riding home

royal exhibition building

garfield minus garfield

For some reason it took me years to realise that Garfield just isn't funny (seriously, how many times do you think that people will laugh at lasagne?)

Now if you take Garfield out of the picture all together, it makes:
"an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life"


garfieldminusgarfield

cbd

Just filling in time, waiting for Deb.

rail trail photo map

This is neat. It's now easy to embed my photo map right on the page instead of linking out to it!


View Larger Map Thanks to the commenter on this page for the tip on using your own map.

how many?

This has always bugged me:

As I was going to St Ives
I met a man with seven wives

And every wife had seven sacks
And every sack had seven cats
And every cat had seven kits

Kits, cats, sacks, wives
How many were going to St Ives?

The person telling this "riddle" usually looks smug when they tell you the answer is 1, instead of the alternate answer of 2800 you could have fairly calculated (if you were only counting the kits, cats, sacks and wives that the riddle requests)
I want to know how you can tell which direction the man and his wives are travelling in! Assuming they aren't just standing still (which is yet another option) they could also be on their way to St Ives to sell the 2744 cats, which would seriously slow them down, enabling the narrator to catch up and easily overtake them. Also, if the answer really is 1, you would have to assume that the narrator was a kit, cat, sack or wife, which was never mentioned.

This is similar to those stupid "brainteasers" like: "There's a large room with a high ceiling, a man is hanging dead at the end of a short rope 5 metres above the floor. There's nothing else in the room except a large puddle of water. How did he die?"
The "answer" is apparantly that he stood on the block of ice, put the rope around his neck and waited for the ice to melt. One problem with this, is a block of ice that big would have taken a very long time to melt, so the bloke would have died of hypothermia or starvation before he was strangled by the rope.
Who's to say though that he wasn't hung by a lynch mob who then washed away all of their footprints with a hose?

Yeah. Think about it.

These kinds of ambiguous riddles do nothing except wind me up, because there is NOT just one answer, even if only one answer was supplied in the FW:FW:FW:FW chain email that you received.

Verdict: welcome to Monday.

and i thought they were just a myth

Deb swept our steps out and found this little bugger:



I'm not a big fan of spiders, so knowing that I'd been walking barefoot past this web for the last month is a little creepy.

rail trail

Deb and I did the Otago Central Rail Trail in NZ a few weeks ago.

It was three days and 150km of riding (which doesn't sound too bad until you realise you're riding a mountain bike on gravel the whole way).

The accomodation was great, the scenery fantastic and here are some photos:


Click the picture above to view the album.

deathstar

off to nz

Deb and I are hitting Dunedin for a couple of weeks including three days cycling through central Otago. Should be nice if a little tiring.

kitty

andy roddick v michael berrer

It's 9.10pm and 18 degrees. Normally it wouldn't be too bad, but I've gotten used to the 28 degree evenings. I'm cold and Deb's lips are turning blue.

australian open

We got some pretty good seats tonight. First game is Sharapova v Davenport.
I might post some more pics later.

we are so insignificant

I don't know about you, but things like this make my mind explode.

federation trail

We're currently on the Federation Trail. It's surrounded by chemical factories, rubbish dumps and thistles. Appropriate then that it was built over an old sewage line

this burger is too big

it's good to have options

Best when firm or soft.
So which is it? Should I eat them when I first get them, or wait a week until they get mushy.
I hate being confused by food.

pointing out the obvious

So, what other options do pedestrians have?

at least it was early in the ride

I was on my way to the gym on a SATURDAY when this happened. Bugger

what's with the shoes?

merry xmas

Roast lamb, roast veges, ham, fruit salad, plum pudding, pavlova.
It may have been only Deb and I for Xmas lunch, but that was no reason to miss out on anything!

cloudburst

The rain in Melbourne for the last few days has been ridiculous. It's been falling so hard that water bounces back up to your waist. I joked about buying an umbrella off the guy from our noodle shop tonight, so he fashioned a raincoat out of a big rubbish bag for me. I laughed at the time, but it really kept me dry. I guess I owe him a beer!

We've had leaks in our lounge roof in the past. The first time it was repaired it didn't rain again for six months, so we didn't know that it wasn't fixed. The second time around, the roofing dude said he couldn't find any leaks on the roof, but bogged up the most likely areas, so every time it rains we expect to come home to a big puddle of water on the table.

And now you know the back story.

Deb was out on the booze tonight and I felt like having a laugh. I sent this picture message to her phone:


It was a 2 minute photoshop, so it doesn't look like much at this size, but I guess it looked convincing enough on her mobile screen, as her phonecall's first words were "what the fuck?!"

