GIAC'ed

I got my GTI chipped today, which basically means that it got a software upgrade for the engine computer unit. Also called a re-map, basically the parameters for engine management got changed so that the car is running a lot more aggressive! So I chose the GIAC version, mainly because its a lot closer to where I lived, but also a few hundred bucks cheaper!

What does this mean in real life? Well, now I feel the turbo lag a fair bit more, because when the turbo comes on, it really is a shove in the backside! The amount of power is just amazing! There were a little bit of engine pinging at the beginning, but I was told this could be because it was a bad batch of petrol and the ECU is stil trying to adapt to the higher boost. Plus, this was done on a 30-degree-plus day with air conditioning on. After this initial adpation phase, the car is now running perfect. Even without pushing the car, the amount of power just makes driving it so much easier!

Tomorrow, I'll be starting my travels to Melbourne and Tassie! This will allow the car to stretch its legs out, and hopefully I won't fall in the speed trap, expecially seeing as it will be double demerit season!

Pooki Box for Her

Bought the Pooki box from Catch of the Day out of pure curiosity. So what did I get for $33? Here are the contents:


2x Australia Blush set
20 Christmas Cards
Alarm clock
Cold Wax
2x BBQ Cooking DVD (including Jamie Oliver!)
Seacret skincare set
Her Tools 31 piece hardware set.

So, was it worth it? It's probably all up worth more than the amount I paid for, but I probably could have spent the thrity odd dolllars elsewhere.

Venturi Mini

The Venturi Mini is absolutely awesome. I bought this little gadget a couple of weeks ago, and have been meaning to do a little review, but haven't had the time to upload the photos for it. I still don't have the photos for it yet, maybe a bit later.

So, what is it? It's a bluetooth receiver + fm transmitter + usb charger that plugs in to a 12v plug in the car - the complete in-car solution. This little gadget allows me to fully connect my N95 to my car. It's about the size of an iPhone Mini. Mine came in a sleek all black casing. On the top surface, there are four back it buttons - Music, Phone, Play/Pickup, Stop/Hang up. Wedged in between them is the bright white LED display. Just beneath this is the built in noise-cancelling mic, and below that a scrow wheel similar to one you find on a mouse but wider. On the left of the device are two 3.5mm audio jacks for in and out by wire, and a FM frequency selector. On the right there's a settings button and a usb type A female plug.

Setting up was a breeze, just plug it in, and follow the instructions display. The device plugs in quite snug, and then to keep it in place, there's a locking ring. Nexdt, set up the FM requencies. There are 4 channels you can set, and the range goes from 88.1Mhz to 107.9Mhz, incrementing by 0.2Mhz. After this, its time to pair with the phone. Pairing with the N95 is straight forward as well. Pairing only needs to be paired once. Venturi also allows you to download 100 phone book entries to the Mini, but this did not work with the N95.

So how does it work? I enter the car, turn car on, and the Venturi connects automatically. I press the music button, and then press play. Music is now streamed from my phone to the car audio. When a call comes in, I simply press the pickup button again. The music is crystal clear as are the phone calls, keeping in mind my car has a modified shorter FM antenna. The music does however skip every now and then for half a second, but I haven't isolated the problem yet. If I need to charge the phone, simply plug the phone into the usb charger. Perfect.

One curiosity, although a nice feature in my book, is that despite selecting one radio frequency, the Mini seems to be transmitting in at least 3 frequencies at the same time. This is actually quite convenient sicne I can just switch the radio in the car when there are interference without touching the Mini.

Definately one of the best in car solutions I've come across! 10/10.

Teaching old N95 new tricks

Nokia launched their new flagship N97 last week to much fanfare! This however did not mean much to me as I just got my phone repaired. However, I did discover Ovi. Ovi allows Nokia owners to sign up and sync remotely with their server both contacts and calendar. This is a really useful feature, and provides a good way to back up things. This is one area I liked about the iPhone - integration.

More importantly, they have also been progressively releasing a suite of new software that will integrate nicely with the N97 and Ovi. There's the new Nokia Music application and store - a direct competitor to iTunes. It's not as polished yet but it does the job. Then there is Nokia photos - to compete with iPhoto. This is a nice piece of software, and allows you to organise your photos by timeline as well as location, using the geotagged information from the phone. Also, you can now upload directly onto Ovi any photos of videos you took on the phone, and share it with your contacts, and even link Ovi with your Flickr account!

