Steven
Hanley
About
email: sjh@svana.org
web: http://svana.org/sjh
Other online diaries:
Aaron Broughton,
Alison Russell,
Allan Bontjer,
Andrew Pollock,
Anthony Towns,
Chris Yeoh,
Jeremy Kerr,
Martijn van Oosterhout,
Michael Carden,
Michael Davies,
Michael Still,
Rusty Russell,
Tim Potter,
Tony Breeds,
Links:
Linux Weekly News,
XKCD,
Userfriendly,
Questionable Content,
Planet Linux Australia,
Bilbys,
CORC,
Canberra Weather: forecast, radar.
planet sjh
(online feed aggrgator for all the diaries I read regularly)
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| Jan | Feb | Mar |
| Apr | May | Jun |
| Jul | Aug | Sep |
| Oct | Nov | Dec |
Categories:
- amusing - 34
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- software - 16
- lca - 53
- leisure - 113
- books - 13
- food - 47
- holiday - 2
- music - 24
- screen - 20
- theatre - 4
- mtb - 352
- events - 69
- gear - 82
- various - 294
- ilmiwac - 37
- milkcarton - 21
- work - 5
- January 2010 (10)
- December 2009 (4)
- November 2009 (7)
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Thu, 21 Jan 2010
Midnight Espresso is awesome - 17:39
Tony had been telling me
for a while that he was really looking forward to returning to Wellington to
go to Midnight Espresso, his favourite cafe in a town which is famous for a
good cafe culture, he also hinted I may like it a lot. There does not appear
to be a website, however details are on a few
review
sites.
I am impressed, though not vegetarian only they do have an extensive Vegetarian (and Vegan friendly) menu with some great food. All the cakes they have for sale are Vegan and their coffee is indeed excellent. This cafe is almost worth the trip to Wellington alone. If you are anywhere near Cuba street, or really I think if you are any where near New Zealand pop on over and visit this cafe. Maybe it is because I do not have the variety of Veggie friendly places to eat that is found in Melbourne, or maybe it is because this is a great place to hang out. Anyway with the fun mountain biking and linux.conf.au here this week it would be silly not to come and now I know of another good reason to visit Wellington. Thanks Tony.
Wed, 20 Jan 2010
My notes from the first day of lca (Miniconf day 1) - 22:22
I have written 34 pages of notes (in the a5 conference notebook) in the three
days (2 days miniconfs, 1 day main conference) so far, however as my hand
writing closely resembles and encryption standard I had better get them
transcribed into the computer reasonably soon (before I completely forget how
to decipher what I scrawled on paper). So I have just typed up the notes I
took (9 a5 pages worth of my hand writing) from the first day of lca (miniconf
day 1) and put it
here
in plain text.
I probably should put them directly up here but am not in the mood to add html formatting to the notes at the moment. Great stuff so far, I will see if I can find time to transcribe another day or two tomorrow.
Day two lca finishing off with a great ride - 06:57
 Skyline ride (fullsize) |
I noticed yesterday at the finish of the miniconfs I already have 19 pages of
notes written in the a5 conference notebook. I now need to find the time to
put some of the notes into the computer I think.
Another great miniconf day, I really enjoyed the Weta digital high density computer room design talk. I have uploaded the photos from the ride I did around Skyline (awesome ride around the ridgelines and hills surrounding Wellington) on a Skyline MTB Ride photos page. Oops, an update, I mentioned to a few people the gps map of the ride would be online, it is here if you wish to see it. |
Mon, 18 Jan 2010
Awesome New Zealand Food - 15:31
 Penguino Ice Cream Cafe (fullsize) |
The friend I did my Abel Tasman kayaking trip with has said a few times he
could eat himself to death here in New Zealand. I tend to agree the food here
is pretty good. Today I had lunch with Stewart, Bdale, Edale, TonyB and others
at Midnight Espresso, a cafe recommended by Tony, who went to high school
here, he said we would like it. I did it was excellent, lots of great Vegan
options including all their cakes. I will be back tomorrow (possibly missing
out on variety but OMG it was good.
