I could not blog about my ride yesterday - I was in bed by 7.30pm, passed out - stone cold dead from from exhaustion.
I knew it was going to be windy before I started, but not how windy. In my interlude from riding to work, I have not been riding on windy days. If I look out the window and the tree limbs are swaying too and fro, I go back to the couch. Therefore, I am totally out of shape for riding into the wind.
Getting to work was not too bad. It was chilly - a brisk 10 degrees when I suited up - but not evilly chilly. It's odd that I felt colder on the way home, when the bike thermometer was reading 20, than on the way to work. Then again, the thermometer seemed to wake up a kilometer into my ride and rapidly plunged to 17, then 15 degrees. That was more like it.
Except that I had believed the temperature as given by the thermometer to be correct, and had stuffed my jacket in my backpack, and gone with fingerless gloves rather than the full length gauntlets. My jersey was still damp with sweat from riding in that morning, and I was soon having trouble grasping the brake levers due to numb fingertips! I have been issued a locker at work, which will allow my wet gear to dry properly during the day, but have not been issued with a key.
The only way I know I have a locker is that I walked past them and saw that my name had been put on one of them. I have been told not to approach she-who-issues-the-locker-keys, as that is the best way to have my locker rights revoked. I have to wait until she feels that it is time to pay me a visit and hand over the key.
The problems really started when I hit the ANZAC bridge. The ANZAC bridge is fine to ride over when heading into the city - the bridge is reasonably steep, but from the Balmain side, you have this long, straight downhill run before it starts heading sharply upwards. Sensible riders go hell-for-leather on the downhill part and try and build as much speed and momentum as possible before tackling the rise. That sometimes means scooting between pedestrians at 50km/h on a confined path, which can be a bit hairy, but that generally gives them the idea that they should keep left, rather than filling the path from side to side.
The city side of the bridge is altogether different. Some wise engineer at the RTA came up with the idea of building a zig-zag approach for the bike path, so by the time you have ascended to the deck proper of the bridge, all momentum is gone. The zig zag path is also fairly steep - it's common to get stuck behind mountain bikes going zshh-zshh up the path in low-low gear, which equates to walking pace for most humans.
And when you get to the top of the zig zag, you find yourself facing the steepest part of the bridge. Somehow, that engineer with a wacky sense of humour managed to design a bike path that is most off-putting to beginner riders. Bike paths are supposed to be easy to use in order to encourage fat, unfit bastards to start using them. Building a path on one of the most heavily used routes into the city that has a degree of difficulty that would not be out of place on the Tour de France is not the best way to tempt first time riders to come back for a second attempt!
I don't mind it now of course - I usually come up the zig-zag a few gears up from low, and have the stamina to push up and over the steepest part at a reasonable clip. Thin, young wiry bastards occasionally go zipping past me, making me feel like a lumbering hippo trundling up the ascent, but in the main I find it an every day challenge to see if I can improve my time from the base of the zig-zag to the crest of the bridge.
Yesterday was different. As soon as I emerged from the zig-zag, which is in a wind shadow, I rode straight into a ferocious head wind. I was suddenly in low gear, pushing for all I was worth to get up to the crest. Every rotation of the cranks was an effort, and I didn't have the luxury of getting into a really, really low gear like mountain bikes do. I just had to grit my teeth and bear it, hoping that my spleen would not explode out of my side halfway up the hill. It was push-push-push-gasp, push-push-push all the way to the top. I even had to push on the downward slope, so nasty was the headwind. Normally, I coast down under brakes. This time, I had to pedal to keep moving!
Once I was over the top, the fun didn't stop. Apart from a nasty headwind, I was also being buffeted by strong gusty side winds. They were enough to push me sideways a bit every now and then, and I am not as light as a feather. I was giving everything a wide berth, worried that I'd be going around a pedestrian when I'd get bumped sideways enough by the wind to force a collision.
I got a feel for the strength of the wind when I hit the Bay Run. The Run loops this way and that, so sometimes the wind is in your face, others at your back. I came around a long bend and the wind was now behind me. I pushed up through the gears until suddenly there was no noise - the roaring in my ears was muted, and I was riding in the Cone of Silence. I was barely putting any pressure on the pedals, yet I was tonking along at 40km/h.
About 500 metres later, I was doing zero. I'd had another flat.
I found a park bench, and sat down to change the tube. That went ok, until I removed the pump after inflating the fresh tube. The bit that lives inside the valve stem came shooting out under pressure and disappeared into the grass, leaving me with a very flat tyre and no spare tube.
Thank goodness for mobile phones. J came and picked me up.
I woke up several times during the night and had to scrub bits of sand and grit out of my eyes. It was even worse this morning - I had a crust on my bottom eyelid of crud that had worked its way out overnight. On windy days, you really need to swap the sunglasses out for a set of goggles.
Such is life in the saddle. I am about to head out to buy some more inner tubes.
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Friday, 3 July 2009
Green madness in Byron
The fruitloops in Byron Bay have gone off the deep end again, refusing to allow landowners to build seawalls to protect their properties from erosion.
I have a simple solution.
The landowners should give the council two fingers and build the walls anyway. When the council turns up with a bulldozer to demolish it, lie down in front of the dozer. At night, put sugar or sand in the fuel tank. Cut the hydraulic lines. Chain yourself to your sea wall. Get your friends to run around singing "we shall overcome" whilst waving red banners. Make sure young children are involved, and put at risk by heavy earth moving machinery. Call in the media and accuse the police of brutality and excessive force. Scream, rant and throw yourselves to the ground in a theatrical manner. Arrange for every ratbag, rent-a-crowd loonie to join in.
If it's good enough for the greens to pull those kind of stunts in order to block legalised logging activities, why shouldn't they be given a taste of their own medicine?
I have a simple solution.
The landowners should give the council two fingers and build the walls anyway. When the council turns up with a bulldozer to demolish it, lie down in front of the dozer. At night, put sugar or sand in the fuel tank. Cut the hydraulic lines. Chain yourself to your sea wall. Get your friends to run around singing "we shall overcome" whilst waving red banners. Make sure young children are involved, and put at risk by heavy earth moving machinery. Call in the media and accuse the police of brutality and excessive force. Scream, rant and throw yourselves to the ground in a theatrical manner. Arrange for every ratbag, rent-a-crowd loonie to join in.
If it's good enough for the greens to pull those kind of stunts in order to block legalised logging activities, why shouldn't they be given a taste of their own medicine?
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Side by Side
Whenever I visit Junior's school, I try and pick up a copy of a newspaper called "Side by side", which is described as "the newspaper for NSW public schools".
It's a bloody awful newspaper - full of the worst public sector goop one can imagine. They might as well translate old copies of Pravda and publish that instead. Everytime I try and digest it, I imagine an editorial committee of wierd-beards in their birkenstock sandals (plastic, zip-up shoes in winter), grey cardigans and corduroy trousers deciding on how to waste another slab of taxpayer's funds. I can't for the life of me think why anyone would read it voluntarily. I read it because it utterly horrifies me, and reminds me that socialism must be encased in a concrete block and dumped somewhere offshore in a depp ocean trench.
I was reading one of the issues that I picked up recently and found that I was vaguely disturbed. I couldn't put my finger on it, but then it struck me that the paper was putting an awfully large amount of emphasis on two issues only - green issues and black issues.
I pulled out my ruler and tried to determine how much of the paper was devoted to each topic.
For starters, the paper is 28cm x 39cm and has 24 pages. That gives it 26,208 square centimetres of paper to play with.
(These numbers don't add up precisely, because I was not being altogether precise in my measurements).
Of those 26,208 square centimetres of virgin paper, 6,888 were used on white space, headers, footers, advertisements and the usual "published by" legal guff. 28% of the surface area of the paper was devoted to.... nothing useful.
There were a stack of job ads at the back for teachers - they got 4,368 square centimetres. Sport took up 1,638 centimetres. That left 11,442 square centimetres for news.
3,724 square centimetres of available "news" space was devoted to environmental or aboriginal issues - 33% of the news. There was almost nothing devoted to what I would term educational issues - it was all puff pieces on greenies and various aspects of aboriginal education.
Thinking that issue must have been devoted to those issues, I took my ruler to the next issue.
The results were fairly similar.
Now two papers does not make a good sample, and the paper does not seem to be available on line, so I can't do any more analysis until I scarfle another paper on my next visit to the school. But bloody hell, if that doesn't give you a taste of where the heads of our educational bureaucrats are at, nothing will.
(There was nothing devoted to special needs in either issue).
It's a bloody awful newspaper - full of the worst public sector goop one can imagine. They might as well translate old copies of Pravda and publish that instead. Everytime I try and digest it, I imagine an editorial committee of wierd-beards in their birkenstock sandals (plastic, zip-up shoes in winter), grey cardigans and corduroy trousers deciding on how to waste another slab of taxpayer's funds. I can't for the life of me think why anyone would read it voluntarily. I read it because it utterly horrifies me, and reminds me that socialism must be encased in a concrete block and dumped somewhere offshore in a depp ocean trench.
I was reading one of the issues that I picked up recently and found that I was vaguely disturbed. I couldn't put my finger on it, but then it struck me that the paper was putting an awfully large amount of emphasis on two issues only - green issues and black issues.
I pulled out my ruler and tried to determine how much of the paper was devoted to each topic.
For starters, the paper is 28cm x 39cm and has 24 pages. That gives it 26,208 square centimetres of paper to play with.
(These numbers don't add up precisely, because I was not being altogether precise in my measurements).
Of those 26,208 square centimetres of virgin paper, 6,888 were used on white space, headers, footers, advertisements and the usual "published by" legal guff. 28% of the surface area of the paper was devoted to.... nothing useful.
There were a stack of job ads at the back for teachers - they got 4,368 square centimetres. Sport took up 1,638 centimetres. That left 11,442 square centimetres for news.
3,724 square centimetres of available "news" space was devoted to environmental or aboriginal issues - 33% of the news. There was almost nothing devoted to what I would term educational issues - it was all puff pieces on greenies and various aspects of aboriginal education.
Thinking that issue must have been devoted to those issues, I took my ruler to the next issue.
The results were fairly similar.
Now two papers does not make a good sample, and the paper does not seem to be available on line, so I can't do any more analysis until I scarfle another paper on my next visit to the school. But bloody hell, if that doesn't give you a taste of where the heads of our educational bureaucrats are at, nothing will.
(There was nothing devoted to special needs in either issue).
Losing lights
I was such a lazy sot this morning. I was up at 0615 (thanks to a Monkey elbow in the ribs), but sat around reading blogs and drinking coffee for an hour before developing the will to go outside. It's not like it was windy or wet, or even particularly cold. It was chilly - around 10 degrees - and still. I think my problem is having an office at home with no view - I can't see the sky from my desk, and that affects my motivation to move.
Once I did get moving, the sky was quite spectacular - those clouds are almost an upside-down ski field.
I hit a major bump on the road on the Leichhardt side of the Bay, and unbeknownst to me, my headlight bounced right out of its cradle and landed on the road (it was light enough to not need it to be switched on). There was a pack of half a dozen riders behind me, and they were kind enough to pick it up, catch me up and hand it over. That saved me at least a hundred bucks, and the prospect of riding home in the dark.
A similar thing happened on the way home - I crashed into a pot hole in Kent St, and heard a clatter behind me. I checked that I still had everything - pump, water bottle, wallet, camera and phone - and could not work out what had made that noise.
