say it with me now Tuesday, 22 July 2008 link 

Every night, watching the Tour de France, I say a quiet prayer:

Please, god, don't let Mark Cavendish be doping.

I honestly don't think that the ITV commentary crew - not to mention the entire British cycling media - could take it. Plus, I'd be pretty disappointed.

Had a good ride out on Sunday. A slight scheduling mishap meant that I missed the Weta peloton (they moved the start time and no-one had my mobile number), but I rode the route nonetheless. It was nice cruising through Karori, down to Makara and then back through to J'ville. The recent appalling weather meant that there was a lot of evidence of rain damage - in particular, a number of minor slips. The farmland through there has what is often referred to as "excessive contour", i.e. it's mountain goat territory (and indeed a number of farms do have goats - quite possibly even deliberate ones). This means that it's really vulnerable to lumps dropping off after heavy rains. Not great for the farmers, but pretty dramatic to look at. And there were pukeko wandering around the paddocks with a smug look - that look that says "Ha, I'm a wetland bird and this is my natural habitat, bitches!". Unfortunately some of the pine forest around the Takarau Gorge had been logged since I'd last ridden through. Obviously, this is precisely why the trees were there in the first place, but it was a lot nicer to ride through a mature pine forest than through half forest, half barren tree stumps. Just hope they replant it rather than converting to dairy or something annoying like that.

Reading: Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery - particularly the one revealing the terrible truth about cycle commuting.

Listening to: DeVotchKa. It's one of those moments when you're used to hearing something in one language, hearing it in another causes a bit of cognitive dissonance. They do a very good instrumental version of "Ochi chyornye", but since it was given a translated title ("Dark Eyes") on the CD, I didn't expect it and did a double-take. I recall a similar thing when someone a while back mentioned an international aid organisation, "Doctors Without Borders", and explained what they did... and I replied "Oh, like Medicins Sans Frontieres then?" and immediately felt foolish.

ripping the legs off Wednesday, 16 July 2008 link 

My entry is in. We have the accomodation booked. We have the babysitting booked. I have a time to beat. I'm riding Taupo this year.

My current commuting mileage (kilometrage?) is about 100k, plus lunch rides, and closer to the date I'm probably going to start doing the odd longer Sunday morning effort. Should be able to knock a few minutes off my last time (7'03", putting me about 3/4 of the way down the field of solo riders). Mind you, just not getting stuck in the really slow bunch at the start should help with that, ditto trying not to take as many food stops. Still, I've got 5 months; I'm sure I'll get around to some training at some point. If nothing else, I've started riding out with the Weta lunchtime peloton, so that'll help me get some pace.

There's a bit of an etiquette to riding out with a new bunch.

First, if possible, there's the pre-ride preparation. This typically consists of a series of emails. These are basically psychological in nature. For example:

New rider: I'm pretty average pace, not too fast. I don't want to slow you guys down. What sort of pace is normal?
Established group member: No worries! We're all really unfit! I've only been riding for a little while, and the most exercise I've had in the last six months is lifting crates of beer and icecream out of my car! We typically ride at about 10kph and stop at every corner for a 2-minute coughing break.
New rider: OK then - I think I can probably make that pace.

This is then followed by the ride itself. The new rider turns up at the spot to find a pack of shaven-legged whippets on high-end road bikes. On the ride itself, the existing group will subtly turn the pace up to about 120% of the normal, just to see what the new guy does. The new guy has to staunch it out and try to raise the pace themself. It's not easy, but it's perfectly normal and no evidence of ill intent. It's just a subtle "let's see what you can do" sort of quiet hierarchical thing. On the second ride out, it's normally a bit more relaxed.

We took Rebecca out to see the Weta Cave on Saturday. She's been bugging me to see my workplace ever since I told her that I helped make Jane and the Dragon. So we went out for a family shufti at the Weta museum/gift shop. She enjoyed herself, but found a lot of the stuff a bit scary. High point was probably Richard Taylor popping over and introducing himself; he was pleased that the girls were enjoying the children's play area (a model of the castle from Jane and the Dragon). Nice bloke.

Maggie is nearly walking. As in, she's walking for about five or six steps. On a good run, she gets from one side of the kitchen to the other on her own two feet. It's but a short period of time until she can run around the show after Rebecca. They're getting on very well - we often find them in the same room just laughing at each other. Lovely.