The photo to the left is from a Penguin themed ice cream cafe in Nelson, they had some excellent Sorbet (an award winning boysenberry and a great apple and berry for example) that I was able to eat too. I thought I should put something penguin themed in a post to the lca tag here. (they have a Penguino Crossing sign too). I hope I can find a few more really good examples of local veggie friendly food before I have to head home on Saturday morning. |
 Camping Observation Beach, Abel Tasman NP (fullsize) |
Keith and I met up for a kayaking trip in Abel Tasman National Park when we
were both in New Zealand. The photos are all up on my
Abel Tasman Kayaking January
2010 Page
As Keith said this is something that should be on everyone's bucket list. An incredible area and some wonderful kayaking. We were thinking about it a fair bit and we both think there are other ways you can approach this trip that would be fun. Heidi told me there is an Abel Tasman marathon sometime in September, I am thinking that it would be a lot of fun to run up the track to the end in one day, get your gear dropped up there for camping along with a fast AR double kayak. The next day leave your gear there to be picked up and kayak back. Otherwise we both think doing the track walk to the end and then kayaking back, or maybe walking in from the other end of the track and doing a remote park start for your kayak trip at Tonga Beach (this is the farthest north the rented kayaks will be dropped off) and paddle back to Marahau. I had a lot of fun on the trip and the fact we did not have a nice fast kayak such as Matilda was not really a problem as we are on holiday and not trying to go fast or anything. I did miss Matilda a bit at times but I got over it. |
Sun, 17 Jan 2010
In Wellington hanging out for lca. - 16:07
 Makara Summit Weather (fullsize) |
I am in Wellington, lca is starting tomorrow, I arrived yesterday however the
weather was horrible so a hung out with a friend, Bec, who is living here for
a few years. We saw the Sherlock Holmes movie which was awesome. Today when I
went looking for coffee I ran across Jon Oxer so we headed in for some
conference supplies, breakfast, coffee etc (along with Thomas). Then I went to
the rego area and
found MRD, AJ and
others. After registering for the conference we headed out for some lunch.
Then as the weather was better today than yesterday (no heavy horizontal rain) Bec and I went for a mountain bike ride (in the photo above I am somewhat muddy but enjoying the summit of Makara Peak mtb park). Now I am about to go find some lca ghosts, what fun. |
Sun, 10 Jan 2010
Rotorua Summer MTB Series - Bike Vegas - 23:28
 Green Lake near Rotorua (fullsize) |
Much to my delight I found out when I arrived in Rotorua that there was a
mountain bike race on this Sunday. The Bike Vegas Summer MTB Series, this is a
series of 45km point to point races through the Whakarewarewa Forest where the
legendary redwoods single track are.
The rest of the series are 24th Jan and 14th Feb so I will obviously miss these events, I headed out to race today though and had a great time. I got to catch up with Gaz from NZO Clothing which was good as he was there racing. (and he beat my by a few minutes, way to go Gaz) My GPS Map for the race shows where the race went, starting going the wrong way up the rock drop track and then onto many others, I can not work out the order exactly (writing this without the GPS trace in front of me right now) but remember it included Pigeon Run, Pig Track Link, Mad If You Dont, Mossy Track, around next to Green Lake (gorgeous/spectacular scenery there), No Brains, the end of Old Chevy (with the fun gap jump), Spring Roll, Sweet & Sour, Be Rude Not To, Lion Trail, Turkish Delight, Soakhole, Grinder, The Dipper, and Tahi. I had not ridden some of the green tracks since the 2005 Moonride 12 Hour, others I probably would not have ridden if it were not for the race today and some of the tracks are the classics that should be ridden every time you come here. I had a great time and think it was an excellent race format (they had a 25 KM option also for people who did not want quite such a long race). |
Sat, 09 Jan 2010
Rotorua mountain biking - 07:47
I know we have it good in Canberra for mountain bike trails, there are many
times I think people who live in Rotorua are even better off though. In the
lead up to linux.conf.au this year I am having a week and a half of play time
in New Zealand before the conference. At the moment I am staying with a friend
in Rotorua for a few days and we have been doing some rides the last two days.
For example I put this status update onto Facebook on Thursday night. "a-trail, tickler, frontal lobotomy, billy t, split enz, pondy downhill, pondy new, roller coaster, chop suey, corners, be rude not to, exit trail" which were the tracks I rode in this 47 km ride on Thursday. Oh so much fun to be had on the mountain bike here.
You can see the Rotorua trail map online now days at the Rotorua NZ website which is handy. I bought a copy at a bike shop the other day to get around with too. Yesterday one of the highlights was the track Old Chevy which just goes on seemingly for ever and is as awesome as any of the great tracks here.
Yesterday morning we rode into town for some shopping and on the way back my crank snapped, last time it was the left crank, this time the right crank. So I rode one legged back to the house and we then took the bike into a shop and they are putting some XT cranks on. Jen got a bunch of photos of me riding one legged as she thought it was hilarious.
I thought my riding for the day was over as the bike would take until the next morning to get fixed up (and without all my bike tools I could not just buy the part and do it myself), however the completely awesome guys at KiwiBikes next to Zippys Cafe in town just happened to have an awesome Titus hardtail demo bike they loaned me overnight so I could keep on riding. Awesome guys, great shop, and they hand build some pretty nifty bikes. Anyway some more fun to be had coming up soon.
