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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| Jul | Aug | Sep |
| Oct | Nov | Dec |
Categories:
- amusing - 33
- comp - 124
- blogging - 6
- blosxom - 11
- design - 5
- email - 7
- hardware - 31
- internet - 14
- ip - 3
- linux - 18
- prog - 1
- schwag - 2
- software - 15
- lca - 45
- leisure - 78
- books - 9
- food - 29
- holiday - 2
- music - 18
- screen - 14
- theatre - 3
- mtb - 289
- events - 51
- gear - 70
- various - 258
- ilmiwac - 37
- milkcarton - 20
- work - 4
- July 2008 (10)
- June 2008 (14)
- May 2008 (30)
- April 2008 (20)
- March 2008 (12)
- February 2008 (8)
- January 2008 (7)
- December 2007 (7)
- November 2007 (11)
- October 2007 (9)
- September 2007 (7)
- August 2007 (7)
- July 2007 (26)
- June 2007 (6)
- May 2007 (19)
- April 2007 (7)
- March 2007 (10)
- February 2007 (7)
- January 2007 (26)
- December 2006 (7)
- November 2006 (10)
- October 2006 (11)
- September 2006 (12)
- August 2006 (18)
- July 2006 (9)
- June 2006 (12)
- May 2006 (23)
- April 2006 (17)
- March 2006 (17)
- February 2006 (13)
- January 2006 (24)
- December 2005 (13)
- November 2005 (20)
- October 2005 (15)
- September 2005 (27)
- August 2005 (34)
- July 2005 (28)
- June 2005 (31)
- May 2005 (12)
- April 2005 (17)
- March 2005 (28)
- February 2005 (38)
- January 2005 (29)
- December 2004 (34)
- November 2004 (38)
- October 2004 (15)
- September 2004 (27)
- August 2004 (9)
Fri, 30 Dec 2005
Spud stacks and other cleat stories. - 22:03
I see Andrew is dealing with some of
the problems we all
face when we first start using clipless pedals. Sure eventually using clipless
pedals becomes second nature and you do not even think about it, however for
the first week or so in every new clipless pedal owner's life there are spud
stacks, usually with an audience. Heck I remember one of mine, I had
purchased a pair of Onza clipless pedals in Los Angeles and bought them home
with me around January 1994. I bought a pair of shoes and went out riding, at
a traffic light near Telopia park I pulled up, with some pedestrians watching
and many car drivers able to see, and toppled over.
I am pretty sure every cyclist using clipless pedals you ask has some similar story or a few such stories. Interestingly Andrew's fall this time was caused by a loose cleat rather than forgetting to twist out, so he is probably doing better than many cyclists in remembering to use the pedals properly. I know the loose cleat problem is annoying, I did the majority of the 24 Hour race solo last year (2004) with a loose cleat, I had wondered why it had been so hard to get my left foot out of the pedals when I stopped, I did not actually realise I had lost a cleat bolt and that it was loose until the day after the race (I think that shows how out of it I was during the race), that and the broken front wheel axle definitely made the race more interesting...
Wed, 28 Dec 2005
Making you stop and think again - 17:12
I just finished reading the book
The
Cuckoo's Egg by
Clifford Stoll, it
really does make you stop and think a bit. As a large part of
net lore (100 greatest moments in
Internet history article, a good read) I am somewhat surprised I had not come
across this book in the past. The copy I read was loaned to me by a friend who
is not a self proclaimed geek to a huge extent who had recommended it as a
good read.
I should have been doing a lot of other things today but spent most of it reading the book, ahh well. As mentioned above it makes me stop and think, should I go and recheck my nagios setup, should I run some more log analysis tools, etc etc. Consider that this all happened back in 1986 and 1987, compare the scale of the Internet and the number of people behaving maliciously online back then to today and you start to wonder are you doing enough with security concerns?
Tue, 27 Dec 2005
Extending the Tuesday loop - 12:05
Most Tuesday mornings I head out with a bunch of other mountain bikers to do
the Cotter/Uriarra loop on a
road bike. This being the height of holiday season I expected there would not
be many others there this morning. In order to avoid riding in the heat of the
day I decided to head out early anyway. No one else rocked up so I headed off
by myself with my mp3 player on, I decided to extend the loop a bit today as I
did not need to be at work around 9am.
Last year when Allan was off work for a while he was trying to talk a bunch of us into doing Condor Creek during the loop, this is not really viable as it would have us returning to town around 8:30am rather than around 7:45am (an extra 10 KM with some climbing). However as I was able to do a choose my own adventure style ride this morning I went out to the end of the bitumen up past Condor Creek, then I also headed out to the end of the bitumen past Uriarra Crossing, and eventually returned to civic at 9am on the dot for a coffee and then home.
A most pleasant way to spend the morning, turning the cranks over by myself, not pushing the pace at all.
Fri, 23 Dec 2005
My knees are safe again - 13:42
 New RaceFace/SRAM drivetrain (Full Size) |
After trying to
destroy my knees
and hurt myself the other week, I finally got around to purchasing a new
drivetrain for my hardtail. 2005 RaceFace Evolve XC cranks with an external
bottom bracket with the axle attached to the left crank. SRAM PG970 cluster
(SRAM finally for 2005 started releasing clusters with a 30 to 34 jump at the
top rather than the silly 28 to 34 they used to have) and a SRAM PC991 chain.
I bought the chain at Mals for AUD $50, however the retail price for the crankset in Australia is over AUD $400 so I really could not bring myself to buy that here. The cluster costs around AUD $100 here, so I ended up ordering both cluster and crankset/bottom bracket from the US. Universal Cycles had good prices so I tried them out. It cost me around AUD $250 for the crankset and cassette including shipping to Australia. They sent it out on Monday and it arrived at work today, considering this is the silly season that is pretty good. Now I will be able to ride the hardtail again next week, wheeeeee. |
Wed, 21 Dec 2005
Not so much pay for, more a case of implicitly support - 10:45
Lindsay Holmwood seemed to
think I was
suggesting
schools pay for conference attendance, as nice as that would be, I was not
really suggesting that. I know from long experience (parents were teachers,
many of my friends are teachers) how pitifully underfunded schools are so
would not imagine it is possible.
What I was suggesting is that if a student wishes to attend a conference being held during school time for a week, they should be encouraged by the school and allowed the week off with no penalty or problems. This is because requesting to attend a conference shows a lot of initiative, also of course the incredible knowledge gain available from a good conference. There is an issue of what is a good conference and what is not, however the pricing of contiki style conferences (3 day marketing thingy at the beach or similar, you know what I am talking about) are priced well out of the budget of students. Most of the good conferences however appear to be priced very well, especially for students. The two examples I gave of GUADEC and linux.conf.au definitely fit the bill.
The problem as I see it is that a school, and possibly parents, would not realise the huge advantage a student would have knowledge wise by going to something like GUADEC for a week over a week of school.
Tue, 20 Dec 2005
Students at conferences - 13:52
Yesterday I read something on
p.l.o.a written by Pascal Klein,
discussing a school student
attending lca.
It seems obvious when you think about it, however if a highschool age student is in to Linux or related technologies and they are able to attend a nearby technical conference it should be encouraged by the school and parents. Whether the conference is linux.conf.au, GUADEC or some other equally great open source related conference. The price is low, especially for students, and in one week of conference attendance a student will gain far more interesting and technical computing related knowledge than would be obtained in any highschool or similar I can think of in a few months.
For example Bdale Garbee's daughter Elizabeth attended lca2005, initially her school appeared to be a little upset at her missing the school time, however with subsequent good marks and probably increase in enthusiasm from lca I suspect they were convinced of the benefit.
Mon, 19 Dec 2005
MTB Christmas Decorations - 16:52
 MTB Tinsel (Full Size) |
 MTB Snowman (Full Size) |
For the Friday morning mtb ride last week I decorated my duallie as pictured on the left. Red duallie, all it needed was green tinsel. Oh and a snowman, because what is a mountain bike in the Australian summer without a snowman attached to it somewhere. Christmas Cotter/Uriarra loop is tomorrow so I ponder what to add to the bike for that. |
Thu, 15 Dec 2005
 3M Stick on Rubber Feet (Full Size) |
See my shoes did not fit, so I thought it might be easier to get new feet than
new sho.... ahh who am I kidding it is not even a amusing attempt at being
humorous, the title of course refers to
my missing
laptop feet.