At the next set of lights, a cyclist pulled up next to me and told me that my back light had departed company with my bike, and the bloke coming up behind him had picked up my light! The light had fallen apart, with the base remaining attached to my bike, and the blinky bit and batteries hitting the road. All I got back was the blinky bit - the batteries had speared off somewhere else, so I had to ride home with no tail light. I have a spare front light in case my big rechargeable battery goes flat halfway home... now I need yet another tail light in case the primary light meets a bad end. Where will this end? So much for high speed, low drag.
That's two big favours other cyclists have done in one day - I must have built up some good karma somehow. Perhaps it's sending those care packs to the troops.....
And here we have the city at sunset - yes, it really was that pink. I have not fiddled with this photo at all. I think smog helps.
One thing that did bug me today is that I had no grip in my hands. My gloves kept on sliding around on the handlebars, and nothing I did would stop it. I normally change grip once a minute or so in order to stop my hands and forearms from going numb - I have racing handlebars, so one minute, I'll grip them using the horizontal part of the bar, and the next I'll change to the forward poking part. It didn't matter what I did - my hands kept sliding around, and I had trouble pulling on the brake levers when I needed to.
I initially blamed the gloves, as they were the full-fingered set. They lack the palm padding that the fingerless gloves have, and the baby seal skin that lines the palms of the fingerless gloves generally grips the handle tape like glue. However, when I swapped gloves for the ride home, the fingerless ones were just as bad. It's as if the handlebar tape has suddenly lost all its stickiness; or my forearms have suddenly developed a bad case of piss weak.
Tomorrow morning will be interesting, when I ride again at dawn. I am back to checking the weather forecast every night before bed - gusty winds tomorrow. Not very warm either. I feel major ball shrinkage coming on.
Once I did get moving, the sky was quite spectacular - those clouds are almost an upside-down ski field.
I hit a major bump on the road on the Leichhardt side of the Bay, and unbeknownst to me, my headlight bounced right out of its cradle and landed on the road (it was light enough to not need it to be switched on). There was a pack of half a dozen riders behind me, and they were kind enough to pick it up, catch me up and hand it over. That saved me at least a hundred bucks, and the prospect of riding home in the dark.
A similar thing happened on the way home - I crashed into a pot hole in Kent St, and heard a clatter behind me. I checked that I still had everything - pump, water bottle, wallet, camera and phone - and could not work out what had made that noise.
At the next set of lights, a cyclist pulled up next to me and told me that my back light had departed company with my bike, and the bloke coming up behind him had picked up my light! The light had fallen apart, with the base remaining attached to my bike, and the blinky bit and batteries hitting the road. All I got back was the blinky bit - the batteries had speared off somewhere else, so I had to ride home with no tail light. I have a spare front light in case my big rechargeable battery goes flat halfway home... now I need yet another tail light in case the primary light meets a bad end. Where will this end? So much for high speed, low drag.
That's two big favours other cyclists have done in one day - I must have built up some good karma somehow. Perhaps it's sending those care packs to the troops.....
And here we have the city at sunset - yes, it really was that pink. I have not fiddled with this photo at all. I think smog helps.
One thing that did bug me today is that I had no grip in my hands. My gloves kept on sliding around on the handlebars, and nothing I did would stop it. I normally change grip once a minute or so in order to stop my hands and forearms from going numb - I have racing handlebars, so one minute, I'll grip them using the horizontal part of the bar, and the next I'll change to the forward poking part. It didn't matter what I did - my hands kept sliding around, and I had trouble pulling on the brake levers when I needed to.
I initially blamed the gloves, as they were the full-fingered set. They lack the palm padding that the fingerless gloves have, and the baby seal skin that lines the palms of the fingerless gloves generally grips the handle tape like glue. However, when I swapped gloves for the ride home, the fingerless ones were just as bad. It's as if the handlebar tape has suddenly lost all its stickiness; or my forearms have suddenly developed a bad case of piss weak.
Tomorrow morning will be interesting, when I ride again at dawn. I am back to checking the weather forecast every night before bed - gusty winds tomorrow. Not very warm either. I feel major ball shrinkage coming on.
Having fun with numbers
The MSH (SMH) ran a story today on the Gravy Plane - how our retired politicians are using their free travel passes. They kindly posted some PDF's of who has been doing what, so I decided to analyse the numbers to see if anything stood out.
For starters, providing data in PDF format is beastly, and it required some massaging to get it into Excel. By massaging, I mean getting the bloody data into the right cells, not fiddling with the data IPCC style. For that reason, I only worked on those who spent over $50,000, which conveniently happened to be those on the first two pages. There are 10 pages of data - I could not be fagged to massage the bloody lot. Let's just go with the frequent fliers.
I plotted the data using simple X-Y scatter diagrams. The pinko Labor types were first - note that I have fixed the scales for each party at the same maximum values so that the charts are not distorted via different scales. Nice fit on the R-squared value. The trend line is a 2 factor polynomial. The uppity-down axis is the number of flights each member has taken, and the cross-the-bottom axis is the aggregate value in $,000.
Then come the Tories - the best fit trend line was a straight line rather than a polynomial, and the R-squared is a disappointing 0.54.
Whoa, check out the Nationals. That massive outlier is Ian Sinclair, who just happens to sit on the board of that fake charity that I had a look at a few weeks back. If he has been flying down to Sydney for board meetings, then the charity should foot the bill, not the taxpayer.
I tried getting fancy by using a radar plot to see if anything jumped out at me, but apart from Sinclair, the plots are all fairly similar.
For those in the top 66 frequent fliers, the average cost for retired Labor members is $79,000 and $81,000 for Libs. The Nats are blown out to $92,000, but that shrinks to $78,000 if you remove Sinclair. In other words, they are all equally into the trough, with barely a pork chop to separate them.
I then tried a different tack, analysing them by state rather than party. Since blogger renders tables like crap, I am doing this as dot points. The first number is how many members that state had in the top frequent fliers, and the second is the average cost for the top fliers in that state:
WA tops the league in cost, as you might expect given the cost of flights from there to anywhere else.
What the hell is it with Tasmania though? They have a minuscule population, not a lot of members in the reps, yet they have more members in the top frequent fliers than WA. Are they that desperate to get out of Tasmania?
Queensland - big state, not a lot of members in the top list. The top member on the list comes from Townsville, which is a long way from anywhere. A quick check on the Qantas web site shows that a flight from Townsville to Sydney is more expensive than one from Perth to Sydney. It's a loooong way.
Then there is South Australia. Crumbs! 11 members doing their best to get out as often as possible, averaging $83,000. I guess they were just popping across to Melbourne for a civilised weekend.
Victoria - big state in terms of population, yet only 1 more member in the top list than South Australia. Yet they are still expensive - why would anyone living in Victoria want to go anywhere else? I can understand people in Tasmania and SA wanting to split, but Victoria tends to be pretty nice.
NSW tops the list as expected, having the highest number of ex members. The average is pulled up a bit by NSW having Ian Sinclair with his snout right in the trough, and then the next highest is the globe trotting Tim Fischer, who lives in the middle of nowhere.
The fascinating thing is that the 4th biggest spender for NSW is Janice Crosio, who was the Member for Prospect - which is an electorate in western Sydney. The others are all Nationals who live out in the boonies. Janice Crosio is just down the road a bit from me. She took 154 flights to total up her $98,000, whilst Noel Hicks, who lives in the sticks as the member for Riverina-Darling, took 336 flights in order to spend $99,000 - a grand more than Janice.
I'd be interested to see where she has been zooming off to.
For starters, providing data in PDF format is beastly, and it required some massaging to get it into Excel. By massaging, I mean getting the bloody data into the right cells, not fiddling with the data IPCC style. For that reason, I only worked on those who spent over $50,000, which conveniently happened to be those on the first two pages. There are 10 pages of data - I could not be fagged to massage the bloody lot. Let's just go with the frequent fliers.
I plotted the data using simple X-Y scatter diagrams. The pinko Labor types were first - note that I have fixed the scales for each party at the same maximum values so that the charts are not distorted via different scales. Nice fit on the R-squared value. The trend line is a 2 factor polynomial. The uppity-down axis is the number of flights each member has taken, and the cross-the-bottom axis is the aggregate value in $,000.
Then come the Tories - the best fit trend line was a straight line rather than a polynomial, and the R-squared is a disappointing 0.54.
Whoa, check out the Nationals. That massive outlier is Ian Sinclair, who just happens to sit on the board of that fake charity that I had a look at a few weeks back. If he has been flying down to Sydney for board meetings, then the charity should foot the bill, not the taxpayer.
I tried getting fancy by using a radar plot to see if anything jumped out at me, but apart from Sinclair, the plots are all fairly similar.
For those in the top 66 frequent fliers, the average cost for retired Labor members is $79,000 and $81,000 for Libs. The Nats are blown out to $92,000, but that shrinks to $78,000 if you remove Sinclair. In other words, they are all equally into the trough, with barely a pork chop to separate them.
I then tried a different tack, analysing them by state rather than party. Since blogger renders tables like crap, I am doing this as dot points. The first number is how many members that state had in the top frequent fliers, and the second is the average cost for the top fliers in that state:
- ACT - 3 members, $62,000 average
- WA - 6 members, $117,000 average
- TAS - 7 members, $72,000 average
- QLD - 7 members, $91,000 average
- SA - 11 members, $83,000 average
- VIC - 12 members, $87,000 average
- NSW - 19 members, $73,000 average
WA tops the league in cost, as you might expect given the cost of flights from there to anywhere else.
What the hell is it with Tasmania though? They have a minuscule population, not a lot of members in the reps, yet they have more members in the top frequent fliers than WA. Are they that desperate to get out of Tasmania?
Queensland - big state, not a lot of members in the top list. The top member on the list comes from Townsville, which is a long way from anywhere. A quick check on the Qantas web site shows that a flight from Townsville to Sydney is more expensive than one from Perth to Sydney. It's a loooong way.
Then there is South Australia. Crumbs! 11 members doing their best to get out as often as possible, averaging $83,000. I guess they were just popping across to Melbourne for a civilised weekend.
Victoria - big state in terms of population, yet only 1 more member in the top list than South Australia. Yet they are still expensive - why would anyone living in Victoria want to go anywhere else? I can understand people in Tasmania and SA wanting to split, but Victoria tends to be pretty nice.
NSW tops the list as expected, having the highest number of ex members. The average is pulled up a bit by NSW having Ian Sinclair with his snout right in the trough, and then the next highest is the globe trotting Tim Fischer, who lives in the middle of nowhere.
The fascinating thing is that the 4th biggest spender for NSW is Janice Crosio, who was the Member for Prospect - which is an electorate in western Sydney. The others are all Nationals who live out in the boonies. Janice Crosio is just down the road a bit from me. She took 154 flights to total up her $98,000, whilst Noel Hicks, who lives in the sticks as the member for Riverina-Darling, took 336 flights in order to spend $99,000 - a grand more than Janice.
I'd be interested to see where she has been zooming off to.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Fascinating stuff
Locking people up is a sucky, but necessary thing to do. The SMH has been reporting on crime and punishment lately in a manner that suggest intense disapproval. Take this latest one for instance:
There has been a surge in the number of juveniles on remand in the State's prisons, following a trebling in the number of arrests due to breach of bail conditions.A surge, or just a return to the tougher sort of environment that used to exist before the namby-pamby, feel-good, "it's all society's faultt" mob took over?