 Looking back toward Coogee, Bronte, Bondi, etc (fullsize) |
I spent Christmas in Sydney with Jane and other extended family (Grandma,
Nick, Ashlie, Jude, Chris, Stu, Karin) at a place in Coogee. Though I had
a bike with me (single speed) that was for a potential boxing day mtb ride
(which I piked on due to rain). As I was so close to the coastal walking path
I headed out for a run on it on Christmas morning. South from Coogee until I
ran out of obvious walking path (around 4 km I think) and then back up to the
other end of Bondi and back down to Coogee. No idea how far it was (maybe
16km) as my Garmin stopped working and I had sent it in for a replacement.
One of the nice things about being there over Christmas was I managed to go for a swim in the ocean every day while there. No serious swim training but it was nice to get into the salt water and do some swimming none the less. Lots of fun was had with the family, thanks for an awesome time to all of them there. |
 Bracelet fade evidence (fullsize) |
I commented a while ago that the new NBCF bracelets should last longer as they have a design that is less likely to break. Looks like I was right, the faded almost white bracelet in the photo has been on my wrist for most of 2009, I finally noticed a little before Christmas when I gave a new one to a friend that mine was no longer a good NBCF pink, time to put a new one on, I am not sure I can retire the faded one to my notice board at work as it is not broken. |
Tue, 22 Dec 2009
Pretty average bar tape, a 7 month report. - 14:06
My new road bike, a
2008 model Kona
Kapu in Orange I purchased in April, came with white bar tape wrapped up
to just past the brake hoods. The bar is one of the new flat topped ergo style
bars. Though as it is aluminium rather than carbon it will feel quite cold on
chilly mornings. Due to my firm belief that white bar tape is almost as wrong
as white knicks and the fact I did not want to get chilly hands on the bare
aluminium I decided to get new bar tape for the bike.
I searched around trying to find orange coloured tape for a while and found the Lizard Skins tape in a good shade of orange at a shop here. The Lizard Skins tape had some good reviews for the tacky grip feel and seemed alright, though it was around twice the price of most traditional cork or synthetic cork tape. Now 7 months after purchasing the grip tape and putting it on the bike I have discovered the two major problems with it are that it gets dirty and the packaging recommended against using any cleaning agent other than plain water on it as it may deteriorate the grip. I can deal with this as it is sort of in the nature of grip tape to become dirty over time.
My bigger gripe is that I noticed the last few days that after only 7 months the grip tape is wearing out on some of the points I have my hands in contact with the bars the most often. Previously I have had grip tape last for 3 or 4 years before wearing out enough to require replacing so I am definitely disappointed in this and in the next few days will pull off the tape and put on some much cheaper cork tape in orange from a different brand.
Fri, 11 Dec 2009
Paddle times improving all round - 15:49
This week I set a pb at paddling, 49m52s for the 9.6 km on the GPS (first time
ever under 50 minutes). Randall also set another PB (second week running doing
that for him) of 47:08 (I still have almost 3 minutes to gain there...), he is
also getting closer to Brendan and other fast paddlers which is good. Danielle
missed the time trial this week, however last week smashed her PB and wen well
under 60 minutes for the first time, getting 58:59. It is good to see progress
happening all over here, lets hope we can all keep it up for a while at
least. Brendan has mentioned it took him 4 or so years to get to his speed
doing a fairly large amount of paddling, none of us AR nuts really get the
time to paddle more than twice a week most weeks though so do not improve
as fast as we could potentially otherwise.
Mon, 07 Dec 2009
 The lovely Taemas Bridge near Yass (fullsize) |
Saturday morning I hopped on my road bike and headed out to Yass, a
nice 3
hour, 84 KM ride which is always rather enjoyable. The reason to head out
there was for Jeff and
Pia's combined 30th and housewarming. The
bbq/party was a lot of fun and I was able to catch up with many people I have
not seen much of in a while. Thanks for having us all over guys, and what a
lovely place you have there (especially with the views out toward open land
from the yard).
