Thoughts on Australian Politics

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 →

Visionary or Villain?

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 →

Gong Ride 2018

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 →

Watch more womens cycling!

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 →

“Love, Simon” is a wonderful film that I hope you love too

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 →

I went to see A Wrinkle in Time and quite enjoyed it

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 →

My trip south didn’t go as planned

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 →

Thoughts on The Last Jedi

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.

Christmas holidays ride 2017

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 →

Some people worth supporting on Patreon

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 →

Patreon has just killed the income stream for a ton of artists, etc.

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 →

2017 ‘Gong Ride update

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 →

Cat on a lead

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 →

Changed work circumstances

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 →

HelloFresh is Part of a Modern Cancer

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 →

Meeting Cadel Evans

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 →

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