New data from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research shows a 32 per cent increase - from 181 to 239 - in the number of juveniles gaoled while on remand between 2007 and 2008.239 little crims locked up? That doesn't sound like a lot to me out of a population of 6 million in NSW.
The rise is due to an increase in the rate at which police are arresting juveniles for breaching bail conditions, along with those on remand spending longer in prison, the bureau said.Hoorah! The little turds commit a crime; they get bail; they go out and commit another crime and the cops nab them for it. However, instead of being let go to commit more crime, they get locked up. What is there to not like about that?
One third of bail breach arrests involved committing another crime, according to a study of a portion of the cases by the bureau.That in itself tells me everything we need to know about what sort of kids these are - bad. One crime can be dismissed as youthful exuberance or stupidity (been there, done that - but never got caught). But being busted for a crime and being brought in front of a Magistrate should be an experience that causes a person to go, "Whoops, better straighten out and be good from now on". If they don't want to make that change, I won't weep for them. Life is about making choices, not excuses.
However the most common bail condition breached was not complying with a curfew order, which accounted for 35 out of 50 cases, and not being in the company of a parent (29 out of 50 cases).Curfew order. Something that says, "You will not leave your house at night and fart around with other young crims, causing trouble and stealing the property of others". How difficult is it to comply with that? Stay at home and don't go out and steal stuff. Don't get drunk or stoned (at age 14 or 15). Don't carry a knife. Do your homework.
Also contributing to an increase in the length of time spent in prison on remand was a move by the State Government in late 2007 to block lawyers shopping around for lenient magistrates in the hope of getting bail for their client.Sounds like a sensible move to me. The government could go a step further and move to dismiss those magistrates. It's times like these that I like the US system of electing judges at this level. Don't like the piss-weak magistrate in your local court? Vote them out.
The Bureau said there was no link between the longer time being spent in prison on remand and the reduction in property crime which has been evident over the past few years.Really? Amazing bit of logic, that. I'll have to dig the report out and see how they justify that statement.
Self portrait
Two photos by Monkey. One of them is he.
Is that just the coolest self-portrait or what?
Is that just the coolest self-portrait or what?
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Fatherhood
It's 10:30pm, 2 hours past when Monkey should definitely be in bed. He's taken over my office chair, and is sitting there eating peanut butter crackers and trying to assist me with typing this. I am sitting in a distant chair, trying to read the monitor from 5 feet away on a 30 degree angle.
I am not feeding him chocolate cake again for dessert - especially flourless chocolate cake that contains an entire block of cooking chocolate! Especially when such a cake lasts less than 24 hours in this household. I was expecting to partake of a small slice each day until the end of the week, but some disappeared at breakfast (not me), some disappeared at lunch (not me), some went into Junior's lunchbox and some was had for afternoon tea (not me)... and that was almost it. I got a thin sliver tonight, topped with double cream and surrounded by blackberries. Damned delicious, but the lack of seconds was a major drag.
Now I have to get Monkey into bed. When he whinged last night, I lay down with him for a few minutes in order to calm him down.... and apparently woke up at 11pm and carted myself off to our bed. I have no recollection of leaving his bed and finding my way into ours. I was still feeling the after effects of a good Sunday ride. What I forgot to mention about Sunday is that I tried to maintain at least 30km/h on everything except the steeper hills.
Now that is pretty easy to maintain when in a group, but much harder when on your own and when you are the wrong side of.... however old I am. It's a reasonable clip for someone born in the 1960's, and who is fond of chocolate cake with proper double cream.
It was not a tongue hanging out of the side of your mouth sort of speed - but it was sufficient to be hard work. Not excruciatingly hard, not ball-breakingly hard - just hard. It was a good work out, no more, no less. Especially since it lasted over 2 hours with only one small break. I have not worn a heart rate monitor for a few years, but I know I was pushing 70-80% most of the time - if not more.
My legs are giving off just a gentle ache at present. They are not twanging and collapsing like they do after a meteorically stupid ride, where I push up hills until I nearly vomit, and am blinded by sweat pouring into my eyes. They have the dull discomfort of a ride that involved an elegant sufficiency of exercise.
What that means is that I can climb into the bath tub to have a shower knowing that I will be able to get out again without danger of falling out of the tub as I attempt to exit. When you find yourself lying naked on the bathroom floor because your legs have given out on you, you know you've done a good ride.
--------
Case in point. Put Monkey to bed shortly after writing that. Woke up with him at 0012 hours. Finished this off this morning.
I am not feeding him chocolate cake again for dessert - especially flourless chocolate cake that contains an entire block of cooking chocolate! Especially when such a cake lasts less than 24 hours in this household. I was expecting to partake of a small slice each day until the end of the week, but some disappeared at breakfast (not me), some disappeared at lunch (not me), some went into Junior's lunchbox and some was had for afternoon tea (not me)... and that was almost it. I got a thin sliver tonight, topped with double cream and surrounded by blackberries. Damned delicious, but the lack of seconds was a major drag.
Now I have to get Monkey into bed. When he whinged last night, I lay down with him for a few minutes in order to calm him down.... and apparently woke up at 11pm and carted myself off to our bed. I have no recollection of leaving his bed and finding my way into ours. I was still feeling the after effects of a good Sunday ride. What I forgot to mention about Sunday is that I tried to maintain at least 30km/h on everything except the steeper hills.
Now that is pretty easy to maintain when in a group, but much harder when on your own and when you are the wrong side of.... however old I am. It's a reasonable clip for someone born in the 1960's, and who is fond of chocolate cake with proper double cream.
It was not a tongue hanging out of the side of your mouth sort of speed - but it was sufficient to be hard work. Not excruciatingly hard, not ball-breakingly hard - just hard. It was a good work out, no more, no less. Especially since it lasted over 2 hours with only one small break. I have not worn a heart rate monitor for a few years, but I know I was pushing 70-80% most of the time - if not more.
My legs are giving off just a gentle ache at present. They are not twanging and collapsing like they do after a meteorically stupid ride, where I push up hills until I nearly vomit, and am blinded by sweat pouring into my eyes. They have the dull discomfort of a ride that involved an elegant sufficiency of exercise.
What that means is that I can climb into the bath tub to have a shower knowing that I will be able to get out again without danger of falling out of the tub as I attempt to exit. When you find yourself lying naked on the bathroom floor because your legs have given out on you, you know you've done a good ride.
--------
Case in point. Put Monkey to bed shortly after writing that. Woke up with him at 0012 hours. Finished this off this morning.
Sunday, 28 June 2009
Ripsnorting wheel turners
After much faffing around, I finally made it out the door around 10am. I had a half-baked idea of trying to raise the weekly total to 100 miles, or 160.9344 kms. After much huffing and puffing, I achieved 98.18% of my target. The thing that put me off pushing for that last 2% was a bad case of the 'black finger', which is commonly brought about by a puncture. I was not far from home, and had numerous options for taking detours that would extend my ride by the requisite amount, but I decided not to push my luck. You always get a second puncture when you push your luck, and I only carry one spare tube.....
Notice my soft, pink hands. I used to have callouses. Lots of callouses. Where did they all go?
The other thing that made me go straight home, without collecting $200, was that my stupid little pump was only capable of putting 40psi into my tyre after I changed the tube. I have a big pump at home - one that you put both feet on and then pump like crazy - and it quickly and easily gets my tyres up to 100psi or more. But I can't take that on the road with me, so I have a little porta-pump that is supposed to do the same job..... but doesn't. When it got to 40psi, it kept blasting off the end of the valve as the pressure was too much for it. You'd need muscles like The Humongous to get it any further. (This is quite a good take on Humongous and his henchmen by the way, and this explains how they rolled the tanker at the end of Mad Max II).
I had a bit of a laugh whilst changing the tube on the side of the road. As soon as I heard that fatal 'pfft-pfft-pfft' of air exiting the tyre on each rotation, I slowed down and pulled over. I happened to pull over right outside the front of a house where the occupant was standing in his doorway having a fag, with his dog.
After I stripped off the back wheel and sat down to start the tube change, he wandered over to see how things were going. He looked like a complete welfare-bludging dero. Trailer trash, except without the trailer. He had a nice looking fibro home in an expensive suburb instead.
The thing that got me is that he was wearing a tracksuit and trainers. I've noticed the same thing at our supermarket all the time - all the heroin addicts and meth-freaks from down the road stagger in wearing tracksuits and trainers. The immensely overweight waddle around in tracksuits and trainers. The worse their heroin problem, the more expensive is their designer sports wear. On the other hand, those of us that actually exercise and take reasonable care of ourselves are never seen outdoors in tracksuits.
Why is it that those least likely to do any form of exercise, apart from elbow bending, are the most likely to be seen in sports clothes? In winter, I sleep in a pair of tracksuit pants. The only time you will ever, ever see me in them outside is if our house catches fire and we have to evacuate in a hurry. When I put that idea to J tonight, she said, "Hmm, even then, I would probably stop and get changed".
Riding mid-morning meant that as I was heading out, I was passing all the serious cyclists heading home. The packs of lean, mean, hungry looking, lycra-clad coffee-slurpers was being replaced by families. Many families. Families with many meandering kids on bicycles. I was constantly standing on the brakes to avoid running over some tow-headed five year old that suddenly decided it would be a good time to ride on the opposite side of the path.
I was approaching one such family head on when the little kid at the front of the pack looked up at me and went wide-eyed and he spread his arms as far as they would go and smiled - I am rather broad across the shoulders, and I think he was making the point that from his point of view several feet below me, I looked like this hulking monster.
At least I hope he was referring to the width of my shoulders, and not my Hinze-like beer belly.
And I mean a Russ Hinze belly, not a Kirsty Hinze belly.
Notice my soft, pink hands. I used to have callouses. Lots of callouses. Where did they all go?The other thing that made me go straight home, without collecting $200, was that my stupid little pump was only capable of putting 40psi into my tyre after I changed the tube. I have a big pump at home - one that you put both feet on and then pump like crazy - and it quickly and easily gets my tyres up to 100psi or more. But I can't take that on the road with me, so I have a little porta-pump that is supposed to do the same job..... but doesn't. When it got to 40psi, it kept blasting off the end of the valve as the pressure was too much for it. You'd need muscles like The Humongous to get it any further. (This is quite a good take on Humongous and his henchmen by the way, and this explains how they rolled the tanker at the end of Mad Max II).
I had a bit of a laugh whilst changing the tube on the side of the road. As soon as I heard that fatal 'pfft-pfft-pfft' of air exiting the tyre on each rotation, I slowed down and pulled over. I happened to pull over right outside the front of a house where the occupant was standing in his doorway having a fag, with his dog.
After I stripped off the back wheel and sat down to start the tube change, he wandered over to see how things were going. He looked like a complete welfare-bludging dero. Trailer trash, except without the trailer. He had a nice looking fibro home in an expensive suburb instead.
The thing that got me is that he was wearing a tracksuit and trainers. I've noticed the same thing at our supermarket all the time - all the heroin addicts and meth-freaks from down the road stagger in wearing tracksuits and trainers. The immensely overweight waddle around in tracksuits and trainers. The worse their heroin problem, the more expensive is their designer sports wear. On the other hand, those of us that actually exercise and take reasonable care of ourselves are never seen outdoors in tracksuits.
Why is it that those least likely to do any form of exercise, apart from elbow bending, are the most likely to be seen in sports clothes? In winter, I sleep in a pair of tracksuit pants. The only time you will ever, ever see me in them outside is if our house catches fire and we have to evacuate in a hurry. When I put that idea to J tonight, she said, "Hmm, even then, I would probably stop and get changed".
