ajft

Or so it seemed anyway. This morning's newspaper contained a one page article on half of the remaining Ramones — Marky Ramone, the drummer. Tales of infighting, hatreds, partying. Do I want to know it, or will it diminish the cartoon-like mysticism of the band? One, Two, Three, Four…, what more is needed for an introduction? One magnificent quote made me chuckle:

Sure, there was Iggy and the Stooges, the MC5, but those bands played slow songs,…

Now who else in the world could get away with that?

Next Wednesday night at the Corner, he's bringing his “video, slides and stories.” It could be interesting, it could be sad.

Then this evening, off to drumming of a different sort. Taikoz were playing at the Alexander theatre at Monash, I'd have missed it completely except that just this once, the brochure that they send out to all staff fell open on my desk moments before I threw it at the bin. A mix of Japanese drumming and dance, almost theatrical, and it looks to be exceptionally physical! My only regret is that the big drum ™ didn't seem to be used often enough, it just stood there, looming over the stage.

Another day, yet another virus or worm or whatever gets through the mail scanners at Monash. Yet again, people run the attachment — for whatever reason. Feels like banging my head against a brick wall as we battle to keep the technical anti-virus measures up-to-date and yet staff, supposedly technically literate staff, persist in clicking on anything and everything that comes in the mail.

On a related, but slightly light-hearted note, a cow-orker sent me a link to the following article: OCD and the Cycle of Virus Doom By John C. Dvorak. It seems to explain a lot, both in the propogation of computer viruses and the persistent use of mobile phones by motorists...

To make up for the nonsense that came spouting out of the supposedly “technical” mailing list at work, here's the latest bits of text from my spam. Frighteningly, they seem to make more sense than some of the official emails I see at work...

Any gonad can buy an expensive gift for boy from mating ritual, but it takes a real ski lodge to living with cheese wheel. Where we can single-handledly caricature our girl scout. When you see about cup, it means that over scooby snack feels nagging remorse. And confess the dark side of her scooby snack.

Most taxidermists believe that around squid mourn microscope of ballerina. Unlike so many waifs who have made their tattered cowboy to us. For example, spider of indicates that cowboy of pee on cup defined by. Patrice, although somewhat soothed by eggplant for and girl related to. Most dahlias believe that graduated cylinder related to tenor a big fan of inside sandwich.

Meme via Norman Walsh: From The Best Australian Stories 1999 by Peter Craven (editor): “I was grateful I had a Saturday lunch to go to.”

Instructions: Grab the nearest book, open it to page 23, find the 5th sentence, and post its text along with these instructions. Point back to where you got the idea so that we can follow the threads.

Hmmm, fun to participate in I guess. Not sure how accurate it was though, there's a row of about ten books sitting next to me — I've no idea which one really is the closest one.

One curious aspect of the meme though, the choice of page number. Many years ago a friend of mine in a mathematics class became obsessed by the number 23. He was convinced that it occurred far more often than — statistically — it should. His birthday is the 23rd... Here you go Peter, another example for you!

With the missing part replaced, Vorahk the Rahkshi now stands guard over my desk at work.

This hardly seemed fair, taking a photo of Vorahk and leaving Lehvak out of the picture — so to speak. Lehvak (Lego Bionicle #8564) has been sitting at home on top of the bookshelf for almost a year.... Here's Lehvak the Bohrok then, standing guard over my desk at home.

Customer friendly

Four days after filling in a “missing part report” on the Lego website, the offending item turned up in a little post bag all of its own. A most impressive turn around!

Non-Customer Friendly…

Not so easy was a last minute attempt to book some tickets for the Taikoz show on Friday. I called up the Alexander theatre on the phone and started to book two tickets, we got all the way through to the “how do you want to pay?” Then the guy on the other end says “There's a $4 charge for booking over the phone, but if you're on campus, you can come here and book in person…” Scrap one partial booking, a ten minute walk across campus, rebook in person! Not much effort for me, but double the paperwork for the theatre!

Then more bizarre buracratic bumblings. Its phone bill time and I'd forgotten the fun and games with credit cards being accepted through one channel — the 1-300 phone number — but not through the online B-pay system.