The biggest most useful feature however, has got to be the new email program or Nokia Messaging. Although it is still in beta, I see alot of potential for it. It's a two part systme. Firstly, you sign up to the service online. Nokia provides a service where it links up your email account, be it an ISP or internet mail such as Gmail, and pushes any new email straight to your phone. The second part is the cool application installed onto the phone. Although you can already check email using the messaging program, now you can get emails pushed onto your phone. So Nokia doesn't actually provide you with an inbox, more of a redirection. The data cost is pretty minimal (I use about 400kb per day skimming about 15 emails and reading about 3 or 4 in full). You can link up to 7 email accounts to one phone and the whole system works seamlessly!

So now my phone does everything an iPhone does in terms of integration, I don't feel so compelled to upgrade my phone any time soon! The biggest selling point of the iPhone for me is now adequetly covered by the N95. (The touch screen is nice, but not a must have). Good on you Nokia!

Christmas Dinner

Last Saturday turned out to be a huge success. We picked up the Turkey and Ham in the morning, and Anica spent the rest of the afternoon preparing the food. Eventually I came back to help as well.

So, in typical Christmas tradition, we prepared a full meal with roast stuffed turkey, and roast ham. This turned out to be around 8kg of meat, and took about 4 hours to cook using 2 ovens. The recipe can be found on Taste.com.au. The mains fed about 12 people, and we had left overs! Everything turned out really well. Pictures will be up as soon as they're processed!

Kayaking in Sydney Harbour

Sydney Harbour is one of the most beautiful harbours in the world, and what better way spend a Sunday afternoon padding around on a sea kayak.

There are kayaks for hire at Rose Bay, costing from around $30 an hour. If you bargain a bit, and bring a large enough group, the operators might be kind enough to rent the kayaks for much cheaper. We ended up with about 20 people, at around $20 per person, for 2 hours. There are single and double kayaks for hire, so make sure you drag along someone to paddle for you if you're not too comfortable. They also provide you with a life jacket, and if you're lucky enough, some $300 worth of carbon fibre paddles.

The water within the bay is reasonably calm, depending on the weather conditions of course. As you paddle into the harbour, the water becomes much more choppy. It is often very fun riding the waves generated by a myriad of sail and power boats flying past you.

If you ever fall off and capsize, it is a royal pain to get back onboard, so unless you have about 3 other kayaks to help you get back inside, I strongly suggest you don't go for a swim.

There are some nice quiet beaches on the eastern side of the bay, and a 40-60 minute paddle will get you to Shark Island in the middle of the harbour. Get off here for possibly one of the best places to take in the views of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House!

The Coast Track

I'm still recovering from my weekend trip to the Royal National Park, completing the Coast Track. The track starts from Bundeena and ends at Otford, traversing as you might have guest, along the coast. We started the day brightly from Cronulla at 8.30am. The ferry was delayed for about 10 minutes, and we sat on the bow of the boat. THe trip is $5.40 per person one way. Arriving in Bundeena by 9am, we set off to the first track on our left. Having thought that at least someone in the group would know where we're going, we didn't even bring a map or question our directions. The heavens soon split open and we were greeted with some refreshing but large rain drops. This was to be the beginning of a very long day!

Quantum of Solace

The latest Bond film was a blast, literally. There were plenty of action as one have come accustomed to, including car chases, boat chases, plane chases, foot chases, and just about anything else you can think of. The movie felt a little bit convoluted for me, but that might be because I don't remember much from the last film, and this one makes a lot of references to that. But then you don't really go to see a Bond film for its story lines. However, there seems to be something lacking from this film, maybe there weren't enough expensive cars, or high tech gadgets, or indeed hot women! Olga Kurylenko is stunning though, and actually makes the Bond look a little soft. The franchise though, for better or worse, is definitely heading towards Jason Bourne territory. Daniel Craig is more rough cut than the suave Pierce Brosnan, maybe that'll give us normal blokes a chance! 4 out of 5 for me.

Petrol Update

Unleaded: 110.9c / L
Exchange Rate: 0.6494 USD
Crude: 54.39 USD (83.75 AUD) / Barrel

Kensington Universal FM Transmitter

I got a nice surprise at my desk at work today. I had ordered this device last Friday, and had no idea when it would turn up. Having no auxiliary input jack in my car and many MP3 players makes it very inconvenient to play my music collection. Usually this required the burning of CDs, which more often than not would fail or simply go out of date in a few weeks. Surely then, an FM transmitter is in order, and surely they shouldn't cost all that much! I bought this Kensington unit for less than $30 delivered (from CatchOfTheDay), which I thought was a pretty good deal.


