ajft

I've still got a cold, snuffling and wheezing, but its getting better. Lying in bed this morning I remembered that this time last year I was somewhere in France, but also had a cold.

Wondering what I was doing last year, I've ended up spending part of the afternoon catching up on some more of my journal. I got back from my trip with the best of intentions of transferring it from paper to here, so far so little has been done.

Woopee, another Nigerian business proposal.

From The Age, Wednesday June 26, 2002. Originally from Guardian

If philosophy's your subject, here are some sites to help the thought processes.

The Argument Clinic

[http://www.univnorthco.edu/philosophy/clinic.html] — Submit an argument to the clinic and have it critiqued by staff at the University of Northern Colorado.

The Atheism Web: Logic and Fallacies

[http://infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html] — An excellent introduction to contructing logical arguments, together with an intriguing list of common fallacies.

Bjorn's Guide to Philosophy

[http://knuten.liu.se/~bjoch509] — Although this site is no longer being maintained, it is still very useful as it includes summaries of the lives and thoughts of many philosophers.

Blupete's Philosophy Site

[http://blupete.com/Intro.htm] — Includes a good range of biographies with summaries of thinking: Descartes, Hegel, Kant, Plato, Popper, Sartre, Schopenhauer and many more.

Episteme Links

[http://epistemelinks.com/index.asp] — A comprehensive ethics and philosophy site arranged into topic sections with substantial searching facilities.

Ethics at RS—Web

[http://rsweb.org.uk/] — The ethics section of RS—Web contains links by ethical theory and issue, as well as a glossary of terms and links to online versions of major philosophical works.

Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

[http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/] — Another vast resource containing articles on philosophers, philosophical and ethical theories, terms, movements and so on.

Philosophy Comix

[http://members.aol.com/lshauser/phlcomix.html] — If you want to know how a Garfield cartoon can convey conversational implicature, Peanuts false cause of Dennis the Menace Mill's method of residues, start here. No explanations are given, but the cartoons make a good primary source for lessons.

OK, out of the goodness of my heart, I've given the Commonwealth Bank one last chance. The last few months' statements show that I'm now being billed around $100 a year for the priviledge of banking with them, and together with the rest of Australia “I don't like banks.” Catylsed by the ACCC report showing that the public paid around $7.1 billion in bank fees in the last year!

My account is changing to a new type, with fewer fees and consequently, less chances for me to actually use it (We can't have me actually getting access to my own money, can we). In true banking fashion in the early part of the 21st century, the papers have to be forwarded from the branch at work to the branch where I originally opened the account, to enable them to do the work!

Maybe the last of yesterday's photos is appropriate...

Stuff

[http://www.cexx.org/]

??

An ignoble end to a fine piece of furniture. Today we tossed out the hairy-brown-couch, left it lying destitute at the side of the road, waiting for collection by the council on Monday morning.

This morning's drive to Lorne was uneventful, we arrived in time for lunch, then spent the afternoon relaxing and strolling about. Out on the pier we weren't the only ones watching the fishermen. The heron in the photo was intently watching for any signs of food.

In the fish co-op Jack was fascinated by the crabs, so much so that Christos gave him one. Nobody was quite sure what Jack would think of eating the crab, but he enjoyed looking at it! Unfortunately I didn't enjoy eating it, a slight allergic reaction later in the evening had my lips tingling and eyes puffed up. A real shame since it tasted delicious, but that's the second time in my life that fresh crab or crayfish has given me a reaction!

[http://www.robotoz.com.au/]

an Australian source of parts and kits!

[http://www.robotbooks.com/]

a large collection of books

VHS to Digital video

Some notes, grabbed from a posting to the Audio/Video forum of arstechnica.

The free washing machine has just changed to a sixty-six dollar washing machine, however it does now have a pump that works. It amazes me at the stuff that people through out at these rubbish collections!

