fizzigig August 28, 2004  

Rebecca is settling nicely into a routine, although the routine is now morphing every few weeks. It's a bit hard to keep track of, but she seems comfortable. She's getting us up at 6:30 every morning now, which gives us a chance to get an early breakfast and have a bit of a play. By around 7:30 she's normally getting a bit tired again, so we lie next to her and hug her until she drops off for a nap. It's great. Of course, then I have to haul myself back out of the bed and head off to begin the whole torrid cycle of work yet again, but it's a fantastic way to start the day.

After the arrival of a package from Smoke CDs, I've been on a good old Kiwi music tip. I say "old" - just catching up on the bits of the last three years of NZ music that I've missed out on. Bit of Flight of the Conchords (tip of the nib to Svend there for introducing us to this fine music), bit of Jet Jaguar (tip of the nib to Michael, for actually making this fine music). Nice to hear some vibes from back home. There's a real NZ music sensibility that you miss after a while.

Doing the 108km audax ride at Mildenhall tomorrow morning. Should be fun. I'm confident that I can do the distance (particularly since we've got nine hours to do it in), I'm just slightly worried about the weather. Still, I spent a couple of hours over the last few nights installing a set of mudguards on my road bike, so that'll help. And the forecast is for brilliant sunshine. I've got the route sheet, I've got me OS maps as backup, I've got a malt loaf, and I've cleaned my camelbak. I am centred. Definitely looking forward to the ride.

Cleaning the camelbak was fun. I've previously just cleaned it by scrubbing out the bladder, running clean water through it, and trying to clean the inside of the tube with a variety of odd tools. The best thing I'd found is an implement for cleaning a saxophone, which is basically a small brush on the end of a long wire. I'd had to trim the brush to fit it inside the tube, but it did a reasonablish job. Anyway, a week or so back I decided that the best way to stuff up a job was to have the wrong tools, so I bought the official camelbak cleaning kit (as made/marketed by them). Interesting stuff. They're obviously trying to put an "Xtreme!" feel to cleaning equipment, which is a bit of an ask. The contents of the kit are:

• Brush for cleaning the bladder: your average, bog standard cleaning brush with plastic bristles. Has lots of bristles at all angles, to get right up into the edges of the bladder. This is basically exactly the same as the brush I keep at the gym to clean out my water bottles, which I bought at Mothercare for £1.49 - it being originally designed for cleaning out babies' bottles.
• Brush for cleaning the tube: small set of bristles on the end of a long wire. Basically, exactly the same as my cut-down saxophone maintenance device, except better sized (and hence easier to use).
• Cleaning tablets: these are great. You put them in a litre of water, and they foam up, and the water goes blue, and you can put the bits of your camelback into the blue water to sterilise them! How cool is that? Of course, they're just your standard hydrogen peroxide tablets, used for sterilising babies' bottles (about £2.50 for a pack of 50 or so from Tesco), with blue food colouring added. But, y'know, a nice little marketing spin to justify a horrendous markup.
• Drying frame. This is the one bit of kit that's actually useful and otherwise hard to buy an equivalent for - it's a plastic hanger that's correctly sized for the bladder. You clean out the bladder, insert the drying frame, and hang it up. The frame holds the bladder open and enables any last drops of water to evaporate out. This is genuinely handy and worth having.

I'm just impressed at how camelbak have basically repackaged a load of stuff that would cost you a couple of quid in any reasonable baby shop, thrown in a bespoke piece of plastic, and then charge you a tenner for it. Still, I'll say this: I did get my Camelbak very clean indeed with it, so I suppose it was worth it.

two by two August 24, 2004  

We tried Rebecca in her backpack again yesterday. It's a very impressive one, with bags of zippy features (sorry Macpac, we got a Vaude 'cos it was of equally high quality as the Macpac offering but, crucially, also included a kickstand enabling the pack to stand upright with child in situ on the ground) - very German (i.e. highly functional and well constructed). The first time I put her in it about a fortnight ago, I was a bit nervous about constricting her, and so didn't do any of the straps up particularly tight. As a result, she slopped around a bit, which she didn't like, and so she lasted about five minutes in it before the screaming started. This time, I was a bit more cavalier about tightening the straps, and she was held much more securely. She loved it. She was giggling away, singing to herself, looking around at everything. She also discovered that the great advantage to being strapped to Daddy's back (rather than front, as with the sling) is that you can grab Daddy's ponytail and pull/eat it. Once she's a bit older, I'm expecting her to start grabbing my ponytail and using it like a set of reins. "Gee up!" and all that. Anyway, she enjoyed the sojourn in the pack, and our trip around to the shops was a definite success. Nice one there.