So I eagerly plugged it in my car on my way home. It is quite a compact unit, the buttons could be a little bigger, but they also suffice. The frequencies goes from 88.1 to 107.9 and increments by 0.2Mhz. There are 3 presets to configure. The display is nice and clear and non-distracting, with black LED on Orange back light. There are indicators to show which preset is selected. Power is drawn from the cigarette lighter plug, and is self on.

How's the sound quality? For the frequencies I chose, the sound quality was pretty good, comparable to commercial radio stations. The cord from the unit to the player acts as the antenna, so unwrapping the cord to its length made the transmission a little better. Drop outs and interference gets more frequent as you approach a more congested area, such as the CBD. Some times the unit just gives up completely and turns off by itself. To turn it back on, simply unplug and plug again. The unit claims to turn off by itself if there is no music playing for more than 1 minute, although I haven't tested this out yet.

Overall, quite happy with the package, and highly recommended. It's application will be best served on those long road trips, and I won't have to carry all those CDs anymore!

Broken things

Aside from a very fun weekend, several things are either under repair, or needs to be repaired. These included my Nokia N95, my Canon EF 50mm f1.4 IS lens, and my VW Polo GTI. So what has gone wrong with them?

Well, the N95 has died, and won't switch on, nor recharge. After trying to take the Sim out, micro SD out, battery out, attempted recharge overnight, I ran out of ideas. So I took the plunge and took it to the Nokia Care centre, and promptly got slapped a $35 inspection fee. I didn't bother with a loan phone for another $20.

The GTI? Well, nothing wrong with it really, I'm just being very pedantic. There are clicking noises coming from the rear suspension, and I know what it is - rear top strut mount. How do I know this? It was replaced under warranty about half a year ago. The noise is now back, but I had since modified my car. So I did a half-arsed job and took out the sway bar, but left the links in. Bad idea. Took it to the dealer, but they said they won't fix it unless the links are removed. Fair enough. At least I got a free wash out of the dealer.

Lastly, the lens. It has stopped auto-focusing. So the last few photos on the weekend trip was taken using manual focus, and I don't have a particularly sharp eye. So back to Canon it goes tomorrow to get it looked at under warranty.

You'd think with the cost of the above items, the quality would at least hold up...

Houseboat Withdrawal

What a weekend! After planning for more than a month, we finally pulled it off! Over the weekend, we held a surprise birthday party. What made it extra special was that it involved 11 people and a house boat. We hired out a house boat from Able and cruised the Hawkesbury River for 2 days and a night. To keep this a secret was no easy feat!

So we boarded the boat at Wisemans Ferry, and then hid on the boat, and waited for the birthday boy to arrive. I think the delight shown on his face was priceless! Over the weekend, we did some swimming, paddled a small dingy, tried to fish, sung some Singstar, drank wine and beer, cooked several barbies, and played some board games, such as Ticket to Ride and Balderdash. We also managed to catch a water ski race, got a tow from another boat (while trying in vain to paddle against the current in the dingy), and even managed to dance some Salsa.

A day later, I'm still suffering from the after-effects of the boat ride. Even as I type, I feel the screen is waving as if I'm still on the boat. Time to get some more missed sleep!

Petrol Update

Unleaded: 116.9c / L
Exchange Rate: 0.6696 USD
Crude: 59.38 USD (88.70 AUD) / Barrel

Diversification

Well, this blog hasn't been updated for a couple of days, mainly due to a certain lack of inspiration. After having a chat to one of my close friends, I decided to diversify this blog. I was told to consider blogging as an art form, and to discuss topics that I am passionate about. This blog will continue to exist of course, but it will be here mainly for my rants. I will soon start blogs on a few areas that I'm really passionate about (or at least I think I will be passionate about). These are the areas:

• Football
  
• Travel
  
• Motoring
  
• Taekwondo / Martial Arts
  
• Salsa / Dance
  
• Cycling / Hiking / Camping
  
• Photography
  
• Gadgets / Computers
  
• Events / Entertainment / Reviews

They will be updated a lot less frequently, but at least they will have a dedicated topic, although I'm not too sure where a review of a camera lens would fall into - Photography, Gadgets, or Reviews?

