jeremy.id.au

Yesterday, me and Daniel caught up again to go riding. We decided on the Dandenongs again, ignoring the fact that the forecast said few showers. We couldn’t go on the weekend because the train line is closed again between Box Hill and Ringwood and I couldn’t go Monday, so Friday it had to be. This time we decided tot ake the train out there to do more riding in the hills, tossingup whether to start on the Belgrave line or the Lilydale line. The fact that the train wound up in Lilydale was the deciding factor.

At this point I had initially planned to take the Warbuton Trail to Mount Evelyn. Though we got a little lost around Mt. Lilydale College. The old reservation disappears into the school and things don’t always work out as the Melway would lead you to believe. The map showed a small track of reserve behind the school, though it didn’t lead onto the bike trail so obviously as shown in the Melway. Instead we wound up in a paddock and battled blackberries and a barbed fence to get back out onto the bike trail. Had we followed the school boundry more, I think we would have been alright.

None the less, once we got back onto the trail, the ride out to Mount Evelyn was fairly nice; 8km into the ride we arrived at Mt. Evelyn, where decided to stop for lunch. The choice was between a bakery and a cafe. Given that the bakery wasn’t as flash looking as the one we’ve stopped at in The Basin and that most of the people appeared to be at the cafe, we opted for the cafe. At this point it was already 2pm as we had started out late. I had a steak sandwich which was fairly good.

However, over lunch the rain really started to set in and at some points the Dandenongs were completely invisible. It was starting to rain lightly when we had arrived, though we had hoped it would pass while we were there. Instead, it was at it’s worst when we were ready to live and go off on our ride. It has to be remembered that showers in the rest of Melbourne will no doubt fall as heavy rain around the Dandenongs as the clouds dump their loud. To make matters worse, I thought I had packed a spray jacket, only to realise I had nothing to keep dry at all. To much disappointment, at this point it became obvious that we were going to have to head back. So we immediately sprinted back to Lilydale, at no less than 30kph for most of the way (it was downhill though on a very soft grade) I was peddling along at 40kph for a large part as I was trying to stay warm.

It was still raining when we got back to Lilydale and I was drenched when we got to the station. The was a train on the platform with 2 minutes to departure so we boarded immediately. Some strange character came through and demanded that I move my bike. My immediate reaction was what is this smart alec thinking? There’s plenty of space to get past!

I pointed out that the back wheel was as far back as it could go and that he had at least half a metre to get through. Though he pointed at Daniel’s bike which was leaning across one of the doorways (the one not being used for the platform at that station). I told him that this would just block off the doorway to which he he had no answer. A girl then walked in and wanted to go through so he stepped aside to let her through. She got past without any trouble. Yet he still went back to demanding that I move my bike. At this point a bunch of high school students that had been watching were really starting to take amusement. He finally said “Okay, would you like to delay this train by 10 minutes?” and pulled out a massive walkie talkie thing. I then realised that he was probably the train driver, though unidentifiable as a Connex employee in the jacket he was wearing. I moved the damn bike anyway and as he had just got past I said to him “You could have got past easily anyway” (not even in a nasty way). He turned around and asked if i would like to wait for the police to show up, so I said that they wouldn’t waste their time. He walked off in a huff, the high school students were really amused by that point and commenting on what a prick he was. Some of them joked about it when they later got off, “the fucking bike’s in the way”, when they had already walked past it. Maybe he had been having a bad day, but that’s no way for Connex employees to treat passengers (had he asked nicely in the first place, there would have been no problem).

The rain was already clearing up as we approached Ringwood so we decided to get off there and ride the last bit back to Box Hill, having not done so much riding. We ended up doing almost 30km when we got back. It didn’t really feel like that much. We looked back at the Dandenongs when we were half way back it was evident that it had stopped raining. Oh well.

Yesterday morning I awoke to find tradies left, right and centre working on stuff in the house. A dust storm was brewing in the kitchen, the smell of paint was wafting through from the back room and plants that had been freshly planted on the weekend were being squashed as a brick retaining wall in the front yard was being bagged. Breakfast at home was not an option and while maccas breaky was over (yeah a slept in a little), fortunately I was able to get a bacon and egg focaccia from a local café (beats a maccas breaky anyway). So I ended up having take away breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Today was a little better, as I had devised a plan to have breaky at home this morning by having everything ready the night before. Although they were still doing work on the kitchen benches, they weren’t using the electric belt sanders anymore. A heap of other work was still being done, such as painting of the front door and some work on the front of the house. I decided not to hang around in it for another day and rode my bike into TAFE despite the 30 degree heat. Yes, despite the 20km in each direction, it was a good excuse to fit in a bike ride and get away from other menial tasks that need to be done around the house. Only because I was going to TAFE. That’s about the only reason I would cycle commute, to get somewhere and to fit in a bike ride at the same time. It’s the second time I’ve ridden into TAFE too, and quite a nice ride as a good portion of Box Hill to Brunswick can be done on bike paths. Being in at TAFE, I ended up having take away lunch again and the kitchen *still* wasn’t finished today so take away dinner as well. Hopefully it’ll be done by tomorrow.

