Steam to Hurstbridge

Once again it was Wattle Festival time in Hurstbridge last Sunday(26/08/07), and as usual a steam train special operated by Steamrail took visitors to the festival from Flinders Street. The train operated by , which had a K class locomotive at either end ran shuttles between Hurstbridge and Diamond Creek for most of the day, before returning to Flinders Street in the evening. I managed to catch up with the train near Alendale road between Eltham and Diamond Creek on the down journey from Flinders Street in the morning. The consist of the train from the Hurstbridge end was K153- W cars-K190. I'm quite pleased with these photos actually.

Steamrail are running more suburban steam shuttles between Camberwell and Mitcham on Sunday the 16th of Septmber.

Too late, weekend stuff and a red hot moon.

I really need to go to bed earlier. I need to go to bed now. This morning I slept in until 7, when idealy I should be going out the door at this time. At least it's starting to get lighter in the morning now. The spring weather we've been having the last few days has been great. I like temperatures in the high teens, low twenties are better, but you've got to build up to it, otherwise it actually feels hot, especially at this time of year. Some more rain would be nice.

I've got a few pent up postings in the pipeline too, mostly about what I did on the weekend. This included geocaching, football, steam trains and waterfalls. I might get around to it next weekend. Maybe I should take my laptop on the train and do it there.

As for last night all I can say is that blood red moons are creepy (when there is no cloud in the way that is). I remember the last total lunar eclipse like it was yesterday. I couldn't believe it was all the way back in 2000. Seeing the moon this colour reminded me of the song Red Hot Moon by Rancid, not the song itself, just the title. (I would embed but I cant be bothered)

Flying Toasters!

They're back! The classic screen saver from the early 90's, part of the After Dark series is back. Download from here for PC and Mac.

Tetris Dreams

Recently in a post Daniel mentioned that one of his friends used to have dreams about playing Tetris. I've had them too, usually after playing the game for extended periods of time before going to sleep. I no longer have them though as I don't play games all that often. At the time I did a bit of research, and found out it is a recognised phenomenon. A friend of mine said he has experienced similar dreams with other games. I just did another bit of research , but didn't come up with much except an old article from the Scientific American. Interesting stuff really.

Blogs of Influence

So today as I went past my old seconday school, I thought to myself "There's the old educational establishment". Straight after I thought this I came to wonder where I got such a phrase from. I quickly remembered that it is a term that Anne Marie frequently uses in her blog.

Wierd, huh?

Nice Beaver! - In the air Part 3

De Haviland Canada DHC-2 Beaver

Operated by Sydney Sea Planes, taken from Watsons Bay, Sydney back in February. More info on this model at Wikipedia.

Post title provided by Leslie Nielsen in one of the Naked Gun movies.

Edit: Interestingly the Sydney Sea Planes "About Us" page claims that they operate three Beavers and two more built by Cessna, but the CASA civil aircraft register has them as owning four Beavers and one Cessna, I wonder who is right?

False Alarm - disaster averted

My ADSL connection got approved today. I'm in a happier mood now. I like the idea of always on internet, even better is that the phone will no longer be tied up(I've already tested with my mobile to make sure) and certain siblings and in laws won't have cause to make me feel guilty for it.

Technical Dificulties

No broadband for me I'm afraid. While it is technically possible for me to have ADSL connected, it appears that ADSL is so popular in my area that there are no ports available at the telephone exchange, and apparently Telstra have no plans to install any more until 2011 or something. So after my old dial up account dried up I signed up to cheaper plan for the time being with Beagle Internet.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do now. As far as I can tell I have two options ADSL 2 and cable, in both cases supplied by Optus. Although on consultation of the Optus website it would appear that only cable is available at my address. $49 a month for measly 2gb worth of downloads is a bit hard to swallow though, so for now I stay on dial up, and remain on the waiting list for ADSL as ports become available at the local exchange.

Third world telecommunications and monopoly at work...

>>The world of tommorrow>>

Four letters for you "A" "D" "S" "L". I finally made the move onto what is tentatively described as broadband. I signed up this morning, and will hopefully be permanently tethered to the net within 5 working days. For now I am sticking with my dial up ISP, and am on a pretty reasonable 20GB download plan. I can't see myself ever downloading 20 GB, but for only $5 extra over 1GB of downloads, it seemed like a good deal. Interestingly after signing up I found that my ISP has a usage meter that I've never seen before. On checking it, it says that I've downloaded 75mb in the last month. I can't see my internet habits changing that much, but I guess it is coming at me a lot faster so who knows?

