Blah, not much to say. Wow, how did it get to be half way through the month already?
After scanning through wyvern’s Apache logs I noticed that I’ve been Nimda’d recently and it irked me, so I rummaged around and have installed EarlyBird on the box. Only time will tell if it actually performs a useful function.
EARLY BIRD: A real-time HTTP worm attempt reporting utility.
Proof that television is bad for you: After lugging the TV down the stairs and into the boot of Jo’s car, I’ve managed to pull a muscle in my back; and after a rotten night’s sleep, today decided to stay home and rest it rather than try to hobble in to work.
One thing I did manage to do today was to fill in a lot of the missing details of last year’s bike trip in June and July.
A slight chill in the air, a vague threat of rain and hail in the morning, a sore back from the weekend. They all added up to the decision not to ride the bicycle to work. This evening as I went to leave, boy was I glad of that decision! Strong winds and icy rain made the ride home unpleasant on the road, rather than potential lethal on the bicycle track.
The grocery shopping isn’t meant to get exciting. Normally its a very routine event. Today it was looking perfectly ordinary until we got home, I tried to get the eggs out of the egg carton, and discovered that they were cemented in with dried yolk from one that had leaked. Attempting to prise them out of the carton, one exploded, showering me with rotting egg, and filling the kitchen with a truly evil stench.
stats. Distance 78.89 ㎞ With some misgivings I dragged myself out of bed this morning to go riding with Mark. Evan and Kelvin turned up on time, I couldn’t think of a better way to get from home to Carnegie so we rode up Gardiners Creek bike path, Kelvin muttering that he’d only been on his new bike an hour and here I was taking him around a myriad of right-angled bends on poor surfaces, determined to tip him off.
“Would madam like a ring with her breakfast?”
I don’t think the two of us could stop grinning or laughing. Half of it is relief that we’ve finally got the bloody thing and don’t need to spend our weekends surreptitiously shopping.
Jo decided not to wear it to work, not just yet, she felt strange not having told her family.
This evening we hit the phones and I called my parents and brother, I tried my sister first, but as usual she was outside with the horses, so she didn’t get to be the first to know.
A memorable day. My “quick trip into the city at lunch time” turned into a bit of a nightmare. There was a parade to celebrate the home-coming of the Australian Commonwealth Games team, so Collins Street was closed off, assorted side streets were closed off, traffic police were directing traffic every which way, and general mayhem was in the air. I eventually managed to park on Elizabeth street and walk up the road to pick up the mighty secret which can now be revealed to the world….
I just finished reading Tim Moore’s “French Revolutions” this evening and have been struck by a great longing to go away again on another bike tour … so many of the things in his writing were so evocative — the slug tennis for example — or just the descriptions of the riding.
French Revolutions, Tim Moore
ASIN: 0312316127 Buy at Amazon
Joey is getting all twitchy about the length of this week and the great secret to be revealed…
House cleaning. House cleaning. Then a little more house cleaning.
Somewhere in the past few weeks we seem to have omitted a few of the routine chores. This morning they all caught up with us! There was a frenzy of domesticity, followed by relief at being able to see the kitchen bench, comfortably walk across the floor in bare feet, and enter the bathroom without needing a full decontamination suit.
The Aggregate: The Aggregate refers to a collection of researchers and the technologies that they use to make the components of a parallel computer work better together. Since before our first Linux PC work in the PAPERS project, we have been considering all aspects of Compilers, Hardware Architectures, and Operating Systems (KAOS) together, optimizing system performance rather than performance of the individual parts. The only aspect of our computer system designs that is set in stone is our name.
Incredible for a Saturday — we were breakfasted and out of the house by ten o’clock. The secret shopping mission kept us occupied for most of the day, was completed by four pm, so we adjourned for a well-earned glass of wine at South Bank, closely followed by an equally well-earned pint ‘o Guinness.
Somewhere along the way I succumbed to an advertised “sale” and bought 256M more memory for wyvern, turns out that Dick Smith’s sale price is still well over the average green guide price, but at least I’ve finally bought some, so there’s no more excuse.
Just to make sure I don’t forget, Casey and Zoe are now firmly recorded in my address book. I even sent their birthday present.
Wow, there was a huge thunderstorm this evening while we were up the road having dinner. Getting home involved leap-frogging from shelter to shelter along the street. Thunderstorms aren’t meant to happen here in the winter!
Jelly legs this morning, but rode to work anyway. The forecast is for 18 degrees, it sounds almost spring time. Certainly wasn’t warm for the first half of the ride though!
The major news of the day (or of yesterday I guess), is that I now have two new nieces. Hello to Casey Elizabeth and Zoe Anne, if you ever get to read this! 14:08 and 14:14 yesterday, at 7lb and 6lb 7oz respectively.
This evening I went on the Mascot Cycles ride for the first time in months. Seems that it has changed a bit, a lot of the faces I knew aren’t there anymore, and the people that are there are there for a more serious ride. The first lap was gentle enough, but as soon as we turned around the roundabout for the second, off they went, harder than I could keep up.