This is largely to remind me where I got them, I first went to office works and they did not have them, I later found them for sale at the hardware store Bunnings. Now I think of it I recall buying the feet for my Pismo there also years ago. I got black rather than clear as they are cheaper, and really who wants to sit around admiring the see through feet on a laptop anyway? |
Wed, 14 Dec 2005
Lessons in drivetrain wear, again - 22:10
If you let your drive train wear out well past the point at which the chain
should have been replaced, the cluster and chainrings also wear badly and
eventually your drivetrain reaches the point at which the chain skips whenever
much power to it.
The drivetrain on my hardtail was well past the worn chain point and into the realms of needing the cluster and chainring replaced also back in May. Today I paid the price for avoiding buying replacement equipment for so long. Every time I stood up or tried to accelerate fast on my hardtail today the chain would skip, on the instances when I was standing my knees made painful contact with the handlebars and on one occasion I almost crashed on bitumen while accelerating.
I guess I have been somewhat lay in replacing the equipment partly because I have two mountain bikes to ride, so I have not paid as close attention to wear on one or the other and to KM ridden. It is my normal experience that approximately every 5000Km on a mountain bike, if you are not replacing the chain more regularly, the chain, cluster and middle chain ring need replacing. Then every 10000Km (another 5000Km later) the same replacement is required but the large chain ring and probably the granny ring also will need replacing. Sure it is possible to avoid this by doing more regular cleaning and replacing chains more often, it is possible to get as much as 20,000 Km out of a cluster and set of chainrings on a mountain bike. I do not however hold to those rather stricter maintenance regimes.
Ahh well time I guess to buy a new drivetrain for the hardtail. The last time I had the knee pain induced by meeting the handlebars due to worn drive train was a few years ago, I had forgotten how much it can hurt.
Fri, 09 Dec 2005
Blisters outside the comfort zone - 13:42
As should be expected, when I start doing a sports activity I do not do often,
have not done for years or have never done before, things hurt. In this case,
kayaking
again for the first time in many years. As it was with
getting back
into running earlier in the year I hurt a lot after kayaking.
I have never done much kayaking or paddling in my life anyway, thus I do not have a particularly effective or efficient paddling technique. There is a lot more to paddling technique than simply sticking the paddle in the water and pulling back. Hopefully with more practice (so far only two one and a half hour paddles in the last few weeks) I will improve.
From last night I have sore shoulders and slightly sore upper arms plus blisters on my pinky fingers and on the inside of both thumbs to show for my efforts. Hopefully that adage about pain simply being weakness leaving the body will hold true in a while, I know it does for cycling to a large extent.
Thu, 08 Dec 2005
This is how warranties should be - 21:00
Almost a month ago Crash sent a
link to this reallite
warranty, absolutely hilarious. I wish more companies would show their
sense of humour by putting a warranty such as this on their product.
All products should be warrantied against damage due to drop kicking them into the path of an oncoming run away train after all.
Thu, 01 Dec 2005
Open source cookie design attempt, what they missed - 17:44
Malcom Gladwell as is often the case can write a good article, this article I
found linked from kottke concerns an
attempt to
develop a
great diet cookie using a few different software development
methodologies. On the whole the article is interesting to see an attempt
at applying software development methodologies (eXtreme Programming,
Cathedral, and Bazaar) to another problem space/industry. From my reading of
the article I believe they misapplied the open source model to a large
extent.
Gladwell is a great author and often writes interesting and entertaining articles as I have noted in the past on occasion, however coming from an open source geek perspective there are obvious points missed here that show how the open source methodology could have been better applied. For example the quote "Linus Torvald, the Norwegian hacker" shows two problems, Linus' surname has an s, and Linus originates from Finland. The guy who ran this multi methodology project, Steve Gundrum, got off on the right foot, talking with Mitch Kapor as to the viability of applying the open source methodology to this new problem space, however I would suggest the team established did not operate in the manner teams on successful open source projects tend to.
They established a team for the open source group by inviting 15 well known specialists in the related food industry to be involved and make suggestions that would be implemented by Gundrum's company. Asking these people to design the cookie in effect. During the project, when some arguments or difficulties arose there was no dispute arbitration mechanism or established way to make a final decision. Also no one was actually elected as a benevolent dictator, without one or both of those mechanisms I am not surprised the project suffered and many people involved came out of it not particularly happy with the results.
Using the Linux kernel as an example again I think a few things they missed are, lack of benevolent leader, a dispute arbitration mechanism based on something akin to show me the code, ie coming up with ideas or suggestions is not sufficient, it needs to be implemented, tested and proven to work in a satisfactory manner, also some specific specialising in areas may have helped, especially with such a large team. Looking at the goals of the project and dividing up components such that people who may better work on those aspects could have more control over them. However I think one of the biggest failings was the scratch an itch component of free software or passion for it. This project though possibly interesting to those involved was unlikely to inspire passion from them. A combination of technical ability and the passion for the project really does provide a lot of the groundwork for success in the open source world. Even those people paid full time to work on open source are generally still passionate about their work (Linus, Tridge, Rusty, Anton, etc).
The article does mention some of Joel Spolsky's (of Joel on Software) reservations about open source development, and admittedly they could be relevant, however they could also be disputed. The argument about lack of innovation and simply following the herd would be disputed I suggest by looking at the innovation happening in given problem spaces in open source. Some of the desktop software such as amaRok, f-spot or the gstreamer based Fluendo (admittedly this is a company, however it is open source development with Flumotion) are all doing things way ahead of and more interesting than other entries in that problem space worldwide. Sure there are problems that do not mix well with open source development, but a simple argument being made that there is no innovation in the open source would I think is quite narrow minded.
Looking at how close the open source cookie was in second place I suspect that with a better understanding of the methodology and applying it with a group of people that fit well to that mechanism would have somewhat improved results.
Laptop feet go bye bye - 17:36
I just noticed a few hours ago that my laptop (dell x300) is missing two of
the rubber stabilising feet on its base. When this happened to my pismo
powerbook a few years ago I was able to purchase basic round rubber stick on
feet and they worked. The feet on this dell are long thin bits of rubber. I
need to have a bit of a look around OfficeWorks or similar to see if they sell
feet that will work.
The laptop rattles a bit when I type now unless I have my palms resting next to the touchpad while typing, which is a slightly inefficient typing position and possibly damaging long term. I noticed the missing feet as one of them fell off, however somehow I lost it as I flicked it away before realising what I had just flicked away.
Tue, 29 Nov 2005
One Week - 14:02
You are most welcome to sing this entry to the tune of
One Week
(video)
by Bare Naked Ladies (if ever there was
a NSFW sounding band name that is it). though I do not know how much it will
help.
I saw someone else doing this detailed diary of a week thing, everything you see on the Internets (or if you must wikipedia link) should be copied I thought I would give it a try. (thanks to the fun that is using a proleptic gregorian calendar I am pretty sure the days below are correct for those dates)
Monday May 13 150 BCE, Sittin' around discussin' with Ishvara what name would be good for the son or daughter of god in the Christian religion in a century or two, a few possible names such as Trevor, Cathy, George, Kylie, Rick, Neil or Gwendolyn come to mind, but we do not worry much as no one has to decide for more than a century yet.
Tuesday April 1 2036 CE, One joke someone tried today was suggesting Unix Time would overflow almost 2 years early due to the f00f bug, however this being somewhat geeky other themes proved more popular.
Wednesday February 21 3120 BCE, Someone opened the first Mcdonalds franchise on Christmas Island today, not much media coverage, and due to the lack of people living there they have not sold many big macs since they opened, this may explain why the crabs do not tend to be overweight, though I am not really sure about that.
Thursday July 28 1932 CE, Trying to find a milk carton to do a late Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging post I am once more stumped by the fact the milk carton has not yet been invented, hurry up you lazy swedes and invent the milk carton, I don't have all day to sit around waiting for a milk carton.
Friday December 2 2005 CE, that is still a few days away, how am I supposed to know what I will be doing, silly.
Mon, 28 Nov 2005
Triple Tri 2005 Report and Photos. - 14:42
Bruce, Shanyn and I had a rather fun triple tri again last week. I was still
trying to get rid of my cold and thus was not doing too well. We came second
again this year, both Bruce and Shanyn put in incredible performances. Most
important of all is we all had fun and the whole team is looking forward to the
event next year already.
