leavin’ on a jet plane — tropical xmas… booked my ticket to townsville this morning… leaving sydney on the twentieth of december, coming back to sydney on the thirtieth…

isosceles nerdrangle — the square of the harry potter news is equal to the sum of the two towers…

critical mass — the annual bridge ride is on this afternoon, starting from the fountain in hyde park at 5.30… expecting in excess of a thousand cyclists… why? well, because i’m a cowboy, on a steel horse i ride…

yay! the IT division at work are evaluating an on-line training provider, & i’m one of fifty people selected to participate in a year long trial… there’s a heap of good stuff on offer… free skills for me…

meanwhile, on planet henderson… dawn threatens to pull out someone’s chest hair if santa doesn’t bring her a playstation 2…

frosty the snowdave — his royal daveness is on his way to canada to speak at a conference, & anne has very helpfully sent through some comparative weather data… townsville was in the low-to-mid thirties, around sixty percent humidity when dave left… by way of contrast, on his arrival in toronto he can expect to be greeted by an ambient temperature in the vicinity of minus two… oh, & look out for the wet flurries…

ahem…

• sydney kings 128 d. perth wild cats 74…
• adelaide 36ers 106 d. townsville crocodiles 101…

sweat-splash-chomp-sweat-zzz — dug out my bike lights from the bottom of the storage cupboard yesterday morning & rode to coogee after work… went for a swim in the derelict old rock pool on the north end of coogee beach… kinda cold, but fantastic… then dinner, & a leisurely late-night cycle back to betty bay…

slightly kewler — temperature more temperate this morning…

melter-skelter — hoo-wee it’s another stinky-hot day in downtown sydnoink… it’s way plenty warm, just after half-past one & currently thirty-seven degrees celcius… that’s about ten degrees too many…

top dude analyst? while not wanting to give the impression i endorse its choice of expression, my horoscope does have a point…

You’re top dude at analysing your problems, but are a wee bit slow about solving them. Sometimes it’s easier to let sleeping dogs lie rather than to provoke a confrontation. However, if you’re ever going to fulfil your emotional and spiritual dreams, you must deal with the people and situations that are hampering your progress. Write out a list of three things you can do to materially improve your life today, and then aspire to them.

alrighty then — no more sleeping dog… because really, i’m in the fortunate position of being the only person who’s really hampering my progress… not that i have any spiritual dreams… a list of three things to which to aspire that will materially improve my life? hmmm… how about:

• financial security — am i almost there? i’d like to think so… but i need to wind back my cash burn & get rid of my credit cards…
• fitness/weight loss — keep cycling, keep eating sensibly… i’ve lost sixteen kilos in the last twelve months… i was ninety-eight this morning & i’m aiming for ninety…
• playstation 2! no, really… well, okay, mebbe this runs a little counter to the first two items…

Q. so do i feel provoked? confronted?
A. shut up. no one wants to listen to your webpage.

everybody sing:

well there was a guy
an underwater guy who controlled the sea
got killed by ten million pounds of sludge
from new york & new jersey
this monkey’s gone to heaven

swimbo — laps of centennial park on saturday morning, but on sunday morning i rode out along new south head road, climbed the evil hills to vaucluse & went for a swim (because now i can) in the harbour enclosure at nielsen park… & yeah, the water was fantastic, crystal clear & cool, but not too cold… i swam around for about half an hour, checking out the little fish that were zooming about on the bottom…

lookout — i didn’t take the turn off to nielsen park on the way out, because i’d figured before i did the ride there was no way i’d be able to climb all the way… (the last hill in particular up to vaucluse is a killer… it’s a long climb, & way steep in parts… & it doesn’t help when your wheels keep slipping on all the money…) but when it became obvious that i was gonna make it i figured i should keep going right to the top… so i was totally stoked to climb all the way up to johnson’s lookout at the highest point of vaucluse… the view back down the harbour is pretty spectacular… & once i’d checked it out, i rolled back down to the park…

why do they call it edgecliff? the trip back was a bit of an eye-opener… new south head road is a weird kind of ride… there’s a short, flat bit around the shore of what might be rose bay (the one where the seaplanes take off & land), but apart from that you’re either climbing a huge hill or rolling down one… & yeah, wow, i was so pleased to discover the climb up to edgecliff on the way home was even harder than the climb to vaucluse…

hu’s on first? via kottke.org…

el scorcho — got hot if you want it… bitey, bitey sun… where’s monty burns when you need him?