I bought the girls (OK, Rebecca) some more general Lego at the weekend. I got a couple of landscape plates and a big bucket of miscellaneous Lego pieces. She's been enraptured ever since; we've started several days by immediate post-breakfast Lego play sessions.

From the "Why didn't I know about this before?" box: DVD players with USB ports. I knew you could get DVD players that could read data DVDs with DIVX movies on them, I just hadn't realised that you could buy ones that you can plug a USB drive into directly. This has markedly improved our experience of watching this year's Tour de France.

Speaking of this year's Tour... two words. Mark fucking Cavendish. Not sure if Cadel Evans has it in him to win the whole thing, but by gum Mark Cavendish is going well. Two stages so far isn't at all bad. Looks like the heir to Mario Cipollini and Alessandro Petacchi isn't an Italian, he's from the Isle of Man. It's particularly fun to watch the TV commentary - the ITV pundits get so happy when Cav wins a stage. And speaking of the pundits, I do really enjoy the coverage provided by Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin, but it's sometimes hard not to want to play the Tour Commentary drinking game.

And dearie, dearie me. Not only has the Tour de France told the UCI to get stuffed - so have all 17 of the teams in the ProTour. Either the UCI is going to have to pull some serious finger, or they could find that it's not their ball after all and everyone else wants to play on the other side of the playground.

only a couple more hours Saturday, 5 July 2008 link 

So Friday, the day dawned bright and beautiful. The promised truckies' strike meant that everyone had left for work before 7am, so when I dropped the kids off at nursery at 8am the roads were deserted. Cycling to work, I think I saw some tumbleweed on the Old Hutt Road. Clearest run I've ever had. And a beautiful day, too; absolutely lovely, clear as a bell and fine to boot. Spiffing.

At lunch, I rode out with the burgeoning Weta peloton. The weather had suddenly gone to shit: the shining sunshine and calm weather had dissolved to squalls of intense rain and a bastard northerly. Halfway through the ride, I punctured - cue ten minutes at the side of the road frantically swapping tubes. So that's me having used my (one) spare tube. Ah well, as long as I don't puncture on the way home I'll be fine.

At 4:30 I leave work in what I can only describe as driving rain and heavy wind. The weather did not improve. Riding around the waterfront, I achieved that zen state known as "as wet as you can possibly get"; the rain at this point was lashing down with a force comparable to a decent domestic shower cubicle, I could barely see ten feet in front of my face, and I was soaked to the fucking skin. Those of you with a sense of irony are expecting me to say that I then punctured; I did not.

No, it wasn't until ten minutes later, when the rain had fallen off slightly, that I punctured. Lovely. By this point I was around Kaiwharawhara. Here's how to tell when I puncture if you're riding with me: if you see me slow down dramatically, look down at the wheels, and then look up at the heavens and scream "FUCK!" with all my lungs - that's when I've punctured. So I'm standing in Kaiwharawhara, still about 5k from home, soaked to the skin and with no spare tubes, with a puncture. At this point I'm just trying to find some form of shelter so I can assess my options. And as I desperately run towards a boarded up doorway, a bloke pulls in in front of me and gives me a spare tube. He refused any form of payment or reciprocation; "I've had tubes given to me, just give one to someone else sometime." Faith in humanity: restored. Rear wheel: up and running. Home again: jiggity jig. Lovely.

So not the best commute, but it was still a good hard 50k for the day. One thing about riding out with a new bunch is that you can guarantee on the first ride, people will quietly and politely tear the legs off you. I tried my best to keep up with the serious road whippets and didn't do too bad - hard yards though.

The Tour starts tonight. God only knows who's going to win. I'd like to hope that Julian Dean wins a stage; it's the only way that the Tour is going to get near primetime telly over here. Otherwise, my money's on Mark Cavendish: the Manx express is scary-fast. Don't expect any media coverage other than doping scandals, though.

Did you know tumbleweeds are actually native to Ukraine, and were introduced to the US in the 1870s? True!

and you dress funny Thursday, 3 July 2008 link 

For various reasons, I've been reading up on the characteristics of various bits of hi-fi kit. Which is to say, I've been vaguely thinking about getting some speakers or something for the telly. So far, so good. But there's a bit of a problem: if you read any reviews of hi-fi kit, you immediately realise that all the people writing them are either horrible wankers, have terrible taste, or both. Honestly: you get people going "Oh, yah, you should hear it when Satriani gets to the big guitar solo at the end - it really blows you away, yah?" sort of thing. Or "Yes, this amp really coped well with the big fight sequence at the end of Reign of Fire". I find myself thinking, "Do I really want to take direction from people with such poor taste?"

