Blog
2009 Perth Sun Fair
The 2009 Perth Sun Fair is on this Sunday April 5th at the UWA. It's been a really good combination of companies, community, and education in the past and I'm sure it'll be great again this year. If you live in Perth then I recommend going and make sure to check out the seminars.
Hello 2009
Somehow 2008 disappeared quickly without much blogging, Felix is a year older (and almost 2 now), and we're still staying with my in-laws because our house isn't finished yet!
The good news is the house is almost ready and the passive solar design seems to be working really well. Despite some extended periods of very hot weather and not living in the house to control when the windows are open/closed, the house temperature is very comfortable. I'm actually blown away at how good it is. The rammed earth walls and concrete slab offer a huge amount of thermal mass while orienting the house correctly with 500mm eves seems to stop unwanted sun from hitting the walls or internal floor (slab). A little bit of unwanted sun hits the east side of the house late morning so I'll probably extend the pergola along there too (was planning only on the north side only).
Ruwani has been busy taking care of Felix and organizing things for the
house, such as getting the polished concrete finished and wooden flooring
done recently. With the handover potentially a month away she is also looking at all
the other bits we'll need like a bed, curtains/blinds, fridge, etc... She's also making sure I
don't forget about building the rest of the kitchen! 
I had been planning to blog quite a bit about what we're doing with the house, the block, and living sustainably but that hasn't happened ... yet. I still plan to write up about the whole process because when we started out along this path I couldn't find enough information on it. There is stuff out there but more is better, especially if it's specific for your location/climate.
I met my cycling goal for 2008 and completed ~6500km (goal was 6000km). For
this year I can't see myself spending too much more time on the bike so the
goal is to ride faster instead . So for 2009 I will be
targetting 8000km and have already started a very simple training program to get
quicker. I built a bike for Ruwani last year and was hoping she'd ride a bit
more but that's still a work in progress. I also need to take Felix out more
in the trailer.
I'm off for work the next couple weeks which should be good because I'll have a chance to catch up with my work colleagues and Ian while in the US. Although I'm looking forward to the trip it's also difficult leaving Felix behind. Working from home I'm so used to his frequent visits/interruptions. Oh well, I guess that's what webcams are for now!
Bit of a Crash
I was out last night on a ride and was almost home after about 40km
when I had a bit of a crash. It was dark so I was checking my speedo while
passing by a street light when I realised the kerb was curving right and I
was heading straight into it - then bang! Thanks to the speedo check I know I
was travelling 36kph at the time .
Very lucky for me I went over the gutter into some vegetation between the road and footpath. So I got pretty dirty but not hurt, I didn't hit anything hard at all! That was me, but my rear wheel hit the gutter pretty hard and was bent a little. My brifters were pushed out of position but that was an easy fix. Still need to fix the wheel but I have a spare (from Ruwani's bike).
VMware Workstation on Ubuntu 8.04
Well I ran into a problem with VMware Workstation (v6.0.3) since the kernel modules wouldn't build on hardy. Thankfully Igor Guerrero Fonseca has already solved the problem and his fix worked for me. Take a look at his blog: VMware 6.0.3 in Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 kernel 2.6.24.
Upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04
I upgraded my desktop from Ubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 on the weekend. I'm
pleased to say it was a non event and everything is still working
. Thanks to the iiNet mirror it only took 21 minutes to download
the 1311 packages (install said ~1GB worth) - nice!.
Perth Freeway Bike Hike 2008
Sunday saw me up early for the Perth Freeway Bike Hike and what a day it was!
I rode to Bull Creek station to get the train down to the 60km start but the trains were 100% full and the platform was 100% full too - i.e. no chance. Without a car I jumped back on the bike and headed south. On the way down I managed to flip my bike over, took a graze to the elbow, all while having a phone conversation! (also the cause of the stupid move which resulted in the flip).
At approx 7:12 I rolled into the A group starting area just in time to hear them counting down and off I went again. My plan was to catch up to Graeme since Ron and Phil mentioned he was up the front but by the time everyone got out the starting area we were spread out over a km. I was pushing hard to move further up until I met some other guys going the same speed and we kinda formed a group. This may have been the 2nd or 3rd big group out of the A starters - many riders joined on and we had a pretty big pack all the way to the end. We were really moving although I think with better co-ordination we could have pushed a little quicker.
A few times after people would wreck our pace line the guys behind would surge and surround us leading to some scary situations.
In the end I finished in 1:27:56 averaging 40.3kph over the 59.06km.
After 21km + 59km we had a short ride to Ron's place and enjoyed a long relaxing breakfast before heading home (+46.33km). So all up I would have done approx 125km for the day.
Blog Neglect
It's a new year and I haven't blogged for months - but we've been busy:
- Felix is now 10 months old, already! He's crawling around everywhere, standing up, standing and moving around holding onto things, his top 2 and bottom 2 front teeth are through and he's bigger. I need to upload some more current photos.
- We were in Sydney for Christmas with my family. It was great to see everyone again.
- I was in Melbourne for linux.conf.au 2008. This was awesome as always with too many talks to see but thankfully most were recorded. Go check them out. Ruwani and Felix came along as we stayed with Ruwani's sister who took the week off. There are plenty of great vegan and vegan friendly restaurants in Melb which was nice.
- I finished out 2007 with 3000km on the bike. That was pretty good I thought, although many months were a bit weak due to laziness and/or travel. This year my goal is to double it to 6000km.
- Our house is finally moving along. Site works are complete, the slab is down and they are preparing to start the (rammed earth) walls. Exciting stuff and I'll put up photos of the progress soon.
Sleeping: Shot with my old 2MP Canon IXUS - rather grainy and poor white balance. I only just found the battery charger after about 2 years!
[ see entries for: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, misc ]
