© 1984 - 2026 Adrian Tritschler
somewhere outside there's a butcher bird[1], calling loudly and telling me to get out of the office and rejoin the world
[1] Grey butcherbird
TIL tbray SoTD WPA
well there you go; courtesy of Tim Bray’s Song of the Day series I’ve found that Barrett’s Privateers, made famous in my ears by Weddings, Parties, Anything, is from Canadian Stan Rogers
Music – The Knack
listening to the entire album “Get the Knack” to relive a little childhood, for years I had – and probably still have – a cassette tape with a live concert and had never realised that it’s probably that album played through, I think I’d only ever heard “My Sharona” on the radio. Very cheesy, no wonder it appealed to my 14yr old self.
V/Line purple
I saw an N-class and three coaches in new purple V/Line livery, it looked very shiny and new and smart, and matched the V/Locity sets. The effect was somewhat spoilt by the two dirty old red and grey coaches making up the remainder of the train
Something different
a pleasant break from all the ravens and lorikeets, on my walk today I had a nice closeup view of a Black-faced cuckooshrike[1] on the wires overhead [1] Black-faced cuckooshrike
Somewhere near work we seem to have the world's loudest butcherbird[1], I can't believe the volume that it calls at!
[1] Grey butcherbird
birds on the commute
Damp and grey, the first rainy morning I can remember for months. Riding in the last few streets to work there were currawongs[1] calling, somewhere, evoking winter. Then a butcherbird[2] loudly telling the world it was raining [1] Pied currawong [2] Grey butcherbird
Skyrail progress
Thursday afternoon long ride home, around to Grange road to check out the full length of the Skyrail section. Caulfield end waiting for ramps, the south viaduct is one segment short of Poath road
Evening Skyrail progress
A late evening walk up to Murrumbeena on one side of the railway and back on the other. Surprised to see how close the south viaduct of Skyrail has got – it’s level with the end of Rosella street – and also at how high it is at that point
Mark E. Smith
Oh, I just discovered that Mark E. Smith died back in January, on [2018-01-24 Wed]. It must have been while we were away up at Bright
"Read Later" housekeeping
reduced my feedly “Read Later” list from 224 down to 190 items, I wish there was a way to export it and get it directly into my org-mode feeds. Unsurprisingly, many of the old links have vanished due to bitrot. #simplify
LXRA progres
Lovely and sunny, with scattered cherry pickers…lots of scattered cherry pickers. Bike path is open to Huntingdale, but if anyone in SE Melbourne is looking for a cherry picker, I know where they’ve all been stashed. At Huntingdale a bit more of the bike path is open, lovely straight path, goes between the car park and station platform all the way to the bus interchange then vanishes with a “Cyclists dismount” sign.
not quite hoarding
Almost 30 years ago, sometime in 1988 or thereabouts, I had my left ear pierced. I bought a pair of silver earings and have worn one of them in it ever since. Last weekend it started falling open, then snapped. Today I picked up the other one from where I’ve kept it, through up to 10 house moves, and put that one in.
Superb parrots[1]
Signs along Hillview drive near Murrumbatemen warning of Superb parrots feeding on the roadside, I kept my eyes peeled but didn’t see any trace of them. So far the only ones I’ve ever seen were flying over Colin’s old place on Yass river road. [1] Superb parrot
bay tree suckers are almost ankle-high in the lawn, overdue for a mow
saw a large rat running along the back fence, it may be time for some traps
I think they’re attracted by the compost, and it may be rats rather than possums that ate the peaches. Last night we watched a large one trot casually along the fence from bay tree to garage and back
released a blackbird[1] that had got in under the netting on the tomatoes
[1] Common blackbird
lorikeets[1] have found the plum tree, much shrieking and destruction of fruit
[1] Rainbow lorikeet
There’s not much more I can add to who I am.
Vanity site? Technology experiment? Learning tool? Blog? Journal? Diary? Photo album? I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you…
I experiment. I play. I write and I take pictures. Some of the site is organised around topics, other parts are organized by date, then there’s always the cross-references between them.
Its all been here a fairly long time. Like the papers on my desk, or the books on the bedside table, the pile just grew… and it all grew without much plan or structure. I try not to break URLs, so historical oddities abound.
Long ago it started as a learning experiment with a few static HTML pages, then I added a bit of server-side includes and some very ugly PHP. A hand-built journal/blog on top of that PHP, then a few experiments in moving to various static publishing systems. I’ve never wanted a database-based blogging engine, so over the years I’ve tried PHP, nanoblogger, emacs-muse, silkpage and docbook before settling on Emacs Org mode for writing and jekyll for publishing. But the itch remained… I never really liked jekyll and the ruby underneath always seemed so much black magic. So now the latest incarnation is Org mode and hugo.