It made my night anyway :)

pre-owned chump

I took time out from the stress of trying to find the perfect xmas present to have a look in EB Games. Super Paper Mario is selling brand new for $99 or pre-owned for $95. What a great business! They buy back the game for bugger all then sell it again for almost the original price! Do mugs really buy these pre-owned games or am I missing part of the equation here?

meetings are suck

"no to all" tip for windows

This is probably a well known tip, but I discovered it today and it is totally invaluable!

When you're copying a large number of files from one place to another (as I tend to do when backing up photos), you're presented with this option:


For simplicity, you can just overwrite all of the existing photos with an exact copy, which really is just a waste of time. What's even more of a waste of time though is sitting there for 20 minutes clicking "No" for every file so that you only copy over unique files.

Here's the tip: hold down Shift when you click no. It's essentially a virtual button that says "No to all" on it. Frikkin' sweet.

Thanks to Jigar Mehta who happened to be the first link I clicked on.

back up your photos

The hard drive that I store all my photos on is starting to play up. I can't open a couple of dozen photos, but luckily most of them are backed up in various locations.
The problem now is finding out where the dodgy files are and replacing them either from the backup drive (that I haven't used as often as I should), Deb's laptop (that only has backups of more recent stuff), the portable hard drive that we used in Vietnam (that was going to be used as a proper backup drive from today) or my backup at work (which was current as of around this time last year).
This year, the plan is to build a proper RAID file server so I won't have to worry as much about failing hard drives. Of course, I also need to figure out what the hell RAID really is, but that's a small detail.

hehe, neat

I couldn't wait until we got home, so I posted this from the train :)

Here's a better photo now that we're home:

and one that the Jeweller took:

Ian from Ellissi was fantastic. He's really down to earth and having spent his entire working life in the trade, knows his stuff too.

Legend.

maybe the coolest thing in the world

Create your own plastic 3D models with this:

Product page

I love the idea of being able to print out my own Angelina Jolie action figure.

another tree

We've got our tree up now.

It's sitting in front of a window, so is hard to take a good photo. You'll just have to use your imagination.

stupid fruits of the world #19: mango

If there's ever been a strong argument against intelligent design, it has to be the mango.

On the outside, it looks like a normal, easy to eat fruit, but no. To prepare it, you have to cut the "cheeks" off and to avoid wastage spend a further 5 minutes hacking slivers off the great big seed in the middle. It still looks tasty, so you inevitably try and nibble the remaining flesh off the seed, but instead end up with masses of hairy fibres between your teeth.



Verdict: fuck it, stick to apples

8-bit christmas

This is in downtown Madrid (Spain for you less worldly types).





Thanks to Gizmodo and Clipset

nice tree...

This from the fashion capital of Australia.

i'm assured it's hygenic

I came back from grabbing some lunch to find that desert had been supplied.
Shame it was my favourite red stapler.

Now I'm going to have to set the building on fire.

vietnam gallery

The photos from Vietnam are closer to being finished.
I've uploaded a good chunk of them to a webalbum, so if you're interested, have a look!
http://picasaweb.google.com/reidcparker/Vietnam

We're still in the middle of captioning everything, and we really need to do that before we forget what everything was. I've also been tagging the locations on Google maps, so if your bandwidth is up to it (sorry Mum), you can view the satellite images of Vietnam with our photos pinned onto it.

and we're back

Nice day in Melbourne, tired as shit, photos to follow

tan son nhat airport

Our plane from Saigon to Singapore has been delayed, which means we'll only get to spend 3 hours at Singapore airport!
/sarcasm

We needed to get water and barely had enough cash left. This is because we were used to paying no more than 5000d for a bottle and they were charging 32000d for them after passing customs.

Cool, we're boarding now!

saigon

Our last day in Vietnam is in Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as every single person still calls it). This is the view from our breakfast table at the Majestic Hotel. It was a treat being able to sleep in clean sheets, have a shower in water that doesn't smell and have people waiting on you that appeared happy to do so. (appeared was supposed to be in italics, but my phone can't do that :).
Next stop is Singapore for a bit of duty free then we're back in Melbourne in time for work on Monday.
Woo hoo.

mui ne

We're finally in the sun! We are 5 seconds walk from the beach and I've just had my first shave since we arrived in Vietnam. Deb isn't too pleased.

