Wednesday, June 30th 2004

Epitome

Yuko confessed to Patricia about our disloyalty yesterday. She was very understanding. But she only knows about the existence of Lane Cove, Chatswood and Artarmon, so she had no idea where Woolwich is.

CSS

During breakfast, I finally solved my CSS problem. The answer was right there in the Fish book. And so I was able, later in the day to finally install my re-designed Chess Club Page. After some more messing around I even got it to validate as strict HTML 4.01 (but only the main page).

Smoke

When I went walking in the afternoon there was smoke around. I also saw a fire engine go past on River Road with its siren on. The smoke was rising from a spot on the north-west horizon and it looked pretty close so I thought it might be a building over on Epping Road. However, I then heard on the radio that is was just a boring grass fire in the Lane Cove National Park.

Little Chicken

We had intended to go the the sushi fair tonight. But due to the complexity of having two low-level sushi eaters and one professional sushi eater, we decided at the last minute that it would be better to go tomorrow instead when the sushi fair is over.

So instead we ate a "little chicken" after Mother had recommended them. It's not obvious from the picture, but this is a pigeon sized bird. Poor little headless chicken...

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End of Month

And thus, another exciting month, and financial year, in the lives of the Noswonkies ends...

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Tuesday, June 29th 2004

Welcome to Pixie

If you are reading this, you have reached the new noswonky web server at Pixie. If you are reading a different page, then I've stuffed up!

At about 6.30pm today, I redirected most of the pages under the noswonky home page to their mirror pages on the Pixie server (this being one of them). You might notice that the URL of this page is not under the noswonky.com domain. That's because I haven't transferred the domain yet and users are simply redirected. But I hope everything still works. After I transfer the domain the URLs should look like they did before.

The first benefit of the new host is that the Chess pages are now updated automatically every hour. Until now I've had to type a command manually to do this every day. Now, I have the luxury of cronjobs.

Disloyalty to Epitome

I know this might be a shock to regular readers, but today we went to a cafe other than Epitome! (Don't tell the Epitome staff)

We went to Woolwich...

This is the place we went to on May 30th, the name of which I don't remember. We sat in a semi-enclosed area with a view of the city and Harbour Bridge. The weather was perfect and the food was nice, although a tad small...

Thing

When Yuko came back from her walk, I told her I had bought something interesting, but I refused to tell her what it was. I said "you will find it". This made her very curious and she was looking around everywhere trying to find the thing. However, she was not very successful. Eventually, I had to point her in the right direction and she found it...

Yuko often walks around in the dark banging on the wall to feel where she's going. This little automatic light in the hall will make it easier to walk in the dark, because it won't be dark. She liked it.

Sushi

Ponto-Cho is having a Sushi Fair so Yuko said we have to go. I called Mother and we arranged to go on Thursday. But when Yuko rang to make a booking, they said it ends on Wednesday (the end of the month). So we had to change to Wednesday. Unfortunately, this clashes with a proposed table tennis outing which I'll have to skip.

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Monday, June 28th 2004

Whoops...

While working on the transfer of files to the new web server, I did a stupid thing. I made an error when uploading some files which overwrote some files with backups from a few days ago! The effect of this is that replies posted between June 22 and today (June 28) were lost. Damn!

But then... I found another backup. I think everything is restored now.

Translation

I finished off the translation in the morning and sent it to Keiko at about 10:30am. She was very happy and will send money anon.

Epitome

We were upstairs and when they brought Yuko's earl grey, they forgot the milk jug. So Yuko used the mobile to call Patricia downstairs to demand the jug be brought up. This caused much hilarity and the milk soon arrived.

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Sunday, June 27th 2004

Yuko has been reading Japanese comics. I think she may be too young to be exposed to such material!

Scotts

We left to go to Betty and Bruce's place at about 1.15pm. Yuko had intended to take some Shiso leaf tempura for them, but she didn't have time to cook it. So she cooked it at their place. Betty was a bit nervous that her kitchen would be trashed, but it wasn't!

Mother took her art portfolio to show them. Here is one of several works she displayed...

Afternoon tea included lots of home made goodies...

Then they let me hold their horse...

... and play their piano. It's always nice to play on a real piano for a change. However, the keyboard feels so different from the non-weighted electronic variety, that I found it quite difficult to play.

Mother wore her new coat and we told the story of how she acquired it for chickenfeed. Yuko took this picture which I think is the best photo of Mother in recent times.

