So I’m making this slightly early, as there is still Friday left for triking, but three days in a row appears to have given my legs enough.
So some stats:
Week total distance: 13.5km
Total Distance: 19.8km
Interesting Story for the week:
So I was riding home from work for the first time and was going along the side of a road on the foot path. I notice an egg flying past me then a the black commodore that was driving past slowly accelerates away.
Don’t most people grow out of that type of behaviour before they get old enough to have a car?
Apparently the ebook market in Australia is still pretty terrible. I’m looking at the iPhone question (I think its a yes) and being able to read ebooks on what ever I do buy seems like a plus.
The but is that I can’t find a way to buy some books from Australia. I tried to find the cost and formats available for the book I was reading at the time (Twilight, just finished Eclipse last night), and saw that it was a very reasonable $USD12.00 from the first site I found). Then I noticed that I couldn’t buy it as an Australian, so I tried some Australian ebook sites and they didn’t have the Twilight series.
So then I tried looking at Amazon, who were 100% prepaired to sell me a physical copy of the book, but couldn’t sell an Australian an ebook copy. Why is the world so silly?
Anyway the Poll question is, what is the best option for getting hold of ebooks not available in your region. Please comment after voting.
So after the defeat of the rather large hill I went after a flatter target this Sunday. Practicing the trip to work seemed like a good idea. Having perfected the use of the Garmin Edge 205 I know that the trip was 4902 meters. As my day job informs me GPS units are least accurate in terms of height (it has to do with the geometry of the constellation. IE you can only ever receive satellites that are ‘up’ so working out how far up or down you are is hard), which explains why I keep managing to have a total gain in elevation greater than my loss, despite starting and finishing the trip at the same place.
So last week I went down to Cycle Science to buy my self a Whiz Wheels Cruiser. Unfortunately I had to wait till the following Friday night to pick it up with the options I wanted on it (one of those options being both rear seat supports). So I picked it up and rode it to the train station and from the station to home.
This was my first attempted real trip, I wasn’t expecting much, as my fitness level was, well abysmal. All I planed was a quick ride over to my parents, Google maps tells me that it was a 4.2km round trip that I intended to do. It also tells me that I only managed 1.8km.
Due to an error with using the Garmin Edge 205 I brought I only recorded the last 1443m of the ride, but this is what the Distance-Elevation plot for it looks like:
Which I guess was more of a hill than I was ready for.
I’ve been looking at buying some lenses since I brought my Pentax K20D in November. Straight after buying it I borrowed Dad’s old Pentax lenses so I’ve been carrying around:
* 18-55mm F3.5-4.5 DA kit lense that came with the cammera. This is very handy for those situations where you think a bit of weather proofing would be useful. With the crop factor putting the range to 27-82mm it is a very useful range of zoom as well. Keep reading →
Prime Minister Rudd announced this morning our new National Broadband Network plan. Apparently the only different between Telstra and the other players in the tender process was that Telstra worked out they couldn’t make a worthy tender before submitting, everyone else just submited something anyway.
So now that the government has no worthy tenders they have decided to do it them selves (with 49% private ownership, the other 51% to be several years after completion). Which is a nobel idea, but I do wonder how this is going to interact with Telstra. My ability to find stock prices online is apparently bad enough that I can find out what has happened to Telstra stock price since this was announced.
Just recieved these in an email from Phil, can’t be bothered working out if they are from a reputable source, but this is the internet:
MELBOURNE: 3.6 million people (2006), 248 Nationalities, 289 languages,128 religious faiths
THE CHURCH
* 300,000 people attend church weekly, another 300,000 attend about once a month.
* There are over 1700 local churches of more than 30 denominations and over 80 nationalities
* There are 60 Chinese, 52 Greek, 41 Italian, 35 Samoan, 30 Vietnamese, 24 Korean churches
* “NO RELIGION” up 20% in 10 years
* Under 34s: 1.2million (48%) in population BUT only 48,000 (4%) attend church(=16% of attenders)
* Over 55s: 819,000 (22%) of population and 20% (122,000) attend weekly (= 54% of attenders)
* About 5000 people come to faith each year, about 9000 people leave the Church
I do like how they compare apples and pears in the last dot point :) It is still sobering though.
So I decided it was time to buy tickets to Canberra for nationals, Tiger Airways ended up being the cheapest option. So I purchased the tickets online. $101 for a return trip to Canberra is pretty good in my eyes and thats after selecting to have some check in luguage and selecting which seat I wanted on the way there.
So everything was sweet untill I noticed the price charged to me on the ticket confirmation, $111. Apparently they manage to charge you $10 more for ‘convenience’, I’m not sure yet what convenience they are charging me this fee for, but thats a later part of the story.
Not wanting to look like a fool I go through the booking screens again doing a text search for this extra fee, it is never mentioned once on any of the pages. In the interest of doing things the same the second time through I attempt to select the same seat again. No worries mate, but that is a worry to me: How can I book the same seat on the same flight twice?
Do I even have a booking, I don’t need to resolve this immediately, nationals isn’t until July, but theres no time like the present. So I give the local Tiger call center a call (tip: they have no local numbers, just the direct normal number for Melbourne, which is fine for those who live in Melbourne . . .)
The next problem though is actually getting to talk to someone. Their number is busy 5 out of 6 tries and when you get through and select an option at the prompt: Silience followed by disconnection.