Petrol Update

Unleaded: 121.9c / L
Exchange Rate: 0.6954 USD
Crude: 70.53 USD (101 .42 AUD) / Barrel

MS Sydney to the Gong Ride Part 2

I got up this morning at 5 am, after not having a very good night's rest. Picked up everything prepared from the previous night, and headed off. I was running a little late for my train, so decided to ride to Strathfield station instead as a warm up. Jumped on the train, got off at Redfern to change, but was still going to be late, so rode down to the start at Sydney Park, St Peters.

After fumbling around a bit, taking team photos, and not eating breakfast, I hit the road eventually around 7.30 am - 40 minutes behind schedule. Along the way, much liquid was consumed. My breakfast came in the form of a triple Time Out bar and a blueberry muffin. Other food consumption on the way included a banana, half an orange, and and packet of GU carbohydrate gel.

Having never ridden this distance before, I tried to stay quite fresh at the beginning, and up to Loftus Oval, it was all pretty easy riding. No major problems with hills either. Up to waterfall, the ride becomes more interesting, with some up and downs along the highway. At waterfall, we were herded together to go down hill in packs in order to improve safety. However, what goes down must come up. As I hit the Royal National Park, the hills starts to take a toll on me as I started to push a bit harder. Eventually arriving at Stanwell Tops look out, I was pretty well spent. A lot of people here started to push their bikes up. I just dug in deep.

The rest of the the journey was just a hard slog. The scenery was magnificent, and included the must-used-in-car-advertising-bridge: the Sea Cliff Bridge. The hill on the other side of the bridge however, was not very kind. More people were pushing their bikes up the hill by now. There were also a couple of accidents that I was aware off, and plenty of bikes on the side of the road with an array of mechanical problems and punctures. Luckily, my bike held up to the end.

After 5 hours and a half, I finally made it to the destination. Much liquid was then consumed, muscles sore and tired. Lunch was had at a local fish and chip shop, and after a power nap, we headed home. Thanks to Greg who drove down just to support and give my bike a lift back to Sydney. Much appreciated!

So here are my final stats: 

Top Speed: 52.8km/h

Time: 5 hours 28 minutes

Average Speed: 15.8 km/h

MS Sydney to the Gong Ride

Tomorrow, I will participate in my first ever MS Sydney to the Gong ride. The ride goes from St. Peters to Wollongong, via Brighton Le Sands, the Royal National Park, and the Sea Cliff Bridge, totaling 90 km. Personally, I hope to finish in 5-6 hours. The event is held to help raise money and awareness for MS - Multiple Sclerosis - an autoimmune disease affecting the central nervous system.

Preparation for any endurance event is of utmost importance, and this is no different. Equipment must be checked and rechecked, supplies readied. For this event, the most important equipment will be the bike. It has been serviced a couple of days ago, and all gears and brakes are checked. The tyre pressures are also checked, as are the pedals and the shoes. Aside from the bike, there are the clothing, helmut, gloves, shoes, camelpak for hydration and some light energy snacks for along the way.

But perhaps the most important thing is human preparation, both mentally and physically. I have no idea how I will go as I have never ridden this far before. Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to train up for this event, unlike for the Oxfam Trailwalker, but hopefully I will finish tomorrow.

Health Checks

Today we had a health expo at work. The work is carried out by this company called HealthWorks. I had several things checked out, including vision and skin cancer screenings. Luckily, nothing of concern came up. I did learn that it is possible to get melanoma on the sole of the foot and in the eye. 

Other tests I went through included body composition and heart health. I had an interesting discussion with one of the health professionals about what is classified as fast food. Turns out I considered everything that's not a sit down meal at a restaurant to be fast food, but they only considered the more traditional meaning of chain stores. My blood pressure was uncharacteristically high today, perhaps due to the recent tragedy in the news.

I thought it was a bit unsophisticated for the body composition check that they just used a Bio-Electric Impedance scale for everything. But, I did get some good results, so I can't really complain. I mean, to have a Basal Metabolic Age of 18 years is great. They also gave a figure for % body fat, bone mass, and body water percentage.

Weekly Petrol Update

Unleaded: 135.9c / L
Exchange Rate: 0.6362 USD
Crude: 65.00 USD (102.17 AUD) / Barrel

Indoor soccer

So I played my last game of Indoor Soccer at Tempe. It wasn't a particularly good game by my team, but we managed a respectable score of 4-7. The season has been a long one, and I joined the team a few weeks after the start.