My photos and a longish report are now online. Strangely when I started writing all that I thought I did not have much to write, so I was amazed at how much I ended up writing.
Sat, 26 Nov 2005
Silliness and fishing - 11:47
I do not usually feel the need to defend
stuff I put
here, especially when placed in the
I Let Myself In With
This Chainsaw category but what the hey I
got
a bite on the ol' fishin' line so here we go.
The category I placed that post in is quite deliberately somewhat full of nonsense and whimsy. If I actually feel like saying something seriously it does not go there, if I feel like making stuff up and joking that is where I will put it.
Also I was to some extent making a jab to the left field of defence, as Scott Adams recently pointed out on his diary, neither side of a rather prominent religious issue tend to make well founded arguments. I thought to myself, lets have some fun with this. I know full well the weak points of my suggestion that the people created in such a manner would not have a clue, when seen from a religious angle these people would be informed by the $DEITY in question in some manner and it would all come out rosy and happy and the birds would be singing and all that, but where is the fun in making nonsense stand up to criticism well.
Of course my own angle on it is that the sort of people who are pushing ID in the US and other similar claims are trying to do that themselves, make nonsense stand up. It was with some interest I saw an article the other day suggesting we are somewhat wired from birth with a built in need to believe in the supernatural, so maybe people do need their religious views rather than scientificly grounded ones.
Personally I would simply prefer more people to be able to compartmentalise their life so they could live with their own religious convictions and yet allow the world at large to utilise scientific advances rather than attempt to suppress or mutilate science because it differs from their personal world view or threatens their perceived power in the world. (I view this as similar in many ways to the dark ages in our history)
Thu, 24 Nov 2005
Different cultures, different stationery - 22:31
A the moment I am for some reason unable to find my Shaefer calligraphy set,
not a large problem as I still have my small Parker set readily available. Ink
cartridge calligraphy pens in both sets. However with the Shaefer set I also
have a number of dip pens and some other supplies. Currently I am mostly
interested in finding all my ink (cartridge) writing supplies to see if I
still have a plain ink cartridge pen around anywhere. I wish to write
something with an ink pen and they are completely unavailable in news
agencies. (well for anything less than AUD $100 it seems).
With this inability to find cheap ink based writing supplies rather than ball based I have a remarkable cultural difference bought home I had never really noticed before. While going to school in England in 1993 for a year, and I imagine the public school system there is still similar, all writing had to be done with ink cartridge pens, no ball point or biro style pens were allowed to be used. Thus every WH Smiths and other news agent had a ready supply of ink based writing equipment. Here at home I have, as stated, found such items almost impossible to find. A local art store suggested I go check out a specialist paper (stuff to write on, not news paper) shop in the Canberra Centre as they apparently stock ink writing equipment.
Due to the fact I still have my small Parker calligraphy set sitting around readily available I would not even mind if I were able to find a parker nib to fit that is suitable for writing (ie not a wide nib such as used in calligraphy), I will have to make a visit to the Canberra centre and try my luck I guess. Still it is kind of strange to note the complete lack of ink pens in regular supply here in Canberra.
Thinking about paper also reminds me I bought some really gorgeous hand made paper at a paper shop in Porto in Portugal in 2002 that I have not yet used, though I have no idea where it may be, probably hiding out with my calligraphy supplies.
Wed, 23 Nov 2005
This cause and effect may give the kooks a pause - 22:22
Sure I almost said this may cause them a pause for a thought, but then I
remembered how unlikely it is that a thought has ever really entered their
head rather than just passed through as a repeater for kook radio. However
stop for a second and imagine, what if those people (kooks, interchangeable
term) who think some $DEITY placed all life on earth at some given point not
too long ago are correct, and evolution and all that are all just a big
giggle.
Now I know this is hard to accept, but you will need to suspend disbelief just a little bit further, thus accepting that first idea may make this next one more palatable. Assume for a second all these miraculously created people were not religiously inclined loonies salivating over small children or hiding away in some abode of worship, imagine for a second one or two of them had sex, you because it feels good, or it was something to do of an afternoon.
What the hell did they think when the effects started to appear, otherwise known as childbirth. With no period experience, due to evolution, when the female started to increase in girth and have all associated issues, what was going through their heads. How many years did it take them to correlate the sex with the child birth, they may not even appear to be related at all, and with the religious mind seeming all intent on banning all forms of reasonable science anyone suggesting the two (sex and childbirth) were related was probably burned at the stake. Then when pregnancy reaches its culmination, all the pain and weird things going on, followed by the appearance of a little human. Heck the religious mind may even take this as some form of exorcism, thousands of women and newly born children were probably put to death. $DEITY may have needed to intervene at some point to put a stop to the silliness.
Getting back to reality I think we should be glad of evidence and observances as we and other animals evolved to keep current reality of how the species propagates understood by the practitioners (in this case the practitioners being all of us).
Mon, 14 Nov 2005
Weird and wacky french animation - 16:12
So I was in
Bundanoon the
other night and they were showing the movie
Les Triplettes de
Belleville, an animated movie length feature released in 2003. The movie
shows cyclists to be a somewhat obsessive compulsive sort of bunch (we really
are), and has a large number of rather strange visuals or ideas running
through it.
Definitely an entertaining and worthwhile movie to see, some hilarious sections, some strange bits, not a lot of dialogue so you need to concentrate on the imagery to get a lot from it also there is some good music. Tres cool. The "car chase" at the end is really highly amusing, the seemingly endless number of ways the broad shouldered mafia can crash cars is fantastic.
Tacos rock - 16:07
So I went over to help a friend out with some computer issues the other day,
as a thankyou they served a rather good dinner. Tacos, I have not eaten Tacos
for about 8 years, I wonder why not, they absolutely rock. Also very easy to
prepare, get some sour cream, some cheese, cut up some tomato and lettuce, get
a jar of taco sauce (spiciness to taste) and choose the base sauce, meat
base, or refried bean base or something else. And you know what, they taste
great. Mmmmmmm tacos.
My 2005 Highland Fling 100 KM mountain bike marathon. - 12:23
Well I still
have that cold, which is rather annoying, however it did give me a great
reason to slow up and take it easy yesterday. I have uploaded my
Highland Fling photos
and a few words now. The event was a lot of fun, an absolutely fantastic
course for a 100 KM race. The weather was perfect, the marshals and everyone
else out there was good. Highly recommended.
Fri, 11 Nov 2005
Riding with a cold is a bad idea mmmmkay? - 22:26
As the
triple
tri is fast approaching, a number of people I ride with were keen to be
shown around the bike legs. We covered the first bike leg about a month ago
over two consecutive weeks on Friday morning rides. I decided the second bike
leg could be covered on a Thursday morning with a slightly earlier start and
slightly later finish. Finally Thursday this week there was no rain and at
least a few other people had said they would be there to be shown the way.
With people expecting me there, the day before was of course the one on which I would develop a cold, I tend to get a cold maybe once a year. Ahh well I went out and did the ride anyway, feeling like crap and probably only made it through due to having two paracetamol tablets before hand. When I got back home after the ride I felt so bad I had to lay down on my bed and sleep for an hour and a bit before I could muster the energy and brain power to go into work.
Interestingly while out on the ride I think we discovered the location of most of the flies in Canberra. Sure there were a few flies buzzing around in places during the ride, however when we got to the top of Bluetts I do believe we found the majority of flies in the Canberra region, I was crawling with them, if you think there are a lot of flies on me here think again, that is nothing compared with the black crawling mass all over me at the top of Bluetts on Thursday morning, fortunately they seemed to stay there once the others arrived and we rode on.
Anyway I strongly advise against riding when feeling fairly unwell, I was able to skip the ride this morning, unfortunate as I never like to miss a ride but it would not have been sensible, after all I have the Highland Fling around the Bundanoon area this weekend, a 100 KM mountain bike race, at which I strongly suspect I will need to go very slowly if my current health is anything to go by. I definitely need to shake this cold by next week in order to do well in the Triple Tri, after all I do not want to let my completely kick arse team down.
Questioned about blogging at the noble palace - 17:14
I was out for dinner on Wednesday night at a Chinese restaurant in Woden
called the "Noble Palace"
(noble palace
review). Not trying to muscle in on
Mel or
Rusty in the reviewing
space, but I must say it was indeed damn good food. One of the people I was
dining with who had recently been travelling throughout a lot of Asia for work
(China, Korea, etc) was impressed as heck saying it was on par with the best
she had tasted there. I did have one complaint I guess, we had a part of around
20 people and ordered one of the banquet items from the menu. Though the food
was good there was not very much of it. Even Kate was still looking for more
to eat once all the food had disappeared, and she is not a big eater at the
best of times. It was to a large extent made up for by the quality of the
dishes though. Oh and their dessert offerings are rather bland and pointless
also in my opinion.