Translation

Keiko emailed me the document for translation and I spent most of the evening working on it. It's a product information pamphlet running to 6 A4 pages. The tricky part is that it contains a lot of jargon words (from bio-chemistry), but by 11pm I'd got through the whole thing with just a few odd issues outstanding. I'll finish it off tomorrow.

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Saturday, June 26th 2004

Coat Swap

Yuko decided that she liked Mother's $12 coat better than her own $200 coat. So before breakfast we dropped in on Mother and Yuko put to her the proposition of a swap. Mother agreed...

At Lane Cove there was a jazzy band playing in the gazebo, but it was a bit windy to sit outside, so we went upstairs.

Keiko

Yuko found some ko-ebi in the freezer the other day. They had been there for several months and we'd forgotten about them. We had some yesterday, and today Yuko suddenly decided to give some of them to Keiko. So she cooked them and we drove over there at about 6.30pm. Keiko was very glad to get the ko-ebi.

Web Server

I made some progress in getting a copy of the Noswonky site running on the Pixie server. I was hoping to transfer the domain over this weekend. However, we're going to the Scotts for afternoon tea tomorrow and I'll also be working on Keiko's translation so I may not have time to do any web server stuff.

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Friday, June 25th 2004

Badminton

Eight players today ([Name Omitted], [Name Omitted], [Name Omitted], [Name Omitted], [Name Omitted], [Name Omitted], [Name Omitted] and me) so we booked two courts. Again we played at UTS.

The general consensus is that UTS is a better place than Macquarie and so we might play there every week.

Books

I then went to Borders at Macquarie Centre to look for a book on a particular topic. But instead I bought two books on different topics!

One of them was the O'Reilly CSS book which appears to be much better than the book I've been using. I chose it partly because, after yesterday laying out the Chess Club web page with CSS, I ran into problems with some of the other pages on the site when using the same style sheet. It just does something unexpected and unacceptable and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I think the book will shed light on the problem.

Keiko

When I got home Yuko asked me to drive her to Keiko's house at Balmain to drop in some stuff to her. So I did. This is in connection with their scheme.

Later Keiko rang and asked if I could do a translation job over the weekend. It's a nine-page document which she will email me on Sunday, and it's due on Tuesday morning.

Fire

I installed a hook and hung the fire blanket in a convenient location in the kitchen. In case of fire, pull!

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Thursday, June 24th 2004

Belinda

Belinda has an ant problem...

This has happened before, but today it was the worst I've seen. I can't figure out how they get onto her or why they want to. I weilded a can of Mortein as a temporary solution.

Mother

At about 1pm our doorbell rang. It was Mother paying us a surprise visit. She returned a borrowed video tape and invited us out to dinner.

So we went to the Korean BBQ at Eastwood.

Then we had coffee at our house. Mother damanded a latte. This involves pre-heating the milk in a red thingy...

Japanese Scheme

Yuko and Keiko have been emailing each other all day, discussing the details of their new scheme. Yuko told Mother about it while we were having coffee and Mother came up with a great name for the enterprise (which I can't yet reveal). For this she will demand royalties. I also confirmed that the domain name is available. Yuko emailed Keiko to see what she thinks, but she hasn't replied yet.

Chess Web

I decided to re-layout the Chess Club web site using CSS. I did the original layout about four years ago and it looks a bit clunky now. The new version now exists but I won't install it as the default page until I resolve some problems with some of the other pages on the site which are not fully compatible with the new layout.

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Wednesday, June 23rd 2004

Lunch

Yuko went to the city to meet Keiko for a girls' talking lunch. I dropped her at St. Leonards at about 11.30am. I therefore had free time again. She took the camera with her but only the food was photographed.

When Yuko returned she told me that she and Keiko had concocted a scheme involving XXXXXXXX X XXXXXXX XXXXXXX

Meanwhile, I bought fish and chips and went up to Greenwich lookout to have lunch and read the paper. However, as I began to eat, I was approached by a black bitch who held the view that my lunch belonged to her! The bitch deposited saliva on me as I attempted to ward her off. Then a guy came over and dragged the bitch away with a piece of rope and I was able to relax in peace. Unfortunately, no pictures were taken of this incident because, of course, Yuko had the camera.

Step Toe

I kicked Yuko's wooden steps with my left toe. This caused an injury to my left pinky toe comparable to the injury to my right pinky toe which happened on June 8th.

Today (left foot)

June 8 (right foot)

This caused me moderate distress and cursing was abundant. Later, Yuko refused to apologise for causing this injury.

Home Farm

The shallots are growing faster than expected and are now contributing to our food supply.

The crop...

