Away away

A wee trip down to Sydney happened. Had a brilliant time with Andy, Keryn and the wee cousins - so glad they could put up with us for the week!  Eight days of relaxation, 2000km, and only 21 hours in the car.  Very nice.  Nearly hit a kangaroo at 105kmph in the first hour, but all's good.  After several years of telling me about it, Dad located the missing pocket watch he had told me about.  Twas a Waltham from about 1925 (movement number 24823563) in a double hunter Philadelphia watch case co 'Victory' case dated to a few years before the movement.  Very pretty.

 Taff and Lach have completed their archery training course and are well into it as a monday night before dinner exploit.  It is fun to watch, and am jealous that I'm not participating...  Maybe one day soon.  In the meantime I will be buying them a target bow to share, to use after bike riding.  My problem is that they are both left handers.

Gen, Bell and Jen at Coolongolook on the way to Sydney.  Twas a very hot day that one.  37degC+

Sydney Dragway and Eastern Ck.  The Nationals.

Top Fuelers.  Top noise too!  Andy, Lach, Jen and I loved it.  SOOOO violent!

After getting home we found a message from the jewelers to say our silver anniversary wedded ring set had arrived.  Uber cool!

The kids during lunch stop at Kempsey on the way back home.  Hours in the car will make one look that enthusiastic!

Reassessment

Right.  This SWTOR lark.  It lasted until level 48 of 50 with an empire Bounty Hunter.  Somewhere about there I fell asleep.  And then woke up when Pandaria started up.

Maybe I'm just a creature of habit, or maybe I'm into fantasy more than Sci-Fi,  Whatever.  I'm back in Azeroth.  One of the more scary elements of the new expansion is that Genna has started playing.  At age 10, she created a Panda Monk and took it to lvl 12 before I realised she'd logged on.  Lach has switched his attention to League Of Legends, and the open beta of RaiderZ which he and Taz Chapman are punishing until the wee hours instead of doing schoolwork.  Taff is mostly just immersing herself in nippon anime, and Bella is sticking with Spiral Knights and Moshi monsters.  Jen is avoiding the lot and keeping an eye on Downton Abbey...

My soulmate, best friend and wife of (nearly) 25 years (that's all one person btw) and I are planning an all-in Sth NZ holiday for the new year.  It has been nearly two decades since she's been there, and we're hoping the Wanaka chips are as good as ever, and that we get a half decent hire car. Woot, roll on January.

late june

The boys are coming back apparently, and the tall one gets to ride in the cab of 60163. Bastard. The short one throws his leg over a black shadow, and the one with sensitive hair gets into a Xk120C all the way to Scotland. Cool.

I am going to see the Tornado in the flesh, maybe at the NRM - I hope it's in steam. So what connects these machines? Just that they are 1950's vintage? Or is it that they personify these individuals?

damp

Not as damp as Bravus up in Briswegia, but enough so that we have water views! A rather dramatic rain depression camped off SE Qld and later NE NSW and dumped a rather lot, precipitating a bunch of work for the SES of both states. The Wilson river peaked at 10.4m in Lismore - about a foot below the top of the CBD levy bank. The flood surge now travels downriver to Coraki and onwards to reach Ballina in a day or so. It seems strange now to not have the noise of rain thundering on the roof. But we can live with that...


Today's view from our back balcony of north-of-Lismore. It is not normal to see any water in this view...

This weekend is the temporal venue for the celebration of the half century continous duration of the nuptular conjunction of Arthur & Margaret Petrie, maternal uncle of Jennie. Such celebration with be celebrated in the lovely village of Cooranbong. Cooked carrot. Jen and Taff accompanied wee Gen and Bell on their first ever air born commution to join said anniversary party, and even though the weather was abysmally inclement, all partially digested finely chopped carrot stayed out of the ubiquitous brown paper bags often found in the seat pocket.

leeches and jam

The world is full of blood-suckers. A less emotive form of the same statement may be: I can see a mosquito. I can't actually see one from where I am currently standing, but life is really just an exercise in logic if you stop to think about it.