Riding mid-morning meant that as I was heading out, I was passing all the serious cyclists heading home. The packs of lean, mean, hungry looking, lycra-clad coffee-slurpers was being replaced by families. Many families. Families with many meandering kids on bicycles. I was constantly standing on the brakes to avoid running over some tow-headed five year old that suddenly decided it would be a good time to ride on the opposite side of the path.
I was approaching one such family head on when the little kid at the front of the pack looked up at me and went wide-eyed and he spread his arms as far as they would go and smiled - I am rather broad across the shoulders, and I think he was making the point that from his point of view several feet below me, I looked like this hulking monster.
At least I hope he was referring to the width of my shoulders, and not my Hinze-like beer belly.
And I mean a Russ Hinze belly, not a Kirsty Hinze belly.
Where be photos?
Sorry, no beautiful ride snapshots today. Partly because the weather has sucked big time for the better part of a week, and partly because I have been slack as dog's balls. I have this target in mind of doing 100 miles a week - a good, old-fashioned ton - because when I hit that mileage, I start dropping a pants size every few weeks. I am not going to make it this week, but I will get about 80% of the way there, although there will be few photos to record my travels.
Right now, the realm outside the house is cold, murly and grey. I'm going to leave that word spelled as "murly", instead of correcting it to "murky". Murly has a ring to it, denoting surly, murky skies that threaten rain at just the wrong moment. It was that way yesterday as well, which is why I remained curled up on the couch by the heater. I cursed myself last night for my slackness, and pulled out all my riding gear and left it where it would be easy to change into it. I told myself I would get up half an hour before dawn and ride.
The sun has now been up for nearly 3 hours, and I am just out of bed and sitting here trying to type through bleary eyes. I might get out the door at 0930.
I did go for some good rides on Thursday and Friday. The Thursday ride was a cracker - I always feel at my peak after I've done a few rides, then had a day or two off. Thursday was like that - my legs were running at 10,000 watts of power, and it felt like a supercharger kicked it every time I needed to attack a hill or blast along the flat.
This was a delightful change, because there are many days when I go to do a hill, and my legs look up at me and say, "Oh, fuck off, we are not going up that thing", and it is a battle of wills to see whether we will indeed make it to the top before I do a Michael Jackson impersonation (as in, drop dead of a heart attack, rather than attempting to rear mount a 10 year old).
A day like that makes for a great night's sleep. Or, in my case, getting home, having a shower, feeding and promptly passing out on the couch not long after at around 7pm. J shook me awake at midnight, and I stumbled off to bed. A good, hard ride will do that to you (and again, I am not referring to Michael Jackson here).
A good ride deserves a tasty dessert. I have been going all-out this week on making tasty desserts for the family. We did the mini chocolate puddings, and then I moved on to bread and butter pudding. I tried two recipes - one which used individual ramekins, and the other a single baking dish - and both were scoffed with delight. J even ended up eating the leftovers for breakfast!
I think I prefer the ramekin approach, except most of our ramekins are too small - too petite - for a proper pudding. We will be ramekin shopping after lunch. The recipe said it would do 4 ramekins, but it ended up doing 5, and it could have done 6 more easily (ie, with less spillage of custard on the bench top as I filled the ramekins).
I have rediscovered an old truism that my mother told me, and which you will not find in any modern cook book. A good bread and butter pudding requires bread that is NOT fresh. In the old days, it was a great way of using up stale bread that would otherwise be thrown out (and as my parents grew up during the Depression, I can assure you that the only thing they throw out is empty egg shells, and even then they go into the garden as fertilizer).
I might have to buy a loaf of bread and leave it aside for a few days specifically for this pudding, which sounds extravagant and stupid, but none of the shops around here sell 'day old bread'.
I used to be able to buy it when I lived in other suburbs - those that fed the ducks and pigeons snapped it up cheaply - but here, it is just not the done thing.
As a modern twist, I replaced the currants with half a 500gm packet of frozen mixed berries. They were excellent - the tartness of the berries offsetting the sweetness of the custard. One was done with castor sugar, and the other with soft brown sugar. Soft brown sugar is best. One custard was 50/50 cream and milk, and the other 100% milk - I detected no appreciable difference in outcomes.
I also relearned the lesson that you pour in the custard and let them sit for 5 minutes before going in the oven - they need a short period to soak before cooking. And remember to sprinkle a bit of sugar on top - I forgot both times.
Best served with double cream, and I mean proper double cream, not that crap which contains vegetable gum as a thickener.
Now, I must go for a 60km ride - that way, I can eat whatever I damned well like for dinner.
Right now, the realm outside the house is cold, murly and grey. I'm going to leave that word spelled as "murly", instead of correcting it to "murky". Murly has a ring to it, denoting surly, murky skies that threaten rain at just the wrong moment. It was that way yesterday as well, which is why I remained curled up on the couch by the heater. I cursed myself last night for my slackness, and pulled out all my riding gear and left it where it would be easy to change into it. I told myself I would get up half an hour before dawn and ride.
The sun has now been up for nearly 3 hours, and I am just out of bed and sitting here trying to type through bleary eyes. I might get out the door at 0930.
I did go for some good rides on Thursday and Friday. The Thursday ride was a cracker - I always feel at my peak after I've done a few rides, then had a day or two off. Thursday was like that - my legs were running at 10,000 watts of power, and it felt like a supercharger kicked it every time I needed to attack a hill or blast along the flat.
This was a delightful change, because there are many days when I go to do a hill, and my legs look up at me and say, "Oh, fuck off, we are not going up that thing", and it is a battle of wills to see whether we will indeed make it to the top before I do a Michael Jackson impersonation (as in, drop dead of a heart attack, rather than attempting to rear mount a 10 year old).
A day like that makes for a great night's sleep. Or, in my case, getting home, having a shower, feeding and promptly passing out on the couch not long after at around 7pm. J shook me awake at midnight, and I stumbled off to bed. A good, hard ride will do that to you (and again, I am not referring to Michael Jackson here).
A good ride deserves a tasty dessert. I have been going all-out this week on making tasty desserts for the family. We did the mini chocolate puddings, and then I moved on to bread and butter pudding. I tried two recipes - one which used individual ramekins, and the other a single baking dish - and both were scoffed with delight. J even ended up eating the leftovers for breakfast!
I think I prefer the ramekin approach, except most of our ramekins are too small - too petite - for a proper pudding. We will be ramekin shopping after lunch. The recipe said it would do 4 ramekins, but it ended up doing 5, and it could have done 6 more easily (ie, with less spillage of custard on the bench top as I filled the ramekins).
I have rediscovered an old truism that my mother told me, and which you will not find in any modern cook book. A good bread and butter pudding requires bread that is NOT fresh. In the old days, it was a great way of using up stale bread that would otherwise be thrown out (and as my parents grew up during the Depression, I can assure you that the only thing they throw out is empty egg shells, and even then they go into the garden as fertilizer).
I might have to buy a loaf of bread and leave it aside for a few days specifically for this pudding, which sounds extravagant and stupid, but none of the shops around here sell 'day old bread'.
I used to be able to buy it when I lived in other suburbs - those that fed the ducks and pigeons snapped it up cheaply - but here, it is just not the done thing.
As a modern twist, I replaced the currants with half a 500gm packet of frozen mixed berries. They were excellent - the tartness of the berries offsetting the sweetness of the custard. One was done with castor sugar, and the other with soft brown sugar. Soft brown sugar is best. One custard was 50/50 cream and milk, and the other 100% milk - I detected no appreciable difference in outcomes.
I also relearned the lesson that you pour in the custard and let them sit for 5 minutes before going in the oven - they need a short period to soak before cooking. And remember to sprinkle a bit of sugar on top - I forgot both times.
Best served with double cream, and I mean proper double cream, not that crap which contains vegetable gum as a thickener.
Now, I must go for a 60km ride - that way, I can eat whatever I damned well like for dinner.
Saturday, 27 June 2009
Gremlins and firewalls
Blogging has been a bit retarded of late due to my computer refusing to connect to blogger from time to time. J started having the same problem with Faceplant. Then I stopped getting emails, and finally it just wouldn't connect to blogger at all.
Fixing the email problem took a while, but the fix was simple - I turned off the firewall on our router. It had decided to block the ports for gmail. I now need to figure out how to enable those ports and turn the firewall back on.
Fixing the other problems were also router related. The router has an intrusion detection setting, but it can only be accessed if the firewall is enabled. I re-enabled the firewall and turned off intrusion detection. Suddenly, there was blogger and faceplant!
I think I'll be doing a firmware update on the router later today, and then spending a few hours fiddling with the firewall settings. Damn and blast.
Fixing the email problem took a while, but the fix was simple - I turned off the firewall on our router. It had decided to block the ports for gmail. I now need to figure out how to enable those ports and turn the firewall back on.
Fixing the other problems were also router related. The router has an intrusion detection setting, but it can only be accessed if the firewall is enabled. I re-enabled the firewall and turned off intrusion detection. Suddenly, there was blogger and faceplant!
I think I'll be doing a firmware update on the router later today, and then spending a few hours fiddling with the firewall settings. Damn and blast.
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
Chocolate puddings
Crikey, strike a light. Fair suck on the sauce bottle. Even Tim Blair has gone all new agey and start posting recipes.
Bloody copycat.
Before I start on chocolate puddings, let me digress for a moment onto oysters and adaptation.
In the ebb and flow of the debate about carpetbag steak, a comment was made about how we'd have fewer oysters in future because increasing CO2 concentrations will make the water they grow in more acidic, and that will give oysters reproductive problems.
My response was:
I got pulled up by Pogs this morning for describing a chocolate pudding that has flour in it as being flourless. Oops, my bad. Here is the recipe from the Marie Claire Seasonal Kitchen:
Beat the egg whites to form soft peaks.
Beat the egg yolds and sugar until soft and pale. (I hate how they tell you to do this first. I always beat the whites first, then use the same beaters to do the yolks. That way, I avoid a bit of washing up. You can't of course use dirty beaters to beat whites as they won't whip properly).
Stir the melted choc/butter mixture into the yolks/sugar mixture. Then add the flour, cornflour and cocoa and mix until smooth.
Fold in the beaten egg whites, 1/3 at a time. Do not smash the air out of them! Be gentle.
Grease the 6 ramekins and divide the goo amongst them.
Now, you have two choices here - whether to cook straight away, or freeze and cook later. The book says to chill the empty ramekins first, and to then tip the mixture in and freeze that too until ready to cook.
I didn't bother with the chilling of the ramekins, and I put 3 straight into a 200 degree C oven for 13 minutes. They came out perfectly.
The next day, I took the 3 that I had put in the freezer into the oven, and cooked them for 15 minutes. Mine was still a bit gooey in the middle, but J said she loves it that way. Note that I cooked the frozen ones for 2 minutes longer than the non-frozen ones. The book says 15 minutes, and I just took a wild-arsed guess that 13 would do the trick if they were thawed.
Oh, by the way, you are supposed to let them sit for 10 minutes after cooking. All that happened during that time is that they all collapsed inwards. Looked a bit like Malcolm Turnbull did yesterday. Still damned tasty though. Although deflated, they came through with the goods. They did the trick. I'd prefer a tasty, deflated chocolate Turnbull to a puffed up turd sandwich from Rudd any day.
Serve with double cream.
