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November 24th, 2009

01:30 pm - More Things ... Short Shameful Confession time : I've barely been using Linux at home for the last six months. Most of the time, I'm on Windows XP. The main problem is that I've never managed to get any video driver other than the standard vesa one to work on my laptop. I've run through every FAQ and Howto I can find, using packages, Envy, manual install, lots of different versions of the nvidia drivers - but in all cases, I can get the driver installed, and when X comes up, the display is "all messed up" - i.e. part of the screen overlapping the rest, lines across the screen, flickering, etc. Not usable in any way. Seems to be something incompatible with my particular combination of hardware (and being a laptop, I don't really get to start swapping things around to fix it). That wasn't so much of a problem before, because I could still use the vesa driver and get a decent resolution display, as the cost of no 3D acceleration. But then I wanted to hook up an external monitor, and guess what else the default driver doesn't support ? Sadly, It Just Works in Windows. I set the external monitor as the primary display, and everything I've tried so far displays correctly on it. So ... I'm starting to think about buying a separate Linux machine, or maybe a Mac mini. Something quiet which doesn't require too much power. Oh look, Christmas is just around the corner :-) Current Mood: quixotic

(2 touches | En garde !)

09:25 am - Things ... Today's earworm while I was cycling to work was the Red Dwarf theme tune - all 40 minutes of it. Ooof. Meanwhile, I've (finally) started "ripping" my old cassettes - four down, about 300 to go. First priority is the stuff which can't be found anywhere else - e.g. my recordings from the Womadelaide 93 and 95 events (mainly Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan), various DJ mixes from Dreaming Daisies/The China Syndrome days, etc. Current Mood: calm Current Music: Red Dwarf !

(3 touches | En garde !)

November 19th, 2009

10:49 pm - AKICILJ ... So, once upon a time I used to have (among my "load every day" bookmark folder) a weather site, which summarised the world's weather for the previous day. It also listed the extremes of the day, e.g. hottest/coldest places, highest rainfall, etc, and was a very interesting site. Of course, time passed, and so, apparently, did my bookmarks, and I can't find the site again. Any idea what it was, and if it still exists ? Current Mood: curious

(1 touche | En garde !)

November 10th, 2009

10:45 pm - Time passes ... A year ago today a few days ... ... ummm, about a year ago, rwrylsin and I arrived back in Australia. The past year has featured a car, bicycles, jobs, a house, and a bunch of weather. It's good to be back ! (but we do miss Scotland still :-) ) Current Mood: thoughtful

(2 touches | En garde !)

November 5th, 2009

04:55 pm - Boxes ! Anyone (Melbourne-based) planning to move soon ? We still have a lot of moving boxes left over, and we don't intend to move again for a long time. Comment (LJ or DW) or get in touch in some way and let me know if you want some ! Current Mood: calm

(3 touches | En garde !)

October 22nd, 2009

10:05 pm - Belated report of Reasonable day of Triumph ... So, last Sunday was Around the Bay in a Day, at which I rode the 100km Sorrento to Melbourne leg. The ride went well - my original plan was to take it easy, take a break at every rest stop (every 25km or so) and generally cruise along. That plan met my competitive streak, even though it was Not A Race, so I found myself zooming along with various small groups of riders, and only made one brief stop to remove my rain jacket. Ended up doing 98km at an average of 30.8km/h, which is quite reasonable indeed. It's probably been 15 years since I've cycled that far with no rest breaks, and that's probably the fastest I've gone on a ride of that length since some time in the very early 90s, when I was still competing in cycle racing of various sorts. Goes to show what riding to work about three days a week since June has been doing for me. It's still possible to sponsor me (proceeds to The Smith Family, helping disadvantaged children) here. And ... I think I'm going to enter the 210km event next year, to "celebrate" turning 40. Or something. That could be a whole new challenge, I was pretty confident that I could do 100km, but I've never done more than 150km in a day before. Some training may be required :-) Current Mood: calm

(2 touches | En garde !)

October 20th, 2009

09:24 pm Whew. We have Internets again ! (on Friday evening, the power went out for about an hour; this was apparently too much for the power supply for the cable modem, which shuffled off the mortal coil at that point. The replacement (new cable modem/wifi-router unit!) arrived at work today ... ) Current Mood: relieved

(1 touche | En garde !)

October 9th, 2009

12:03 am - Around the Bay in a Day ! On Sunday the 18th (eek, less than 10 days !), I'll be doing the 100km ride of Around The Bay In A Day (maybe next year I'll build up to the 210 or 250km versions). One of the aims of the ride is to raise funds for The Smith Family, providing education and learning opportunities for disadvantaged Aussie kids. You can sponsor me here ! Current Mood: awake

(En garde !)

October 7th, 2009

11:05 pm - 'tis the season for ... fencing ! Apparently this is exactly the right time of year to hold a fencing tournament. Over the past week or so, there's been the Australian Under-20 Championships, Australian University Games (which has fencing!), World Veterans Championships in Moscow, World Championships in Antalya, and finally, the Highland Open in Inverness. I haven't been at any of them, though - not young enough, not student enough, not old enough, not good enough, and not near enough, respectively :-) (unfortunately, no Australian triumphs from the two World-level events - congratulations to Amber on her L64 at Worlds, though !) Current Mood: calm

(3 touches | En garde !)