It was frightening out on the road riding home this evening. I was starting to suspect that everyone had picked up their pay and spent it on stupid-pills. First one was some idiot overtaking along Gardiner road and heading straight at me, apparently the new 50km/hr speed limits are not to his satisfaction. At the next set of lights I sat alongside a taxi driver (M-0486) who nearly burst a blood-vessel hammering on the horn to try and make the car in front of him turn right for the right turn arrow, while the driver of the car in front patiently waited for the straight-ahead light to go green, since that's where he wanted to go.

Now that there is a “speed measuring” sign in Gardiner road, showing how far over the 50km/hr limit you're driving, some motorists actually seem to slow down to try to stay on the limit. I've found that its 3,500rpm in 3rd gear. On the other hand, some of the other drivers seem to resent the 50km/hr and do stupid things like this evening, or try to find the “high score” of the sign.

Woohoo! A free washing machine.

I think it's illegal, but when someone dumps a perfectly good washing machine at the side of the road for the council hard-rubbish collection, I think its environmentally sound to pick it up!

Plugging and plumbing it in showed that it isn't perfectly good, just mostly good. Everything works except the pump, so we can use it as a gravity emptying washing machine, safe in the knowledge that should gravity fail, the inability to wash our clothes is the least of our worries.

First frost I've seen so far this year! Normally I'm not out of bed early enough, but today it was back on norky bike to get to work. Cold and misty along the river, with the fog rising up off the water, then frost along the creek through Hawthorn. I could feel the temperature rise as the path climbed from the creek up to Glennferrie road.

This evening, curiousity got the better of me so I went for a ride to see just how bad North Road is for cycling along. There's been a campaign for quite some time by Monash cyclists to get a bike lane built along the road, to encourage more students and staff to either ride to Uni, or to catch the train to Huntingdale and ride from there.

Riding at dusk, in the cold, in rush hour traffic is probably not the best time to visit any major road! From the University back to Huntingdale it didn't seem anywhere near as bad as some narrow roads I've ridden on, the kerbside lane is fairly wide. Nobody swerved at me, hooted at me, or threw anything at me, so it's not as bad as some of the rides I've been on in Oakleigh and Clayton! The main problem is the speed and noise of the traffic. Maybe enforcing the speed limit would help! Crossing the mighty Dandenong Road/North Road intersection is another matter, you seem to be confronted by acres of ashphalt, and the twelve seconds of green light seem very short while you're doing it!

[http://urbanphoto.org/]

Urban photographs of a number of cities, including Melbourne.

[http://webcam.omni.net.au/]

Webcams showing Melbourne. (Although nowhere near as good as speed-hump cam)

Then I found a few links to more cycling material from the urbanphoto site.

[http://urbanbicyclist.org/]

I know where the development version is, but I'm not supposed to tell.

[http://www.johnforester.com/]

John Forester, outspoken cycling advocate.

[http://www.tpg1.com//protest/city/nobike/van_bikelanesbad.htm]

Why Bike Lanes are a Bad Idea. Flip left for right for Australian use, it sums up all my feelings on the subject.

The Saturday Age's general knowledge crossword has started to be a bit of a morning ritual. Completeness varies between 25% and 95%, I don't think we've ever finished one. Today I knew one of the answers was Nietzsche, but couldn't for life of me remember the correct spelling. Enter one of the more interesting reference materials I've ever used while completing a crossword... TISM's Hot Dogma liner notes.

Into the city to see the exhibition of RAIA entrants for this years awards. It's always great to see decent design in any field, seeing the architecture awards reminds me that Australia hasn't been taken over completely by ugly neo-Georgian box monstrosities, ever-expanding across the landscape in a cancer of suburbia.

Then head up towards the corner of Russell and Latrobe Streets, curious at the apartment development being built there. We got there to find that its all being sold off the plan, which is probaby fine if you want to become a slum lord (oops, property investment manager), not so good if you're picky and want to buy somewhere to live. Along the way we passed a building site, everywhere there was motion, eight cranes busy moving materials around. If there's anyone in the building trade out there, how do they all tell which whistle is for which crane?

