jeremy.id.au

With only half a day left, it’s been an interesting election and in some ways, an entertaining one to watch as well. While Labo[u]r messed up on their Transport & Liveability Statement, they’ve cunningly kept a low profile on transport during the election campaign. Not that this is necessarily in their best interests, with the Liberals committing to many broken ALP promises, including Rowville railway line, extending the Epping line to South Morang and Cranbourne line to Cranbourne East. While the libs have also thrown in an extension of the 48 tram to Doncaster, something which obviously makes a lot of sense.

The campaign hasn’t been without dirty politics either, much of it also coming from the ALP. Terrified that they will lose the seat of Melbourne to the Greens, they have been making claims that the Greens have done a dirty deal with the Liberals. Along with this is the claim that the Greens will be preferencing the Liberals in a number of seats, when in fact the Greens will be issuing split ticket how to vote cards (allowing voters to vote Green then have a choice over ALP/Liberal). Furthermore, they’ve been making the ridiculous suggestion that voting for the Greens would somehow elect a Liberal government even bringing Peter Garrett down to Melbourne to make this claim, even though the Greens are more likely to from a coalition with a Labor government. So Bronwyn Pike is out and they’ve even brought Garrett down to celebrate! Though seriously, Garrett has become such a sellout for the Labor party.

The Libs have also had their turn at attacking the Greens. In addition to digging the usual social policies, they also attack the Greens for limiting infrastructure, stating “No new freeways to be built &en; regardless of need or traffic congestion”. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to relise that freeways don’t solve traffic congestion, rather making it worse and with this in mind there is no need.

Another amusing tidbit I saw in the local paper was some Family First signs being defaced with white masks and the letters “KKK”. While certainly I can’t endorse such behaviour, I really do think we should keep religion out of politics. Not to mention that Family First don’t rate too highly on transport, with support for every freeway proposal in the known universe.

The Democrats, People Power and the Greens have all released good policies on transport. Though it is the Greens that seem to have the best chance, with many tipping (see: Winners picked) that they’ll pick up Melbourne and the possibility that they’ll have the balance of power in the new upper house. So with a few seats in the upper house and possibly a few more in the lower house, the Greens ought to make a difference. Meanwhile the Libs are certainly pulling ahead (slightly) of the ALP on transport issues.

The PTUA has also released it’s scorecard comparing the various parties at the upcoming election.

Now only to wait for the results, tomorrow night.

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?

Short of turning this into a cycling blog, though todays riding was something that had to be written up. Once again we started out from Box Hill and headed through the suburbs of Blackburn, Nunawading and Mitcham. At Vermont, we once again joined the Dandenong Creek trail, though this time, instead of heading south, we continued east.

Passing through the suburbs of Heathmont, Bayswater and Boronia, the trial is reasonable though nothing overly special. It’s when you hit The Basin that things really start to change. As you can see in the photo below.

At this point we had already riden 20km so we stopped for lunch at a bakery at The Basin shops. The chilli pie I had was very tasty, quite a decent little bakery actually. After lunch we commenced our climb up along Mountain Highway. This road actually has quite a gentle grade, I recall reading somewhere that it’s approximately a 1 in 8 gradient. So I didn’t even have to do it in my lowest gear, completing the 7.5km climb to Sassasfras in no more than 40-45 minutes (without stopping). It was quite a peaceful ride with hardly any traffic, perhaps partly because everyone was home watching the Grand Final.

We continued along the Mt. Dandenong Tourist Rd to Olinda. This road had a little more traffic on it and we still had some climbing to do. Despite eating a banana back at Sassafras, I felt like a sugar fix. Though to my disgrace there is not a single bakery in Olinda, the place is obviously far too up market. None the less, we had a very nice descent down to the Mount Dandenong township where I was able to find a bakery. I was a little bit offput by the fact that their food was all wrapped in plastic, still the mint slice I had was quite nice. While sitting outside the bakery I noticed where the road was going up to the Mt. Dandenong “Sky High” lookout which we had almost gone straight past.

We had a little more climbing to do once again before we did reach the lookout, at 633 metres above sea level. Unfortunately the views were rather hazy (see below). Still we had an awesome descent back down to Kalorama, reaching 66kph myself. The views across to Silvan were much clearer.

The descent down to Montrose was rather disappointing. It may have been steeper than Mountain Highway though it wasn’t steep enough that we could gain some decent speed. At almost 50km we decided to take the train home. It didn’t seem that far into Mooroolbark, unfortunately getting there as we just missed a train! Fortunately it was only 20 minutes to the next one (as opposed to half an hour during the week).

We ended the ride at 54km total distance and an average speed of 16.6km/h. Not bad when it includes a mountain climb!

P.S. I promise to write about something that isn’t cycling real soon.

It’s been another mostly uneventful week. I have kept up the riding, bringing the total to 130km in the last fortnight. Though the best day of riding was Monday, where I did 45km to Jells Park and back, along with Daniel, a mate from my last TAFE course.

We set out from Box Hill at approximately midday, heading east along the creek to Blackburn Lake. After leaving the Blackburn Lake Sanctuary we mostly cut through side streets to get through Nunawading and Mitchem and then onto Heatherdale Road (which amazingly has bike lanes on it). We then headed south, joining Dandenong Creek in Vermont, which takes you through Koomba Park, a regional park which somewhat resembles the Yarra Flats park near Heidelberg. We then went along a track behind the Whitehorse Recycling and Waste centre where we stopped at a fairly unusual looking lookout tower, although most of the view was obscured by trees. We then continued along Dandenong Creek to Shepherds Bush.

