with apologies to myles na gopaleen, after listening to the new don mcglashan album May 30, 2006  

When discussing the quality of mild unhappiness, and bearing in mind that the word 'sad' has connotations of wretchedness, what are we instead?

Melancholy.

With what may something characterised by a great degree of melancholy be?

Suffused.

And barring this suffusion, if the object, person, or occasion has a lesser degree of melancholy, what is it?

Tinged.

And in what measures is melancholy never assigned?

It is never loaded, crammed, packed, soaked (though it may, in some cases, be steeped), painted, lathered, or covered.

Will that be all?

Yes, I think that is enough for today.

one of us May 29, 2006  

First off, congrats and best wishes to Maire and Rodger! Good luck, and just remember: you get used to the sleep deprivation pretty fast.

Late May. That time of year.

In the Northern hemisphere, the days are getting longer and warmer.

The Giro d'Italia has finished.

ProBikeKit have got in all their replica team jerseys.

It's only another month till the Tour starts. Oooh yes. Basso's won the Giro, he's on good form, and it'd be great to see someone take the double again. One of the oft-cited criticisms of Lance was that he focussed solely on the Tour to the exclusion of all else, treating the other races as training aids or ways to gauge his fitness in his build-up to the Tour. This is arguably true: his near-solipsistic focus on the Tour meant that he could surgically calculate the effort required on every day and could absolutely ride himself into the ground when required. But it'd be great to see Basso prove that you don't necessarily have to focus just on one major tour; knocking off the double would mean that he'd achieved something that Lance never did. Roll on July....

Which just means that I need to figure out some way to be able to watch it. Since I basically object to paying money for TV, we don't have any form of cable or owt, which basically leaves us with seeing what we can find on the internet. Between cycling.tv and bittorrent, I should be able to find something reasonable, with a bit of luck. Anyone with any handy tips, pass 'em on.

Apparantly you can get vermicomposting toilets. As in, it's a composting toilet (not connected to the sewage systems, converts human waste into compost) that uses worms as the main composting agent. Which, to me, raises an interesting question - the main composting action that worms perform is to eat the waste and to pass it through their digestive tract. Given that, surely all the composting toilet is doing is converting one kind of shite to another?

Notice how, with great forebearance, I manage to restrain myself from comparing that process to anything else.

Rebecca likes music. She frequently asks us to sing to her (she doesn't yet know that I can't hold a tune). The other evening, I was getting her dinner and she demanded that I sing along to the stereo. Unfortunately, I was playing the Aphex Twin at the time. Drill & Bass, braincore, call it what you will - it was a lot of noisy clanging and thuds. Singing along wasn't really an option. On the other hand, I show a surprising proclivity to pick up the words to children's songs (I can now sing all of the theme tune to Balamory, for instance), so there's hope yet.

Today's pet hate: idiots who put revision dates in their documents as MS Word {DATE} fields. Great, so now we've got a revision history that just tells me what today's date is. I know what today's date is. I want to know when you last updated this document, numbskull.

Apparantly, the key to happiness in your job is to find something that you really love and then get someone else to pay you to do it. To me, this begs a question. Is there money in sarcasm?

mobile trench foot May 23, 2006  

I've decided on my personal theme song at work. It's sung to the tune of "Smack my bitch up" by the Prodigy, but it's called "Get my desk tidied up".

A lot of people think that cycling on the road in Wellington is dangerous. I don't tend to agree - mind you, I also don't ride through much of the central city on a regular basis. About 60% of my commute is on cyclepaths, which reduce the risk from cars. Of course, it drastically increases the risk from pedestrians, other cyclists, and, um, cars (pulling in/out).