da lat

This is weird. After walking the streets of Hoi An being eyed up like a walking bag of money, we're now in Da Lat feeling like celebrities! People walking past yell out hello ard get big grins on their faces when we reply with xin chào. We paid next to nothing for a couple of coffees (around 1/3 the price we've had to pay up until now) and the hotelier looks honestly pleased to see us. I'm pleased we did the north first so we could really appreciate the difference.
We're doing a day trip with the Easy Riders tomorrow which should be a laugh. It's our first time on the back of a motorbike since we've been here and the traffic is ridiculous, but I'm sure we'll be fine.

raining again

Just booked our tickets to Dalat. From what I can figure out, we get a cab to De Nang, train to Nha Trang, stay the night and then a bus to Dalat.
The weather has turned a bit rainy in Hoi An, so the bad stuff is going to hit the coast soon. Hopefully it clears up or we'll have to skip Mui Ne and spend a few days in the Mekong Delta instead. At least the typhoon has been downgraded to a tropical storm, so we'll be a bit safer.

and again

They have free wi-fi AND free pool. How could we refuse?

tam tam cafe

We ended up at a bloody westerner bar in Hoi An. Oh well

noodles please, hold the typhoon

We arrived in Hué a few days ago to clouds and drizzle. Caught a couple of cyclos for a tour of the citadel, but eventually got sick of the wet cushions soaking through our clothes and finished the tour on foot.
The next day was a bus tour of the DMZ which ended after visiting the Vinh Moc caves where civilians lived for 6 years during the war.

We're now in Hoi An, after an afternoon getting fitted for suits, shirts pants and jackets.
It was a little daunting walking past the dozens and dozens of shops, each one full of bolts of material and clothing samples. We settled on a place that looked good and was staffed by a couple of friendly young girls with good english. After poring over catalogues thicker than the yellow pages, we settled on some clothes that looked good. We go back tomorrow to see what they've achieved and if it's all good will order some more.

This post is a little lacking in detail, but I'll fill it out when we get some more time (and get to use a computer that isn't sharing a dialup connection with 2 other computers)

xin chào

I'd planned to get a pre paid sim card so I could use the internet on my phone, but nobody seems to know what I'm on about. I know they exist, but the terminology must be different.
It means that instead of being able to update this on the fly, I need to sit in an internet cafe and try writing about a whole week all at once.

So following on from the last post:
We were walking back from the train station after missing our train when a minibus pulled over, a couple of vietnamese (mother and son I think) jumped out and started waving us onto the bus.
We eventually figured out they were going to Halong Bay and there were another couple of tourists (Chris and Jo) on the bus as well so we thought we'd give it a shot.

4 1/2 hours, half a dozen crammed on new passengers, a crying puking baby and an attempt to overcharge us later, we arrived in Halong Bay. The English couple who were on the bus with us were going to Cat Ba island as well, so we bought our boat tickets together and set off.

After visiting some natural caves (thoughtfully lit up for us with coloured lights) we arrived on Cat Ba island. To get to Cat Ba town, it was then just a 20 minute ride in a minivan (16 people in a 12 seater with all of their luggage) which wasn't nerve wracking at all..
Accomodation was easy to organise and we spent the evening dozing after a hell of a long and tiring day.
Before going to sleep though, we managed to take the obligatory millionaire photos:


Cat Co 2 is a beach that is accessible via a rickety boardwalk attached to the rocks around one of the bays. Apart from the parts held together with sticks and wire, it was actually pretty sturdy.

We were the only ones there at 8 in the morning, so after booking a couple of loungers, buying some beers and getting rid of the syringe that was spoiling the view, we sat back and enjoyed a bit of sun.
After a while, a dude came along offering a 40 minute massage for a couple of dollars. After turning him down for a few minutes I caved in and let him do his stuff.
I could get used to having those regularly I think.
Kein was born on Cat Ba and has been trained in Hanoi and China as well as doing a bit of time in Sa Pa as a porter and part time masseuse. Nice bloke and maybe the first genuine person we'd come across in Vietnam (don't worry, he wasn't the last).
That evening we had dinner at a seafood restaurant, so Deb thought she'd be adventurous and ordered the crab "with lemongrass".
Perhaps the lemongrass made it sound fancier than it was, because she ended up with a whole boiled crab sitting on a plate. It hadn't been prepared at all, so after hacking into the thing with nutcrackers, the owner arrived laughing with a pair of scissors and cut the thing in half for us.
I have a feeling that Deb won't be ordering crab next time and will just stick to the dog.
Day 3 in Cat Ba was our last day, so we rented a couple of scooters and took off around the coast of the island. Deb was a little nervous but got the hang of it eventually and we had fun nipping around the roads and tooting our horns like authentic Vietnamese.
We dropped the bikes off after a couple of hours, checked out of the hotel and hopped in a van to take us to the "fast ferry". The ferry was maybe 10-12 metres long, so it was nice and crammed once the dozen motorbikes were rolled on. I ended up sitting right at the front of the boat keeping an eye on our bags that were just sitting on top of the roof.
After the ferry, we were transferred onto the bus to Hanoi with a lot of other locals. Luckily we got on fairly early, so didn't need to sit on plastic stools in the aisle (as was the case for everyone who got on after us).
We made it back to Hanoi without any dramas, checked into our hotel and went out for a couple of cheap beers. By cheap I mean 2000D (which at last count was around $0.13AU).