The bird life around Shepherds Bush (and probably all along Dandenong Creek) was truly amazing. As we came in past the sporting ovals there was a large flock of Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and I also spotted Galahs, Willie Wagtails, Blue Wrens, Rosellas and many other species.

Arriving at Jells Park some time after 1pm having riden over 20km, we rode around the lake (where there were also Pelicans and other wetland birds), before stopping for lunch at the restaurant. While waiting for lunch I used the WiFi feature in my new phone to check up on the weather as it was one of those days where it just seemed like it wanted to rain. Though after looking at the radar we were satisfied that any showers that were around would be insignificant. As it turns out we didn’t get hit by any rain at all.

After lunch (approx 2:30pm) we had another 20km of riding to do in order to return to Box Hill. We left Jells Park through Wheelers Hill, following the Scotchmans Creek trail. Although at this point it is more of a bike route with no remote possibility of any creek nearby with the number of hills we had to climb. There were some moderately steep climbs in there as well through the Wheelers Hill area (hence the name I suppose). The route through the side streets, however, was very well sign posted; until we got to a new housing development near the Monash Freeway that is, requiring use of the Melway to get to the start of the actual Scotchmans Creek trail.

We then only followed the creek for just over a kilometre before turning off at Valley Reserve. We then cut through Mount Waverley, stopping briefly at a small park between High Street Road and Highbury. We then crossed over Highbury Road before hitting the backstreets of Bennettswood then across Burwood Highway before taking a short path towards Station Street. We took a few more back streets through Box Hill South and we were finally home (sometime after 4pm).

We had just completed 45km (averaging 16.4km per an hour; not including any stopping time), without riding on a single main road, riding all the way from Box Hill to Wheelers Hill and back in a loop, all along side streets and bike paths.

Edit: I’ve made a map of the route we did that is now available through Bikely (excluding some diversions where we got lost, etc).

Well it must be spring. Not least because the weather has been getting warmer, though the daffodils have been out (and have mostly died off already), birds have been swooping my head while I’ve been out cycling, while some birds have also been nesting right outside our kitchen window (though I think that may have been the mother bird that flew into the kitchen window at great impact and died today).

Today I didn’t make it to TAFE and it was a nice 21˚C so I ended up out riding my bike instead. Had the bike paths to myself just about, while I cruised along at an average speed of 20km/hr for 28km. Not bad after a winter of practically no riding.

Had to go to Bunnings for a few things this week and picked up a $30 el-cheapo drill while we were there. After all, it’s a pain not having a drill handy and when you can get a cordless drill this cheap, why not get one? And so gone are the days when you had to drape a great long extension cord to the place you were drilling.

Though having a new toy means you have to find something to do with it. Well one of those things was to cut hole through piece of MDF behind a desk/bunch for a power and network cable. For years the cables have come out from under the desk then back behind a filing cabinet in a little recess and back out to the power point. Now they can go straight behind the filing cabinet from under the desk. However, before the job could begin I had to remove the filing cabinet, including all four drawers. While I was at it, I was able to remove an old shelf which housed the old PC, just below the desk (no longer needed since the iMac G3 that replaced it is self contained). Finally, I was able to able to fix the network patch plate to the wall, after it had been hanging out of the wall for five years. So a few things that were waiting to have the filing cabinet temporarily removed!

None the less, with an old “hole saw” I was able to find in the garage it came out quite well (you don’t normally see it anyway because it’s under the desk).

In other news, this site is back online now having been down for a few days last week. Emails from my spam registrar were being caught up in my spam filter and the domain name expired! (Though it didn’t go back into the pool of available domains).

For years and years we’ve had these things flying over far above the tree tops. But they would never actually come down. As I kid I tried to devise and engineer various means to get them down, namely, bird feeders and the like. Though they could never actually see from far above the tree tops that the feed was here. However, more recently they have found their own food on our property in the form of a flowering gum tree that was planted in more recent years. No doubt, it is far more healthy for them as well than becoming dependent on human provided feed.

They also like to feed on our silver birch trees at this time of the year and they have been seen in our silver birch trees before. Though this year we’ve the frequent visits have lasted for a far more prolonged period.

Now just for fun, who wants to guess the species? Sorry, no prizes for the first person to guess it right though.

Edit: Since nobody wanted to guess (even though the answer is pretty obvious), they are Rainbow Lorikeets.

On Thursday morning I got up at the earliest time as I have in a long time. The only time I can remember getting on a train any earlier was when I left for Sydney earlier this year. Only that time it was daylight, where as this time it was pitch black when I got up at 6:40am. As I walked out the door twenty minutes later, it was still quite dark though there was a glimmer of daylight.

It was a cold chilly walk to the station and the air has a crisp feel to it. The street lights were still on and a few cars went past with their headlights beaming. It wasn’t until I got on the tram at Elizabeth Street in the city that the sun made its first appearance as just a glimmer of light on the city buildings. Yet as I rode the tram up Royal Parade a possum could be seen still lurking in one of the elm trees. Finally as I was approaching Brunswick, sunlight was making its appearance in the tree tops.

It’s a strange and almost eerie feeling to be out so early, yet almost an amazing feeling at the same time to see the world awaken. Though possibly only because I don’t do it that often.

The reason was that I had to go into TAFE to finish off some work that I should have done last year. Yeah I’ve been slack, well at least in this instance I have an excuse since I was sick when the module was on originally. The only classes being run were for some Prepress apprentices from 8am to 4:30pm. These apprentices must be brave and fearless people to be getting there so early and in fact they do it for two weeks at a time.

On Friday I didn’t quite get up as early and it was already magnitudes quieter when I left, however, on both days it was still quite dark when I left and dark when I got home too. Well now I’m glad it’s the weekend and glad that I don’t have classes next week.