what’s on high rotation in my head today?

born from an egg on a mountain top
the funkiest monkey there ever was
he knew every magic trick under the sun
teased the gods & everyone & had some fun
monkey magic
monkey magic
monkey magic
monkey magic oooh

c’mon everyone, a big round of applause for my brain, give it up…

hot, stinky — so much for the prospect of rain… although i did discover yesterday afternoon that v-brakes should be applied with care on a wet road… it was still overcast this morning on the ride to work, but on this side of midday the cloud’s gettin’ higher & higher & it’s gettin’ hotter & hotter…

on a rooftop in brooklyn, one in the morning — left my bike at work last night & walked down to surrey hills to meet keri, where we went to the opening of a show at first draft gallery that included some work by jess, who has been doing some temp work at, uh, work, & yeah, there were some good things there, especially jess’s stuff, a roll of undeveloped film (new york snapshots from 1-11 september 2001) which i thought was clever & respectful & thoughtful mounted beside two paintings, one of which was a portrait with the figure whited out while the other was a streetscape with three small figures, kinda motion-blurred, with the street behind them mostly whited out but with just a hint of background pencilled in… i liked them, i thought they did interesting things to the viewer’s desire for a way into them, & the absences (of person, of buildings) worked off the intimated potential of what might be on the roll of film, which itself spanned (the illusory) transition between (for the sake of an argument) presence & loss, knowledge & uncertainty…

evening, star — then (pausing only to buy a p.j. harvey cd) we met up with claire & andrey & kim for a drink at the evening star hotel, before wandering off to crown street where we were supposed to meet dallas, although that didn’t work out, & the restaurant we were going to turned out to be totally busy, so at keri’s suggestion we wandered down the street a bit & finished up at the nepalese kitchen, which was just fantastic…

bus, boy — so yeah, it’s a kinda drizzly morning, which meant the bus wasn’t a bad option… hopefully it’ll clear enough for me to ride this afternoon… it was weird to be at home last night with a space in the lounge where my bike shoulda been… although i notice this morning that it hasn’t done any of the work i left in the office for it…

& i feel like some bird of paradise
my bad fortune slipping away…

yay — made it to work two days running without any kind of filth shower… the week’s lookin’ up… &, yeah, even my sunburn’s fadin’… (possible title from joanne for the dramatised recreation of monday morning’s events — how green was my oxford street valley? although i’m leaning more towards the tenuously beckettian waste-gunk for dogbot…)

lackity-lack (don’t talk back) — i think i wanna new bike… an aluminium-framed hardtail with a nice set of suspension forks & a deore LX groupset & mebbe disc brakes… & some new shoes… & a new helmet… apart from that, i’m sweet, got everything i want…

big ride? thinkin’ about doing the rta big ride next year… & not just because it finishes in cootamundra… 588km over nine days… i guess i’d better take some sunscreen…

thanks for the thank you — gotta postcard from fiona & dave yesterday, thanking me for orchestrating (or was that ringleading?) the roistering (or was that yobbishness?) at their wedding… no problemo. am white trash, will travel.

at swim one dog — went for my first post-lessons swim after work yesterday… did six laps, then just floated around for a while… it’s an insane amount of fun to be able to swim, even in such a rudimentary fashion…

::: MID-MORNING UPDATE :::

gross, point blank — so i’m in darlinghurst on my way to work this morning & there’s a garbage truck, collecting garbage, & just as i’m about to ride past it the guy operating the compacting part of the machinery hits the “squash everything” button & gosh, sometimes garbage bags are full of icky liquid, right? &, like, if you squeeze a bag full of liquid, it’s likely to burst & squirt stuff everywhere? well, guess who copped a wave of stenchy, icky, liquid garbage? luckily my glasses kept it out of my eyes, so it only got me in the hair, on my face, on the neck, on my left arm, & all down the rest of my left side… fucking yay.