Interestingly while there I got up from my seat to walk to the toilet and a diner at another table asked me what the word on my t-shirt means. How do you describe blogging to people that say oh some computer thing? I used the term, it is an Internet diary that anyone can read. Interestingly later in the evening Russ' daughter Avril complimented me on wearing a cool t-shirt, so at least some people at the dinner appreciated it.
Mon, 07 Nov 2005
What is it with Holbrook. - 22:15
Driving through Holbrook the
other day got me to thinking what I am sure is on the FAQ list for the
town. What is a submarine doing in a country NSW town no where near the coast?
Sure some people have attempted to come up with a
reasonable
answer, something about renaming it from Germantown during WWW1 and
choosing a submarine war hero and maintaining a link to submarines over the
years. But really who is ever going to believe that. Obviously not the
townsfolk or the council, on the
FAQ and the council
page about about
Holbrook there is nary a mention of the submarine.
Can the people living there even see the submarine in the park there? When a visitor asks them about the submarine in the town do they look at said questioner in askance, What submarine? I can not see anything like that and I think it may be a bit hard to hide one in the park there. Maybe the submarine is sort of like a submarine patent, and no one could see the submarine, or the town (after all there is a sign on the highway claiming it is the submarine town) until the day when some other town elsewhere claimed to be a submarine town, and hey presto Holbrook appeared and pointed out an established history since a name change in 1915.
Of course there could be another reason for the submarine, kind of like a nuclear bunker but this one is for the town council in case of floods. No one will even know they left as the submarine will be able to sneak away under the water, it will just be Noah, a bunch of animals and the Holbrook town council.
Commentary on the weblog usability thing. - 22:07
I made
mention of a
Neilsen when I made some updates recently. A the time I did not put much stock
in most of the recommendations, but did apply some to this diary. I also
noticed many others tended to think the recommendations were out of whack.
Today I saw a rather good commentary on why they are a bit off. Pointing out the seeming lack of understanding of how diarys/blogs really differ to corporate websites and other similar medium has skewed the recommendations heavily.
Did I really wear those shoes? - 21:03
Currently my good/current pair of cycling shoes (2005 Model M180-B shoes) has
broken again and I am awaiting a warranty replacement from Shimano. So this
weekend I wore my previous pair of cycling shoes, what was second from top of
the line in Shimano mtb shoes back in 2002. Though they feel weird they are
still wearable, just a little worn out everywhere. However as I wore them this
weekend at the race in Victoria and got them very muddy I hosed them off
yesterday and then let them sit to dry. I forgot to put newspaper in them and
they were not yet dry this morning when I wanted to ride to work. All of this
is to explain why I wore my really old cycling shoes to ride to work today.
My older pair of cycling shoes, purchased sometime around 1997 are Lake, with laces and two velcro straps. A nice enough pair of shoes I thought up until I stopped using them, now days if I wear them on a bike as I did today I wonder how I could ever have ridden in them at all. They rock on the pedals, feel loose when I pull my foot up on the pedal stroke, as if I am pulling the shoe off the sole. They are incredibly worn out on the sole and to one side due to pronating a bit much and really feel completely different to how shoes I wear now days feel on the bike.
I suppose the good news is the replacement pair shimano are giving me is the 2006 model equivalent to those I broke, and it looks like it will be a bit tougher in the areas (all around the toe box) I have been continually breaking this older model.
The Gravity 12 Hour race was a heap of fun. - 17:27
Last week I
mentioned I
would again be competing in the Gravity 12 Hour mountain bike race in
Rosewhite in Victoria. Sam, Ben and I went down there, raced, had a fantastic
time and all of us are damn happy with it, and keen for a repeat next year.
I have my gravity photos online with a few words. Also I notice Bill Clarke (a work colleague) has his photos up also. One, a panorama shot shows off the campsite and surrounding hills and mountains well. He also has two photos of me, thus proving to a greater extent I was really there (who knows I may have had someone else take the photos and am in fact a couch potato sitting in front of a tv 24 hours a day).
Fri, 04 Nov 2005
Gravity 12 Hour mountain bike race - 09:42
As in previous
years I am competing in the
Beechworth Chain Gang
Gravity 12
Hour mountain bike race this year. Once again I am teamed up with Sam and
Ben in the three person mixed category. Our team name this year is "Ride
Babysit Ride" which may be somewhat accurate as Maxine and Nikita will be
camping with us of course.
Last year was a little bit muddy (read this as understatement, in reality it was the muddiest event I have ever competed in), the year before was a little bit warm (I was dehydrated and needed to visit the hospital upon my return to Canberra to rehydrate).
The weather looked as if it may be wet again with the long range forecast last weekend, however it now appears we could be up for a reasonably dry event (almost anything will be dry when compared with last year though). Anyway Sam is hell keen after missing out on racing this last year (probably the year to miss one if you have to though) and I am sure it will be fun. I just have to go into work briefly before driving to Victoria, and am sure I will be under prepared food wise at the event, ahh well I can buy stuff.
Tue, 01 Nov 2005
500 Mile Email Limit - 22:19
This is cool, freaky but cool. This story of a sysadmin trying to find out the
cause of a email fault reported by the statistics department claiming email
would not deliver to locations much more than
500 miles away.
Reading it, by the end it makes perfect sense, but half way through I was going through the same thoughts he must have been, wtf is happening sort of thoughts.
Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging - 00:00
 Got Goat's Milk? |
As has been pointed out, a milk carton may contain other types of milk, Cows
are not the only source of contents for these venerable containers. To the
left is a milk carton containing Goat's Milk from the company
Meyenberg (large producer of Goat's
Milk in the US). It can be argued that
Goat's
milk is healthier for you or at least it
may be a better baby food
than Cow milk.
Though I would suggest the biggest advantage me be that we will never see another milk carton desecrated with big black splotches, through Goat's have been known to have black splotches, the image of a Goat in the public mind does not, thus opening up milk carton designs to whole new splotch free realms. |
Showing you why we need science. - 00:00
We really do need science, otherwise no one would be able to make a proper
appraisal of the
utility of a chocolate teapot (seen last week on ploa or similar), this
really is lots of fun, reminds me of the
Twinkies Project I had a link to
on my links page back
around 1996. (yes I know many of them are dead links,really I could care
less).
Ooohh look a coincidence, maybe - 00:00
I just happened to glance at my posts per month thing in the left hand column
here and look at what I saw. September 2004, 27 posts. September 2005, 27
posts. October 2004, 15 Posts. October 2005, 15 posts. Almost kinda spooky
maybe sorta.
Wild Horse Ridge - 00:00
So a bunch of us drove down to Talbingo on Saturday morning to ride Wild Horse
Ridge. Heaps of fun was had, the weather held off for the duration of the
ride. We camped over night there intending to ride the next day if the weather
continued behaving. It rained all night and on in to Sunday so we packed up
and drove home. However we had a fantastic time on Saturday riding up to
Budong falls and the top of Wild Horse Ridge and subsequently riding down Wild
Horse Ridge. We even saw Wild Horses up near the top.
Anyway myself,
Dave McCook and
Andrew Cassie all took photos, I am
hosting Dave's and mine. The people present on the ride were Michael "Crash"
Carden, David McCook, David "DAS" Sutton, Andrew "Madge" Cassie (on a single
speed), Craig "Darren?
Wed, 26 Oct 2005
Ahhh bugger I slept in again, no wait I didn't - 05:37
So I woke up 20 minutes ago and thought, oops I slept through my alarm again
and missed the morning ride (the weather was finally clear this morning too)
then I looked at my watch and realised I had not. With day light saving this
weekend it really is damn light this early in the morning, so by now it
appears as though it is 7am or something outside (sound and light
levels). Good to see I get to join in the ride and did not sleep through my
alarm (or turn it off and roll over back into sleep).
Of course the fact I got ready for the ride then turned on my laptop and checked email and wrote to my diary rather prominently displays what a raging geek I am.