Ouch, ow, creak, groan, moan — I'm definitely not used to the kind of physical activity that we did yesterday! Today I've got arms that seem to be only barely capable of being lifted up to shoulder level. All worthwhile though when its going into the finished product...

Up early and off in the car for the grape picking at The Duke Vineyard down at Red Hill on the Mornington peninsula. When I arrived I found that my description of our last visit had been discovered by some friends of the family and passed on to Geoff and Sue!

After yesterday, the weather still looked ominous, but apart from about ten minutes of drizzle, it was just grey and overcast for the day, almost ideal weather for picking the grapes. Even the grass underfoot was dry!

The pinot picking was well underway when we arrived, others having turned up much closer to the eight a.m. start than us! The pinot is a deep, dark red, almost all of the leaves are gone from the vines and the bunches stand right out, picking them is easy.

Then comes the chardonnay. The grapes are almost exactly the same colour as the vines, the leaves were still on, and the bane of my visit — the nets were still on the vines! It must have made an impression last time, because Geoff almost burst out laughing as he asked me to help removing the nets. Once again we walked the lengths of the rows, arms up above our heads like demented orang-utans, untangling and removing the nets — I must remember to wear a long-sleeved shirt next time, to try and avoid the worst of the scratches! The early rows had very few bunches of grapes, the pickers followed close behind at first, almost chasing us along in the eagerness to get at the fruit, then slowed down as we finally got ahead of them.

After a couple of rows of the chardonnay it was time for a morning tea of Sue's magnificent cakes and biscuits. Time to sit down, stretch sore backs and flex hands and fingers cramped from cutting bunches of grapes. Too soon it was time to get back out there for the rest of the grapes.

Up and down the hillside we went, there weren't many people but the picking all seemed to proceed quite quickly. Maybe everyone is getting more efficient with the years! Geoff was about to declare it lunch time when everyone decided that they needed to do one more row to feel sated, so we had to get back in there and remove another row of netting. Then it was back with the snippers and the tubs to collect the grapes.

Finally the last row was done, or almost the last… two rows were left for some overseas visitors next weekend, so that they can share in the fun. Now for the most important part of the day — Sue's lunch! Steaming hot mugs of homemade tomato soup, plates of food, and glasses of previous years' produce. The 2001 and 2002 Pinot Noir were tasted, and compared, and tasted some more. The chocolate cake and apple slice were also tasted, and compared, and tasted somemore…

After lunch we were free to go, or to stay and help with the rest of the jobs. I think nearly everyone stayed on to help bring in the tubs of grapes from the vines, or to watch the crushing and pressing of our labours. Late in the afternoon it was time to go home, those of us that had helped in previous years received our bottle as payment, everyone said their good byes and we left — the work over for us, but only just starting for Geoff in the winery!

It feels as though winter is upon us. Sometime during the night the unseasonably warm weather broke, a cool front came through and it has been pouring with rain ever since. Breakfast was a dreary affair as we both looked at the rain beating on the windows, wondering how dry we'd be by the time we got to work!

Lego kills Firefox, news at 11... Off to the post office this morning to pick up a long-overdue parcel, I bought myself a toy from their sale bin. Bionicle #8591, suitable for ages 7+ so I guess that's ok for me. Tried to put it together at lunch time only to discover that one of the important pieces is missing. Bother! Off to the Lego website, to see whether there's any way of replacing missing pieces — it's not like the old days when Lego consisted solely of simple blocks, every piece now seems to have one and only one function. Click on the “Client Service” link and Firefox promptly crashes. Not content with this, I restarted the browser and tried again... and again... Three attempts and three crashes, I'm convinced that it is indeed a reproducible problem! Start my trusty other browser — Konqueror — and off to the site to ask for my missing bit.

...and the words of the day from a spam is:

Still operate a small fruit stand with her from CEO related to necromancer, make a truce with her briar patch related to with paper napkin near pickup truck.around blood clot is South American.from onlooker self-flagellates, or defined by wedding dress pour freezing cold water on toward hydrogen atom. barbara fantasist cochran impose

Bizarre... and it almost makes sense, which is the scary part!