After all, in much the same was as no-one else in the world can drive properly, it is of course a fact that everyone else in the world has, in some way, crap taste in music. And often in movies too. Fools! All of you!

I'm somewhat putting myself through CG boot camp at the moment. This involves absorbing as much info as possible about how CG works and how movies are made. Favourite quote so far is from some of Autodesk's documentation for Maya:

Every day, you come into contact with three-dimensional objects and spaces. You have learned how to recognize and work with three dimensions in your daily routine and have an intuitive feel for how it works.

The Art of Maya

No - really?

the problem with the review system Monday, 30 June 2008 link 

So on Saturday, I took the chance during a brief hiatus in the horizontal rain to take the kids out to the library. Walking back along the waterfront, I passed a group of adolescents. "Sir!", one called out. "Sir! Sir!" Unsure as to whether he meant me, I half-turned and saw him addressing me. "Excuse me, sir, but what mil are your ears at?" "Um... 12mm" I replied. He flashed me a big grin, lifted his hair up a bit and said "Mine are 14!" Unsure how to reply, I said "Well, there you go." He grinned again and turned to catch up with his friends. The youth of today, eh?

And for those of you who are wondering what a pubescent youth (I'd have put his age around 12-14) was doing with stretched earlobes, I'd just like to point out that he was extremely respectful and polite. So that for your declining community standards!

And we've definitely come a long way since my having 12mm earlobes was enough to get my picture posted on a gay German piercing fetish website.

Earlier in the same trip, Rebecca met a guide dog for the first time. This was her first face-to-muzzle encounter with a guide dog (previously, it had turned out that my careful explanations had led her to believe that they were "guide dogs for the blonde", and she'd filed that away under "odd things that adults say that may be jokes but I'll have to find out later"). Slightly embarassing moment when I told Rebecca that the dog was being trained to help a blind person, and the owner turned to me and politely said "No, she's my guide dog." It was a sunny day, I'd assumed that the owner was wearing the dark glasses for the wrong reason. Whoops. She was very nice, though. Rebecca did me proud: walked up to the lady and said "Excuse me, do you mind if I pat your dog?" She's a good girl. Good dog, too; golden lab, clearly very used to kids. I wouldn't normally let the girls play with a guide dog, as the dog needs to concentrate on its owner, but in this case the owner was quite happy and the dog was quite used to it so it was all good.

And then on sunday, it rained horizontally the whole day. And Campagnolo announced that not only are they fucking going to 11-speed rear cassettes, they're killing off the Xenon and Mirage groupsets. Great: no entry level groupsets. Am I even going to be able to get a bloody 9-speed casette in a year or two? It's this sort of persistant ignoring of actual grassroots cyclists that's making me think seriously about just buying a bike with a hub gear.

worst. commute. ever. Friday, 27 June 2008 link 

Sometimes, at 4:55pm, I look out the window at the driving rain and wind and ask myself "Why do I ride a bike again?"

Wednesday night, we had gale force northerlies. I rode home from work in driving rain and wind fierce enough for the Met Service to issue a severe weather warning. It took me 80 minutes to get home. I arrived wet and exhausted.

Tonight, it was raining. For various reasons, I had to take the bus home from work. It took me 100 minutes to get home, including 40 of those minutes standing at bus stops grinding my teeth. I arrived home wet, exhausted, and frustrated enough to chew nails. And it cost me $7.

And that's why I ride a bike.

into the unknown, with temerity Monday, 23 June 2008 link 

Righto. So I've been at Weta for a week now, and it's been very interesting. I've got one hell of a learning curve to run up: I have absolutely no background in CG, so suddenly having to learn huge amounts about how the damn stuff works is quite a challenge. So that's keeping me busy/amused for the moment. And on the whole, Weta is surprisingly like how a company would be if I ran it - slightly shambolic, lots of cool stuff, and a refreshing "You're all grownups now get on with it" attitude that encourages a good work environment. Of course, if I could get an office with natural light I'd be a bit happier, but we can't have everything.

But there's an obvious issue with the working at Weta schtick. Namely, the commute. I'm not quite going entirely across the city (I'd need to be leaving from Tawa to do that), but it's not too far off. So how do I get from point A, home, to point B, on the southern half of the Miramar peninsula?