The team was originally pulled together by one of my friends - Eric. The level of competition is very high, and way beyond what the team was capable of. So, that plus the fact that for some reason, for this competition, you did not pay upfront, meant that everyone on the team pulled out after week 3.

So, captain Eric, with all that he can muster, started calling through all his friends. His girlfriend eventually contacted me and that's how I joined the team. All the other team in the competition have uniforms. We just rocked up in whatever colour we wanted to wear. We're the rainbow team. In the number of games I've played, we have gone through at least 15 different players over the season, and this is for a game where there are only 5 on court at any one time.

All the games I played were in good spirit, and despite losing almost all games, I had a lot of fun. I have learnt a lot through this competition, and I have no doubt my skills have improved. I am now looking forward to another season to play somewhere, but I am finding hard to find competitions that are still open and accessible, maybe I'm just not looking in the right places, but it sure is a lot harder than finding outdoor games. Hopefully I will find a competition at a good level and gather a team to participate before the start of the next out door season.

Catch of the Day or something

There are plenty of online stores out there, so how would one go about attracting business? Recently I discovered a website that has an interesting concept. The website is called Catch of the Day. This is an Australian website with a difference - they sell one major discount item per day. This way, they keep their inventory costs low, while providing an incentive for visitors to return. They don't always have new stock though, and sometime they recycle old stock that didn't sell as well. The more popular items - like LCD monitors and portable hard drives - sell like hot cakes, and are usually gone by mid-afternoon. They update their listing each day at noon, so it pays to check each lunch time.

I recently bought a set of Philips stereo bluetooth headphone and a pair of Doro cordless phones from them. Payment was done via PayPal, so it is fairly secure. The items were delivered about a week after placing the order. The thing is, some of their prices are just amazing. I ended up paying less than half of the cheapest alternative for the cordless phones. I don't even know how they can source their stuff so cheaply.

Tomorrow, they will have a birthday sale, and some of the items posted on the site are real bargains. For example, they're selling the popular Nintendo Wii for just $199, and 4GB Ipod Nano for $99. That's huge! So, if you're in the hunt for some bargains, I really recommend this site! Happy Fishing...

Sculpture by the Sea

Until the 2nd of November, the coast line from Bondi to Tamarama will be littered with colours and shapes, forming the one of the largest outdoor sculpture displays in the world. Best of all, it's free. I went to Sculpture by the Sea today, even though the weather could have been more kind. A few of my favourite this year included the anatomically correct farm animals, and the huge needle pulling thread on the hill. There were a few more abstract ones that also caught my attention, and the butterfly-globe was also very striking. Here are some of photos from the day trip, definitely worth a visit!

Night Noodle Markets and World Bar

October is Good Food Month and last Friday was the last night the Noodle Markets were held. at Hyde Park, and I went to check it out. The atmosphere was amazing, the north side of the park packed with people chatting, drinking, eating. Musing blaring in the background and an array of coloured lighting transformed the trees and walkways.

The food on offer was pretty good too. The best part? The fact that I went at 8.30pm. The stalls all close at 9.30pm, and it's the time to flog off whatever they had left. This means shorter queues, and cheaper food. I also got to try out the Citi VIP area. The area is just a small barricaded area in the middle of everything, and it had a private bar, and some candle lit tables draped with red table cloth. It gave a very intimate feel to the area. The noodle markets were very well carried out, and I'll be back next year for sure.

After the noodle markets, I headed to World Bar with some friends. For a bar right in the heart of the Cross, we were told that we would only get in if we were casual and not business attire. One of my friends had to go buy a t-shirt from a near by shop after he turned up in a dressy shirt. The bar was pretty packed and a live band was playing. The trademark for the bar though had to be their teapots. Several cocktails - Long Island Iced Tea,  Tropicana, etc, are served in teapots you would find at a Yum Cha restaurant. One pot is about 7 shots, which is pretty awesome!

ViewSonic VA1928wm

There was a sale of sorts at Harvey Norman today. I've been eyeing an upgrade for computer monitors for my parents' PC for a while now, and thought I might try my luck there. The budget is not high, around $200. But, anything will be better than what they were on before - an LG 17" flat CRT.