There are only actually two dodgy bits on my commute (well, three if you count when it's really windy and I'm coming down the Ngauranga Gorge at speed). The first one is coming along Thorndon Quay. Either way, I'm going at a time when a lot of cars are pulling in or out, and they're often not looking for cyclists or misjudge the speed that you're moving at (or just don't care). As long as you ride relatively assertively and are confident about moving into the main stream of traffic you're normally OK. The second is going along the foot/cyclepath around Kaiwharawhara (from around Thorndon up to about the Khandallah turnoff). Since it's a combined foot/cyclepath, the surface leaves a lot to be desired (and is currently being redone in several places). This goes past the entries to a number of businesses, so cars pull in and out. Cars pulling out as I go home are a particular problem - the buggers generally only look to their right to see if there's any oncoming traffic on the road, and ignore the fact that a cyclist could be coming from their left (I've had to do a few panic stops). But not half as much of a problem as a bit further down. The trouble is, there's a childcare center just past Kaiwharawhara, and going home there's always a lot of activity of high-powered parents pulling in to pick little Tarquin up from his day of heuristic play. Parents and kids walking to their cars I don't mind - the kids usually look pretty jealous as you zoom past on your bike - it's the large number of parents who pull in/out aggressively, or drive down the footpath, treating 'yield to tonnage' as a moral imperative on you rather than a practical consideration. Of course, most of the parents are actually pretty considerate, but there's always a few highly agressive types who set the tone. And, funnily enough, these high-testosterone types tend to be driving the big, wide cars that take up most of the available room.

On the other hand: this morning we had fairly heavy rain. I looked out the window, saw the traffic wasn't moving too fast, and thought "stuff it, I'll ride in". I left the house just before 8am, and was dripping gently at my desk by 8:21. Our next door neighbour - who has the desk about 20 feet away from me - left home at 8am, and arrived at work at 9:26. The bus had been slightly delayed by a 15 car pile up at the bottom of the Ngauranga Gorge. OK, I arrived soaking wet (from the waist down - my rain jacket proved equal to the task), but I had a hot shower and was at my desk by 8:30. See, employers! Cyclists are more punctual! And fitter, so less likely to take sick days! OK, so we're also more likely to leak important information about major telecommunications infrastructure changes (who came up with the name 'Tar Babies', anyway?), but you gotta take the rough with the smooth.

I know I've been spending too long wading through COBIT when... phrases like "insight-to-effort ratio" start to seem reasonable. It's a measure of how useful a metric is weighed against how much effort it is to obtain the metric. If I wrote business books I'd have called it something memorable like "Value to PT (Pain in the Tits) ratio".

tectonic May 17, 2006  

Having commented on the earthquake the other day, about an hour after I'd posted that I was lying in bed and heard the windows rattling. "Blimey", thought I, "it's that bloody neighbour's cat on the windowsill again!" Of course, it turns out to have been another earthquake - this time a force 7.6 quake centred 800k north of Auckland. So around 1500k (call it 900 miles or so) north of us, then. Or: a big one for us to have felt it. Pace the increase in seismic activity, and my comment yesterday about the Ngauranga Gorge becoming impassable, I've had to come up with an emergency plan. I've got a mountainbike that could probably get me across reasonable swathes of rubble. I've got a backpack. I've got a balaclava. I've got a cricket bat. So if the worst comes to the worst, the Big One hits and civilisation temporarily disappears, I'll ride across to Johnsonville and loot Woolworths.

actual mirrors May 16, 2006  

Had a bit of a wiggle yesterday morning. Over 5.0 on the richter scale, not too far down - we felt the house shake a bit. Interestingly, looking at the Greater Wellington Regional Council maps of earthquake risk, I note that Newlands is really low risk - but the Ngauranga Gorge (basically the only way in/out of the northern suburbs) is one of the highest risks in Wellington (presumably due to the danger of slips). Which means that if the Big One comes, our house is unlikely to be destroyed directly, but we might end up cut off from civilisation (well, Johnsonville) for a bit. You'll also notice that the entire Wellington CBD - resting, as it does, on reclaimed land, and right near to the fault line - is identified as relatively high risk. So we might not have anything much left to be cut off from.

OK, so we know that headphones while cycling mean that you can't hear traffic - but they also mean that you can't hear bears chasing you. Bloke survived, mind.

