flip the onside March 30, 2006  

This year's ironic dress craze will be the return of walk shorts and knee socks. You heard it here first, folks.

I worked out how I can become a millionaire the other day. Publish a series of technical books modelled on the 'For Dummies' series, but aimed at the end of the market with absolutely no self-esteem, or indeed active self-loathing. Sample working titles: "Word for Total Fuckwits", "Excel for the Futile", and "Web Design for the Useless". Tagline: "If hate yourself enough to buy this book, then you're in our target market, you vile little piece of filth."

Heather's reading up on Power Yoga at the moment. I've not read the book, but I'm pretty sure that's the one where you tuck one leg behind your neck, jam a toe into an electrical socket, and chant "Ohm... ohm... ohm...".

There's a strange sense of satisfaction when you break something that came with a lifetime guarantee. Ha! Take that, undue confidence on the part of the manufacturers! I can defeat your petty engineering efforts! Then you realise that you're halfway through changing a tyre and you've just snapped your tyre lever. Uh-oh. Fortunately, I managed to bodge a tyre lever using the spanner attachment on my multi-tool (don't ask), and managed to complete my journey home.

Only one day until I can drink again. I've purchased a bottle of Old Speckled Hen in preparation. All the way from scenic Bury St Edmunds!

I've just got my basic certification in ITIL (basically, an IT service management best practice structure). As part of it, you can get a free badge showing that you've got the qualification. It's like being in the Scouts. I've sent away for it, of course. I can wear it on my blazer during job interviews. No-one will think I'm a pretentious wanker at all.

aix galericulata March 26, 2006  

We've had a Southerly for the last five days. It's swingeing rain, driving wind, and generally manky. Not great. Combine this with the recent bouts of illness we've all had, and it's been a bit blugh for the last couple of days. Nicer weather today meant that we spent the morning at the zoo, with Rebecca telling anyone nearby what we were looking at ("is guinea pigs! eating apples!").

While looking after a sick Rebecca, her grandparents also watched The Fellowship of the Ring. Rebecca doesn't have the attention span for that sort of thing, but did see some of it as she toddled around the place. She saw the first half of the movie; the relevant high points were: "Happy birthday!" when Frodo opens the envelope containing the ring (presents = birthday), "Man on horse!", and "Horsies fall over" (when the Ringwraiths are swept away by the flood). I can see a new form of capsule review in the offing.

For various reasons (mainly relating to illicit methamphetamine manufacture), most over-the-counter cold remedies sold in NZ don't contain pseudoephidrine. You're thus left presented with retail choices like Lemsip Cold & Flu tablets (active ingredient: 500mg of paracetamol per tablet) at $9 for a box of 18, or Pacimol paracetamol tablets (active ingredient: also 500mg of paracetamol per tablet) at $7.95 for a box of 100. Seriously. Lemsip seem to be relying on the words 'cold and flu' on the box to justify the ludicrously high pricing. Worse, it seems to be working.

I actually caught myself the other day starting a sentence with "As I get older, I find that...". And me only 30.

Astoundingly, my research has shown that there are a number of people out there whose immediate reaction upon picking up a new dictionary isn't to quickly look up a few rude words just to check how comprehensive the definitions are. Astonishing. The easiest way to check how good a dictionary is is to look up a few words that you know really well; and what words do you know better than the ones you use when you drop a hammer on your foot?

Dictionary crawling is, by the way, how I know that feijoas are named after a c19th Spanish botanist, J. Da Silva Feijo. So there you go.

Startling personal revelation from yesterday: I really enjoy finding interesting things and then showing them to other people. Discovering cool stuff (a great bike ride, an interesting plant, a cool song, an interesting philosophical concept) and sharing my enthusiasm. Basically, my ideal job would be one where I can spend a lot of time saying "See this? Isn't it cool?" to people.

On the headphones: up in flames by Manitoba. Now I wish I'd made the time to go see them when they played the Portland Arms.

zero half measures! March 21, 2006  

What do Requiem for a Dream, Pi, and Can U Dig It? have in common? Clint Mansell. Yup, the lead singer/guitarist of the incredible Pop Will Eat Itself is now working successfully as a film composer. That's career progression for you.

This revelation comes courtesy of the fact that the Wellington Public Library has quite a good collection of PWEI's back catalog. PWEI were my favorite band for the better part of a decade, and I still rate them most highly. As with most things that you really, really like in your youth, I basically stopped listening to them for about nine years, so it's good to revisit them and remember quite why I liked them so much in the first place. Good beats, good lyrics, shouting Midlanders, a sense of humour, namechecking Alan Moore - what's not to like? If you get a chance, pop down and check out PWEI Product: 1986-1996, a double-CD representative sampling of their back catalog from the early garage band days all the way through to industrial guitar frenzy. Worth a listen if you've never heard 'em. All together now: everybody's happy now, everybody's singing, everybody's happy now - we're bulletproof!