This is what I ended up with the ViewSonic VA1928wm. I got this baby for $197. There are several shops around that sell 20" screens in the low $200 mark, and they all have superior resolution - 1650 x 1080. The VA1928wm only have a resolution of 1440 x 900. But resolution wasn't the biggest concern, since the higher res. 20 inchers have a finer pitch, therefore smaller lettering on screen. That would in fact make it harder and not easier for my parent to use.

So for my dough, what do I get? An easy-to-install, non-tilt-height-adjustable hard-to-tilt, super bright screen, with in-built speakers connected to my PC via standard VGA and audio cable. The design looks a little dated, but sleek non-the-less, with a silver bezel on the bottom. The power button in the middle of five buttons glows a bright blue when turned on. 

The amount of physical desk real estate saved is amazing. The screen is also more bright than my 20" iMac and I'm thoroughly impressed. The specs boast a 10,000:1 contrast ratio, and I have no reason to complain. I haven't tested out the response time for the screen, but that will be less critical for my parents' usage. Overall, very happy with my purchase.

Petrol Prices

As the financial crisis hit, oil prices have come down a long way since the highs experienced earlier in the year. The Aussie Dollar has also come down sharply against the Greenback. With these factors, should the price at the pump have fallen? Yesterday, as a silly protest, a petrol station in Blacktown started subsidising petrol, and sold Unleaded at 94.9c a litre for a while. According to 2Day FM, they were subsidising more than 30c off their wholesale price, which means, the petrol stations really don't make that much profit - all the profits goes to the petrol companies. 

I will attempt to post some figures every Wednesday morning from now on and compare the price at the pump, crude oil, and exchange rates. This will hopefully give us a good idea of what is actually happening and how much we're being ripped off.

Unleaded: 140.9c / L

Exchange Rate: 0.6882 USD

Crude: 72.18 USD (104.88 AUD) / Barrel

The price of Unleaded petrol the Shell in North Ryde on Lane Cove Road.
The exchange rate according to Google.
The price for Crude is  from Nymex Crude Future according to Bloomberg.

Are you with ANZ?

Last night I was given a task, that should have been a lot simpler than it turned out to be. I needed to transfer some money into an ANZ account by midnight. If I transferred from another bank, it would take a couple of days to clear. This meant that the money had to come from another ANZ account, one that I don't have. Without thinking, I started messaging my MSN list to see who have an ANZ account. ANZ being one of the big four banks in Australia, I figured this would be easy.

After about 15 minutes and talking to countless people, I finally found one person with an ANZ account. But this person didn't even have any money in that account! The search went on for another 30 minutes, and eventually I managed to find a source, and here I say my thanks. What amazed me though, was that even a future employee of ANZ did not have an account with them. So much for being one of the big four.

Vote for which bank you use on the right!

ATO's Callback Feature Bug

As a result of high interest online savings accounts, many people have earned plenty of interest last financial year. Apparently I did enough to be billed for Pay As You Go instalments for this financial year, even though I won't be earning must interest any more.

So I called up the ATO to vary my PAYG amount down to zero. The automated system took my call and placed me in the queue. To save caller frustration, the ATO have implemented a call back system, whereby, you leave your number, and they call you back when you have reached the front of the queue. They even give you a prediction of how long it will take to reach you. When I got the call back however, I was again placed in the queue, although I only had to wait another two minutes or so. Maybe they should rename it the call-back-and-wait system.

Royal National Park Ride

Today, the City of Sydney Spring Cycle event was held. But I decided to instead go for a ride in the Royal National Park with some friends. We started out from Sutherland, and rode down to Otford, via Lady Carrington Drive. According to Google maps, this is a 27.6km ride.

Unfortunately, one of the team started cramping early in the day, so we had to fight hard, and I'm sure he pushed through several pain barriers. But in the end, we reached our destination. We started out at 11.30am, and finished by 3pm, with an average speed of 8 km/h.

A 1.5 hour wait at Otford station ensued, as we sent out scout for some much needed Coke and water. The view at Otford lookout along with the ocean breeze provided much satisfaction for all.

Mobile upload not working

Well, blogger supports mobile uploads, so I thought I'd give it a try. But after a few battles with 3G reception, I received this in the email: 

Your carrier is not supported by Blogger Mobile. Please try using Mail-to-Blogger or visit http://www.blogger.com/mobile-request for more information.