The harvest...

The dinner...

Pixie

Lots of FTPing, script tweaking and stuff like that.

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Tuesday, June 22nd 2004

Epitome Alone

Yuko XXXXXX XX XXX XXXXXXX and therefore decided not to go to Epitome. So I went to Epitome alone. Patricia was shocked when I told her the reason for Yuko's absence. By the time I got back, Yuko was XXXXX XXXXXXXX XX XXXXX XX XXX XXXXXXX XXX XXXXX XXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXX

I'm a Pixie

I've been using my current web hosting company Addr.com, for about four years and I've had no real problems with them. However, because I need more space and more features, I've been considering changing hosts. Then, recently I found this site which rates web hosts based on customer reviews. So I took a look at the reviews for my current hosting company. Here are some of the titles of reviews by customers...

• Run by incompetents (1 / 10)
• They don't even respond when you want to set up an account (1 / 10)
• Terrible support. Don't use these guys (1 / 10)
• bordering on slimy (1 / 10)
• horrible (1 / 10)
• Unreliable email... (1 / 10)
• Support Slipping over time (8 / 10)
• Always up but zero support (3 / 10)
• The worst company ever (1 / 10)
• terrible service (1 / 10)
• Very poor tech support (2 / 10)
• Terrible servive (2 / 10)
• They're committing fraud (2 / 10)
• Excellent host so far (9 / 10)
• all around not bad not good (5 / 10)
• Worthless (2 / 10)
• Nightmare on Web Street (1 / 10)
• Not Bad (8 / 10)
• No site statistics (2 / 10)
• I've Left Husbands for Less (1 / 10)
• worst company I have ever dealt with (1 / 10)
• very poor support, old/troublesome servlet technology (2 / 10)
• Awful tech servicve and customer support!!! (1 / 10)
• unreliable (1 / 10)
• Bogus Hosting service (1 / 10)
• Poor customer service, over-active billing department (3 / 10)
• The WORST hosting company you could ever use! (1 / 10) by Ron

That's surprising given that I've found them to be ok! Perhaps my standards are too low. Or maybe it's because I've never needed support.

So after much consideration and research I've decided to move the Noswonky site to PixieHost. It gives me more space and more features for less money. And the customer reviews are good too! So I signed up today with PixieHost. It was activated immediately and I began Noswonkyfying it.

If all goes well, I'll transfer the noswonky.com domain to point to Pixie in the next few days.

Mother

Mother's smoke alarm started "chirping" today so she asked me to take a look at it. Of course, the chirping means that the battery is low. I changed the battery but the "test" button still didn't work! I then used a candle to make some smoke and the device did indeed work.

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Monday, June 21st 2004

Tasks

Yuko gave me some tasks.

First... change the battery in her personal security alarm.

Cut some wood...

And fill up some boxes with leaves (no picture of that). I make no claim to being a skilled wood cutter and the task of cutting the remains of a palm (tree) into three pieces was moderately taxing. I think I should stick to mouse-pushing.

Sushi and Table Tennis

TT was organised by [Name Omitted] for this evening. So I suggested to Yuko that we eat first at Ponto-Cho. As usual, the ebi were excellent and Yuko ate some strange things.

We then went to the Club (don't click it) for TT. The others soon arrived and [Name Omitted] asked the guy at the desk for the TT equipment. But he said it was already out! After some confusion, some people turned up carrying the box of equipment. Apparently they had obtained the box earlier and debarked with it to prevent anyone else from using it. Bastards! So we had to wait around for 30 minutes until they finished playing.

Then we played doubles for about an hour. Three of us were a bit out of practice, but after a while I felt I was starting to get back in touch. Yuko also played quite well.

One player said that my ball carrying bag was "a bit nancy". Surely not!

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Sunday, June 20th 2004

Movie

We took Mother to see the movie Shrek 2.

It's the story of an ugly guy who resorts to taking drugs (which he obtains by theft) to solve his marital problems. Meanwhile, his father-in-law hires a hit man to have him killed. Of course stories like this are very popular with young children, and the theatre was full of them.

We thought it was quite entertaining and better than the first Shrek. If you see this movie, don't leave when the credits start. There's an extra scene at the end which reveals details of the donkey's sex life.

Mother

We also invited Mother for dinner at our house. We ate John Dory...

We discussed today's movie and I mentioned that Shrek's voice was done by Mike Myers. She said that this was surprising given his background of political protest and activism. As I was unaware of this facet of Mike Myers' life, I fired up Google to find his biography. However, I couldn't find anything about that. Then Mother mentioned Mike Myers' appearance at the academy awards in which he attacked president Bush's policies. Then I realised what was going on. She was confusing these two Mikes...

