Oh my knees, by back, my a**. Just kidding, but I would happily kill for a beer.

Today I completed the first stage of my trip to Longreach. Arriving in Emerald at 6:10pm. This is a motorcycle trip that will take eight or so days return, and cover about 3000kms. This is my first motorcycle trip longer than a day. Today is the longest day of the trip with 850kms in total to get to Emerald. Each successive day from this point onward won’t exceed 400kms. This should give me enough time to take some photos. Which reminds me, I think I’ve left my CF card reader at home! Doh!

I left home at 7:00am this morning and dawdled my way to Gayndah. I stopped in Gayndah for a coffee and it was at that time that I realised I was running about an hour behind schedule. Unfortunately that type of difference is hard to make up. I also only managed to take about 5 photos.

The main objective of today, aside from getting to Emerald, was to visit Moonford. Moonford is a little locality about 12kms on the North side of Monto. It consists now of a couple of houses and a Parks and Wildlife office. The reason I wanted to visit Moonford is because the Parks and Wildlife office used to be the Moonford school. Which is where I started my academic career some twenty-nine years ago, in grade one. My Dad was working at Cania Gorge at the time and I think my Mum used to drive the school bus for the area. The school house is almost unchanged from my memory of it. A few louvres have been replaced with sliding windows but that’s about it. The little verandah that housed the port racks still exists.

The entire run has been smooth. The bike is riding like a cloud thanks to the extra weight on the back wheel. Less is definitely more when doing a bike trip, and I have come to realise that much less is much more. However, I do have the capacity to take a lot more stuff in my panniers than I at first thought. I resisted the urge to fill them.

The only hiccup so far was my visor breaking about 2kms east of Rolleston. This time it wasn’t the visor, but the hookup that it attaches to. That particular little gadget has broken away from the helmet. I’ll see if I can track down some glue tomorrow on the way to Longreach and re-attach it. Thankfully I have some duct-tape and currently the visor is taped open.

Photos to come when I get access to them.

Tags: motorcycles, travel

This makes me laugh every time I see it.

enjoy.

Worth reading: Yes

Summary: Jack Reacher has been digging swimming pools for weeks. It’s the longest he’s been in one place for a long time. The lack of money can do that to a person. He’s also been working a second job. A bouncer for a night club.

Now a private detective has been looking for him. Reacher doesn’t know why and doesn’t much care, until the private eye ends up dead. Reacher still doesn’t much care, but he’s come to the realisation that the P.I. died because he was looking for him. That’s enough for Reacher to want to find out what is going on, but could he be losing his touch in the investigation game?

This is another riveting Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child. Jack is forced to face people from his distance past, and could this mean the end to his care-free, wandering days?

Tags: jack reacher, Lee Child

Unisys: The one I worked for.


Novell: the one I’d like to work for.

OK, so I’m on my way to Melbourne to attend some spiffy training.

On walking through the security gates, I was selected as a random patch test. I’m not sure how random this event is, because I get caught every single time. Must be my troublesome nature preceding me.

Anyway, this time was a little different. While my stuff was being dabbed with a magic wand, the security alarms went off behind me. I was immediately thinking “I wasn’t... I didn’t...” (part of the troublesome nature I mentioned before), but the lady security guard who was attending to me said, “That guys has just been nabbed for an explosive material”.

A number of other security personnel started paying particular attention to bloke who was nabbed.

It couldn’t possibly be my flight. I mean really, what are the chances?

Life is never boring.

Interestingly I’m writing this blog entry from the domestic Qantas departure lounge in Brisbane.

Update:
I’ve finally made it to my hotel in Melbourne. I was delayed by about an hour. The reason: three people managed to get through the security without being scanned. I only found out the reason for the security breach on the late news here in Melbourne.

Could they have been a decoy for the bloke earlier? ...well we can’t live in fear can we? And it would have made for a more interesting flight than it actually was.

Update:
Just to ensure you the “random” patch test is indeed NOT random for me, I was “selected” once again for a “random” patch test on my way from Melbourne to Brisbane. Once again my troublesome nature is preceding me.

I was getting to know my mac a bit better today, I had some spare time and was looking for ways to keep the relationship interesting.

I came across two little terminal utilities that, for me, have a “cool” factor.

bc

bc is a terminal window calculator. Just run bc in a terminal and then plug in what you’d like to calculate. The calculator follows the BODMAS rules of calculation and calculates internal brackets before external ones. Type man bc for more options.

cal

cal by default, displays the current month calendar in the terminal window. Type cal in the terminal window. If you’d prefer the Julian calendar type cal -j. Type man cal for more options.

So if you spend your time in a terminal window, you don’t need to leave it do calendary mathematical things.

Tags: OS X

A song for our times I think.

I’ve always liked the stuff Phil Collins has churned out over his music career, with and without Genesis.

Here is the original music video from 1986 for Land of Confusion. Enjoy.

What catalogs your CD’s, movies, books and a swag of other stuff... and tastes delicious?

Delicious Library!

This beaut little program uses the iSight camera built into your MacBook to scan the ISBN bar-code on your books, movies and whatever else then looks them up on the interweb and puts them in your library. How easy is that!?

It can search through ISBN libraries in other countries just in case your “item” was imported.

Not only can it do this, but it also hooks into your iTunes library as well.

Once you’ve cataloged your tools and the like, you can then add “friends” from the Address Book so you can check out items to them. Never again will you forget who you loaned that widget-remover to. Even have Delicious Library notify you when they’ve had that doovey for too long.

Go to www.delicious-monster.com and check out the latest version.

Tags: OS X, mac

Along the same lines as BotTF comes “Song of the Time Frame”, or SotTF.

Song of the Time Frame is a category I will update with each song that comes to mind. I will attempt to find the original video clip, or whatever else YouTube has on offer, so you can watch as well as listen - a true multimedia experience. My music tastes are wide and varied, but SotTF will also include stuff I just happen across as I dawdle along.

Like BotTF, SotTF is so-called because I don’t want to be held to any specific numbers of songs or to any specific period of time. I’ll post them when I’m good and ready. I can’t promise you’ll like everything I’ll post under this category, so lets just say it’s broadening your mind. Opening your eyes and ears to something you may not normally listen to. If only for a moment.

So without further ado here is the very first SotTF entry...

Ruslana ~ “Wild Dances”.

Yes, lets look past the lyrics and the repetitive nature, but how can you look past HER?



Ruslana won the 2004 Eurovision song contest with this song. How that happened I’m not sure... but I would have voted for her.

Tags: music

Worth reading: Yes

Summary: The Maloneys are at the bottom of the social ladder. Nancy takes care of her five children while Tommy spends his time either drunk or in the local lockup. They run the local garbage collection for the council which sees the three boys up before dawn loading the garbage truck before heading off to school. It’s a hard life for the Maloney’s, with very few of life’s luxuries.

This is a fantastic tale set against small town Australia, bush-fires, religion and the true battling Aussie.

Remember this little guy? I used to watch this on TV when I was a young-en.

I was reminded of Morph today as I was building a Linux server, he first aired on TV back in the early 70’s.