And a big hello to those of you who found this site by searching for "olympics nipples photos". It's nice to have the old caliber of user around here. And a thumbs up to whoever was looking for "Thomas Voekler t-shirts" - I suggest the slogan "riding his guts out".

Interesting resources time:

• The Carnivorous Plant Wiki - does what it says on the tin: a wiki about carnivorous plants. Nice one; I'm going to bang a few articles in.
• Bikepimp.co.uk - online price comparison tool for finding the best bike bits cheap. Misses out a couple of online retailers (like Parker International), but generally a very useful resource.
• French Military Victories - a companion piece to the various "the French are a pack of wusses who have never won any form of military victory, the cowardly pack of cheese-eating surrender monkeys" opinions floating around the net.

And continuing the Olympics tip from yesterday, big ups to those athletes proving that you don't have to be a clean-cut square jawed type to be a world-class athlete. Specific mentions go to the Australian track cyclist Sean Eadie, for having a gigantic goatee (wonder if he still shaves his legs, though), and British cyclist Jamie Staff, who made the transition to the track from BMX racing (ex US number 1 rider, having hopped the pond for career purposes before returning to blighty) and thus has some rather impressive tattoos on his legs. Minus points to Eadie for the rather impressive drug allegations, mind.

Odd juxtaposition of the day: Black Planet (Sisters of Mercy) followed by Fear of a Black Planet (Public Enemy). Not at all based on each other.

papparawhat? August 23, 2004  

New photos of Rebecca now available from the photos page.

And, while we're at it, massive congrats to Sarah Ulmer.

and we're live August 22, 2004  

Heh heh. Details of my new project (and Heather's latest surprise!) are available here: Red Girl build-up.

scribble unites us August 17, 2004  

I'm asthmatic. This isn't any big thing - it's never actually been life-threatening, and has only occasionally felt like it is. Growing up as a kid in NZ, I had a few attacks, peaking in my teens. The attacks were mainly triggered by environmental factors such as allergies (cats being a particularly bad one), dust, etc. I also had severe difficulty during intense exercise - this may go some way to explaining why I was such a sports-averse bookworm during my teenage years. Regardless, I got used to carrying a pulmicort inhaler at all times. The risk of an attack was too great. I'd use it about once or twice a week.

This was particularly true during my student years, when I lived in a lot of cheap accommodation. In Wellington, cheap student accommodation almost invariably meant damp. In some cases, really damp (though some mates of ours lived in much damper flats - they could have put down mouse traps and caught fish). I had to go onto a steroid inhaler (bricanyl) to avert the otherwise-constant attacks.

Then we moved to the UK. I stopped getting attacks unless we had pretty severe environmental triggers (on the order of someone physically rubbing a tomcat across my upper lip). I stopped bothering to take my steroid inhaler. I was only using my pulmicort inhaler about once every two or three months, and the attacks weren't particularly severe even then. As long as I was careful, and avoided houses with cats, I was cool. I eventually even stopped carrying my pulmicort as a matter of course.

And then, about a fortnight ago, I had an attack.

And then another one the next day.

And then three more in the next two days.

So I've been having attacks on and off for the last two weeks. I've started taking my steroid inhaler again, and I'm now carrying the pulmicort everywhere. I can only hope that this is related to the really hot, humid weather Britain has been experiencing recently - which would imply a bit of a reprieve when it cools. Fingers crossed.

On a vaguely related note, I'm sure that most of you won't be surprised to hear that I wasn't a particularly sporty kid. At primary school in NZ, there wasn't too much of a distinction into the sporty kids and the non-sporty ones - we all just ran around like hooligans yelling. I wasn't as good at sports as a lot of the others, and tended to be in the final three or so when teams were picked, but I tended to enjoy it. At primary school I played on various teams for cricket (Dad's suggestion; I hated it and lasted a season), field hockey (my suggestion; I enjoyed it and lasted a couple of seasons) and water polo (loved it).

At secondary school, it was much more compartmentalised. You were either the brainy kid who was good at schoolwork but crap at sports, or the thick kid who could do one-arm pull-ups and was good at soccer. A few kids straddled the divide, but most went firmly into one camp or the other. I went for brainy, and proceeded to become much worse at various sports (not helped by the aforementioend asthma problem). It took until midway through my university career to get interested in "sports" again, although I had (and have always had) a deep and abiding love of walking. But walking's not really a sport - it's just how you get from your flat in Mount Vic to that party in Kilburnie without springing for bus fare. It took the discovery of weight training - including some sterling support and guidance from our mate John - to convince me again that organised activities involving equipment, proper ways of doing things, and so on, were a worthwhile way of spending my time. And with my latter interest in cycling, I've finally starting fulfilling one of the primary definers of hegemonic masculinity: watching sports on telly. While drinking beer. And spending my Sunday mronings sweating away doing a training session, of course.