Well, I could take the bus. Ha ha, nice one! Taking a bus into Wellington from an outer suburb is certainly possible. Then taking another bus out to another outer suburb, less so. I've taken the bus a couple of times, and it's averaging around 75 minutes door to door. Oy vey.

I've also driven in. On a wet Monday morning, from the outside of Newlands Childcare Inc, it was about 40 minutes. Rush hour traffic, kids! Actually, once I cleared the Basin Reserve it was pretty straightforward. And of course, driving around by meself in the morning means I can get the bangin' choons going and rack up the thud thud action. Or at least, listen to National Radio on the way in. I may even subscribe to a podcast or two if I end up having to drive in regularly.

But of course you can see where this is going. So yes, I have mainly been riding in. On my first day, I went around the bays and into the teeth of a Southerly. It took about 55 minutes for 18k on the bike (yes, it was a very windy day). Later days came through a little more and I've got it averaging about 40 minutes door to door on the way in, 55 minutes on the way back. That's mainly by going through the Mt Vic tunnel (cuts about 2k off), which isn't particularly pleasant but does the job. So the ride in is comparable to driving, and ludicrously better than the bus.

But it's looking like I'll be driving in a day or two a week (at least), just so I can do the drop off/pick-up for the kids at creche. And that's OK - I'll just have to increase my mileage at weekends to make up for it. I'm sure we can work something out.

I'm getting to grips with Linux, too. Half the time is spent trying to configure the damn thing. Particularly annoying is the default autocompletion in OpenOffice, where someone didn't seem to realise that it's actually really annoying for a touch-typist to have to stop and think about what word is appearing in the autocomplete and whether to press return to select it, rather than just typing the rest of the damn word. Anyway, that's a minor niggle and I'm currently going through and making OpenOffice my bitch: mainly it's a rip-off of Word, but there's enough difference to make it interesting.

On the headphones: 2 many djs live sets and DJ Socalled. I think I'm worrying my officemate with how much I'm getting into the vibes. The intersection between Yiddish chanted music and hip-hop works so well it's astonishing that it hasn't happened before.

Today's hilarious cycling link: photos from the Fremont Summer Solstice Parade. Totally NSFW; lots of nudity and bodypaint. And cycling! It's all good. Worth seeing, though probably not at work.

rollin steady Monday, 9 June 2008 link 

So the other day, flush with leftover holiday pay (I had about a week to cash out when I left ACC), I crossed a barrier that I had hitherto left undisturbed. I bought an iPod. Until now, I haven't owned an MP3 player; I basically objected to throwing huge amounts of cash at something that was likely to date stupid fast. But now the entry level has dropped acceptably - a 4GB iPod Nano for $200, so I'm not too worried about the potential for being out of date in three years. And hey, 4GB is a reasonable size. So I've spent the last few days playing around with it. It's great fun. Of course, since most of our car trips are under 70 minutes, there's not actually any particular advantage to having an iPod instead of just burning up CDs - but heck, it's getting my play data loaded up to Last.fm, and I'm enough of a metadata geek to really like that. Though I do now have a strange urge to download cover data, so the cover browse view works correctly.

I'm on a week off at the moment. And we're getting to zoosh around and just, y'know, chill out and stuff. Today, we took a quiet walk to Red Rocks and Sinclair Head. It was a ludicrously nice day: clear, bright, little wind. As it's winter, it was still pretty frigging cold, and there were medium heavy seas. The walk around to the headland is great: first, we passed a headless seal. Woo hoo! That'd be evidence of that pod of orca that was hanging around a week or so ago, then. A bit further on, were passed by a van. Around the next corner, we found the same van, firmly stuck in the loose shingle and now realising that gosh, maybe the council had actually meant all those big signs that said "4WD ONLY". Ten minutes trying to push the increasingly enmired van out before someone in a hilux came past and towed them out. So we walked on a bit further, and reached the seals. Lovely beasts: you don't see them until you get to the sign saying "Warning, seals, stay at least 20m away at all times" and then you realise that the lump five feet behind the sign has whiskers and has just yawned. Whoops! And then you realise that you've just walked past at least a dozen other seals that you hadn't noticed. And then someone else in a hilux comes past and manifestly fails to clear the carefully marked "EXTREME HAZARD" on the track. I've never seen so much smoke from something that still worked afterwards - tyres and diesel exhaust smoking away like a flare. Then turn around and wander back, passing various protagonists on the way, including a number of American tourists who stopped us to check whether there really were seals a bit further along. Note several goats high up on the sort of vertiginous terrain usually described as mountain goat territory, which just goes to show that sometimes these phrases have a basis in truth (how the buggers can stand up on those 70 degree slopes I'll never know). And then we wombled back for late lunch at The Bach in Island Bay and to pick up a new chain at Burkes Cycles in Kilbirnie. It's all good.

cos it's time to shine Friday, 6 June 2008 link 

Fun things to find out at your leaving do: I stood out at the interview for my current job not just for my many and varied personal competancies, but also because they remembered my long hair and big earrings. So there you are - my piercings made me more memorable, and helped me a get a job. Who says body modification leads to diminished career progression?