On Monday I drank whiskey and soda and became drunk. On Tuesday I drank scotch and soda and I became drunk. On Wednesday I drank bourbon and soda and became drunk. I therefore conclude that soda makes one drunk. On Thursday morning I failed an alcohol breath test - thank goodness it was only the machine in the bar at the pub.


I have been reading about Silbury Hill near Avebury. Being the highest and largest prehistoric mound in Europe, Archaeologists calculate that Silbury Hill was built about 4750 years ago and that it took 18 million man-hours, or 500 men working 15 years to deposit and shape 248,000 cubic metres of earth and fill on top of a natural hill. The mound stands 40-metres high and covers about 5 acres. At least once for each of the last four centuries, explorers and treasure hunters have been sinking shafts and digging tunnels through the hill in order to reveal it's history and secrets. I'm gonna drag my mob there for a gander.

mamma mia

Taffy's developing piano skillset has been under the tutelage of someone new these past several months. She appears to very much appreciate the new teaching style, and all is rosy surrounding the ebony and ivory music thing. Or is it? Somehow or other, a disease has entered the house - a blight and a scourge upon our senses. No longer are we safe in our beds on a sunday morning, a pleasant tuesday lunch can be shattered and found quivering on the floor. The dog and, yea even the mice in the roof have all but gnawed off three of their legs to escape the cacophony that rises like burning polystyrene from a BBQ hotplate. What is this perversion of music?

Behold the Dancing Queens of Yesteryear

I am not intending to drag the children through every major cathedral ruin in Great Britain. But I do wish to see both Rievaulx and Bolton Abbeys in Nth Yorkshire. The latter is a terminus of the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway. Nuff said.

Pastry and Sheep

There was no pastry in the freezer. It was nearly a catastrophe. Then I remembered that one can actually make it from base ingredients. It was a shock revelation that. And so a life-lesson was born. What else can this be applied to, in a society comprised of prepackaged fast fixes, and beta-tested highly processed short chain fatty acids? I guess the burning question is: can Ross Brawn do anything with the Honda in 09? That Barrichello and Button have a drive is nice and all that (the latter still being my favourite under-performer), but is nearly making the top twenty each week going to be satisfying, or should we just check the freezer again to see if anything there can go faster?



My latest ruinous object of desire for visitation later this year is Byland Abbey. My great great (several dozen great) grandmother Gundreda persuaded her son Roger to bankroll a bunch of itinerant monks who felt the need to displace some sheep near Coxwold in North Yorkshire and build said edifice. Henry the Ate dissolved this one as well on St Andrew's day in 1538, as you do. No wonder the Pope crossed him off the Vatican christmas card list.

to plan or not to plan

A trip to the UK for later this year is in the planning stage, and will include staying a week in Hay on Wye - true boookshop paradise for Jennie. We are itemising North Wales sites of interest including Harlech castle, the Blaenau Ffestiniog railway, Portmeirion and the Welsh Mountain Zoo (for the little ones). This last spot turns out to be the birthplace of former 007 Timothy Dalton and former python Terry Jones. A number of personal genealogical south Wales locations are penciled in, including Abergavenny, Llanvetherine and Tintern Abbey. The last of these was the location used in the Iron Maiden music video of Can I Play With Madness which featured Graham Chapman (the dead python) in one of his last ever TV appearances.

Tintern Abbey, built in the 13th Century,
demonasticized in the 16th by Henry VIII

Kidwelly was the only castle appearing in Monty Python and the Holy Grail which isn't in Scotland, not counting the one which Patsy denounced as 'only a model'. The £229k budget for this film was raised partly from Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin. Another day trip planned from Hay on Wye takes us near Rushock, the resting place of John Bonham. Maybe we'll stop. A song by the Dutch gothic metal group Within Temptation randomised it's way onto my ipod turntable - named Hand of Sorrow, it evoked in me images, familiar but couldn't quite be placed... A wiki search showed the song to be based upon the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb that I am currently rereading for the first time in more than a decade. A nice form of synchronicity.

colour and movement

In the world before Monkey primal chaos reigned,
Heaven sought order, but the Phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown.
The four worlds formed again and yet again,
As endless aeons wheeled and passed.