------
OK, that was the chocolate pudding recipe with flour. Now for my very similar regular recipe, which is bereft of flour, which also explains why I described the above as "flourless".
Bloody copycat.
Before I start on chocolate puddings, let me digress for a moment onto oysters and adaptation.
In the ebb and flow of the debate about carpetbag steak, a comment was made about how we'd have fewer oysters in future because increasing CO2 concentrations will make the water they grow in more acidic, and that will give oysters reproductive problems.
My response was:
My guess is that natural selection will kick in and those oysters that prefer lower pH levels will thrive, whilst those that don’t will die out. This is due to existing natural genetic variation in the current oyster population.
We’ll still have oysters - they’ll just be slightly different to the ones we have today.
If all else fails, just do some genetic modification. That should fix it.
And that's how I think we should respond to all this global warming rubbish. Some plants have a problem surviving in a changing environment? Genetically modify them. What's wrong with a franken-oyster for instance? I doubt it will come to that because I suspect there is plenty of variation in the population, and those that adapt best will come to the fore. I think that's called natural selection. It makes you wonder how all those plants and animals adapted in the past to climate change - the ice ages and all that. Well, I guess the mammoths didn't adapt too well to the end of the last ice age. But do greenies weep for woolly mammoths that died out long before man discovered fire, let alone the electric kettle?
It's like Ashfield Council putting up signs showing where the water level might be at in 40 years time. I had a close look today, and given that they are talking about the record high tide levels that we might get in 4 decades time, I think we have two options:
- As there is already a seawall around that entire part of the harbour to prevent erosion, just top it with a few courses of bricks. A mini-dyke, so to speak. They're projecting that a record high tide in 2050 might submerge a few small sections of the Bay pathway under an inch or two of water. We're talking high tide here, not a permanent inundation. A slightly higher sea wall should keep that out.
- Do nothing, and just put up with the path being underwater once in a while. That happens at the moment during heavy rains anyway. It happens on the Cooks River cycleway. BFD.
I got pulled up by Pogs this morning for describing a chocolate pudding that has flour in it as being flourless. Oops, my bad. Here is the recipe from the Marie Claire Seasonal Kitchen:
- 200gm good quality chocolate
- 100gm unsalted butter (oops, I used salted last night)
- 4 eggs, separated
- 1/2 cup soft brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon plain flour
- 1 tablespoon corn flour (I did not put this in)
- 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
- 6 ramekins
Beat the egg whites to form soft peaks.
Beat the egg yolds and sugar until soft and pale. (I hate how they tell you to do this first. I always beat the whites first, then use the same beaters to do the yolks. That way, I avoid a bit of washing up. You can't of course use dirty beaters to beat whites as they won't whip properly).
Stir the melted choc/butter mixture into the yolks/sugar mixture. Then add the flour, cornflour and cocoa and mix until smooth.
Fold in the beaten egg whites, 1/3 at a time. Do not smash the air out of them! Be gentle.
Grease the 6 ramekins and divide the goo amongst them.
Now, you have two choices here - whether to cook straight away, or freeze and cook later. The book says to chill the empty ramekins first, and to then tip the mixture in and freeze that too until ready to cook.
I didn't bother with the chilling of the ramekins, and I put 3 straight into a 200 degree C oven for 13 minutes. They came out perfectly.
The next day, I took the 3 that I had put in the freezer into the oven, and cooked them for 15 minutes. Mine was still a bit gooey in the middle, but J said she loves it that way. Note that I cooked the frozen ones for 2 minutes longer than the non-frozen ones. The book says 15 minutes, and I just took a wild-arsed guess that 13 would do the trick if they were thawed.
Oh, by the way, you are supposed to let them sit for 10 minutes after cooking. All that happened during that time is that they all collapsed inwards. Looked a bit like Malcolm Turnbull did yesterday. Still damned tasty though. Although deflated, they came through with the goods. They did the trick. I'd prefer a tasty, deflated chocolate Turnbull to a puffed up turd sandwich from Rudd any day.
Serve with double cream.
------
OK, that was the chocolate pudding recipe with flour. Now for my very similar regular recipe, which is bereft of flour, which also explains why I described the above as "flourless".
- 125g dark chocolate. Break into small pieces and melt with 1 tsp. of water in a bain marie.
- 125g butter 70g castor sugar. Cream the butter in a warmed mixing bowl. Add the sugar and mix in.
- 30g cocoa powder 90g ground almonds. Sift the cocoa and mix with the ground almonds.
- 6 egg yolks. Add the cocoa mixture and the egg yolks in alternate spoonfuls to the creamed butter. Add the melted chocolate. (I never do this. I just tip the whole lot in and mix).
- 6 egg whites. Whisk. Slacken the chocolate mixture with 1/3 of the egg whites, then fold in the rest.
- Pour mixture into a 3 pint steamer and steam for 70 minutes.
See? No flour. The recipes are very similar, and I prefer the results of the second. The downside is that making it creates more mess, and it takes 55 minutes longer to cook. You also need a large steamer, and an even bigger pot to cook it in. I have a big stock pot, and even that is not big enough for the steamer. I usually have to wrap lots of tinfoil around the top in place of a lid to keep the steam in.
Goes really well with blueberries and double cream. I usually eat it until I want to throw up - it's that good.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
I like dogs: not so much their owners
I took advantage of a recent sunny day to take Monkey to a playground. Ho-hum. Like most playgrounds these days, all the slides and things are surrounded by a thick layer of woodchips - designed to break the fall of a falling Monkey.
Monkey decided to spend his time digging through the soggy woodchips to see what he could find underneath. I don't mind - boys will be boys. When I was a year older, and at kindergarten, I organised a squad to dig a pit in order to trap one of our teachers. We were busted laying the camouflage covering over the top.
So I sat back and watched Monkey hacking his way through the woodchips, and after a while, I decided to go and have a closer look at what he was up to.
When I got to him, the smell hit me. At first, I thought he had failed to warn me and had done the world's largest crap in his pants. Then I kicked over the mound of woodchips he was playing with.
Hmm. Barker's eggs. (If you don't get that, think of an animal that barks, and the things that it lays). Big, yellow barker's eggs, just below a layer of woodchips that had been suspiciously mounded up by human hand.
The way I see it, some bastard took his (or her) dog into a gated playground, let the dog crap in the play area, and then instead of picking up the crap, kicked woodchips over the top of it and sodded off.
Great. Just what I needed. A Monkey covered in dog crap, and me with no wipes or anything to get it off.
If we had a water tower in the vicinity, I'd be opening fire on non-dog crap collecting owners by now. I don't blame the dog for crapping where it did - how is a dog supposed to know not to crap in a playground?
At least I hope it was dog crap. Then again, I wouldn't put it past some of the dero junkies from the housing commission estate down the road to do something like that.
Monkey decided to spend his time digging through the soggy woodchips to see what he could find underneath. I don't mind - boys will be boys. When I was a year older, and at kindergarten, I organised a squad to dig a pit in order to trap one of our teachers. We were busted laying the camouflage covering over the top.
So I sat back and watched Monkey hacking his way through the woodchips, and after a while, I decided to go and have a closer look at what he was up to.
When I got to him, the smell hit me. At first, I thought he had failed to warn me and had done the world's largest crap in his pants. Then I kicked over the mound of woodchips he was playing with.
Hmm. Barker's eggs. (If you don't get that, think of an animal that barks, and the things that it lays). Big, yellow barker's eggs, just below a layer of woodchips that had been suspiciously mounded up by human hand.
The way I see it, some bastard took his (or her) dog into a gated playground, let the dog crap in the play area, and then instead of picking up the crap, kicked woodchips over the top of it and sodded off.
Great. Just what I needed. A Monkey covered in dog crap, and me with no wipes or anything to get it off.
If we had a water tower in the vicinity, I'd be opening fire on non-dog crap collecting owners by now. I don't blame the dog for crapping where it did - how is a dog supposed to know not to crap in a playground?
At least I hope it was dog crap. Then again, I wouldn't put it past some of the dero junkies from the housing commission estate down the road to do something like that.
Clouds of dopes
What a great day to go for a short ride. I had to try and sandwich some pedal time in between knocking off work and monkey collecting, and I managed to do so - a short jaunt of a bit over an hour.
I was unable to play the chick game of changing clothes every 30 seconds today because I couldn't find my undershirt. I packed my jacket into a backpack and went outside to put my shoes on..... and there was my undershirt, sitting on a chair, just where I had left it when I removed it on the last hot, sunny day. The bike thermometer was showing 26 degrees, although it only felt like maybe 22 at most. Who cares. I had the short gloves on, no jacket, and it felt great. Not a breath of wind either.
Just look at that - ok, it's not the Eiffel Tower as far as a view goes, but we've got blue skies, crystal clear water and fluffy clouds in late June.
On more mundane matters, the guys who are working on widening this path into a proper cycle/pedestrian path have advanced a bit since I was last down this way. It's now 100 metres down, 58,999.9 km to go.
I think this is a pretty ugly boat. I was hoping for a photo showing a better reflection. This is not about boat envy or yacht-fondling; it's simply about trying to frame a neat photo. Fail.
A while later, I was toodling around a bend when I got a face full of dope smoke. I stopped and had a look around, and found that the source was this mung bean strolling along the mud flat. I watched him for a minute, and all he did was stagger around in confused circles. If you're going to get stoned somewhere, surely there are better looking places than a stinking mudflat?
Then again, if you are a stoner, goodness knows what you are thinking.
I was unable to play the chick game of changing clothes every 30 seconds today because I couldn't find my undershirt. I packed my jacket into a backpack and went outside to put my shoes on..... and there was my undershirt, sitting on a chair, just where I had left it when I removed it on the last hot, sunny day. The bike thermometer was showing 26 degrees, although it only felt like maybe 22 at most. Who cares. I had the short gloves on, no jacket, and it felt great. Not a breath of wind either.
Just look at that - ok, it's not the Eiffel Tower as far as a view goes, but we've got blue skies, crystal clear water and fluffy clouds in late June.
On more mundane matters, the guys who are working on widening this path into a proper cycle/pedestrian path have advanced a bit since I was last down this way. It's now 100 metres down, 58,999.9 km to go.
I think this is a pretty ugly boat. I was hoping for a photo showing a better reflection. This is not about boat envy or yacht-fondling; it's simply about trying to frame a neat photo. Fail.
A while later, I was toodling around a bend when I got a face full of dope smoke. I stopped and had a look around, and found that the source was this mung bean strolling along the mud flat. I watched him for a minute, and all he did was stagger around in confused circles. If you're going to get stoned somewhere, surely there are better looking places than a stinking mudflat?
Then again, if you are a stoner, goodness knows what you are thinking.
Vomit
From The Aus:
"Collaborative learning centres"? Where do they think up these names? It's bad enough when our school starts talking about being a "learning community". What a crock.
I'm sure there are some subjects where a collaborative approach works well. Drawing on my very distant school experience, I remember it working well in subjects like chemistry and biology where we carried out shared experiments either in pairs or groups of 4. However, collaboration only takes you so far in high school. I also remember having to collaborative assessments, such as researching and writing a history paper, and what ended up happening is that 5 people sat around and traded gossip whilst one did the work!
I'm also sure that collaboration would work very well where students have strong self-discipline that drives them to actually tackle the task at hand, rather than loafing around having a gas-bag. In undisciplined environments, where you have a reasonable proportion of trouble makers, bone heads and blatherers, I'm sure it is a recipe for utter, shambolic disaster.
