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July 9th, 2009

09:50 pm - Post time ... Greetings from Boxburb, Boxville, in the Kingdom of Boxlandia. Ok, this unpacking process may take a while, not least because I have to paint some of the wardrobes before we start shoving stuff into them. Still, I'm liking our new house a lot - there's work to do, but the basics are all there. And some of the little things are good, e.g. the light switches are generally where I expect them to be, and rwrylsin and I can both be doing stuff in the kitchen and not tripping over each other too much. The train trip to work takes only a little bit longer than at the previous place - which is pretty good considering we're almost twice as far from my workplace. I cycled in today, and had a very good run in (19.11km, 38min30). Unfortunately, the ride home was closer to 50 minutes, and felt like hard work. I don't think I'll be riding every day just yet - at least until the mornings are a bit warmer than 5°C (( Male TMI )). Anyway, life in the new place is good, and I suspect we'll soon be on first name terms with the staff of the nearby hardware store ... and furniture stores ... and bike shop ... and electronics stores ... and outdoor store ... and possibly even the pizza place. Current Mood: relaxed

(3 touches | En garde !)

July 5th, 2009

12:21 pm - Moved ! In brief: Move successful. House nice ! Important stuff functional (bed, computer, TV :-) ). Lots of unpacking still to do, of course. And rwrylsin posted a more detailed account of the move if you wish to know more ... Current Mood: happy

(1 touche | En garde !)

July 1st, 2009

03:03 pm - Settled ! Not without some last-minute drama and running around ("What do you mean, our FHOG application hasn't been lodged in the months since we bought the place ?!"), but settlement has gone through, and rwrylsin and I now own our own home ! Whee ! We move in on Saturday, starting at 9:30 ... if anyone wants to hang around and shift some boxes with us, we'll feed you pizza or chocolate (or chocolate pizza!) afterwards :-) Current Mood: excited

(9 touches | En garde !)

June 30th, 2009

04:25 pm Hmmm, two weeks since the last update. The main news is that settlement hasn't happened today as originally planned. Some problem with the vendor's bank not getting details to the vendor's solicitor to pass on to our solicitor so we can get a Very Large Cheque to them. In theory, it should happen tomorrow, although I haven't heard anything yet, so I'm not completely convinced, and maybe slightly worried - we have various people booked for Thursday to do stuff (connect phone, power, measure up for solar hot water, etc). ... and in the course of writing this post, I got called away to a meeting, and our solicitor called during the meeting (of course), and when I called back afterward they had all the required details. I now have a Very Large Bank Cheque sitting here waiting for tomorrow, so it looks like all will work out ok. Yay ! We just about have our house now ! Can't wait to move in ! I've been cycling to work most days, except for Fridays (because it's casual day here, and I can't be bothered bringing in casual clothes on the bike for one day a week :-) ), and last Wednesday, because I got caught in the rain last Tuesday on the way home and my cycling shoes were still very wet on Wednesday morning. Could be an interesting ride home today - it was quite windy this morning, and is very windy now, and starting to rain. I get the strangest earworms while cycling to work - Nightwish, Rhapsody, random mid-80s easy-listening (where did that come from?), or this morning, the Baldur's Gate II theme (which just makes me want to play it, which would be bad, because, you know, moving house on Saturday). I've been playing Total Annihilation II Supreme Commander quite a bit lately - it's growing on me, not least because each game I discover something that I didn't know I could do. The first couple of games, I was "upgrading" things like metal extractors, radar, etc the old TA way - destroy the old, and build a new one. I hadn't realised that most of those things come with an upgrade option now. Then I realised that the higher-tech-level engineers can build all of the lower-tech-level items, and they do it faster than the low-level ones - so I don't need to keep level 1 or 2 engineers around all game. And it took another game to realise that factories worked the same - a level 3 factory can build L1-3 units, and builds the L1/2 units faster. What will I figure out next ? (well, apparently you can set up air/sea transport units to automatically ferry land units from one place to another - I'll have to play with that one next :-) ) Current Mood: excited

(1 touche | En garde !)