...and I dreamed of a world with oak trees and butterflys,
a world without hate and cucumber and icicles,
where all men have free dental treatment,
and all women are at liberty to be at liberty.


Harlech Castle
Half a decade ago we found ourselves on the north west coast of Wales. This particular trip had been notable for the speed with which the then seven year old Lachy could get up historical monument stairs. 250 steps to the top of York Minster, won by miles. Half a mile up the steep Bavarian road to Neuschwanstein on a full stomach, jogged out of sight. 10km of uphill German bush tracks to Berg Eltz, "guten morgan wee boy, where's your family?", "A couple of K's back down there mate!",says Lachy pointing approximately down into the fog filled valley. Just as well Roozle could keep up a bit - Koh and I and Taff could na. So a blur disappears up the stairs at Harlech Castle, "doesn't matter"I thought, "I'll catch 'em at the top". I gained the battlement several minutes later to find him standing at the barrierless brink gazing down the 200 foot drop to the Welsh grass and rocks below.
Who said I couldn't move fast?

blood sucker

A delightful week it has been. Onto the eighth box of crispy cremes, fourth case of guinness, and 95th hour of world of warcraft. These ingredients form the basis of power-leveling. About a million and a half xp I reckon, each. There were some sacrifices though. Sometimes we had to leave the room to eat stuff, or to drive to the donut and beer shops. We even spent wednesday treking around darling harbour, and crawling through HMAS Vampire (a Darling class destroyer in service from 1959 to 1986), HMAS Onslow (an Oberon class submarine, commissioned 1959, paid off 1999), and the HMB Endeavour replica. Coolness. Except for the weather, Hotness.

Onboard the Vampire

The Australian National Maritime Museum was also worth the visit. Ken Warby's 317.5696mph Spirit of Australia was the highlight. The kids liked the bus - train - tram - monorail sequence to get there, but the tram - train - thousand stairs in the mosqueto jungle were even better.
Built in his own backyard...

post camp

Back from Camp. Ten days and nine nights with eight people under a 4.5x4.5m canvas roof upon a stabilized sand dune / river delta thing. Only complaint was running water - having to run to get water. We managed to fluke one of the powered sites which were in the minority for the thousand or so tents, and were only fifty yards from the ablutions block.

It was all a learning process in terms of what one takes when camping, and we will do better next year.

Scotts Head beach was very nice; very similar to Wategos beach at Byron Bay with its protective headland and shallow graduated surf. It was neck deep about 75m out and half to one meter waves, a very good kids beach. We visited the Big Banana in Coffs (the first time in three decades for me) and had fun on the stainless steel downhill tobaggan ride - we are definitely doing that again!


Keryn and Georgina joined us for the week via Coffs Harbour airport. The wee Georgie was just delightful! She has the ability to brighten any moment with her grins. We generally knew she had been noisy the night before only when Keryn told us so in the morning! I found the occasional heavy downpour, and the wind noise through the surrounding trees quite entertaining some nights as I imagined the tent requesting tower permission for clearance to take off into the jet stream...

It was quite a busy week that seemed to fly by. Nan and Pop came up from the Hunter valley to visit on the first sabbath, and maybe might join us at camp next year. As might Roozle if we twist his arm enough. Jen did a superb job with the meals, and I did a marvelous job with the dishes, again and again and again and... The ice fridge could have been icier, but handled the hot days OK. A pleasant surprise was the sudden temperature drop each sunset making sleeping easier. The last night may even be called chilly! We took both vehicles and the truck's gearbox is still not right - it needs to rev out to 4krpm in 1st before 2nd clunks in, but 2-3 and 3-4 are normal. A sticky pressure valve? Probably.

under pressure

A lunch gathering of the large variety occurred today at Andy's in-laws. We were able to catch up with Antoinette,who is in her third year of medicine at Newcastle Uni and still looks quite sane. From memory, Jennie had gone completely mad by mid second year :-) We spent most of the afternoon watching Top Gear clips on Youtube with Paul who is in his final semester of an aerodynamics and aviation design degree at Sydney Uni. He's still wishing that some of the lecturers spoke english. A bit.