In other news, I have been keeping the riding up. Did another trip out to the Dandenongs about two weeks ago, riding from Box Hill to Ringwood (because the train line was closed), train to Boronia, then we rode to Olinda via The Basin then down to Emerald via Monbulk before riding back to Belgrave. Then finally had to ride the stint from Ringwood to Box Hill again, bringing the total to almost 70km of riding for that day. Also did 55km of riding from Daniel’s place last weekend, from Montmorency - Plenty - Diamond Creek - Research - Warrandyte then back to Montmorency. A few photos (though not many) have been uploaded to gallery and flickr.

It seems to be Blue Tongue season as well. The other day while riding through Fairfield Park, only 5km (crows flight) from the city, I spotted what I had at first thought was a rather large lizard. I soon realised it might may have been a Blue Tongue, and after waiting around for a few minutes I was able to confirm that it was indeed. Unfortunately I didn’t have the camera on me that time.

I promise something that wasn’t to do with bike riding, so here it is (took me long enough). Recently my old mobile phone started playing up. The replacement phone I chose was the Nokia E60 so here’s the verdict.

I’ve never really been a fan of Nokia phones, though I was more or less sold by the features. A phone that supports WiFi (802.11g even) sounded quite useful. It certainly has its uses; this includes checking my emails in the morning without having to wait for my laptop to wake from sleep and I have been able to use it for net access from some open wireless access points. Overall, however, I would say I haven’t been wooed by Nokia from this phone.

First of all, it’s not quite like my old Siemens ME45. That phone fits snug in your hand, feels very solid and you couldn’t wish for it any smaller. My only regret with this old phone was that it had a monochrome screen when colour ones were just coming out and the lack of bluetooth. I’m sure there were things I was disappointed about though after the years I’ve forgotten what they would have been (at 3.5 years, it lasted very well).

Now compare this to the Nokia E60, width and length, it’s not much larger than my old phone though the old phone has curved sides which seems to make a fair difference. I could fit the old phone in my pocket along with my ipod a lot easier. Though on the positive side it’s thinner so it’s less visible through my pockets if I’m wearing jeans and I don’t have my ipod. It’s not as comfortable to hold and it hasn’t got the same shock-resistant design though fortunately I haven’t dropped it yet.

More on the positive side, Bluetooth syncability has been a great addition. While my old phone could be synced over IrDA and rs232, this became obsolete when my new laptop didn’t have either. And while I used to to back up contacts, the calendar only had miniscule storage capacity so I didn’t use it. Being able to sync it with iCal on my mac has been a great enhancement, not only for appointments and meetings, though to-do items as well. This probably justifies the new phone, though it could have been achieved with any bluetooth phone. It didn’t have to be a Nokia or WiFi capable.

The negatives would have to include user interface design. Many people rant and rave about how user friendly Nokia phones are, though I’m now suspecting that this is nothing but a myth (it’s possibly that most of these people are just the long time Nokia users). Now while the interface hasn’t been impossible to figure out (probably only because I’m tech savvy), however it has been far from logical. For example, I spent ages trying to figure out how to get the in-call timer showing (i.e. the thing that shows the duration of the call as you speak). Anyone would swear that the setting for this should be found in the main Settings menu, however, it was buried away in a settings menu in the part where you actually go to view recent call times, etc.

Another downside is that it didn’t ship with a stopwatch or a countdown timer. You’d think that such a sophisticated phone would have such a basic and trivial feature, but no. Not to worry, there are some third party programs for this though, some that cost an arm and a leg if you want the Symbian polished looking native version. Though if you search a bit further you’ll find some free J2ME ones that are a bit trickier to figure out, but appear to do the job.

Another let down is that although the phone supports VoIP calls over WiFi using SIP, it doesn’t cope with NAT traversal at all and I’ve yet to get my local asterisk setup going properly yet. Another funny thing is with task management, unless you quit an application it continues to run though if another app needs memory and there isn’t any free, then an app in the background may get closed. Yet there isn’t actually any way to see which apps are currently open. I guess it’s not such a huge problems but that’s probably one of the things that differentiates Symbian from a real operating system. In any case, I suppose it’s not a PDA after all though.

While there are probably other issues, that is probably enough to detail for now. I’m sure I can make do with this phone for now. Though the question is, will it last another 3.5 years like the old one?