Monday morning, groan. Way too little sleep after staying up to watch the Tour last night. To add to that, whatever I did to my neck last Friday is still sore, so I was half tempted to stay in bed with a hot-water bottle, sulking.
2001 TDF jersey wearers I managed to find the answer to a question that has been bugging me for about a year — just who was wearing the polka-dot jersey on l’Alpe d’Huez last year when they shot past me?
So much for the nice weather! Today it was back to grayness, windy and cold.
Spent the morning being a good little aunt and uncle and looking after Jack while his mum and dad went off to a brunch. A rather entertaining time for all concerned as Jack explored the wardrobes in the spare room, just in case someone had hidden any trains in there, and attempted to drive a large steam-engine around the lounge room floor.
A beautiful spring-like day. The good intentions were to get up and out of the house early, visit the markets and be out shopping by ten. After a bad night’s sleep we woke around eight, but then fell asleep again, so it wasn’t until ten thirty that we could step outside the door. Markets and groceries, then breakfast at Via Ponte. Sadly, the coffee isn’t up to scratch. Not as bad as last week’s shocker, but still not good.
More thoughts on a new PC. The Shuttle SS51 looks pretty cool, as usual, it was brought to my attention on slashdot.
www.shuttle.com: the Shuttle SS51G product description http://www.satotech.com.au/: Australian supplier, and they’re nearby in Box Hill
Bloody bike lights! Half way to work this morning and my rear flashing light snapped in half and fell off. That’s the second one of these where the plastic clip has just fatigued after a couple of months use, there’s nothing wrong with the light. I managed to catch it as it bounced around on the pannier rack, and have reattached it with packing tape. Not quite as good as gaff tape, but it holds a lot of the world together.
Riding home I nearly ran off the bike track and into the trees. I thought I was on the track, then saw a red flashing tail light off to my right. Just as I started to head towards it I realised that a) it was only about a foot off the ground, and b) it was bouncing up and down. I swerved back onto the path just in time to see a Jack Russell terrier come bounding out of the shrubbery with the light on its collar!
There’s only one problem with staying up until 2 am watching the Tour de France, and that is getting up the next morning and going to work, especially when the radio informs you that its a pleasant 3.4 °C outside. All thoughts of cycling disappeared, a strong coffee and smoke-emitting toast helped me on my way.
Lunch time today and I sent off an email to one of the other guys from the France tour last year, wondering whether he’d stayed up last night to watch the stage.
Spent an interesting afternoon exploring parts of the CBD. It started as an optimistic trip to the shops, but the ones we wanted weren’t open on a Sunday, so we delved into the arcades and alleys. Found places I’d heard of, but only had vague recollections of where they were — on the other hand, I’m not sure I’ll be able to find any of them again…
We also wasted a little of our time and a little of someone else’s time by visiting an apartment that is for-sale and telling a few lies to a real-estate agent.
Hmm, some much-needed house work. A little archaeological digging and we rediscovered the lounge room floor. A visit to the Richmond markets and we’ve convinced the fridge that we still have a use for it. Then probably the worst coffee of the year, a shockingly bad serve from a favourite café, scalded milk and weak watery coffee.
Not much else, lazed around after being up half the night watching the tour.
A 9:40 am appointment at St Vincent’s hospital to see the Orthopaedic people. The doctor wasn’t happy about me managing to dislocate my arm for a fourth time and so he’s referred me to the hospital. Stupidly I thought that a 9:40 am appointment meant an appointment that started at 9:40 am. Turns out that it meant an appointment that started at 9:55 am, but only because the person before me had given up and gone home!
There are huge masses of kelp washed up along the beach and rocks today, but no signs of the whales that were seen on Friday. It’s getting to be a joke that where ever I go, there are no whales. Fishermen on the pier, coffees in the café, another relaxing day as we unwound from last week.
3.30 this afternoon and I decided that I desperately needed to get out and go for a bike ride, to try and capture the last of the sunny afternoon, so while everyone else snoozed on the couch I rode off along the Great Ocean Road, arranging for them to pick me up at Torquay.
Woke up, ate, went for a walk, ate, sat around the house, ate, went for a walk, slept. Nearly a perfect day really.
Marko offered what may well be one of the centuries more meaningful wine reviews. Sitting down to a magnificent beef curry with a large glass of red, he uttered the following:
Ere, this is alright; and there’s lots of it.
Truer words are rarely spoken.
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.
![Journal for [2002-08-14 Wed]](https://ajft.org/img/default4.jpg)
![Journal for [2002-08-13 Tue]](https://ajft.org/img/default1.jpg)
![Journal for [2002-08-10 Sat]](https://ajft.org/img/default3.jpg)
![Journal for [2002-08-05 Mon]](https://ajft.org/img/default2.jpg)