Myers

Moore

Kubrick

I've been watching the series of Kubrick movies on SBS recently including A Clockwork Orange and 2001. But tonight it was one of Kubrick's worst (or "less successful") movies Barry Lyndon. I had never seen this movie and, after seeing it, I can understand why it would not be a big commercial success. But actually it wasn't bad. The interesting thing from a technical point of view is how Kubrick used authentic light, by which I mean either natural light or candle light for the indoor scenes. He had to use super-fast lenses (f/0.7) for the candle-lit scenes and the resulting shallow depth of field was very obvious.

But I think Kubrick should have stuck to sex, violence, apes and computers.

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Saturday, June 19th 2004

Handsome Man

Yuko thinks the guy on the front page of yesterday's Herald is handsome. I'd better not say any more lest this site is shut down by the U.S. government.

New Two Steps

Yuko took the broken steps back to the shop. I advised her to ask for a refund as I really think it's an unsafe design rather than just a defective unit. But she didn't. She got a replacement AND bought a folding table from the same shop.

Scotts and Dog

In the plaza there were some Scottish things happening. So Yuko joined a clan...

Then Yuko photographed a dog wearing a jacket on a shop counter...

Rain and Wind

There was significant wind, and a little rain in the afternoon. We saw it approaching on the BOM radar and it looked like it was going to be a significant wetting. Then it fizzled. However it was windy enough that I thought it necessary to bring Belinda inside lest a tree fall on her.

As I wanted to learn how to create a GIF animation with The Gimp, I decided to use the weather radar as a test case.

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Friday, June 18th 2004

Sock

Last night I was wearing my diamond* studded alpaca socks (the eyes of the alpacas are diamonds*). Anyway, Yuko started picking at the diamonds* saying "these would be good for my glasses". I had to fight her off to protect the integrity of my alpaca's eyes.

Picnic

When we woke up, the weather looked a bit dodgy for the picnic. As Yuko had to prepare, there was no time to have breakfast. Instead, I was sent to the shops to buy a cob of corn. When I returned, Yuko left to pick up the other members of her party from the station. By that time the weather was looking much better. Of course, I was not invited to the picnic, but the following pictures were taken.

Seiko and two Keikos

Keiko and Yuko and a chicken

Wine was drunk in abundance

They sent me back these treasures

For dinner I got the scraps from the picnic which were turned into soup.

Badminton

Today's players were [Name Omitted], [Name Omitted], [Name Omitted], [Name Omitted], [Name Omitted] and me.

We played at U.T.S. today for the first time. The parking was a bit confusing and I ended up parking a considerable distance from the building. However, I found the courts without difficulty.

It was very quiet; hardly a soul around when I arrived. Perhaps they are having exams too (like Macquarie). But towards the end of our session a big group of soccer players arrived and it was a bit disruptive. We decided to book the court 15 minutes earlier next week to avoid them.

We had six players, and as there was noone else around for most of the time we were able to use two courts.

Garage Sale

We have a family tradition of holding a garage sale once every 20 years. The first one was in 1979. Then we had one in 1999. So I have told Mother and Yuko that the next one will be in 2019.

However, they have been hassling me to hold the next one early. So last week I reluctantly agreed. I thought it was supposed to be this Saturday, but as I've been rather busy this week, I really hadn't done any preparation. So I rang Mother late in the afternoon to ask if she still wanted to go ahead with it. I was relieved to hear that she didn't. In fact she thought it was going to be the following Saturday! She suggested we postpone it indefinitely. I agreed without reluctance!

Technology Change

Today, this blog entry has been created in a different way. Normally I login to the web server with ssh and edit the text file there. However, it seems that ssh access is becoming a rarity on web hosting services and, as I'm planning to change hosts, I thought I'd better get used to the non-ssh style. So I acquired a gui-based drag-and-drop style ftp tool thingy and used it for real today. One problem is that I can't actually see what the blog entry will look like until I upload it. But I think I can get used to it.

* Well ok, they might not be real.

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Thursday, June 17th 2004

Cold

It was cold all day. In fact Yuko took her own heater to Epitome...

And Fujiko and Fifi got close together to keep warm.

Broken Step

Our blind was broken, so I used Yuko's steps to gain access and perform the repair. However, when I stepped down onto the lower step, it cracked and showed signs of a lack of structural integrity...

We'll be returning it to the shop.