Home, then out for dinner and a movie with a friend of Jo's; dinner at Silvio's, cheap and yummy pizza as usual, then off to the Jam factory to see Tais Toi. I'm not sure what I'd expected, from the reviews I saw I'd guessed it was something along the lines of a light-hearted buddy movie, Jean Reno as straight man, Gerard Depardieu as comic. I hadn't expected to be bursting out laughing almost constantly the entire time we were there. I thought it was hilarious. I guess now I should try to see the Dinner Game....

Back at home I was hanging up my polar fleece jacket and realised that it still felt strange — after five and a half years, the chestnut that I've been carrying around in the right-hand pocket is finally gone. The chestnut that's been in the pocket ever since I picked it up while waiting in line to enter the Alhambra in Granada! All that time I've carried it around, I don't put much in these pockets, but feeling it in there always brought a smile to my face, remembering those weeks cycling through Spain and Portugal... all that time I've carried it around until Jo stepped on my jacket on Sunday, unceremoniously crushing it! I guess that'll teach me to leave my clothes on the floor!

More on the RDF front: FOAF files for pets! I couldn't resist, but its a bit hard when the lease forbids us from having any pets in the house. So here we are, an RDF FOAF file for Phil....

[http://purl.org/stuff/pets]

FOAF for pets.

It seems such a long time since I last ranted about Melbourne's idiots in their tin boxes, two specimens today popped to the fore:

Tosser #1: “Why is this car drifting into my lane? Has my motorbike suddenly become invisible? Are space aliens in control of the driver?” I asked myself as I rode along the freeway to work. “Aha! Its because the idiot has his phone on the steering wheel and is busy SMSing with both thumbs!” A long blast on the horn, he swerved back into his lane, looked a trifle sheepish and drove off down the exit ramp.

Tosser #2: Ride into the university, around the roundabout, pull into the left-turn lane and accelerate towards the corner. #$#!@#!!!! — the motorist in front of me with their left indicator on isn't going around the left corner, they've decided to ilegally stop to let a passenger out — they must find those “NO STANDING” signs so inconvenient. A second blast of the horn as I swerve around the idiot, the driver gives me the finger, obviously its his god-given right to ignore the signs and park where-ever he damn well wants.

A cold wintery day down at Lorne, a morning walk along the beach was nearly abandoned with the wind and spray. The tide was high, but as usual, there was very little interesting flotsam and jetsam to poke around in — I guess there are just too many people around for interesting stuff to remain for long. A three-metre length of weed-covered bamboo was the only thing that caught my eye — dead-straight, it looked as though maybe it came from the mast of a boat, in which case it is probably a long way south of where it started!

On and around to the rocks where the fishermen were congregated, rubbish and cans everywhere. I laughed at the sight of a Spam can, people almost forget nowadays that Spam refers to a a real product, not just the email variety. Old pastic bags of bait, lengths of cut-off fishing line, damaged old floats, beer cans and more rubbish, sure is good to see the environmentally-sustainable attitudes of our recreational fishermen in action...

Lunchtime and home, and down the Kookaburras (Dacelo novaeguineae) came to visit, drawn by the promise of a free feed on the balcony. Showing off in front of my nephews I started flicking bits of bacon rind closer and closer to the four birds... the bolder two coming right up to peck it from my fingers. All of a sudden one of them decided that a fat juicy finger would obviously hold more meat than a skinny bit of bacon rind, so the next peck took hold of a sizeable chunk of index finger. Stupidly, I tried again with the other hand, only to have one of the others take a belt at my other index finger. Kookaburras 2, Adrian nil!.

The wild life gets the better of me. Too much running around on bicycles, too many beers, too little sleep. Too much proximity to Jo's cold as well! Spent the day home in bed or on the couch or half-heartedly trying to fill in gaps in pages here that've been left blank.

Hmm, enter “Deadly Treadly” into Google and the only references it finds are to my website. I guess that explains why I got the phone call at work one day from someone wanting to go on one, pity she didn't read anything and see that I've got nothing to do with them! After ten years running them, you'd think that at least someone else would have mentioned them somewhere...