Actinopterygii Beloniformes Exocoetidae

Similar to any other wartime incident, there is still heaps of conjecture, bollocks, conspiracy theory, and propaganda flotsaming about the ghost of the HMS Sheffield, a full quarter of a century later. The AM.39 Exocet cruise missile fired by an Argentine naval Super Étendard is unique as it was the first airborne anti-ship missile of it's type used in combat. The fact that it may or may not have exploded just makes it fairly typical for an Exocet I think. I'm not aware of any other uniquities about it but that's not surprising for me - was it a funny colour? It was travelling at about 1000kmph? The Sheffield radar was off due to routine radio traffic? The conjecture about the distance it was launched from Sheffield (5 to 40 miles)? The height above the water line that it struck the Sheffield? The fact that it was french and it still worked?

What was the first man made object to impact another planet's surface and how much had it's designers underestimated the prospective atmospheric pressure by?

miles and miles

About thirty km north of Canberra is Lake George. It measures 25km long and 10km wide and holds 500 million cubic metres of water when full. We had never seen it contain anything except cattle, but yesterday it held water! Must have been nearly one half of one percent full. I visited the Australian War Memorial for the first time since 1981 and again found it fascinating and very moving. Above the memorial pool containing the eternal flame are the two cloisters containing 102000 rankless names. There were thousands of poppies shoved into the cracks between the name plaques as has become the custom. One poppie within the great war section had a small crimson piece of paper attached, gently stirring in the cold Canberra wind. Written in a fine hand was: Stay dead, damn you. I guess some memories just won't die.

Australian War Memorial, Canberra

"Houston, while you're looking that up, you might recognize what I have in my hand as the handle for the contingency sample return; it just so happens to have a genuine six iron on the bottom of it. In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans. I'll drop it down. Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can't do this with two hands, but I'm going to try a little sand-trap shot here."

Which of the following are not true of the XLR99 rocket engine:
A: generated 57k pounds of thrust at 100% throttle at sea level
B: used liquid oygen and anhydrous ammonia for propellant
C: had a rated operating life of 30 minutes before overhaul
D: engine feed turbine pumps could deliver 12k pounds per min
E: had a basic engine weight of 910 pounds
F: thrust could be throttled from about 50 to 100%

get bach

I'm back, after five days of visiting southern central NSW, normal transmission has resumed. Our time at the astro observatory was awesome, but that in a later post. We spent two days in Canberra and visited the National War Memorial twice, the National Art Gallery, National Zoo and Aquarium, and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. The latter was about 30km south west of the city and was utterly brilliant. I admit a leaning towards radio telescopes such as the Parkes Observatory rather than just comm centers but the visitors center at CSSCC captured me utterly. A 26m (85ft), two 35m (115ft), and the 70m (230ft) antennas dominate the bush skyline and the display of rocket and space electronics evolution was really cool. There was even a bit of rock picked up by Buzz Lightminute Aldrin on longterm loan from NASA to CSSCC.
My copy of book of The Right Stuff is out on loan at present, but from memory the pivotal moment for Mr Pete Conrad was the Barium Enema examination aftermath which involved his commanding officers desktop. I did find a reference to an abstract conception test where he implied that a blank card was being held upside down. But the Net is like that.
There were more than 500 young guns listed by NASA for consideration for the Mercury program. 110 were test pilots with the required 1500 hrs flight time and specialty in jet aircraft. 32 young dudes made it into phase two at Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico.

Secondary question: Someone went astray. Who was he?

The main question: the physiologic data collected from the 31 Mercury candidates at Lovelace may be compared to the subset of the 7 selected astronauts. Which of the only single following categories did the selected 7 astronauts score lower in than the total mean candidate group? Height, Weight, Body surface area, Lean body mass, Total body potasium, Total body water, Total body blood volume, Nitrogen clearance, and Exercise oxygen uptake.
(don't look at this hint unless you admit defeat)