June 15th, 2009

10:05 pm - Brief life update... 15 days to settlement. Yay ! Eeek ! We move on the 4th of July, a Big Truck arrives here at 9:30, and whisks our stuff away some time after that (offers of box-lugging assistance gratefully accepted; we'll give you lunch or chocolate in return :-) ) Packing is going well, around 80% done, so only another 70-90% to go ... Having started a new job only a few weeks ago, and being a contractor, my trip to Adelaide wasn't taken with paid leave as such. Instead, we came to an arrangement where I would make up the 32 hours away by working extra when I got back. Makes for rather long days, and means that by the time I get home and do dinner, there's not much free time left before I need to start thinking about bed, but I'll get most of it out of the way in the next couple of weeks before the Big Move. And today, I cycled to work, for the first time in aaaages - back to 1996 or 97 or so, when I was working at Adelaide Uni and living in North Adelaide, and I could just roll down the hill to get to work. I never got around to it the last time we lived in Melbourne, and we didn't even own bikes in Glasgow, but I decided it was about time. I'm not quite sure why I decided to start in mid-winter, when it's hovering around 6° in the morning, though ... From here, work is just under 9km away, which is an easy ride. When we move, it'll be more like 20km, which is starting to seem like work, and the train will be the quicker option. I'll see how I go after that (after all, commuting time is my main reading time these days, I'll never get through our to-read stack if I don't take the lazy option sometimes :-) ). Current Mood: calm

(2 touches | En garde !)

June 14th, 2009

05:20 pm - What are the odds ? I like it when I turn out to have done something clever completely by chance. Six months ago, when I bought my bike, I also bought a pannier rack, thinking it'd be handy when I got around to commuting to work (after getting a job of course :) ). Yesterday, rwrylsin and I went shopping for bike accessories (I wanted a long-sleeved wind/rain-proof top; she wanted something to keep her legs warm). I also ended up buying a nifty pannier bag thing - the main part of the bag slides on to the pannier rack (assuming you have a compatible one) and clicks into place, and the pannier bags can be folded out from side compartments. And the best bit was, the rack I bought six months ago happened to have the right type of slide/rail system on it ! Win ! Current Mood: amused

(En garde !)

12:37 am - Phone geeking ... Quite a while ago (December-ish, maybe ?) I posted about my quest for a new phone. I finally got around to a decision a few weeks ago, and eBayed myself a Nokia N82. Yes, it's not an iPhone, but so far, I'm happy with it. Among many features, it has WiFi, 3G, Bluetooth, etc, GPS, a 5MP camera with decent flash and Zeiss lens, came with various useful apps and a bunch of games, and it looks like there are tons of applications available for the Symbian S60 OS. I grabbed PuTTY and GNUGo yesterday, and I'm quite tempted to get MAME too. I like living in the future where devices like this are available ... Current Mood: geeky

(En garde !)

June 9th, 2009

09:35 pm Back from Adelaide ! Pizza inhaled, car unloaded, now to catch up on six days of Internets. Conjecture was good fun, fencing was ok. More words later ... (and we seem to have brought the rain back with us ... yay !) Current Mood: calm

(4 touches | En garde !)

May 26th, 2009

08:04 am - Plans ! rwrylsin and I will be in Adelaide next week - arriving late on the 3rd (we're driving over !), free on the 4th and maybe some of the 5th, then attending Conjecture for a while, before I run away to fence some epee on the 6th, then back to Conjecture, and driving back to Melbourne on Tuesday 9th. Anyone want to randomly meet up with us in our few free hours ? Who else is going to be at Conjecture ? Current Mood: tired

(8 touches | En garde !)

May 16th, 2009

05:38 pm - All Fencing All The Time ... at least, that's what it feels like this week. It started last weekend, with a training camp on Saturday and Sunday, 6 hours of fencing (warmups, footwork drills, scenario bouting, mini-competition), following by regular training and a lesson on Tuesday, another training night on Wednesday, regular training Thursday, and finally today, a local competition. It'll be nice to have a couple of non-fencing days now, my knees and ankles and right elbow will all be grateful. (how did the competition go ? Ok, up to a point. Won three bouts and lost one (4-5) in the pool round, but had a good enough indicator to be seeded 4th (out of 25) into the DE. After the partial round-of-32 finished it was my turn, and ... I lost, 5-15. The guy seeded 13th must have been having a very slow pool round, since he came 2nd in the last local comp, and went on to end up somewhere in the last 4 this time too. I wasn't having much luck in setting up any hits on him - in retrospect, it really would have been a good bout to sit back and wait once I got 1-0 up. Oh well, on to the next one ... which is Adelaide ! In three weeks time ! Eeek ! Current Mood: tired

(En garde !)

May 15th, 2009

12:36 pm - BSG on pause ... We seem to have run out of BSG ! Got to the end of the first half of S4 the other day, only to discover that my cunning plan to dash out and buy the second half wasn't quite as cunning as I'd thought, due to the second half not actually being released over here until August. Bah. It comes out in June in the UK, but at twice the price (plus postage etc). Guess we'll have to catch up with some other series in the meantime (although rwrylsin seems to have started on a Babylon 5 re-watch, that should keep us occupied for a while). Anyway, we've enjoyed BSG so far, first-half-of-S4 has some interesting twists, and hopefully the second half keeps up the good work (I've heard the last episode is ... somewhat less than perfect. We'll see :-) ) I've been reading the TWOP recaps as I go along, clearly written by someone who loves the show a great deal, although they throw in some snark at the directors and writers as they go. They definitely add to my enjoyment of the show, pointing out bits that I missed on watching, and adding some interesting tangents and background ideas as well. Current Mood: calm

(4 touches | En garde !)