The speed however is only 256/64 kbps, which is slow by todays standard but beats the pants off my nominally 56K dial up connection. It works out to be something like 40 times faster, assuming that I get the full 256kbps download speed. A friend up the road is on an over 1028kbps plan and only gets about 100, so I hope my phone line is a bit better.

My brother is unlucky as he lives too far from the exchange to get ADSL and ended up getting cable from Bigpond. Sure it's faster, but it's a lot more expensive. I suppose the sweetener to the deal was the bundling of phone and internet, so it's not too bad. It also helped that his house was already wired for cable.

As for a modem, I bought a Netcomm NB5Plus4W wireless modem/router last week. Wireless so I can use it with my laptop and desktop. I am not looking forward to setting it up. I've tried some networking before, and it confuses the crap out of me. Oh well, time will tell.

Football, meat pies,kangaroos and .... - In the air part 2

Holden Blimps!

I remember the first time I saw this thing, it was night, and after a brief glimpse in my peripheral vision I was convinced I had seen a UFO. A second more purposeful look after finding the thing again after it came out from behind some buildings or something revealled it was an airship. How disappointing.

Flying Marsupial - In the air part 1

Boeing 767

This is the first in a series of aircraft photos that I've snapped in the last year or so. For some reason, I tend to take photos of aircraft passing overhead when the opportunity arises. This one was taken from out the front of my house, we live under one of the approach routes to runway 34 at Melbourne Airport, so when there's a northerly, there's a plane flying over every 5 minutes or so. We also live under the approach for runway 27 at Essendon, so we get lots of light aircraft too.

My camera is not too good at this sort of thing, and it's a full size crop so the pic is a bit fuzzy.

New Computers Part 2

Long story short, a few weeks ago I went out rather stupidly with the intention of buying a Laptop with specs rivaling my potential new desktop PC for about $1600. Due to events conspiring against me (in hind sight I think fate was on my side that day) I came home in possession of a "budget", yet fully capable of what I really want from a laptop, laptop. After finding out about the nuances of daily withdrawal/EFTPOS limits and the fact that no Bank branches in the city are open on a Saturday (they open on Saturdays in the suburbs!), and then having a good think over lunch, I went and purchased a Compaq C554Tu . The clinchers of the deal being that the memory was expandable to 2 GB, and the $100 cash back on the already ridiculously low price.

So for $700 (after Cash back) I got:

• 1.86ghz Celeron 440 (it's a Core Solo with a smaller Cache and something else turned off)
• 512mb ram
• 80gb HDD
• 15" screen
• DVD Rom/CD RW combo drive
• 802.11 b/g wireless
  

As with anything labeled as "budget" there are a few compromises. The largest being the amount of ram, 512mb is just barely enough to run Windows Vista. Other compromises are no DVD burner, my current desktop doesn't have one either, but at least I'll be able to read DVD rom disks now. From what I can tell the battery life is absolutly dismal , and as I've been using it plugged in mostly, so I wouldn't know how long it lasts, except that it went down to about 85% after what only seemed like 10 minutes when the power plug was accidentally pulled out. Other minor issues are the size and weight, but at least it's portable.

While being fairly basic it handles day to day tasks well (word, photo editing etc). Today I purchased an extra 1gb of ram (for much less than the $100 cash back), and it now goes like a champion. I'm pretty happy with my purchase, and certainly less out of pocket than more expensive models. Now all I need is a wireless router and we are in business for some lunge chair web browsing!

Some reviews of the C554Tu:

• Notebook Review.
• C|Net

New Computers Part 1

I've been looking at getting a new computer for a few months now. A desktop that is, I pretty much know what I want, but it's the finer details that get me, once I get the specs sorted I'll go ahead and order it. I originally had ideas of buying all the parts and building it myself, but I think that I'm too impatient for that. The basic specs are:

• Dual Core processor
• At least 1gb of ram
• 256mb graphics card
• 160gb + Hard drive
• DVD burner
  

As for monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers etc I'll keep the ones I've already got as they are all fairly recent, and still in good condition. Although given that the case will probably be black, I'd better get a matching black keyboard and mouse set.

Tagology

Tagging blog posts seems to be a bit of an art, something I have yet to master. Since I started tagging earlier in the year almost every blog entry has introduced a new tag, while simultaneously being lumped into the "general" tag. This has to stop. Therefore I propose a new tag order, one with a pre-defined set of tags that all entries must be shoehorned to fit, and no "general" tags that ultimately describe nothing.

Having said that I might keep the "general" tag, but rename it something more descriptive.

If and when I get around to implementing the new tag order is another question. I'll keep you posted..