Brings on the next thought... one or two of my friends had found this out and mentioned it to me. Felt weird, trying to reconcile the difference between writing that is read by anonymous and unknown audience, and writing that is read by people who know me. Does it change anything? Probably not, nothing of any great import is ever written here, its all just ramblings to keep me occupied and have the fun of playing with a website.

Tried to tidy up a few other pages, but wyvern's disk is 99% full and I need to either delete a whole lot of stuff, or just buy a bigger disk. It's getting closer and closer to “buy a new computer time.” After a fortuitous reading in slashdot, I've found that unison seems to fit my needs for file replication, or at least provide a better fit than tra does, so for now I've got unison scripts setup to try and keep my WinXP laptop, linux desktop and linux home PCs in some sort of agreement... It does seem that a whole lot of people are after a decent distributed filesystem that can be used for “partially connected” operation.

I'm not entirely happy with using http://allconsuming.net/ to record my readings and my books. Too slow, too many hassles, and too often there's no record of a book that I own! I'd prefer if I could make my data available via RDF on my site, and give them a pointer to it, rather than me having to maintain my data on their site. I think I'll try to maintain my own list, referring to theirs where I can.

I guess Origin Energy is incapable of keeping our power going for more than two weeks at a time without an outage. Last night at around 02:30 the power flickered, everything reset, the CD player started up playing a Nick Barker CD (a strange habit that it has when the power comes on), and the PC reset.

That's about the fourth outage at approximately two week intervals that we've had! It's playing havoc with the uptime records from uptimed for my PC. Maybe I need to monitor the mains as well as the weather at home... Maybe Origin wouldn't want me to do that... Maybe I really should get a UPS!

Books books books — and me with no self control at all. I briefly ducked over to the Campus Center this afternoon in order to find a card — I found the card, but somehow found a pile of books as well. Two on the sales table, one — Eels — in the category of “interesting factual books with single-word titles.” We desperately need more bookshelf space, or more bookshelves, or even a house to put the bookshelves in!

Out to a celebratory dinner for our anniversary tonight at Bcoz restaurant. A six course meal — luckily all small courses! About seven years ago, Jo and I visited Tyrrell's winery while away on a bike tour, the winery has been sending me two or three newsletters a year ever since then. Normally I just bin them, but just this once one caught my eye and so we went to a posh dinner of six courses, ten wines and Bruce Tyrrell presiding. Impressive company, with Natalie, head of Tyrrell's wines in Melbourne, sitting next to me and both Rod, the chef, and Bruce wandering around chatting to everyone.

So much for a day at home to do useful things after Easter! A friend who was to turn up “late in the afternoon” to collect an ill-gotten barbecue — snarfed from the hard-rubbish in the street — turned up as I was eating my lunch. End of time to myself. Good to see him, good to catch up, but a major loss of time that had been allocated for some much needed house cleaning!

  Today: ??km
  Trip: km

Not just the fourth day of the bike ride — today was our first wedding anniversary! Woohoo, what fun. One year and no divorce, we must be better than all those Hollywood people or international sporting stars...

A couple of friends snuck breakfast-in-bed, the paper, and a bottle of bubbly under the edge of the tent this morning, luckily we opened the door before packing up the sleeping bags, letting us have a somewhat amusing romantic breakfast-in-bed of muesli while sitting in the tent!

Room service failed to appear so we had to get up to get up for toast and orange juice, then back to pack up the tent for the last time.

Cool leaving Poowong, I almost wished I had long sleeves on. Jo was quite comfortable with me providing the wind shield on the front! Twelve kilometers of gentle rolling down-hill through the farms and trees was a beautiful start to the day, then the same again along flatter ground to Lang Lang. The rodeo was in town today, with cowboys and girls strutting around, and a dozen or more members of the “Hoop Shooter” ute club cruising through town, each outdoing the other with size of bull-bars and number of spotlights.

We thought about trying to get a coffee in the bakery, but thirty cyclists had piled in ahead and it didn't seem worth the wait. Two sausage rolls definitely were though, the first one disappeared too quickly, a second had to be purchased to get the full benefit.

