As a preface, let me say that none of this is an argument that originates with me. It is a synthesis of thought that I felt compelled to write in light of the most recent federal election result With that in mind… The Australian Labor Party will likely never win an election again. Never! What we see in the current… Read more →
Most of it anyway… It wasn’t my most successful year. I’d done about the same amount of preparation as for the last couple of years but had to pull out after almost 60km due to severe muscle cramps. in general I haven’t exercised as much as I have in previous years, and working from home means I don’t have the… Read more →
Walking through USyd today, I saw a really stupid false dichotomy on a flyer: “Elon Musk – visionary or villain?”. Really? What are they teaching the children these days? Is a visionary inherently good? Are villains not able to have a vision? Are people no more than a collection of behaviors encapsulated by a handful of headline-grabbing buzzwords? The flyer… Read more →
My brother and I are participating in the 2018 Gong Ride, raising money for the MS Society. It’s an 82km bicycle ride from Sydney to Wollongong and it’s only 10 weeks away (4 Nov) and I’m hoping to raise $500 to provide vital support services for those afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis and fund research into finding better and more effective… Read more →
That’s the conclusion as stated by Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig at the end of yesterday’s La Course after a hard (almost) two weeks of racing in Italy and France. It started with the Giro Rosa and ended with the passionate and exciting La Course, raced from Lac d’Annecy to Le Grand-Bornand in France. In last year’s Giro, Annemieke Van Vleuten was… Read more →
There’s a lot of good reviews about this film and nothing bad that I’ve seen. I don’t know that I can add anything of weight to the discussion, but I did feel that it was iconic and wonderful and probably couldn’t have been made until quite recently. I’m old enough to remember the buzz the came out for “My Beautiful… Read more →
The book, along with the Narnia series and LoTR, were formative in my childhood reading. Rereading it as an adult is “interesting”; it’s a bit simplistic and didactic in the Christian moralising, but heartwarming with the love conquers all storyline, along with the idea that our individuality and our flaws make us interesting and better people – that we should… Read more →
Having monitored the weather forecasts over the last week, I saw that the heatwave in Sydney was heading north and that it was peaking on Tuesday. That’s when I had to start riding south in order to catch the train back to Sydney from Coffs Harbour. I got up at 5am and was on the road just after 6, roughly… Read more →
So, yeah, this’ll be spoilery… I liked it but it’s obviously struck a nerve with the crybaby snowflakes, who have started a petition demanding that the film be removed from canon by Disney. Not having read other reviews in an attempt to watch it unencumbered by preconceptions, I’m probably repeating what others have written but here goes nothing.
Monday I caught the train from Central to Coffs Harbour and reassembled the bike and rode to the motel where I rebalanced the load in the panniers. It appears that tomorrow’s weather will be reasonable. As far as I can see, the heat wave won’t hit the north coast until the weekend. Tuesday I got up at 5am and was… Read more →
Just because I can no longer afford to support people on Patreon doesn’t mean that I don’t think they’re worth supporting. Here’s a list of the people I’ve had to drop from my creator list and why I think they’re worth your money. Rebecca Watson makes great videos about science and skepticism with none of the bullshit ‘bro bullshit. fabioz is responsible… Read more →
I’ve long supported a bunch of people on Patreon, from artists like Amanda Palmer, writers like Laurie Penny and activists like Asher Wolf along with podcasters, cartoonists, technologists etc. Since there is a ton of worthy causes and interesting talent out there, I have followed the common practice of give $1 pledges to a whole lot of people, and slightly… Read more →
I rode the 2017 Gong Ride yesterday. Unfortunately Danya couldn’t make it – he came down with a cold on Friday and wasn’t able to recover in time. Given the weather, I’m glad he didn’t try and push himself to ride; it was quite wet and cold at times. The number of participants was perhaps slightly smaller due to the… Read more →
I have entered the 2017 MS Sydney to the Gong bike ride to support people living with multiple sclerosis. Once again, my brother and I are riding the 90km from Sydney Park to Wollongong and there’s 10 weeks of training before the event, which is on November 5. We’ve been lazy over the Australian winter, but are ramping up our… Read more →
We finally decided that Ripley was settling into the new place, and put a harness and lead on her. Then we took her “walking” in the back yard. She was nervous and slinking around – partly due to the indignity of being trussed up 🙂 Meg was very bemused and solicitous and kept wanting to help, which Ripley wasn’t keen… Read more →
Over the past few years, it’s become increasingly apparent that the company at which I work doesn’t need an office. When we downsized our premises in 2012, it might not yet (just) have been economically a good option – various cloud providers like AWS and Rackspace didn’t have the solutions available that they do now – and there was also… Read more →
We had a door-knocker today from HelloFresh (not giving them a link) – a company that is marketing itself as an alternative for shopping and preparing food. You choose from a handful of recipes, order on-line and get a bunch of portioned ingredients delivered which you then combine. I was aware of American versions (Blue Apron being one), but wasn’t… Read more →
I’d forgotten that Gleebooks have regular book launch and author speaking events, but Bobbie was perusing the latest catalogue and noticed that Cadel Evans was booked in so I made an effort to reserve a seat. He’s written a book that’s launched in time for the Christmas present season and he’s been doing the rounds of bookstores around the country…. Read more →
So Danya and I rode from Sydney to Wollongong today. It was expected to be a hot one, but luckily for us the fairly constant headwinds kept the temperature down. It didn’t get above 23c from what I saw, although the temperature graph on the bike computer shows a spike as we left the sea bridge and climbed up to… Read more →
The 2016 Sydney to Wollongong MS Ride is coming up – this year the ride is on Sunday the 6th of November. As has been the case for the last few years, my brother Danya and I are riding the full 90km and raising money for the MS Society. Multiple Sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system that… Read more →