I had been planning to ride back but a friend was keen to go paddling on Saturday afternoon so I got a lift back with Crash and headed out for a paddle, largely so my friend could get some more time in tippy boats. Sunday morning I helped Bilbys do the timing at the triathlon on at the lake and had been sort of planning to go paddling again however ended up going home and napping for an extended period of time. So all in all a fun but relaxing sort of weekend. The Bridge in the photo on the left is one of the reasons I think everyone should go check out the road from Yass to Wee Jasper, a lovely majestic bridge across the river seemingly in the middle of nowhere. |
Fri, 04 Dec 2009
 New pedals indoors (fullsize) |
 New pedals in the sunshine (fullsize) |
Mon, 30 Nov 2009
Cruising around the AROC Sprint on Saturday - 16:04
 Selina, Celia, Mark and Randall at presentations (fullsize) |
While Nathan, DaveS and Wayne were Moseying around the AROC classic course on Saturday just a little bit faster than the Mosey of Selina, Mark and Randall and that of Danielle, Matt and Gary. I was also out there cruising around with Ron and Tony. Strangely I was carrying a camera so took a few photos, my AROC Sprint Race 2 for 2009 photos are online. The results and race photos and stuff can be found linked from the event page at AROC Sports. |
Tue, 24 Nov 2009
Kate Miller-Heidke live in Canberra last week - 11:29
What with my love of female folk singers, and especially of Missy Higgins
piano work and what my sister refers to as my predictable enjoyment of female
pop sort of music I guess it comes as no surprise I am a huge fan of
Kate Miller-Heidke. She started
an Australian tour recently and one of the gigs was in Canberra. Last Tuesday
night at the Hellenic club I managed to catch the gig with my sister and her
partner. The support act was
Washington, I enjoyed
their music and thought it a fitting support act for this gig. The song How to
Tame Lions was very good, and I agree with the lead singer if everyone at a
gig had one of the face masks on it would be even cooler. Thought neither Jane
or I listen to radio much currently we both recognised a few other songs sung
by the group.
The main act was of course Kate Miller-Heidke and her band, they came on and got going on some really good renditions of her songs, she also tended to talk a fair bit between songs and had some good amusing stories and anecdotes. Such as telling about the recent US tour, where they played the Facebook song on college radio stations a lot. However due to the fact they are publicly funded you can not swear, so they had to be rid of the obvious swearing "fucking fucking kidding me" etc, however the next when she sings "narcissistic arsehole", at one station they had a list of banned words, and said you can not say "ass" (American spelling and pronunciation) so she asked can we say "arse" (Australian spelling and drawled out) and he said it is not on the list so sure go ahead.
As much as I love the music some of the lyrics have been hitting a bit close to home for me, even though it has been almost a year the whole facebook song reminds me I am still trying not to remember a lot of last year so as not to be depressed, and of course the line in "Space they cannot touch", "I just hope I am good enough to keep you" still preys on my mind a lot as I wasn't. Still so long as I do not dwell on such thoughts I had a good time there and was definitely impressed by the live performance. They work hard to choreograph their performance on stage with movements and dancing and have a lot of energy. When the amps were playing up for a while Kate and Keir played 4 songs with just an acoustic guitar and singing which was a great recovery for the equipment problems.
 Vegan Chocolate Cakes with Soy Cream Cheese Chocolate Icing (fullsize) |
Last night I whipped up two vegan chocolate cakes, and because I had some
vegan cream cheese left from Friday I made chocolate cream cheese icing for
them. These are incredibly easy to make and have a very basic recipe. I used
something very similar to this Vegan
Chocolate Cake recipe though made the icing with Cream Cheese, Nuttelex,
Icing Powder and Vanilla.
Anyone rocking up to the evening at Tilleys tonight will be able to sample these. |
Wed, 18 Nov 2009
I doubt even we were the first... - 16:54
I was interested to see the
claim
about believing they are running the first tertiary exams run on computers, I
guess I am interested because in Computer
Science at ANU we have been running exams for first through fourth years
and for masters courses for 5 years now. Including a first year course with
over 150 students in comp1110 (first year), comp3300 (third year operating
systems course), comp3310 (third year computer networks course) and many
others. These exams account for 50 to 70% of the assessment in these courses.
As I said I would be very surprised if we were the first to do this in Australia too.
Mon, 16 Nov 2009
 Dave and Julie finishing (fullsize) |
I was unable to compete this year, but I got out there and cheered on my
friends and took a whole lot of photos which can be found at my
2009 Triple Triathlon
photos page.
I hope everyone racing had fun, I enjoyed following the race. |
Thu, 12 Nov 2009
Yummy vegan lasagna, Lentil and Leek - 22:33
 Lentil and Leek Lasagna (fullsize) |
I was in the Oxfam shop a little while ago and while there noticed an Oxfam
Vegetarian Cookbook. It looked interesting and I like buying Oxfam stuff so I
bought a copy. Home sick today I was having a read through it and liked the
look of the Lentil and Leek lasagna pictured above.