Beer in Carlton, then off along Grattan Street to find the new University of Melbourne building that was entered in the architectural awards. I've never been around the area much, Jo has, but almost ten years ago, so she was amazed at the changes.

Then wonder of wonders, catching a tram back to the city, I spotted not one, but three ticket inspecters. Busy writing out tickets to book the recidivist criminals that are the Melbourne travelling public. The amusing thing was that what had caught my eye was the turban-wearing gent who at first glance appeared to be one of the old conductors, then I realised that he probably used to be one of the conductors. Gone are the days of selling tickets to the public, now he's employed to fine them for not buying them from the machines.

A night for trashy entertainment, off to the Jam factory to see Spider Man. It was everything I expected, fun, lightweight, a comic book on the big screen. What was not fun was the ankle-deep layer of crap in the cinema, and the way that they abruptly shut off the credits around 10 seconds in! There was barely enough time to read the first three lines of the major stars, then bang off with the movie and full on with the house lights. I guess Jam Factory need to maximise their profits by cramming the next session in and didn't want the audience waiting around for...

Towards the end of the closing credits the theme song from the original Spider-Man animated series is played.

I feel like an old cripple this morning. Somehow I managed to pull a muscle in my back while tossing papers and books around on Wednesday afternoon.

Tired too, as a result of the Concrete Blonde gig last night. A most impressive show, even if Johnette did appear to be wearing snakeskin pyjamas! Old songs and new songs, ending with Tomorrow Wendy. I managed to take a couple of photos, but was more interested in listening and having a good time than in photography. I'm no good at gig reports, suffice to say that I had a really good time. Even the Prince Of Wales' concrete pillar didn't get in the way.

ATBIAD

Looks like one of the guys from ITS has decided to organize a team for BV's Round the Bay in a Day. Not sure if I feel enthused enough to join, or whether I'm still thinking that $AU70 to Bicycle Victoria for a glorified ferry ticket is a bit much.

Haha! Despite the best efforts of the motorist in the red Honda Civic I'm still here. Wet slippery road, lights turn orange, three cars in front of me run the orange, I stop, car behind me flies around me and slides sideways around the corner through the red light!

Recieved an email back from Kodak Support Australia, they're really sorry but they've got no idea. Please call 1300.138.029. I called them and found out the good news and the bad news. The good news was that they could actually help me, the bad news... PictureCD is only available when I get my APS films developed, PhotoCD is all that's available “post-development”. Other suggestion was to try National Photos (a Kodak offshoot), who might be able to offer PictureCD after processing.

PhotoCD costs $AU19 per CD, then $AU2.50 per image, minimum of 20 images. Quick back-of-envelope calculation shows that 350 images is around $AU900!

Nope. National Photos can't help, they did refer me back to Kodak though...

Declare war on ugly web browsers! Time to encourage people to use something that complies reasonably well with HTML and CSS standards. I've included the following little 'ol snippet of javascript from webstandards.org to redirect anything evil (eg Netscape 4.x) back to my “about” page:

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--  //
if (!document.getElementById) {
    window.location =
	  "/about"
}

	// -->
</script>

This evening I rebuilt the i2c and sensors module on wyvern to see if I can monitor the motherboard temperature. Only problem seems to be that since Monash “upgraded” it for me, I've got a very dubious no-name motherboard. The manual is for three different chipsets, and doesn't even have a company name on it anywhere! Best I can come up with is Brand X with VIA82C693A chipset.

Suggestion to load the i2c-riva module that's available from rivatv

Evil weather this afternoon. There was a huge thunderstorm around 5pm, then by the time I left work it had blown away to leave everything soaked and an icy chill in the air.