I always preferred silence in the classroom, as it allowed me to concentrate on what the teacher was saying, or to concentrate on the work that we had been set to perform. Chit-chat is distracting, even if carried on in a low voice. Even the passing of notes is distracting. How are you supposed to take in information if there is a high level of background noise and distraction? If a school is near a road, the teachers complain about the noise from passing cars, saying it makes teaching difficult. Well, if car noise is a problem, why is child noise not?
We hear about more and more kids being diagnosed with ADD and all its variants. If that is the case, why would we want to introduce an environment that is even more distracting than a quiet, well structured one? Surely the best way to deal with kids that are bouncing off the walls is to put them in a calm, structured and non-distractive environment, rather than one that will set them off like an epileptic exposed to disco lights?
Mr Kelly, whose firm has been involved in the design of collaborative learning centres at the University of Melbourne's engineering faculty and at the Sir Gustav Nossal select entry school in Melbourne's southeast, said the idea of the stimulus package was sound.
He said the template classrooms were based on the traditional top-down teaching system, with the teacher lecturing to a seated class, whereas more innovative designs featured circular tables or more flexible spatial arrangements that allowed children to interact and learn by participation. Mr Kelly acknowledged that such designs required more space per pupil, but said research proved they gave children a better education.
"Collaborative learning centres"? Where do they think up these names? It's bad enough when our school starts talking about being a "learning community". What a crock.
I'm sure there are some subjects where a collaborative approach works well. Drawing on my very distant school experience, I remember it working well in subjects like chemistry and biology where we carried out shared experiments either in pairs or groups of 4. However, collaboration only takes you so far in high school. I also remember having to collaborative assessments, such as researching and writing a history paper, and what ended up happening is that 5 people sat around and traded gossip whilst one did the work!
I'm also sure that collaboration would work very well where students have strong self-discipline that drives them to actually tackle the task at hand, rather than loafing around having a gas-bag. In undisciplined environments, where you have a reasonable proportion of trouble makers, bone heads and blatherers, I'm sure it is a recipe for utter, shambolic disaster.
I always preferred silence in the classroom, as it allowed me to concentrate on what the teacher was saying, or to concentrate on the work that we had been set to perform. Chit-chat is distracting, even if carried on in a low voice. Even the passing of notes is distracting. How are you supposed to take in information if there is a high level of background noise and distraction? If a school is near a road, the teachers complain about the noise from passing cars, saying it makes teaching difficult. Well, if car noise is a problem, why is child noise not?
We hear about more and more kids being diagnosed with ADD and all its variants. If that is the case, why would we want to introduce an environment that is even more distracting than a quiet, well structured one? Surely the best way to deal with kids that are bouncing off the walls is to put them in a calm, structured and non-distractive environment, rather than one that will set them off like an epileptic exposed to disco lights?
Just a thought
With regard to the great science fiction movies, like Blade Runner and the Alien series - I don't recall ever seeing a building covered in solar panels, or great swathes of wind turbines. I do recall the cities being lit up with tonnes of neon - there seems to be no shortage of electric power in the future. How much juice does it take to make a car fly, such as in The Fifth Element? Not to mention space travel.
Given that many portray some sort of perfect society (Aeon Flux for instance), where is all the green power? Where do the robots in I, Robot get their power from? Not many seemed to have propellers sticking out of the top of their heads.
And the Death Stars were not clad in solar panels - they were covered in laser cannons instead. Ever tried destroying a planet with a wind powered death ray? Or firing a solar powered phaser at Klingons?
I know it's only fantasy, but good science fiction has some element of possibility about it. I remember when Blade Runner was released, and people gasped at the scene where Harrison Ford used a photo scanner to zoom in on bits of a photo using voice recognition. That movie came out in 1982, when digital photography was fantasy to the people watching that movie.
Just a thought.
Given that many portray some sort of perfect society (Aeon Flux for instance), where is all the green power? Where do the robots in I, Robot get their power from? Not many seemed to have propellers sticking out of the top of their heads.
And the Death Stars were not clad in solar panels - they were covered in laser cannons instead. Ever tried destroying a planet with a wind powered death ray? Or firing a solar powered phaser at Klingons?
I know it's only fantasy, but good science fiction has some element of possibility about it. I remember when Blade Runner was released, and people gasped at the scene where Harrison Ford used a photo scanner to zoom in on bits of a photo using voice recognition. That movie came out in 1982, when digital photography was fantasy to the people watching that movie.
Just a thought.
Monday, 22 June 2009
Chocolate monkeys
I much prefer to make a proper, old-fashioned dessert as opposed to buying some pre-prepared, half-frozen muck from the supermarket. Tonight, it was the turn of the flourless chocolate pudding.
No, you can't have the recipe.
I blogged a few weeks back about the pleasures of walking into a house that smells of baking. Well, tonight the house reeked of chocolate. An entire slab of cooking chocolate went into making puddings for 6. Monkey, who has a nose for trouble, appeared in the kitchen not long after I started melting the chocolate and butter on the stove. He hung around and watched me beating the sugar and eggs together, then the sifting in of the cocoa and flour, followed by the addition of the melted chocolate mixture and finished up with the folding in of the beaten egg whites.
Just before I started to fold in the egg whites, I popped the beaters out of the electric whisk thing and plonked them on the benchtop. Monkey went suspiciously silent at that point. When I completed my careful folding of the mixture (being very attentive to not bash all the air out of the egg whites with soft peaks), I turned around to find a grinning, chocolate covered Monkey. He had a beater in each hand and was licking them for all he was worth. There was chocolate from ear to ear.
It was of course less than 15 minutes after we had extracted him from the bath and dressed him in clean clothes. He finished off the beaters, put them in the sink, then looked at his chocolate covered hands and wiped them on his shirt...... I felt like sticking him in the sink along with the rest of the washing.
He made up for it by telling me that it was "very good", and then he marched out to demand a bit of Shrek before bed.
He was right about them being very good. Especially with proper double cream - the stuff that is just cream, not cream and gelatine.
Boy, I feel like I need to go and lie down for a while.
No, you can't have the recipe.
I blogged a few weeks back about the pleasures of walking into a house that smells of baking. Well, tonight the house reeked of chocolate. An entire slab of cooking chocolate went into making puddings for 6. Monkey, who has a nose for trouble, appeared in the kitchen not long after I started melting the chocolate and butter on the stove. He hung around and watched me beating the sugar and eggs together, then the sifting in of the cocoa and flour, followed by the addition of the melted chocolate mixture and finished up with the folding in of the beaten egg whites.
Just before I started to fold in the egg whites, I popped the beaters out of the electric whisk thing and plonked them on the benchtop. Monkey went suspiciously silent at that point. When I completed my careful folding of the mixture (being very attentive to not bash all the air out of the egg whites with soft peaks), I turned around to find a grinning, chocolate covered Monkey. He had a beater in each hand and was licking them for all he was worth. There was chocolate from ear to ear.
It was of course less than 15 minutes after we had extracted him from the bath and dressed him in clean clothes. He finished off the beaters, put them in the sink, then looked at his chocolate covered hands and wiped them on his shirt...... I felt like sticking him in the sink along with the rest of the washing.
He made up for it by telling me that it was "very good", and then he marched out to demand a bit of Shrek before bed.
He was right about them being very good. Especially with proper double cream - the stuff that is just cream, not cream and gelatine.
Boy, I feel like I need to go and lie down for a while.
Catching rude bastards
From the SMH today:
Cycling champion furious as crash motorist flees
Interesting though that the SMH decided to tell us about the ethnicity of the driver. In this case, two of the silly's favourite groups collided - cyclists and Men of No Appearance, and the interests of the cyclists won the day. Amazing.
Cycling champion furious as crash motorist flees
A former Australian road cycling champion who fractured her arm in a road accident yesterday morning is furious at the motorist who hit her, after he told her he was going to move his car before driving off.This is why I always carry a camera that I can quickly whip out to take a photo of the miscreant - assuming I am concious and have use of one arm. If someone even vaguely threatens me, I pull the camera out and photograph them and then video them. You get some pretty shocked looks from motorists when that happens, and in most cases, their behaviour instantly improves. Some even look vaguely apologetic.
The driver in yesterday's incident was described as being in his mid 50s, possibly of Middle Eastern appearance, with dark hair and wearing a dark-coloured jumper or vest.Then again, this guy sounds like a complete tool. In that case, I'll take a nice Glock instead of a camera any day.
Interesting though that the SMH decided to tell us about the ethnicity of the driver. In this case, two of the silly's favourite groups collided - cyclists and Men of No Appearance, and the interests of the cyclists won the day. Amazing.
Sunday, 21 June 2009
The aftermath
Riding into work yesterday was marvelous. The spooky mist. The chilled, slightly diesel-scented air. The chance to see the sun come up for the first time in months. Coughing the clag up from the very bottom of my lung sacs.
The ride home was not so crash hot. I was planning on taking a detour and going the long way, but as soon as I "assumed the position" on the bike, I got a headache at the base of my skull. It didn't get any better as I went on, so I took the shortest path home and put my feet up.
My head was splitting when I woke up this morning. I don't know what it was, but something threw my neck out something fierce. That's the lingering effect of whiplash - the neck can be fine for weeks, then I'll turn the wrong way at the wrong time, and the whole thing goes guts-up. I took a handfull of pills and tried to sleep through it. I had colours moving around behind my eyelids, and a constant tone in one ear - not a ringing of bells, but more a single note from a synthesiser with a finger not lifted for hours.
There are two possibilities that I can think of. The first is that using a laptop is not for me. I think I spent all day hunched over a dinky little keyboard, squinting at a small screen. That could have done it.
The second is that I had to lug a backpack in, and I have not worn a heavy pack for a year or so.
I am hoping the first problem will be resolved by a new laptop that is supposed to be on the way, along with external mouse and keyboard and lifty thingy that props it up so that the screen is at eye level.
If that doesn't do the trick, I'll have to buy panniers for the bike. I don't want to, as it's the equivalent of putting a tow bar on a sports car. It can be done, but it's not a good look.
At present, I am hoping that I got enough sleep today to allow me to get up before dawn and ride for a few hours in the morning. What better way to spend Sunday morning is there?
The ride home was not so crash hot. I was planning on taking a detour and going the long way, but as soon as I "assumed the position" on the bike, I got a headache at the base of my skull. It didn't get any better as I went on, so I took the shortest path home and put my feet up.
My head was splitting when I woke up this morning. I don't know what it was, but something threw my neck out something fierce. That's the lingering effect of whiplash - the neck can be fine for weeks, then I'll turn the wrong way at the wrong time, and the whole thing goes guts-up. I took a handfull of pills and tried to sleep through it. I had colours moving around behind my eyelids, and a constant tone in one ear - not a ringing of bells, but more a single note from a synthesiser with a finger not lifted for hours.
There are two possibilities that I can think of. The first is that using a laptop is not for me. I think I spent all day hunched over a dinky little keyboard, squinting at a small screen. That could have done it.
The second is that I had to lug a backpack in, and I have not worn a heavy pack for a year or so.
I am hoping the first problem will be resolved by a new laptop that is supposed to be on the way, along with external mouse and keyboard and lifty thingy that props it up so that the screen is at eye level.
If that doesn't do the trick, I'll have to buy panniers for the bike. I don't want to, as it's the equivalent of putting a tow bar on a sports car. It can be done, but it's not a good look.