destructorlach

Yay, the weekend cometh. Apparently the internet has been down here all day - by mid evening here it hadn't recovered and Roo reported from sydney that my ISP was admitting no fault, or at least no helpful or informative fault. I tried a back up dsl modem with no success, and then did a reset to defaults on my router which saw it burst back into life again. Maybe a coincidence - doesn't make huge sense. Some cool pics of our wee double cousin Georgina at the zoo: it was worth the trip just for the red pandas and the concrete walls... (below are great nana, nana, roo, and the very wee Georgina)
Mr Lach has discovered a new hobby. He disassembles PC parts. This usually involves three types of screwdriver, sissors, and a large pair of hedge trimmers. Devices of exquisite precision such as CDRom drives and power supplies have made the trip down his efficient disenchantment line and been reduced to component molecules. Such is his immanufactorish momentum that I feel the little girls and their small red dog should keep their distance... Had a good chat with Greg from Casino this afternoon when he dropped in to the basic edifice for some reason or other. He remembered number 6 fondly, and passed on his warmest regards, and best wishes in his new job in qld rad health. I didn't correct him.

If you ever get tired, you can use it as a kickstand - clone

Brave Dave has buried his Bravus blog. But it lives on as Braviad. At least the colour is different. OK, so Notablog became Undeniable, but that was only because I got lazy, and could not face the coding every time I had a thought to publish, or the half hour needed to change months. The other reason was the modofac website (all 10mb of it) was full, and I couldn't decide what to delete. Mister 6, what sort of job are you looking for? and don't just say "anything but medical imaging..." I may be missing something but Mondays are not my favorite day either, just as well she was a bad shot :-(
Another verbal fisticuffs with a dropkick O&G reg. Post op rif pain, them: ?ov cyst; me: suggestive of partial tortion but with +ve colour currently; them: do tv; me: what for, visit hades; them: pull rank, insist; radiologist: just operate; me: gain copulatio future tense; them: official complaint; me: early lunch, aubergine and ricotta pasta, 12 chapters of Dark is the moon, book three of The view from the mirror quartet, two coffees, and a pile of macadamia and pecan nuts to crack. Win - win situation really. I miss our last gyn reg, Charlie Evil - now there was a sensible, logical and likable fellow - but they all move on eventually. All this pleasantness at work is making me really look forward to some serious astrophotography on some really cool rigs. Maybe a keg of Guinness as well, but I ain't gonna warm it in the microwave even if it is snowing out.

u2 war opening track

Don't be blue, be even. My pod stumbled onto maiden's a matter of life and death today and I've decided it's quite cool after all. Sometimes the better an album is, the longer it takes to get to like it. IM is, by definition, classical (metal) music, so when they appear to be getting a bit too prog, it's because they are inventing another metal genre (again). The astro observatory is booked for next month and I'm shivering in my boots in anticipation - mainly because it's likely to be well sub zero on the southern tablelands, especially in the wee hours.
Today was a massacre from dawn (well, lunch when I got up) til it was too dark to swing a sword, mace, axe, polearm, cat or wand. My NE sh Priest hit 32, Lach's ICBM hit 40 plated and mounted, and Taff's characters have a mean level of 62 with a SD of 0.5, could be twins except for the 5 foot height difference. Rooz spent the day entertaining four generations of relatives and hardly appeared in Azeroth - so he had a life. I could have had a life too if I had been called back to work, but I ain't complaining - spent an hour or two during a half dozen phone calls from Helen who was (very bravely) rebuilding her XP system on a new HDD.
My health has returned.

a wee adventure

The very wee Georgina came to visit with her parents last week: I nicked these pics from Koh's blog. She had fun visiting her double cousins (all four of them) and did all sorts of tricks, like free standing, singing beautifully, and base jumping down the stairs. Georgina's dad and Lachy managed to skip up a few WoW levels in the swamp of sorrows, whilst Taffy quested out Winterspring a dozen levels higher. I managed to not get online at all due to illness. After four weeks, I'm sick of being sick.

Instead of sleeping and getting well, I spent from one til four last night in emergency irradiating two inebriated idiots who fell off the same motorbike in two separate accidents two hours apart. The bike will wake up in the morning feeling fine, as will the helmets and jackets - neither of which were worn that night. It was all part of some vigilante effort to redistribute ownership of said KDX250 as occasioned by a lost bet. Or something. Was hard to tell through the fog of alcohol, concussion, stupidity and teenage bravado. Just two more nights on - then I can be sick at home without being interrupted by RMOs.