On Monday the nice man who offered to buy my car for less than I really wanted handed me a bank cheque and I handed him some keys. Naturally then he twisted my arm ’till I signed some official documents.
I am now officially car free.
So in the interest of keeping my self honest to some rules I want to follow I will be logging my transportation activities.
I am hoping to not abuse my friends and their cars, my choice to not have a car shouldn’t create a burden for my friends. Equally it shouldn’t get in the way of me doing the things I want to do.
Day 0: (23/2/2009)
Drove to work.
Walked home.
Walked to IGA for bits and pieces needed for dinner.
Day 1: (24/2/2009)
Walked to work.
Walked home.
Train to Westgarth for Church. (Train was running 2 minutes early, nearly missed it)
Train home.
Day 2: (25/2/2009)
Train to work, it was lightly raining and I was going to use the train after work anyway so it was free. (Train was 8 minutes late, wasn’t important as I was early for work)
Train to city for drafting / play testing for the weekend. (Expect train to be late, will post a comment if it is)
Train home from city.
So that will make 3 days without taking a car trip, I wonder how long that streak will last.
Due to the request of Scott I feel I need to continue my long running posts of burger reviews.
On the Saturday that is now referred to as Black Saturday I went down to Mornington for a swim with a friend. We decided to stop at La Monicas on Main Street in Mornington, it was such a hot day that we decided to eat inside and were thankful for the water that was served regularly.
Both of us decided to order the burger because it sounded really good: Steak, Bacon and Mushrooms on a Turkish style bun, served with salad. The prospect of Mushrooms wasn’t all that inspiring, but it sounded pretty good.
When the burger arrived I was fairly disappointed, but first the good. The meat used appeared to be reasonably high quality beef, with essentially no gristle/fat and it tasted fantastic. The bacon was also of good quality.
The Turkish bun, which encouraged me to purchase the burger in the first place wasn’t toasted. Which was a substantial problem because the mushrooms had been cooked in plenty of butter, making the whole burger nearly too soggy to hold.
Lastly you’ll notice that my list of ingredients for the burger didn’t include letuce or tomato, so the first thing both of us did was add them from the side salad to the burger.
Updated Points:
0.0 – No Burger :(
0.5 – McDonalds Cheese Burger
1.0 – Big Mac
1.5 – KFC Filler
2.0 – Any burger at Hungry Jacks
2.5 – Hogs Breath Cafe (Canberra Central)
3.0 – La Monicas (Mornington)
4.0 – Average Fish and Chips shop burger
5.0 – Good Fish and Chip shop burger
7.0 – BBNT burger
8.5 – Urban Burger
8.5 – Trims Cafe, McCrae
9.0 – Grill’d
So I was clicking on random links in IRC this afternoon when I found this gem of a quote:
Magic: The Gathering, a type of poker
This surprised me quite a bit, as its on a gambling site. The rest of the article has many other fantastic gems, including this paragraph:
“That is dangerous,” the Pastor explains. “Part of the game’s appeal comes from ‘the ability to develop a character — you get to be somebody else,’ says Garfield…In Magic the deck you put together reflects your character — your persona.”
Which uses the bad habit of quoting two different people in the same paragraph (fairly confusing when the paragraph is primarily quote) and then adds insult to injury by using incorrect punctuation to confuse who is being quoted where. Also what are the ellipses doing?
Personally I think the whole demonic side to magic is very over blown, I don’t know of many people who play because they think its fun to pretend to be a wizard, they play because its fun to play.
Last week I thought it would be a good idea to grab a copy of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It was one of the two videos we watched continually when visiting my Grandmother and Grandfather in East Kew. (The other one I’ve only ever known as ‘that ewok movie’ and possibly the name being Caravan, I always suspected that I was just thinking all small furry aliens were called ewoks and that it wasn’t actually a star wars movie. But my imdb skills have made me believe the movie was called An Ewok Adventure: Caravan of Courage).
So I’ve gotten around to watching it now. What is annoying me the most is the mono sound. I would never thought that such a simple family movie would sound so hollow and flat in mono. The mono sound is much more annoying than the fake colours.
Oh if you were looking for some thrilling interesting discussion of important things, I’m not really in the mood :)
I’ll leave you with a few of the lines I love in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang:
“Fiery Furnace”
“You two/too are truely scrumptious”
“Just as soon as they kiss, then they’ll have to get married”
So I invited everyone to my place to celebrate my 26th birthday. ‘Everyone’ in this case means all the people on facebook that I wouldn’t feel weird about having turn up to my place, 84 people. 15 people RSVPed using the facebook application, but 6 of those people didn’t turn up in the long run.
18 people said they might attend, of them 1 did, who was my sister. Of the 22 you declined the invite none of them turned up and the 33 who didn’t respond at all didn’t show up either.
Naturally having 15 positives and 18 maybes I catered the salads and soft drink for 20ish people and had lots left over when a measly 10 showed up.
Although in the long run the fact I had fun is the only thing of consequence.
Not sure how we got onto it but a friend I was chatting with yesterday mentioned that the IGAs (Independent Grocers Association) were increasing the requirements and standards on keeping membership with them. So what do I see today when I walk into what I always think of as the worst IGA ever?
Yes the random Chinese ladies who work the store are going around furiously cleaning every surface they can get to. I hope this isn’t a once off cleaning effort.
PS: Yes, long time no post. Hoping to get back into the rhythm now.