At present, I am hoping that I got enough sleep today to allow me to get up before dawn and ride for a few hours in the morning. What better way to spend Sunday morning is there?
Saturday, 20 June 2009
Some people just don't get this "respect" thing
There's a bit of a flap going on in the US at present regarding a silly bint (sorry, Senator) who got her knickers in a knot over being addressed as "ma'am" by a general. She wanted to be addressed as "Senator".
Blackfive gives a nice take on this hoo-hah from a US perspective. Here's my take, from an Australian perspective.
I actually know a couple of serving and former Senators personally. I've seen them interacting with people in all sorts of circumstances, and I've yet to see one get on their high horse about how they are addressed. Maybe that's just something about the Australian character - we don't get uptight about the whole title thing. Judges on the other hand... don't get me started on them. And idiots with PhD's - they are the worst, always wanting to be addressed as "doctor". But Senators - they're generally a pretty relaxed bunch.
As for the military angle, when not in a strictly formal setting, I always addressed my platoon commander as "boss" or "chief" or occasionally "bwana". You couldn't do that straight away - you had to evolve into an "old sweat" in order to reach that stage of informality. You certainly didn't do it if the RSM was in earshot. It was a private thing, for platoon members only. Other platoons had their own terms of endearment for their commanders. For the young platoon commanders, straight out of OCTU (officer training), they knew they'd made it when their form of address out bush changed to "boss", or something similar. I'm sure many remember when they "lost their virginity" in this respect - because it meant that the men had grown to respect them as a leader and commander. In modern parlance, they had "bonded".
However, it was interesting to note that everyone in the Regiment addressed one dickhead captain as "Sir" or "Captain" under all circumstances.
Now there may be areas of the Australian military where this sort of thing is frowned upon, and things might have changed since I hung up my giggle hat, but that's how I remember it.
Blackfive gives a nice take on this hoo-hah from a US perspective. Here's my take, from an Australian perspective.
I actually know a couple of serving and former Senators personally. I've seen them interacting with people in all sorts of circumstances, and I've yet to see one get on their high horse about how they are addressed. Maybe that's just something about the Australian character - we don't get uptight about the whole title thing. Judges on the other hand... don't get me started on them. And idiots with PhD's - they are the worst, always wanting to be addressed as "doctor". But Senators - they're generally a pretty relaxed bunch.
As for the military angle, when not in a strictly formal setting, I always addressed my platoon commander as "boss" or "chief" or occasionally "bwana". You couldn't do that straight away - you had to evolve into an "old sweat" in order to reach that stage of informality. You certainly didn't do it if the RSM was in earshot. It was a private thing, for platoon members only. Other platoons had their own terms of endearment for their commanders. For the young platoon commanders, straight out of OCTU (officer training), they knew they'd made it when their form of address out bush changed to "boss", or something similar. I'm sure many remember when they "lost their virginity" in this respect - because it meant that the men had grown to respect them as a leader and commander. In modern parlance, they had "bonded".
However, it was interesting to note that everyone in the Regiment addressed one dickhead captain as "Sir" or "Captain" under all circumstances.
Now there may be areas of the Australian military where this sort of thing is frowned upon, and things might have changed since I hung up my giggle hat, but that's how I remember it.
Friday, 19 June 2009
Commuters in the mist
Whilst I refuse to shave my legs for that "aero" look, I don't think I am hirsute enough to qualify as a "gorilla" in the mist. Today was my first ride to work in over 6 months. That meant rolling out of the farter at 0630 and stumbling around for half an hour collecting my wits and my things. It took me 40 minutes from the alarm going off to putting rubber on tarmac. I used to be able to do it in 15 minutes, but I frequently spent the first 10 minutes of the ride in a completely sleepy daze, not concentrating on where I was going. I prefer to potter around for a bit longer these days, doing my best to put brain into gear.
It was 8 degrees when I hit the road, which required almost my entire "battle-rattle". I left out the lightweight skullcap that sits under my helmet, keeping the onrushing wind off my thinning hair, and decided not to wear an undershirt. If it had been raining, I would have pulled both on, and although the roads were wet, the sky was clear.
The sun had not been up for long when the cranks started grinding around and around. When I rode up this hill, I went from darkness into dawn in a big way. The shadows disappeared and I found myself riding straight into the rising sun.
Mist, mist, mist as far as the eye can see.
The morning mist coming off the Bay was something to behold.
The island out in the Bay was hard to see for once.
The photo below looks great when viewed full size. Although that is a rowing club on the right, there weren't any rowers out there in the mist.
Confusion. Note the car with its back to me in the middle of the photo - it's driven down the footpath to reach this point. There was an old guy at the wheel, and he looked mightily confused.
This is what he drove down to get to this point. It's pretty well marked at the far end as a bike path, but some drivers will go to any length to knock down cyclists - including driving on bike paths. Next time some jerk tells me to get off the road, I will tell him that I'll get off the roads when drivers stop driving on bike paths. Ha ha ha.
The air was almost perfectly still this morning - there were some big puddles across the path here and there (nothing to do with rising sea levels), and the water in them was utterly still. Check out the perfection of the reflection in this puddle.
Another great reflection.
On arriving at work, I discovered that I had left my bike lock at home. That prompted a scramble to reach the closest bike shop at opening time to buy a $49 chain lock. Thankfully, the bike was still there when I returned.
I also found that we have a "power shower" on our floor. That's me being ironic. Some environmental wanker has fitted a shower head that delivers only a trickle of water. It took me twice as long as usual to shower due to the pathetic flow of H2O.
The return trip home showed that I was right to not buy a set of full length knicks - I wear shorts with a set of leggings tucked into them when it gets cold (like this morning). It was 20 degrees when I set out for home, which meant the leggings went into my back pack. As it was, I wished for a set of fingerless gloves instead of the full length ones (that keep my fingers from freezing off at 0700) and before long, I wanted to stop and stuff my jacket into the backpack as well - except that it was full, so I just had to sweat.
I relearned a lesson this morning as well. When I ride, I eat well. I eat proper. I really watch what I chow down on because I don't want to get on the bike feeling bloated and icky. That meant breakfast was an omelette (which turned out to be great) and lunch was a smacking big salad. I avoid anything that's greasy or fried when I ride, so things like Indian and fish & chips and burgers and Chinese are off the menu. Instead, I live on Japanese (lots of sushi and sashimi) and salad (if I can find a good salad bar nearby). I even had to pass on the opportunity to have some free drinks tonight in the office - beer and riding up hills do not go together at all.
The only downside to riding in today is that I was slow. Slooooow. Four cyclists of the kind that I would normally leave for dead went past me. It's going to be a long road back to a reasonable level of fitness and speed.
It was 8 degrees when I hit the road, which required almost my entire "battle-rattle". I left out the lightweight skullcap that sits under my helmet, keeping the onrushing wind off my thinning hair, and decided not to wear an undershirt. If it had been raining, I would have pulled both on, and although the roads were wet, the sky was clear.
The sun had not been up for long when the cranks started grinding around and around. When I rode up this hill, I went from darkness into dawn in a big way. The shadows disappeared and I found myself riding straight into the rising sun.
Mist, mist, mist as far as the eye can see.
The morning mist coming off the Bay was something to behold.
The island out in the Bay was hard to see for once.
The photo below looks great when viewed full size. Although that is a rowing club on the right, there weren't any rowers out there in the mist.
Confusion. Note the car with its back to me in the middle of the photo - it's driven down the footpath to reach this point. There was an old guy at the wheel, and he looked mightily confused.
This is what he drove down to get to this point. It's pretty well marked at the far end as a bike path, but some drivers will go to any length to knock down cyclists - including driving on bike paths. Next time some jerk tells me to get off the road, I will tell him that I'll get off the roads when drivers stop driving on bike paths. Ha ha ha.
The air was almost perfectly still this morning - there were some big puddles across the path here and there (nothing to do with rising sea levels), and the water in them was utterly still. Check out the perfection of the reflection in this puddle.
Another great reflection.
On arriving at work, I discovered that I had left my bike lock at home. That prompted a scramble to reach the closest bike shop at opening time to buy a $49 chain lock. Thankfully, the bike was still there when I returned.
I also found that we have a "power shower" on our floor. That's me being ironic. Some environmental wanker has fitted a shower head that delivers only a trickle of water. It took me twice as long as usual to shower due to the pathetic flow of H2O.
The return trip home showed that I was right to not buy a set of full length knicks - I wear shorts with a set of leggings tucked into them when it gets cold (like this morning). It was 20 degrees when I set out for home, which meant the leggings went into my back pack. As it was, I wished for a set of fingerless gloves instead of the full length ones (that keep my fingers from freezing off at 0700) and before long, I wanted to stop and stuff my jacket into the backpack as well - except that it was full, so I just had to sweat.
I relearned a lesson this morning as well. When I ride, I eat well. I eat proper. I really watch what I chow down on because I don't want to get on the bike feeling bloated and icky. That meant breakfast was an omelette (which turned out to be great) and lunch was a smacking big salad. I avoid anything that's greasy or fried when I ride, so things like Indian and fish & chips and burgers and Chinese are off the menu. Instead, I live on Japanese (lots of sushi and sashimi) and salad (if I can find a good salad bar nearby). I even had to pass on the opportunity to have some free drinks tonight in the office - beer and riding up hills do not go together at all.
The only downside to riding in today is that I was slow. Slooooow. Four cyclists of the kind that I would normally leave for dead went past me. It's going to be a long road back to a reasonable level of fitness and speed.
Thursday, 18 June 2009
Damn and blast
BigPond had a nasty little outage yesterday afternoon - our internet was there one minute, gone the next. I setup a continuous ping on the Telstra DNS servers, and over half the packets were being lost. I gave up trying to do anything electronic and read a book instead.
The outage didn't last that long, but since then, I have been unable to send or recieve a single item of mail from Outlook. I don't know if the outage was just a coincidence with some other nefarious gremlin that has gone awry in the bowels of my beast, but it is most annoying. Webmail still works, but I like all my email to flow into one place, where I can deal with it. I've checked all the email settings, and nothing is amiss.
Computers, for all their wonderfulness, really are such fragile beasts. The merest grain of sand in the gearbox can bring the whole contraption grinding to a shuddering halt.
The same goes for my memory. I was shown around my new place of work the other day - the company that I work for has several floors in the one building. I was given the grand tour of each floor, then packed up and went home.
The following day, I arrived for work, and for the life of me could not remember which floor I was supposed to be working on. I knew I could exclude 2 floors where I definitely did not have a seat, but that meant getting out of the lift at numerous floors and then wandering around until I saw something familiar. I went through quite a floors until I got the right one.....
It's not like I am not used to moving office. In 18 years of working in and around the CBD, I have worked in at least 15 different buildings - perhaps more. Until now, I have never gotten lost in the office. Brain must be turning to mush.
The upside is that tomorrow, I ride. I have to go and lay out all the kit now, so everything will be ready and findable in the dark. Also gotta charge the battery for the headlight. Chances are, I'm going to get soaked.
The outage didn't last that long, but since then, I have been unable to send or recieve a single item of mail from Outlook. I don't know if the outage was just a coincidence with some other nefarious gremlin that has gone awry in the bowels of my beast, but it is most annoying. Webmail still works, but I like all my email to flow into one place, where I can deal with it. I've checked all the email settings, and nothing is amiss.
Computers, for all their wonderfulness, really are such fragile beasts. The merest grain of sand in the gearbox can bring the whole contraption grinding to a shuddering halt.