Surprise

So here I was minding my own business (or that of the company really) at work when my phone started having a spasm on the desk next to me. I had received a text message. Much to my surprise it was Vodafone telling me that I'd won a prize of my choice and to go to this web page and enter the code enclosed in the message. In all there were about 9 choices, including:

• magazine subscriptions
• travel guides
• a voucher book
• DVD rental vouchers
• 2 trees planted for conservation
• a swiss army knife
• 2 emergency mobile phone chargers
• 20% discount on a new handset

There was one more, but I don't recall what it was.

After much consideration, I went for the tree's. Supposedly the trees will be planted by a reputable conservation group and I'll receive some updates on what the group is up to. I nearly chose the Swiss army knife, even though I already have one, this one has tweezers and toothpick which mine doesn't have. In the end I decided that the last thing I need is more stuff.

Hopefully my two trees grow up big and strong.

How do you like them Avocados?

The lack of recent posts can be explained by me being stuck in bit of a rut as of late. Nothing really exciting has happened. so that's about it really.

Anyway....

The other day I bought a chicken schnitzel roll for lunch, in it along with the schnitzel,were some cheese, mayonnaise and Avocado. I don't get Avocado, to me it's a nothing food, it's mushy and it tastes neither good nor bad. I get the impression that some people (especially sandwich shop workers who use it as filler) hold it up as some kind of super universal food, and I suppose it is being full of nutrients and vitamins, especially vitamin C. Apparently Avocados are classified as a type of berry.

On Wednesday I went for a longish walk at lunch time, something I've been intending to do for ages. I used to do a lot of walking, but since I started this job (over a year ago now!) I've been living a very sedentary life. I'm aiming go on 2 lunch time walks a week.

Gunzel Tripping

Lately I've been thinking about taking a leaf out Jarf's book, and just riding around on public transport for no apparent reason (reminds me of my uni days...). What I've got in mind is this:

• Tram 75 City - Vermont South
• Tramlink Bus 732 Vermont south - Knox City Shopping Centre
• Bus 665 Knox City - Stud Park Shopping Centre
• Smartbus 900 Stud Park - Caulfield
• Train Caulfield - City

That ought to keep me occupied for a few hours one Saturday.

But do you think the Metlink Journey planner thinks that this is a sensible idea? No, for some odd reason it seems to think that the best route between Vermont South tram terminus and Knox City is via Ringwood. Considering that the Tramlink bus service only takes 10 minutes and meets every tram, while the suggested route via Ringwood takes more like an hour, I think it's a bad idea. I'll stick to working it out from timetables thank you very much.

Speaking of timetables, I went into the Met Shop the other day to pick up the appropriate timetables for my journey, but the grumpy guy with the beard who I don't like was there, so I left. My loss I suppose. (It always cracks me up on the "That's M!lbourne" public transport ad when the girl is talking about how friendly and helpful the staff are, and the grumpy beard guy is in the background.) I also tried the Melbourne Visitor Information Centre at Federation Square, but all the public transport timetables they used to have are no longer there.

Trash and Treasure

A recent post over at Danielbowen.com reminded me of something I saw on TV a few weeks ago. For some reason I caught a segment of Better Homes and Gardens (mum was probably watching it) in which "DIY queen" Tara Dennis was advocating taking furniture from council hard rubbish collections and "prettying" them up for use in your own home. I think she had got an old bookcase or some such and done a quick paint job, and then more than likely finished up with a stencil and spray paint or a hot glue gun etc etc. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't that theft? I've always thought that the "good" stuff goes to charity, so you're effectively robbing them of income. Sure it's fair game, sitting out there on the nature strip (or "verge" as Tara called it being a Sydney girl), and you get the usual pickers come around with trailers who I've always seen them as a bit desperate.

I must admit to taking something out of someones hard rubbish once when I was walking home from school. It was a safety card from an Ansett Airbus A320. I still have it, and I'm glad that I rescued it. I guess that makes me a hypocrite...

Bonnie Doon

The "Kerrigan" House at Bonnie Doon, September 2006

A work colleague recently expressed his delight after finding out that Bonnie Doon is a real place. Being from New Zealand, he didn't realise that Bonnie Doon was a real place until traveling through it on the way to Mansfield.

As you can see I found the kerrigan house when we went to Bonnie Doon and Mansfield last year on fathers day. It was really easy to find, just look for the powerlines. The lake? Well that's a bit harder to find at the moment...

Super Mario Kart

I've been playing Super Mario Kart on ZSNES a bit lately. So far I've beaten the Mushroom Cup, Flower Cup and Star Cup. I have not yet beaten the Special cup because...


I keep falling off the track in the final race, and end up falling behind the rest of the field so far that I get lapped.

Once again, I came last...