Lines from coworkers that wouldn't have made sense until very recently: "My kids' iPods are playing hell with my scrobbling."

demob happy, again Thursday, 5 June 2008 link 

Day 5 back on the booze: I am very relaxed. Last day at work tomorrow: I'm counting the hours. Roll on somewhere around 3pm, is all I can say.

A couple of people have commented to me or Heather that they're surprised that I stayed so long at ACC, as they have a reputation for being bad employers and pushing people too hard. I'd have to say, my experience has been quite the opposite. Obviously, there were a few things at ACC that made me want to leave, but it wasn't my general working environment. One of the things that kept me at ACC - apart from the as-it-turned-out-forlorn hope that someone would start listening to me and we'd get some kind of document management system - was the fact that they're really family friendly employers. I am perfectly confident that if I'd asked to drop down to 4 or even 3 day weeks, they'd have been amenable and would have worked with me to get it sorted. So the idea was that when Heather wanted to get back to work, I could drop my days back, and we could both work part-time and look after the kids. Given that my manager's immediate response to hearing that Heather was pregnant was "congratulations - would it be helpful if we set you up to work from home?", and from talking to other people, I wouldn't expect any problems. ACC as a whole is a very good employer, and is making big steps towards being an employer of choice. The flexible working hours and the fringe benefits are all good. If you're looking for a job in the health policy region, I'd heartily recommend having a shufti at the ACC careers site.

Unintended consequences: now, whenever I play Spiritualized's "I Think I'm in Love", Heather starts singing the Yeti Magic song from The Mighty Boosh. I'd be annoyed if it wasn't bang on.

How old am I? I'm so old I can remember when PJ O'Rourke was a funny cultural commentator, rather than a whining blowhard. Reading his review of a trip to the museum, I wasn't so much insulted, piqued, or amused, as just left feeling meh. He rails at such concessions to our squeamish modern tastes as renaming the Brontosaurus - sneering that offence may have been taking from "Chicago's Bronto-American community" (gosh, those terrible PC museum people, even trying not to offend nonexistent groups - fear my razor-sharp sarcastic wit!). Or that the aforementioned skeleton is no longer posed in combat with a Tyrannosaurus skeleton - "Modern kids are too loving and caring about dinosaurs to be exposed to such scenes of domestic violence."

Or maybe modern kids have actually read up on dinosaurs and might think it incongruous that the museum would pose an Apatosaurus (from the late Jurassic period) with a Tyrannosaurus (from the Cretaceous period); after all, there's about 70 million years between the two. It'd be just as accurate to show the Tyrannosaurus in single combat with, say, you. Or that the name Apatosaurus is used rather than Brontosaurus because of, gosh, tediously following the actual rules for scientific naming of species. But hey! Let's not let facts distract us from the important business of castigating the museum! Reading through, this descends into a standard catalogue of aging conservative whingeing: people dress too informally! Hippies are annoying! That Barack Obama, eh? And don't get me started on that Hillary Clinton, never mind that neither of them have the least little remotest bit to do with what I'm talking about! And - particularly surprising - he starts banging on about how great Christianity is. Is it just me, but since when did PJ O'Rourke start saying that certain types of religious beliefs are the difference "between civilisation and savagery" (conveniently forgetting some of the more savage acts of a number of monotheistic religions and states - the Inquisition, the slave trade, and Belgium's colonial history, to pick three examples out of the air)? And that religious conversion was "the only decent thing .... that Europeans brought to America's Indigenous peoples"?

It's a shame, to see the firebrand writer we once knew brought so low. That the man who wrote "How to drive fast on drugs while getting your wing-wang squeezed and not spill your drink" is now reduced to complaining that young people today, they don't have any respect. I could forgive his change of subject matter if he could make with the prose of fire; sadly, he cannot.