“shit, sorry,” yelled the garbo, who then started giggling like a loon with the rest of his garbo mates… but, you know, what can you do? apart, obviously, from having a quick rinse underneath the closest waterbottle… & yeah, there was somebody hosing down the footpath out the front of one of the cafés a bit further along who was happy to hose me down, too, but wow, talk about stink… if i’m suddenly struck down by some kind of mysterious disease, you’ll know where to point the epidemiologists…

::: EARLY MORNING REPORT ON YESTERDAY :::

psycle psydney — did the cycle sydney thing from north sydney to parramatta yesterday, which was kinda fun on one level, but kinda disappointing on another… i guess i was expecting it to be more like the sydney to the gong ride than it turned out to be… instead, it drew a much different crowd of people, a lot of whom appeared to be very occasional cyclists &, as such, there were a lot of people who didn’t seem all that confident on their bikes… which is great, & good on ’em for getting into it, but yeah, it made the experience of riding fifty kilometres handlebar to handlebar with a few thousand other cyclists slightly fraught…

stacker system — i had three people stack it just in front of me at different points, none of whom were badly hurt, & i managed to avoid running into/over them, & somehow managed not to bring anyone else down while i was taking evasive action, but yeah, for the three who went down there must’ve been another twenty or so very near misses… that’s not counting the people who, for whatever reason, would suddenly decide to just stop in the middle of the lane… which made climbing the occasional hill interesting… the domino effect would start halfway up & then just flow back down to the bottom…

inner city gridlock — & yeah, while the prospect of riding a “dedicated lane” sounded great in the pre-ride publicity, by the time thousands of bikes have squeezed into a single lane of traffic, there’s not a lot of room left to ride… it must have taken over an hour & a half to get from the harbour bridge out to ultimo (for non-sydney dwellers, this is not very far — you could usually do it in about ten minutes), with most of that time spent waiting for traffic lights… the police were controlling the intersections, but yeah, they were stopping the bikes to let through single cars… it was just insane…

a course is a course, of course, of course — the route was okay for the most part, although sydney’s scenic light industrial estates don’t really stack up that well against the royal national park… & yeah, i guess overall it was kinda hot, flat & boring… i made it to parramatta & felt like i hadn’t actually done anything, so i took a break for half an hour or so, had some lunch, refilled my bottles, queued up for fifteen minutes to get my complimentary commemorative t-shirt, then turned around & pedalled back… at which point the headwind kicked in…

windy city — & yeah, it didn’t let up until i was back in darlinghurst, so i was totally knackered by the time i got home… stats for the day: 92.62km in five hours & nineteen minutes of riding… 52.4km/hr maximum speed, but an average of only 17.4km/hr…

ticked off — so yeah, it wasn’t the day i was expecting it to be, & i got a bit sunburnt in places (my fault for not putting on enough sunblock), & i don’t think i’ll be lining up to do it next year… although, you know, i’m glad i did it, i’ve ticked it off my list, & maybe if i start earlier i might miss some of the crush… sydney to the gong absolutely rocks, cycle sydney just, i dunno, is a bit blah…

two words — for people planning to rub dencorub into their upper thighs… be careful…

somniac — totally stonkered last night, crashed out in bed with a book about eight o’clock, woke up at two a.m. with the bedside light shining in my eyes, switched it off, went back to sleep, woke up again at five… [hurrah. does little happy dance. ironically. in the alannis sense.]