September 24th, 2009

04:39 pm - The Ways of Wine ... So, what do I need to know about wine ? I have a glass or two every now and then (usually red, usually chosen randomly), but I don't really know much about how wine should be stored or cared for. How long can I keep a bottle around after it has been opened ? How should they be stored ? (And is it different for cork vs screw cap vs artificial cork ?) How would I determine if a wine should be kept (cellared ?), and for how long ? Feel free to answer all the other questions that I should be asking, too :-) Current Mood: curious

(13 touches | En garde !)

September 17th, 2009

03:00 pm - Gadgets ... Does a camera count as "gadget" ? Anyway, I really like the interval timer feature on my Optio W20 - apart from the obvious uses (e.g. making a time-lapse movie of the bump-out of the stage/tech at the Discworld Con last year), I've used it to see which parts of our roof get sunshine through the day (when we were trying to decide if solar hot water would work for us), and to monitor the temperature inside the house pre-insulation (which reminds me, I should do a post-insulation comparison). Who needs a temperature logger ? I found some Linux software that takes a series of images and makes a movie file out of them - unfortunately, the best it can do is one image per second in the movie file ... it must be repeating each image for 24 or 30 frames - why can't I make it repeat for 5 frames, say ? Anyone know of a handy (free!) tool under Windows or Linux that'll do what I want ? The next gadget is my new Dremel - the old one has been flaky for a few years now, only running intermittently. I finally got around to putting it in for repair a few weeks ago, and it came back on Monday, with the main switch/speed control replaced - and it still only runs intermittently. I took this as a sign to get an early birthday present, so I have a shiny new Dremel (digital ! Wait, what ? And why ?!). I've been using it for rabbets and dadoes for a pair of bookcases I'm making, and it's making the job much easier and neater than sawing/chiselling would have been. And my Ay-up bike lights continue to be great - I don't need them as much while riding at the moment, because I've moved to earlier start/finish times at work, but they came with a headband mount as well, and that makes them incredibly useful for the above-mentioned wood-working. rwrylsin bought a set for herself, too, and I think she likes the way drivers actually leave some room for her and give way at intersections when she's using them (possibly because they've been dazzled by the blinding bike lights :-) ). Mmmmm, gadgets. Current Mood: geeky

(5 touches | En garde !)

September 2nd, 2009

11:43 pm - That's no moon, that's ... oh wait. The moon was very clear and bright tonight : And so was Jupiter (and probably Callisto and Io to the left, Europa/Ganymede are the blob to the right) : (all taken with a 300mm/4.5 lens with cheap-ish 2x teleconverter. Exposures and ISO varied randomly until something looked reasonably good ... ) ( And one more of Jupiter ... ) Current Mood: creative

(4 touches | En garde !)

August 25th, 2009

02:50 pm - A spot of construction ... What takes 200 nails, 186 holes drilled, 96 screws, 30 metre-long shelves, 30 shelf support batten thingies, 20 flat 90° bracket thingies, 80 more screws, and 6 litres of paint ? I don't know, but it sure holds a lot of DVDs and CDs ! Yes, it's done. Whatever "it" is. Mega DVD storage ? Epic DVD storage ? Something like that :-) You see, our house has a ... space. A very small room, you could call it, or a box cupboard, or something. Roughly one by two metres. We decided that it was the perfect place to store our many DVDs and CDs (and tapes, and somewhere I have a couple of LPs as well). So, over the last few weeks I've measured and sawed and painted and drilled and nailed and so on, and the end result is ... still standing, for now. It'll be interesting to see how it goes when it's full of Stuff. And I'll have to post photos sometime ... Right, then. On to the bookcases ! *thud* Current Mood: accomplished

(3 touches | En garde !)

August 13th, 2009

08:10 am - It's been a while since I posted photos ... Here, have some photos ! (as always, click through for larger versions ... ) (I need to clean out my camera more often, the Hong Kong one was taken last November !) A view over the beach at Largs Bay. ( Six more back here ...  ) Current Mood: creative Tags: photos

(5 touches | En garde !)

August 11th, 2009

11:32 pm - Woohoo ! Congratulations to my parents on their 50th wedding anniversary ! (errr, for yesterday (Monday), because I'm a little disorganised ;-) ) Meanwhile, the 8th marked 14 years since rwrylsin and I became an item. Yay us ! (... and our 6th wedding anniversary will be in late September, would be much more impressive if we'd got hitched earlier in the relationship :-) ) Current Mood: happy

(4 touches | En garde !)