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Domestic

In the evening I did domestic work. I had to tidy the Japanese room. Yuko's picnicers might drop in tomorrow.

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Wednesday, June 16th 2004

Fire

It was a bit cold in the morning so Helmut fired up the fire.

Free Time

Yuko went to the city in the afternoon for a meeting with [Name Omitted] of XXXXX so I had free time. However I decline to comment on the merits or otherwise of free time.

Billy

Yuko found a billy in the cupboard. So she proceeded to sing Waltzing Matilda...

As seen in the photo, the billy is a high-tech model which includes a pouring spout and a tilting handle. We never had such luxuries in my camping days as a boy-scout. Yuko plans to use this billy for the picnic on Friday.

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Tuesday, June 15th 2004

The 2 Steps

Yuko bought a set of two steps.

as a result of this, she "discovered" a lot of items in our high cupboards that nobody knew existed. These items then filled up our kitchen.

Headless Chicken

The Japanese don't usually cook whole chickens. But today Yuko decided to try it for the first time. I was sent to purchase a suitable bird and, after obtaining some advice from Mother, the once corn-eating avian was transformed by Yuko as follows...

This was actually an experiment in preparation for Yuko's picnic on Friday and I was the guinea pig. I can vouch for the success of this venture.

Yuko later emailed these chicken images to her Japanese friends which triggered a frenzy of email discussion about the impending picnic.

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New Page

I installed the new version of the Noswonky home page. Please let me know if it looks the way it's meant to look. I particularly want to hear if it looks ok on a Mac as I can't test this.

Laugh Mole Laugh

I challenged the goose who is masquerading as Laughing Mole to a game of chess. This will test his mettle and truly separate the geese from the moles. I even let him play white. Look at his first pathetic move...

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1   a b c d e f g h

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Monday, June 14th 2004

Crowd

It was exceptionally crowded at Epitome because, of course, it's a public holiday. Therefore the service was slower than usual but It didn't matter as we were in no hurry. It was quite warm, and the leaves have dropped from the big tree allowing a lot of sunlight through; so we sat outside.

Pole

After breakfast, Yuko bought a wooden pole.

I leave it to the reader to speculate on the purpose of this item.

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Email

My email provider which, by the way, I recommend highly, has just upgraded its web interface. So I spent some time playing with it (as one does). Just to remind me that it's new, I loaded a new style-sheet so that is also has a new look...

Old

New

Chess

I just won another round of a tournament on GameKnot. Strangely, I seem to be winning more than losing.

This is in stark contrast to my humiliating performance against my former CISRA colleagues. In The Pavel Rej Memorial Tournament.

Does this mean that CISRA people are smarter than regular people?

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Sunday, June 13th 2004

Domestic Violence

I went into the kitchen to help Yuko and she stepped on my foot! This is the same foot which has the injured toe, so of course I screamed out in pain. I said she should apologise, but she said it was my fault for walking too quietly and thus not making her aware of where I was standing.

At least she made sukiyaki...

Letter

Marie had a letter published in the Telegraph today. Mother showed it to me when I dropped in there today as I don't buy that paper. It's a political rant which heaps scorn and ridicule on someone.

Bonsai

Yuko has begun growing bonsai shallots. This will save us one trip to the Korean shop every 10 years.

HAL

In the evening I watched 2001 on SBS.

It's the story of a bunch of apes who find a big black brick and then invent computers and spaceships by banging some bones together.

But one guy's computer turns out to be a lemon and it crashes despite the fact that he didn't even install Windows. This teaches him the dangers of home automation when his computer refuses to open the door and he has to go in the back way. Then he lands his spaceship in his own bedroom, has dinner and is visited by the big black brick that he found when he used to be an ape.

Then the screen goes black for five minutes while they play Strauss.

My favourite quote from the movie is the following by HAL which I often find useful in domestic life:

"This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye."

And of course...

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Saturday, June 12th 2004

Not much really happened today, but we took a lot of pictures...

Garage Sale

On the way back from Lane Cove, Yuko spotted a garage sale sign and I was forced to divert there. I am usually just a spectator at garage sales but, strangely, today I bought something.

Yuko bought this chair for her office.

I bought this bag for Fifi. It cost $3.

As the chair was too big to fit in the car, and the sale was only a short distance from home, and the chair was on wheels, we decided to push it home on the road. There was a football "fixture" on at the college and a lot of spectators were arriving by car and by foot. A lot of the people who saw us pushing the chair along thought we were on our way to the football and were going to use the chair to relax while watching the game. Several people shouted smart-arse comments at us based on that assumption.