Tue, 25 Oct 2005
Footpaths out to "get you" - 21:59
So I hear you wonder what does this yonder footpath upon which you may
wander have to do with a complete understanding of yourself. Who knows, but I
have to say the footpaths are not telling me anything. They just sit there all
cememnty and solid keeping their secrets. I stop walking for a minute and
ask the footpath "How's things Mr Footpath?" (This may be seen as sexist but I
lost my book on footpath sexing so really have no idea how to work out what
gender a given footpath may be so Mr it will have to be). You know what? the
footpath doesn't even answer me.
I mean it could help us out so much if it did, a footpath is surely a useful source of information, I may in fact have been walking on the next Einstein of the footpath world. It would have saved us years of study if the footpath had told us putting our children on a diet of happy pills wont make them happy, instead scientists have spent years and untold monies trying to find out why drugging children up to their eyes with happy pills does not create happy bouncy children.
You know, maybe the footpath has a secret, it may know who stole this duck and is keeping quiet to protect the perpetrator. Hah I say, the duck stealing fiend has been foiled, the show must go on, and it did, the duck's understudy got quacking and was up on stage in no time.
There it sits staying silent and solid, it may indeed get you, it is after all a good listener, with nary a whisper of what it has heard repeated theron.
Thu, 20 Oct 2005
Will a person of a diachronic persuasion be wary of wild animals? - 22:24
You can see it now, someone wandering down the street their heads lost
pondering the origins of the German habit of joining words together to create
really long new words, do they reserve some small part of their minds to look
out for rampaging lions, elephant stampedes or vicious Chihuahuas? (okay so I
admit the segue at the start of this post was just an excuse to use the word
diachronic)
A book I was reading contains a list of suggestions for "Ways of escaping attacks from wild animals (probably)". For example to escape from an unfriendly lion they suggest.
Wait until the lion is five feet away and then ram a large pair of step ladders down its throat.
From the tone of that I am sure you can see we need more hints and tips in this vein or we simply will not be safe from wild animals as we walk the streets having diachronic thoughts.
Thus I have a few contributions to the cause.
- Chihuahuas: feed them to your snake.
- Aliens: Abduct them, get in first.
- Poo slinging monkies: far too cool to be wary of, give em some peanuts (thanks to Juzzy)
- Poo slinging politicians (ie all of them): Nuke them from orbit.
- A Grue: Run, scream, struggle, and die a horrific death or open the curtains to let in the sunlight
The problem with having clean bikes - 22:05
So I cleaned my road bike and my hardtail mtb on Sunday, both needed it fairly
urgently, the mountain bike had not been cleaned since before the WSMTB 12
hour race in early September, the road bike for even longer (they do not get
dirty so easily). The drive train on the road bike was half replaced so
cleaning the chain rings to go with he new cluster and chain was a good
thing. The hardtail drive train is pretty much cactus now too, but I cleaned it
and will continue using it for a while.
Anyway the problem I have now encountered, after cleaning both frames, components, other bits, etc is the bikes look too good and I am wary of getting them out in bad weather. It rained again today and I had my mountain bike sitting in my office at work, with the rather lovely paint job I have on that frame it really does look good. As soon as I ride in rain or even dust it will not be so shiny and nice looking.
I suppose this shows I am somewhat bike obsessed, that I could sit and stare at my own bikes when they look so good, the clean drive train on the road bike appears almost jewel like and I even chose to ride the mtb to work today so as to avoid getting the drive train on the road bike messed up.
Good news on the bike front is the hanger I needed for getting the rocky mountain rolling again arrived on Wednesday (along with a spare), thanks to Aaron for getting hold of these for me. I can now clean off the duallie, replace a few outers and cables (some are trashed anyway) and put it in the garage and avoid riding it due to it being too clean also.
Reasons weight loss can be annoying - 11:19
So I have been heard from time to time uttering that I would like to lose some
weight and get down to around 80 KG, I seem never to have mentioned this here,
but hey some people have heard me say this. The primary reason being I suspect
I can sustain that weight reasonably easily and it will mean I can climb a lot
faster on the bike. Though considering how much riding I do, looking at the
fact I have been approximately 88 KG for the last 3 years or so there is
obviously some thought that has to go into the weight loss (or dieting maybe).
Anyway the Sunday night following the Mont I checked out my weight on the scales and was surprised to find I was 5 KG lighter than when I checked in the morning sometime a week before the Mont. Leading up to the Mont I was usually around 90 or 90.5 KG, even when checking in the morning (the time of day you are at your lightest, after waking up, or in my case after waking up and exercising for a few hours). After the Mont however I was, all of a sudden down to 85.5, at night too. With the plan of losing weight in order to climb faster this was a good thing, though surprising, I decided I had better hydrate well for a few days to ensure I was not dehydrated or anything, though as I had not competed in the race or done much strenuous for a while it was unlikely.
I thought I may as well work on keeping the weight loss going so I have been careful to eat less at all meals since then and it appears to be working as the last few mornings when weighing myself I have generally been around 84 KG, for the sake of cycling I hope I can indeed get down to around 80, however the problem I have encountered is my clothes fit even worse now. The main point of this post is to complain my clothes are all too big. I suppose at least my cycling clothing all still fits as it is Lycra style rather than baggy.
Sure pants and jeans and stuff purchased about 5 or 6 years ago have been too big to wear well for 3 years now, but the annoying thing is a pair of jeans I purchased about a month ago requires a belt to stay up now. I dislike wearing belts and thought I would be able to avoid them with this new pair of jeans, but noooooo I went and lost weight and have to wear a belt. Stupid weight loss. I also had difficulty sticking my tummy out and showing off a real beer gut when I tried to, so I am no longer a real Australian male or anything either due to lack of significant beer gut.
I will continue to work on this weight loss thing a bit as I really would like to climb faster and put in a much better performance in the three bike legs of the Triple Tri in a month (November 20th).
They noticed we went quiet. - 10:53
Mikal just added to the blog entropy with his post about a
work mate noticing how
quiet some of us have been. I have to admit I was a little surprised when
I saw there was only one post over night on
ploa, I suppose this is, in part due
to the fact Mikal has not been posting anywhere between 100 and 2^32 posts a
day as he tends to when he is no sick and resigned and moving overseas and all
that. I guess I have been a little busy this month also and have not really
been making many posts.
I was however reading a rather interesting book last night that could be the source of many posts, however the book is at home so it will not be the source of posts until at least tonight.
Wed, 19 Oct 2005
about:sjh updated - 11:59
I just updated the about
me page linked from the top of this diary. Changing the status of the
Linux conference section, changing my current bikes status, rewording a few
things and adding in my hackergotchi and some links to other photos in part
due to reading a weblog
usability page by Jakob Neilsen I found linked on
kottke today.
Sun, 16 Oct 2005
Complimentary exercise? - 22:10
Good to see Leon still appears to be enjoying his cycling,
he
wonders what sport would be good to compliment the cycling and exercise
the upper body. My suggestion would be kayaking, on flat water with a racing
kayak it can be fun, faster than expected and a damn good workout. Of course
using a slalom/rapids kayak is a lot slower than a racing kayak but they are
likely more common.
I may be saying this as I need to get out and start doing some kayaking again soon (I have not done any for over 7 years currently) as I will need the skills up a bit for competing in a few upcoming adventure races. However unlike swimming it is no where near as boring, and unlike squash (which is anaerobic anyway) it is not high impact. There is a small problem of finding a kayak and paddle, however friends often have them, as do some outdoor clubs, such as the ANU mountaineering club.
Fri, 14 Oct 2005
-ENOCLOTHFRISBEE - 14:12
The incredibly cool
Ximian
Frisbee I wrote about in January is no more. I leant it to
Mikal for a number of months so he could
ask the lca2005 schwag supplier
about getting them made for the conference. After annoying Mikal about getting
it back for a while, he had apparently had it in his car boot and kept
forgetting to bring it upstairs at DCS, he finally went to get it one day for
me and it was not there. Catherine had thrown it out thinking it was not
needed or supposed to be there.
Thus I no longer have an incredibly cool Ximian cloth frisbee, I wish I could find someone who sold these things. As I described in January it is a light weight nylon material with a canvas edge filled with ball bearings. Kathmandu makes a travel frisbee that is too thick and bulky, many many online sites mention dog frisbees, however they all tend to be similar to the Kathmandu one and are far too bulky feeling.
Does anyone know where Ximian sourced these from, or of a supplier somewhere that can still sell them? I would be keen to buy a few, probably good as Christmas presents or something anyway.