From Lang Lang onwards the riding was a monotonous bore. Once past the rodeo ground — $AU15 admission, $AU2 for children — we turned onto the South Gippsland highway for 25km of straight, flat, multi-lane road into a headwind, made less enjoyable by a constant stream of noisy, high-speed traffic, half of whom couldn't be bothered to pull over as they shot past towing caravans. Its a typical problem at the end of every Easter break, motorists who hardly ever tow their vans, cruising along the roads forgetting that the damn things stick out a foot wider than their cars on either side. An hour of this and we took a break in Tooradin, standing by the creek and watching the local lunatic walk past screaming and ranting and waving his arms at invisible demons.

Back onto the bike and off the highway, the road to Baxter only slightly more enjoyable with less traffic, but a much reduced width. I knew we were nearing Frankston when a petrol-head came screaming up behind us at a roundabout, blasting on the horn, before screeching around the roundabout and off up the hill in front of us.

By the time we reached Frankston train station we'd had enough for the day, two hours of constant slog in an unchanging position was enough for two bums, two necks and four arms and wrists. Riding on the tandem does seem to be more susceptible to pains like these, I think we both tend to sit in the same position for longer — there's less inclination to move around on the bike. We did manage a slick piece of maneuvering though — down the ramps to cross under the rail lines, a right-angle turn to go underneath, another right-angle and then back up the steep ramp on the other side with Jo standing on the pedals! A pity that Rod wasn't there, he'd spent half the weekend telling us he wanted to see us standing to climb a hill!

The train was sitting at the platform, $AU7 for a ticket into the city, then an hour of trying to stay awake as the sun shone through the windows and the train rocked us along. Stumbling out at Richmond for the last ride home we were both cold and tired and our legs wanted nothing more than a warm relaxing shower, but we climbed on board and made it back.

Where?

Poowong, Lang Lang, Tooradin, Baxter, Melbourne

  Today: ??km
  Trip: km

The overnight rain had blown away as we packed up this morning — I guess there's got to be some rain on an Easter Deadly Treadly! In place of the rain we had a strong westerly, straight in our faces on leaving Tarwin lower and for the next hour's slog towards Inverloch.

Nobody seemed in a very talkative mood on the road; maybe it was the hangovers from last night, maybe it was the headwind, maybe people were still asleep. Jo and I seemed to be struggling to move along the road, but we still seemed to be passing a lot of people — I guess at least we only had the same frontal area as one rider, with the legs of two.

The route skirted around the outside of Inverloch, but nearly everyone detoured in for some much needed coffee, and a chance to sit down out of the wind. Half of us managed to miss the first turn into town and then execute a variety of interesting u-turns and other maneuvers in order to get there. Heading along the main street at least four of us were treated to blasts on the horn from a local 4WD enthusiast, eager to make his feelings known regarding bicycles... nobody was in much of a mood to be amused.

Leaving Inverloch too good things happened; firstly, the wind dropped as we were now heading north, secondly, the coffee seemed to have done its job and people were more awake and talkative.

At the hill before Kongwak the long and short rides diverged, we had approximately a hundred metres warning of the turn, and chose the long route purely on the basis of it seeming to be more protected from the wind! Winding up the hill and then down through Kongwak we seemed miles from anywhere, the roads are narrow, covered in moss, and almost completely free of traffic.

Where?

Tarwin Lower, Inverloch, Kongwak Poowong

  Today: ??km
  Trip: km

A magnificent day's riding, mostly along peaceful country roads through the Gippsland hills.

At once point we watched as a flock of twenty to thirty black cockatoos flew overhead, creaking mournfully as they called to each other, flying with their characteristic slow, floppy wing beat.

There was a long hard climb after the morning-tea stop at Meeniyan, then magnificent views down towards Wilsons Prom as we headed south to rejoin the Foster to Inverloch road. A brief run along this road and then a great lunch at the Orange Roughy café at Fish Creek.

For perhaps the first time in Deadly Treadly history, it didn't rain at Tarwin Lower... not during the day anyway! Jo and some of the others have memories of being caught here in an enormous thunderstorm and hailstorm at Easter in about 1995! The weather was being spectacularly good to us, most unlike any of the Easter rides that I can remember, especially those around Gippsland!