Pushing it up the driveway.

Yuko was happy when we got the chair home.

Well, as soon as Yuko spotted the chair at the garage sale I said: "How are we going to get it into the room???" The problem is that there's a china cabinet in our hall which makes it impossible to get even a normal sized chair past without a lot of hassle.

The gap between the wall and the cabinet is a bit small.

The chair must be inverted and slid along the top of the black cabinet.

Even then, getting into Yuko's office was a problem.

But we got it into Yuko's office eventually. Here Yuko shows how much it cost.

Football

As I said, there was a football "fixture" at the College. This created chaos in the streets around our house. There were more police than I've seen since the Redfern riots and hundreds of cars. Access to our little section of the street was restricted (which was a good thing)...

I wandered over to the college to have a look at how the rolling green hills had been turned into a carpark...

Rolling green hills?

The spectators.

Evening

In the evening, I XXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXX and watched a weird French movie on SBS. I didn't take any pictures of that.

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Friday, June 11th 2004

Humiliation

As we were watching TV, Yuko called me a bastard and then ridiculed my legs, taking this picture to prove the point...

However, I told her that I'm not a bastard - and she believed me!

Park

Yuko is planning a picnic at Tambourine Bay (just down from our house). So today she took some research photos to analyse the conditions.

I am not invited to the picnic as there is a gender restriction.

Cold

There was some party in preparation at Epitome and so we could not go upstairs. We therefore sat outside and Patricia turned on a gas heater for us.

However, it was still damned cold and we debarked early.

Badminton

Five players today. My toe was ok.

One player picked up my camera and took some photos of much worse quality than this one.

Water Patrol

Yesterday I saw the "Water Restriction Patrol" car in a local street. The patrol car was parked outside a house and the dude from the car was in the front yard of the house speaking with a woman. Presumably, she got caught watering.

I considered reporting this to Mother lest she also violate and get caught. But I didn't bother.

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Thursday, June 10th 2004

Reagan

As readers may be aware, Ronald Reagan's funeral is scheduled for Friday in the U.S. which means early Saturday here. So I was surprised to hear on Sky TV News at 3pm today that:

"a state funeral for the former president has been held in Washington..."

I checked their web site and the mistake was there too...

Being an annoying pedant, I clicked on their feedback link and pointed out the mistake. Half an hour later the item on the web site had been corrected...

When Noswonky speaks, people listen!

Toe

I've been thinking that I might have to drop out of Badminton this week because of my toe injury. But today it felt and looked significantly better. Therefore I tried going for a walk to see if it would induce unbearable pain or just moderate pain. It wasn't too bad. I think by tomorrow it will have recovered enough to give badminton a try.

CSS

I've now almost finished a css-based version of the noswonky home page. Just a bit of tweaking and it should be ready tomorrow.

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Wednesday, June 9th 2004

Phone

We were woken early in the morning by the phone. When I answered it, it was just a beeping machine. It rang a couple more times and beeped at us again.

I hate that!

Exciting Day

Yuko was very excited today because XXX XXXXXXXX XX XXX XXXXXX XXXXX XXX XXX XXX XXXXXXX was revealed on their web site.

Keiko will be doing the graphic design for the web site for XXXXXX XXXXXX and I have agreed to do the technical side of it. To this end I've been messing around with style sheets and other good stuff which may be useful. This is me messing around with style sheets...

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Mother

Mother invited us to dinner.

We ate a chicken which used to be happy and free and was privileged to dine on yellow corn which, Mother said gave the bird a yellow colour, However, I'm skeptical. If the chicken is yellow it's probably due to some poison chemical substance which is given to the chickens.

Mother has a candle which appears to be made of jelly with embedded apples. We discussed this odd candle at length and Yuko became obsessed with it.

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Tuesday, June 8th 2004

Transit of Venus

There was a transit of Venus today so I decided to drag out my equipment. Although I have a solar filter, I have no way of photographing through the telescope with the digital camera. So I decided to just use eyepiece projection. To this end, I selected two wire coat-hangers from my wardrobe and constructed a mounting frame. The side of a cardboard wine cask served as a screen holder. And a sheet of A4 paper from the printer became a projection screen.

Some photos are below, but a more complete set is here.

The scope with the projection screen held in place with coat-hanger wire and sticky tape. I moved the telescope a few metres back from this position before the transit began.

Here you can see the Sun's image on the screen.