May 14th, 2009

02:39 pm - Random life update ... I appear to have found myself a job ("at last", I hear you all say :-) ). Contract position with $Bank (of course), starting next week, assuming all the paperwork gets sorted out by then. I actually used networking to find this one - got in touch with a former manager after applying for a different position with $Bank, discovered that she had a new project starting up with a position that would suit me, and everything went from there. First contact was in February, I got details in March, two interviews in April, and finally starting in the second half of May. And they say this is a fast-paced industry ... (and meanwhile: 47 days until we can move into our new house ... ) Current Mood: happy

(4 touches | En garde !)

May 4th, 2009

03:45 pm - Dreamwidth invites ... I have four left - please leave a comment with your e-mail address if you want one (comments screened). Edit: All gone ! Enjoy ! Current Mood: calm

(2 touches | En garde !)

May 3rd, 2009

02:05 pm - Musical urges ... So, I went on a bit of a youtube music binge the other day, and ended up listening to a bunch of flute music. It's been years since I even touched a flute, and over a decade since I practiced regularly, but I'm starting to get the itch to play again. The only problem I'm having is that the music is all so nice and pretty and I really want to sit down and crash out some heavy metal or hardcore techno ... on the flute. Could be a bit tricky. Not least because I don't own one at the moment. In the meantime, I'll share some of the music I've liked in recent years - I always assume that "everyone" knows what sort of music I like and likes the same stuff, but that can't be anywhere near true. I'm open to recommendations, although you can assume that I've heard of Dead Can Dance already :-) Today, I'll do the stuff with a vaguely mediaeval influence - most of it would horrify the purists (sorry, halfflat !), but I like it. Saltatio Mortis, Live at "Mittelalter Spectaculum 06" (4min 21sec) (not the best audio/video quality, unfortunately), and "Heuchler" (4:45). Hopefully those videos get across the sort of "mediaeval rave music" they used to play - these days it's more goth/metal with some mediaeval sounds, e.g. "Dunckler Engel" (4:01) or "Des Königs Henker" (8:15). Moving on, here's Estampie, with "Floret Silva" (4:09), and "Seigneurs, sachiez" (3:19). Many of the musicians in Estampie also perform as Qntal (more pop/rock influences, but still a good mediaeval core) : "Am Morgen Fruo" (5:02), and "Ecce Gratum" (5:11) Arcana : "Source of Light" (3:05), and "Love Eternal" (2:37). And finally, two bands I've heard a bit of, and intend to explore more sometime : "Ductia" by Corvus Corax (5:10), and "Ordo Militum Christi" by Trobar de Morte (3:46). (for some reason, these styles of music seem to be most popular in Germany, and if we'd had time and been organised enough and had enough leave and money to do so while we were living in the UK, it would have been cool to see some of these bands live. Maybe next time !) Current Mood: creative

(4 touches | En garde !)

April 29th, 2009

07:30 pm - Ahh, the irony ... rwrylsin and I lived in Glasgow for four and a half years. For almost three of those years, Partick station, which was on the other side of the car park from our block of flats, was being redeveloped, mostly at night. Double glazing is a wonderful thing, but jackhammers at 1am still win ... We left before they had finished, although apparently the shiny new station is now done and shiny and stuff (saw some photos on Flickr of the finished product, it looks pretty good). We also had major roadworks in front of our place for a year or so, as they lowered part of the Expressway and reworked the on/off-ramps near us. In July this year, we're moving in to our new house ( yay \o/ ), in Nunawading, quite close to the train station ... the one which is going to be redeveloped next year (they're moving the rail line under the road, and moving the station to the west side of Springvale Rd and putting it underground). And we thought we'd escaped living near a construction site ! Oh well ... at least it won't be quite so close, this time. As an aside, the Partick development was done while keeping the station (train and subway) running as normal, and took over 3 years. The Nunawading work is planned to take 1 month. Current Mood: calm

(2 touches | En garde !)