12:15 am - The cricket ... "You talk about putting your foot on someone's throat and not letting go. I think we have done that very well," England topscorer Matt Prior said. ... obviously he said that rather more than four days ago :-) It's nice to see such a turnaround in form, for a while I was thinking that the umpires were going to become England's leading wicket-takers. Not that I'm bitter ... Actually, I'm curious about that turn of phrase - "putting your foot on someone's throat". Anyone know the origin of that phrase, or some phrase that it might have been based on ? Current Mood: calm

(1 touche | En garde !)

August 7th, 2009

12:05 am - It is a dark and stormy night ... Well, a very windy night, at least, and I'm assuming it's still dark. Apparently I haven't felt like updating much lately, except when it's All House All The Time. So, a few non-house-related things : rwrylsin has reached 1000 LJ posts ! ! She joined after me, but she's now over 100 posts ahead ... Clearly I've been slacking off lately (i.e. the last three or four years). I have new lights for my bike. These are not "being seen" lights, these are "Argh ! My eyes !" lights, made by Ay Up! (an Australian company). They're also compact (the lights are tiny, and the separate battery is pretty small too), shiny, and nigh-indestructible (and waterproof !). And when I rode home with them on Wednesday night I was finally able to see the road and bike track surface that I've been riding on for the past couple of months (some of the back streets I use are pretty dimly lit, and my previous headlight was just enough to make sure I didn't fall into a ditch, but not much use for trying to maintain a decent speed). They're not cheap, but I'd say well worth it for anyone commuting regularly, or riding on poorly-lit routes. And ... ok, that's about it, everything else is house-related :-) Last weekend we finished off the compost bins (they're big and ugly, made of the cheapest treated pine I could find, and not exactly a masterwork of carpentry, but they'll probably survive and be useful for a number of years), I put up some peg-board in the workshop (I have another piece to put up sometime), did some painting (another wardrobe dealt with; one more wardrobe and a cupboard or two to go), and some staining (the last few drawers from an Ikea unit that I started on a few months ago, well before we moved here). This weekend we're going sofa hunting (shhh! They're shy ... ), and I may end up being rwrylsin's student again in the third session of her coaching course. I've started measuring and marking for the shelves in the DVD/CD/tape/media cupboard. We think this cupboard space was left over when the previous owners extended this place upwards sometime in the 80s - it's about 1m x 1.5m, so we're going to line it with shelves and fill it with Stuff. Once that's done and the painting is finished, the next project will involve bookcases - probably quite a few of them, we have a lot of books. Current Mood: calm

(2 touches | En garde !)

July 30th, 2009

10:04 pm - Driving to work ... Today's lesson is that I definitely don't want to ever drive to work on a regular basis. Technically, I wasn't driving to (and from) work, I was dropping the car off to be serviced, and the service place happens to be 1km or so away from my workplace. Anyway, the drive in was ok, but took about 50 minutes. The drive home was very very slow going - 20ish km in about 70 minutes. From here, it's much quicker to take the train (about 40 minutes, door-to-door) or cycle (about 45-50 minutes, plus shower-and-changing time when I arrive at work). Fortunately, the car is happy again (routine service, plus replacing the timing belt - it's at the age where, depending on how the previous owner drove it, it may or may not have needed doing, and we know how expensive it is to deal with if it isn't done in time and goes wrong from our previous car in the UK), and I can get back to efficient commuting (one way gets me fit, the other way gets lots of reading done - the car just gets me bored and/or frustrated). Current Mood: tired

(1 touche | En garde !)

July 20th, 2009

01:39 pm - State of the House ... So, two weeks living in our new house, how are we going ? Well, the kitchen is in a pretty good state now - all boxes cleared, all of the useful stuff has been put away somewhere - maybe not neccessarily to the final organised spot, but reasonably tidy, at least. The lounge/dining area still has boxes, but floor is emerging rapidly, and we may even be at the point where we can fit in a sofa once we buy one. The bedroom has one last stubborn box - maybe I'll tackle that tonight. The computer rooms have varying amounts of boxes i.e. mine has lots, rwrylsin's is mostly tidy :-) And the book unpacking is somewhat stalled, our bookcases are full - about 20 shelf-metres taken, and we're only up to K or so in the fiction books, and only a box or two out in non-fiction. rwrylsin keeps muttering about "weeding", but I am unfamiliar with this concept applied to my our books :-) The garden, fortunately, is well-establised and only needed some taming so that we could actually walk around it safely (and the clothes hoist is free again). Next weekend I'll be building our compost bins, and looking at the uneven paved area at the back and making tutting noises at it. And finally, my workshop area should soon be tidy, I have pegboard, blank wall space, and a drill ... muahahaha ! There's also some painting to be done in and around some cupboards and wardrobes, and staining to finish off on some shelves and drawers, but that should all be manageable over the next few months. After 14 years in rented places, I'm still getting used to the idea of being able to make changes to the house - maybe I need to start rearranging internal walls or something to really get the feel of it. All in all, though, I'm very happy with it. Current Mood: happy

(5 touches | En garde !)

July 14th, 2009

08:21 pm - Photos ! Since I'm lazy and rwrylsin has already done the work, here are links to photos she's posted in and around our new house : post 1, and post 2. Current Mood: calm

(En garde !)