Owing to lack of interest in the kitchen, dinner was provided by Grandma Funk's, Swan Street Richmond.

laugh — Another day, another Nigerian Business offer.

Uploaded the photos from the weekend. Ten points and a free beer to the first person who can spot where we live. No, we're not at the end of the rainbow!

Today was a holiday for a some, a leave day for me, but hardly worth taking the day off. Just like the last holiday, Anzac Day, it was cold and gray and miserable.

With much yawning we dragged ourselves out of bed in the dark in time for a quick breakfast before driving Kathy to the airport. Managed to take the right turnoff this time! We joked that it was hardly a typical morning's drive along citylink, seemed to be that the whole city had either gone away for the weekend or stayed in bed this morning — the roads were nearly deserted. Remembered where Virgin's terminal was down in the freight part of the airport and managed to let her out without having to locate the mysterious short term parking area that signs referred to, but didn't point towards.

Probably the most exciting thing we did all day was catch one of the shiny new trams along Victoria Street. The Victoria Gardens concrete monstrosity of a shopping centre is getting bigger and bigger, rather than walk past it we jumped on one of the new low-floor trams. All very quiet and modern and efficient, in some ways they don't seem to be a part of Melbourne's public transport system at all. Tied in well with a letter to the editor of the paper asking for the W-class trams back, but only on the tourist routes so normal people didn't have to use them, and a couple of articles referenced off slashdot about Hong Kong's Octopus card system.

Old band memory of the day: Fischer Z — dredged up from somewhere and played on the radio this evening. A show I don't normally listen to but tonight the woman with the irritating giggle isn't in the studio, so I haven't turned it off yet.

Running late to head towards the airport this morning there was a comedy of events. A girl moving into one of the other units had parked a van across half the driveway, we could have driven around it except that they'd left a washing machine standing in the middle of the other half. Rather than move the washing machine, three of them indulged in some very complicated conversation and exchange of keys, then started the van and inched it backwards out onto the street and around their other, illegally parked, vehicle. Growing frustration was tempered by amusement at their complete incompetence.

Then the event we've been joking about every time we drive along citylink towards the Westgate (bridge), we forgot to turn off onto the Hume highway and found ourselves heading rapidly the wrong way towards Geelong. Luckily it is possible to detour off, down through the last petrol station, then under the freeway, back around through the other petrol station, and up onto the freeway again. Not something I'd recommend though, especially since there's a stop sign that seems to appear out of nowhere while you think you're on the main road, only to discover that you are meant to stop for merging traffic.

After all that we got to the terminal only five minutes late, picked up Kathy and made our way, uneventfully, back home.

Did the tourist bit in the afternoon and caught the tram into the city, shopped in Daimaru ¹, then visited the Rialto to get a good view of the city from above. Probably the best part of the day to be up there, we started in daylight and got to see all the city lights come on. The observation deck has been updated since I was last there, about five years ago, and the very dated 1980-esque photos with 1970s captions have been replaced with recent colour displays of the numerous views. Other things that seem to have been renovated are the wall displays and brochures listing the Rialto's place in the world's tallest towers. There must have been much frantic reprinting last September, since there's no mention of the World Trade Centre anywhere... they never existed. Slightly more odd, the brochures are available in multiple languages, fair enough, but there are three different copies with Australian, American and British flags on the covers. Unfortunately we didn't grab one of each to find out what the differences were.

We even managed to find a tram driver with a sense of humour. Normally the announcements over the PA are incomprehensible, or all you manage to hear is “Sppttthht Street.” On the way in to town it was as if we had an ABC TV announcer in the cab, and then the message— “Spring Street, State parliament, Fitzroy gardens and lots of trees.” — all delivered in a dead-pan voice.

Stuff

1. One shiny new teapot, on sale as part of Daimaru's clearance sale.

Dee Dee Ramone is dead. chuckle the Ramones are leading the Beatles two to one¹. I heard Julie is a Punk being played in tribute this morning on RRR. Wow, that was a demo from 1975... what were we all doing in 1975? I seem to remember Sherbet and Skyhooks, and Mrs Andrews my fifth grade teacher.

