Author: Grant

I managed to get another car a couple of weeks ago. It’s a white 1983 Mazda RX-7 and I’m really really happy to have it. Goes well, looks good and has been kept in great condition. It needs a tune and a check to ensure there’s no urgent work required, but otherwise it’s near perfect.

This is the series 2 model which has 2+2 seating (eg: two seats up front and two tiny seats in back that work if you run the front seats forward or put your legs up to the side :) We’ve had three adults in it (usually guys in front and a girl in back sitting sideways) and I was running with me plus 3 kids the other day.

Kitt and I have given the car a name – it’s now called “BINKY” – which is based on the horse that Death rides in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of books. Basically, this is the first white car I’ve ever owned, so it’s the first time I’ve had a “pale horse.” Given that “Death rides a pale horse” and I’m not gothic enough to go with a name from some other series/book like “Morpheus” or “Mortis”, we felt that “Binky” was crazy enough to suit the driver :)

Will load photos of the car shortly.

We’re fighting against spammers at the moment, thanks to our use of Movable Type and the FormMail.pl script. The scum that are spammers have been using automatic systems to load their crap into the comments systems some of our Movable Type installations use. This has a two-fold effect – first it shoves lots of comments into the system that have to be tracked and removed. Second, it puts one hell of a load on our server, some times slowing it down incredibly.

The FormMail.pl script we’ve set up has been configured to restrict who it sends to, but spammer-scum just use it to send their own message to that restricted list. On some of our forms, these are politicians, senior executives, etc. While some may say it’s good for a politician to get a bag of spam (hopefully helping to convert them into fighters against the problem), it’s not a good thing that it appears to come from our domains….

We’re doing what we can, such as implementing the MT Blacklist system, changing the name of the comments script within MT, modifying FormMail.pl, etc. It’s just very annoying that we even have to do that, just become a bunch of scum are out to rort the system.

Honestly, if a spammer were drowning I’d have no problem at all throwing them a lead weight to help out. I’d call them vermin but I like rats too much. Perhaps spammers are the new lawyers in the jokes world, eg:

Q:What do you call 10 spammers in a bus going over a cliff?
A: A good start

Well, things have settled down now – on the way into the office via the ocean road and the sea was flat – almost mirror like (especially in comparison to yesterday :) Lots of crap around the place and the roads looking like they’ve been dug up here and there (some more potholes to avoid).

Not a good time to be an insurance company, that’s for sure….

Melbourne’s just had it’s biggest single-day downpour on record (since 1856 or so). The previous mega-downpour was around 106mm in the 1960’s. While this has trashed trains, flooded streets and washed out houses, so far it’s not had any major impact on me at home or work.

At home, my apartment’s survived OK with not a leak in sight. I was woken up during the night by rain hitting my bedroom windows – a rather spectacular feat given they’re off a balcony that’s somewhat sheltered by the rest of the building. To achieve this, the rain was heading pretty much horizontally for a fair distance.

I’m hoping we don’t get a repeat of the Tree Branch Madness that happened back in September last year. A previous mega-wind/rain session weakened a tree out the front of my apartment which dropped 1/3 of itself over the carpark (and a neighbour’s car).

On the way in to the office this morning, I figured I’d head up the road along side of the beach. Heading out we had trams stopped in the middle of the street on both Chapel and Carlisle streets. There were branches everywhere and one tree on Chapel had broken a water main as it fell so water was gushing everywhere.

Heading up the beach road in bright sunlight, the bay was filled with dark, rushing water. Waves were coming into the beach from the south but not many white caps out there. Lots of palm fronds everywhere on the road and I often encountered large puddles of standing water, some of which blocked an entire lane. On the north side of St Kilda Beach there was a yacht beached on its side, the keel ripped away by its trip up the rocks and sand. Further up at Middle Park the waves were still breaking over the sea wall, pushing water over the path & cycle track (yes, morning joggers/walkers were out and generally managing to avoid getting too wet here).

In at the office we had a few leaks here and there – annoying in a newly rennovated building but to be expected given the generally rushed and shoddy work that’s often found on modern constructions (I’ve seen many newly constructed apartments around St Kilda and it’s not uncommon to find them falling apart within the first year or so) Half the staff weren’t in today and a few meetings were cancelled. Apparently the authorities were recommending that people avoid going to the city due to problems with public transport, flooding, etc.

The cops were out near our building blocking traffic heading out on Dynon Rd – they were there all day so whatever was causing the problem, it must have been big.

So yeah, lots of interesting stuff but, for me, nothing major – very happy about that…

Called Buenos Aires to confirm that Nykolai and his mom had arrived OK – all fine and a big family reunion going on. They’re off to Pinamar in a couple of days so it looks like everything’s going to be pretty crazy over there for a while :)

I drove Nykolai and his mom out to the airport today for the first leg of their journey to Buenos Aires (thanks to Emmanuel for the use of his car :) From Melbourne they flew up to Sydney via QANTAS then changed to Aerolineas Argentinas for a quick jump across to Auckland. About 9 hours after they left Melbourne, the Aerolineas Argentinas flight left Auckland for a journey of about 16 hours non-stop to Buenos Aires. This flight will take them south to within about 1,000km of the pole, looping down and around on a “great circle” path (the shortest distance between two points on a sphere). From the flight deck on one of these flights you can get a great view of the ice on a clear day, but usually in the cabin the windows are too small to really get much viewing in.

As I type, they’re about an hour outbound from Auckland. Once they arrive at Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires, they will have spent about 26 hours travelling and have flown about 13,200km. You can get a good representation of their total flight path from start to finish via this Great Circle Mapper page.

Before we went on holiday, our friend Emmanuel took some photos of Nykolai with a pair of angels wings. He’s doing a series of angel images and Nykolai’s going to be a part of the collection. I was at Rocio’s place while Emmanuel took the shots, so I grabbed a few myself. While the photos I took are fun, the end result of Emmanuel’s work (superimpositions, touch ups, coloring, etc) is amazing. I’ve ordered a large print of the final image for my place of course :)

Got back to Melbourne this evening from our holiday up north. It was wonderful to have a real break from everything, just relaxing and reading most of the time. A few support calls here and there, but nothing major. Christmas was great with Kitt’s extended family and we really enjoyed ourselves up there.

Murray (Kitt’s grandfather) invited us out to Murwillumbah airstrip to visit the folks at Mothcair, an organisation specialising in the restoration of early British aircraft (plus a few early US designs). It was great to visit and chat with everyone there – they’ve done a number of projects and really do enjoy their work. I managed to get a few photos while there, including some of an old Beach 18 that was parked out front.

Nykolai and I have flown up to Tweed Heads for a holiday with Kitt at her mom’s place. This is the first real holiday that I’ve had in two years and I’m really enjoying the chance to relax. Nykolai’s meeting the family up here and got invited to yet another end-of-year school breakup (another massive water fight was being held). Will get around to loading the photos once we’re back in Melbourne next week.