A lot of people call Madonna the queen of reinvention, but I reckon Coldcut would give her a run for her money. Back in the early '90s, they kicked off as a pop dance act, working with vocalists like Lisa Stansfield and Queen Latifah. In the mid '90s they got dropped, started their own record label (the incredibly wonderful Ninja Tune, and became the ultimate UK leftfield mixologists. Cue ground-breaking albums, series of DJ mixes, etc. And now, in what I find myself forced to refer to as the mid '00s, they've released Sound Mirrors, and combined their previous two directions. It's a much more chart-friendly feeling, but with a good swack of offcentre. Previous collaborators such as Roots Manuva and Saul Williams are in evidence. The musical style ranges around the place, but each track on the CD is recognisably a 'song' rather than a 'track', whether it's a swift-flowing house workout, a bouncy bhangra dance number, or a trip-hop jazz sesh. Funky, but poppy - made for airplay, I reckon. I'd be surprised if we don't hear a bit more about it in the charts in the near future. Or at least, you'll hear it in the background of ads, which is what seems to happen to all decently funky music these days. No airplay, but if you want to whore out the new Ford Breadbox, you're on a winner. Sorry, got distracted there.

And Rebecca really likes the combination of bhangra beats and Roots Manuva's vocals on True Skool, and jumps around when she hears it. So it gets the toddler seal of approval.

Happy birthday, Livia! We all wombled along to Livia's fifth birthday party and had a great time. Rebecca particularly enjoyed herself, and ate at least two saveloys, a large number of rice crackers, and an undisclosed amount of cake.

If anyone's interested in helping populate the database on ZoomIn, I've started a Playgrounds in Wellington group to list, well, playgrounds in Wellington. It's always handy to know where the closest playground is, after all. I've posted a couple, and I'm planning to add a few more as I get around to it. But if anyone else wants to help, it'd be most nice, ta.

I habitually wear a titanium ring on my right middle finger (present from Heather a few years ago). One of the interesting things about titanium is that it transmits heat extremely well. So if you hold a hot/cold object in that hand, you can feel the top side of your finger get hot/cold within seconds. It's an extremely odd feeling.

I've been reading Chris Boardman's autobiography/training manual. It's quite an interesting read, particularly when compared to that of Graham Obree. The two of them were the great hopes of British cycling in the early 90s, and concentrated on the same events (notably, both taking the hour record). Boardman's autobiog was written in 2000, at the end of his professional career (and presumably prior to his final hour attempt, as it doesn't mention it), and is pretty obviously ghosted. It's a relatively light tome, with a lot of exposition of his training methods, some brief autobiographical info, extracts from his training diary, etc. He illustrates examples of his training principles with reference to his own life. Boardman was an extremely driven athlete, and was very intently focussed on using the latest advances in sports science to wring every drop of performance out of his body. It's an intriguing comparison to Obree's autobiography, which was written by him as part of his therapy (ongoing treatment for the depression that has caused, so far, three suicide attempts). Obree was determinedly low-tech compared to Chris Boardman's tactics of training in a wind tunnel to determine the most aerodynamic position possible. Obree set one of his hour records on a meal of marmelade sandwiches. The two athletes are very similar mentally: both extremely focussed, near-obsessional about their goals. It's interesting to see the very different ways that these tendencies manifested themselves, but with very similar results.

the gen May 09, 2006  

The inestimable Harry Hutton has the definitive word on the John Prescott scandal. Oh, would that I had a similar muse of fire and vinegar!

light and frothy May 08, 2006  

I got Rebecca her first fluffy (or babyccino, or bambaccino, depending on who you talk to) yesterday. If you've not seen one, it's a sign of how far cafe culture has permeated New Zealand - it's a hot fluffy milk (made as you'd make the milk for a cappuccino), served in an espresso cup, for small children. Presumably so the kids can have something while Mummy has a coffee. We'd gone to the library and hit the cafe there for afternoon tea. The bloke asked what I wanted with it. I went with my normal default, which is 'everything'. Rebecca ended up being served a hot milk sprinkled with powdered chocolate and hundreds and thousands, with three marshmallows on the side. She took to it like a duck to water. She was particularly keen on scraping the foam out of the cup with a spoon. When she'd finished, she waved the cup at me and asked hopefully for more. Of course, she was also after a swig of my V, which is basically stupidly overcaffeinated sugar-water, so that didn't fly. But she's made her first tentative steps on the long, hard road that will inevitably lead in a couple of decade's time, to her moaning that the crema on her espresso is too thin. What thrills we have to anticipate.