Yuko hassled me to let her take a picture of me. But as the camera was mounted on the telescope to photograph the transit, she couldn't. But after second contact I removed the camera briefly so Yuko could take this picture. I didn't bother with polar alignment but just plopped the tripod down with the polar axis pointing roughly south. It was good enough to allow me to follow the sun with mainly just one knob.

The following photos of the transit are oriented the same as this diagram. Ie: North is at the top and east is to the left. The images have been rotated, cropped, darkened and re-sized.

Diagram from: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/transit/venus0412.html

Near second contact Venus is clearly visible. There is obvious limb darkening aroung the limb (where else) of the sun. I'm surprised this shows up so well with projection. alt="">

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The "black drop" effect? It was not as obvious as expected. alt="">

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3.53pm Some clouds are visible at upper right

As the Sun moved behind trees I re-focussed the telescope to show the trees. alt="">

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Venusian Injury

During preparations for the transit, I injured my toe by striking it against a wall with moderate force. I therefore blame this injury on the planet Venus.

Morning

Earlier...

Yuko put her pickles in the sun to ferment. They smell disgusting!

Epitome

The jack hammers we at work again and the gazebo pavers looked like a disaster zone. So we had to go upstairs again.

There was a dead fish in the tank. This time the yabbies can't be blamed. I think this fish cost $400.

Mother

Mother's VCR was ready to pick up. So I picked it up. It cost $155 to fix. I took it to her place and connected the cables and Mother was very happy.

Mother and Marie have been studying painting. She showed me a picture she painted. It's an abstract portrait of an un-named world leader...

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Monday, June 7th 2004

Jack Hammer

No, not Mike's brother.

When we arrived at Epitome, there was a Jack Hammer of the noisy kind in operation within a few metres of our usual table. They were tearing up the pavers in the Gazebo for no obvious reason.

So we went upstairs (by the stairs) where it was reasonably quiet.

Free Time

Yuko went to meet Keiko at North Sydney in the afternoon, so I had free time.

After that, as Yuko was already at North Sydney, I went over there to meet her and we had dinner at the Pizza place there. The Pizza guy told Yuko about a new fishing spot near the Spit Bridge. Yuko always discusses fishing with him because they met each other on a wharf somewhere in her fishing days during the late 20th century.

Transit of Venus

The transit of Venus happens tomorrow. The question is, will I be motivated enough to drag my scope out and point it at the sun? I guess I will if it's not cloudy.

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Sunday, June 6th 2004

Movie

We went to see "The Day After Tomorrow". Mother came along too although it's not the type of movie she normally likes.

It's the story of a weather forecaster who predicts some bad weather and then stupidly decides to walk from Philadelphia to New York to visit the public library.

Due to the bad weather that he predicted, his companion gets killed on the way. Then when he gets to the library he doesn't even borrow a book because his son has burned them and has vandalised the library to impress a girl.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney becomes president and goes to live in Mexico.

We found it entertaining (even Mother) but a tad corny and far-fetched, which is to be expected. And of course the science content is extremely dodgy. I also think that the use of CGI effects in movies like this actually lessens their impact. You never have to think "Wow! how did they do that?" You just know that it was all done with CGI and therefore it doesn't matter whether the wave is 10 metres or 100 metres.

And although Philadelphia is close to New York I think it's a bit far to walk...

Lift

Then the three of us had coffee at Epitome. Helmut suggested we use the lift to go upstairs. This is a rare privilige afforded only to VIPs like us as it involves them opening a special door not normally accessable to customers. But actually... there wouldn't be anyone else like us!

Dogs

Maria's bitches have been a bit noisy recently. It sounds like they fight with each other which I guess is to be expected when you have two bitches together. Today, Yuko looked at them...

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Saturday, June 5th 2004

Penguins

The Penguins were playing in the plaza this morning...

They are quite good musicians and their music is quite relaxing. It's much nicer music for breakfast than the brass bands that are often playing on Saturdays. Yuko bought one of their CDs and then danced to it when we got home...

Bond Girl

Mother went to a 21st birthday party at the house next door to hers.

The party had a James Bond theme, so naturally she went as a bond girl...

I'm not sure whether she killed anyone. We could hear the noise from our place.

Waters Lane

Meanwhile, while Mother was being a Bond Girl... we returned to Waters Lane after a long absence.

We had red wine with fish and chicken despite this being a barbaric combination. We also had sticky date pudding which is not barbaric but is certainly disgusting.

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Friday, June 4th 2004

De Malaya

I went to lunch at De Malaya (Formerly 33) with a bunch of people including, but not limited to, these pixelees.