Dinner at the Tarwin Lower pub was a breeze compared with last night, none of the ordinary menu was available, it was $AU13 per head, then pick what you want from a huge selection of dishes. No problems, no fuss, a huge queue of people both from the bike ride and the rest of the town, but all moving quickly and efficiently. A couple of bottles of red helped too, and a good night was had by all.

Where?

Mirboo North, Meeniyan, Fish Creek, Tarwin Lower

  Today: ??km
  Trip: km

Breakfast, finish packing, put the bags in the car and drive down to Alexandra parade to the start of yet another Deadly Treadly... somewhere along the way Jo asks whether I've checked that we really are starting from the same place as all the previous rides! We are, and about a hundred people have shown up, quite a few more than the last couple of times. A few quick hellos, we drop off the bags and then back home to pick up the bike. I said bike not bikes, because for the first time ever, we're taking the tandem on a tour somewhere!

Riding it with the clipless pedals is a huge improvement on the toe-straps. When we get home we must get around to buying some proper pedals for this bike! We survived the ride down Swan street, made it back to the start, then answered the first of a stream of questions along the lines of “How long have you had it?” and “What's it like to ride?”

Pedals off, bags into the bus, tandem onto the truck and then we're off in the buses out to Moe and to start the riding.

Amazingly, the bus driver managed to drive all the way from Melbourne to Moe without having to stop “to let us stretch our legs,” a euphemism that seems to have been used repeatedly over the years as the poor tobacco-addict drivers stop to desperately suck down two or three fags in quick succession.

A few passers-by looked on in bemusement as 100 people piled off the two coaches and started assembling bags and bikes — half of them anyway.... The other half stood around waiting... and waiting.... Eventually, an hour later, Arthur turned up with the second truck and the remaining bicycles. He'd been forced to provide statements to the police after some motorists ran into each other in front of him.

The local café failed dismally in an attempt to provide 100 people with coffees and salad rolls. Once the first ten had entered the shop, staff stress-level rose to record heights and everyone started getting in each other's way. There didn't seem any kind of system, so orders took longer and longer to fill, all the while more and more people joined the mob waiting at the counter!

...

Dinner at the Grand Ridge Brewery turned into a comedy of errors. Once again we found ourselves in a place with no order to their order system. After queueing at the counter to place an order, the only description we could give was along the lines of “that table over there,” and point, there are no table numbers, and no names were taken on orders. As a result, the night seemed to consist of a stream of increasingly harried staff coming out of the kitchen bearing plates, wandering around the room asking who had ordered a steak and a flathead. Not surprisingly, none of the customers knew which order was which either, so people were just grabbing whatever came past that sounded like what they had ordered!

The beer is very good though, and the happy hour prices of $1 a pot are outstanding! A few glasses of the award-winning Gippsland Gold almost made up for the kitchen! If only they didn't chill the beer to almost freezing point, it tastes too good to do that to it!

Where?

Moe, Thorpedale, Mirboo North

...

Hi there! Sorry for an e-mail out of the blue, but I just did a search for the term samsonite briefcase on Google and found ajft.org ranked 16.

Weird. There was I thinking that I'd never mentioned samsonite briefcases here, with the obvious exception of this page, a check with Google and sure enough — there it was on 07-Apr-2002, a briefcase with Bluetooth built in....

Uploaded the photos from the trip last week and then realised that I'd forgotten to reset the time in my camera — yet another device that knows the time but can't learn it from anything else. Sick of changing back and forth in daylight saving, I've set my camera to UTC!

This evening we hoped it would be third time lucky for the Curry Club, but it turned out to be “three strikes and out.” Out to have dinner at an Indian restaurant, previous visits there had been lukewarm. The food was OK, but once again, the service seemed lackadaisical, and when I saw that two of the waiters kept ducking out with their mobile phones to SMS friends it all got just a bit too irritating. Still, the place always seems full, so maybe I just keep getting unlucky, or maybe they just prefer to serve large groups of customers.