So Telecom have been forced to hand over the local loop. Excellent - that's us only, what, five years behind the UK, is it? Various more serious commentators have made a number of good points - see Hard News for a good discussion. I'm just going to say that I'm quite glad that Telecom's stranglehold on NZ's telecommunications infrastructure is over. When I left in the late 90s, NZ had much better telecoms (certainly, much better internet access) than the UK - when I returned, the reverse was true. We're a small country, we move fast, we have a wide diaspora that regularly communicates home - I'm astonished at the state of our telecoms infrastructure. And I'd be interested to know what the justification for our horrific charging for mobile telephony (most expensive in the OECD in absolute terms, let alone relative) is - I rather suspect it to be "because we can".

If I was going to start my own clothing label, I'd have to call it Fickle Fashion. I'd be astonished if that joke hasn't already been taken, though.

Currently listening to: Softcore Cabaret, compilation album selected by Ladytron. Any album that opens with My Bloody Valentine's soon is a goer. An excellent melange of new wave/electro/shoegazer tracks, from The Fall, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, !!!, Seenenluft, Ladytron... and ending out with Shocking Blue's Send me a postcard and the original version (Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood) of Some Velvet Morning.

service evil agreement May 05, 2006  

The other morning, I managed to get Rebecca to take Heather's birthday present in while singing "Happy Birthday". OK, she tripped up halfway through and took the card off to investigate it, but for a two year old, excellent multitasking, I thought. And a great big happy birthday to my lovely wife, too.

Contemporary dub and roots: proud revival of an ethnic music, or prog rock without the wizards and dwarves? Long songs, emphasis on instrumentals, blethering about nature, heavy use of drugs, long hair... an onlooker could get confused between the two, all I'm saying.

Mind you, I suppose you could say a lot of the same about the early 90s ambient onslaught. And since I have always sworn that if I'm ever on Desert Island Disks I'll be picking The Orb's a huge ever growing pulsating brain that rules from the centre of the ultraworld: live mix mark ii as one of my tracks, I haven't got a leg to stand on.

Urination on a colleague - subject of a German "special interest" filmic presentation, or typical New Zealand sporting celebration? Looks like the events of the Commonwealth games are still getting the headlines. I note with interest that the mum of the athlete in question is blaming a strong drinking culture within NZ cycling. I would argue that it's not just New Zealand cycling, it's New Zealand per se.

The Brits drink habitually, and have a fine tradition of binge-drinking. Here in NZ, we don't drink as a matter of course quite as much (anyone who went to the pub for a couple of pints at lunch every day of the week would probably find themselves having a little chat with their manager), but we have an equally good culture of binge-drinking. This particularly applies in sports. In a lot of NZ communities, the local sports club (OK, the local rugby club) is one of the main bars in town. You drink if you win, you drink if you lose; you just sink the bloody p***. We just don't have a culture of drinking responsibly - the six o'clock swill mentality is still present. Anyone here been down Castle St in Dunedin on a friday night? Or, for that matter, a thursday?

Speaking of alcohol: New World Metro (small supermarket) on Willis St in Wellington is selling Charles Wells' excellent ale Bombardier for $3.99 per bottle on special. At the current exchange rate, that's £1.38. The same bottle of ale is on sale at Tesco.com for £1.60. This isn't some locally brewed off-brand stuff, this is exactly the same beer, brewed at the same brewery, and imported into NZ. So perhaps my predictions that moving back to NZ would mean that I couldn't get a decent pint anymore were somewhat hasty.

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