Favourite junk mail for today:

 . [  30: customerservice5034l57@] Free Septic Tank Information 6618RdoT4-86-11

I've been looking at some of the photos that are online, especially some of the material on http://photo.net/. Reminded me again that I need to make a concerted effort to get all my old photos scanned and added to my archive, then post-processed so that they look ok! Dug into some of the processing software that came with my camera, stuff that I've never really looked at yet.

PhotoRecord seems to do a passable job of printing, at least on the only colour printer that I've got access to. I made a test page of the Birrarung Marr photos and all the problems were at the printer end, not with the software!

[http://www.photorecord.com/]

PhotoRecord

Ooh pretty lights

What is this business with the stupid little blue lights on car bonnets? Are blue glow-in-the-dark windscreen squirter nozzles meant to be cool or something? I was tailgated home along the freeway by a black ford ute EVLXR-6 with some this evening.

1. OK, I was wrong. For some odd reason I managed to forge Mr Harrissson and only remembered the dead lennon. It's a two-all draw.

Downloaded the free release of QNX and their IDE. What a hassle, it fails during download so I had to re-enter everything in their #@ registration form.

195.1Mb 9d07009277b9aa3ecd9e84d4a3ca4770 qnxnc620.iso

[http://www.qnx.com/]

QNX

There's one problem with 9pm movies — not getting to be before midnight. Yawn I must be getting old, but it was very difficult to get out of bed this morning.

A beautiful clear wintery day to be out cycling. World environment day I believe, not that you could tell based on what the Australian and US governments had to say about the Kyoto treaty today! Riding in to work I diverged from the bike track and explored a few short cuts and side tracks that I've seen people use, they seem to be much more straightforward and involve far fewer bridge crossings of the creek.

For some reason a girl in a Laser gave me a blast on the horn as she passed me near the Nott this evening. P-plates of course. She also jumped about a foot in the air when I caught her at the lights and made an equal amount of noise by smacking my hand on the door of her car.

Stuff

Saw a reference to Squeak, which then led me to Alice. Not sure if I want to get involved in smalltalk or a derivative. I never quite got my head around it the last time I tried, and that was at work!

[http://www.squeak.org/]

Squeak

[http://www.alice.org/]

Alice

An interesting variation of my route to get home today. I ended up nearly circumnavigating Richmond after impatience at seeing the traffic. It was banked up from McRobb bridge around the Boulevarde, then back down onto the freeway to the toll gantry. (Toll gantry on a free-way? Too hard, I'll explain some other time.) Anyway, I continued on around to Punt Rd, nearly slammed into the back of a bimbo who decided to stop in a no-standing merge lane, phone to ear, while she attempted to merge one-handed with 80km/hr traffic, then had to continue up to Bridge Rd because I'd forgotten that you can't turn right into Swan St. Eventually I got home and thought that next time I'll just wait patiently in the grid-lock!

Tonight we'd decided to go and see a movie, the only problem was that neither Jo nor I could choose. Eventually it came down to Gosford Park, because the season was nearly over, and 9pm because there was no way we could get to an earlier session in time.

We drove off into the unchartered reaches of Camberwell this evening to find a cinema, and took a wrong turn somewhere along the way. Gosford Park was worth it though, lots of chuckles and a cast of characters that I'm still trying to get straight in my head. “The buttler did it...”

We should now be able to drink professionally made coffee as a result of the course Joey went on today. Elementary Espresso 2000, quite a humerous name, but it enables her to safely run the espresso machine in the café without endangering herself or others.

Probably one of the more spectacularly eye-watering headlines I've seen in a newspaper all year. Jo and I spent half the afternoon sniggering and warning each other to “beware of the brothel probe.”