rain — not enough to break the drought, but yeah, actual real rain, like, from the sky… which points to another bracing swimming lesson this afternoon…

designers network — via zeldman…

deflated — unscheduled pit stop in darlinghurst this morning… my front tyre picked up a bit of glass & i had to make some running repairs…

freezestyle — my oh my it was cold at swimming yesterday… like, the whole drizzly rain, howling wind kinda cold… but i did eight laps! mostly fin-assisted freestyle, but also including a lap of freestyle sans-fins, & a lap of dubious breaststroke, & a lap of what my instructor was kind enough to describe as backstroke, though really, i’m sure it looked more like one of those science experiments involving the sporadic application of electrical current than it did any internationally recognised form of swimming…

cycle sydney — looking forward to this on sunday…

can’t see your bus before your face — weird, hazy, dusty or possibly smoky day today… it’s sorta teasing about whether or not it’s gonna rain, but so far, nuffin… but yeah, just no visibility at all…

gig guided — oh. my. god. laurie anderson at the opera house on february 16 next year. we have tickets. what more is there to say? except, perhaps, p.j. harvey at the enmore theatre on january 22. we have tickets for that, too. & sleater-kinney at the gaelic club on december 13. i don’t have a ticket for that. yet…

too hard drive — argh. my hard drive has the staggers. seagate’s helpful diagnostic software cheerfully reports the drive fails its advanced tests with a problem so severe as to warrant replacement. luckily the machine still boots, & disk doktor seems to be happily fixing errors as fast as it can report them, but still, it’s not exactly confidence inspiring… i mean, sure, i’m running with a full backup, but i’m really hoping the drive hangs together for another couple of months…

bike face — i love commuting in sydney traffic… it’s like riding a really steep downhill track in the middle of an avalanche… yeah, i’m riding here — you gonna run me over? i didn’t think so…

meanderthal — cruisy ride to work this morning, just kinda chilled & spinnin’ rather than elbows-out & bombin’ along… although, yeah, i wuz ridin’ before the cool change kicked in, so it wuz hot despite me bein’ chilled & all…

six inches forward & five inches back — keri & i watched hedwig & the angry inch on video on friday night… it’s good, very good… the songs are great, sort of like an undiscovered bowie album from the early seventies, recorded somewhere between ziggy stardust & the spiders from mars & diamond dogs…

singin’ too-ra-li oo-ra-li addity — did one of the rides from my sydney cycle guide or whatever the hell it’s called on saturday morning & finished up at botany bay… it’s a bit over 50k there & back, & took in a lot of the first part of the course for the sydney to wollongong ride before turning off & heading east around the southern side of the bay… scenic, scenic heavy industry & boeings screaming overhead on final approach to mascot… still, it was a good ride, although insanely hot, & i sorta kinked my neck or something on the way home & finished up with a headache that only a return to bed for the rest of the day could solve…

akka-dakka-ri — bounced outta bed late on saturday afternoon with a revitalised, non-aching brain & plenty of time to head over to kate & lyle’s housewarming at their new place in newtown, where many (possibly too many?) various kinds of daiquiris were prepared & consumed until the wee small hours… nice house, nice people, nice work with the blender…

tuff enuff for the ruff stuff — swimming with keri at gordon’s bay yesterday afternoon, & yeah, woah, the water was cold as & it was high tide & kinda choppy but still heaps of fun… & yeah, i don’t as yet have any grace in my transitions, e.g. swim for a bit. [flail around.] tread water for a bit. [flail around.] swim for a bit. [flail around.] float on my back. [flail around.] swim a bit more… but i’m gettin’ better…

yay, updated schema — excellent. the new release of our new software arrived, & now we have documentation to guide us… we’re moving from a particularly ancient & impressively undocumented research management system to a new one &, up until friday, we only had docs & schema for the 1.5 release of the new system, not the shiny 2.0 release that we’ll actually be installing… & given that we knew the V2.0 schema had changed, but didn’t know exactly how, well, it was kinda interesting trying to massage our legacy data into the required shape with any sorta confidence… it’s still gonna be a relatively massive pain in the arse, but now that we know what the target looks like…