It is indeed a delightful dish, I enjoyed my dinner tonight. I did not use cheese (I instead spread some sesame seeds and olive oil on top of the white sauce. For the white sauce I used soy milk, whole meal flour and nuttelex rather than milk and butter). I highly recommend this lasagna. |
Thu, 05 Nov 2009
Oh no fast - 13:30
Last summer when the lake was open and I was able to do paddle time trials a
few times, I did not really go very fast, looking at my GPS records from
December onwards I did not even go under 52 minutes for the 9.6km time trial
last summer. So yesterday arvo I rocked up for the first summer time trial of
the season at the river.
Thinking I had not paddled much over winter and I had not had many sustained efforts of 10km non stop I was expecting I would probably push the pace a bit to do 54 minutes. So imagine my surprise when, after wash riding a slower wash than I should have been paddling for the first few km and then going it alone I ended up doing 50:52 in the time trial.
Sure I am happy to have that sort of speed, however I must admit to being somewhat paniced that now over summer I should in theory get faster most weeks, I really will have to crack my goal of sub 50 soon I suppose. Eeek.
Sat, 24 Oct 2009
Cranks are not suposed to do this I think. - 20:36
 One solution to increase right leg strength (fullsize) |
Leading a ride today, pulled a gap jump and was a little bit slow, so landed a
bit hard with my back tyre just clearing the lip. Suddenly found my left foot
a lot closer to the ground than it should be. Oh a broken crank, only one
year old. The bigger problem was as ride guide for a familiarisation ride I
was not sure anyone else of the 23 people I was showing this course to knew the
rest of the route for the ride.
Fortunately someone knew the way through to Mt Taylor on this leg and I was able to swing a lift with someone to get home rather than ride one legged from Stromlo home. Mr Milton I am not. |
Fri, 16 Oct 2009
A new discovery, ninja music - 13:25
Last night I was reading AFP's
second recent on the issue of artists making money in the Internet enabled
world, something she refers to as
Virtual
Crowdsurfing, all that makes a lot of sense to me, however I happened to
note her mentioning doing an online performance with a musician named
Matthew Ebel.
Out of interest I followed the links and then looked up youtube to learn about him. One of the first youtube videos I stumbled upon was Everybody Needs a Ninja, which is awesome beyond words. Go watch it now, anyway I listened to some other stuff on youtube, however mostly on the strength of the Ninja song alone I bought copies (mp3 download and two physical copies, all from cdbaby) of his album Goodbye Planet Earth. Listening to it on rotation in my ipod today and it really is pretty awesome. Creative amusing lyrics, good piano and other instruments/effects. I had a bit of a listen to the samples of his older albums, however they are a bit more main stream and less amusing/clever seeming, though still good I was not in the mood to buy them.
Mon, 12 Oct 2009
Scott 24 Hour Photos - 20:03
While out at the 24 hour this weekend I managed to take a few photos I have
now uploaded to a page, 2009
Scott 24 Hour photos. I also provided bandwidth this morning for the
Sportograf guys to upload their
photos. They took 85,000 over the weekend, the best of set are already up and
they should have the rest public by Wednesday sometime.
Tue, 06 Oct 2009
Googong Multisport Challenge, more Sri Chinmoy fun - 13:24
Similar to the Yerrabi race in May but longer and tougher, the Googong
Multisport challenge was on this weekend. I went and competed again and had
fun. So did a number of friends. Photos and other stuff at my
Googong Multisport Challenge
2009 page. Thanks to the
local Sri Chinmoy Events crew for
more fun this weekend.
Wed, 30 Sep 2009
Rockbox freezes on ogg files fix - 17:41
After messing around with my ipod for a while upgrading it to rockbox v3.4 to
see if it would play some ogg files it was freezing on I discovered a simple
fix at last. If an ogg file has id3 or id3v2 tags it appears rock box will
refuse to play the file. I had been wondering for a year or so why my violent
femmes albums I ripped onto the ipod would not play, however was not to fussed
as I was not listening to them overly much. However I ripped a new album I
bought and was most annoyed to find I could not play it.
Happily now I have discovered this problem I have easily removed all the id3 and id3v2 tags form ogg files on the device with "find -name '*.ogg' -print0 | xargs -0 id3v2 -D" and hey presto I can now play all these files again easily. The ogg/vorbis tag remains intact, for some reason I had add id3 tags ticked in grip without restricting it to files ending in .mp3.
Disappointed to learn that purple Vitasoy is not vegan - 16:33
I was somewhat pissed off at Vitasoy/national foods last week when I learned
that the calci plus (purple container) Vitasoy is not vegan friendly. Some
time in mid 2008 they changed the packaging slightly saying it had vitamin D
added. I paid no attention to this, however some vegans are far more alert to
this sort of thing than I am.