Thu, 13 Oct 2005
Are the cakes surreal today? - 16:53
When you see a surreal cake, you know what I mean, something that looks
suspiciously like a vacuum cleaner, that is infact an edible slab of chocolate
spongy goodness, swinging through the trees in your local library. Do you ever
think to yourself, I wonder who bakes those cakes, or does this sight only
make you hungry?
If you do sit around pondering the identities and habits of those artisans of Daliesque though never fear I will not reveal the answers to any of what you wonder, you are most welcome to continue sitting there as long as you wish.
Lots of people have been known to use colloquial phrases such as "as dumb as a box of hammers" or "as queer as a three dollar bill" however there are some variations. "As queer as a one or two dollar bill" may indicate the speaker belongs within the box of hammers genome for example. If you look around there are more interesting examples of these colloquial terms anyway. "As queer as a football bat", "As queer as a bottle of chips", "As queer as a screen door on a submarine", "As queer as a lemonade sandwich". All of these are of course variations on As camp as a row of tents though with a more American bent.
All you need to do is think up something that is rather obviously strange or unusual, put it after "As queer as" and you will be able to start your own americanised homophobic colloquialism production business. This is surely going to be far more profitable than selling underpants.
If you are however keen to see bats used in football (either the black flying rodent like creatures or the sports person's arm extension) I have to ask why the heck not? They use them in ice hockey and the violence of that sport attracts fans everywhere, if you used bats in football the game would be more violent and thus attract much larger crowds, after all everyone loves to crowd around a train wreck out of some ghoulish fascination. Letting some prejudice show, if the increased level of violence manages to kill off a few more AFL, RL, RU or NFL style footy heads the world will be a better place anyway.
If on the other hand black flying rodents become a common part of the average game of football, those Daliesque chocolate spongy vacuum cleaners flying through the library will no longer be so surreal after all.
Tue, 04 Oct 2005
2005 Mont Australian 24 Hour Mountain Bike Race, post 1 - 21:41
Most mountain bikers in Australia know, the 24 hour race is on this coming
weekend. 2420 riders, 640 teams on track (including 170 solo entrants), around
5000 to 7000 people will be on site in Kowen forest over the weekend. This is
the largest 24 hour mountain bike race in the world currently (and has been
for the last two years also) if you look at it from the number of competitors
all up or number of solo entrants perspective.
Kowen Campsite on the Sunday before the race.
By Thursday afternoon that will almost not be recognisable due to all the marquees and other equipment we have being put up there from today onward. Then on Friday morning we open the gates to the competitors (until that time most of them get in to the course for practice laps by riding 5 KM from one of the gates into Kowen) to come and set up camp, Solo entrants and possibly the pairs category entrants will be able to set up their camps in the open grass area. The schools teams also get to set up in one of these areas specifically set aside for schools. Corporate teams have a marquee provided as part of their entry (with gas heaters in them too) all the other categories (3, 4, 6) set up in the pines forest section on the top right.
The final information letter to teams, what is likely to be the latest map and the current rider list are on the CORC website in a recent news item.
There will be a few interesting items this year but I should refrain from mentioning these until after the race, things that seem likely at the moment are ABC news rocking up to do a piece on the race on Saturday (apparently ABC news is the most watched tv show in Canberra), due to ABC being there Win is likely to show up also, possibly others. SBS people will be around the race also, along with Jim Trail (who does work for the SBS Cycling Central show each summer) who is of course racing and doing various commentary things for us and for others. (on 2CN radio in Canberra tomorrow at about 11:45am Jim will be interviewing Trent Lowe about the event and other stuff too).
The ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope will be out there doing the race start, Simon Corbell (ACT Planning Minister) will be competing in a team. Various Australian Olympians and other highly ranked athletes such as Lisa Mathison, Trent Lowe, Sid Taberlay will be there.
And you know why all this happens? Because it is a whole heap of fun. I will try to upload some words and photos a bit over the next week form the event, I am not competing this year so who knows how it will work out, I will however not have much time in front of a computer until next Tuesday though.
 The silver wheel label, changes colour with different light (full size) |
 The rear hub, showing off the Miche cassette (full size) |
 Both wheels, the label is in a different light (full size) |
|
Since my road bike
front wheel blew
up the day before the Alpine Classic this year I have been borrowing a
front wheel, first from
Alan
and then a spare one
Ben
had sitting around.
About two weeks ago I pulled another spoke hole on the Mavic MA3 rim on the back, I then grabbed the front wheel that had blown up in January and pulled the rim from it to put on the back wheel. However I decided it was finally enough, I really should go ahead and order the wheels I had been avoiding buying for months. Another contributing factor was my rear hub has been getting worse, for about a year now it has made some funny noises, been in need of a serious service and had the freewheel start to fail (both becoming a fixed wheel breifly and not locking until after more than half a crank rotation). Pictured above, Campagnolo Centaur 32 Hole Hubs (I chose Centaur as they are a whole lot better than Veloce, effectively they are the same hub as the Record hubs), Mavic Open Pro rims (not my first choice, but the price for the complete wheel set was too good to turn down) and DT Competition double butted spokes. The cassette which I have on there is a Miche 11-28 (lots of gear range) 9 speed cassette I purchased with some of the lca2005 gift voucher. I am a fan of standard wheels, 32 spokes, good quality components, these should last fairly well, the tension feels a bit lower than I expected, however if they go a bit out of true after a few weeks I will wander in and pay Ian Downing to rebuild them, though expensive that would make them far more bomb proof then anything else. I bought the wheels for AUD $550 (including postage) from BikePro in Victoria. This is a great deal, usually a pair of Centrau hubs is around AUD $350, Mavic Open Pro rims are around AUD $120 and the DT spokes would normally be more than AUD $1 each. |
||
We hooked another one - 16:26
Good to see MRD is now
hooked
on mountain biking. Just a few days left now until the biggest 24 hour
race in the world (based on number of competitors, around 2450 people entered,
170 of whom are riding in the solo category) the
Mont Australian 24 Hour Mountain Bike
Race is on this weekend in Kowen Forest ACT.
Unlike some previous years I am not competing this year and am instead taking on more of the on the weekend event management tasks, after being involved with planning the event for a number of years I thought I should help out Russ and Dave and CORC in general on the weekend too. So I have taken from tomorrow through to Monday next week off work (inclusive) in order to be out at the event centre getting stuff set up. At least all the work will be worthwhile once we see how much people enjoy the race.
There are teams and competitors coming from all over the place so obviously MRD could put this on his calendar for next year as a good goal, get in a team at the Mont.
Sun, 02 Oct 2005
Gale Onomatopoeic? - 16:09
On Friday evening I was somewhat surprised to learn that
The Wizard of Oz character
Dorothy has a surname. Sure I suppose I should have guessed that, but I really
never thought of it, and now find it somewhat surprising, the surname is
"Gale". When I read this I thought to myself it is almost onomatopoeic, what
with her being carried off to Oz in a hurricane. However I did not think to
myself "Gale" is sort of onomatopoeic in this context, rather I thought that
name is kind of like that word for words that sound like what they
mean. Obviously I was unable to remember the term onomatopoeic.
So I searched for the correct term and came across the answer at a rather neat website, Ask Oxford. Somehow associated with the OED this site has a lot of useful answers and other resources that would be useful or interesting while writing. The FAQ section alone answers a bunch of interesting questions and there are various other sections that are interesting also, such as a list of disambiguations of commonly confused words.
British "Whose Line Is It Anyway" - 00:09
As most people should know British comedy tends to be the best around, a show
I was hooked on when living in the UK for all of 1993 is
Whose Line Is It Anyway,
airing from 1988 to 1998. I taped around 13 episodes from Foxtel my my mum's
house a few years ago (they have Foxtel, on which it was airing). There was a
US version of the show, with some of the same comedians appearing and hosted
by Drew Carey, however the US version of the show sucked.
Anyway the show is an theatre sports style improvisation show with comedians acting out various provided (often by the audience) situations on the spot. I have to say this is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen, probably helped by the fact it has some of my favourite comedians as regulars, Paul Merton and Stephen Fry.
I have been watching the tape I have of the show a bit last night and tonight and I have been laughing almost constantly. This truly is brilliantly entertaining, highly recommended. For more information there are some sites with more of it and of course something Wikipedia.