Hard couple of days in the house. Rebecca turned out not to be simply overtired as a result of her second birthday party (as we'd thought); shortly after putting an exhausted little girl to bed, we heard a very worrying hacking cough and associated crying. Turns out she has laryngotracheobronchitis, better known as croup. This has knocked her back a fair bit. She's had quite a hacking cough (worse at night when she's lying down), she's been really tired, and we've all been having a bad time of it. Heather spent the night on Saturday kipping on a 2cm-thick piece of foam rubber beside Rebecca's bed in case of problems. As it turned out, Rebecca got a good night's sleep but Heather didn't - funny how these things work out, eh? Heather's parents have been extremely helpful, though - they're staying with us at the moment, and it's great having them around to help out with R. Mind you, with Rebecca's coughing fits throughout the night, no-one's getting much sleep. Couple this with the ending of daylight saving, and we're now all getting up at 5:30am for breakfast. We are all little sunbeams at this time of the morning.

I must say, the state of bubble technology has advanced since I last dipped my toes in. I'm used to the old 'plastic loop that you dip into a bottle of bubble mixture' - trustworthy, reliable, hard to go wrong. One of our friends gave Rebecca a bubble gun for her birthday. It's basically a small electric fan with a couple of those plastic loops mounted in front. You dip the loops into a bowl of bubble mix, push the button, the fan starts, and whammo! Bubbles galore. It's actually astounding how effective this thing is. Rebecca's most impressed with it, and I'm not far behind. Better living through technology.

let's get down to it boppers March 17, 2006  

Blimey. Two years ago yesterday I was sitting in a hospital, feeling slightly dazed, and holding a very annoyed small person who was vociferously complaining about the sudden presence of all this space and light. I spent a lot of the time wandering around corridors, holding her on my shoulder, trying to get her to settle, desperately singing the only nursery rhyme I could remember: "Hush little baby, don't say a word, Daddy's going to buy you a mockingbird..." Except that I couldn't remember the verse after diamond ring (which is, of course, the second verse), and had to just make it up after that. I still can't remember any more of the words (I'm sure there's something to do with goats). Happy birthday, Rebecca.

fictional dogs March 13, 2006  

The problem with deep-frying lard would be to prevent the lard from just liquefying. You'd have to approach it like baked alaska: coat a chilled block of lard in a thick layer of something (probably just be easiest to use a thick batter) and deep-fry it quickly, then serve immediately. If you did it right, you could just get the lard nice and soft within a crispy batter shell.

I'd be tempted to give it a go as an experiment, if it weren't for the fact that the results would be revoltingly inedible whether it worked or not.

So Thursday night, I'm riding home. I get to the bottom of the gorge no worries, and start mentally girding myself for the ordeal that is to come. Just then - right at the bottom - I hear a cheerful voice calling out my name. It's one of my coworkers, who lives in Paparangi, and is riding a nice wee Avanti road bike. He says "C'mon, I'll ride up with you". I then have to ride up the gorge at a reasonable pace, giving it some welly to avoid looking like a complete woofter, making polite conversation as I go. I ended up doing the ride about 20% faster than I normally would. Luckily, he turned off at the Johnsonville exit, allowing me to casually continue riding up to the Newlands overbridge and then spend five minutes gasping frantically for breath while waiting for the stars to disappear from in front of my eyes. Handy that.

Mind you, it seems to be doing me good: on Friday, I managed to ride clean from the lights at the bottom of the gorge to our front door. Took it relatively slowly, kept it calm, and got to the overbridge still feeling relatively good. Felt very good to get to our front door OK. Annoyingly, I'm still off the booze (only another three weeks), so I celebrated my achievement with a refreshing glass of Coke Zero (motto: "slightly less vile than Diet Coke!"). Mmm. Phenylalanine.

Went to see Capote on Saturday night. My enjoyment of this rather good movie was somewhat spoilt by the person I was sitting next to. He was a middle aged bloke who'd clearly been dragged to the movie by his wife. About half an hour in, he fell asleep. Fine by me. Then he woke back up. Then he spent the rest of the movie in a waking doze: he'd be sitting upright fine, then his head would start to droop forward... further... further... and then he'd wake up with a jerk. Thirty seconds later his head would start to tip backwards... further... further... Until his head was pointing right back, eyes to the ceiling, and he'd wake with a jerk. The bugger kept up this pendulum performance for over an hour. I'm aware that given my record in meetings, I probably shouldn't be the one to point the finger, but at least I only nod off in events that people haven't paid for entry to.