I sat next to a guy who had a balloon head...

And there was another guy with rabbit ears...

As usual, large sums of money were demanded from me and some diners claimed that I should buy dinner for the whole group at a future time. Of course, I ridiculed these demands.

Torch Relay

The Olympic Flame made its way through Sydney today on its way to Athens. As it was scheduled to go through Lane Cove just after 4pm we decided to observe it. The flame was going from North Sydney to Lane Cove by car, and then transfering to a "bearer" at Lane Cove. However, the map in the paper wasn't very detailed and it was unclear at what location the changeover would occur. I therefore chose a spot down near the Fig Tree bridge where I was sure the flame would not be traveling motorised.

After parking down by the river, we walked up onto Burns Bay Road just at the end of the Fig Tree Bridge. There, we found a small group of people gathered and the Mayor of Lane Cove (Ian Longbottom) was there, and he appeared to be performing a tree-planting...

The planting

Yuko awaits the flame

I thought it would be a pretty good spot to watch the torch go past. But then I heard someone in the Mayor's group say "We're going up to where they're doing the changeover." So we followed them up the road a bit. As we walked, some indications of the approach of the flame were observed...

Then we reached a spot where another, bigger crowd had gathered.

Within a couple of minutes, the convoy appeared. The torch arrived borne by a cyclist and he transfered the flame to another cyclist. According to the map in the paper, these cyclists were Brett Aitkin and Sean Eadie. The torch then moved on...

The transfer

Cyclist decamps with flame

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IH

I got an emaill from IH as a followup to CELTA. They want former students to send them stories about their post-CELTA experiences. They are also promoting a post-CELTA Language Awareness Course and they want to give me $100 for every new CELTA student I refer to them.

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Thursday, June 3rd 2004

Water

Water was falling from the sky when we woke up. However this strange phenomenon ceased in time for us to sit outside for breakfast.

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After that I went to Kinokunia where I had arranged to meet Yuko. I saw her before she saw me, so I snuck up on her and surprised her on the escalator. We browsed in the bookshop for about an hour and then had an early dinner (4.15) at the Japanese restaurant just outside Kinokunia.

It's and adequate place and quite cheap. However we chose it mainly because it's open all day, thus allowing us to have dinner at 4.15pm.

Mother

When I took Mother's (actually my) VCR for repair yesterday I just pulled out the cables and dropped them on the floor. I should have realised that Mother's TV would not work unless I plugged the antenna back in. So today she left a woeful message on the machine asking me to come and fix her TV. So I did.

Month Anomaly

I've now moved the June entries to June rather than May. They seem more at home in June.

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Wednesday, June 2nd 2004

Webmaster Banned

I have banned myself from posting comments. But only if it's not me.

Shock Breakfast

Patricia and Helmut were shocked this morning when I ordered a croissant instead of my usual toast or eggs. Then, while I was at the counter, Yuko phoned me from the table to change her order to a croissant too. Copy cat!

One of the weekend waiters was at a nearby table as a customer. Yuko said that although, as a waiter he looks nice, as a customer he looked like a bastard.

Photos

We didn't take any photos today!

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Mother

Mother had another technical problem. This time her VCR is chewing up tapes. Actually though, it's my VCR that I lent (not loaned) her a long time ago when hers croaked. I think she's forgotten that I only lent it to her. I originally bought if from Foo. Anyway, I went around to Mother's house to pick it up and took it up to the local rip-off merchants to be repaired. Mother game me three packets of microwave popcorn and a pair of shoes for Yuko. I noticed that the shop does dry-cleaning as well as VCR repairs which does not inspire confidence.

And I've just learned to play the theme music on the keyboard. It has three notes.

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Tuesday, June 1st 2004

Water

Water restrictions are tightened from today. Watering is only allowed outside the hours 9am-5pm and only on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. I will have to keep an eye on Yuko to make sure she doesnt stretch the rules. (She is prone to illegal behaviour.)

Mother too!

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Mother

We invited Mother for dinner. So in the afternoon I walked up to Lane Cove to buy the food for dinner. Thus killing two proverbial birds (shopping and exercise) with one proverbial stone. Actually I killed three birds because I also dropped a document in at the solicitor's office. Bob's money should begin to flow soon.

For dinner Yuko cooked chicken teriyaki and it was damn nice.

I was also able to play the first section (11 bars) of Raindrop for Mother. She likes that piece and so she was very happy that I'm learning to play it.

Month Anomaly

Yes, I know I'm posting a June entry in the May section, but it's my blog and I can post in any damned month I want!

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