Thu, 29 Sep 2005
No inspiration? - 21:51
So many blogs have one of those posts, the post that starts off with "I have
no idea what to blog about" and pretty much ends there. This is probably one
of those posts. I have no idea what to write, or should I even write
something? No inspiration, I obviously need a source of inspiration, where art
thou inspiration?
I could go wabbit^Winspiration hunting but where would I begin to look, maybe I had better hope inspiration comes from some external source, like say alien abduction. Who knows it could happen, though if it does, I hope it is some cute fluffy little aliens, cute fluffy friendly little aliens, not big scary aliens. Big scary aliens would be a bad source of inspiration, you would be sitting there all quaking in your boots... assuming of course you are wearing boots? Who knows you may be wearing slippers, or pumps, or spd sandals. Okay so for the sake of argument, you are sitting there quaking in your spd sandals while the big scary alien is scaring you. After all that is what big scary aliens do isn't it.
After all if the alien was sitting there with a tea service and scones it would be a big tea and scones alien and not a big scary alien. Anyway you obviously wont get inspiration from the big scary alien, nor for that matter would you get any from the tea and scones alien, what with it being too busy with its tea and scones to do any inspirin'. So it is obvious really why it has to be cute fluffy aliens that sit around giving inspiration. They could give you all sorts of inspiration, you could write blog posts about bunny rabbits, and harmless little kittens, maybe even the harmless cute fluffy aliens could be the focus of your newly inspired blog post.
But really how likely is any of that, maybe I had better face facts, I can think of nothing to write about, I hope my poor little blog does not have to be put down or anything because of it. Ignoring for a minute how difficult it is to put down some virtual object, just think about it, if you have a piece of paper, or a pen or a gherkin. You could put it down on that table (assuming you are near a table, rather than the camel you are probably closer to, in which case you would need to put it down on the camel). How do you hold some virtual object in order to put it down?
I think that kind of flopped - 00:24
My attempt at milk carton blogging this week,
an interview
with a milk carton, really tanked I think. It took me a long time to think
up ideas of what to include in there, I do not think I adequately connected
things together, and I was unable to "bring the funny" at any point I can see.
I suppose what Jeremy suggested when I mentioned I was "trying to work out a way to write an interview with a milk carton and make it not sound absolutely stupid" may hold true. jk: "yeah, i think you might be stuck there."
I thought I may be able to make it work, heck the interviews fafblog do are generally brilliant such as this with an Enormous Pumpkin or this with God, though of course the people writing Fafblog are far funnier than I.
Wed, 28 Sep 2005
Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging - 12:46
Today rather than a passive display of information pertaining to milk cartons
or some photo of a milk carton I thought it best to sit down with one of these
revered calcium rich liquid containers and ask a few questions of it in order
to further understand the life and times of your average milk carton. Thus I
present you with.
Interview with a Vampi^WMilk Carton
sjh: So why is it that Buffy so regularly kick's your arse?
MC: Who/What is this Buffy of which you speak?
sjh: Oops, yeah I was still lost with the whole interview title mixup in my
head, there must have been a
milk
carton involved somewhere
MC: Whatever
sjh: So you are a milk carton, when people wander up to you in the street, how
do you prove to them that you are in fact a milk carton? Or do we need to take
it as an article of faith that you are a milk carton?
MC: Well in my case there is a fair amount of
Scientific Method
that could be applied to back up any claims I make in relation to actually
being a milk carton. My mostly rectangular cartonesque shape, labels
pertaining to my milky contents, I would hope there is no need to extract milk
from within and test that, however that is also an option. I hope not too many
would feel the need to
tickle, prick or
poison me to learn how identical I am to other milk cartons.
sjh: So you are fairly sure anyone wishing to apply scientific methodology
will believe claims that you are a milk carton, however what do you claim to
those who wish to ignore such methods?
MC: If a bunch of skeptics wished to ignore scientific methodology and were
really not interested in
learning
more I could get away with murder, I can go around claiming to be a
herd
of buffalo or a
carrot cake and
there would be no sensible way to refute my claims, it may even be fun.
sjh: There is a continuing theme in the collective conscious of many people
about the missing person's ads that have appeared on milk cartons in the past.
Conspiracy theorists may suggest milk cartons even had something to do with
the disappearance of these people, what do you think of all of this?
MC: Sure there are many
theories about
what may have happened to all those people on the milk cartons, you should of
course be careful of what to
believe lest people think you a little strange.
sjh: You really don't seem to be answering the questions posed to you, is
there any reason you are simply touching on the topic and then trying to
distract me with possibly related information?
MC: No Comment
sjh: Thank you for your time, I hope you have no problems returning to your
milk cartony ways after this brush with blogdom.
MC: No comment.
Tue, 27 Sep 2005
The sheep are scared, what's next Brain? - 15:10
Riding out in the country today, along a bitumen road, 20 metres from fenced
in paddocks full of sheep. It would appear the sheep have sufficient distance
from me that they would not be afraid. One would think they may even be brave
enough to come close to the fence and taunt me as I ride past. Insults and
taunts such as "Baah Baaaaah Bah Bah Baaaah" or the rather cruel "Bah Bah
Baaah Baaaaaaaaah Bah Baaah", none of this happened though. Instead the sheep
ran further away from the fences on both sides of the road as I rode past.
Woohoo I instill such fear that even the sheep are running scared, next step either Profit or World Domination (heck why not both). Ignoring for a moment any other interpretations of scared sheep.
Sun, 25 Sep 2005
The 100 things meme a snarky review - 19:11
So it probably
could be shorter, it would be easy to make even less sense too. The link
is to the site of some
random amusing blog I
found. His top post when I found it was
a
response to the "100 things about <insert your name>" meme that pops
up on blogs often, number 9 is absolute gold.
9. I am great in bed. Seriously, I can sleep like you wouldn't friggin believe! Coma like. I was almost buried once!
I found that via a movie review blog, 16mm Shrine I saw linked from MeFi on Thursday. Brilliant stuff: Snarky, well written, many non sequitur interludes. Fun to read for all involved.
I Wonder - 19:00
Could
this be shorter?
Fri, 23 Sep 2005
Special conference features for the little people - 21:44
I notice Arjen Lentz
discussing a
mysql t-shirt he had on his baby daughter, I do not know if he is planing
to have a line of baby clothing available for sale at the next mysql event, or
is simply considering it for the mysql clothing line they have somewhere.
I do however think it is interesting to get a few special items like this for a conference or event. In the case of lca, part of what makes the conference fun is little special features organisers have at the conference or similar. Such as the Perth guys putting unusual hints in their DNS records and the hidden badge label stuff on their rego system (which we copied).
One of the cute things we (2005) did was copied an idea from the Adelaide people (2004) and got some kids clothing made up. Partly because our organising crew followed in the footsteps of the 2004 crew and their were 3 babies born to organiser's families in the course of the year leading up to lca2005 and partly because it looks cool to see babies and young kids wandering around in your geeky t-shirts. (well we all seem to think so)
It is good to see Arjen is at least working on some of these fun sort of aspects, the fun or unusual items are often one of the lasting impressions from a conference. Well that and hearing DaveM make our brains melt talking about making the Linux networking stack go even faster (CALU talk).
Thu, 22 Sep 2005
Hi ho hi ho its off to link we go. - 19:05
Well I have not done a two things for a while, 1) post to the various
category, and 2) post a bunch of links I have seen in the past while that
interested me. Time to fix this easier stuff, before working on the harder
stuff like
splitting
the atom, finding Newton's groove or starting it with a big bang not a
whimper.
(all of them
available here)
From Suw Charman some incredibly amusing suggestions relating to English Folk songs on how to avoid having the last three stanzas of your life totally sucking, probably with the involvement of a doleful ghost.
In Canberra there are food markets at Belconnen and Fyshwick, fresh produce will often be there from Thursday morning onward. On Saturday mornings there is a farmers market on at Epic (Natex for people who have not adjusted to the latest name change yet). Anyway the markets have reasonably good produce, and the produce available from the Farmers Markets is generally great (quality and price). Of course it annoys me that it is only 8am until 11am on Saturdays as I am almost busy with some riding related activity during those times.
Anyway on the subject of fresh produce and why you should pursue this in your diet, this post, 10 reasons to eat locally grown produce is a worthwhile read.