Last week I was looking for some information about the new Vitasoy cafe milk that is appearing in many cafes, I happened to come across some discussion on vegan forums about the calci plus not being vegan friendly. The vitamin D they began adding to the product some time last year is from a lanolin derived source (sheep/wool production industry), the forums referred to it as a D3 additive, suggesting Vitasoy if they felt the need to add vitamin D could put the effort into finding D2 based vitamin D which is not from the animal industry. Response from Vitasoy when they were contacted about this is that many of their other products remain Vegan friendly and they are investigating a reliable source of D2 for this milk.
Apart from them changing the packaging but not noticeably making it clear in any other way I am somewhat annoyed at a soy milk product with vitamin D added making it non Vegan. Anyone needing some vitamin D should go outside from time to time and get a bit of sun for crying out loud. I am unfortunately somewhat addicted to Vitasoy by choice and as they have stopped producing Vitasoy heart (yummiest soy milk around) I had since then been drinking calci plus. On my most recent shopping trip however I went to buying the green carton Vitasoy (fibre), I guess it would be better to try a few non Vitasoy products and see if there is one the behaves nicely (does not clump up) tastes better than So Good and costs less than Bonsoy.
I like the term a friend I was telling this to came up with, if they feel the product needs vitamin D as people consuming it do not have enough Vitamin D it should be called "Cave Dweller Vitasoy".
Fri, 25 Sep 2009
 Astro Road Assistance (fullsize) |
To go along with my habit of bender dolls, robot dogs, cute animal horns, etc somewhere on all my bikes I was starting to notice the lack of something extra mounted somewhere on my new road bike. Fortunately while in landspeed records tonight I saw something that helped me fix this situation. With the dual advantage of offering some extra rocket assistance on the road bike and nicely accessorising one of my cycling outfits how could I pass this one up? |
Gear transport mechanism costs - 16:40
I finally got the car service I have been putting off for a while done. Last
time I had it in there they mentioned the radiator will need replacing, so I
got that done this time. Also last weekend while my car was locked in secure
parking at my sister's place in Sydney with Matilda (double sea kayak) on the
roof some retards came along and stuck a screw driver or something in the
drivers side lock. Thus I needed a new barrel on the lock, this means to
unlock the car on the drivers side I now use a different key to the one I use
for ignition and the passenger side. I have had to deal with this on other
cars in the past and it is a PITA.
I guess I should be happy whoever it was did not damage Matilda and that was the only damage to the car. Anyway the whole shebang cost AUD $1230, around $200 of that was on the new lock barrel and associated labour so not worth an insurance claim ($500 excess). Now I can go back to putting off the car servicing until I absolutely need to for a while, well apart from the two new front tyres I need that they did not do at the time.
Tue, 15 Sep 2009
Hard day in the heat at the Angry Doctor - 14:33
I put some photos I took at
the Angry Doctor on line, none of them particularly good. Though showing
off the awards ceremony for the spectacular efforts by Heather, Julie, Libby
and Sam.
What with the worlds taking up a lot of time, and no real serious cycling efforts recently I have been continuing to rely on my base cycle fitness for all the bike efforts I do. This event came down to relying on that again. I do however think I made some mistakes. It was well over 30 Celsius down there for the race, I normally struggle in the heat so should have expected to here also.
I did not pay much attention to hydration or salts intake the day before of morning before the start. Then going out harder than I should have I was feeling good until at 30km I was hit with some nasty cramps. My reaction to that was to consume a lot of liquid. 2 litres of water from the camel back, one full bottle and two half bottles of sports drink (borrowed from others) all used up before reaching 50km. I took on two bottles of sports drink and 3 litres of water at 50km and used that all up by 70km going for 10km until the aid station with no liquid.
I did not overheat which is good, however with bad cramps for 70km and being unable to put much power down I was annoyed with my race. I probably washed too much liquid through my system, though being scared of overheating (and heat stroke type problems) I think maybe I should have tried to have more salty foods and solid foods instead of the mostly gels I used all day. Chips may have worked a treat or salty biscuits. Of course a heck of a lot more time on the bike would also help. I think this is something I should seriously concentrate on getting back before Jindabyne next year, some good bike form rather than relying on base all the time.
Anyway it was still a good event on spectacular trails, I am keen to repeat the effort next year.
Wed, 09 Sep 2009
British pollies at elite level to Australian pollies with rorts. - 16:50
So I notice many of the papers today have front page
material
about the Australian politicians needing to cut perks due to rorts in their use
of available allowances.