Tune in next time for: "Name that Smell" and "No motorbike for me, please"

ha noi

So, we're now on Cat Ba Island, relaxing after a busy couple of days.
Here's a quick run down:
Arrived in Hanoi around lunchtime.
Caught a minibus from the airport to the city (only $2 or so).
After being dropped of at the hotel we asked for, decided to say no thanks to the scammer and walked round to the other side of the lake to the actual hotel.
Walked around that evening trying to find the train station to buy tickets for the morning train to Hai Phong. Couldn't find it (apparantly a lot of people have had trouble with the Lonely Planet map of Hanoi), so we went to a restaurant for dinner and asked one of the guys at the hotel to pick up tickets for us instead. I proposed to Debbie at the restaurant, which caught us both by surprise. This photo was taken a minute or so later :)

Getting up at up at 5am the next morning, we found that they hadn't managed to get tickets for the decent seats, so didn't buy them. We thought we'd just go to the station and get normal tickets ourselves. Shame the hotel dude sent us to the wrong station, which we discovered after taking a taxi there, but luckily a guy with a three wheeled motorbike heard us mention Hai Phong in amongst our jibberish and drove like a madman for a couple of km to get us to the right station.

Missed it by that much.

Ok, this place is too hot, need to get a beer. Will finish the story later.

singapore

Man, I forgot how big this place was! They have free foot massage machines, free internet terminals and free wireless!! The humidity is also free, but they can just keep that if they like.

Damn, there was a photo for this, but we wandered out of the wireless coverage area and couldn't be arsed walking back again.

I'm also really in need of a shower so with at least three more hours of flying to do, I'm gonna be nice and ripe by lunchtime.

plane

This is going to be my view for the next 8 hours.

OK, now I'm done.

airport

I have a feeling I'm not going to keep up this rate of posting, but I'll do my best.
Started well: missed our train by about a minute, so had to get a cab. I'm pretty sure the first thing cabbies learn when they get of the plane is that the ONLY way to get anywhere is to take the CityLink. Seriously, if you ask them to take another route they revert to their childhood and forget their grasp of English.

Off to customs now.

Peace out.

off to vietnam

I'm just filling a few minutes before we head off to the airport. I think we've learned all we can (by that I mean Deb has done loads of reading and has told me off for not preparing as much) and it's going to be fantastic!
I'm mainly looking forward to the food... but also the cheap beer.... and I guess the bargain tailor made clothes in Hoi An are pretty inviting... don't forget hanging out in Hanoi's old quarter, eating grilled pork from street vendors... and shooting AK47s in De Nang is going to be neat as well.

Man, that three weeks is going to go by in a heartbeat!

Ok, gotta dash, see you all on the flip side.*


* flip side? What the fuck does that really mean? My life isn't a bloody record, and why would you guys be on the b-side?

national ride to work day

Scored a free breakfast this morning as part of the "National Ride To Work Day". It was good to see so many people riding in to work today, but it also made me wonder where the hell they are every other day of the week!
We usually pass only a handful of cyclists on the way to work in the morning and seeing hundreds more today showed that loads of people are capable of doing it, yet would rather sit on a train or drive to work.

It lead me to assume that most people only rode in today to be part of something instead of trying to stave off an early death due to FATNESS.

Sorry, I'm not a fan of people who do things like catch the lift to avoid a single flight of stairs or fat people who drink 2 litres of diet coke to make them feel better about the choloate they had for breakfast.

Hmm, that didn't end as planned. Here's a picture:

still lovin' it

So, I've had my phone for a few months now and I'm still enjoying it. Having no keys took some getting used to, and it's definitely harder to knock out a text after a couple of beers, but I wrote and sent this on the train after leaving the pub. That has to count for something... Right?

iphone

chasers

This is classic. The chasers boys got through two APEC checkpoints in a fake motorcade then one jumped out as Bin Laden.
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