So I'm back on the computer, at least I don't have to worry about predictive text going haywire. Last night I went to Hogs Breath in Cronulla, and had my latest brush with fame. I looked up from my steak and there they were - Terri and Bindi Irwin. Before I could whip out the camera though, they were gone. I wondered what they were doing in Sydney, and what they thought of these caged animals.

Apple Recycling Weekend

Apple has just released some sweet new computers this week, although they are priced in the stratosphere. Nevertheless, some people will be able to afford it, and need to dispose of their old wares. In case you needed to do the same, or just want to get rid of that computer sitting in the corner of your room taking up valuable real estate space gathering dust, then you're in luck if you live in Sydney. Apple is carrying out a recycling event this weekend, and you can bring all your unwanted goods. That could potentially free up some space, and be rented out to an international student!

Ride to Work Day

Today was National Ride To Work Day. The idea is to encourage people to lead a healthier lifestyle by riding to work instead of driving. This is beneficial not only to the rider but also the environment and the hip pocket. I started cycling to work a few months ago, my daily commute is about 11 km one way and takes approximately 45 minutes. That burns about 2000 kilojoules of energy for me, which is about the amount contained in a McDonald's Big Mac. It will also save me approximately $1.50 on petrol and approximately 2 kg of CO₂. All of that might not seem much, but if I cycled twice a week, in a year, I will have saved over $300, and 400 kg of CO₂ not to mention the health benefits I'd receive.

There are a few things that can make cycling less enjoyable. In particular drivers that really don't give any respect to cyclists. On my way to work today, I saw an ambulance at an accident scene involving two cycles and a car.I guess it is frustrating sitting in morning traffic, and having to continually go pass cyclists only to be overtaken by them. There are dedicated cycling lanes and paths in some areas, but they're far too inadequate and puts out a mixed message. Often the path is shared with pedestrians or end abruptly and forces a cyclist to join the road again. There are pros and cons for cycling with traffic or cycling on dedicated paths, but I find its very counterproductive to force cyclists to have to do both.

Other than traffic dangers, when riding in spring time in Australia, magpies do attack riders. These birds are highly territorial, and there are not many ways to avoid being attacked. Some suggestions to help avert attacks include putting elaborate devices on the helmet. This has to be carefully considered - in the event of an accident, the contraption must not affect the helmet's purpose to protect your head. One suggestion from my colleague was to use cable ties and stick the pointy end away from your helmet, although I have yet to try this out. If you could, it would be best to avoid where they nest and use an alternate route if possible. A map of magpie attacks is being compiled.

Fortunately, there is good camaraderie between cyclists. Often I will cycle pass another cyclists and we will acknowledge each other with a nod or a wave. So next time you cycle, don't forget to say hello to your fellow cyclists!

Allergy immunotherapy

As I sit here and eat my dinner left over from last night, I am contemplating the effectiveness of allergy immunotherapy. Many people suffer from allergies, some more severe than others, and their quality of life is seriously affected by their over-reactive immune systems. To alleviate symptoms, many people take anti-histamines daily, and while there are many good products on the market, they are often expensive and a hassle for the sufferer. 

Immunotherapy aims to combat allergies at the root by desensitising the immune system. Allergens - the substance that causes the allergic reaction - are introduced to the sufferer at an increasing dosage over a period of time. The idea is to allow the body to adapt to a higher level of allergens and reduce the severity and even eliminate the body's reactions. In some sense, immunotherapy may be considered as a "cure" to allergies. Success rate depend on the individual, but research has shown up to 70%.

There are a few methods of delivery of allergens, one of which is by subcutaneous injections. The length and therefore cost of the therapy differ for each allergen. For some, it can be up to 5 years and very expensive. A visit to the GP is required for each injection. This is time consuming for both the sufferer and the doctor. There are also factors that may influence the effectiveness of the injections, such as mishandling of the allergens, poor injection technique or missed doses. For some people, that is enough to warrant them to stay on the anti-histamine. For others, immunotherapy is a path to freedom from allergies. I have chosen the latter path.

Always consult your doctor.

Hello World!

Welcome readers. This will be the blog that will hopefully, eventually make me a rich man, just like every other aspiring blogger out there. I'd like to not have to go to work - not that there is anything wrong with working 40 hour weeks for 40 year although that would make for a pretty boring existence and blog.

Maybe I am a bit late to the blogging party, but we shall see how things go. Random things and thoughts will fill this space, and I will try to make things as organised as possible. So here goes and please be gentle!