April 27th, 2009

09:55 am - Two months to go ... *sigh* Still two months until we can move into our new house. The place we're currently renting is pretty good, except for the galley-style kitchen, which drives us batty, and the apparent lack of anything resembling insulation in the place. The temperature in the bedroom tracks the ambient far too well - when we had the hot spells in summer, it regularly went over 30°C, up to 34° or so on the hottest days - fortunately, there's a (small & noisy) air-conditioner in there, which managed to get the temperature back down to bearable after a couple of hours of running. Now we're having a cold spell[1], and the temperature in there was 16°C this morning. This house does have central heating, but it's not as effective as we'd like, due to the above mentioned tent-like insulation, and the design of the house - the lounge area has a double-height ceiling, and upstairs a balcony overlooking this space connects the bedrooms. This means that all the heat entering the lounge at ground level goes straight up and seemingly straight out of the house, making it quite hard to warm up the place. So ... roll on June 30th. [1] Glaswegians & other Scots reading this may now smirk, snicker, and laugh, as "cold spell" around here means maximums around 14-18°C with patchy rain - to be fair, though, we are the second stop for the Antarctic-chilled 40kt wind after Tasmania, so it feels rather cooler than that. Current Mood: cold

(5 touches | En garde !)

April 22nd, 2009

09:49 pm - Nice day for a ride ... Went for a very pleasant bike ride this afternoon - lovely Autumn sunshine, nice and warm, and I wasn't trying to go too fast (mostly; I have a bit of a competitive streak, i.e. any time there's a cyclist in front of me). I was riding along a section of Yarra Boulevard which is popular with cyclists (and the occasional zoomy motorcyclist, presumably they like the bendy nature of the road, 'cos they certainly aren't cruising along admiring the scenery), and apart from spending a bit of time chasing after someone who'd overtaken me, I rambled along at a reasonable pace. I suspect it's coming to the end of the easy-riding weather - there's a cool change coming this weekend with the promise of rain and even snow over the Alps, and I don't think we'll be seeing much in the mid-20s here for a while. Not that I'm planning to stop riding regularly, but I find it much harder to hop on the bike go for a ride when it's 14°C with strong winds and passing showers, than when it's 24°C and sunny and calm. I'll probably be riding a bit less for a few months, and spending a bit more time on fencing (I'm even getting a lesson next week ! It's about time, too, at training I'm reasonably effective, but also quite flaily and messy, and my footwork is all over the place). Current Mood: calm

(En garde !)

02:24 pm - Fencing ... I went to fencing last night (first Tuesday training session since we got back from the UK), and had one of those nights where everything Just Works - I was mostly at the right distance (or if I was at the wrong distance, my opponents were doing the wrong thing :-) ), I was accurate to hand/wrist, I was moving well, and I was thinking - trying to actively set up hits, unlike my usual reactive style. Nights like that don't come along too often, but it's very nice when they do - it'll be even better if it happens for the next tournament, of course.

(1 touche | En garde !)

April 18th, 2009

02:09 pm - DW again ... I got an invite code ! So I'm now davidcook over there too. I don't seem to have invite codes yet, I'll let you all know if/when I get some :-) Current Mood: happy

(2 touches | En garde !)

April 16th, 2009

02:10 pm - Dreamwidth ... Lots of people are talking about Dreamwidth at the moment, roughly divided into "invite code plz?!?" and "what's Dreamwidth?" camps. For those in camp B: it's another journal service, using a modified version of the LJ code. It's being run by some former LJ staff, plus a bunch of volunteers. They've made a number of improvements to the LJ code e.g. splitting "friend" into "subscribing" (people you read) and "trusted access" (people who can read locked posts). There are also tools to enable an easy migration from LJ to DW - you can import all of your journal entries and comments from LJ, and they have good OpenID integration, so LJ users can easily comment on DW posts (and vice-versa, I believe). They also intend to stay free of advertising, and to grow slowly and steadily - they've done the sums so that they'll cover the first year's costs from an initial sale of permanent "seed" accounts, and thereafter use income from paid accounts to keep running and growing. Now, I'm not planning to move over to DW completely, but I will get an account there sooner or later (sooner if I get an invite code, later via paid account if not), and probably cross-post to both places. I don't intend to completely move off LJ, though - I have a permanent account here, and I have lots of photos in the LJ ScrapBook service, which I don't think DW can handle just yet. On the other hand, I think LJ has some problems that hopefully DW can avoid. Every now and then, I look at the "latest posts" page (note: very likely NSFW) - it used to be possible to see interesting things there, maybe pick up on current events. Now, it's 80-90% spam and porn and porn spam and worse (e.g. links to attack sites), and I don't think LJ has the mechanisms to deal with it all. PS: On the off-chance that someone from DW reads this, does DW have a similar latest posts page ? I tried the analogous URL but that's not it ... Current Mood: thoughtful

(6 touches | En garde !)