More stuff from Suw Charman, here pointing out how off putting Coca Cola tastes in the US, this is of course largely due to the US obsession with using Corn Syrup as a sweetener in everything. Of course it would largely depend on what you grew up with, and in Australia and England we are used to Cane Sugar based sweetening. I too find most corn syrup sweetened foods to taste vile so would be tempted to say "Sing It Suw". (I can not get away with saying Sing it Sister, for many obvious reasons I suspect, ahh well)
I saw this during the tour, then did not blog about it, ahh well. Stuart O'Grady is regularly one of the most amusing, interesting and cool professional cyclists in the peloton in my opinion. Anyway I loved this quote late in the tour this year. A pretty tough day coming up today... "Yeah, it's been really easy over the past two weeks."
This game they apparently were playing at the recent debconf in Norway, Assassins sounds pretty cool to play at a conference or some other gathering of people.
There was a bunch of stuff online a few months ago about how we have relay short circuits in our brains for items that are familiar to us. This article titled Why your brain has a 'Jennifer Aniston cell' talks about it. I thought it was interesting largely because thinking about it, it appears our brains do a form of huffman encoding with this.
Paul Graham generally turns out great essays to read, I kept this link in my to blog file in early march sometime, a quickie Paul Graham Essay on Writing I am sure it is a good read, otherwise why would I have kept it in the file...
Enough from the file for now, time to escape for home and get some sleep. (damn just as I was spell checking and fixing up this post a bit before uploading Bob tagged me to lock up CLUG for the night), one more then, this somewhat surreal furniture is pretty cool.
Wed, 21 Sep 2005
Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging - 14:32
Feel Good Wednesday Edition
Tue, 20 Sep 2005
Naming schemes again and non obvious contact methods - 16:40
So I noticed on Planet Debian this
morning Benjamin Drieu
was asking
about naming schemes for computers. I have previously talked here a bit
about problems
finding a good name when you do not have scheme, so I thought I would share
two of the naming schemes he did not mention that I have seen in use.
As I said in my previous post, at a job I used to do around 2000, the scheme in use was alcoholic drink names, I found the list of proposed drink names and those in use at the time I left when I looked around some backups just now also. A scheme we use where I currently work is types of penguins (which ran out quickly, so we used some other penguin related things for a while too). More exactly Benjamin did not suggest a naming scheme as a species of animals or similar (well apart form the suggestion of fishes).
So I was going to email him (or post a comment on his blog if that was an option), so I click on the link and bring up his blog, I can find no email address there anywhere, even encoded to stop spammers getting it. There are no comments (which I do not mind as I do not like web forums) available, heck he even has geek code about himself on his about me page and a photo but absolutely no way to contact him. Admittedly I am sure google could work out his email address quickly, and I can find out his Debian email address (if he is a developer) easily, but it still strikes me as strange that there is no way to contact him that can be easily found on his home page or blog anywhere.
Interestingly I just noticed Andrew's site and diary do not list any obvious way to contact him (though he does mention a GPG key so one could look up a public keyserver and hope I guess (or ask google and work it out).
Sun, 18 Sep 2005
The Banana Sandwich Theory - 09:04
This could instead be titled the turd sandwich theory I suppose. When you are
working your arse off for a period of time, whether it be riding for hundred's
of KM or moving furniture or some other sort of big physical effort for a
number hours any food is liable to taste a whole lot better than at other
times.
Crash reckons the best hamburgers in NSW are sold by the Wee Jasper take away, this is likely largely due to the fact he has only ever eaten one of their hamburgers after riding more than 100 KM over some large hills. Crash reckons there is a good chance you would be rhapsodising about a turd sandwich to all and sundry if you had eaten one after 150 KM into a head wind over big hills. Thus the reputation of the hamburgers in Wee Jasper probably needs to be considered with some scepticism.
This all came back to me yesterday while helping my sister move her furniture and belongings into storage in Sydney before her pending world travels, we made some banana sandwiches. These were truly brilliant banana sandwiches, however due to the physical effort involved in the moving process I did wonder if they were, as it seemed at the time, the epitome of banana sandwiches or not.
In reality we can probably be grateful that when we are out busting our arses on some huge ride, whether it be the Polaris Challenge, Alpine Classic or an epic into the mountains with a bunch of friends that the food we eat will, irrelevant of content, be some of the best we have consumed in our lives. Just be happy we are so easily catered for by the food we brought on the ride and that we do not need to find the elusive five star cafe at the top of Mt Coree.
Sat, 17 Sep 2005
How can you tell if you are as camp as a row of tents? - 22:15
It appears, if the title is anything to go by I am in search of some really
bad colloquialisms, or maybe I just need to get in touch with my own raging
homophobe. One possible response to the question I heard is "You have had a
few pegs in the wrong places". If I were serious at this point you would
expect me to be donning my white pointed hat and robes or taking up a position
in the US Republican party (if they are not already synonymous?)
In answer to the question I could just link to the James Dobson's notes on detecting if your Son is gay (actually I can't as it appears the original article has disappeared, however Fafblog and the Apostropher to which I linked said it all much better) and suggest that my work here is done, there is however the small problem of that document being impossible to read with a straight face. Ahh yes if the gaydar pings wildly in the presence of your male offspring (notice of course in this obviously male centric world there is no questions raised about the female offspring) you must rush out and cure them of this abomination in front of Alanis^Wyour $DEITY.
But I hear you ask, given the option to choose your own $DEITY, what reason is there to be upset here, after all you may worship at the church of Big Gay Al's Big Gay Animal Sanctuary, or any manner of fun loving and sensible (or not) house of worship. Indeed it is even written down in a few places that it is a good idea to allow people to choose their own religion (and have free speech and a bunch of other stuff). If we go ahead and let people choose something, rather than insisting on a prescribed text it would be folly to get upset over something as unimportant as someone having a slightly different sexual orientation to the so called norm. Wouldn't it?
I probably only wrote this post because I cracked up upon hearing the expression used in the title, ahh well.
Fri, 16 Sep 2005
Operation: ANB is a great post - 12:02
So Aaron has only been doing this blog
thing for a little while, but I must say he seems to be continually posting
some interesting stuff from his travels in Canadia.
The guest blogging practice really can work and be amusing as is appears Aaron has discovered with this post about the IKEA Nationals 2005, a great example of the blogging artform, photos, text, humour all based on an every day experience.
Fairy Tales in the Key of Klingon - 10:21
I have been wondering for a few days now if there were some way I could work
this link into a post, however I have given up in failure and, due to this
being most amusing, will dedicate an entire post to it.
I first saw this link on Kottke back in August, and have since seen it in other places. Another Mcsweeneys list, Klingon Fairy Tales. Including "Goldilocks Dies With Honor at the Hands of the Three Bears" and "Jack and the Giant Settle Their Differences With Flaming Knives".
Now I am just waiting for someone to write more than just the titles, as Kottke suggested, think of the titles as read by Michael Dorn with his Worf voice. This does make one wonder what other fairy tale titles one could think up for various characters in various shows and movies?
"Jack hopped on a plane to Bora Bora to avoid the Giant so he could Live, Grow Stronger and Fight another Day" as told by Methos (that link has been updated far more recently than methos.org).
"Snow White and the 7 dwarves sat around drinking beer and eating burgers, mmmmm Burgers" as told by Homer Simpson.
"Little red riding hood breaks a press-on nail while fighting the werewolf" as told by Buffy Summers.
"How the white knight had new legislation passed to better support Old Mother Hubbard and was brought the finest muffins and bagels in the land" as told by Joshua Lyman
Thu, 15 Sep 2005
2005 NZ-O WSMTB 12 Hour race - 14:31
As in
previous
years the
WSMTB 12 Hour mtb race was on and I went up to Sydney to compete. After I put
our entry in Heidi decided she would be flying over to Australia to compete in
the Mont Australian 24 Hour race
and to focus on it a bit, thus the prospect of flying to Australia twice in
less than a month was not a good one, so I had to find another team mate this
year.
I eventually gave up the prospect of doing well in mixed pairs and asked Morgs (the guy between Heidi and I in that photo) to compete with me in mens pairs. Morgs is a damn fine rider, skill levels well above most of us mere mortals and a great guy to have a beer and sit around telling tall stories with too. This promised to be a good weekend. Also Morgs had never raced or even ridden around the Yarramundi course so he was in for a treat as it is a really fun mtb course.
Driving up to Sydney a bit later than intended on Friday arvo (I was held back in Canberra doing some work in preparation for the Mont 24 Hour I had to get done that week) I knew I was going to miss out on a practi