Sunday afternoon, we went out for a bit of a family walk. I was out with Rebecca and up ahead of us we saw a lady with a dalmatian. "Look, Rebecca", I said, "who's that?", pointing at the dalmatian. Now, Rebecca is currently being read the wide variety of Hairy Maclary stories. These stories feature, among other characters, a dalmatian named Bottomley Potts (all covered in spots). Peering up at the dalmatian, you could see her thinking "I know this one... Now what was it again...". Then she looked up at me and said uncertainly "Big as a horse?" So she realised that I was talking about the Hairy Maclary books, but confused the catchphrases for Bottomley Potts and Hercules Morse (the Great Dane). Not bad for an under-2.

I'm quite impressed that Wikipedia has a subcategory of Children's Books for Fictional Dogs.

still knackered though March 06, 2006  

I cleaned the Ngauranga Gorge riding my road bike today. Of course, I had to stop and wait for my heart rate to drop back below 190 at the overbridge at the top, so I didn't quite ride all the way home without a rest. Absolutely stuffed me though. Pretty chuffed with it, mind.

Rebecca's current favorite books, in no particular order, are:

• The Quangle Wangle's Hat by Edward Lear. "And at night, by the light of the mulberry moon, they danced to the flute of the blue baboon..."
• Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy by Lynley Dodd. It's got a great rhythm, excellent pictures, and doggies. Though she did get quite indignant when we read it to her and we got to the passage about Hercules Morse, as big as a horse (a Great Dane). She looked carefully at the picture and then looked up at us and said in a firm voice, "No no no no no no no. Not horsie - doggie!".
• Poison-Arrow Frogs: Their Natural History and Care in Captivity by Ralf Heselhaus (english translation of Pfeilgiftfrösche). It's a combination of natural history, care instructions, and colour photographs. She loves the photographs. If she's in a bit of a bad mood, we sit her down and look at the pictures of frogs for a bit, and she calms right down. She'a a particular fan of Dendrobates azureus (which lent its name to a well-known bittorrent client), but she's also got quite a soft spot for D. tinctorius.

Her other big new thing is giving directions. I'll be in the car, driving into the shops in Johnsonville, and I'll hear a voice frm the back seat: "Daddy go that way!". She'll issue these commands, pointing in the desired direction. If she knows where we're going (basically, the shops, nursery, or Nana's house) then her directions are usually pretty accurate (though of course, since I'm driving, it's quite hard to turn around to check). She seems to reason that since she knows the way, she should be telling us how to do it. She also hopefully tries giving directions when she doesn't know where she's going. For example, when we're out in the pram, telling me that I should go "this way!" and pointing across a stream and straight up the sheer side of a gulley. But if she thinks she knows where we're going, and you don't follow her directions, it can get a bit fraught. Notably, if you say that we're off to the shops, and then fail to go to Johnsonville (for example, popping up to Porirua). As you drive past the exit for J'ville, a chorus of frantic directions erupts from the back seat, followed by frustrated sobs at your foolish inability to follow simple instructions.

We toddled off yesterday and watched the latter half of the Wellington round of the UCI Women's World Cup Cycling tour. Most impressive. The course was 6.2k of downtown Wellington, including two fairly grunty climbs (notably up Boulcott St onto The Terrace). Sarah Ulmer tore the legs off the field, coming in 4'24" ahead of the main field after a break six laps into the 20 lap race. Impressive stuff; a very good ride indeed. Towards the end, the peleton seemed to accept that Ulmer had won, and started racing for second. And, presumably, for UCI points: although Sarah Ulmer isn't a serious contender for the Women's World Championships, there were championship points on offer for all placings down to 20th. I was quite disappointed to find out that Nicole Cooke, the Welsh dynamo, crashed out of the race early on. Pity - I was really hoping for her to put some pressure on. It was an excellent field overall (including Judith Arndt and Oenone Wood), which just puts Ulmer's performance into sharp relief. Nice one the local girl, and I'm sure that Avanti are shifting rather a lot of her SUB (Sarah Ulmer Brand) kit this week. And it was very good to see the lasses from the Wholly Bagels team holding their own with the world's best.

From the 'when punk rock rebellion goes a little bit pear-shaped' file: if you want to put some stickers on your bike to stick it to the man and show your contempt for the overweening car fetishism of contemporary Western society, there are plenty of stickers of varying hostility and rebellion factor. But you might want to avoid this one: "This bike is a pipe bomb". It was only a matter of time before someone didn't get the joke, with predictable results.

It does beg the question, though. Has anyone yet started producing "This bike is not a pipe bomb" stickers? I'd buy one

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