What amuses me the most here is that the perk in question is the use of allowances to print/photocopy material for their election campaigns at the last federal election. Yes the amount that has allegedly been rorted is huge and election material should not be funded with public money. However I keep wondering if the British pollies may look on and think of the rorting abilities of Australian pollies as somewhat amateur. In May there was a lot of coverage of the British pollies rorting allowances and purchasing things such as moat cleaning or pornography. Though it was interesting to see some unique views on that situation at the time.
Oh and speaking of federal politics, I am happy to see I am not the only one who thinks our federal minister for sport (Ellis) is gorgeous.
Wed, 02 Sep 2009
2009 Mountain Bike World Championships in Canberra are finally happening. - 07:32
 Ben Henderson practising the course (fullsize) |
The worlds most incredible riders are all finally here for the Worlds. It is
on and happening. I have been taking photos (and will continue to do so) while
I am out there working on site (two weeks of holiday from work to do so).
Yesterday was the first race (Team Relay) which was won by the Italian team. I finally have had a few moments spare to upload my photos so far (though this has made me late on site this morning). My worlds photos are all on my 2009 Mountain Bike World Championships Photos page (no time to spell check this morning) |
Sun, 30 Aug 2009
Kate and Ruth at the Folkus - 23:29
 Kate and Ruth(fullsize) |
On Friday night after getting home from another day doing
World Champs work at Mt
Stromlo I had the rather enjoyable opportunity to see
Kate and Ruth playing live at
The Folkus Room. They do not often
play in Canberra outside the folk festival and they really are a wonderful
pair of performers. My housemate Matt who is also a fan of their work came
along with me and we got to enjoy a spectacular evening of music.
Early on they played Cindy Cindy which was wonderful. Kate played a cover of the Joni Mitchell song A Case of You which was really amazing, what an evening. I thought it was a little disappointing how few people were there as they are popular in Canberra. Though an amusing aspect of this is that most of the people in the audience were close friends of theirs and both there mothers were (eventually) at the gig and they had played in groups with some of the audience members. I have been taking photos while working out at Stromlo on the worlds, however have not had much time in front of a computer recently so have not had time to upload them and comment on them. It will happen at some point soon. |
Sun, 23 Aug 2009
Another ouch, Out at the worlds site today and Coraline is awesome - 23:00
On my way out to Stromlo this morning on the CX bike I unfortunately had more
data provided to back up my theory that my CX bike is cursed. Riding into the
bike path tunnel near Scrivner Dam I thought to myself on the wet bike path,
hmm I may be going a bit fast here, as I finished the thought my front wheel
slipped and I went sliding along the bitumen on my right hip. This is of
course the same hip
I went sliding
on a month ago.
Right now I am seriously annoyed as it makes walking around and a lot of movements painful, I was almost back to being able to sleep on my right side, now I wont for a while. I once more will be unable to run for a few weeks, and can not put full power into the pedals for another few weeks now too. I also have this theory that the cyclocross bike is cursed. This is the only bike I have ever owned on which I have had crashes serious enough to stop me riding or doing other things.
Sure I have had other crashes, such as those involving the breaking of frames however I was still able to go out and do long hard riders or other stuff the next day without much pain. So far on the CX bike I have crashed badly 4 times, each time with the front wheel losing traction and ending up pretty badly hurt. Stitches at the hospital required from one such incident in November 2007, then last year I came off and broke my collar bone when the front wheel lost traction. The recent crash in the CX race meant a month of no running, missing some events and some serious pain. Now a repeat (though it does not feel quite so severe) today. I guess it is possible that something about my position on the bike combined with the geometry and handling of it simply does not suit my riding style and thus I just lose the front wheel badly form time to time. Or I could be blaming the tool.
I made it out to Stromlo of course and we got to work, getting closer to having all the pipes up to hold the bunting around the XC course. We put in some new rocks in a line on one section to make A and B lines, later while working near hammer head the Australian team came past. I took some photos of them practising sections (not posting online until I get faster Internet at home again). So we asked them to check out the new section later on and tell us if it worked and if the B line needed to be slowed or the A line changed. In the end we went down and fixed both up to the extent it should work well while the practised in front of us as we changed it around to ensure it was correct. As Dave said it was kind of fun to have the elites there as we built this to see how it worked at pace.
Upon getting home I showered and headed out to see a movie, Coraline in 3d. This (being a Neil Gaiman based movie) was something I had been looking forward to for a long while, everyone had said seeing it in 3d was worth it too. What can I say, it did not disappoint, scary and cool and fantastic and fun and incredible and sweet and fun and oh so worth seeing. The 3d was a cool experience too.