This week's training ride: a quick 26 miles in the west villages, including a very nasty spell on the A428, but only one driver ignoring the fact that I had right of way through a junction. Good run, all in all - Knapworth is a very nice little village.

We went to the Milton maize maze on Sunday afternoon. Great fun. Nice curving lines made it very hard to keep track of where you were, 3m high maize made it hard to use landmarks, and a good time was had by all. There were a total of nine clues hidden inside the maze - we found three of them before we found the way out. Rebecca seemed to enjoy it. Well, she repeatedly vomited on me, but she was making happy gurgling noises throughout. She seemed very interested in the farm's Kune Kune pig, too.

Incredibly cool linkage of politics, performance art, chalk, wireless networking, GPS and bicycles: Bikes Against Bush.

audacious August 13, 2004  

Saw Svend last night. It was good to see the lad, with his strange tales of life at an all-contract workplace and proper accent. He bought tribute to Rebecca - well, soft toys. It was great to see him. It's always good to see old friends (lao pengyou, hao pengyou, innit) from back home; even better when they turn out to have a fairly relaxed attitude to being vomited on. He was so calm when Rebecca vommed on him, I was tempted to have a go myself to see what happened. Anyway, a very nice evening was had by all.

Excellent article on Slate (disclaimer: I don't read Slate, someone sent me the link) about Californian traffic law. What, I hear you ask, could be interesting about California traffic law? Why, the fact that by-laws intended to stop articulated lorries from driving through residential areas mean that it is technically illegal for many SUVs to drive through most California neighbourhoods, of course! Of course, it would never, ever be enforced, but it's nice to know it's there.

Have taken the plunge and signed up for a 108km audax ride at the Mildenhall Cycle Rally on the August bank holiday weekend. Ride starts at 9am, and you've got about 9 hours to get around the course. I reckon I can do that. I've been meaning to do an audax for a while - the basic idea is, you do a fairly long(ish) ride within a specific time. The time includes both a minimum and maximum limit, so while you've got to get around in a particular time, it's definitely not a race. There are a number of checkpoints where you have to get your brevet card stamped to prove that you've passed through, and these checkpoints only open at a specific time. So it's more of a steady ride than a mad dash. Audax rides range from 50-1200+km (the longest event listed in the Audax UK calendar is 3400km). 200km is the normal "doable in a day" distance - such a ride is called a randonée, and anyone who's cracked an approved 200km off is known as a randonneur. I'm not sure I can crack off a 200km right at the moment, mind. As I say, I've been meaning to get around to doing an audax ride for quite a while, so it'll be a laugh to see what it's actually like. Further details about audax at Audax UK. Pity we're going to be in NZ too late for the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge, really.

And I note with interest that the coprophiliac Dr Gillian McKeith, PhD [sic], has been thoroughly debunked by The Guardian's Bad Science column this week. Not that all of what she's saying is bollocks (though "eat less junk food, eat more fruit and vegetables" isn't particularly revolutionary); just that her qualifications and supposed academic career are mainly considerably less rigorous than you might expect (and, indeed, than previous press releases had claimed) - and in some cases, considerably less, um, existing than you might expect. Whoops! Heck, with a couple of grand and a few weeks to learn the babble, I could have the same qualifications. Probably wouldn't get my own telly show, though - I'm not, um, the sort of presenter that Channel 4 likes at that stage of the evening (that is, the "strict nanny" style of dominatrix - with, in this case, a nice sideline in scat). Though I do reckon that "Lose It With Beardie" would be a great title for a telly show.

a wonderful morning wake you up with the singing of bird August 11, 2004  

Post title is the exact title of a spam I got the other day; and no, I couldn't work out what it was about. Cialis, I think.

The heat! This heat is hot! It's been, frankly, punishingly hot here for the past few days. I made a point of doing my weekend ride at 8am on Sunday, getting home at 11 (nice rolling 36 miles through the countryside), and by gum it was starting to heat up by then. I saw a number of people who I can only describe as "mad bastards" actually heading out at 11am - they'll have popped and sizzled like sausages, is all I can say. The nights are terribly hot - you just lie on the bed, sweat pouring off you, all the windows open, unable to sleep because you're so bloody hot. It's all very subtropical. I'm tempted to invest in a solar topee. We've been drinking gin and tonics to get into the spirit of things. There was a torrential downpour at 6am this morning. And yesterday. Looks like the monsoon season has arrived.