The same goes for my memory. I was shown around my new place of work the other day - the company that I work for has several floors in the one building. I was given the grand tour of each floor, then packed up and went home.
The following day, I arrived for work, and for the life of me could not remember which floor I was supposed to be working on. I knew I could exclude 2 floors where I definitely did not have a seat, but that meant getting out of the lift at numerous floors and then wandering around until I saw something familiar. I went through quite a floors until I got the right one.....
It's not like I am not used to moving office. In 18 years of working in and around the CBD, I have worked in at least 15 different buildings - perhaps more. Until now, I have never gotten lost in the office. Brain must be turning to mush.
The upside is that tomorrow, I ride. I have to go and lay out all the kit now, so everything will be ready and findable in the dark. Also gotta charge the battery for the headlight. Chances are, I'm going to get soaked.
Act!onaid - part !!
I like graphs. It has been a while since I have cooked up a decent pie chart, so I thought I would grab some numbers from act!onaid and see what I could do with them.
Chart 1 shows a breakdown of act!onaid's finances, as derived from their published financial statements. I have interpreted them as best I can.
act!onaid raised the better part of $8 million last year from various sources (as this a pie chart, perhaps I should recast that as "sauces") and spent around $2 million on expenses. At a glance, this looks like a reasonable charity, as the overheads and expenses are "only" 25% of total income.
However, if you strip out the $6 million that the government gave them, the picture changes. Suddenly, they are making a surplus of only $127,000 on $2 million worth of private donations. That gives them an expense ratio of 93.6%. ie, of every dollar donated privately, 93 cents are swallowed up by salaries, rent, computers, cars, fundraising expenses and so on. By that measure, this charity is not very effective.
The red slice of the pie shows the costs of "key management personnel", which as far as I can tell, are just two people - the CEO and CFO. If government funding dried up tomorrow for this charity, but their expenses did not change, then the CEO and CFO between them would be taking out of the charity three times more cash than the charity would be spending on "good works" - $378,000 for them vs $127,000 for the starving plebs. The two top executives are taking 19 cents in the donated dollar between them.
I feel justified in working the numbers this way for the following reasons:
In percentage terms, it's 2%.
If 98% of your "spendable" funds come from government, are you still an independent charity, or are you now an arm of government?
If the government decided to take over the activities of this charity, I'm sure the public servant placed in charge of spending a paltry $8 million per year would not be drawing a salary of $177,000 or more.
You really have to wonder why a charity is paying salaries at this level. Surely those that want to work in the charity sector are happy to work for less-than-market pay rates because of the nature of the business?
Oh, and by the way, the interests of this charity appear to have morphed from giving poor Africans a shovel and some seeds to this - the national climate emergency rally.
Here's their top idea:
Loonies. Unless they mean nuclear power.
Chart 1 shows a breakdown of act!onaid's finances, as derived from their published financial statements. I have interpreted them as best I can.
act!onaid raised the better part of $8 million last year from various sources (as this a pie chart, perhaps I should recast that as "sauces") and spent around $2 million on expenses. At a glance, this looks like a reasonable charity, as the overheads and expenses are "only" 25% of total income.
However, if you strip out the $6 million that the government gave them, the picture changes. Suddenly, they are making a surplus of only $127,000 on $2 million worth of private donations. That gives them an expense ratio of 93.6%. ie, of every dollar donated privately, 93 cents are swallowed up by salaries, rent, computers, cars, fundraising expenses and so on. By that measure, this charity is not very effective.The red slice of the pie shows the costs of "key management personnel", which as far as I can tell, are just two people - the CEO and CFO. If government funding dried up tomorrow for this charity, but their expenses did not change, then the CEO and CFO between them would be taking out of the charity three times more cash than the charity would be spending on "good works" - $378,000 for them vs $127,000 for the starving plebs. The two top executives are taking 19 cents in the donated dollar between them.
I feel justified in working the numbers this way for the following reasons:
- the expenses of $1 million in fundraising costs would not change if the government gave them no money next year. If anything, it would grow as the charity sought more money from private pockets
- the salaries of the "key management personnel" would be unlikely to fall, leaving them at $378,000 (inc Super)
- the "other expenses" would probably not fall by much, given that they include rent (hard to break a lease), depreciation on assets and money spent on things like accountants, auditors and lawyers (which can't be avoided). They might save a bit by sacking the receptionist, but that would probably only reduce total costs by 5% or so. Not a lot.
In percentage terms, it's 2%.
If 98% of your "spendable" funds come from government, are you still an independent charity, or are you now an arm of government?If the government decided to take over the activities of this charity, I'm sure the public servant placed in charge of spending a paltry $8 million per year would not be drawing a salary of $177,000 or more.
You really have to wonder why a charity is paying salaries at this level. Surely those that want to work in the charity sector are happy to work for less-than-market pay rates because of the nature of the business?
Oh, and by the way, the interests of this charity appear to have morphed from giving poor Africans a shovel and some seeds to this - the national climate emergency rally.
Here's their top idea:
We need:
1. 100% renewable energy by 2020
Australia must shift to 100% renewable energy from wind, solar and other existing technologies within a decade.
Loonies. Unless they mean nuclear power.
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
act!onaid. End twattery. Together
act!onaid used to be Austcare. Nice to see the char!ty has enough money to blow on a stup!d piece of rebranding to act!onaid. That alone should cause most people to g!ve them the f!nger rather than money from now on.
The!r latest wheeze is to ask for money to do someth!ng about rape in Afr!ca. Apparently there are an estimated 500,000 rapes in South Africa every year and half of all South African women will be raped during their lifetime. Only 1 in 25 men charged with rape go to ja!l. That's what act!onaid are telling us.
I have a simple solution. Give African women a handgun each.
Funnily enough, I found this report:
Anyway, act!onaid is using an unsubstantiated number of "500,000" rapes in South Africa per year as a lever to open our wallets. They will get away with that by saying, "Many rapes go unreported". I believe that to be true - many crimes go unreported. But what they are suggesting is that only 7% of all rapes in South Africa get reported each year. It's possible that they are confusing surveys that ask women about whether they have been sexual assaulted with rape. I won't profess to know the answer. Let me just state that I am sceptical of their numbers.
Here is a great l!ne from one of their begging letters:
I was unable to find out how much they pay Archie Law, the CEO, but I did find this nugget:
I take it from reading that section that the CEO and CFO split a paltry $354,015 in salary between them. Assuming a 60/40 split favouring the CEO, Archie is making $212,000 per year. Even on a 50/50 split, he'd be on $177,000. Plus Super. No mention is made of any other "key management personnel", so I have to assume that all those costs are attributable to just two positions.
Sorry, let me repeat that line from his begging letter:
This though might blow you away:
Public donations - $2,007,315
Costs to raise those donations - $1,002,507
Admin costs - $873,390.
If it wasn't for the government throwing around $6 million their way, act!onaid would have had just over a hundred grand to spend on charitable causes.
And just remember, 43% of those "admin costs" are taken up by the salary and Super for the CEO and CFO.
I need another bucket.
The!r latest wheeze is to ask for money to do someth!ng about rape in Afr!ca. Apparently there are an estimated 500,000 rapes in South Africa every year and half of all South African women will be raped during their lifetime. Only 1 in 25 men charged with rape go to ja!l. That's what act!onaid are telling us.
I have a simple solution. Give African women a handgun each.
Funnily enough, I found this report:
The incidence of murder, attempted murder and rape dropped over the past year, according to the South African Police Service's 2007/08 annual report, tabled at parliament.That's a nasty number of rapes. Give woman handguns - preferably powerful handguns - teach them how to use them and get them started on shooting attepted rapists. I say "attempted" because it's hard to go through with a rape when you've got 11 or 12 9mm slugs in your chest.
The number of murders dropped from 19 202 in the previous year to 18 487, attempted murders from 20 142 to 18 795, and rapes from 39 304 to 36 190.
Anyway, act!onaid is using an unsubstantiated number of "500,000" rapes in South Africa per year as a lever to open our wallets. They will get away with that by saying, "Many rapes go unreported". I believe that to be true - many crimes go unreported. But what they are suggesting is that only 7% of all rapes in South Africa get reported each year. It's possible that they are confusing surveys that ask women about whether they have been sexual assaulted with rape. I won't profess to know the answer. Let me just state that I am sceptical of their numbers.
Here is a great l!ne from one of their begging letters:
We will take sides with the poor. And that can mean standing up against the rich.I decided to have a look at their last annual report.
They paid the trader $232,000 to raise $185,000...... ie, they went backwards by fortyseven grand.
During the year, Austcare engaged the services of a trader for the purposes of face-to-face fundraising. Austcare commenced face-to-face fundraising in 2007, and the net amount of revenue raised has been negative as anticipated due to the upfront nature of the costs involved in face-to-face fundraising. Austcare expects that 2009 will return a positive amount of net revenue from face-to-face fundraising.
I was unable to find out how much they pay Archie Law, the CEO, but I did find this nugget:
Executives
Archie Law – Chief Executive Officer (appointed on 1 April 2008)
Greg Taylor – Chief Financial Officer (appointed on 14 January 2008)
In addition to a salary, the Company also provides non-cash benefits to key management personnel, and contributes to a post-employment defined contribution superannuation fund on their behalf.
The key management personnel compensation included in ‘employee expenses’ are as follows:
Short-term employee benefits $354,015
Post-employment benefits $24,078
Total $378,092
I take it from reading that section that the CEO and CFO split a paltry $354,015 in salary between them. Assuming a 60/40 split favouring the CEO, Archie is making $212,000 per year. Even on a 50/50 split, he'd be on $177,000. Plus Super. No mention is made of any other "key management personnel", so I have to assume that all those costs are attributable to just two positions.
Sorry, let me repeat that line from his begging letter:
And that can mean standing up against the rich.Excuse me while I vom!t in a bucket. He earns at least $177,000, plus Super, and tells us that we need to stand up against the rich? Is an income of $177,000 qualify you as being poor these days?
This though might blow you away:
Public donations - $2,007,315
Costs to raise those donations - $1,002,507
Admin costs - $873,390.
If it wasn't for the government throwing around $6 million their way, act!onaid would have had just over a hundred grand to spend on charitable causes.
And just remember, 43% of those "admin costs" are taken up by the salary and Super for the CEO and CFO.
I need another bucket.
Fattening the paths
Thought that was a typo did you - that I'd be talking about fatted calves rather than fatted paths.
Nope, I did get it right. I spotted this work crew during the week ripping out one of the horrible little ancient paths around the waterfront and replacing it with a great swathe of concrete - a path so wide and concretey that it would make Bob Moses proud.
Hooray for that. Most of the time, I stick to the road when out this way because the paths are so narrow and crap. I'd prefer to be off the road and away from the idiots in their BMWs, but you can't always get what you want.
It looks to me like this crew is only doing a short section of path - 100 metres if we're lucky. That's 100 metres down, about 5,000km to go.
Nope, I did get it right. I spotted this work crew during the week ripping out one of the horrible little ancient paths around the waterfront and replacing it with a great swathe of concrete - a path so wide and concretey that it would make Bob Moses proud.
Hooray for that. Most of the time, I stick to the road when out this way because the paths are so narrow and crap. I'd prefer to be off the road and away from the idiots in their BMWs, but you can't always get what you want.
It looks to me like this crew is only doing a short section of path - 100 metres if we're lucky. That's 100 metres down, about 5,000km to go.
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