Fri, 21 Aug 2009
Where many of my friends will be next week - 12:36
So a lot of my friends I regularly ride bikes with will be over in East Timor
next week for the inaugural Tour de
Timor, this looks like an excellent event in the making and I would love
to be there. The timing however was simply too close to the
Mountain Bike World
Championships which start on September 1st here in Canberra at Stromlo,
there is a lot of work to be done out there next week and I am having the
next two weeks off work to work out there with the other CORC people who have
been putting in so much time and effort to bring this event to Canberra.
Still I wish Libby, Chris, Gary, Bleeksie, Cameron, and the rest of them an excellent time over there and I look forward to hearing how much fun it was when they return from their adventure.
The final product of yesterday's baking - 12:24
 Vegan Tiramisu cupcakes, finished product(fullsize) |
The photo on the left is of the 24 finished tiramisu cupcakes mentioned yesterday. They were a hit. Yummm. |
Thu, 20 Aug 2009
Still not allowed to give blood - 17:35
So I have been hearing rumours from friends recently that the rule that means
I am not allowed to give blood has recently been relaxed. Not due to my
diabetes, reading the
FAQ on
the donate blood site mentions that insulin controlled diabetics should
speak with them, however hints they probably will be able to.
The reason I (and also my Sister and Mother) are not allowed to give blood is that we lived in England for all of 1993, which is between the 1980 to 1996 period they rule out due to the lack of a vCJD test. (details here). Which it appears is definitely still a restriction. Unfortunate really.
 Vegan Golden Cupcakes pre Tiramisu (fullsize) |
Will anyone ever tire of a cupcake? I doubt it. Here are 24 fresh (baked this
morning after I got home from swimming before going to work) vegan golden
cupcakes (from the
VCTOTW
book), this is the plain cupcake recipe, however tonight I will be making them
into vegan
Tiramisu cupcakes. Last time they were spectacular so I expect similar
results this time, and I was able to get the dark chocolate coated coffee
beans at the ANU Food Co-Op yesterday too so they may even be better.
This is of course pre preparation with the Kahlua at the ready for when I get home to do the vegan vanilla cream cheese icing and Kahlua/coffee mix. I am going over to a friend's birthday dinner tonight and offered to bring a vegan friendly dessert. |
Mon, 17 Aug 2009
dc++ or new digital camera - 14:43
 New Panasonic DMC-FT1 (fullsize)
|
So I bought myself a 6MP, 6x optical zoom,
panasonic
dmc-lz5 in January 2007. It has been a good camera and has worked well for
2.5 years now. I guess one thing I found a little bit jarring is it seemed to
have more sensor induced noise (it looked like a painting up close) in many
photos. However on the whole I liked it.
When I have it with me in an event I tend to carry it in my jersey pocket, in a padded bag inside a dry bag. This makes the camera quite bulky (and heavier), it also makes it a lot harder to whip it out for a photo (have to undo the bags, get it out, put it back etc). At geoquest this year one of my team mates had a Panasonic DMC-FT1 (called the TS1 in US and possibly Europe) which is waterproof to 3 metres and shock proof to 1.5 metre drop. He was swimming with it in his pocket and getting it out to take shots in the ocean and simply kept it there where it could easily get banged up. One of my housemates already had an Olympus camera she uses in races that is similar (waterproof and shock proof), this Panasonic one I was looking at came out this year and has some nice features, as I am still somewhat partial to Panasonic cameras (Crash's influence) I decided this is the one I wanted. 4.8 optical zoom, 12 MP, AVCHD (1080p) video recording, no moving parts externally. So I ordered it last Wednesday night and it came on Friday morning. When water used to get into the drybag/camera bag while racing the camera would fog up and be useless for taking photos, this camera I can now keep in a pocket or neoprene pouch and let it get wet and it will still work fine. Also My test photos so far do not have the painted looking noise as the LZ5 did and the photos appear crisper. I like it, I also think Jane may like the purchase as I will give her the old camera as I no longer need it. Of the photos on the left, the photo of the new camera was taken with the LZ5 and the photo of the LZ5 was taken with the new camera. A few other photos taken this weekend (3 paddling on Saturday afternoon and one at the Gravity XC race at Stromlo yesterday also turned out well). The new camera is effectively the same size as the old one, however as I do not need the camera bag or dry bag it will be more compact and easier to deal with. |
Wed, 12 Aug 2009
 Fresh Warm Chai Latte Cupcakes (fullsize) |
Last night D, G and I went over to M and A's place for dinner. A asked me to do dessert. Before that request I had been considering making Vegan Sausage Rolls, with the Dessert request I decided on the rather wonderful Chai Latte Cupcakes from The Post Punk Kitchen. Pictured to the left are 22 cupcakes fresh from the oven last night. Everyone liked them so only one or two remain now. Yum. |