Mind you, Rebecca's taking the heat well in stride. She's a very happy wee thing at the moment, giggling and laughing away. She has a new favorite game: airplanes! You play airplanes by picking her up (firm grip under the armpits), holding her up above you, and moving her up and down, back and forth, while making "gzzzhhh woooo wooo vvvzzzzhmmm wooo" noises. She grins broadly and giggles. Another variant has you lying on your back, holding her up above you and parallel to you, while you fly her around. She greatly enjoys this. Often, she enjoys it slightly too much. I can confirm that baby sick is quite hard to clean out of a beard. Fortunately, she missed my mouth.

I've just posted off the cheque for this year's London to Cambridge bike ride. The total amount I raised this year (including both on/offline contributions) totalled £170 (over NZ$500) - which I reckon isn't too shabby. Once again, many thanks for those who sponsored me; your money is going to a good cause.

Actual picture of finished bike build (and procedural pictures to follow soon, as soon as I get around to developing that final roll of actual film before we bought the digital camera) are now available on the Kaffenback page.

4130 style August 05, 2004  

Somewhat annoyed at the moment, as a project I was looking forward to working on now doesn't look to be getting off the ground due to lack of affordable materials. Ah well - another case of not counting chickens prior to hatching, I suppose.

I've been spending a fair bit of time recently using P2P networks legitimately, downloading MP3 versions of stuff I bought on cassette when I was a lot younger. Look, I've already bought the stuff once, I reckon I'm entitled to just download it rather than spending bloody hours trying to create my own MP3s from old audio tapes. So I've been going through a bit of a revisit to a lot of my early student days - bit of Sisters of Mercy, fair bit of Pop Will Eat Itself, good whack of Julian Cope & The Teardrop Explodes. It's like being 18 again. Except that I now have some muscle tone, I'm not living in a flat with a weekly rental just over the price of a bottle of vodka, the tattoos are a bit older, and I'm very slightly better dressed.

In the "if you're stuck for an idea for my Christmas present" league - KMX Karts are releasing an adult version of their BMX-style recumbent trike. Since "proper" recumbent trikes tend to start at twice this price (and don't ask how much anything really sexy, like a Windcheetah sets you back), and aren't really designed to be chucked around much, the prospect of an inexpensive and robust trike is very tempting. I've had a crack on a recumbent trike: it was a barrel of laughs (let's hear it for cornering on two wheels!). Combined the fun of go-carting with the joy of biking. And at around 600 notes, it's certainly reasonably doable.

Would that I were not a fiscally prudent(ish) person, and could afford such extravagance. Still, where would we put it, eh?

Today's themes: Reynard the Fox by The Teardrop Explodes and "B" movie by Gil Scott-Heron.

It's been as muggy as all hell here recently. The carnivores love it, as there's loads of flies around. Particularly hoverflies, which practically queue up to go to a messy death in the Sarracenia pitchers. There's so many hoverflies crawling around the pitchers that we now have a resident frog. He sits in the pots, by the base of the pitchers, and stalks the hoverflies. You can sit there of an evening, watching him stalking around the various pots, eyes firmly fixed on a particular fly. Most impressive.

Less good aspect of the heat/humidity: Rebecca seems to be finding it quite hard. She's got sharp little fingernails, and loves scratching herself until she draws blood. Our normal solution to this is to put clothes on the affected area - for example, she'll put gert big scratches on her thighs unless you put her in something with legs. Two problems: firstly, we don't have a hat that she can sleep in, and as a consequence she mangles her head. Secondly, all this clothing is quite hot for her. She gets very hot and grumpy, sweats lots, dehydrates and needs to be fed more, etc. It's a bit of a pain. We'd have scratch mitts on her at night (when she does the worst scratching, because we're not there to stop her), but she sucks her thumb for reassurance. We've reached a compromise where we put a scratch mitt on her left hand (she prefers sucking her right thumb), which helps a bit. She still looks very worrying. Anyone know somewhere that sells coolmax skullcaps for babies? I'd just get her a miniature bandanna, but the knot at the back wouldn't do her head any good.

Hmm. Maybe I could tie the bandanna reversed, gangsta do-rag stylee. I might try that tomorrow.

Well, I say that tying the bandanna with the knot at the front is the gangsta stylee. It's also very Northern housewife, standing on the front step with a ciggy, gossiping. My mental image is now confused between Straight Outta Compton and Coronation Street.

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