I was wearing, I stood and waited and hoped that cold or hot, the weather wouldn't be too uncomfortable!

Finally we were ready, off down the rail-trail towards Warbutton, the surface not really suited to some of the road bikes. Over the years the track seems to be deteriorating, like a lot of bicycle facilities, it doesn't look as if there is any budget for maintenance, once the thing has been built, that's it! One particular timber bridge is in a sorry state, the approach from the eastern side being eroded away, and quite dangerous unless you zig-zag onto the opposite side of the track.

By the time we reached Warbutton we were all ready for a bite to eat; the sun had cleared away the mist, all the previously donned warm clothing needed to be shed, and people were starting to comment about the warmth of the day!

Back on the bikes, off through Warbutton, then turn off the main road and seventeen kilometres of climbing up through the Yarra Ranges park to the summit of mount Donna Buang. It's still a great ride, there's never much traffic, the scenery is fantastic, and at 1250m, it's quite a climb!

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The creek is back down, the heron was back on his rock this morning — I wonder where he went during the flood? The river is still turgid, brown and full of drifting objects. Driftwood everywhere, the stink of mud in the air.

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Last night's storm created floods in the suburbs just north of us. Over 100mm of rain fell in some places!

I don't think I've ever seen the flood marks from the creek up so high, this morning every flat bit of bike track was awash with debris or mud. All the councils have just finished beautifying the parklands with pine-chips and mulch, so as a result, there are now huge piles of pine-chips and mulch washed off every garden bed, deposited in “challenging” ways on the track.

Glennferrie road underpass just passable. Under Tooronga road was a slimy, slippery mud pit.

There were a few very large trees floating in the Yarra, and lots of rafts of plastic bottles and stuff migrating down to the sea.

Three of the seven lightning photos from last night sort-of worked.

Lots of fun'n'games with my photo annotation stuff. Trying to find sufficient information on RDF and N3 and then trying to find examples to show me what is needed. After creating some very broken files, I've found that the following is what is needed:

<> foaf:annotates <http://ajft.org/2003/12/01/204-0408_img.jpg>;
  foaf:maker [
    a foaf:Person
      foaf:mbox_sha1sum "87d5276974d12ea0f4064e7870cab2d47cb5e91d"
  ];

Must be a day for the birds — running a bit late this morning due to sleeping in, I made myself even later by stopping for a couple of minutes to take some photos of a Nankeen Night-heron in the creek. The pictures didn't come out very well, they were at the extreme end of the digital zoom, but it was unusual enough to see one out in daylight. Normally that rock is frequented by a White-faced heron. I really need an SLR and a good lense for wildlife pictures, but there's no way I'd carry it around with me!

Half an hour later, riding in the gates at Monash there was a White ibis flying past overhead. I guess that might mean something important if I was in ancient Egypt, as it was all it meant was two more birds to add to the list I've seen while commuting.